I’m being antisocial. Again. I’m at that point where people are draining me, so I know I need my time to myself.

Some guy’s aggressively pursuing me. I could be shagging this weekend, not lounging around in ugly clothes. The thought fills me with a little doubt as I look down at my yoga pants and my shitty concert t-shirt. God knows it’s been long enough. If landscapes were sex-life allusions, then mine would be the Sahara in a drought. I’m okay with this, though. Except, you know, at those moments when — SCHWING — I’m so not. Fortunately, self-inducing oblivion helps avoid those moments.

I’ve been rebuffing said attempts. Pretty sure he’s not really my type. It’d be just sex. Incredibly-hot-guy-with-no-mental-connection sex. If things were less complicated, maybe. Like I say: A dry season in the Sahara. The problem with hormones is, once you turn ‘em on, it’s like the switch gets broke. They get this mind of their own. I’d prefer not to fuck my mode and just avoid sex entirely unless it’s for the “oh, YOU might be a sidedish of WOW” kinda manly potential right now.

I’ve been insanely busy for a long time. I’m not sure I have a relationship in me. A lazy relationship. Heavy on the sex and the indoors thing, you know, preferably with a short-term agoraphobic who can afford to order us delivery, and has a good wine habit and stunning taste in film, with a potential Scrabble habit. But I’m just spit-balling here. Does seem a bit much to ask, I know, but I believe in dreams. And unicorns.

Or maybe I could just have sex. But therein lies the problem. With WHOM? That’s no easily-answered question; you’ll be requiring references and a skill-testing question. I’m so old-fashioned. I’m having a hard time going after the casual thing. I don’t trust others to play clean. I’m not into taking chances with my health when I’m completely STD-free, always have been, and there’s so many skanks in the world. That old commercial where you see two people shagging and there’s all these other people superimposed above, with something like “When you sleep with someone, you sleep with everyone who’s ever slept with everyone they’ve slept with.” If that makes any sense at all.

Naturally, being a chick with discerning tastes, and seeing the sometimes-craptastic women that even the GOOD guys I know have shagged, well. Yeah, I get hesitant. You hear about the one person who gets HIV because a condom tore one night, and they’ve always worn one, or the escort who gets pregnant despite never having unprotected sex, and you have to realize that .1% ineffectiveness has a human toll.

Let’s face it: I *am* statistics girl. As a superhero, my tights would be nothing but a chart of probability and statistics. “Why, I’ll show you a skyrocketing mortality rate!”

I’ve been thrown off a horse, fallen down a flight of stairs, blew my knee three times in a year, have had five car accidents, almost died in one, almost killed myself on my scooter the next year, and blew my back by standing up from a chair. In 15 years. Most of it in the last 7. And those are just the headlines.

Should *I* test fate more than necessary? You think?

The hedonist in me has definitely seized the odd moment that would’ve been criminal to let past, and that’s the way the casual cookie crumbles. Protection lowers the odds but never prevents it. Thank god my libido stays quiet when I want it to. Heh, yeah, you envy me. Like I’ve got a muzzle for the thing, I swear. It’s awesome. I couldn’t imagine being “on” when I’m in single patches. Whew. Innocents would die. I kid you not. Old people, toddlers; the casualties would be legion.

Regardless of all the above babble, I’ve resolved to plop myself back out there on the market PFQ. It is time. Like, two weeks from now when I’m done a bunch of stuff, that’s when it’s time. It’s time! My digs are too cool for me to stay single any longer, too. I need to share this bitchin’ pad with someone who can appreciate latenights with lazy mornings too.

Trouble is, I get into anything with anyone and I’m pretty sure the rest of my social life would go to the wayside, even if I only hooked up with said fella once a week or something, ‘cos time ain’t something I’ve got considering all I’m trying to accomplish these days. And I hate those choices. And who does “once a week”? Not people in MY circles, I tell you.

But there you have it, I overthink things. This is why I’m just saying fuck it, putting myself out there, and seeing what the world unfolds for me. There are times when thinking is good, and there are times when “Whatcha got?” works nicely too. I’ve been thinking too much for a while.

It’s whatchagot time. You, take the wheel.

More happily, TiVo ate some Breakfast Club and is serving it up fresh for me this morning — one of those few movies I can recite more than half. It’s surprising how many of those movies I can recite are of the John Hughes Library.

I  _am_ the John Hughes Generation. I’m so sad he passed away before 60, and bitter he stopped his brilliantly insightful teen movies when he did, back in the ’80s. I always wanted to go through college with John Hughes as my guide. Thank god Cameron Crowe peaked when he did. I’ve not yet written about Hughes’ death, though, and have been meaning to say a few words.

Everyone in my crowd has their own John Hughes memory. This is the biggest of them all, for me: The Breakfast Club.

It was a June day back in 1985. None of my friends (overstating it: “classmates”, not friends)  had seen this movie “The Breakfast Club” but I was sure they’d like it. And to show it to ‘em, I had the biggest, baddest party of them all. A slumber party!

Every girl in my class was invited. And… unbeknownst to Mom & Dad, so were most boys; I had hatched a master plan. It was a Saturday, we’d hang at my house, then we’d all head down to the FunFun Park… (I kid you not, I grew up a block from a park called The FunFun Park — explains a lot, no?) …and all the boys would meet us there. We could play for an hour or two (ahem, play) and then go back home, do our girl-thang.

It was the end of grade 7. We were all 12-year-olds and we were each just discovering that the opposite sex wasn’t so icky after all.

I invited many kids that day, but I had not invited Danny.* He was the goat farmer’s son. Guess what he smelled like? Yep. Mm, goat — HAWT.

We were in Grade 7. Seriously, kids that age a) don’t shower like they should and b) tend to be mean to those who don’t fit in. I wasn’t immune to being a cunt then.

At school, the chatter was to a minimum about the party — most kids knew it was hush-hush. If parental units heard, Bad Things Would Happen. This was The Big Ticket. Our first attempt at going parentless, the summer before high school.  Whatever trouble could we get up to, out there, at the FunFun Park, sans Parental-Types?

I had visions of being the mastermind behind many a first kiss. SMOOCHIES galore! Oh, the excitement! Only two days left and my parents still hadn’t gotten wind of my brilliant scheme.

Then Danny phoned.

While I was literally washing my hair.

Mom took a message.

Ever so destructively helpful of her. Typical.

“I was just wondering what time we were supposed to come out there for the party at the… FunFun Park?”

“…The party? At the FunFun Park? There’s no party at the Fu… Fu–!!”

God help me. Oh, the tirade it unleashed. My mother was not one for letting a lesson go unfelt. And by “unfelt” I mean punctuated with several whacks to one’s tushy. Sheepishly I hauled my tenderized ass to school that Friday and told everyone rather dramatically “DANNY WRECKED IT. FOR EVERYBODY.” At least it wasn’t MY fault.

My party! Destroyed! All by the GOAT FARMER’S BOY. Dammit! Foiled!

So now it would be — sigh — a movie-and-popcorn-and-stupid-girlie-stuff night. No boys. Damn you, goat farmer’s boy!

The girls all still came over, gamefaces on. We’d have fun anyhow. (Damn you, goat farmer’s boy!)  Cake was had. We behaved. Then, 13 of us crammed into my bedroom for the night’s movies, and pajamaed up and readied for swoonery: The Breakfast Club and Rebel Without A Cause. I was a discerning pubescent girl.

The Breakfast Club blew our minds. All that teen angst and the hotness and the — RRR! — god, we loved it. I fell hard and long for the baddest boy of them all, John Bender. Oh, how I swooned. I watched it several times before returning the VHS on Sunday afternoon.

For me, The Breakfast Club became a foundation for who I would become. To this day, I don’t apologize for what I am. I don’t fit into any “typical” holes. I’m an acquired taste, and I really don’t care. I don’t have to justify who I am to anyone, and more importantly, I won’t. Hughes taught me that in both the opening and closing voiceovers of The Breakfast Club.

But that’s not all John Hughes schooled me well in. Among other things in life I learned from Hughes & his movies –

• Love, in all its stupidity, is a really big thing, and when hearts swell or break, it’s SUCH a big thing it’s probably worth writing a movie about, or at least a song.
• Whatever happens, it’s really, really important that it happen when there’s good music playing, because a good soundtrack makes everything all better.
• Image is everything but can also be uniquely you, because Molly Ringwald looked fuckin’ hot in that quirky Pretty In Pink dress. Ducky kinda worked it in his own hot-dorky-way too.
• Story is eternal, human struggles are common when they’re matters of the heart, and the geeks shall inherit the earth or at least the really hot chick every now and then (especially when they can rig serious equipment in their bedrooms when the folks are outta town).
• Bad boys are hot, but they will break your heart. So will the good guys, though. (I blame you, Ducky.)
• If you’re stuck somewhere and have time to kill, marijuana might be fun.
• If you’re REALLY smart, you’ll ask for a computer for Christmas, because look how well it worked for Ferris.
• Always know at least one good dance move, and have a big bag ready-packed, because you never know when you may have to jam.
• Insecurities are like dustbunnies; they’re hiding everywhere, and everyone’s got ‘em.

We’ll miss you, John. Thanks for the memories.

So, hey… what’s YOUR memory?

*All names have been changed to protect the identity of children of goat farmers.

It’s a love/hate relationship. I can’t live without it. I wish I could.

It’s a near-pathological need to dig, writing. For some of us. For me. Dig, dig, dig. I feel like I’m taking a stab at digging my way to China in my back yard. I’ll never finish. I’ll never even get halfway where I’m going. I know this. Thank god it’s a free passage. Taxes would kill me. And, unlike digging to China, the scenery’s interesting.

Recently, I’ve found writing hard. I’m not feeling inspired to go there. Mostly I know this is because I’m mired in existential spelunking of late; splooshing through dimly lit recesses and passages, seeing only a fragment of what’s really there because that’s the nature of cavernous darkness… and the human mind.

Still, there’s only four places left for man to really explore; to the centre of the earth, the bottom of the ocean, the reaches of space, and the depths of the human mind. Of the mind, I’m endlessly fascinated.

I’ve begun to read The Brain that Changes Itself, to try to understand the mechanics of thought more, and how to heal the body’s most enigmatic organ — which I know I’ve damaged in my many accidents and mishaps over the years. Amazing what landing on one’s head will do. Don’t try that at home, kids.

It occurs to me now, though, that the book may have application creatively. What if I can tap into a greater wellspring from which all this comes? What if I can cut through the ideological and ever-present bullshit that comes with any day-to-day existence on this big ol’ ball in space? What if there’s a simple “on” switch for creativity, that folks like Stephen King and Paul Theroux have long since mastered, given their prolific careers?

What I really want to learn, though, is where the emotional-bypass switch is. Where I can turn off all the hurt and shame and regret and fear that precedes any real psychological foray. All those monsters of our psyche that rear up and roar at us when we start looking back into our past.

I can remember being a child in grade one, staring up at the Big Kids in Grade 7, and the giants they seemed then. Now, at 35, I feel like I can step on ‘em and squoosh ‘em like the bugs they are. Perspective is everything; so is growing 18 inches.

My experience with emptying a few boxes on the weekend, delving into my distant past in a hands-on way, makes me think perhaps it’s the reverse of Grade 7-biggies-awe. All the years that have passed between then and now, I look back upon my memories and remember the fear or hurt or pain I felt in my youth, and I magnify it, because that’s how we humans roll. But somewhere in the midst of all that, I forget the most important thing…

I’m older now, and what might have hurt me then is likely to roll off my back within a couple days now. With age comes experience, temperance. When you’re hurt enough by the realities of life being life, day after day, you start to learn which hurts cut deeply and which are superficial bleeders; temporary yet ultimately irrelevant, like paper cuts.

We don’t have those filters at the age of 13, or 18, when hurts seem indelible and life-altering. When, with every bend of misfortune, our soul seems it might just break.

Then, one day, it doesn’t break. We bounce back, like a willow that’s been staked and pulled over, protecting it for a windstorm. Untie the tether, and poof, back it comes. Not unlike us feeble humans. Next time, we remember that resilience. We traipse a little less defensively, venture a little further, trust a little more.

Yet, despite all the courage and adventurousness we might one day find, those fear-mongering giants of our youthful memories are still seen from the scared, childlike eyes that first experienced it all. That’s the frame of reference. Until we’ve screwed up the courage to face it and change the frame, that is. Then it occurs to me — maybe I don’t need an emotional bypass. Maybe I just need to grow a further 18 existential inches, maybe the camera angle just needs tilting, maybe… who knows.

It all comes back to Socrates, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Simply put, life’s not worth moving through if you don’t appreciate the magnitude of that from which you’ve just come.

As much as I sometimes loathe writing, this uncertain feeling of doom that bubbles up inside of me when I stare at an empty screen, wondering which words to impart it this time, I’d never give it up. When I go through my life avoiding examination and all that existential spelunking, I feel like a fraud. I feel unplugged and extraneous, as if I’m failing to give value to that which really deserves it. Life, for all its pains and heartbreaks and betrayals, is a magical thing, and I’m grateful I get a chance to experience a new surprise every day, and that I have the skill and ability to turn it on its head for a few readers.

As much as writing and its thought processes sometimes will consume me — because I’m not just writing about media or movies or whatever, I tend to write more about the marrow of life, so I’m lost in observation and ponderings much of time, when my craft is working for me — I almost always find the time to literally stop and smell a flower or search the night sky for a star.

Because, as a writer, one can’t help but realize the importance of all details. If the details, the little things, make a story richer, imagine their contribution to the repetition of life.

It’s finding meaning in my life’s happenings that allows me to create meaning in my writing, so that the cycle completes itself by my life actually having more meaning. Or at least it does to me.

I wonder if Socrates would approve.

The province of Alberta, here in Canada, has opted to make matters of sex, sexual orientation,* and religion OPTIONAL for their students. Parents can yank their kids out of school when they disagree with the premise at hand. [Story here.]

Religion? Okay. Fine. I’ll give you that. Make that optional. I not only understand having strong beliefs on faith, I respect it. I do not, however, understand refusing to listen to other views, not having faith in your children to be intelligent enough to hear more than one viewpoint, or shutting down education when it seems fit,  because I feel that teaches children that the teachers and education itself are not credible.

But on matters of sex? Sex education?

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Seriously! Are you?

Because I’m of the understanding that I pay ridiculous taxes on EVERYTHING in my life, as well as absorb considerably more expensive cost of living, all so I can enjoy the privilege of being Canadian… and have access to a universal healthcare system.**

Whether it’s cancer caused by HPV during sexual contact, infection of AIDS or HIV, unwanted pregnancies, or even the murder of doctors because they administer abortions for those who’ve “accidentally” gotten pregnant — all these things can only improve with a more educated populace that understands how the causes are spread and what they can do to prevent it through safe practices.

Allowing people the choice of remaining ignorant when it’s MY tax dollars cleaning up after their messes? Not cool. Nuh-uh.

Worse, though, is that these things — sexually-transmitted diseases or unwanted preganacies — are big contributors to social ills of many kinds.

The cycle of poverty perpetuates through ignorance and young, inexperienced parents who are often undereducated before they give birth, and who struggle just to get by, often having to make compromises that other parents may never face. Our already overtaxed medical system bleeds with the stresses placed upon it through demand and limited resources. Unpreventable diseases work our system to death. We’re going to ignore the prevention of easily-preventable ones now?

Education is THERE to do the job many parents fail to do at home. It’s there to ensure children learn to read and how to socialize, that they have broad horizons and perhaps more opportunity than their inheritance might allow. It’s there to ensure children have access to all that society offers, and not just some hand-picked universe that keeps the “other guy’s beliefs” outside so as to preserve some naive homogeneous old-school delusion of what society ought to be.

Children should be forced to learn about sexual contact. They should be made to understand the consequences of their actions, and not in just a fire-and-brimstone rhetoric kind of way.

Let’s teach sexual education to all. It’s important. It’s not whimsy. STDs and unwanted pregnancies don’t just affect lives, they change our society. Teach kids that. Show them how it usually turns out when 15-year-olds give birth, or what AIDS looks like in late stages. Give them realistic consequences and show them the destruction that can be wrought from badly chosen encounters.

Let’s not romanticize sex, at all. In education, let’s tear it down and make it science, psychology, and sociology. Let’s be brutal. Let’s be real. Let’s take the delusion of “sex only happens when you’re in love” out of the equation and realize it also happens when you’re drunk — so maybe getting schooled might be wise.

Let’s not be optional.

Skirting these issues hasn’t been working out for us. STDs are on the rise across the board after having education shaped by moralistic do-gooders who think “abstinence” is any real kind of solution under a New World Order sought by George Bush — and don’t kid yourself, it’s not just in the US, but around the world via the US policy to not give funds to most organizations that refused to teach abstinence-only. Ignorant asses like that still believe in the rhythm method.

Educate the kids, but don’t skirt the issues. Don’t just dally with the information, shine a million-watt floodlight on it so there’s absolutely no misunderstanding: Casual sex is a dangerous game, and sex should never be considered something to do for kicks just ‘cos cable sucks and Pammy’s party got cancelled.

As adults, we choose and we live with our choices. But the presumption is that we know what we’re choosing. And we all know what a fallacy that is.

Most adults could use sex education. Kids are there, ripe for the knowledge.

And here we go, failing them again. Well done, Alberta. You’re continuing your legacy of horrific social governance. Let’s not even mention eugenics, shall we?

*It’s too big a topic to throw on top of this one, but sexual orientation — as long as kids are still committing suicide and hate crimes continue, opting out of discussion on sexual orientation should NOT be legal.

**Before someone wants to get their asshatty combative panties in a twist and turn this into a debate about universal medicare, don’t even fucking bother. I will OWN you. I both feel that the Canadian Medical System is partly responsible for my mother’s death while being grateful she died in this country. I fully recognize and understand all the flaws of this system, I feel it needs improvement, and I would take it HANDS DOWN, seven days a week and twice on Sundays, over the United States. Enough said.

“Makes me think of the ideal woman: smart like an academic, jokes like a buddy, sex like a whore, makes chicken pot pie like Paula Deen.” @neilochka

There you have it. I am the ideal. Almost. I’m more a brazen hussy than I am whorey. Can’t help it, I was brought up well. Hussy’s as far as my standards can lax.

Still: Sweet and good enough to take home and have Mom give you the thumbs up, but bad enough to keep it interesting and show you new ways to make use of your childhood closet.

I’m sure there are plenty of men out there who still want the demure kitty-cat girl 24/7, but they’re not my type anyhow. Men who think like Neil are the sorts of fellows I gravitate toward, because letting me being myself is about as big a gift I can receive.

I can be, uh, inappropriate. I’m impulsive, I’m boisterous. Blunt. Provocative. I’m an acquired taste, and far from a universal cup of tea. As with stinky cheese and red wine, those who acquire my tastes tend to become somewhat fond.

And it’s like the good Dr. Seuss always said, “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.”

The trouble with most of us feeble human-things is that we judge ourselves for what we think are our weaknesses and faults, just because certain authority figures or parents have pointed those things out to us over the years. But what if they’re not flaws?

What if your irreverence is what makes you special? More importantly, what if it’s what makes you really you? What if it’s when you feel most like you fit in your own skin?

Then why fight that? Why change? ‘Cause the teacher said you’re gonna hafta if you’re gonna be anything?

Pfft. Don’t.*

There are qualities you should change — negativity, pessimism, fearfulness, dishonesty, narcissism, et al — but irreverence, goofiness, provocateur tendencies? No.

If you’re too much to handle, honey, maybe you just need to find better handlers.

Anyone who rejects me these days is doing me the favour of saving my very valuable time from being wasted upon them. And I thank them very kindly. Because there’s a whole lot of other people who might enjoy a little dose of this, and life’s too short to be spread thinly upon those who fail to appreciate what they’re receiving, isn’t it?

I look for people who not only appreciate me but who make me laugh and think and feel. When someone accepts me as I am and doesn’t expect me to dress up my language or subside into a tidal wave of social propriety, then I find myself similarly wanting to invite them to be themselves too. It’s easy, it’s good. It’s the right way to be with others.

Too bad so much of our society is still hung up on living up to Mommy & Daddy’s expectations, being in the “right” crowd as opposed, or having a trophy-ish lover to present at the office’s Christmas party.

Love’s not just about digging the person you’re involved with. It’s about how much of you they not only allow you to be but truly appreciate and enjoy.

There aren’t a lot of the “traditional” marriage vows I can get behind — and don’t even start me on the “love, honour, and obey” line — but one of the greatest lines in it, and one of the greatest things to aspire to in love and friendship, is “for better or worse”.

Me, I’m a loose cannon. I’m a match looking for a spark, and when I find it, I go off. I’ll launch into mini-rants all the time. They’re usually pretty funny, though, if you have a sense of humour. But if you don’t, then I’m some negative windbag (hardly!) you want to move away from. Fine, whatever, man. But my best friends always start giggling when yet another thing finds my Displeasure. And I love them for it, because I never feel like I have to apologize for expressing myself. Especially since I enjoy my rants and usually wind up laughing at myself by the end of them. Shouldn’t we enjoy ourselves that way?

That’s what we all need to aspire for. Friends and lovers who don’t need apologies often. Friends and lovers who just understand we’re “just that way”, who make us feel not only comfortable enough, but entitled, to be who we are and say what we feel.

I like myself this way. I’m not fucking apologizing. I’m not cleaning up my act. I’m not going to kowtow to civility and normalcy.

Don’t like it? Walk away.

‘Cause I’m staying.

After all: I’m the ideal woman. Maybe you didn’t get the memo?

*It’s funny, though, this whole “don’t change” thing is something I need to accompany with saying that I think it’s just like the philosophy of selfishness as a virtue, egoism — the premise is only as good as the moral grounds under the practitioner. If you’re not a moral person, then your practice of selfishness will be amoral. If you’re a good person and you get something out of helping others, then you being a selfish person will benefit others.

Are they getting married? Well, that will all depend. This could be (and likely is) all just a big ploy to get people reinterested in a comic that has steadily but increasingly sucked for the last two decades.

Veronica? Over Betty? Really?

You see, the problem with this infinitely stupid story’s plot development — Archie hookin’ with Veronica — is largely that it’s continuing to perpetuate about a million stereotypes that one would hope we’re finally past.

Personally, I’d rather see Betty and Veronica scarfing down a pint of Ben & Jerry’s as they cuss out men, then fall into a troubling kiss, and leave the schmucks like Archie to fend for themselves as the girls enjoy a dalliance with the Dyke Side.

But, no, what we have is a geek with a shitty car who somehow manages to have not one, but two hot chicks who are totally smitten for him and doing catty things to win him over and lock the other girl out. Oh, great.

Because, as we all know, broke-ass geek-girls would never, ever have two guys fighting over her in a mainstream media piece (hence why Betty’s always out in the cold). No, instead geek-girls are shown fumbling and trying to figure out vibrators, clinging desperately to men who probably shouldn’t be clung to and who can’t get “normal” girls but who reject the geek-girl, and they’re shown praying to be accepted within the narrow confines of their geeky universe. Or else, a la most ugly-duckling-themed flicks, geek-girl transforms into hot-chick and then wins guy who never noticed her before.

Yeah, nice double-standard there.

Veronica’s a manipulative, two-faced bitch who thinks her money puts her in another class of morality. There’s what’s right, then there’s what Veronica wants. So, she wins the guy.

And even if this thing changes, and suddenly Archie realizes he’s dooming himself to taking a submissive backseat to a woman who’ll treat him like a doormat, I think, if Betty forgets the whole sordid history and agrees to marry the Schmuck, I’ll still be disgusted.

Which is sad, because I was a Ginormous Archie Fan when I was growing up. My $1.85 went out on the Archie double digest with GLEE, I’m telling you.

But then again, I was 12, and my tastes have evolved a smidge since then.

After almost 70 years, Archie’s storyline is stagnated with stereotypes that we really need to get past. We need to stop thinking it’s amusing when two chicks fight over the same unenthralling guy. Women need to stop being portrayed as finding their self-worth through the men they pursue, because it’s not just a cute story, but a destructive pattern in society today.

The nice, cute girl shouldn’t come last place anymore. We should be past that as a society — particularly when Archie choosing the cunty girl actually goes against his character type and is bad fuckin’ writing.

It just feels so futile, sometimes. All these arguments.

It’s 2009. It’s an exciting time to be female. Things are changing SO quickly for us. I’ve been an edgy, independent chick my whole life, but now it’s becoming more the norm for younger women, and it’s fantastic. Just last week I was on my scooter in capris and sandals and this 70-year-old woman comes over and tells me how she rode a motorcycle a few times in her 20s, but that it was never really accepted for her “station” in life, and she always felt robbed by propriety because she LOVED riding. And she told me how rewarding and rejuvenating she thought it was to watch today as more and more young women weren’t being held back by appearances and propriety anymore.

And then there’s Archie. Banging the same old a-woman’s-only-good-if-a-man’s-chosen-her drum — the same ol’ chasing-men-not-life female type that SOME of us women are trying to move past.

It’s time.

It’s time that manipulative self-serving bitches and jerks are exposed as the wankers they are, and not exalted by culture.

Or maybe it’s time Archie just fucking ceased to exist. 70-year-old relationship dynamics have no place in 2009. It’s a brave new world, a place for brave new art, not tired old stereotypes, because we have brave new relationships that are defying our millenias of social history.

2009, baby. Lovin’ it.

Fuck him, Betty. Move on, girl. Get a cat or something.

Hey, wait, isn’t this how the whole chick-with-cat stereotype started? Aww, shit.

Tom Waits wailed in his gravelly splendour as a breeze softly batted the bamboo blinds. She peered over the rim of her glass at the words before her, unsure where the fuck any of it would go.

But with the right music on the right night with the right drink in the wrong clothes with the tapping toes, well, who needs luck? She shrugged.

The trouble was, with such an easy tappy kind of rhythm to the night, with the lackadaisical ease of early Spring, and the peace that comes from being a Canadian whose team is on the verge of sweeping the first round of playoffs, where’s the conflict our heroine would muster to create, well, you know, a bloggy thing?

But then she turned to Twitter. Ahh, Twitter.

“You festering cesspool of silliness and brilliance, lay it on me,” she urged it.

And there, then, as if on cosmic cue, a question was asked by a local blogger*:

“What makes a kiss a heart-wrenching butterfly-launching stomach-tingly tingle-to-your-toes kiss?”

So, our heroine quipped and @replied to her, “A wall helps.”

But then, because she didn’t feel like being tweet-stalked by guys all night, she direct-messaged the woman with her real reply: “Gimme a man against a wall for a kiss, and I’ll show you an instrument of my bidding.”

So Tom Waits continued crooning his raspy ramblings over a tinkly piano as she leaned back, nursing the glass, ever so slowly sipping on the rye, wistfully deciding, “Walls. I need more walls.”

***

And you? What do you need more of?

*http://twitter.com/julesjulesjules

I also, inexplicably, will hit 1,300 followers probably before the weekend is through. I follow little over 300, quite a few of whom don’t follow me. Whatever.

So why don’t I follow you? Well, it’s not about you, is it? It’s about me getting the most out of the experience for me. It’s about me enjoying my time on there. Not making you happy in Nantucket or whatever. This is my gratuitous fun time, nothing more.

Now, I could go and do what some Shall-Remain-Nameless folks do, which is follow EVERYONE who follows them, but I think that’s disingenuous. Not that THEY are, but I think, for me, it would be disingenuous to do, yes, because it’d just be for appearances ‘cos I won’t be reading Twitter anymore, just my replies. And I’m not that kind of girl, or I at least try not to be.

The reality is, how many people can you REALLY follow? How many conversations and lives can you plug yourself into while still actually getting something out of it, huh?

For me, I passed that number at about 110 people in my tweet stream. I now barely absorb anything on Twitter. And I’m not enjoying it as much. 315 is too many for me, and I won’t be taking any more. I may, in fact, be unfollowing a few.

But I try to reply to most people who message me or @reply me. Unfortunately, the higher my follower count goes, the more the likelihood that my replying follow-through starts to slip because there’s more and more replies.

I don’t ever get to use Twitter at work. I don’t have one of those jobs and I can’t stay current on it there. When I come home, I want it to be fun. If I feel like replying, I will. If not, then it’s just more work, and, frankly, I’m too fucking busy with too many things in life that feel like work. Twitter’s not going to be one of them.

But if you REALLY want to be followed, then earn it. Seriously. Be funny, make me laugh, message me a few times, but most importantly, be patient.

Let’s face it, I’m no Mary Poppins. I say a lot of stuff that’s not exactly everyone’s cup of tea. Many people who follow me will unfollow me in a couple weeks. A lot of people do that initial tweet upon following me to try and suck me into their fold, and I get that, but if they’re only going to follow me in order to have me reciprocate, that’s foolish, especially if they don’t REALLY know what I’m like on a longer term. Since I know my drop rate’s at 20% or so. I could be more polite and appropriate, but that’d just be boring. I’d rather be myself and suffer the consequences.

Why put myself out until I know you’re sticking it out? But if I get @replies from you often, I’ll probably reply quite often, too. Isn’t that at least a great start? I hear you, right? I reply to most, even now.

Don’t get all huffy about it. It’s not personal. I’m tweet-overloaded. But when I see someone I like, I’ll usually try to follow and lose some dead weight. But I also like a lot of folk I follow, so it’s the cyber rock-and-a-hard-place conundrum.

Also, why the fuck should I follow you if you’ve followed me and never said anything to me? I don’t even look at most of my followers’ pages, not because I’m a snobby bitch, but BECAUSE I’M BUSY. My week computes to about 70+ hours a week without factoring in any social life — if I have the energy to have one. Again, Twitter is for relaxation and blowing off steam, not for piling on more obligations on top of my already-obligation-crowded existence.

And, the weirdest reason of the bunch? I had a head injury a few years ago that gets me kind of overloaded easily. Especially on Twitter. My 300+ peeps tweet stream barely gets absorbed EVER anymore. I glance at it, here and there. That’s it. I feel inundated and like I’m out of touch with everyone. Which makes ME feel like a fraud, because I’m not “really” involved in anyone’s output. All of a sudden I see someone’s update and I’m shocked — “When did she get a boyfriend? Is she funnier when getting laid? Wish I knew.”

So, it is what it is. You don’t like it, think every follow deserves a follow back? Have fun in your perfect little unrealistic Twitter world, because it’s not a world I want to be a part of. CHOOSE to follow me, please. Don’t do it as some kneejerk “Right back atcha” bullshit diplomatic move.

Because the people I follow? It’s on purpose. Because I like them. Because they gave me a really good reason. And because I maybe had a hole to fill in my Twitter stream. Maybe, though, more will open, and I’ll have an urge to fill it with you. But I ain’t gonna unless I’ve got a reason, now, am I?

By the way? I have never actively sought to get new followers on Twitter. I post my stream on my blog, but that’s it. So, if folks want to follow, awesome, but I’m not out there actively trying to boost my numbers, ever, I’m just there posting comments, blowing off steam, and enjoying the ride. Let’s keep things simple, let’s keep ‘em real, because that’s the only way I fly. Unfollow at will.

I love the articulation of thought, the solving of ideas, the expressing of inner qualities.

The trouble with readers is, what they see is what they get.

You people, you read my blog and you somehow think what I put up here is some finite guide to the divinity of Steff, or some such.

Unfortunately, it’s not. These posts can sometimes be all-important treatises that stand as a testimony to who and what I am and always shall be. But, most of the time, they’re snapshots into a moment of time, a thought I had, a feeling that represents who I am at this given time in my hopefully 80-odd-years-plus.

My friends who’ve known me for a long time, they know this about me. I change and grow in ridiculous strides. This fact can be true whilst coexisting with that seemingly-contradictory, but-also-absolute-truth about me. Why? Because I’m a ridiculously complex person and even I don’t understand myself all the time.

Blogs should be taken with a hefty dose of salt. Any blog, but doubly mine. When you’re thinking “but how much salt?” Consider it to be like the intensely high ratio of salt you might use for rimming a margarita glass. This ain’t no dusting over your dinner, okay? Choke on that salt and you know you’re on the right path.

Whatever blog-writing is, as true-to-self as it probably is on some level, the thing you, the reader, must always remember is: This is crafted for an audience.

What I would write for myself would be considerably less funny, less conversational, and a whole lot more investigative.

Why I choose to blog instead of journal is, I find journalling takes me to darker places, always more mundane and self-involved locales. Blogging, I sanitize things, and — wait for it — I try to explore themes I think other people might identify with.

And it’s funny, because, though I know my blog is some altered view on my life (and don’t even get me started about Twitter and how it relates to who I am or am not), I would be absolutely crestfallen if a love interest showed no affinity for my writing or my blog. Because this *IS* a huge part of me. Aspects — bits and pieces — of these blogs of mine cut closer to home than I ever thought I’d be brave enough to admit in conversation sometimes.

Another struggle with writing is, we have to extract ideas from everywhere. Something occurs in conversation with a friend or arises from a difficulty with a lover, my job as a writer is to find something in that which I can then turn into an idea that can be understood and related to by my audience. If I can’t draw influences from my own life, where can I? My friends learn to realize that I’m not addressing them or our situation, but rather extrapolating reality to share a part of the human condition with others. In my foibles and flaws and failings, I find community with others. That’s where writing comes from — from being human, from being weak, from being inquisitive.

So where do we draw the line when showing these blogs of ours to others? Where should the line of interpretation end for readers that are intimately involved in our lives? When should the written word be construed as a greater truth than what is spoken, when it comes to interpersonal relationships?

Fucked if I know, man.

I really don’t know. I don’t know how to reconcile who I am on the page or screen with what I offer in real life. I don’t even know how to articulate how I differ from the image I project.  I don’t know a damned thing.

But I do know I’m both. I’m this girl and I’m that girl. I’m so much more than this girl. And I suppose part of the struggle of life is eventually understanding ourselves on all those levels, knowing that it’s okay to be confident and funny and assured, all the while being scared and confused and a little lost inside. It’s okay to accept that each of us lives within our own dichotomy.

Us writers, though, our mistake? Airing our dirty dichotomies for all to see.

And me, there on my sofa, I scoff and chuckle, “Oh, sure you will.”

Because I know. I know that, no matter how old we are, love makes bitches of us all.

Whatever your age, power status, social stature, or financial means, when love comes knocking and your heart starts racing, almost every one of us knows the cloying struggle between terror and exuberation.

My god — someone I like? Someone I need to be vulnerable for? Someone who’ll require me breaking free of my thou-shalt-not-enter comfort zone? Someone else to be responsible to?

I know all about the terror and the desire to run. Been there, done that. Yet it happens every time.

Why? Because I’m too fuckin’ smart for my own good.

See, here’s where being blissfully ignorant would pan out nicely. “Aww. He’s cute. I should shag him. We could make babies. Then we could be cute together forever in a rancher with a picket fence! Matching polo sweaters! The end. Okay, let’s do that.”

I think one’s ability to dumb shit down has a direct correlation with their ability to blissfully skate through life without worrying about the far-reaching consequences of today’s actions.

Like: “If I hook up with him, even just for dinner, it’ll be a real connection, and we’d be too smart to think it just a temporary thing, since we’re geniuses, so we’d skip that whole casual thing because we’re over-achievers and that’s what we do, next thing you know, holy-fucking-commitment, Batman.”

Somehow, it’s easy to make the jump from “That’s a nice date” to “What size would you like that ball and chain?” when you have big brains and a penchant for foresight and remedial mathematics.

Naturally, it’s a fucking moronic jump to make, because it’s totally disallowing for the possibility of utterly ridiculous arguments in cars, failed romantic moments, crass comments, stupid jokes, selfishness, and everything else that causes the demise of more than half of relationships.

Because, while we know money and sex issues account for more than half of all doomed relationships, we know that the other half end because of really fucking dumb things. And none of us are immune.

The trouble is, no matter how much of mankind’s history is before us, we seem to conveniently forget that many millenniums of poetry, love stories, fables, and legends, all surrounding matters of the heart, that tell us how instrumental love is not only on an interpersonal, but also on a geopolitical scale.

Look at Catherine the Great and Potemkin. Cleopatra and Antony. The destructive nature of failed relationships in the reign of King Henry VIII and how it completely changed England. Look at how Mata Hari wielded affection like a weapon. Or the legend of William Wallace rising up in Scotland first to avenge his fallen love.

Matters of the heart define us as people. We want to wave them off as puffery and fodder only worthy of silly date movies, but it is the marrow of who we are.

No matter how advanced or intellectual we become as either a society or as individuals, we will never, ever have the upper-hand against our itty-bitty, throbbing hearts.

Jealousy, confusion, betrayal, yearning, wishing, wanting, fearing, dreading… when we say what we want is a chance at love, real love, we have to admit, it is these things too we are preparing to chance.

Despite it all, it’s time we accept that it’s that enthralling whirlwind of unpredictable highs and lows that makes love and the matters of the heart what they are. And all this fear and dread doesn’t change the fact that, for some pretty wonderful (even if sometimes all-too-brief) moments, there is nothing in the world that feels greater than that mind-heart connection firing on all cylinders.

Because, for as long as all those stories of broken hearts have been told, so too has love-worth-dying for existed. Nothing spoke greater to that legacy of Love that Lasts than this archaeological find pictured here, the Lovers of Vardaro, found locked in an embrace in 2007 after more than 5,000 years — when pyramids were being built, before Rome and Greece were even inklings.

And that’s the treasure we’re all looking for, the gift that makes all the searching worth it. The possibility of the ever after.

While we’re looking, though, it’d serve us all well to remember what Ursula K. Leguin has written, “It’s good to have an end to journey toward; but it’s the journey that matters in the end.”