Simpower over in Paolo’s comments has perfectly summed up my feelings about the new Star Wars trailer:

Damn, it looks good, but he’ll find a way to fuck it up.

= 671 entries.

= Thousands of comments.

= The following loves of my life and other assorted wondrous, intelligent, creative, exotic, sexy and good-hearted creatures: Martine, Patrick, Nika, Bill, Marie-Chantale, Ed, Toine, Alex, Eric, Stephanie, Vincent, AJ, Benita, Maggie, Paolo, Maciej, Karl, Boris, John, Kerry, Quan, Philippe, Paul, Kate, Carole, Mark, Fanny, Pierre, NYC Pete, Mikel, Nadia, Cecil, Dan, Sammy, Serge, Oblivia, Michel, JDave, Alex, Genevieve, Alston, François, André, Stephen, Dina, Jeff, Zeke, and of course, those I’m forgetting. Wow, what a lineup! I’m so happy to be among you guys.

= more than I ever thought I would get out of this.

The Lightspeed Chronicles are three years old today. Thanks for being here! Mwah!!!

Two months ago, Alex posited that men had been somewhat castrated in the last few decades, and lost touch with their original masculinity. He called on them to reclaim it, to be the hunters they once were, before they learned to dress and decorate smartly. The idea is to Sure, help your girlfriend choose a dress, but then be a man and rip it off her. Make no apologies for wanting her. She’ll be the happier for it.

Alex’s recent posts on the topic have given rise to a bit of a polemic (English). I told him the other day that his ideas would be misunderstood, but I never guessed he’d be accused of calling for a return to traditional gender roles.

Here’s my weigh-in on the issue.

Gender lines having been blurred in our professional and societal roles, I think it’s important that we recognize our differences in our personal relationships to one another.

Let me put it this way:

My job is about planning, tracking, deciding. It’s about managing people, mostly creative, artistic men. It is very yang (male). During my last relationship, I handled all logistics, drove us everywhere, planned and booked the trips, made decisions. Yang. When I get asked why I wear skirts so often, I say it’s because I’d otherwise forget I’m a girl.

I don’t need a man to show me that I can do what he can. I want that to be taken for granted. What I want is for a man to be a man, so I can be a woman. To feminists who would say “rely on yourself to be feminine, need not another”, I say Please. All the lipstick, skirts and Oprah-goddess love in the world will not make you feminine if there is no masculinity. Same goes for underwiring or worrying about your ever-expanding ass. None of it will amount to being a woman without men, real men. There can be no yin without yang (not that kind of yang, perv!).

Now, maybe it’s the strong-willed, emancipated “Québécoise au sale caractère” that elicits the kind of laid-back apathy from men that Alex describes. Maybe our bulldozing will and determination makes it seem like any galantry would be insulting to our intelligence and independence. Maybe they think we like deciding and doing everything for ourselves all the time. If that’s the case, let me tell you here and now, in writing and for the universe to see, that the one thing we cannot do for ourselves, is be women. For that, we need you to be men. Princess Leia was a strong leader. But Solo was more of a man than she was, and that’s how he won her. He completed her. Around him, she was definitely the chick.

Sure it’s easy to make a highly feminine, hairspray chick feel like a girl. It’s quite another to do the same with one who whips your butt at Grand Theft Auto. You have to be more of a man, not less. Are you up to the challenge?

Treating a woman like a woman will not emasculate you. You’re not pussy-whipped if you help her on with her coat: you’re a confident man. You are pussy-whipped if you answer every question with “I don’t know, what do you think?”. You don’t rob her of her strength and independence by being stronger and taller, by offering to wait for the flasher outside her window with a baseball bat. You don’t rob her of her intelligence by celebrating her beauty. You do rob her of some of her femaleness when you ask “Why do I have to ask her out? Why doesn’t she ask me?”.

I can name all Fantastic Four, but I want to be a woman just as much as you need to be a man. Come up and introduce yourself. It’s ok if you have a beer first. Don’t assume I’ll be pissed off if you choose the restaurant, or if you tell me what time you’ll pick me up. I’ll love that. Propose an activity. Han Solo would. It’s even easy in my case, I tend to like the same things you do.

We promise to be women in return.

This time the cops told me that on the next occasion, I should call them quietly, then open the blinds and watch him, and talk to him, so as to keep him there (and get a description).

I’m surprised they’d advise me to use myself as bait like that. And here I was last night, after having called the cops, cowering in wait away from any windows, thinking I should probably go back to my room and watch him, so as to keep him there. But then I thought that that would be stupid. Guess that stupid thing is exactly what I’m going to do next time.

Saturday around midnight, I’m reading in bed when I start hearing some people having sex. Weird, because the two condos flanking mine are vacant, and above me is an old lady I never hear. These sounds are really loud, as if they are not in another apartment, but more like in another room. Oh well, I figure they’ll finish and quiet down, so I wait.

Then I realize the sound is coming from right outside my bedroom window. For those who don’t know, I’m on the first floor and my window is right on a parking lot. Are they in a car? On top of a car? Who has sex outside at -10 C? A prostitute with client? They must be very close to me because I can distinctly hear every word.

It keeps going, and I can soon hear some pounding against an object, but still only one voice, that of a man. I can’t see anything, as my blind is only open two inches. I soon realize the pounding is against my own bedroom window.

I’m getting a little freaked out. Comet is growling and growling, but try as I might I can’t get her to bark. I turn my light off, then back on to indicate that I’m there. The sounds quiet for an instant, then someone raps right on my window. My heart jumps out of my chest.

I manage a shaky “Yes?”.

He says: “Excuse me, uh, I’m an exhibitionist. I just want you to look at me. Can you just look at me?”

- No. Go away, you’re scaring me.

- Oh, ok. I’m sorry.

Now, I know flashers aren’t typically dangerous, and he seemed quite harmless. And for a second I think I’ll just leave it at that. But he came right up to my bedroom window at night. That’s pretty *&@$&ing intrusive. It’s one thing to flash someone on the street but quite another to bother someone in their own bed. Didn’t he know he was going to scare me? And how did he know I was a chick alone anyway?

Now I’m angry. I call the cops on him, and they send someone. I get up to tidy things up a bit, and it’s when I pick something up that I realize how much I’m shaking, how freaked out I am. But within a minute, I’m looking on from the window at a towering young cop is searching the parking lot, while talking on the phone with me. Of course the guy was gone, and I had no description.

Someone recently told me I was flypaper for freaks… I think we’re all freaks in one way or another, but I generally draw the line at the having-to-call-911-in-the-middle-of-the-night type. Anyway I doubt he’ll be back.

E-mail exchange I had a while back:

Me: So my dad and I were discussing this weekend who should play Wonder Woman in the upcoming movie. I said Carrie-Anne Moss would be good, but he said she doesn’t have enough of a rack. What do you think?

Dr Wank: I think I love your dad.

Jokes aside, I love Wonder Woman, so this is an important question. Rumor has come out that it’s a tossup between Kim Basinger (I know, I know… huh?) and Jessica Biel. I had no idea who this JB chick was, but after looking at a few pictures, I have to say that I provisionally approve, something I never thought I’d do. To me the most important thing in casting for WW is that she should be a real amazon who could kick butt, not some anorexic stick with thin “yoga arms”… Someone powerful-looking like the way she looks in this picture. JB isn’t exactly that, but she’s probably closer than a lot of the actresses being considered.

Go ahead, tell me your opinions on the matter, tell me who could play her.

(illustration by Alex Ross)

Two months ago, when I was moving out of the apartment I had previously shared with T, I had a little misadventure. Y’see, a couple of days after I vacated the apartment, and one day before the new tenant was to go in, T and I went over to clean it and throw out the last of the garbage. Unfortunately, one of us left the back door open when we left and the pipes froze.

The new tenant did not move in the next day as planned, but several days later. By that time damage had been done to the pipes, and even the water in the toilet was frozen. A flurry of communications ensued between the new tenant, the new landlord (yep, the place was sold at that time too) and T and I, to attempt to determine responsibility. There was the plumber’s bill to pay, and the new tenant was making noises about having us pay for her inflated Hydro bill as well. We stressed about eventual structural damages too.

Now, it’s the landlord’s responsibility to ensure things work properly. It’s the tenant’s responsibility to inform the landlord of any problems, and she took more time than planned to move in. Her name was on the lease at that time, so she was the official tenant. As for us, we were most probably responsible for causing the damage. In the end we offered to pay the plumber’s bill, as long as we would not be held accountable for anything more.* And we all lived happily ever after.

Well, it’s now months later, and I came home tonight, quite cross about a situation at work with a difficult client. There was a letter in my mailbox from the landlord of my ex-building. “What now???” I thought as I pulled it open right in the vestibule.

It was a note saying that after examining the receipts, they realized they’d made a mistake in the amount of the plumber’s bill, and were sending us a check for the difference! I know, it’s basic honesty at work here, but they could have so easily pocketed it.

It’s easy to use a blog as a soapbox for general bitching and moaning, so when something positive like this happens, I feel I have to blog about it too.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go enjoy a warm fuzzy feeling.

* Sidenote: this, kids, is why you want to take rejection like a man, take breakups with philosophy, and stay on good terms with your exes if possible. Having T with me through this took considerable stress away, stress that would have been much heightened, had I instead had to fight with him as well as the other parties. There are many other advantages to staying friends, but I think that’s a topic for an entire post. End sidenote.