CTV "First Look" at Olympic Village condos

These last 2 posts represent a couple of generations: my daughter Shannon Paterson, illustrious reporter for CTV News in Vancouver; and Caitlin Paterson, her daughter, my illustrious granddaughter, performing The Turkey Song from La Traviata.

The Turkey Song

This is my LIFE

All right, this whole story is stupid, isn't even a story. So I'm sitting here in a ratty nightgown at 12:43 because a "little job" I thought would take five minutes took four and a half hours, give or take two or three.

I don't know why this crap makes me want to commit suicide. Maybe it's the futility, the utter loss of control, the totally pointless sweat and effort that yields exactly nothing.

I was digging out flannel sheets for the winter, and noticed what a pile of garbage my linen closet is. It's a war in there. I can never find what I want because of all the irrelevant sheets, some of which seem to go back to 1966. There are holes in things, rips in sheets I really liked. Others are magnificent, obviously never used (but those are the ones I can never find, or else they're just too nice to use). There are also old tablecloths, maybe used once at someone's wedding, old partial bath mats (the kind that fit around the toilet - asinine!), decaying shower curtains, a flannel fitted sheet for a playpen (the kid is now seven), and etc. etc. Crap, crap, crap, with the stuff I do want completely buried.

At first I started trying to, you know, straighten up. Just - put this over here, and that over there, and - . As I progressed, or didn't progress, the job got steadily bigger and bigger. There were whole shelves of towels involved (some of which went back to 1963), and a shelf of pillows of various vintage. And cartoon sheets for the kiddies' sleepovers, Dora the Explorer and Thomas the Tank Engine. Or partial sets. You can't put a Dora top with a Thomas bottom (in fact, it sounds alarming). Quivering with fury, I grabbed and pulled out every item on every shelf, dumped it onto the floor and vowed to go through everything item by item. It would only take a few minutes.

Then why do I smell so bad? I smell so bad because the whole thing took so BLOODY LONG, and didn't yield the results I wanted at all.

My sheet inventory was as follows.

One Dora sheet, not fitted.
One Thomas pillow case, with some kind of stain on it, can't think what, could be blood.
One set of twin sheets for the spare bed (which my husband regularly sleeps in when I snore). Hideous color, made in Bangladesh.
One spare set of sheets for our queen bed, very old, with those corners that pop off.
SEVEN SETS OF DOUBLE SHEETS. Double sheets. I couldn't even think about how long ago we had a double bed. Then I realized we bought a pullout years ago, what, seven or eight? It has been slept in maybe twice, three times. So yes, oh, surely, truly, goddam YEAH, YEAH, like we really needed seven sets of double bed sheets!!

OK, it was four, but still. It just defies logic. I never bought those sheets. I never. They must've been spawned by all those other sheets writhing around in there in the dark. It got worse. I kept finding those stupid toilet lid covers and finally put one on my head like a beret. I wanted to flush the sheets down the toilet. I couldn't find my favorite pillow cases - well, I found one, but it was a set, see, given to me by my best friend, nice big queen-size pillow cases, the kind you can never find anywhere, sunny yellow, with pictures of violins hand-embroidered on them.

What the crap happened to the other pillowcase? I want it back I want it back Iwantitback.

Mostly, I want my morning back, and I'll never get it. My life is ebbing away. I can't afford this shit any more. Nobody sleeps in a double bed, it's just not done. Everybody's too fat now. I won't tolerate indelible menstrual stains on my best sheets because I'm eight years past menopause. It's disgusting. From now on, I will sleep suspended in the air 4" above the sheets. Or on the ground outside.

************************************************
POSTSCRIPT. I did find the yellow pillowcase. It was in the wash. But there are still things missing. I broke down and bought a queen set at Zellers for 20 bucks, and now that I've washed them I realize they're the nicest set I own. I want to go back and buy more, more, more, but the thing is, now that I've cobbled together a reasonable variety that sort of match, I don't really need any more. But some day I will need sheets, and say to myself, why do I have to pay $85 for sheets that I could have had for $20?

Baby Laugh-a-lot!

OK, I got carried away today. I dredged these ads up for my 7-year-old granddaughter, she of the gappy teeth and amazing mind. She loves this kind of nostalgia and makes video ads of her own, with Chatty Cathy saying all sorts of subversive things. This one is the limit, I think. Nowadays parents can find the battery chamber and disable toys like this, but this one. . . it's a whole new definition of crazy.

As for the others, I was aghast at Barbie and her pooping dog, and even more taken aback by Willie Wee-Wee or whatever it is, a little boy's peeing penis on full display. I remember there was a Baby Joey when Gloria had a baby on All in the Family, and there was a huge dispute about it because he was anatomically correct. I think they pulled it off (excuse me) the shelves and/or neutered him. So how did this little devil get by the censors?

The Meow Mix one. . . what can I say. It sends my grandkids into peals of laughter every time.

2006 Barbie And Her Dog Tanner HQ Commercial

Another Toy Fail

Meow Mix ad

Shut. UUUUUUUUHHPPPP!!!

Not long ago I was sitting at the bumpy back of a shuttle bus, when I overheard two girls talking.

They must have been somewhere around the age of fourteen (oh God, maybe twelve), headed to Megalopolis Mall for some serious retail therapy. They were deep in conversation in rapid, breathless phrases that almost ran together into one word:

“So I’m like, you can never wear those jeans, Ashley. And she’s like: Kaylee, they make me look 15 pounds thinner! And I’m like, you can’t see them from the back. It’s like majorly muffin-top. And she’s like: maybe I don’t want to look anorexic and have no butt at all. And I’m like: bitch, what are you saying? And she’s like: nothing personal, Kaylee, but you’re like soo thin I can see right through you.”

Her conversation mate Madison replied, “I’d like be so offended, Kaylee, you’re just soo not anorexic, you can like wear a size zero and she’s like jealous.”

I tried to count the “I’m likes”, but lost track after about 20. This phrase, originated by kids who were born in the mid-‘90s, has hung on with surprising tenacity, even longer than, “Then I go. . . then she goes. . . then I go. . .” (“Go” meaning either “say” or some other active verb).

I don’t know how it happens, but obnoxious phrases and quirks of speech seem to worm their way into common discourse, to the point that I’ve heard middle-aged people say “I’m like” (and inflect their voices with that curious upward, ask-permission sound at the end of sentences that communicates chronic but somehow fashionable uncertainty.)

I can’t remember when I first started to hear the phrase “change it up”. You can arrange your living room furniture around the 80" flat screen TV, or you can change it up and stack the sofa on top of the coffee table. Bored with a certain routine? Change it up.

(This is related, but only indirectly, to “man up”. I don’t need to translate that one.)

I am convinced that this particularly irritating phrase originated with Dr. Phil, that transplanted Texas cowboy, his speech peppered with “y’alls” and “you guys” (and don’t get me started on that one, often used by 20-year-old waiters on dignified elderly couples).

Another Phil-ism that I detest is the dreaded “You know what?” I know a woman who says it before every sentence she utters. I am tempted to respond with “NO! WHAT?”, except that this phrase doesn’t really mean anything, and she probably has no idea she’s even saying it. Her mouth is just flapping and something is coming out.

As the song goes, everybody’s talkin’ ‘bout a new way a-walkin’. Or, a-talkin’. Here are some particularly poisonous examples.

No one can say a short “e” sound any more. It’s more like “ahh”. As in, “ahhvry.” “Ahhvry time I go out with my boyfrahhnd, he’s like, I wanna go to bahhd with you, and I’m like, soo not rahhdy.” This isn’t just in people under 30, unfortunately. It has spread like a communicable disease. The jaw drops lazily open and doesn’t bother to come up again (“sahhx”).

It isn't an accent. It's an affectation, and it radiates "dumb" more than people realize.

Another annoying quirk is one popularized by Stacy London of the psychologically sadistic show What Not to Wear (in which women are completely broken down, cult-like, in order to be built back up again by the immutable laws of fashion): “Shut! Up!”. This is not a literal shut up, but almost a seal of approval, replacing the outworn “you go, girl!”. It’s a variation on Elaine’s “Get! Out!” on Seinfeld, accompanied by a push so hard it literally knocks the other person over.

Oh, but I’ve saved the worst ‘til last, and it’s so ubiquitous that people don’t even hear it any more. “Icon”. Or “iconic”, the two are almost interchangeable. Tomorrow, as an exercise, count the number of times you hear or read “icon/iconic” in the media. I once counted five, and that wasn’t unusual at all.

Anything can be iconic now, which means that nothing is. Some asshole journalist was blathering on and on about Sex and the City (after that lame movie came out) and said that the cupcakes Carrie and Miranda ate were “iconic”, leading to a rash of cupcake stores that now litter the landscape all over North America.

OK then, can cones be iconic? As in ice cream?

You nahhver can tahhl.

Up the jungle

Thought I'd update my profile photo. Heheheheh.

No, seriously: I suddenly realize I've become an Amazonian. I order too many things. It started small: a book I couldn't get anywhere else; a book that was 1/4 the retail price in stores; a CD no one even knew about. Most of them were from Amazon. Most of my on-line purchases still are.

In spite of the fact that I live in Vancouver, one of Canada's (supposedly!) more sophisticated centres (note the spelling), I find I can't get anything here. Just nothing, squat. I couldn't even get a decent pair of bedroom slippers, so ended up ordering them from Planet Shoes and spending something like $45.

I get greedy, I get eager, I get curious. Can I still get a book long out of print? Yes, ma'am! Can I get a book I remember from 1973? What do you think? And it's cheap. In fact, Amazon's "new and used" feature sometimes lists book prices at one cent. Yes, you read that right. You can get a book for a penny, so that you only have to pay the shipping and handling. They're practically free.

I can't figure this out, except that there are dusty old piles of unsold books warehoused somewhere, and they just wanna get rid of them. These used books are handled by individual sellers, kinda like on eBay, and for the most part they've been reliable.

And nothing costs very much. . . does it?

Individually, no. But it sneaks up on you.

I had a dream last night that I received parcel after parcel after parcel ("brown paper packages tied up in string") shoved into my mail box, all the purchases I had made in my entire life. It was a jackpot of sorts. Was this a message from my psyche that everything I've done up to now is about to pay off: or, just a consolation prize to get a little squirt of endorphin going to get me through the day?

Speaking of said endorphins, I know this is addictive. I know it because of the temporary giddy rush I feel, then the drop of disappointment after I've had the item for a while. It never lives up to my expectations.

It's a great big bandaid on the hurt places. And there are hurt places.

The other day I realized I never go to the library any more. I became so irritated with loud teenage gossiping, frantic texting, cell phone rings, cell phone calls, staff talking at conversational volume, knuckle-cracking, snot-snuffling, leg-jiggling, rank body odor that leaves a trail through the stacks, etc. etc., that I just couldn't stand it any more.

That, and the fact that I have a far superior library right here at my fingertips. I can find anything in seconds, and never leave my office.

I now write my diary/journal on my computer, and have found it liberating. I had nearly given up on my old journal: it was such a trudge to make my hand move across the page. I used to write like the wind, but now the ink seems hard and chewy, and my hand moves at about 10% the speed of my thoughts.

So, I shop on-line, I research and book-browse on-line, I even journal on my computer now, as if I'm married to the thing. I remember years ago hearing that everyone would have to know everything about computers in the future, or they would be hopelessly lost and fall behind and become useless dinosaurs. No one could've predicted it would be so easy to use these buggers, so easy to go click-click on Amazon and buy yet another couple of books.

Or CDs, or DVDs, or flannel nightgowns, or t shirts, or bird supplies, or or or or

Come back, Mr. Whipple!

Yes, I know that some people still call this "bath tissue" or "TP". They can't even say the name of it. But I think Charmin has gone a little bit too far the other way.

The first time I saw the TV ad with the bear going behind a tree, I thought: they're showing an animal defecating. Yes. That's what they're showing. He's pooping on TV.

This progressed, or regressed, to a bear cub who had "little pieces left behind". Charmin promised not to do this, maybe due to its softness, its super-absorbency, and its ability to wipe the anus clean with efficiency and charm.

Then there came a phrase that made my jaw drop. "Charmin. Enjoy the go!"

Enjoy the. . . go?

I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing, but there it was. It just gobsmacked me, is all. From all this secrecy and euphemism and coyness came a sudden encouragement to really enjoy taking that big ol' dump every morning.

Well, what else could it be?

Charmin really went all out to promote this questionable campaign. They put on a big - what would you call it, anyway? A bathroom exhibit, full of jolly, funny wordplay on excrement and other bodily wastes. I've seen YouTube video of it. I think it was in New York. The people attending it looked dazed. One of the exhibits was called Sit or Squat, some sort of road map to get to the crapper in your neighborhood.

Yeah, I know, maybe this merry, celebratory approach to elimination is "healthier" than secrecy or shame, which is what most people feel or they wouldn't be so careful not to make a noise or a smell. And I am the first to appreciate a clean, well-appointed public restroom (which accounts for less than 10% of what I see in stores and restaurants - and let's not even get into service stations).

But. . . "enjoy the go"? Hasn't Charmin received any complaints from the public? Who thought up this lame, silly, immature thing anyway, this slogan that a six-year-old would giggle over?

Some ads are so clumsy, the seams show, and this is one of them. It's contrived. It's even offensive. The geniuses on Mad Men would be horrified.

Is the country ready for clever word-play and jibes about our need to piss and shit every day? I think I'm going back to Purex, thank you very much.

Polygluts: or, More, More Mormons!

OK, then. You gotta ask yourself, when watching this is about as appealing as eating 19 pounds of Kraft Dinner with no ketchup, why it is that I keep going back to TLC's latest domestic sideshow, Sister Wives.

I guess I just have a mind for the appalling.

Please don't stare (because it's oh, so very intimate), but this guy Kody Brown the groovy long-haired polygamist crawls from bedroom to bedroom every night, or at least gets to choose whom he "cohabits" with, while the other wives lie there tatting or something.

Not content with his three starter wives (named Wynkin, Blynkinn and Nodde), he's decided to mix it up a little and do an add-on: someone a little younger, a little thinner, and certainly more fertile.

In other words, he wants more more more of those Mormons! Can't get enough of them. Though they look like ordinary women in most ways, his original wives must have extraordinary tolerance (or just be really stupid) to live this way year after year, their horde of interchangeable/interrelated savages (I mean, kids) running all over the place like kissing cousins from the backwoods of Appallachia.

I know a little bit about Mormonism. A little bit. I apologize to any real Mormons out there, because I'm drawing upon experiences from a holiday ten years ago. We went to Utah to see Bryce Canyon and other breath-arresting, God-drenched natural sights of Brigham Young country, and for the most part we had a great time.

We actually tasted the waters of the Great Salt Lake - mighty salty, hmmmmm! - and realized that those horrible little wigglies in the water, the only things that could live in anything that densely saline, were sea monkeys. Good thing my order never arrived back in 1962.

We went on a bus tour of Salt Lake City with two jolly Mormon tour guides, one of them serving his missionary time to fulfill the requirements of his faith. But these two guys weren't stuffy at all. They joshed about Brigham Young and polygamy, and claimed that the extremely wide streets of the city were built to accomodate Brigham when he went for a walk with all his wives.

When we visited the Mormon Museum, however, it was a completely different story. As complete as it was in tracing the history of a people and a faith, there was not one mention of polygamy anywhere. God knows I tried to find it, but it wasn't there. So, officially, that must mean that it never happened.

Fast-forward about ten years, and here we are in polyglut land, everything on display except the sex act (and maybe that will be next. How much of the upcoming wedding night will they show, I wonder?). This program is completely bizarre in that nothing anybody says ever matches their facial expression. "Oh, the more the merrier (marry-her?)," Blinkie says at one point, her face a study in repressed grief.

Robyn, the skinny, new, young wife-to-be (who's closer in age to the eldest daughters than the other three wives: ewwwwwwwww!), is the greatest actress of them all. She's. . . so. . . sorry. . . for. . . hurting. . . anyone, but. . . (but that doesn't stop her from yanking their husband away from them by the short hairs).

Closeups show her hand repeatedly shooting up to cover her mouth, her eyes squinching up, the other wives pasting on a look of concern. But there are no tears. Never any tears.

Why? Because Robyn isn't crying. She isn't crying because she doesn't give a shit about them. Not only has she landed a quarter-share in Kody the shaggy-haired reality star and his sexual equipment: she's getting her own house!

Yes. The other three have self-contained apartments within the massive family mansion (which must be paid for by some kind of ill-gotten gains, crackmongering or Ponzi schemes or something). But there's just no room left for Robyn anywhere, dad-burn it, so she has to live down the street. Down the street in a house. Down the street in a brand new house.

Her house.

I won't ask whose name the mortgage is in (or did they pay for it in unmarked bills?).
This new arrangement, even creepier than the former one, means that Kody will soon be strolling down the avenue, maybe with one of his 17 dogs, to pay her a conjugal visit every - what'll it be, fourth night? How will he - you know - "keep it up", do you think? (Blue pills, anyone?)

A bigger problem is how he will he manage the smoldering rage of the "Keep Sweet Three" and the fake histrionics of Robyn the dry crier. In the painful group discussions which abound in this show, Kody sits there scowling, his arm draped around his current favorite, listening to the suppressed anguish he has created with his own selfish, depraved choices, acting for all the world as if he has nothing to do with it, or at least has no power to stop it.

The truth is, he just has no desire to stop it. He does this because he can. He freely admits he's wounding his ever-faithful polygals, but in his typical heartless sociopathic manner he just keeps on smilin' and gosh-darn-in' and walking around like the swaggering prick he is, oozing entitlement and toxic power.

It gets even more offensive, if that's possible. He's going to marry a DIVORCED woman, for God's sake! Since when does a fundamentalist Mormon woman have the right to do that? One can only imagine the furious secret discussions, the hissings and wads of kleenex that have transpired from this particular choice. Nobody has dared to drag the nasty fact out into the light (yet), but it points up the staggering inequity in this unholy alliance. For those first three, divorce has never been an option: there is no way out of this marriage except death. After all, you can't divorce someone you aren't married to.

For all his modern-day-sensitive-guy posturing, Kody Brown is a self-centred, arrogant, narcissistic little creep who claims to have "fallen in love three times" (no, four: he left out himself). In truth, he's a master manipulator, not to mention a petty criminal, a bigamist who simply doesn't care what his wives are going through so long as he gets his "needs" met (and no doubt each wife has a specialty that she must call up whenever he wants it).

"Kody is my soul-mate," Robyn giggles while getting herself prettied up for another session of "courtship" with a thrice-married man (with Kody once more moaning about how hard it is to remember how to do this). The fact that he kisses her when he proposes provokes disbelief among the other three: you're not supposed to kiss 'til you get married! But after that, apparently, anything goes.

For him, that is. So long as he still has the strength left to walk down the street.

Unbearable!

U.S. woman cleared in husband's hunting death peels out of court, music blaring - 570News

This is the kind of story that will likely appear on Dateline sometime next year, with Keith Morrison (he of the earnest, wrinkled, sardonic face, silver hair and ageless blue jeans) grilling Mary Beth Harshbarger about shooting and killing a "black mass" in the wild woods of Newfoundland.

The black mass in question turned out to be a husband. Her husband. The big issue here is whether or not she knew the difference.

The "weapon"was a hunting rifle given to her by her late husband Mark. Certain family members smelled fish, claiming Mary Beth was a crack shot, not likely to confuse Mark with a black bear.

Unless she had grown tired of this. . .black bear. . . and wanted him out of the way.

Why would anyone suspect such a thing? Rumour has it that she was getting mighty cozy with Mark's brother Barry. ("Bear" for short. Just kidding.) The family is now as bitterly divided over this issue as the Hatfields and the McCoys.

The judge must have decided that Mark looked more like a "big black thing" than anyone realized. Cleared of all wrongdoing, Mary Beth whooped and hollered, tooling out of the courtroom parking lot in her lawyer's Mercedes like something out of the Dukes of Hazzard.

Mark was Caucasian and didn't really resemble anything big and black. But he forgot to wear that orange thingie hunters should-a-ought-a wear in the woods. So it was really all his fault.

The most bizarre element of this whole story was the testimony of family friend Ann White, whose husband had also been mistakenly shot in 1958 (for a porcupine or a gorilla or something). She claimed Mark Harshbarger had recently jacked up his insurance coverage and told Barry to look after his family if anything ever happened to him.

"That's just how responsible he was."

So tell me. Is Mary Beth Harshbarger equally responsible?