Apr 02 2018

New and Improved

‘New and improved’ is not just a bit of harmless puffery; it’s a two-party addiction.  Stupid consumers must have and stupid companies must produce – new and improved stuff.  And it hurts third parties.  Such as the animals who are used to test a product every time it changes, every time it becomes new and improved.  And, perhaps more importantly (though I’m really not sure anymore), the people who won’t get their needs met because resources are being spent on stupid people’s wants.

There is a difference.  Between needs and wants.  One you can do without, the other you can’t.  People like to call wants ‘needs’, however, because needs are more compelling, and such people are thus being manipulative: to say ‘I need X’ makes it sound like it’s not an option, like X must be provided; but to say ‘I want X’ leaves the other more free not to fulfil the request.  We need clean water, nutritious food, shelter/warmth, and sometimes, medical care.  Everything else is a want.  (So yes, Freud and Maslow and every man since who says sex is a need – you’re wrong.  Evidence supports the contrary claim: surprising as this may seem, people who don’t have sex do not die.)

Nor do you die without the new and improved dish detergent or lip gloss.  Or this year’s Chrysler.  Don’t get me wrong: many improvements are indeed improvements; some are even valuable improvements.  The new detergents without phosphates are much better than the ones we had before, the ones with phosphates.  And the car with the catalytic converter and higher mpg is better than its predecessor.  But most changes are not improvements.  (There is a difference – between change and improvement.)  And most improvements are not significant enough to warrant new and improved products at the rate they’re being put on the market.

Most of the new and improved stuff is stuff we don’t need.  Actually, so is most of the old and unimproved stuff.  There’s a frighteningly high number of people in our society who exhibit arrested development, who seem stuck at the infantile phase of shouting ‘More! More! I want more!’  I yearn for the day when kids across our country do not start each day reciting a prayer or the anthem but the words ‘We don’t need.’  Because, by and large, in Canada, we don’t.  We don’t need.  We already have.  Enough.

Growth is not always good.  We have these good associations with the word because we think of a child growing.  But the healthy child stops growing when it reaches an optimum size.  There’s a name for unlimited growth: cancer.

And it’s this not stopping, it’s this making and taking more than we need, that has gotten us into this dead end.  The oil supplies will run out, according to the oil industry, by 2040.  The ozone layer is still dealing with the CFCs we released in the 1980s.  We have enough radioactive garbage to make a six foot high pile stretching clear across our country and we don’t know what to do with it.  Isn’t it time to stop?  To grow up and say ‘No thank you, I’m fine, I have enough’?

 

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Mar 26 2018

Solo Women’s Invisible Economic Expenses

It really hit home when my father gave me twenty bucks for a pizza, his treat.  As if I were a teenager.  Instead of a 50-year-old woman with a mortgage to pay, property taxes,  and monthly bills for oil, electricity, phone, internet, tv, house insurance, car insurance…  Amazing.  He was sitting in my living room at the time.  (My living room.)  A carpenter I’d hired to do some renovations on my house (my house) was outside working at the time.  And yet, he seemed to think I didn’t need, or couldn’t use, any real money.  He couldn’t see me as an adult negotiating my way in the real world, the one with jobs, paycheques, mortgages, and bills.

How did he think I came to own my own house?  Who did he think would be paying the carpenter?  Who does he think bought the car sitting in my driveway?  And pays for its repairs?

I don’t doubt for a minute that my parents have given my brother and my married sister a lot more than twenty bucks over the years (I divorced them thirty years ago, so I don’t really know) (and for that reason, I don’t feel entitled to anything from them, but that’s not my point), starting with the hundred-dollar (thousand-dollar?) gifts they gave them to start their households.  Said gifts were ostensibly wedding gifts, but hey, I had a household to start too.  Why do they get a new fridge and I get a hand-me-down blender just because they’re starting a new household with someone to whom they’ve contracted themselves?

And it’s not just my parents, of course.  The twenty-bucks-for-pizza incident wasn’t by any means the first time my economic expenses have been apparently invisible.  A neighbour (a kept woman) explained to me once that she and her husband were happy to have given the commission from the sale of their property to a certain real estate agent, a woman, (instead of selling the property without involving her, which they could have done), because her husband had recently died, so she was on her own now.  No similar sympathy has ever been directed my way.  And I’ve been on my own since I was twenty-one.

Why is this?  What can explain this phenomenon, a phenomenon that is surely causally related to women’s lower salaries?  The belief, clearly mistaken if anyone cared to open their eyes, that every woman is married?  (And every married woman is completely supported by her husband?)  The insistent belief that women are, or should be, considered children?  (And children don’t have adult needs, adult financial responsibilities…)

In 2009, American single women outnumbered married women (All the Single Ladies, Rebecca Traister).  So what do people like my parents think?  That banks waive our mortgage payments, and landlords never charge us rent; that insurance companies waive our premiums; that oil and propane companies fill our tanks, but never send us a bill; that we get our cars and bus passes for free; that we don’t have to pay for gas; that grocery stores let us walk out with all the food we want, for free; that our dentists and optometrists don’t charge us for check-ups; and that little elves come in the middle of the night and leave heaps of money so we can pay for whatever else we need.

 

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Mar 07 2018

for my brother, a poem by Chris Wind

(for my brother)

I

with a grunt of irritation

you condescend to be interrupted

and move your chair back a bit

so i can crawl

under your desk

(the one dad built special for you

now that you’re at university)

so i can dust the baseboards

as is my job

(i’ve already done the rest of your room)

i’m quiet

careful not to disturb

because it’s hard stuff, important stuff

you’re doing

(i’m still only in high school

but you’re at university now

it must be harder

you’re getting only 60s)

i turn around in the cramped space

on my hands and knees

and see your feet

i think about washing them

i think about binding them

II

the guidance counsellor pauses

then discourages

“philosophy’s a very difficult field”

and i thought

(no, not then, later)

i thought, she’s telling the kid

who has the top marks in the school

it’s too difficult?

III

it’s true

i just find it easier

besides, compared to business

philosophy is such a bird course

no, that’s a lie:

i’m smarter

and i work harder–

while you’re out with your friends

friday nights

i’m at work

because my summer job didn’t pay enough

to cover the whole year

and while you’re watching tv

i’m at work

(at ten o’clock

after six hours of lectures

and just as many of typing and filing)

i move the set

so i can crawl

into the corner

to dust the baseboards

you lean and yell in irritation

because i’m in your way

because i’m in your way

1987

from dreaming of kaleidoscopes

www.chriswind.net

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Mar 01 2018

The Academy Awards

Why is the acting category of the Academy Awards sex-segregated (Best Actor in a Lead/Supporting Role, Best Actress in a Leading/Supporting Role)?  We don’t have separate awards for male and female directors. Or screenwriters, cinematographers, costume designers, film editors, soundtrack composers, or make up persons.

Is one’s sex really relevant to one’s acting ability? In a way that justifies separate awards?

Of course not.

My guess is that it’s because the award isn’t really for the actor/actress, but for the character portrayed.  Probably partly because most people can’t distinguish the two.  I’ll bet George Clooney still gets asked what to do by moms whose kid has a fever.

Even so, why do we have separate categories?

Because if we didn’t, women would never win.  Not because they’re worse actors (remember the award isn’t for acting ability), but because we honor the heroes.  And women never get to play hero.

 

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Feb 28 2018

Trust – the movie

Trust – the movie

 

I’m so bloody sick and tired of men who assume center stage is for them.  The way the movie ends, and most of the way it plays out, it’s about the dad, about how he can’t deal with his failure to protect his daughter.

Mom’s not quite so important, apparently, despite her greater empathy with the whole experience: not only is she too beating herself up over her failure as a parent, for, after all, she’s as much the girl’s parent, but also she must surely be saying to herself ‘It could’ve been me — at 13.’

And that’s what the movie’s really about.  The real story, the far more important story, is about Annie.  She’s the one who misplaced her trust.  She’s the one who pays for it, with her life almost.  She even says as much, but apparently the director didn’t hear the writers (assuming he chose the last scene and determined how it was shot, who got the close-up, who got their big face in the camera last…).

This movie should’ve been an examination of not only trust (what is trust and how do we know who to trust?), but also an examination of love: with all the shit we force-feed our kids (including the shit ads the dad makes), it’s perfectly reasonable and perfectly predictable that what happened happened (and I refer here both to what Charlie does and what Annie does).

Shame on Schwimmer for making it about the man.

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Feb 26 2018

On the Radfem Doctrine of Separatism

Here’s the thing.  Men are already separatists.  (So really we have no choice.)

Men already exclude women from anything, everything, important.  (Any inclusion is tokenism: a false symbol, a PR move.)

Men already refuse to get involved with ‘women’s issues’, whether personal or political.  That feminism itself is considered a special interest thing indicates that.  (It shouldn’t be.  And it wouldn’t be if ‘women’s issues’ were typically included in ‘issues’.  That we have to establish them as ‘add-ons’ proves that ‘issues’ are really ‘men’s issues’.  See?  Separatism.)

 

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Feb 23 2018

The Baroness Von Sketch Show – MUST SEE!!

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=baroness+von+sketch+show

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Feb 21 2018

Snowmobiles Rule – Only in Canada.  Pity.

Snowmobilers are often presented as enjoying the natural beauty of the North.  Oh please.  Not at the speeds they drive.  Not while their exhaust pipes spew fumes into our air.  And their engines roar at a volume that must be endured by everyone within five miles.  And their tossed beer cans litter the forest until someone comes by and picks up after them.

What snowmobiling is all about adolescent males going VROOM VROOM.

Which means that our government has handed over thousands of miles of crown land to a bunch of young men to use as their personal racetrack.  How fair is that?  And did they ask us first?

When a friend of mine contacted the MNR to ask about putting up signs at each end of a short trail through crown land that snowmobilers are using as a short cut to get to their trail and, in the process, making it dangerous (not to mention extremely unpleasant because of the fumes and the noise) for the rest of us to use (for walking and cross-country skiing), she was told No, they can’t put up signs prohibiting snowmobilers from using it because everyone has access to crown land.  Right.  Then why do the signs on the snowmobile club trails say ‘No Trespassing – You must have a permit to use this trail’?

Why has the government done this?  Because they’re adolescent males themselves.  Who still want to go VROOM VROOM.

And because local businesses asked them to, because they want to make money from the snowmobilers.

Snowmobilers are a minority.  Local business owners are a minority.  Why do they get to determine policy and practice?  Policy and practice that affects other people?

When snowmobilers (and ATVers and dirtbikers – essentially, all motorized ‘recreational’ vehicles) use crown land the way they want, no one else can use it the way they want.  Consider the trails, mentioned above, unsafe and unpleasant now for hikers and skiers.  Consider the lake we all live on.  In winter (and in summer too – jetskis, another motorized recreational vehicle), our properties may as well be backing on, well, a racetrack.  (So much for sitting outside and – well, so much for sitting outside.  Not to mention canoeing or kayaking.)  Consider all the backroads we live on, the ones without sidewalks.  It’s nice that we can hear a snowmobile coming from miles away so we have time to get off the road, but it’s not enough to get off to the side (assuming that’s not where we already are), because that’s where the snowmobiles drive.  It’s not even enough to get off the road and up onto the snowbank, because they like to ride the banks.  You have to climb up and over the snowbanks to be safe.  In some countries, pedestrians have the right of way.  In Canada, gas-guzzling, fume-spewing, noise-farting, male-driven snowmobiles do.

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Feb 19 2018

Men and Words (?)

As a result of a recent exchange on a blog in which I felt insulted enough by the patronizing tone taken by the moderator that I decided not to participate any further, while another commenter (a male) responded with a mere “LOL”, I asked yet another commenter (also a male) about why he thought our reactions were so different.  “Don’t men know when they’re being insulted?” I asked.

His response?  “We know, we just don’t care. At the end of the day, it’s just words on a
screen. Most of us don’t expect to convince anyone else, this is a social event of sorts for people who like to talk about stuff.”

He went on to say “We don’t expect to change anything, we’re just engaging in venting,
observation, and entertainment. If we learn something new, all the better.”

I find this horrifying.  Words have meaning!  Meaning is important!  At first I thought okay, maybe that’s just a philosopher/non-philosopher thing, but then I recalled conversations with male philosophers in which I similarly felt like I wasn’t being taken seriously, in which I felt like, the man nailed it, “entertainment”.

I don’t feel that when I speak with women on these matters.  So it’s a sexist thing, not a
philosopher thing.

But it’s not that men don’t take women seriously, it’s that they don’t take each other seriously either.  Suddenly their attitude toward debate—it’s a game—makes sense.

As for not expecting to convince or change, maybe that’s a non-teacher-non-social-activist thing, but again, if it’s a male thing, then again, it’s horrifying.  No wonder the world isn’t getting better and better: the people in power aren’t talking, thinking, acting to make it so.  Their discussions on policy are just “venting, observation, and entertainment”!

I wonder if at its root, it’s part of the male relationship to words.  Women are better with language, so it’s said, whether because of neurology or gendered upbringing; men are better with action, so it’s said, again whether by neurology or gendered upbringing.  So that would explain why women (in general, of course) consider words to be important, and men (in general, of course) don’t.

 

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Feb 14 2018

Taking Tiddlywinks Seriously

Imagine a game of tiddlywinks being played by men.

Imagine it televised.  And broadcast to the whole world on any one of over a dozen Tiddlywinks Channels.

Imagine a play-by-play description of the proximity and angle of orientation each tiddlywink, relative to the pot; of the exact positioning of each man’s squidger, relative to each tiddlywink; of the precise force with which the players flip their tiddlywinks.

Imagine after-the-game interviews with the players, eliciting earnest reflections about their every move.

If you’re laughing, why don’t you also laugh at football, hockey, baseball, basketball, and soccer games?

And if you’re not laughing—behold the legitimizing force of serious-men-doing-it.

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