All giggles and glee

Our roommates went down to their homestead to get hitched last week, leaving the house just a little barren for the single girlies left behind, me-self included. So naturally the conversation drifted towards marriage, weddings, bride-zilla extravaganza-thons and such, and it turns out there is not one woman in my immediate company who hasn't planned their wedding, to varying degrees of detail - from the general location (indoors or out, and if out, then whether or not to rent porto-potties), to how many varieties of fruit to put in the cake, and what tinge of off-white the drapes should be. After all, you want to start married life off right, and you can't do that with sky blue velour window trim. Of course, the number one requirement to a wedding is a someone to marry; however, that doesn't seem to mean much to bridal imagination machine, which runs far more efficiently on the power of pure fantasy.

There was one man left our house, unattached, to whom we put forth this most Jane Austin of questions; "Have you given any though to your wedding arrangements". However, being possessed of neither a handsome estate nor a reliable salary, he replied, "no", and went on to elucidate the male position on speculatory wedding planning, which is to say that there is none; though there apparently is a lot of bemoaning the fact, right before the wedding, that marriage means he'll lose the god-given right to potentially sleep with any woman on the planet, a right that is coveted with ever bit the vigour that Charleton Heston covets the right to bear arms. "Potentially", does mean a lot to people after all, like no one will buy an electric car to commute to work and back, even though it's range is perfect for that, because if they one day want to drive to Alaska, it just won't go that far- definitely - whereas a humvee will, even if it total shit for 99.9% of all the other driving that ones does with it.

I am no exception to the theoretical wedding blitz. Since I was about 15, I have given thought mainly to the most innane details that I would want looked after on the "big day", though those details have changed over the years: I used to want a table with a selection of alcoholic drinks displayed with the warning that 50% of them were poisoned (I would make the poison myself, never neglecting the secret ingredient - love) and have ninjas doing backflips by the lake, where some guests were enjoying the complimentary waterskiing. Now, I just have a list of all the hindi love song music videos that I want to have playing in the background while everyone participates in choreographed dances in front of them, and how much money I'm willing to spend on a really good karaoke set-up. I think I would allow people to enjoy some non-poisoned drinks, but the table still does have a lingering appeal. I still would also like to end the reception with some brides family versus grooms family lazer tag, but this again is subject to real-life considerations, like can Uncle $%%#^'s pacemaker cope? And, well...money.

Just in case it never happens, here is one of the videos that is part of the music video selection. The couple in it are actually married, so it just adds to the warm fuzzy feelings in my heart when I hear it. Happy happy, joy joy.

Washed up in age of plenty

Shabam! What a shock! And here I thought the internet made nothing material beyond the reach of man.

I recently found my old copy of Pitch Black by DJ Sangeeta, which I thought had been lost to bowels of the earth, but which was actually lost to the mess of wiring behind the CD panel in my mothers car. For about 2 years, this had been my all-time favourite Bhangra CD, mixed right here is good old BC. It had several songs on it that were attached to very fond romantic memories of driving in the dark, feeling and warmth of a loving hand and the soft pounding of the intermittent pulse of yellow tunnel lights. Having spent the past 3 years tangled behind the dashboard had not been kind to Ms. Sangeeta's masterpiece, and all but the first 3 songs were completely inaudible. Naturally, I wanted another copy.

Sure, it was an obscure recording from 2000, having been purchased for $2 at Tameel video, having a BW photocopy for a jacket, and was released by the mysterious "Heavyeight" record label, apparently NOT to be confused with Heavyweight Records, which was founded by Ice Cube. But still, this is the internet! If I could find a Sunburst Battlebeast to bid on for my ex-boyfriends birthday present (I went up to 65$ before it got too rich for my blood), then surely I could just type "Pitch Black, DJ Sangeeta" into any search engine and be presented with umpteen buying options to quench my thirst for quality Punjabi re-mixes.


(The elusive sunburst battle beast in it's natural habitat)

Would you know, it's gone from the pages of google history just like Lyndey England.

(One of many Google returns that is NOT Lyndsey England)

It seems strange in this day and age that anything that WAS available, should with the passage of time, eventually become UN-available. Just like you can buy apples any day of the year at the supermarket, even if they have to import them from New Zealand, so too should a remix CD made in someones basement in Vancouver 8 eight years ago be only a wish, bang and paypal account away.

Being my late 20th years, I do remember a time when it was really really hard to get something once it had gone out. I have been an avid collector of Transformers since way before Shia La Boeuf left his stain on the Ark. In the early 90's, I fell into a transformers fever which I took 6 years to recover from, during which time I constructed an 8" tall replica of Optimus Prime out of cardboard, masking tape, firewood and liquid paper, and also bolstered the ranks of my Autobot/Decepticon fleets by 123. At that time, finding Transformers was a chance game at the Salvation Army or Value Village thrift stores, and then they would almost always be missing arms (both kinds!) and maybe a head or two. I got most of them through the love and generosity of others, including a full half from my someone who loved me best at the time; the rest I acquired by begging and bribing all my classmates who would speak to me, putting out hundreds of inquires as to the remaining presence of TFs in their homes, and usually bartering them off with rare Magic cards. I even got hold of the entire comic book series by careful search and seizure of all the comic shops in the lower mainland, and wrote letters to all the comic respondants in the Letters sections who had left full addresses, asking for kinships and, of course, any TFs they wouldn't mind parting with. I ended up in a 3 year penpalship with a guy named Lance from the Denmark as an unexpected result.

(Also NOT Transformers)

My fever has died down, though the love remains steady: the happy equilibrium of a stable long-term relationship.

At that time, it took THAT degree of devotion to acquire my hearts desire, whereas now it just takes a computer, a credit card, and OCD. Kind of undermines that idea that anything (or anyone for that matter) worth having is worth trying and waiting for.
My also long-standing passion for South Asian films and music was never that difficult to appease because of my numerous trips to India and thanks to the vigilant population of Main and 49th, but I can imagine if it weren't for them, I would have been chasing down every South Asian I saw and begging them to write their relatives in Mumbai to become my personal supply-ahs. Perhaps my quest for DJ Sangeeta will push me in that direction yet again, but at least I'll only have to go through the 2 million or so residents of Greater Vancouver to find her.

Pigheaded determination a small price to pay for getting what you really want, and it is, like the price of organic fruits, rather a more accurate reflection of the true costs of the things we tend to take for granted.

Charles and The Unending Quest for Satisfying Erotica

I think I must mention being horny too often on this blog, but I suppose it's a small price to pay for being a functioning human being; what is not a small price to pay is $5 for a completely un-arousing video rental.

It all started in Taiwan. I have never been one to openly seek "porn-OGrophy", because I should be "better" than that. But when I was in Taiwan some years ago with my ex-boyfriend, I decided the perfect blend to spice up our XXX-life would be my very own Kung-fu porn compilation.

See, I like there to be a "plot", you know, characters and drama, story development ie: conflict, crisis, "climax" and resolution. And I managed to find a little DVD number that looked tre hot. The pictures on the back were promising, though not so risque as to be vulgar. So I picked it up for small fee, and brought it back to Japan with me (don't even ask why I never picked up any Japanese porn, that is a topic for another, long day). When I popped it into the player, what ended up coming out at me wouldn't have covered a kittens titty.

No only was there no penetration, nor even anything resembling sex enough to be arousing, it wasn't even the same film as the pictures showed on the back. Production quality was beyond the beyonds; they hadn't even bothered to synchronize the swishing sounds of the swords being expertly wielded - steel ones- and despite speaking only the tiniest amount of Mandarin, it was clear even to my ignorant ears that their was no story line. The closest thing to a sex scene was a part where a monk was fondling the tits of his giggling serving wenches seconds before the hero burst in and started flailing his flimsy sword at them - the steel one, again. It almost would have been worth the airfare to fly back just to return the piece of garbage - couldn't even live up to the name Trash!

Fast forward to now. Our little video store has a small section of "Erotica", and in a vain and misguided attempt to put the penis back in happiness. I ended up settling on "Diary of a sex addict"- hoping it wasn't just a clever name -but it appears that someone out there has more brains than balls where it is least needed. Not only does this film also NOT have any sex scenes in it, it includes a most embarassing scene where the sister-in-law of said sex addict, comes over to his house threatening to expose his affairs, of which she has gained magical knowledge, to his wife. She is practically frothing at the mouth as she screams at him and even throws his face a decent punch, which only intensifies the glare of his bedroom eyes. Then she gets a call from her husband, and in the course of the 30 second conversation, it becomes obvious that the sister-in-law is an insecure, hopelessly neglected sex-fiend, and in the next moment the man is upon her - and she WANTS IT! This is one of those little themes in literature that pops up to remind those watching that the authour was surely a man, just in the way that tight-liped composure that conceals the massive ocean of emotion in Mr. Darcy could only possibly have been written by a woman. Real women don't want to have sex with people they hate, at least not according to the latest re-print of "No means No". I got through about 10 minutes at normal speed, and another 3 on fast forward before I had commit that one to the grave.

So here I am, alone and porn-less. I have more or less given up my quest, since I just don't have the courage to take a copy of "There's a giant cock up my sweet ass" to the acne-covered 14 year old working the counter at Movie Express, and I'm not willing to shell out 40$ to own it forever.

You may ask, but Charles, why in Gods hot pink, moist flesh do you not use the Internet to satisfy your lusts, that's what the thing was built for, wasn't it? I have to answer that I don't for the same reason that I don't eat at food fairs - there is too much selection and no easy way to assertain if any of it is any good before you take the plunge.

I think I'll invest in erotic photographs; that way at least, someday my prints will come.

Hello, Mr. Incredible Hulk, welcome to Bella Coola!

I first saw this abomidable book in the Chicago airport 2 years ago while I was making my way to my grandfather's place in the wet-est, hairy-est armpit in the armpity-est area of this here continent-just in time for my grandmothers timely death.

Upon first glance, it was obvious that this book could serve only two purposes: to flood said places with yuppie retirees and completely decimate their local cultures and economies, and to that end, serve as a comprehensive anti-real-estate guide to anyone who wanted to avoid places that were doomed to such a fate. My mother and I thumbed to the index to check if where we are living now was in it, and blessedly, it wasn't; however, to none of our surprises, my hometown was and it is nothing but a den of saggy American blobs of botox and collagen, and overpriced artisan cheeses.

And then I went to see the Incredible Hulk. I do have soft, squishy place in my heart, above left ventricle, for super hero movies, provided they in no way glorify the US military (Ironman, I'm, talk to YOU), in which case they can swivel on the proverbial. But The Hulk was quite enjoyable, and Edward Norton was very convincing as a mild-mannered Bruce Banner - I wish "mild-mannered" was still a compliment in popular use: I think the modern day equivalent is "pussy".

There was a great rush of applause at the end of film when it showed him hold up in a small cabin in the middle of Super Natural Bella Coola, BC, which must have sent the minds of its American audiences racing back to grade school trying to remember which one of 49 states bore that abbreviation. My father and I were actually planning on settling there and co-owning some land until he got himself a new girlfriend and decided to stay where he was. I too appaulded at first, and then got that sinking feeling in my heart that, oh fuck, now that someone KNOWS about it, it'll be DOOMED to be another victim of the Foreign Yuppis Idiots (F.Y.I, for your information) takeover that seems to have started right around the same time as NAFTA; coincidence?



However, Bella Coola enjoys several advantages of privacy that most other beautiful, exquisitely rape-able lands do not. One is that it is very, very isolated. It costs about $500 to fly in and out from Vancouver, or a 2 day ferry ride from Port Hardy, or about a 5 day drive from Vancouver on a road that is only passable about 7 months of the year. The second reason is that it is very very un-luxurious. There are no spas, or beauty salons, or fancy-pants-ery of any kind: it is a rough and tumble land still ruled by a majority of First Nations, and appealing mostly to the hunter-gatherer type of person, not the heiress housewife who spends most of her day ordering flats of Fijian water to be helicoptered in, and dusting the light fixtures of her 10'000 sq. ft "cabin" for two.

Besides, now that the Incredible Hulk is living in Bella Coola, it'll likely soon be missiled off the face of mother earth. Oh, you mean that wasn't real? Shit. I hope the Avengers don't plan to move up there too.

The Fizzgig Reaction

It's been over one week since I decided I had to talk to my mother about her boyfriend, and I have yet to achieve that goal. I am at her house right now trying to find the right opportunity. I managed, right before she popped out the door to go have a bagel at his house, to express that I did not want him to come swimming with us, using the words "I don't like how I feel around him". Nice and PC, no name calling, and really, that pretty much sums it up.

I am beyond the point where I feel the need to lay out all of this mans glaring faults to prove to my mother how inappropriate a partner he is, because he does this admirably whenever he opens his mouth. There is no love between them in any tangible way, and they don't even seem to know each other on even the most uperficial level: their conversations always hinge upon "Do you like...?" and "What would you...?" over the bare basics (food, movies, music) that are supposed to be established in the first month or so of an acquaintance...they have been together for over a year!

More to the heart of the issue is how bad it makes me feel to see my mother trying and pandering to meet the emotional needs of this man, who ostensibly takes no joy in anything, nor has anything positive to say about anything except cars and nature, while in complete ignorance of her own esteem, desires and values. It seems that she simply doesn't want to be alone in her own company, and will endure any manner of man (provided he is present and at least not abusive)to avoid herself.

This guy has bothered me since about 2 months into their engagement, but this really came to a head last week when she invited him along to a family trip that had been planned for months ahead without asking us first. Well, I shouldn't say completely "without asking", what happened was she informed me over tea 3 days before departure that she invited him along and he replied that he would come only if she wanted him to, to which she replied that she wanted him to only if he thought he would enjoy himself. F**K. I should have cut the beast off at the knees then by saying "I DON'T WANNNAAAA" and pulled a Fizzgig(see photo)


However, in a foolhardy attempt to bring peace, and that it was my mothers B-Day trip anyway, I replied that if he really wanted to come he should just make up his mind to do so now (he wanted to wait till the morning of the trip, in case it was raining, for if so was he wouldn't go...we were just going to bloody Victoria, not sailing to the outer Herbenies for Christs sake). To my everlasting despair, he agreed to come along.

We first went to the Horne Lake caves, which was pretty damn awesome, and which was also nice and outdoors, so he didn't complain much there, except for one instance that just turned my stomach when we decided to slip off the path to see a cave that was supposed to be out-of-bounds. There were several other people wandering around where the path broke off, so I told them we were gonna pass the boundary, and asked "you wouldn't tell on us would you?". Of course, they chuckled and replied that there was too much ridiculous red-tape in their lives as well, happy journeys, we'll call base camp if we don't see again long after you're probably dead. So we happily proceeded, asses covered, until the Mr. says to me, "never tell anybody something like we going here, cause now that guy is just going to tell the ranger. You can't trust anybody". Bagah?! Am I so "young and naive"? Pish tosh! How can anyone stand to be on earth with so little faith in their human fellows?

From that point on, there was nothing that he did that was not extrodinarily aggravating, from not ordering any dinner at the "propagandizing" vegetarian chinese restaurant and then immediately after complaining of hunger and settling on 2 slices of the 75 cent homelesspeople special at a rundown pizza joint, to falling asleep at the Jazz festival. The entire trip, he had nothing good to say about anything we saw or did. And my mother was right there the whole time, constantly asking, "well, how about this?" Or "Would you like do blah blah blah?", with him just hoo humming in bland reply, and not coming up with a single thing that he would really like to do, except eat a particular flavour of Baskin Robbins ice cream (no other would do) and go car shopping (with no intention to buy).

The end result is that I never want to spend more than 5 minutes in this mans company again for as long as I live and breathe. I am very unfortunate to have met someone like him in one of the worst possible relationships. If he made my mother genuinely happy, that would be one thing, but they just seem to be two lonely depressed people sharing the same space.

I'm still young, so I can't possibly appreciate that maybe being with anyone is better than being alone when you get older, but I really hope that is never me, nor frankly anyone else I love.

No man is an island, but an island should always have some of it's very own healthy happy vegetation. A poor fate always awaits those rely on heavy imports.