A rose by any other name would still make it look like someone loved me

Valentine’s day is nothing but a fabricated capitalist cash-grab designed to trick men into spending their hard-earned money on teddy bears wearing bowties that will, in less than two years, be cluttering the toy bins at Goodwill, passed up by every thrifty toy-seeking child because the teddy bear is cheap looking and bowties are ugly. Stores cram their shelves with meaningless shiny pink heart broaches and milk chocolate cupid statues in an attempt to convince both women and men that everyone else is buying this shit and that love can only exist in a relationship that includes a sparkly rose Pez dispenser. It’s all a load of soulless, tacky, soon-to-be-discounted crap.

That being said, I’d really like a teddy bear.

At work, I sit at my desk as the pale, hunched mailroom guy trots by again and again with bouquets of roses and mylar balloons and chocolate-covered-fruit arrangements and engagement rings encased in carved ice. They’re all going to the department of pretty girls down the way, easily distinguished by the pink and purple ribbons strung from the ceiling and the high pitched squeals of glee that bounce off the oversized heart balloons every time a new box of love-shaped cookies is delivered.

In the last 10 years I have received a total of one item for Valentine’s Day: a single rose. My third Valentine’s Day with this particular boyfriend and he had finally realized that maybe he should make some sort of loving gesture. I allowed the rose to dry out so I could keep it forever. A month and a half later I was crumpling it into dust and grinding it into his ball cap cos he had dumped me for a 19-year-old Brock student.

Needless to say, I have long abandoned my Grade 4 dreams of discovering the Heathcliffe valentine addressed to me from question-mark-inside-a-heart was actually from (insert undisclosed boy’s name as I am still too shy to reveal my 1993 crush). I have accepted the fact that I am not worthy of even the smallest romantic gesture.

But then came Valentine’s Day 2012. Upon arriving home from my day spent slumped over a desk, I unlocked my humble tin mailbox, expecting to find a No Frills ad selling single-serving Michelina dinners and a note from Xtreme Fitness saying maybe I’d be pretty enough for flowers if I lost 14 pounds. But instead my mailbox contained a baby-pink envelope embossed with a couple of hearts. My own heart fluttered. I had already received my annual you’re-a-great-daughter-and-I’ll-always-love-you-even-if-no-other-man-ever-does card from my sentimental Pops. Who could this love-filled treasure be from?

I immediately thought it must be from one of my endearing girlfriends, determined to bring me joy on such a dicey day. I glanced at the envelope. It was addressed to “My Long-Lost Love.” I, of course, was suspicious. The envelope did not say my proper name and my address had been printed on via computer. But then my gaze was drawn to the top right-hand corner of the happy pink rectangle. There lay a real stamp. A real Canada stamp with a picture of three dirty raccoons peering over a log.

No junk mail company would take the time to affix real stamps to each piece of garbage they sent out!

Clearly this was a prank from a friend, who had printed the envleope so as to disguise her handwriting. Or maybe it was sent from an old flame determined to present me with a classy envelope free of smeared, man-scrawled ink. Or perhaps this was one of those cute novelty mailouts where one can go online and have a secret valentine shipped to a friend. Perhaps this was a touching note from my computer-savvy uncle. Or a menacing plea from my now dormant stalker, which, while horrifying, would at least mean someone was thinking of me.

And that’s all that mattered – that on this day, when every other girl in the world was drowning in a sea of sugary cherry-flavoured chocolate filling, someone – ANYONE – was thinking about scruffy little me.

I tore the envelope open like a pitbull might tear into an unattended child. I pulled out a cheerful card, on which was printed a blue jay singing the words “Miss you!” in a dialogue bubble shaped like a heart.


My mind raced as I considered all the people who might miss me. An old pal from high school? A floor-mate from university? Or maybe my ex finally realized the 19-year-old he left me for DOES look like Eddie Izzard in drag and needed to express his regrets. I flipped the card open and was greeted with a poem.

Roses are red,
violets are blue,
here are two offers
from epost to you.


The valentine went on to note that I had not logged into epost.ca for a while and should do so to rediscover the benefit of managing my bills online. It also said I could take advantage of deals such as $25 towards a subscription to Maclean’s Magazine.

The only thing that could have been more depressing would be a valentine from my cat, and even then I would have been impressed at his ability to compose a sentence in modern English and sign his name with a pen. If I had not already written Valentine’s Day off as a giant marketing scheme I would have marched upstairs, chugged a bottle of merlot, then smashed it in half and plunged the jagged rim into my own neck. Epost is now using what is essentially a huge marketing scheme as a vehicle for its own, smaller, more evil marketing scheme. The matryoshka doll of marketing ploys. A post-modern venture into exploiting exploitation.

So I wrote a letter back.

Dear epost.ca,

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I know this may hurt
But sadly we’re through.

Epost, thank you for the thoughtful Valentine’s Day card. What woman needs a romantic gesture from a man when she has an entire corporation begging her to come back to them? And the Macleans offer, I feel, is your way of telling me I am both smart and successful. Which is much more important than being lovable or pretty.

That said, I’d be lying if I told you I had thought of you even once since the last time I logged into your website to view a measly paycheque from my last job. In fact, I even found logging in at that time slightly annoying.

I’m even a little insulted at your attempt to buy back my loyalty by offering me money towards a magazine subscription. I know you’re privy to my paycheques from when I was temping during the recession, but I’ve got something better now and I don’t need you, or anyone else, to help me manage my bills or buy my reading material.

Thanks, by the way, for waiting three years before checking up on me. I don’t think you give a damn about my bill management. This little valentine you sent reeks of corporate desperation. Maybe if you had put this sort of effort into Valentine’s Day 2009 I never would have left. It’s too late, epost – I’m gone. And I’m never coming back.

Also I noticed the card you send was not a Hallmark. Their marketing scheme tells me that means you don’t actually care.

Sincerely,
Laura


I thought about ripping epost’s cruel advertisement of a card into shreds and tossing it in the blue box. But instead I brought it to work and put the card up at my desk so all the pretty girls down the way would think I got a valentine, too. I may not be special enough for a synthetic mass-produced teddy bear, but I at least want people around me to think I’m special enough for a card. Even if I know I’m only special enough for garbage.

(For the record, my boyfriend did get me a Valentine’s card this year, which I received after the epost debacle. Yeah, I know none of you heartless bastards care.)

Worst thing since sliced bread

Dear Subpar Pita Bread,

I just wanted to commend you on so successfully ruining my lunch. Perhaps you haven’t heard the stories of me eating leftover cake off strangers’ plates in restaurants, but I have fairly low standards when it comes to enjoying something delicious. If I want to eat it, it’s hard to make me regret it. And you know what, other than leftover cake, is usually quite delicious? Turkey wraps. A healthy and refreshing yet portable meal that sadly promises to be the highlight of my otherwise bleak workday, during which I sit hunched at my grey desk putting in enough paid hours to fund my pointless existence. While hunched over a contract I am proofreading, I usually glance at the clock in the bottom right corner of my screen at least six times a minute, counting down the seconds until I can sit hunched over a distracting meal. Today’s meal: turkey wrap with a side of chicken soup. Today’s verdict: fuck you, Subpar Pita Bread.

Perhaps, as a piece of pita bread, you have never enjoyed a pita of your own. Perhaps you do not understand the basic fundamentals of constructing and subsequently eating a pita. It’s actually quite a simple concept to grasp.

1) Put pita on plate
2) Put toppings on pita
3) Wrap pita around toppings
4) Wrap mouth around pita

You’ll notice that these basic instructions do not include any steps that involve throwing the plate at a wall, hopping in a cab and burning down a local pita factory. You know why? Because a pita that can accomplish the four simple steps listed above will only result in the eater of said pita being temporarily satisfied with her life, which she will then continue to mundanely live out without any pesky interference from court dates or three-year jail sentences.

The problem with you becomes evident when one asks the question, “What is the point of a pita?” The answer, of course, is for this bread to act as a vehicle for far more delicious toppings to reach one’s stomach in an efficient manner that requires no utensils and very little cleanup. In this crazy world we live in today, foods such as the pita are more important than ever. The woman on the go does not have time to wash a load of dishes before getting back to her Outlook inbox. Equality started the day it became acceptable for a woman to eat like a savage with her bare hands and curse her miserable 9-5 existence like men have done since the beginning of time.

So, without the ability to safely house toppings, you, Pita, are a useless piece of perishable garbage unfit for any food bank. And this, Subpar Pita, is exactly how and why you ruined my lunch. Maybe you’re not familiar with the month of January, but it usually involves people making fleeting healthy eating choices to rid themselves of the eight pounds they’ve gained since baking that first test batch of Christmas cookies on November 25th. This is prime time for you to prove why you are a valuable member of the food groups and a better choice than a microwavable dish of Michelina-brand chemicals.

Today you were part of my plan to better myself, to eat nutritious meals that do not compromise when it comes to ingredients or shelf life. But you let me down from the very moment I removed you from your plastic pita womb filled with a litter of circular breads and placed you on my plate. In that short journey you developed a crack I immediately knew would interfere with my pita ingestion. But I accepted this small blemish on what otherwise appeared to be a tasty wheat creation. I very carefully placed my romaine lettuce, real turkey breast and tomatoes along the strongest part of your spine. I carried you back to my grey little desk, added some salt and pepper, and – in the daintiest and most gentle of ways - folded. That’s when you fucked everything up. You split open in three different places. A whole inch of you fell right off, exposing a thin inner wall of lettuce. My tiny hands now gripped what was basically a pile of bread chunks balancing a frightened mix of poultry and vegetables. My only option was to fully commit to this wrap, shoving it down my throat as quickly as possible. This is not how I like to eat. I like to take a bite, put the edible object down, do something efficient, then re-clasp and take another bite. Occasionally I like to sip some water or dab a napkin to my cheek. But you did not allow me to do any of these things. With every bite another fragment of bread would crumble to my plate below. This resulted in my hands and face getting messier than ever, but I had no freedom to reach for a paper towel. Lucky for both of us I have an aversion to white sauces and you were free from any mayonnaise, ranch dressing or other vomit equivalency. Had you been the lunch of a normal human being who likes to plop creamy slime all over the place things would have been far more disastrous. That being said, the inherent problem with avoiding sauces is that it results in a rather dry wrap, especially when white turkey meat is involved. So, while I may have been spared globs of pus-like wetness dripping all over my arms, my throat became more and more parched as I was unable to reach for my nearby water bottle. Not to mention that all the while my chicken soup was sitting by sad and alone. The whole point of the sandwich/soup combo is so that one can juxtapose the warm brothy goodness of the soup with the cool crispy freshness of the wrap. Perhaps after four boring wrap bites I would want to throw in a couple soup slurps to mix up the texture, temperature and taste sensations. You allowed me no such freedoms and made my tongue a prisoner of your faulty genetic makeup. Not only was I racing against your ultimate demise, but I was also racing against soup coldness. I had to ram you into my face simply so the rest of my meal could go unspoiled.

Now, had this soup I was waiting for been delicious, perhaps I could forgive some of your shortcomings and think, “Well, at least I had that tasty soup.” But this was not the case. Today I was conducting a soup experiment with a can of Smart Ones chicken noodle. I purchased this soup because it claimed to be low in calories and fat. I believe they abide by this claim by making their soup so tasteless and disgusting that the consumer throws half the can away, thereby saving some precious Weight Watchers points. I have never had a soup that tasted so little of sodium, and even after dumping a litre of salt and pepper into the bowl the dim yellow slop remained tasteless. The so-called chicken - the ingredient around which this entire soup is based – was so revolting my cat would have sent it back if I had passed him a tin of it. Tiny little factory-formed squares of pink that tasted spongy and dystopian. I had to use my spoon to fish them all out and slap them into my under-desk garbage. Had you not fallen apart on me, I would have experimented with this soup much earlier in the meal. Realizing it was disgusting, I would have consumed it first, leaving myself with a delightful turkey wrap to look forward to. Instead I finished my meal by begrudgingly swallowing some boiled carrots floating in yellow.

I realize this is just as much the soup’s fault as it is yours, but at least the soup was still, by scientific standards, soup. You were, by all standards, no longer a pita. You were a pile of rubble under which all my love of lunch was buried and suffering. I could have tried to dig it out but I knew if your remnants were to be the building blocks of any future hunger I would rather let my desire to eat slowly die.

I’m not sure why you chose to destroy my lunch and, subsequently, my work ethic. I treated you with respect. I used you well in advance of your expiry, I did not overstuff, did not tightly fold – I didn’t even do the bottom-end fold-over, which is really quite essential for wrap-wrapping. I knew you were fragile and tried not to hurt you. All I did was think of you and you couldn’t even hold it together for 20 minutes to make me happy. I don’t know why your creators are even in the business of pita-making. If one owned a car factory but only produced cars that could not drive he’d be run out of town. But maybe that is what happened – maybe your makers were run out of Lebanon, which is why they’ve had to bring their Lebanese-style breads here, selling them for a whole dollar less than the other pita breads. I’d vow to never buy a pack of your kind again, but, as I said, your pitas are a whole dollar less per package and I am just sssoooo cheap. I mean, I’m willing to eat leftover cake off restaurant tables. I clearly have no standards.

Sincerely,
Laura

Dressing Down Dresses

Unless I am at a strip club, which I currently am not (and likely will not be in future), the last thing I want to see on stage is a fellow woman’s crotch. To be quite honest, the last thing I want to see in any given situation is a fellow woman’s crotch. I don’t believe this is simply because I am a wholesome young lady who wishes to be married some day and values traditional romance. I believe this is because crotches are rather distracting items and, unless I have set out to specifically view a crotch, a random crotch sighting will likely take away from whatever it is I did initially set out to see.

I have noticed a trend recently on the sketch and improv stages in Toronto that offends me as a performer, audience member and woman. It seems the hip thing to do these days it to improvise in a skirt – often a ridiculously short one, often with bare legs or non-opaque tights. Unless these lady improvisers plan to present a variety of scenes involving Lindsay Lohan getting out of a taxi, these hot little outfits simply are not practical. The entire point of improv is that things are made up on the spot (aka improvised) and thus one never knows what compromising situation she will be required to take part in. When a skirt is being worn – especially without opaque tights or vaudeville-esque bloomers underneath – an improviser has now limited herself in what she can do. When making physical choices she will now be judging every thought based on the cute little number she’s adorning. This means she will likely end up standing around awkwardly throughout the entire scene, just doing a lot of talking. And God knows women never shut up as it is. Anyway, she has basically rendered herself a robotic little trophy wife who daren’t move lest a wisp of hair stray out of place. She has basically made herself a talking mannequin on stage, but not even a cool talking mannequin like Jeff from Today’s Special who often danced about and sang semi-educational songs. More like the Tin Man after only his mouth had been oiled. And really – he was by far inferior to the Scarecrow or the Cowardly Lion.

Now, let’s say the improviser in question is very in the moment and holds her commitment to the scene above her modesty. I respect this far more because she is doing what she is there to do – improvise, not sell the latest H&M creation – but this leads to a number of highly uncomfortable moments for the audience. As open-minded and liberal as any given audience may be, no one wants to feel like a pervert peering up a young woman’s dress as she straddles a chair. Sitting on a chair is an inherent problem as, unless the legs are crossed in the most ladylike fashion, the slight raised level of the stage paired with the slight lowered level of the audience puts viewers’ eyes at crotch level. A sceptic may argue, “Well, just don’t look!” but this is not as easy as it seems. When a female player is writhing about in a skirt a mixture of emotions is experienced by the audience. Some may feel a lusty emotion, wanting to catch a glimpse of the secret lady area as they are very sad and came to the show alone because they found zero matches on e-Harmony. Some may feel a concerned emotion, empathizing with the girl and trying to reposition her skirt using telekinesis. Some may feel an awkward emotion, as one would feel if she were to accidentally burst into an occupied toilet stall. Some may feel a horrified emotion, such as one experiences when passing a four-car pile-up on the 401 – not wanting to see the gruesome aftermath but feeling compelled to stare. Other people may be blind and their emotion would likely remain unchanged. In any case, these emotions have nothing to do with the scene at hand, which may also be evoking a completely different emotion. This inner struggle confuses the audience to the point that they are unable to focus on the scene, but only able to stare fixedly at the cellulite that appears to be located a mere two inches from the woman’s bottom. Thus, when leaving the show, instead of cleverly observing, “I rather enjoyed how that marshmallow scene explored the exploitation of natural resources in South America” a woman may observe “Ew, could that chick’s dress have been any shorter? I mean, you could totally see everything and the dress clashed with her hair anyway.” So basically the short, short skirt has undone all the hard work that was put into creating art on stage.

As well, although this observation on fashion is completely valid, passers-by who hear this remark may then judge the female audience member as being superficial, and then may judge women as a whole as only being concerned with fashion. The short, short skirt has now resulted in a major blow to equality. And how can women and men be equal on stage when women are putting these limitations on themselves? Women in general have a tough enough time in improv and comedy as it is. In a field long dominated by men, unless women are playing alongside top quality improvisers, they are often endowed as being wives, secretaries, nurses, victims, cats, or unused bookshelves in the background. To get to the top in improv, women have to deal with a lot of shitty roles, on-stage sexism, being yelled over – women do have to fight to get to a level at which the men they are working with aren’t total douchebags. But that means the douchebags are in the audience and they are staring up your skirt. Perhaps this is precisely it – perhaps women have fought so hard that they are saying “fuck you, men!” and embracing the skirt like the gay community has embraced the word “queer” or like Amy Winehouse embraced her rampant alcoholism. Thing is, the word “queer” can still hurt a gay man’s feelings and Amy Winehouse still had to go to rehab. Taking something bad and making it your own doesn’t mean everyone wants to see your cha-cha.

Basically, ladies, improv is not about looking hot or cute or sexy or like a total whore. It is about being versatile – sometimes looking like a fool, sometimes looking hideous, sometimes looking like a geek and, well, yes, sometimes looking like a total whore. If you want people to be stunned by your shapely upper thighs, stick around for drinks and change into your whore costume after the show. I guarantee this will be far more magical – like when girls take their hair down and remove their glasses in movies. The high school hunk always asks them out. Why? Because it turns out they were secretly impressed by the girl’s intelligence and quirkiness first and needed that magical moment to realize it. Or skip the middle man and start performing at Zanzibar. No one will ever complain that your dress clashed with your hair and you’ll make a lot more money than you ever will in improv.

Observation

It is somewhat disconcerting when the man sitting across from you on the subway has blood all over his hands. And sleeves. And knapsack.

The True Love Cafe

I find it funny that the "True Love Cafe" is located at the corner of Dundas and Sherbourne, because no one at the corner of Dundas and Sherbourne will ever find True Love.

Rock and roll-over legend

Kurt Cobain was a cultural icon, so people are very protective of the music the man created. Sometimes someone will do a cover of a Nirvana song, which according to the “rules” is blasphemous because Nirvana music is precious and sacred. These covers will usually lead to someone who wants to be thought some high-status-Nirvana-number-one-fan saying, “Ugh. Kurt Cobain must be rolling over in his grave.” THIS MAKES ME MAD. These people try to show off by being all protective of Nirvana, but if they were actual fans they would know that Kurt Cobain was cremated and thus cannot “roll over in his grave” because his ashes are in a canister under a tree. Every time someone misuses the “must-be-rolling-over-in-his-grave” quote, the guy who invented the “must-be-rolling-over-in-his-grave” quote must roll over in his grave.

Backstreet's Back

I have had the new Backstreet Boys song in my head for five days now. That hasn’t happened since 1998. At that time I thought it would never happen again. What is happening to the world? Why have they reunited? Who is listening? Who is buying? How did Howie get all that grease out of his hair?