Man Like Woman, Woman No-Like Man.

I am often confused about the distinction between the two human sexes aside from any reproductive differences. So I set out to understand how and why women and men are so different and it seems that the internets has no shortage of advice on the differences between men and women.

Dating advice:

It appears that heterosexual (and closeted homosexual) men want to have sex with women, in particular, beautiful women. The advice ranges from acting arrogant to authoritative to funny with the common factor being under no circumstances should men be themselves. Women do not like men who are themselves and will get bored and walk away. So you have to trick them into liking you enough until sex happens. What do we on the internets learn from this? 1. Women are vastly different from men 2. Women do not like sex.
Look for yourself, google "talking to women" or "tips on dating women", there is almost no end to the advice on how to get a woman to have sex with you. Yes, this advice treats sex like something that needs to be pitched, a sale, some way to get someone to buy your product (your wang) but on the plus side it allows you to be free of ever having to be a decent human being. Because women, according to these sites, hate having sex with men (firstly) and hate having sex with "weak" men (read: decent human beings). So, in conclusion, women are not attracted to physically good looking men because women do not get turned on in that way. Women do not look at a guy in a bar and think "I'd like to ride that"- this literally never happens! Women need to be coaxed into sex because they are not sexually aggressive, they hate boning. And Women will have sex with any man who can trick her into doing it even if you subsist on a diet of donuts and bacon and smell like you do-tell her you are rich!

Jokes:

"What do you tell a woman with two black eyes?....Nothing! She's already been told twice!" ba-dum-ching! There is no end to jokes about women on the internets, nor are there about men: "Men are like computers...hard to figure out and never have enough memory!" A-ha! So joke #1 implies men should beat women, that men are emotional assholes, and joke #2 implies that men are legally retarded and there are no women in the computer science field.

Conclusion:
Do I have to spell it out? 1. People have sex with people they find attractive and what people find attractive can vary. Sure you get the occasional person who will buy a set of useless kitchen knives from a telemarketer but they learn not to do that again after they've experienced credit card fraud. So maybe a woman will have sex with a jerk that has "tricked" her into it and pitched her a convincing line, but hopefully, she will learn from her mistakes.

Conclusion 2:
Sexism hurts both men and women. How? It creates categories of masculine and feminine that people must force themselves into to feel like a real man or woman. The problem? Most people cannot be categorized and being confined in such a narrow way makes them miserable- especially when they do not live up to the expectations society has forced onto them. Be yourself, be free!

The AGO Hates French-Canadians

I went to the Art Gallery of Ontario on Wednesday as it is free from 6-8pm. It was the first time I have been there since the renovations and, I have to say, it is pretty impressive. All that wood. Everywhere. Great contemporary art pieces; Janet Cardiff's "Whispering Room" was by far my favourite piece. The Canadian section of course houses many paintings from the Group of Seven, the quintessential Canadian painters ( I like Emily Carr the best). And the Krieghoff's, always with the Krieghoff's.

Ever since I can remember, the AGO seemed to be persistent in displaying a multitude of Cornelius Krieghoff paintings depicting the same drunken French Canadian Habitants, drinking with bright red drunk noses, playing drunkenly in the snow while drinking to get drunk. For those of you who do not know Krieghoff painted "potboilers" of these Habitant scenes. The reason: Victorians loved getting wasted but could not do so in their polite society so they settled with living vicariously through these (kinda racist towards French people) paintings. And hence there are so many of these paintings in existence.

Is the AGO trying to make a statement that there is some value to these paintings? It would be like putting 50 copies of Dan Brown's book (choose one; they are all equally bad) on display one hundred years from now just because they are old. Yes, Krieghoff was a good painter if a painting was judged by its' realism and commercial appeal, but surely, one of his paintings would suffice to display his talent. And maybe, if the AGO were to take down just a dozen of the Krieghoff's there would be more room for other contemporary Canadian painters' works. But I forgot, being a painter doesn't make you an artist anymore, unless you used your own congealed blood as your primary medium...

The Robot Thesis: Stop Wasting Good Liquor On Molotov Cocktails Please.

The Robot Thesis: Stop Wasting Good Liquor On Molotov Cocktails Please.

Stop Wasting Good Liquor On Molotov Cocktails Please.

The G20 is finally upon us. Am I going to complain about feeling like I live in a police state? Where there are literally packs of cops roaming the streets or standing on corners, eying everyone with their crazy eyes? No. I will not complain about them, or even the amount of money this has cost, or anything like that. What I am going to complain about, however, is the lack of racial profiling happening in Toronto right now. That's right people, I said lack of racial profiling. And age profiling, and maybe hairstyle profiling as well.

First, let me begin by saying people who have the ability to protest the G20, i.e people who can take the days off work or even travel to Toronto represent some sort of privileged section of this fine North American population. So you're from NYC, and you decide to come to Toronto because you fancy yourself an anarchist(or communist), but how do you leave NYC if you are a single mother raising three kids...?Oh yeah, you can't. How can you leave Montreal to travel to Toronto to protest when you live in a slum and are working for minimum wage...? Oh yeah, you can't. Right. How, someone please tell me, can you afford to buy and wear a $10 "Fuck the G20" t-shirt if you cannot afford to do your laundry? And those are the relatively "privileged" poor, we are not even talking about the so-called subalterns in "3rd" world or "Southern" countries.

Back to racial profiling. It is no fairytale that most suburbs are filled with a certain type of light beige-ish pink-looking person. And residing in these suburban houses there are angst ridden individuals who want to blow off some steam by taking up a cause (fighting a system, mind you, that has only privileged them)in the name of those without political voices. Who is spray painting anarchy symbols on banks? Who was arrested for ordering a bomb online to "test" G20 security? Who is selling "Fuck the G20" shirts in Kensington Market...the "privileged" ones who can afford to. Who walks defiantly amungst police officers all whilst sporting long poo-like poo dreads?

FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING THAT IS AWESOME IN THIS UNIVERSE:
1. Do not take up a cause in someone else's name, last time I checked this is not the 19th century and some of us are trying to move away from being liberal idealist a-holes "protecting" those who cannot "speak" for themselves. If you take up a cause that, I repeat, has given you privilege, and you think you are doing right; you are not. People do not need you spray painting anarchist signs in their name. Thanks.
2. The best thing you can do is NOT go to the protest. If nobody shows up and the city ended up spending millions of dollars on security this would make the conservative capitalists look way worse than your poorly worded and often grammatically incorrect graffiti. They would be the ones that look like idiots. Right? Right.

Thank you.

p.s. The people selling "fuck the G20" shirts actually used "if you don't wear one you are not cool" as their sales pitch. So yeah, go to the G20 and pretend you are cool because you got tear gassed. I am sorry to inform you, however, that being hassled by cops to tell your friends about it later does not feed anybody. For some reason.

Everybody Loves Raymond's Way of Sleeping in the Gutter.

Many cities are famous for different things. New York has Times Square, San Fransisco has the Golden Gate bridge, Paris, London, Prague all are old. But what does Toronto have? We had the CN Tower but only until 2007 when the Burj Khalifa usurped the title of tallest free standing structure that fateful day in September. There is, however, another feature of Toronto that I am sure other people have noticed before, but in their haste to pass homeless people begging on the street failed to recognize the significance. That's right: Toronto has the highest population per square kilometer of homeless people who resemble celebrities.

The other day I was getting off the Bathhurst street car by Queen and I almost ran into an emaciated Tommy Lee Jones from The Fugitive fame. Also the guy opposite Will Smith in Men in Black I and II. The homeless man could have been Tommy Lee Jones. Seriously, we do not know what celebrities look like without airbrushing, lighting and makeup. Maybe Tommy Lee Jones likes coming to Toronto in June to ride around on a bike with a Styrofoam takeout container attached to the handle bars. And in that container there are blue lights. I also saw a Mick Jagger in front of the Bladwin/Spadina liquor store with a sign that claimed he needed money because he was waiting for his big break as a supermodel.

In fact, there are no shortage of celebrity look-a-like homeless people in Toronto. Why yes, I did see a tired looking Jessica Lange drinking from a forty of Max Ice, I saw her just last week. The point is, I guess, now that our quasi-famous tower is no longer the pointy pride of Toronto we need to lobby for something equally awesome to be known for. Celebrity homeless people look-a-likes is just the ticket to put us back on the world map of awesomeness. Some would argue, having so many homeless people who resemble celebrities is actually better that having a crummy corporate sponsored tower anyways.

Will Work for Minimum Wage

I like the movie The Graduate; the summer of being without direction after graduating university. Except, in that movie Dustin Hoffman did anything to alleviate his boredom. I can feel that boredom now in the heat of the sun, in the intense green of the new leaves and the emptiness in the quiet, dusty wind.

I need a job.

But- Apparently I have no qualifications for any job except waitressing/bartending as those were the only types of jobs I've ever had. The employer who wants to take a chance on a new graduate is rare so I've taken the time to write down some jobs I think I am qualified for. Jobs that may even, dare I say, target a niche that needs to be filled in Toronto.

1. Spider Rotator.
This job works with the presupposition that spiders are an ancient being and not climatized to living inside houses that are heated and air conditioned. Since Toronto has a large collection of drafty Victorian houses that use a lot of heating/air conditioning, especially in Cabbagetown, I propose that I will go to your house and rotate the indoor spiders outside and then replace the indoor spiders with outdoor spiders. What this means for you and your family is that your spider population will always be well balanced and less prone to biting. You might inquire as to why I will bring in new spiders and not leave the house 100% spider, and therefore, 100% spider bite free? Because: Spiders eat gross bugs that lurk in the dark.

2. Puppy Hugger.
I've noticed that many people have puppies and that these city puppies are very jaded. They do not look at me when I call them. They are only interested in other dogs and not humans. That is okay. But puppies with a lack of interest in humans will not get as many hugs. I can change this for a small fee.

3. Personal Shopper for Hipsters
Despite the fact that I may make fun of hipsters I am not too proud to work for them. Being a hipster requires a time dedication that may be impossible if you have a full time job. My proposal: I will go to all the Value Villages and other thrift stores in Toronto and the surrounding GTA to find t-shirts and other paraphernalia with a variety of ironic themes. Looking for a t-shirt circa 1980 that was printed for a family reunion in Fort Lauderdale? Need a lamp that is made out of a troll doll? Sunglasses that were donated to the Goodwill by an octogenarian? I can find it for you.

Those are just a few of the ideas for jobs I would be really good at. But for now I guess I will just have to swallow my pride and start applying to bars and restaurants; despite my GPA.

Count Down To G20

The construction site by Collage and Spadina has big, empty wooden boards to block out all ocular offense. They stenciled "POST NO BILLS", however, some clever being(s) whited out the "NO" and then stenciled the likeness of Bill Cosby, Bill Clinton, Bill Murray and Bill Gates.
Today I discovered this pretty cool bit of graffito was almost ruined by- what I can only assume- a possible University student who may or may not have been drinking at Einsteins last night. What they wrote, in big bold letters was "SOAR, F**k G20" and the "A" in SOAR was of course an anarchy symbol.

Anarchism is grossly misunderstood mainly because people under the guise of anarchy show their disdain for the world by throwing Molotov cocktail's at police officers or possibly government buildings. Anarchism, however, as a political stand, means simply without rule, meaning that you have enough self discipline to live without a paternalistic government controlling your life. Like in the Gandhian sense. Spray painting anarchy symbols does not count.

June 26th is almost here and I would just like to take a second to point out some problems with the protesters who have begun so soon with their anarchy signs. First, though, let me make it perfectly clear that I am against the G20 summits, not because of some anti-capitalist agenda but because of the liberal ideals the summit tries to globally promote. 1. free trade, open markets 2. Sustainable world growth (read: a civilizing mission) all in a post-war dated Bretton Woods system...

BUT.

The North (us) exploit the South (the people we protest for). If this was not the case bananas would be $5.00 each instead of $0.69 a pound (this is an estimate I just made up but you get the point). Shoes, shirts, basically all of our foods will go up drastically in price. We will be a place which can no longer support overweight homeless people or let our children use super soakers in the summer time. We might actually have to conserve food and water. Those Do-rags you anarchists/communists plan on wearing to the protests, yes, those dollar do-rags were made possible by this exploitation.

It is clear that what the G20 represents needs to stop. But do you do this by benefiting from society and then "biting the hand that feeds you"? All I am saying is you are giving anarchists a bad name. Protest the G20 everyday by not buying anything that was not made or produced in Canada. Those political liberals like Stephen Harper (yes I know he is a "Conservative" but every one who likes free trade market/ world growth aka civilizing of other countries is adhering to liberalism's doctrine), the IMF and the World Bank, suck. Neo-Liberalism and Neo-Conservatism suck, so write a new political theory and save your Molotov cocktails for people who are starving. Exploit and take advantage of your system by taking out government loans, going to University, working hard and taking down the system from the inside out. It is what any good anarchist would do.