This Year, Give the Gift of Political Discomfort

Have you ever noticed that the harder the media tries to make Christmas--whoops, I mean, the winter season, non-denominational and all-inclusive, the Christmasier the actual Christmas Eve and Day get? Our global media has a bad case of Christmas frustration. So step in line and until Santa pops by, tell the kids repression is what the global village is getting for Christmas! That way, on the morning of December 25th, they'll be even more surprised when they receive that much-yearned-for DVD that came out in 2009, HMV (do people still shop for presents there?) gift certificate, and fanciful notebook/book/daytimer/wallet thing.

A few gems from the Saturday Toronto Star that appeared on the front porch of my parents' house this morning. Additionally, Cultural Wha? dips her prolific beak into a previously untouched medium: comic strips!

AMY

Who's a Diva Now, Bitch

It honestly doesn't bother me when, say, a roommate leaves her Diva Cup out on the bathroom counter. Because my beef with the Diva Cup isn't that it's been inside a girl for 24 hours and now it's on my counter. I mean, hey, who am I to judge. I'm all for the "convenience" and "sustainability" principles behind the Diva Cup, as well as the explicit but informative claim that it will "last you years." No, the issue does not lie in the function or occasionally disturbing accompanying images of the new women's menstrual product.

I'm talking about the name. Diva...Cup? Okay, so it's a cup. I get that part. But Diva? What the fuck? So I'm a diva for putting a cup up my vag now? I thought I was just a smart consumer. And c'mon, let's just save the pink flowers for my first sex-ed class. I'm a woman with a body that means business, and I need a feminine hygiene company that gets it.

TAMPON. It's serious. It's not fucking around. And I like the corporate flavour of brand names like Tampax and Kotex. That "x" means business goddamnit, like it could do your taxes and sell your stocks too. Even "pad" is straight and to the point. No funny stuff. Plus it has a cool sort of upside-down symmetry with the first and last letter.

No funny stuff, Diva Cup!

JULIA

Top 5 Cultural Wha Trends of November

1. MONKEYS. Spearheaded by the newest installment of the ever-relevant Planet of the Apes series, monkeys are a top trend of November. Haven’t you been experiencing the insurmountable problem of itchy armpits (that demand scratching) an awful lot this past year? While monkey impressions have been popular since grade seven, never before has the phrase “I want a monkey” or even “I wish I was a monkey” been uttered so frequently, and with so much conviction. Special mention goes to the popular trend of revisiting past Simpsons’ episodes that feature monkeys:







2. ELVIS. Will and Kate could take a couple pointers from the late King (God rest his soul), cause this royal knew how to part-ay. As quoted from his Wikipedia page:

"Keyboardist Tony Brown remembers the singer's arrival at a University of Maryland concert: "He fell out of the limousine, to his knees. People jumped to help, and he pushed them away like, 'Don't help me.' He walked on stage and held onto the mike for the first thirty minutes like it was a post. Everybody's looking at each other like, Is the tour gonna happen?" Guitarist John Wilkinson recalled, "He was all gut. He was slurring. He was so fucked up. ... It was obvious he was drugged. It was obvious there was something terribly wrong with his body. It was so bad the words to the songs were barely intelligible. ... I remember crying. He could barely get through the introductions". Wilkinson recounted that a few nights later in Detroit, "I watched him in his dressing room, just draped over a chair, unable to move. So often I thought, 'Boss, why don't you just cancel this tour and take a year off...?' I mentioned something once in a guarded moment. He patted me on the back and said, 'It'll be all right. Don't you worry about it.'"

But he just carried it off so well. You can't learn that kind of class.



3. BLACK COFFEE. We’re so over milk and sugar. They just waste precious room in our coffee mugs. Whiskey optional.

4. OMNISCIENT HOUSEHOLD OBJECTS/PETS. Lenny the fish and Professor X the x-mas plant are clearly leaders of this category, however, Virginia the bong, as well as recent rumours of the electric kettle that has been “turning itself on” also deserve recognition.

5. GUY MADDIN. He’s the new David Lynch. (And David Lynch is the new Donald Trump.) But seriously, wait til you see Keyhole. Wowza. Like Inland Empire kinda wowza. Also notable that my class’s Guy Maddin installation is at the end of a five-day long “Focusin” fun time with Mr. Essay, effectively replacing Mulholland Drive in the drug-induced/sleep-deprived/David Lynch/nightmare category. This category is characterized by a difficulty in distinguishing dreams from reality; Alanna Thain is everywhere. Did I really boycott the film studies barbeque with her in a station wagon? It’s impossible to say.