Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!

When you've got no money, nothing else seems to matter. Last month I hit the ceiling on my credit and found myself with a nasty infection near one of my back molars.

Now if I was a blind-raving optimist, I suppose it might have been considered a blessing not to be able to eat solid foods. But after a week of soups and smoothies, my only option was to go to the dentist. But without any dental-plan or cash I was forced to borrow money from a friend to cover half of the appointment cost, and wrote a post-dated check for the rest - to be cashed 2 days after pay-day.

The kindly dentist hummed and hawed over my Xrays, told me my back molar would need to be extracted, and gave me a prescription for antibiotics. The prescription is still in my wallet, unfilled for want of extra cash. When you're broke, you'd be surprised how resilient your body is to infection. I willed myself better, cause will power is much cheaper than drugs. I hoped I wouldn't come down with anything serious this month.

But yesterday was payday, and the money disappeared quicker than ever. I had last month's bills to pay, I have credit cards to feed, and let's not forget rent, and tuition! Before I knew it there I was against the wall again, and then I remembered that post-dated check, now magically rubberized!

One of my friends has been telling me for months to do my taxes. I hadn't done them in 3 years! "You must be due a refund" she said. So this morning I walked through the rain with 3 years worth of tax-receipts and travel mug full of hope that the tax man would pull me out of the hole I've dug for myself. The accountant informed me that I was due back a total of $300 from 2007! 2008 was a total wash, and for 2009? I owe a cart load of clams. Apparently the tax-man is no longer the hero I took him for. Who'd a thunk it?

When you're broke luxury items take on a whole new meaning. Medication, coffee, and peanut butter; items formerly necessary to my well-being become luxuries I can no longer afford. When I have a few extra dollars I have to consider carefully what I'll spend them on. Last week I bought peanut butter and a loaf of bread to treat myself when I was feeling a little less "down in the mouth".

Luckily, I've inherited my mother's tendency to buy too many non-perishable goods when the money's a-flowin, so I've been living on beans, canned salmon, soup, pancakes, oatmeal, home-made syrup, rice, pasta, and the variety of veggies in my freezer. Extra cash is spent on fresh vegetables and fruit. Next week I'll splurge on some cheese if I'm feeling indulgent.

My run-in with the dentist has also made me think about quitting smoking again. Smoking is a black hole of wasted cash. I've always known this, but when the going is good- why not smoke 'em if you got 'em? Well now the going is well...not. But all I can think about is a cigarette. That cheeky little .40 cent friend of mine! Does it strike anyone else as ironic that nicotine gum costs twice as much as a pack of smokes?

So I've been reaching out to my friends alot lately, and I must truly thank them. Not only were they there when I needed some extra cash to pay for dental Xrays, but they helped me with nicotine gum, cigarettes, coffee, spending cash, and some sensible though not very helpful financial advice. My friends have been so helpful in fact that I've decided to begin a sponsorship program through my facebook page. For a little more than a Starbucks latte a day (I ain't livin' in no 3rd world country - shit is expensive around here!) my friends and family are now able to help a poor starving artist in need. I'll send much better letters and drawings to MY sponsors than anything those World Vision kids would send. Stick ME on your fridge! Write ME off on your taxes! Cause god knows I can't.

G

Winners VS Losers

Just as the peak of the Olympics Fever is breaking, I find myself pondering the affliction of competition. How much does winning matter

The more its worth to you the more you'll win.

You'll work for it. You'll put in the time doing the research, sharpening your mind and training your body for it. You'll eat sleep and dream it. You'll seek it out until you find it and nail it.
And Victory is so sweet. You're a hero. You're a samurai. You're a warrior.
People throw parades for you and shower you with riches.
You will set the bar and reach new heights of glory because it matters, it really matters to be the very best brand of good you can be.
It's the natural way. Survival of the fittest. Kill or be killed.

But how long does victory last before you're grasping at it again? How long can you rest on your laurels before you're a has-been looking for your next comeback? Is it really worth all the hassle? Who needs honour, riches and glory anyway?


Some of us are more concerned with the game than the winning. And some, don't feel like playing at all.

We're the losers. We're the spectators. We're the adoring fans.

Winners need people like us to prop them up. Make them look good. Without us, the winners are just idiots running in circles, expending all sorts of energy hopping about for no reason at all.

Who do you think drives the winner's Cadillac through the streets waving and grinning like a cheshire cat? Who do you think he's waving at? Who do you think buys boxes of cereal with his face on it? Who do you think chants his name as he crosses the finish line?

But again, I ask. Does competition really matter? If there was no one sitting in that cadillac, if there were no bouqets and medals, wouldn't traffic move a little quicker? Wouldn't I be able to nosh on my sugar-O's without being reminded that I have no chance of ever running a one-minute mile? Wouldn't I be able to read a newspaper with actual news in it? Wouldn;t men have more interesting things to talk about?

Just a thought.

G

The Dying Art of the Telephone Conversation

Ring.... ring.... ring

Hello?

Hello.

What's up?

Not too much, you?

Nothing new.

How are you?

I'm good. Things are good.

That's good.

Indeed.

So what's new?

Well I haven't talked to YOU in a while, so... this is new.

Yeah.... (prolonged silence) ... So what's new since last time we talked?

If you are like me. You have had a conversation like this recently. This has happened because, either a) you are very boring, b) your friends are very boring, c) you have been doing too many drugs to remember all of the interesting things you do, or d) you have no idea what people are supposed to talk about on the phone.

The telephone was invented a really long time ago, by a guy who is probably not the same guy your highschool teacher told you invented it. We're not sure why he invented it really. But up until a few years ago most people were pretty certain that it was invented as a substitute for human contact. You could "reach out and touch someone" without actually being seen with them, leaving your house or getting their grimy cooties on you.

When I was 14. I was convinced that the telephone was invented to keep rural teenagers from going postal on their families. Without a car, the internet, or cable, the only real connections I had with the outside world were books, and the telephone. And since books did not piss off my mother quite as much as my 2-4hr long chats with my bff, the telephone was my only link to society.

2-4 hour CHATS! Think about that. I would have enough to say about my life and the things in it that I could talk for 2 to 4 full hours every day! Now, I have trouble filling 5 minutes with interesting enough conversation to hold my own attention let alone the attention of the poor sap on the other end of the line.

WARNING! Here is where I ironically rant about how modern technology is ruining my ability to communicate effectively with actual people. Feel free to skip ahead.

These days I am constantly in touch with everyone else on the planet. I've got blogs, viral videos, instant news, TV on the internet, google, wiki-everything, text messaging, instant messaging, uplinks, downloads, and social networks 2.0. Everything is text. For some reason I've decided that it is much more convenient to communicate via text than actually speaking to people. It may just be that I'm a particularly literate person; I read everything that I don't watch on TV. I have come to the realization (after numerous unsuccessful first dates that have followed wildly scintillating MSN chats), that I am much more entertaining in text, a genre in which I can edit myself, rather than in an actual real-time conversation (Am I alone here?) But this has come at the cost of my tele-stamina. I just can't seem to make a conversation last the long haul anymore.

I talk to people for a living. I teach people to engage in conversation, so why do my telephone conversations lack that je ne sais quois?

a) I'm boring

Guilty as charged. My life has fallen into a dull monotonous loop of work, school, eat, sleep, watch TV, with sprinkles of socializing, painting, gossip, and homework. Gone are the exciting intrigues of a young teenaged life. Oh to be 14 again, when I was SO interesting and everything that happened to me was a pivotal event in world history worthy of broadcasting immediately across the wires.

b) My friends are boring.

I can only guess from the amount of information that I manage to drag out of my friends that either their lives are quite similar to mine, or they are keeping important details of their fascinating life from me in an effort to protect my fragile ego. And though I may find the contents of their breakfast titillating, they have chosen for one reason or another to keep it to themselves. Let me put it on record, guys. I can take it! Give me all the gory details! Let me live vicariously through your Baconator!

c) I've been doing too many drugs to remember all the interesting things I do.

Unfortunately I cannot afford the drugs necessary for this to be true. Life is sad sometimes. But as least I can recall almost every tedious moment of it.

d) I have no idea what people are supposed to talk about on the phone.

False. A phone call should be a brief discussion of pertinent events. You want to meet up with someone? Call them on the phone. You want to discuss specific personal issues? Call a friend up. Whenever possible personal issues should be discussed in person. If that isn't possible, have a conversation on the phone. Get it off you chest. Listen carefully to their response. Say goodbye. Something bad happened? Call 911. I hear they are good listeners.

I have quite a few friends who live far away. Sometimes they call me just to chat. It's a painful experience but I put myself through all those awkward pauses, bad jokes, and repetitive questions for one reason. I generally like these people and I would like if possible to one day get a phone call that has a purpose. I want to hear them one day say "hey, wanna get together?". That way, when our conversation hits that inevitable lull and silence washes over us like a wave of boredom, instead of thinking to myself - How much am I paying for this? or I wonder if they are picking their nose right now too - we can just be friends without the silent pressure to be interesting.

G

Monster

I know I'm not the only one who used to be deathly afraid of stepping off my bed too close to the edge. If I had to get out of bed for some reason in the middle of the night, I would jump out as far as I could so that the monsters that may or may not have been under the bed couldn't grab me by the ankle and pull me under. I knew that there probably wasn't anyone under the bed. I knew that if there was someone under the bed, chances are they'd wait til I was sleeping to grab me and tear me into pieces. Duh. That's what I'd do.

When I was a kid I hated horror movies. HATED them. I once saw Freddy Kruger rip the tongue out of a guy's face. For 2 years after that I slept with the covers over my head. My older sister successfully kept me from sneaking into her room by hanging a giant flag of Freddy in front of her door way, until my mom made her take it down. Even then just the knowledge that the image of Freddy was somewhere in that room kept me from snooping. Freddy can come alive out of almost anything you know!

When I finally faced my fears in highschool - Freddy was the first monster I confronted. I watched every single Nightmare on Elmstreet. And Freddy turned out to be kinda funny. So I continued my quest to face the best monsters of Hollywood. Next, came the vampires, whose sexy immortality fueled my immagination for years. I understand the popularity of vampires. Teen vampires bore me. Remember Anne Rice? She wrote bloodthirst without all the garbage about vampire/human love. Vampires shouldn't be nice. They should be killers! Humans are just meat! This was a necessary lesson for me. So when at long last the zombies slowly dragged their oozing corpses into my life, I could understand the theory.

Everybody has a favourite monster, and mine is a mindless mob of festering drones. Devestation of the human race is a preoccupation of mine, and zombies give me a good pretext for avoiding crowds, shopping malls and the mindless automatons that frequent these places: just in case. Zombies are my number one reason for getting in shape. I run up the stairs of my building to train for that day when the human race gets infected with whatever virus causes the dead to return to life to eat brains. When they come - I hope I'll be in good enough shape to run to the nearest armory for supplies.

But what does our favourite monsters say about us? Do I use my love of zombies to keep the general populous at bay (just in case they want to feast upon my massive nogin?). Does my best friend's love of vampire romances mean that she secretly has a thing for bloodsucking immortals? Maybe. To each their own.

All I know is that in my mind, it was never really a monster under the bed. It was a real person, with untold desires to do heinous things to me if I had the gall to get out of bed before morning. The fear was not of Freddy, or Dracula but of real men with the capability of consience to really be heartless. Zombies aren't scary. They move slow, and they're stupid. Its the droves of mindless consumers who really scare me. Real people are fast and surprisingly clever when it comes to fulfilling their questionable cravings.

So excuse me if while you and I are standing in a crowd, I seem distracted. I'm just working out my escape route and looking for something I can use as a bludgeon, just in case.

G

So much to do so little time...

I'm not one of those people who would ever be content with conventional life. You know the image I'm talking about: the husband, a litter of precocious kids, 2.3 pets of various mortality rates,flower pots, a car, gardening on the weekends in canvas gloves, bake sales where everyone makes the same nanaimo bars, grandma's silverware, and flower embossed plates.

These things are lovely, and I'm not going to lie and say that these aren't things that I want. I would love to be satisfied with such a picturesque life. But in my hands, these things would not be picturesque for long.

That husband would soon be overweight thanks to all the mac and cheese I'll stuff him full of; the precocious kids would probably drive me to drink (as precocious kids tend to do); the 2.3 pets would be one by one, flushed down the toilet due to neglect, and then I'd probably have plumbing troubles, cause you aren't supposed to flush puppies down the toilet; I'd trip over the flower pots in a drunken stumble, crash the car and leave the garden to the grubs and aphids; grandma's silverware would tarnish, or get pawned, and the flower plates? Well I'd probably smash them upon sight. Flower plates? Who wants to eat off those?

My life will be something different. There are so many things I want to do in my life. Just the lessons alone would render my poor children motherless. Here's a taste of all the things I want to learn:
1. Spanish
2. French
3. Painting - proper painting - not this amateur stuff I'm passing off for art now.
4. Dancing: flamenco, belly, swing, pole - you name it, I wanna be able to do it.
5. Cooking - so I don't have to live off mac and cheese anymore
6. beekeeping
7. stunt driving
8. mountaineering
9. Highdiving
10. Curling
11. Luge
12. Skiing
13. Sewing
14. carpentry
15. Welding
16. Skydiving
17. Yoga
18. Capoera

Really, with all these things on the horizon, who has time for a regular life? Plus there are a few hundred places in the world I still want to visit, and no one wants to be on a 12 hour flight with a bunch of precocious children.

G

The Hangover

My friend just turned 28. Because I'm a few years older, I take pleasure in reminding her how close to 30 she's getting. She hates that. But I think when she does turn thirty she'll take it in stride just to piss me off. When I turned thirty it took me a month to be able to say my age out loud. She still gasps when I admit it openly.

So she had a birthday party. Since she lives in the same building as I do, this makes for a very uncomplicated but messy elevator ride home. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The party was planned weeks in advance via a facebook invitation. It's always a little nerve wracking to watch a guest-list develop and according to facebook there was only supposed to be like 7 guests, all of whom were girls. And though there is nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned hen-party, I'm very glad that the boys did show up. It cut back on the recurrance of reproductive issues in most conversations.

So because I live 5 floors beneath my friend, I got blattered! I had a great time. I was the resident head-hunter, hiccough curer, and dance party starter. Though I'm not sure if you could call me demanding my more coordinated friends teach me to ball change, grapevine and box step would qualify as a true "dance party". Some of us were attempting to dance and I believe I was a major player in that activity - from what I remember.

All in all a great night. But oh, I know you can commiserate with me when I say - "Why do I do this to myself?" I woke up the next morning with black liquid eyeliner rimming my eyes like a racoon. At the time the worst thing about my state was that I felt like I had just finished licking the furry balls of a cat who relieves himself regularly in an ash-filled litterbox. Other than that I was hungry but otherwise fine.

So breakfast. Oh greasy bacon, egg yoke and peanut butter on toast! Thou art my saviour in my darkest ugliest times! When breakfast was finished I thought all would be well, but when I stood up I realized that the entire lower portion of my body had begun to cramp and stiffen painfully. I walked home as if I had just gotten off a horse. I used this as an excuse to lay on my couch for most of the day watching British soap operas and procrastinating my homework.

By nine o'clock I managed to finish my homework and groan my sad 30 year old self into bed - thanking god that the hangover would certainly be gone by the next day.

It wasn't.

Since when do hangovers last two-days? In my experience the hangover should be doled out in equal portions to the amount of partying. I've had 2 day hangovers, but that was only because I had partied for 2 days straight! 2 day hangovers should only occur if you've had more than 4 different types of alcohol. I was drinking red-wine exclusively! So where did today's gut-rot and blinding headache come from?

Is this karmic retribution for my light-hearted teasing of my younger friend? Was I supposed to let that charming man in the tie die of hiccoughs? I don't deserve this! It's because I'm thirty isn't it? Well, my friends, it would seem that alcohol is not the good-time party-buddy we thought he was. Alcohol is a ageist jerk, and maybe I should think twice before inviting him to a party in the future!

Who am I kidding? It was probably just the onion dip.

G

Sexapalooza

Last night, I found myself paying $20 to get into Sexapalooza a sex-trade-show. Someone had mentioned that Sexapalooza was coming to town and I figured that since I've never been to any kind of Palooza at all, I'd make this my first.

As my 2 single-girl friends and I wandered down the main street to the convention centre, I was cool as a cucumber. Sex is so just part of everyone's lives. I'm totally cool with my sexuality, and I'm cool with everyone else's too. I think I may have even strutted just a little, thinking about howI would capture this oh-so-Carrie-Bradshaw experience in an understated Times font.

But as we got nearer and nearer to the convention centre I began to worry a little that I might give myself away as a sex-trade-show nube. I've been in sex shops before sure; I even went to the sex museum in Amsterdam once. I silently reminded myself as I paid for my ticket 'Don't be awkward. Don't be awkward. Please, for once in your life G, don't be awkward.'

Greeting us in the entrance was a giant plastic vagina. I picked up the matching giant plastic penis and took advantage of the photo op. Totally not awkward.

The first booth was full of cheap plastic vibrators and vinyl nurses outfits. Not awkward, but not what I was interested in. The next booth was called "Clitoraid", a charitable organization fronted by an awkward Stuart-Smalley type man in blue eyeshadow and ugly pink lipstick. We chatted about how successful clitoris rebuilding surgeries can be. 'I'm so progressive' I told myself.

But the next booth was a trap. It was a simple booth with bowl of chocolates and free condoms. I helped myself, and as I stuffed my face with chocolate hearts, a pretty girl approached me with free tickets to a gentleman's club, despite the fact that I am not a gentelman.

"Oh! A Gentleman's club!" I spat out. "Are you..." but I paused. Is it wrong of me to assume that just cause these fine ladies are manning the booth for a gentleman's club that they're performers there as well? If I finish this statement will I be committing some kind of sex-trade-show gaff? G, I reminded myself. Just cause they're spending their weekend handing out free tickets to a titty-bar does not make these women strippers. But my hesitation was noticed. My cheeks flushed a Stuart-Smalley-lipstick shade of pink.

"Don't be shy. Ask anything. You want to know if we're dancers." A towering blonde prompted me out of my dumb freeze.

"Yeah, thank god, I didn't know if it was ok to ask."

"Actually we're the bartenders." Another girl said.

"Oh! Well that must be a fun job." In my head I'm telling myself to move along. You've been saved G, but if you spend too much time here... "Sorry I'm a little awkward, it's weird for me to be here."

"Why?" the blonde asked.

"Awkward" noted my friend who just walked up behind me to witness the stumbling conclusion of this exchange.

"Oh I uh, its not. It's just not what I uhh... Thanks for the chocolate condoms, I mean chocolate and condoms.. uh." Crap.

New Sexapalooza rule. Don't talk to the strippers.

The rest of the night was spent cruising a variety of booths, looking for that perfect corset, testing vibrator settings and textures (on my hand-you sickos), and making a mental list of sex-toys I could make at home, from a candy-necklace thong to a beaded penis ring - or bracelet? I don't know what the proper term for it would be but I don't think I should have to pay $30 for it.

By the time we had left, the pink had faded from my cheeks and I was more comfortable with my kinky side, but still not totally cool with girls who may or may not be strippers. On my wishlist for next Christmas? A Leather corset with buckles and hooks, not zippers and a mustache trimmer.

G.