Want To Hear an Uplifting Story? Actually, No. Now Shut Up.

Just when you thought the constant barrage of advertisements we face in our daily lives couldn't get any more gruelling, somebody had to come up with peopleforgood.ca. I feel bad enough about myself already. Every day on my way to work I'm reminded that I'm average to quirky at best on the attractiveness scale, I can't buy expensive things i.e. achieve respect/happiness, my career is going nowhere, I'm hungry (for gut-busting junk food) and I may even need psychological help or possibly down the line, certain men's health products.

So as I zoom through the rat race, clutching my plastic bag of day-old pre-made sushi and a travel mug and trying desperately not to bash people with my purse while I crane my neck to check out my 9 AM reflection in the subway window, the pressures that convene on me, flickering overhead, are best left ignored.

But these are a little difficult. They're brightly coloured and usually begin with white text and then transition to smaller black text, which is frankly infuriating. The only thing worse than an ad that instantly annoys you is one which exploits human curiosity allowing the annoyance to drag out. I mean I "WANT TO HEAR AN UPLIFTING STORY." But I don't want it to go "A GUY LETS EVERYONE ON THE BUS BEFORE HIM. THE END." What?? You mean that old lady I discreetly shoved past in order to get to this crucial intersection probably didn't appreciate that?? You mean she didn't feel uplifted? Shit!

It's an admirable position, I'll admit, but we all know how much we hate do-gooders, especially when they rub it in. Nothing makes you feel worse about that whole block of cheese you ate while watching four solid hours of TV in a row than the person who tells you all about her overnight charity run while nibbling carrot sticks. And once we know that story, it makes us all the more eager to find out about the forty-five minutes she's about to spend in her cubicle texting and watching funny dog videos.

The idea behind all this is that by being "good" we're somehow going to make everyone feel "good," or at least ourselves. There is a delightfully selfish bent to that latter cause which I feel is the wondrous root of all human compassion. Unfortunately after taking one look at the "Good Ideas" section of the website, I have to say their plan is doomed to fail:

1. Mow your neighbour's lawn
2. Instead of an email, send a handwritten note.
3. Call your mother
4. Bring home flowers.
5. Make cookies for your neighbours
6. Do a chore, even if it's not your turn.
7. Give up the remote
8. Make breakfast for the household
9. Go say hello to your neighbour.
10. Shovel an elderly person's driveway.

Pretty much all of these things are going to make me feel worse, not to mention nothing but nothing gets me started like inconsistent punctuation, so they're already halfway to hell in my books. Good luck, people.

Not.

AMY

You know you're not cool when...

On the breezy evening walk to Jamez's house, you see a bunch of white movie trucks parked along the street. Awesome, you think. I like movies.

There are a gaggle of young girls clutching their cameras, whispering excitedly. You mosey over to see what all the commotion is about.

Suddenly the girls erupt in an explosion of flashes and gasps. The security guards huddle closer.

Around one figure. The centre of attention.

What's going on? You eventually ask.

The middle-aged mother of one flashing, gasping girl offers sympathetically, It's Robert Pattinson.

Oh! You say. Followed by, Which one is he?

She does a double take that's motivated either by pity or awe. It's impossible to tell which.

In the white shirt, she responds curtly.

There's too many people in white shirts. You momentarily catch sight of a highlighted yet manly head of hair. That must be him.

Oh right...with the hair, you manage to remark to the unimpressed mother. Maybe you need glasses.

So I can't walk this way then?

NO.

Jamez is waiting on his front steps with a cigarette.

Dude! You say. Robert Pattinson is shooting a movie just down the block!

Woah! He exclaims, and appears genuinely in the know. A slight pause. He flicks the butt of his cigarette.

I've been meaning to get into True Blood, you say.

Another double take. You're stirring shit up tonight.

Ummm, ha ha, no no. He's in Twilight, Jules. Jamez at least pats you on the shoulder.

Right. I knew that. That's what I meant. I just mean I've been meaning to get into vampires in general lately. You know.

A couple hours pass, and you're reporting the incident on your blog. Aptly titled Cultural Wha?

JULIA

Ideologies of Green Lantern

10,000 BC? I'll top that.

I recently spent a similar smoke-filled several hours with a wise male friend, though the protagonist of the film we watched was not a posh club-wielder but rather Ryan Reynolds in a computer-generated unitard.

The formulaic movie scoots along at a predictable pace, so to make things more exciting, we sought outlandish ideologies within its mechanics. These are our findings.

I. Military Propaganda

First off the bat, the Green Lanterns are members of an elite intergalactic police force called the Green Lantern Corps. You can read them as sort of super-cops, but more obviously as soldiers. When our pal Ryan, AKA Hal Jordan, is first assigned his post as a Green Lantern by a "dying purple alien," he is told that this is a great honour and a noble pursuit in life. In the earlier parts of the movie we see screw-up Jordan bumbling around with slutty girls and fighter jets, lacking a direction in life but with chutzpah to spare. Along come the Green Lanterns and though he may not be cut from the cloth they desire, his new position in the Corps gives his life meaning and determination. Of course, you never see him huddled in a ball suffering from PTSD after battling Parallax (the amorphous, tentacled villian), much less suffering from survivor's guilt after all those people get their souls sucked from their bodies when Parallax hits the downtown core in the climax. But he does use his Green Lantern powers--using the power of will to create forms from energy--to imagine into being cool machine guns, roadsters, more fighter jets and at the very height of tension, a giant green fist!

Now that's willpower. The object of the game in Green Lantern is to conquer fear--it is said that only truly fearless individuals are chosen to be Green Lanterns. Parallax was created when a wise elder tried to harness the power of fear, and it overtook him. The connections to the culture of fear present in America with its simultaneous WARS on drugs and terrorism are glaring to me personally. Parallax gets ya if you let even the tiniest iota of fear take precedence over your will, and then the soul-slurping begins and he gets bigger and more powerful. It's earnest that Jordan's epiphany turns out to be the whole courage-means-admitting-you're-afraid-and-doing-it-anyway-we-all-get-scared-sometimes-but-don't-let-it-beat-you! He literally punches fear in the face, which is kind of awesome. Sub in terror for fear in these instances, and you get a really good feeling about the direction of all this Arab War stuff.

II. Anti-Intellectualism

Ok, so Parallax = bad guy. But the mortal villain in this tale is Hector Hammond, a dweeby scientist with a disappointed senator dad. He examines the purple alien and is infected by the residue of the blast from Parallax that killed him. We're aware that the senator dad is a dick, but his assertion that the world needs more doers, not thinkers, is likely close to home for nerdy types. Hector is only allowed to examine the alien because of his father's connections, implying perhaps that he is a second-rate scientist, but perhaps that good thoughts alone are not enough to secure a prestigious government position. You need to be proactive, and you gotta be hooked up. Evil is planted within Hector upon his first truly radical scientific achievement, and I can't help but notice that each time his transformation worsens, he is twiddling a microscope or swiveling amongst banks of computer screens, as if the more he studies himself, the worse his condition. One of the symptoms is that he is able to read thoughts, and gets some pretty lousy telepathic feedback. The sniveling academic can only resent his intuitiveness.

And as we have seen in many other blockbusters, giving ultimate power to a scientist, really any intellectual at all, can only mean bad news.

III. Conservative Sexuality

My favourite. The one I came up with all on my own. Sadly, I have yet to receive sincere support for this notion.

One of my first thoughts when Jordan donned that green energy imagination suit was, "Sweet! You could put on condoms with your MIND!" Not to mention ascribe to these telepathic prophylactics your precise preferred measurements and thinness. The suit does seem to act like a sort of protective agent, allowing him to penetrate the outer reaches of space, taking him to unknown worlds. Of course, to say it fits like a glove is an understatement. He is supposed to "protect" the universe.

Then there's that ring! Which is bound up in all sorts of oaths and promises involving duty, responsibility and virtue. I won't even spell that one out.

So in this framework Parallax is ascribed the characteristics of STDs: many-limbed, confusing, harmful, scary, contagious. He gets uglier and bigger the longer he goes untreated. He must be obliterated.

In the end, Jordan is able to beat Parallax using willpower and resistance. But that's not enough. At the climax of their power struggle, it is the vocalization of the promise that Jordan has made which secures his victory.

Of course, afterwards he's limp and beaten and a stylish dude yanks him in with ropes.

AMY

Oh, Toronto

Quit trying to be New York.

Love,

AMY

This Isn't The Post I Promised

But I have a new idea for a summer job.

Watching the 2000 movie Life-Size starring Lindsay Lohan and my favourite, Tyra Banks, puts me in mind of the former's current house arrest. I hear she's planning to spend her quality time with herself painting before her "July 2 sober birthday bash".

One day that shock of natural red is emerging from an unlikely football helmet, the next it's bleached blond streaked with acrylic. It's gotta be tough being exposed to so much so soon. I know I suffered due to the high number of "novelty ID" outlets situated in the Yonge-Dundas area of Toronto. So this is what I propose:

Lindsay, let's hang. You've got tons of cash, and I've got hair-dying tips. Probably not as good as the frosted ones on your hairstylist of the constantly shifting sexuality, but trust me, I can make up for it with witty jokes, trashy movies (none of them starring you or Ms. Banks, if you prefer) and virgin caesars. Let's make a deal.

AMY

I believe in you, Jimmy.

What’s with punctuation being named after things in the body?

Like a period. I don’t know what it is about a tiny black dot that resembles a woman shedding her uterine lining. Maybe it’s symbolic of the ovum that will never be fertilized. Maybe I just shouldn’t go there.

Then there’s the colon: what’s the deal? A couple of specks versus… that thing? I guess most people don’t really know how to use either one, what with colon cancer rising and university education increasingly being wasted on idiots that can’t grasp proper punctuation.

Perhaps we have just found the common link. Are both punctuation and body parts meant to be grasped? That would make sense, if it weren’t for the contradictory evidence of little Jimmy getting a D on his Shakespeare exam after having dedicated the previous night entirely to grasping his own dick. The aspiring young academic tried his best to contest the grade, but to no avail.

“C’mon prof, I was gonna comma in my pants!”

“If you are suggesting what I think you are suggesting—“

“No, no, uh, I mean I had my period.”

“What?”

“(.)(.)”

“Put those away!”

“I’m just trying to punctuate my point!”

“JIMMY you’re…suffocating me…”

Shakespeare would have approved, especially with regard to the young man’s gender bending efforts. So why not the Shakespeare professor? Major Cultural Wha alert.

These people clearly get my drift:

One Less Lonely Girl

So I started my morning, as most do, with a glass of chocolate soy milk and a look at the video for the aforementioned Bieb's (Biebs'? Biebs's?) "One Less Lonely Girl".

I'll spare you an easily look-upable link since it's the usual pre-teen pop video: nearly impossible to get through. Predictably replete with guitar-playing in that lovable "look ma! no hands!" style for easy editing, grand romantic gestures, and awkward shorter boy-taller girl slow dancing. Justin make such promises as, "I'll shower you with kisses" (i.e. cum when he gets too excited and doesn't know which goes where due to his Catholic school's faulty sex ed program).

It's all in the spirit of good-natured ribbing. What I was really looking for were the lyrics. I decided to re-post on Bieber because I recently asked the aforementioned Michael's mom (1957-) and two eighteenish-year-old girls what this whole "Lonely Girl" business was about, since they seemed quite enthused about it. They told me what I had assumed, that the song is basically about being rescued by your knight in shining armour. And it is, but in that weird way where the lyrics essentially tell little girls that they've already taped up too many photographs, let too many tears hit the floor, let too many men treat them wrongly, as if ten-year-olds had been involved in all the scandal of your average Sex and the City episode. The only problem I have with this is that it places all the value (for me as a little girl anyway) on being jaded, and none on being innocent. It doesn't have to be equated with virginity, but no one can say that both innocence and virginity don't possess a special beauty of their own. The silver lining to these lyrics is the promise that Biebs will "Show you what you're worth/I'm gonna put you first"--which would be kind of a sweet sentiment if I felt any men anywhere felt worthy of emulating the all-powerful Biebs.

But let's move on to what these three stunning women were able to illuminate about this particular pop tune. In addition to spinning heart-stage (and I told you Julia, Bieber would never stoop to using a headset mic!), during the live performance of "One Less Lonely Girl" one girl is always chosen to come up on stage, sit on a stool, and be sung to by Justin Bieber personally. The shocking use of girl as prop is enough, but the eighteenish girls also informed me that one must not only have exquisitely perfected the art of sitting, but also be wearing shorts, lest a twelve-year-old crotch shot occur in front of thousands of fans. In the video below, Selena Gomez wears a sparkly dress and tights, but is careful to always keep her legs elegantly crossed.

I know that it's every girl's dream to be sung to by their favourite pop star, but let's face it: if we look at what this video is depicting and leave all the pop culture stuff out, it's all sorta kinda wrong. I'd probably feel kinda empty after leaving that stage if I was chosen to sit on the Lonely Girl Stool (hey, maybe we can equate this stuff with early sexual experiences), since Justin is careful to somehow sing right to Selena, graze her arms with his fingertips, but somehow also direct his gaze outward to everyone else, giving his eyes a kind of scared, darty look. So we're left with darty Justin and resplendent Selena, already looking every inch the legal drinker. It's a scientific fact that girls mature faster than boys, so why are these sexy, cheekboned, high-heeled, smart, charismatic, energetic girls left snapping their fingers and bobbing their heads in total silence, waiting for their tap on the shoulder so they may rise and dance with short, baby-faced, awkward little boys?

The matriarch of the group gave me an answer. Every generation has had their teen pop idol, and all have faded. It's pretty clear she didn't end up with a Monkee for a husband. In my view, any girl who would like to be rescued by Justin Bieber need only look in the mirror for a more than adequate substitute. But maybe mom is always right, and the sands of time will only sift and re-sift the endless grains of boy pop stars, eventually blowing them all far away.