In the News: Western Producer

Look, ma! I'm in a national publication!

Ok, so I ghost-wrote it for the president of our board, but it's my words under his name. That counts, right?

Allow me my moment. It's wee, but special.

Ms. Fitz's Monkey of the Week: Aba Daba Honeymoon

If you weren't born a hundred years ago, you may not be familiar with this song, which was written in 1914 and is best known for a 1950 Debbie Reynolds movie I have never seen.

Which begs the question: how in the hell do I know this song?

From my childhood, of course. It's one of those ridiculously catchy nonsensical tunes my mom used to sing to me, as her mom used to sing it to her when she was a child growing up in the '50s.

It's a cute ditty about two monkeys in love. What's not to like?

"And the big baboon one night in June, he married them and very soon they went upon their aba dabba honeymoon!"

Classic.

Hear the song

Read the lyrics

Happy Birthday, On the Origin of Species

This is for all the monkeys, and their uncles.

Yep, ol' Darwin sure knew how to write 'em, and keep them in the public consciousness long after his own trip on that Beagle in the sky. Or something.

The funny thing, of course, is that it's STILL as controversial as ever, with fundamentalist sorts taking offence to being related to apes (I'm sure, in all fairness, that the gorilla isn't altogether thrilled to be related to you either, bub) and decrying OOS as atheist blather or--worse--the work of the devil.

Since I don't believe in a personal god, myself, I'm free to believe in this evolution stuff without wrestling over what it says about my faith. That said, I don't think that understanding evolution and having faith in god(s) are incongruent. You can believe that since God made monkeys and you, that it's just a big happy family situation that the Bible left out in favour of golden calves and other fun stuff.

Or, you know, you could get all bent out of sorts about it and rail on about it to Fox news. Although I find that a mite silly...

Here's what P.Z. Meyers has to say.

Article on the Scopes Monkey Trial in the Edmonton Journal.

Feature article on the book.

Everybody's working for the weekend

Yep, ode to Loverboy on a Saturday afternoon. It don't get much radder, now do it?

Nothing makes the long work week seem more unpleasant than having to come in on a Saturday afternoon. For three and a half hours. To work on 160 pages of speaking notes for a convention. Blecch.

On a positive note, coming in on a Saturday is a good way to focus on the task at hand, since the place is empty, you can crank bad music on your computer if you want to and can wear clothes only a step above pajamas. 

My poor preggers coworker, Mrs. Van B., joined me in the task of proofing and printing 16 copies of the blasted speaking notes for individual podium binders. I pegged her chocolate mood exactly and showed up with a Starbucks brownie waiting on her desk when she arrived an hour later. I figure that buys me at least another ten Karmic points. I'm probably at dung beetle, now. I'm working up to dirty pigeon, but I'll settle for naked mole rat.

Now it's time for home and squeezing in a few hours of real weekend before homework inevitably begins. 

"you wanna piece of my heart? You gotta start from the start. WHOOOOAAA!" *air guitar*

hehehe...

Secret self online? Not so much.

I've been oft-criticized for my online dating habits. While I tend to think of myself as fairly open-minded in terms of giving slack on looks, height, hair colour, etc, there are certain traits--of course--that I tend to gravitate to. As I said in a previous post, my dear, lovely friend, Mrs. P, who wants only the best for me, has stated that I should not base my first impression by a mere handful of photos , since they're not an accurate reflection of who the person is.

According to this Newsweek article I just found, however...they are.

"The findings from this study and other research on personality suggest that the photos you post online provide a wealth of information about who you are—whether you like it or not."

Studies were conducted with Facebook and online dating sites, where people of both genders were asked to evaluate strangers based on a list of personality criteria, such as extroversion, likability and even religiosity (!) The results were that most strangers pegged those they'd never met nine times out of ten. Apparently, the only trait that was difficult to predict was neuroticism. Hehehe, lucky me. Poor, unlucky bastard who decides to take a chance on my silly neurotic self.

So good luck trying to pass yourself off as the coolest dude ever on match.com or making yourself the centre of the party on Facebook. The truth will out, even online.

Sweet. My pickiness seems less bitchy now and more the product of good, old-fashioned unconscious sociological detective work. hehehe.

Writing hero of the moment: Matt Taibbi

Matt Taibbi is an award-winning writer and blogger whom I first discovered while reading his scathingly excellent political articles in Rolling Stone. His words are the precision cutting tools of an expert surgeon and his rage against the machine is palpable.


Here's a great example of his style, which is one part Hunter S. Gonzo and one part "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore". This excerpt's from a blog piece about former governor and Tina Fey-impersonator Sarah Palin:


"...Just as she had during the campaign last fall, Palin defied rational analysis by making a primal connection with the subterranean resentments of white middle America, which is apparently so pissed off now at the rest of the planet for not coddling its hurt feelings in the multicultural age that it is willing to embrace any politician who validates its insane sense of fucked-overness."

Now those are words that grab your throat and screech what's what while flecking your terrified mug with spittle, no?

Rolling Stone is the one magazine I still have a subscription to, and while I'd like to say it's because I'm such a music connoisseur, the truth is I find their political writing incisive and engrossing. Particularly Taibbi, my new writing hero. Check him out:

http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/
www.rollingstone.com

Ms. Fitz's Monkey of the Week: Australopithecus

My first year of university--back when I was a young naif intent on becoming the next Indiana Jones--I took several anthropology courses. While the introductory course was intended to be a survey of all anthropology subjects, the largest focus was on physical anthroplogy and evolutionary genera of homonids, from monkeys to apes to humans.

I took this class with two of my favourite people, Stephanie and Leah, who spent most of the class giggling with me at our Polish professor's butchering of the English name pronunciations. (example: Leah became "Lee-a-MURR", because he always referred to the adorable Malagasy as such.)

The class became "an-throw-PAUL-o-GEEEEAYYY" and we spent a good month studying the evolution of "the MAUN-KEEAYYS". My favourite was Australopithecus bosei, which became a 40-syllable word in his delightful struggle with my native tongue.

Anyway, back to Australopithecus. The genus Australopithecus is closely related to our Homo ancestors, and may in fact be our predecessors (sorry, no Garden of Eden here). They're therefore not technically "monkeys" in the true sense, but as we all share common ancestors and swing from the same evolutionary branch, I'm not going to split ape hairs on this.

Although they were likely no more sophisticated than modern apes, they were bipeds (translation: they walked upright).

The most famous Australopithecis is "Lucy", the A. afarensis speciment discovered in Ethiopia who recently celebrated her 3.2 millionth birthday (the cake was visible from space). Her skeleton shows evidence that bipedalism preceded increase in brain size in human evolution.

So, while you may not be a monkey's uncle, a monkey was certainly yours.

I am so fucked.

Vanity Fair just came out with this article, which analyzes the grotesque lengths to which "cute culture" has taken our otherwise sane, serious society. It's therapeutic, in a way, since I myself am drawn to many of the websites referenced in the article. As the article explains:

"To some degree, we can’t help ourselves. In the 1940s, ethologist Konrad Lorenz proposed—correctly, as it turns out—that we instinctively want to nurture any creature that has a cute appearance...[E]vidence that human beings undergo a chemical reaction deep in their brains when they look at babies....[T]he act of looking at baby pictures stirs up an ancient part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens."

Well, shit. I'd capitalize on this finding, but I think http://www.fupenguin.com/ has already cornered the market. There's something to be said, though, about relieving the stress of a bad day by taking a five minute "cute break" at work. Maybe our society's become so rabid about it in correlation to our overworked, undersocialized, lonely modern existences? It's a recipe to cure the sads. 

Hey, look! A puppy!

Creepy hobby: Graving.

Read about gravers. 

I've always been drawn to cemeteries. Not in a "digging up the undead to create a monster the likes of which the world has never seen" way, nor in a "can't wait to pick my plot next to aunt Janie" way. I just find them beautiful and fascinating.

There's a calmness to a place where people go to their final repose. The landscaped gardens and old granite slabs make for a picturesque scene. There's a sense of shared history when you look at the tombstones and monuments--finding the oldest gravesite or comparing naming trends over the past few decades or centuries. It's like an archaeological study in the most fundamental of human experiences. Wherever I travel, I always try to see a local cemetery. Some are breathtakingly beautiful, others eerie. I've been to a few over a thousand years old, with stones so weathered you can't read anything, and must only imagine the words once engraved.

More than anything, though, I appreciate what cemeteries say about humanity. The fact that we honour our dead and make space for them amongst the living is a comfort. It makes me feel privileged to be among the race of bipedal hairless apes. It's hard to be sad in a cemetery, when you know that the people in them were loved or at the very least thought of enough to have testaments to their existence and memory erected. And even when the last person who knew them passes on, they live in the collective unconscious and in the deliberate efforts of funky folk like gravers, who make a hobby out of amateur cemetery sleuthing. Fascinating. If there's a local chapter, I may have to join. If not, perhaps I'll need to start one?

Ms. Fitz's Monkey of the Week: the Infinite Monkey Theorum

"'It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times?' You stupid monkey!"

-"Last Exit to Springfield", The Simpsons

From Wikipedia.org:

"The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare."

In this case, the monkey's a mathematical metaphor. While the probability of a monkey exactly typing a complete work such as Shakespeare's Hamlet is minuscule, it is not an impossibility. 

The Infinite Monkey idea has a long history that can be traced back to Aristotle, though, obviously, without typewriters. 

In 2003, an experiment was performed with six Celebes Crested Macaques, but their literary contribution was five pages consisting largely of the letter 'S'. This, of course, is a greater contribution to literature than the last Twilight book. Hey-yo!

Getting my ass kicked

For the past few weeks I've been attending twice-weekly Bootcamp sessions on the south side. 

After a good year and a half of watching my ass slowly meld to my office chair and eating crap, I decided to do something about it and get back into shape. My biggest issue with working out is the motivating factor. It's difficult for me to find the motivation on my own, especially when I'm so out of shape that I can't remember how to do a pushup, let alone perform the feat. 

So I signed up for Survivor Bootcamp, one of several in the city, for four weeks of hour-long cardio, weight training and calisthenics. Fun, right? Well...sure. If your idea of fun involves feeling your arteries chugging along and wishing your calf muscles would stop their screaming so you could hear your iPod better. 

Ok. So it's not that bad. The classes are fairly short and consist of changing patterns of cardio and training, so you're never doing any one thing long enough to get too exhausted from it before you're onto another exercise. 

I haven't noticed any physical differences yet, though my heavy panting at walking up a flight of stairs has somewhat diminished. 

I'm most impressed with my ability to actually show up to class. The first class was in the middle of a snowstorm, and my instructor didn't even show. But I stayed for the whole hour while more experienced girls showed me the ropes: and by ropes, I mean endless sets of lunges. Since then, I've done situps in the pouring rain and worn a toque and mittens to every class, but there is something to be said about the open air. 

How in shape I'll be by the end of this is debatable, but the purpose of the class is to get me motivated to start doing more workouts on my own and feel slightly more confident on a treadmill than a month ago. 

Although I'll have to dress more appropriately for future endeavours. While changing before class today, I realized that I'd forgotten my expensive Lululemon sports bra, and had to wear an underwire for the duration of the class. For those of you sans breasts, let me put it thusly: ouch. While even small-chested girls have issues running without support--bruises, stretching, bouncing--I spent my run trying to hold mine down to keep from knocking myself in the eye. Serious discomfort. Next time, I'm packing duck tape in my trunk, just in case. Otherwise, I'm liable to throw myself off balance and go tumbling into the street in front of a moving vehicle. 

PS - If there is such a place as Hell, and if I am indeed destined to serve an eternity there, my most dreaded punishment would be an endless set of burpees. How I loathe burpees.

dealbreaker

So I started up with the PoF again. I've had a profile on and off for the past 3 years and have had mild to moderate success with the dating game. I have had some friends find great success and love online, and others, like me, with mixed results somewhere between terrific and horrific. 

Most are 'meh'. My greatest bane is a man who is 'meh'. There is always a coaxing of the inner line where the deal's off. Where you must balance your needs with your wants and figure out how to get those needs fulfilled and still get a deal of your wants in there, too, without coming off as some grotesque real-life Seinfeld episode who breaks up with someone for having turned-out feet. 

My married friend and close confident, Mrs. P, is always devil's advocate. She's looking out for my best interests and pushes me to question my preconceived notions in an effort to better me and better my chances of snagging someone truly noteworthy. She pokes at me for my snap judgments and criteria for dismissal of potential suitors. I've countered that there must be SOME criteria, lest I date every single person online, which is neither feasible nor desired. 

I know I am attracted to a particular 'type', and that some aspects of this may benefit me, while other aspects may leave certain needs unfulfilled.  These aspects may, in turn, simultaneously satisfy some of the pettier wants on the list. Does this mean that I should broaden my scope? Sure. Does it mean that I should give up my preferences completely? No. I am aware of what I go for and make a concerted effort to assess my needs and what sort of person could fulfill those. At the end of the day, though, my inner romantic wants the 'spark!' and places her bets on the horses that might provide said 'spark!' more readily. 

At times I've taken risks on men that didn't seem to fit, and was pleasantly surprised. Conversely, I've had terrible dates with men who seemed a perfect fit to my preconceived mold. So sure, sometimes they sneak in past my more judgmental filters.

For the most part, however, when all you have to go on is the covers, you have to judge books on the most readily-available criteria.  And those criteria aren't always fair or logical. Most seem picked at random or through trial and error (ie: many, many dates). 

Photo attractive enough to suit? Check. Interests align to a degree? Check. Semi-literate articulation of self? Aye--there's the rub. My dealbreaker.

The profile. The chance to wear that heart out on your sleeve. To pour your soul into a haiku or demonstrate your ability to turn a well-crafted phrase. I have a high standard for self-description and look for particular elements to determine if someone's worth my time. It's not a matter of trying to be a snob or too picky or pretentious. It's a matter of gauging who might be compatible. 

Spelling is one area of contention that gets me eyebrow raises from Mrs. P and other "you're being a pretentious c**t" looks from my friends and loved ones. But hear me out. 

Ok, boy who messaged me: so you can't spell. Hmm...well, you could be really great and amazing and what the fuck does spelling matter in the long run? Nothing, really. It could even put my English snobbery under the microscope and challenge me to look beyond such surface notions. Will a man's use of 'your' in place of 'you're' really matter on a day-to-day basis? Of course not. However, the fact that you don't bother to proofread your entry or at least have a go with an automated grammar tool available anywhere on the interwebs means you're either willfully lazy or too stupid to manage it. 

Saying something is important. I get bored easily, am intelligent, and communicate for a living. Sorry, buddy, but you'll have to keep up at least some portion of the time. You're basically pitching yourself. And if I don't like the concept, I'm not going to invite you to play the role of boyfriend in the movie of my life. You don't have to be boastful or make shit up (the truth will out in the end, so honesty is always best) but put your best self forward. Would you show up to a job interview and half-ass it, then expect to land the gig? 

Charming? Ok, lay it on. Like to laugh? Give me joke, even if it's a groaner. As we writers like to say "show, don't tell." 

And no, being a bad writer is not an excuse. You're talking about the one subject even a four-year old can give a short presentation on: yourself. You know you, inside and out. You can't string two sentences together on the subject? Seriously? If you can't sell yourself, then why should I buy it? There are too many people out there to bother with the mediocre or the well-intentioned. Because I too have good intentions. And I actually have put forth the effort to showcase myself and my interests. I could care less if you've got blonde hair or brown. If you've got a six pack or a bit of a belly. Because personality will trump belly, any day of the week. And has with a number of men I've chosen to see.  But you've got to show it. 

Yes, it's hard to do online. And that's why they have nifty tips for those who don't come by the gift of communication naturally. Take a look around you and see the zillion other profiles available. Take your cue from your peers and apply it to your own self. It's not fucking rocket science. Well, I hope. 

Oh, and another thing: for baby kittens' sake, stop posing with your car. Wow. You can drive. Congrats. Stop embarrassing yourself and just do a straightforward headshot like everyone else. 

I would apologize for being shallow and going for the arty over the athletic, the pretentious over the precious. Maybe my soulmate's the bass fisherman who loves red label and Jebus. But unless he can make a compelling case for it, then I'm going to go for what attracts me: smarts, sass and a dash of nerdy/artiness. I don't care if you drink merlot or margaritas. But you have to hold your end of the conversation up. I have nothing against shy guys or quiet guys. I know some wonderful men who are just those types. But that doesn't make them the ones I want to take home. Because I would gnaw my own hand off to get away from a lifetime of quiet reflection. I don't want antics over security. I think I can find both in some sort of balance. I just choose to seek the comfortable and low-key in the creative and extroverted, rather than try to tease extroversion out of an adorable mute. 

But then I second guess myself and ask...well...is this premise flawed? Am I going about it all wrong. And if so...how can I make it right?

Tasty, tasty pain.

Fuck, my neck hurts. My shoulders hurt. Through those connected muscles and tissues runs a thin, tight wire straight to the back of my skull, which throbs and pulses in time with my heartbeat. The wire wraps around my ears and pulls at my temples, until even the tiny follicles of my hairline are taut. My eyeballs are going to squeeze out of their sockets and roll under the couch, where they'll be safe collecting lint, far away from the dull ache they're currently enduring. 

Tension headache. Not nearly a migraine, but nauseatingly painful nonetheless. The kind of pain you could nearly chew. A slow, taffy-like gnawing that flexes your jaw and grinds your teeth. You'd bite something, but it'd be the inside of your cheek or tongue. And that won't be pleasant the next morning. 

Some people take physical risks for their lifestyles. They break bones pursuing 360s or malnourish themselves and go into hyper sleep-deprivation to endure med school. Me? I write. Constantly. Ceaselessly. Even when I'm not writing for the 8 hours I'm at work, I'm reading something online or on a printed page. Then I'm typing at home. Words are many exquisite things, but for now, they are literally a pain in my neck. Fortunately, they still leave me the ability to describe my discomfort and try to lessen it in the recounting. My pleasure is my poison. God, I'd make myself sick with all this tedious meandering, if I wasn't feeling physically ill already.

Advil would help. Or a chiropractor. The latter is unavailable. The former, unwanted. I'm going to be sucking those babies down for the rest of my life if I keep this up. Maybe I need a dictaphone, so I can stop working on my hunchback while I'm sifting through sentence structures. 

It's not old-timey romantic like an impressionist painter dying of heavy metal poisoning from licking brush tips. Fuck, it's not even a sexy typewriter-induced injury, like a sprained wrist or a broken toe from knocking the damned thing on my foot in a fit of writer's block. Nope. It's a 21st century repetitive stress injury from poor posture and a lifestyle that has me staring at words day in day out. They say you hurt the ones you love the most. But I've never hurt the words. Why are they now hurting me? I need less squinting at the screen and more downtime on a feather pillow. 

Ok. Fine. I'm taking a muscle relaxant. Maybe some alcohol. What? It'll help. And hey, that sounds like just the kind of dangerous drink lifestyle my fellow wordsmiths adopt to lubricate the creative fervor. Hemmingway did it. And look where he...oh. I see. Ahem. Bad example.

Ow.

Ms. Fitz's Monkey of the Week: Clotheshanger Gorilla

Who knew the remnants of drycleaning could look so...imposing?

This is artist David Mach's Coathanger Gorilla. It's made from thousands of welded-together coathangers placed over a plastic base. As you can see, it's quite impressive in size. Mr. Mach is also known for sculpting teddies gone bad art with plush toys. I'm not sure what Freud would have to say about it. But it looks neat. See the freaky stuff online.

Sniffle.

86 year-old Republican WWII veteran makes impassioned speech at marriage rights rally in Maine...in favour of gay rights. Touching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrEbJBFWIPk&feature=player_embedded

Ayn rand popular in new delhi

Found this super-fascinating article on Foreign Policy's website that explores the takeoff of Objectivism in the world's most populous democracy.

For those unfamiliar with Objectivism, it is a philosophy created by Russian-American writer and thinker Ayn Rand back in the earlier part of the 20th century. Her two most famous works, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, put the Objectivist philosophy into practice, and have had an enormous impact on Western culture in the past half-century. 

Back in high school I read some Objectivist philosophy and found the idea of self-centered idealism rather distasteful. However, in my early 20s I read the Fountainhead and loved it. While I don't enjoy Atlas Shrugged as much (too much beating you about the head with her philosophy--and you may as well skip the last 200 pages) the book has sold more copies than pretty much any book other than the Bible. 

Choice quote from FP article:

"Rand's celebration of independence and personal autonomy has proven to be powerfully subversive in a culture that places great emphasis on conforming to the dictates of family, religion, and tradition...Rand's theory of the supremacy of reason and the virtue of selfishness adds up to "the antithesis" of Indian culture, which explains the attraction for...many rebellious Indian teens today."

In recent years, Rand has fallen out of favour as the economic monolith of the US has collapsed upon itself. In burgeoning democracies like India, however, this newly-discovered philosophy is a runaway hit. It's interesting to see the progression of capitalist ideas in society so completely different than ours in North America. Its impact on future world events could be interesting, especially since 1/6 of the world's population is involved. 

And hey, if nothing else, maybe we'll get a really great, musical number-filled Bollywood version of John Galt's speech. Rousing. 

More immunization yakkity yak

I know I keep coming back to this vaccination topic, but really, I am so concerned about our desire to do the right thing overcoming our better judgement that I'm going to publish every rational, fact-based bit of information I can find that puts the Jenny McCarthys in a corner.

This is an article from a parent in the US whose immuno-compromised child (Cancer--much more serious than a vaccine.) couldn't go to daycare because other parents had decided not to innoculate their children on "religious or moral" grounds.

Quote:
"I realize that anti-vaccine sentiment has been around as long as the vaccines themselves. People who choose not to immunize their children may do so out of the best possible motives: They believe those vaccines endanger their children. But I wonder whether they have fully considered that the herd immunity, of which they are taking advantage, is designed to protect those who cannot be vaccinated."

EXACTLY. Because the more kids are immunized, the better off the rest of the kids will be. People need to stop taking disease for granted and weigh the real pros and cons. And just for the record, no, this does not apply to kids with severe egg allergies, as, obviously, the higher risk of dying from a severe reaction is worse than dying from mumps. But that is a separate (and PROVEN) reason against compared to the autism or "I don't believe in immunizing my kids" argument.

Anthropologist to modern men: ‘You’re the worst’

Another book to add to my ever-growing reading list. I think I'm at about 150 titles this year. Better get on it.

***

Manthropology: The Science of the Inadequate Modern Male by Peter McAllister.

The National Post published an article by this prominent anthropologist, explaining all the ways in which our bodies suck compared to our ancestors. For those who would use Darwin as means of explaining our superiority to what came before, Mr. McAllister would beg to differ. For all our longevity, nutrition and disease prevention, we're not quite on par with the Olympic-calibre athletes of the past.

See, as our brains get bigger, our bodies get punier and less able to succeed out in the jungle. Kind of makes you wonder what'll happen when the apocalypse is nigh. We'll have mighty strong thumbs from all that video game playing, but otherwise, our soft underbellies will be ripe for the disembowelling.

Take it from someone who's just entered week two of a strenuous bootcamp exercise class: our physical prowess is pathetic. (Also: burpees are the worst form of torture in existence.)

Even fit people aren't as fit as a lazy one-legged cro magnon. We seem to be exercising only one muscle. And while we've succeeded with that muscle beyond any scope our ancestors could have imagined, ignoring the rest of our muscles seems like it could spell trouble for us in our future.

Although, being a head floating in a jar of fluid aboard a spaceship has its perks, I'm sure. If I remember my Futurama correctly, however, things tended to go awry when the heads couldn't get around and were stuck sloshing about in saline.

“We are so inactive these days and have been since the Industrial Revolution really kicked into gear. These people were much more robust than we were." - Peter McAllister

Time to get off the couch and back to being chased across the Serengeti by a pack of lions?

Ms. Fitz's Monkey of the Week: Doting monkey mum

The Daily Mail ran this anthropomorphizing article over the Thanksgiving weekend. Seems that monkey mums go just a gooey over their cute little monkey babehs as human mums do. Reason #3,425,972 why monkeys are the radness.

HPV Vaccine for Boys

An interesting article that takes a different tack from most: why not innoculate boys against HPV, not just girls? It relates to the sexual determinacy aspect of my previous post. Thoughts?

http://www.slate.com/id/2232537/