Biking in Toronto: The Much Better Way

A few weeks ago, I started commuting by bike to work on a semi-regular basis. And every time I leave the bike to squeeze myself onto the TTC, I regret it. On my bike, I bike with danger. Cars hate me, pedestrians are indifferent to my presence, and I know so little about my bike I rode three times on an open quick release. The only thing between me and an early death is a charmingly awkward helmet which makes me look I have encephalitis. 

And yet - I love it. Here I am, riding down the hill near Dupont and Bathurst. Riding? I meant flying. I am a flying mushroom in my giant grey helmet, look at me go. And yes, there I am lurching off my bike to walk it up a hill, because my legs stubbornly refuse to do that thing where you stand up and ride for extra power. I don't care. Because there I am not: getting a purse to a face on the streetcar, waiting for a bus that will never come, or peeling myself out of somebody's armpit to disembark at St. Andrew station. I support public transit in the same theoretical way I support open relationships and vegan diets. It's a good thing. But it is also a terribly annoying, smelly good thing, at least as implemented in Toronto. 

That Toronto's public transit is craptacular is not an original thought. And yet, an entire industry of TTC-themed swag exists. T-shirts with streetcars on them! Button pins of the subway walls!! Art with more streetcars on it!!! Bus-themed... well, buses get no love because they're buses. And yet, I'm sure I've spoken too soon, and somewhere someone is crocheting a TTC bus to stuff and sell. I refuse to remind myself of what is often the worst part of my day, and so I am left button-less. Though I also don't buy any of the bike-themed tchotchkes either, because I don't feel like I've earned it yet. I'll get the cruiser-printed skirt when I know how to pump air into my own tires.

I guess that makes me a cyclist, though I'll never change in some ways. A few weeks ago an Audi (of course: it's always an Audi or an Acura) really crowded me on Bathurst. When I caught them at a red light, I did not hit their car with my bike lock, or yell, or do anything except tap politely on their window and say - once the driver had rolled it down: "Um, you kind of really crowded me back there, so if you could give cyclists more space next time, that would be nice. Yeah..." And then I biked away, into the day, the mushroom-headed cycling avenger.

I Love Bloodsport

I introduced Dan to Bloodsport last night, which might just be my favourite movie. I'll say that The Life and Death and Colonel Blimp or Raiders of the Lost Ark on dating profiles and in public, but secretly my heart beats only for Bloodsport, and its amazing montages:

Watching Bloodsport always makes me want to do two things. First, take up muay thai, because even though the muay thai guy (Paco) doesn't win, he looks like he has a lot of fun losing:

I have always been more of a kicker than a lover, or an anything-else-kind of fighter, and so muay thai really appeals to me. Particularly if it offers me the chance to kick JCVD repeatedly in the ribs. Oh, and second: ban all of these briefs so that JCVD can never assault my eyes again:

Yikes. Sadly, my first dream has never come to pass, probably because no invitations to highly secretive underground martial arts competitions seem to be forthcoming. But the second dream lives on.

Pillow Blog: Supposedly Healthy Things I've Done Recently, and their Worrisome Side Effects

In the tradition of the Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book, here's a Pillow Blog: an observational list on some subject or another.

1. Commuter biking: In spite of (hopefully) increased physical health, my mental health has taken a dip as I'm now convinced everyone either hates me (best case scenario) or wants me dead (taxi cab driver scenario)
2. Reducing coffee intake: Productivity down to historic lows; I may, in fact, be sleepworking through the first three hours of my job every day now
3. Meditating before sleep: Oh look, I'm learning to centre myself after a long day at work. Oh look my blood pressure's dropping. Oh look, I'm somewhere else and NOW I CAN'T SLEEP BECAUSE THERE'S NO STRANGER TALKING IN MY EAR

Thoughts on a Wedding

After a busy week, and today's civic holiday, I finally have time to sit down, finish an opened beer leftover from, God knows, Saturday, and tell you all about my best friend's wedding. 

Spoiler: I didn't try and break it up so I could marry the best friend myself. Any similarities between me and Julia Roberts stop at the curly hair. Also, my friend Katie is a great person, and her now-husband Martin is a lovely guy, and they're so perfect together, they finally made me understand why Shakespearean comedies have to end with a wedding. 

I left Canada at 9am in the morning on a Thursday, managing to get on a plane with my bridesmaids dress even though my mother was convinced one, or all of the following things would happen: I would forget to wake up, I would forget my passport, I would forget my dress or I would pack it in my checked luggage and the airline would forget to put it on the plane. None of that happened. The flight was all of ten minutes late, and my greatest concern during the time was why Last Tango in Paris was one of the movies you could choose to watch in your seat - did international flights get the Salo: 120 Days of Sodom option? 

Katie met me at the airport, like the world's most adorable argument against the accuracy of the Bridezilla stereotype. She was excited for the ceremony, because who doesn't like cake and sparkly shit (raw vegans; the Amish.) But she also didn't approach it like we were storming the beaches of Normandy, and one flubbed toast would mean the fascists won. Though I finally appreciated the idea of a wedding rehearsal. Before, I figured they were just for people who had worked dry ice and live doves into proceedings, and you could just stumble up to the altar otherwise. No. At least not with bridesmaids, and not in a church, where hymns are going to be sung. I appreciated knowing when I was supposed to return to my pew, and when I was supposed to march up the aisle, or else there would have been a lot of awkward grinning. 

Though that did come later, at the groom's dinner. Katie and I used to be roommates in university, and our "relationship" was also the most satisfying one I had then, everything else being hilariously, cosmically stunted. Like, crushes-on-profs stunted. I would have gladly been a part of that hookup culture the media is frenzied for, but no one would drunkenly bang me, no matter how much flavoured vodka I drank. The closest I got to anything was with this boy named J, where it was 100% emotional and, now, 100% embarrassing. 

And there he was, next to me and the pasta dishes, asking if I wanted a hug. It came with a gingerly administered back pat, courtesy of yours truly. I laughed about it with Katie later, though there was a bitter taste of nostalgia in my mouth. Years years back, when I was running up my phone bill talking to this guy, I was convinced I would run into him and his girlfriend at Katie's wedding. Except at the time I thought it would be a different groom, and I would still be in love with this guy. And here we were. Some of it had come true, but not the essential parts, and we were older, wiser and so much happier. 

The next day was a blur of hairstyling and photographs, until the ceremony. Katie looked beautiful, wearing a spectacular beaded dress, a veil from her great-grandmother, and her glasses. I'm not religious, and I'm also probably not the marrying kind, but I almost cried when the priest introduced Martin and Katie as a married couple. The ceremony might not be for you, and the political and sociological freight of a wedding is imposing, but the idea of commitment and growth is still there, under everything. And so I smiled instead, and even danced with J at the reception. 

Introducing Dan

If you've been a long-time reader of my blog - that is, if you are my Mom - you'll know that I usually try and keep most of my personal life off of this blog. Not all, of course. A girl's gotta vent, and so you'll get the odd maudlin blog post or loaded list. But, today, I'll make a change.

Because I would like to tell you about Dan. Dan is a nice guy, which isn't that unusual, but he's also a nice guy who likes me - a historical anomaly. Just in the past twelve months I had a disappearing act, a casual thing who ended things for an ex, and the greatest foolishness of all - liking somebody in an open relationship too much. The reasonable conclusion was clear. If it's not them, it's you; if it wasn't my tastes, it was me.

So I wasn't in the best mental state when I first met Dan. I had decided to write to him because he reminded me a little of Aaron Rodgers in his profile photo. And even though he didn't look that much like my favourite quarterback in person, there was something likeable about him. I agreed to a second date, but that day he kept on pushing back our meeting time, and pushed it back so far that my phone died. By this point I was irritably waiting in a bar, depressed by the hummus plate, and completely unaware that he was waiting outside. In the rain. After half an hour, I left, only to run into a soggy Dan by the door. Naturally, a third date was in order, where we walked around for an hour before he neglected to invite me in to his house.

And, honestly, if he hadn't texted me to say he was foolish, I probably would have never seen him again. But he did, and I decided to see a movie at his house, and when we were both awkwardly sitting on his couch I decided that since he wasn't about to kiss me, I would kiss him. And I did. And, four months later, I am very glad I did.

To Minnesota (For Matrimony)

I keep on trying to write a post introducing a particular fellow. But now it's almost midnight on the day before I leave to see one of my best friends get - wait for it. So adulthood is on my mind, and pride and happiness for my friend. Until Sunday!

Book Pile for July 17, 2013

It's too hot for anything but this. A book pile. Red and pink edition:

1. Next Classic Read: Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Thief by Maurice Leblanc
2. Next Canadian Read (whose cover I may have to hide on the subway): Maidenhead, Tamara Faith Berger
3. Current Classic Read: Demons, Fyodor Dostoevsky
4. Current Remnant of Pride Reading: The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp

Sometimes National Post Op-Eds Annoy. And That's More Than OK

This week Men's Rights Advocates in Edmonton crawled out from their Reddit subforum, and they brought some posters with them. Following Sexual Assault Voices of Edmonton's "Don't Be that Guy" campaign, they decided the world needed a matching "Don't Be That Girl", even if they didn't need to take any new photos for it. So they took the "Guy" pics, and with a little Photoshop magic, added the following statements: 

• "Just because you regret a one-night stand doesn’t mean it wasn’t consensual. Lying about sexual assault = crime"
• "Women who drink are not responsible for their actions, especially when sex is involved. Double standards"
• "Just because she's easy doesn't mean you shouldn't fear false rape accusations. Lying about sexual assault = an unpunished crime."

Reaction was - as the Men's Rights Advocates probably hoped - quick and loud. The story was picked up by the CBC and The National Post. The latter also found a female voice to speak out for the forgotten ones. For those who had been silenced and misrepresented for so long. For... the Men's Rights Advocates. In a column titled "Sometimes, assault accusations are false. A little awareness is OK," Robyn Urback let the feminists know that "... despite the tactless presentation, the message remains fair: Sometimes, women falsely accuse men of rape." And I would agree with that. Sometimes, that happens. Does that happen often enough to warrant an ad campaign equating false rape accusations with rape itself? An event that's possible, though improbable, compared to a crime of depressing prevalence that's likely to go unreported, according to this StatsCan doc, nine out of ten times? Or is this just another example of rape culture, a campaign which does nothing to support the falsely accused, and everything to tell women they're "responsible" - a word picked directly from one of the posters - for their own drunkenness, for their assault, and for having the audacity to just be women at all?

Now I did it. I used that phrase, "rape culture," which marks me as something more sinister than just a simple feminist, tapping ineffectually away on her keyboard. Because, according to Urback, "there’s also another sort of “rape culture” whereby any sort of critical analysis of an accusation is immediately rejected as “victim blaming.” And it looks like I'm a part of it. 

Pictured: one of two rape cultures from Mad Max III: Beyond Thunderdome. 

Which one? Couldn't tell ya.

I guess Urback thinks we're in some kind of Rape Thunderdome - Two rape cultures enter, one leaves! - but that little joke is not enough for this insulting column. I am pissed the fuck off that anyone can find something to salvage in this offensive campaign. I want Robyn Urback's work broken down to its component parts, and each of those then dismantled one by one.

And yet, that's too much for just one person to handle. Fortunately, an awesome friend of mine, Maggie Gordon, can slice Urback's assertion that "Statistics show that false accusations of sexual assaults occur about as frequently as false accusations of other crimes — somewhere between two and four per cent" to shreds in her excellent blog post, "Conversations about False Rape Allegations are Generally Full of Bullshit." And anyone with a basic grasp of figures should find something shady when Urback says that there are "countless stories of innocent lives being derailed by illegitimate accusations" and then mentions exactly two, neither of which happened in Edmonton, the target of this campaign.

I'll just take a look at Urback's argument that "the new posters around Edmonton inadvertently bring attention to their [people falsely accused of rape's] plight." Because they don't. They just don't. Urback herself does a better job of this. You won't see any victims of false accusations, or figures on imprisonment, in these posters. Just photos of anonymous women, called out for ruining men's lives. At least Urback found two anecdotes for her column. The idea that this isn't about men at all is obvious from the text as well, particularly in the third poster I mentioned. It starts off seemingly directed at at a male reader (Just because she's easy) before returning to tell the now female reader not to "be that girl." The second poster also does a poor job of sharing any sort of message about wrongfully convicted men - whining about double standards doesn't do much, except make you seem petulant. So, Robyn Urback, a little awareness is probably OK, but these posters don't even contain that. Perhaps you could try a little bit of self-awareness, and admit you're just searching for pageviews. 

And I'll do the same, and admit I regret the handful I'll send you through this post.

Domestic Sunday: Tailset Ginger Ale

I don't always regret the choices in my life, and how they've lead me to be paid, except under the following circumstances:

1. Going to the John Fluevog store
2. Contemplating the purchase of original art
3. Admitting that I will probably never be able to afford a living space with air conditioning

It's been the last fact I've felt the most this weekend, as Toronto descended into a puddle of sweat, and I went to Guelph to take refuge. Now I'm back, and typing makes me sweat. However, I may have found a beer that will make the heat and humidity bearable this summer:

It's the Tailset Ginger Ale from Grand River Brewing. Like Canada Dry, but at least 4.5% better. Avid readers (ie my Mom) will remember my love for ginger-flavoured beer. I became addicted to the Phillips version while living out in Victoria, but the Mill Street Ginger Beer I found in Ontario couldn't live up to my idealized brew. And even the bottles of Phillips that made their way eastward couldn't compare to the memories. However, this one was just right, with plenty of ginger flavour. It's the perfect thing to cut your thirst, and to make the humidity almost unnoticeable. I predict it will be a frequent guest in my fridge.

Book, er, Magazine Covers I Have Loved: Lucky Peach #7

What my feelings about Lucky Peach lack in articulation, they make up for in volume. I love food, and writing, so you know I must love food writing - and yet Lucky Peach often seems of a piece with the bro-ified food culture that's developed over the past few years, a culture nourished in a petri dish of social media and an available all-caps key. I have never properly recovered from an early roundtable, which featured Anthony Bourdain and a few other food bros having a dick-swinging contest about "craft." 

But maybe this cover (credit: Christopher Boffoli), and the promise of a feature on curry 'round the world, will bring me back. Nearly white covers are always striking on a crowded newsstand, and the miniature boat in a sea of milk and Lucky Charms is witty and, well, charming.