Doreen Heaps Wants to Die

At a bed-and-breakfast in Indian Point, Nova Scotia, we met a charming and chatty woman named Doreen Heaps. Highly intelligent and well into her 80s, she wanted to hear our views (and share her own) on world politics, sailing, Iran and the future of Canada, among other things.

She lives in Halifax, in an apartment building inhabited by other older people who, she says, "quite frankly bore me to tears." Arthritis had somewhat slowed her gait but not her mind, and she was lovely to talk to. She and her husband had both been university professors and sounded like they were fairly pioneering in their work.

During our conversation, she mentioned obliquely that she wanted to go to Switzerland. This sounded like a fairly innocuous request and we enthusiastically said to her, "you should go!" She suggested that it was not quite that simple and I wondered what she meant.

Later that weekend, while reading an old copy of the Guardian Weekly, I read about Dignitas, a Swiss nonprofit that promotes assisted suicide. Suddenly, I understood what Doreen wanted. It made me sad to think that such a interesting and vibrant person would reach a point where she felt her life was no longer worth living.

She gave us her phone number and said that next time we were in Halifax she would take us for lunch to her yacht club. We offered our contact details, but she said no, that it would be our responsibility to contact her. I really want to go and have that lunch soon.

White Boys Can't Crank That

Gawker is holding a contest called 'Who is the Whitest Kid you Know?'

I'd nominate Daniel and Derek here, if only I actually knew them:



Just to put that wackiness in context, the dance they are trying to emulate comes from this music video by Soulja Boy:

Not the Daily Show, with someone who is not Jon Stewart

In case you need help understanding the writer's strike, here's a crystal clear explanation:

Marathon Men

A year has passed since I blogged on the 2006 New York marathon. The world truly was a different place then - I was under-employed for one thing. Our car lived in Canada and was still unmolested by errant cab drivers. I still hadn't quite readjusted to New York at that point, or it hadn't readjusted to me.

And most of all, my father was still here. He wasn't well, but I didn't want to really acknowledge that. I still thought if he just TRIED harder, he'd be ok. I still believed that if you really wanted some badly enough, you would get it. And I really, really wanted him to get better. I still do...

Celebri-nots

Need a way to feel better about yourself?

Go to planethiltron.com right now. Clever people with too much time on their hands have cleverly photoshopped (did you know that was a verb now?) pictures of celebrities to make them look more... well, real.

My current favorite: Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony disco dancing like there's no tomorrow. Yee-haw!

Shaun the Sheep

The guys at Aardman Animation, the geniuses behind the 'Wallace and Gromit' series and 'Chicken Run' have launched their first ever TV series for kids. Makes me wish I lived in the U.K. (but thankful for the technological age in which we live):

It's stupid, but I like it

Tropical Depression

I feel like I woke up on the wrong side of the universe. Today it was hot and muggy and I would have rather stayed in bed all day. All week would be even better. And it's only Monday!

I'm trying to rationalize that it's just hormones. That "time of the month". But really, I think I just need to get away. I'm burned out.

That, fortunately, is a problem soon to be resolved. Those two plastic Adirondack chairs will soon be filled with the corpulent bodies of two city-weary travelers badly in need of some spiritual upliftment and a few cold pints of beer.

Vacation is coming!!! Can't wait!!

Farewell to Pavarotti

Luciano Pavarotti passed away today after a long and painful bout with cancer. I didn't realize this news would affect me so much, but I guess the sound of his voice is very familiar to me from my childhood, and brings back memories of my father, who was a fan.

I'm a novice when it comes to appreciating opera, but I truly think no one does 'Nessun Dorma' better.

Rest in peace, maestro.

An ode to maps

People are giving Miss Teen South Carolina a lot of grief, but to be honest, I think it takes a lot of skill to be that... unintelligible.

Actually, I think she was channeling Charles Bukowski. I mean, if you break it down to a poem... it's actually kind of beautiful. It's about helping other people and building our future... Who's going to argue with that??

An ode to maps
By Lauren Caitlin Upton

I personally believe
that U.S. Americans
are unable to do so because

some people out there
in our nation
don't have maps

and I believe that education
like such as
in South Africa
and the Iraq
everywhere

like such as
and I believe
that they should

our education over here
in the U.S.
should help the U.S.

or should help South Africa
and should help the Iraq
and the Asian countries

so we will
be able to build up our future

Taking the Plunge

With all the bad news coming out of Asian, European and American stock markets these days, I'm very glad that I have put my money somewhere safe. I found an investment that guarantees returns those big guys could only dream about!

It all started when I received a very polite and intriguing email message (written in all caps) from a Dr. Clement Okon, who said he was the bearer of some $21 million dollars that he was willing to share with me if I could only help him move said funds from Nigeria. For a minimal investment of only thousands, I would reap millions in return!

All right.. All right.. you got me! Of course I didn't send this guy any money. I know lots of people HAVE been fooled by these scams, and I feel for them, but it's hard to believe anyone would think money could come that easily.

Our toe-dip into the investment pool has proven to be disastrous - mutual funds that are worth half now of what we bought them for five years ago... It's like gambling, something else we're not comfortable with. My money is happily invested in a studio apartment on 1st avenue.

Although, I hear this week's Lotto jackpot is $148.... Hey, you never know!

Bryant Park, Monday, 16 July, 5:30 PM

Blood, gore and a tiny little fairy

When I was small, losing my baby teeth was a traumatic experience -- for everyone in my family. I hated the feeling of the loose tooth in my mouth, hated the blood, hated everyone telling me it was no big deal.

The one silver lining was the tooth fairy. I believed in her very much, especially because she managed to find me no matter where in the world we lived, even the cul-de-sac in suburban Rome where we were at the time.

Except one time she didn't come.

I woke up the morning after another harrowing and messy loss and checked for her present under my pillow. The going rate for a tooth back then was 25 cents, but it wasn't there. I looked inside my pillowcase, behind the mattress, under the bed... nothing. I accused my brothers of playing a trick on me.

My parents explained that sometimes these things happen, that there had been an earthquake in Sicily and that other children needed more help than I did. I tried to be selfless and somehow, somebody managed to console me. We got through the day, but my faith was badly shaken. How could she have forgotten? I mean, there were all those tears and all that blood, how could she not remember that?

The next morning I woke up and took a peek under my pillow in the off-chance that I had missed something. There it was! My shiny quarter! But there was something else too. Underneath the coin was a small piece of folded paper. It was a note of apology from my friend the tooth fairy. The note was written in block letters that only vaguely disguised my father's own handwriting. It was signed "Love, T.F." -- short for tooth fairy. Years later I would receive others notes from my father -- these would be signed "Love, D." -- short for Dad.

Keeping up...

I know it's hard keeping up with what's new, so today I'm here to offer a little support:

1) Asian-Americans are the new Jews
2) Starbucks is the new record store
3) Thursday is the new Saturday (at least in Scottsdale, AZ)
4) iPhone is the new Blackberry
5) Gaza is the new Baghdad
6) The 'Silver Surfer' is the new 'Ocean's Thirteen'

When I'm home

The building we live in is old. Prewar they say, although there have been many wars since then.

I think of what my building must have looked like when it was new, of the people who lived here, the first tenants. I wonder what events have unfolded within these walls, what dramas and joys. I realize that I really feel this is "MY" building.

It's a creaky block of bricks, full of ghosts and shadows. I sense them sometimes; the shadows move around me and I see them, but don't see them. We once talked about how we both had a sense of something around us that we couldn't quite see. It had been happening for months but neither of us had mentioned it before then, for fear of sounding mental.

An old building has its charms, but also its foibles. It's like a marriage partner that you are very comfortable and in love with, but who sometimes frustrates you. Sometimes when I walk past the shiny new condos going up in my neighborhood I feel pangs of lustful envy. So new and modern and glitzy.

But then I feel guilty and rush home to silently apologize to my old beast. It's through no fault of its own, after all, that the floors creak and the water pipes are rusty. We're all aging in the same way, aren't we? I don't want anyone to give up on me when I get old just because things don't work the way they used to or because I haven't been able to keep up with modern technology.

Royal Nuisance

Queen Elizabeth II and her husband arrive in the United States today to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, a happy celebration of disease, famine and war with native Americans.

It seems funny that our forefathers staged a revolution to throw off the shackles of an oppressive monarchy and yet, centuries later, hundreds of modern Americans are clamoring to see the current monarch and fretting over what to wear and how to behave.

What also seems funny is the sanitized world in which the royals live. I wonder if they realize that wherever they go, they are seeing a highly glossed and polished view of what really is. They see schools where children stand quietly, wearing their best clothes, presumably pressed the night before. They see hospital wards that are clean, quiet and, I suspect, devoid of patients screaming in pain.

At NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, which the monarchs will visit during their current trip, the chief of public affairs is mainly concerned with making sure the queen and prince "don't trip over extension cords stretched across the aisle."

When I lived in Kenya, there was a patch of tarmac just down the otherwise pothole-filled road where we lived that was perfectly paved and smooth. The patch started and ended abruptly and lasted for about 20 feet. I always wondered why someone had bothered to pave just one small, random patch of the road. Then someone explained:

The Queen had come to visit a few years before. Her itinerary involved her driving from the airport to the United Nations campus in Gigiri. To get there, she needed to drive close to where we lived, taking a fork to the right to ascend a hill. From the incline, if the royal dear had bothered to turn to her left, she would have seen a beautifully paved, 20-foot patch of road. Not surprisingly, the exact route that she drove had also been smoothly tarred just before her arrival. What I wonder is if Lizzie realized that this had all been done in her honor, or if she congratulated herself on leaving Kenya in such a fine state after colonial times. "My what lovely roads they have here!"

In the interest of full disclosure I should relate one other anecdote to counteract the somewhat cynical tone of this piece. During my last year of high school I lived in Barbados, a tiny Caribbean island that had not, at the time, been independent of Buckingham Palace for long and was still known as “Little Britain.”

I attended Queen’s College, one of the top high schools in the country. Our school had outgrown its facilities and plans were under way to build new, modern grounds. During a visit to commemorate the 350th anniversary of Barbados’ Parliament, the Queen was to lay the foundation stone of our new school. The entire island seemed to have been spruced up for her arrival. One day, before our stone-laying ceremony, the royal entourage was to drive past our old school on the way to the Parliament buildings. All the school children were given tiny paper flags and asked to line the street and wave when the cars passed by. I wanted to gag. I ranted to my parents about the irrelevance and pretension of it all. I was adamantly anti-royal.

The day of the ceremony came and the afternoon was predictably choreographed. The Queen made a speech and laid the stone. At least we all assumed she laid the stone; we were seated too far back to see much of anything. My photographs of the day consist of a sea of blue school uniforms surrounding a little dot wearing a hat. After the speech, the Queen and her entourage filed out down an aisle past the seated students. Half way down, they stopped and began to chat with students, Queenie on the far side and her hubby, Philip, on my side, directly in front of me and a few of my friends. He asked about our uniforms, what class we were in and other inanities. When he detected an American accent, he had an in-depth chat with my friend Rachael the exchange student about her hometown in Oregon.

Suddenly my teenage rage completely dissipated. Phillip was suave and charismatic and we were all sad when he moved on down the aisle to talk to some other students. For weeks, perhaps months, I related this story to everyone I met. I had been charmed by a royal.

The Wacky World of Ebay

Ebay is a strange thing. In the right hands, it can be an effective tool for exchanging merchandise according to the basic laws of supply and demand. In the wrong hands, it can be a masterful guise for fraud and deception.

And in the hands of people with a bit of imagination and spare time, it provides some oddly intriguing offers:

• Koopa, an artist living in Connecticut who just happens to be a turtle, is selling his original artwork (see above). Koopa's paintings hang in all 50 U.S. states, as well as Canada, Bahrain, The Netherlands, The United Kingdom, Australia, and Italy, and he has been featured in Ripley’s Believe it or Not.

• An ebay member known as little_ska_band is selling memories of his childhood, which he describes as “amazing.” For a minimum bid of $350, you can have this young man’s go-cart, car bed, play kitchen, bike and other toys. However the real treasure, he says, is his ‘book of memories’ containing recollections of birthdays, friends, family and embarrassing mishaps. (In true ebay style, the seller adds this disclaimer: “Only one book will ever be made and all memories will be authentic.”)

• In a similar vein, you can buy ‘everything that Lisa Perry owns’ - from mid-century modern chairs to 8-track tapes and Talbot dresses - in one lot (buy-it-now price $2,000). The auction is, Perry says, part of an effort to “rid myself of possessions which have kept me looking backward.” There are currently 9 bids.

• If you’d rather make your own history than buy someone else’s, you may want to consider buying a Scottish ‘sporting estate’ that, for $49.95, comes with the right to call yourself ‘Laird’ or ‘Lady’. If you have gullible friends, it’s a great way to impress them. What you really get is a certificate entitling you to a 12-inch-square piece of the highlands. Archaic Scottish law being what it is, this is enough for you to be a master of a landed estate - so there you go!

• Lastly, the opportunity to exact sophomoric revenge. For $5.00 (plus shipping and handling) millard_699 will mail your foe a diaper smeared with melted chocolate to simulate human feces. Now you may be thinking you could just do it yourself but our plucky seller is already two steps ahead of you: “Sure you could do it yourself and maybe get away with it... Drive to the store, buy a whole pack of diapers, put chocolate or peanut butter in it, purchase a box, insert your own note and ship it yourself, sure you could probably do all this yourself........ BUT WHY!! Why go through all that!! We'll do it for you cheaper than you can do it yourself and we'll save you the time and the trouble!!” Hey, you can’t argue with that logic.

The Secret to Satisfaction

My friends... I believe I have unwittingly stumbled upon the key to being happy. The catch is, it involves moving to South Korea, becoming a gangster and of course ... not getting caught.

It seems that of 109 jailed South Korean gangsters questioned, nearly 80 percent said they were either somewhat or very satisfied with their life of crime. This compares to about 65 percent of police who enjoyed what they did, according to another survey. The results, no doubt, have much to do with the fact that gangsters in Seoul take home about 4 million won a month, roughly $4,255 US, through extortion, prostitution and gambling.

I love the fact that South Korean researchers took the time to ask the convicts whether they liked their work. I tend to think, however, that few of us, when jailed, would not look back wistfully on our life of work - not matter how droll it might have been. I think the Age-o-Matic is a much more realistic and intuitive measure of the affect our jobs have on us. Try it and see!

Holy Sh... Shanghai!

When New York City banned smoking in restaurants and bars many residents groaned and grumbled; but in the end I think we can all agree it was a good thing. Likewise when London banned cars from the city center I’m sure tons of people were inconvenienced. But now dozens of other metropolises are introducing similar measures. Singapore banned chewing gum in public places. Moscow banned gay pride parades. Kuwait banned men from working in lingerie shops.

But a ban on swearing? Now that’s just too much!

Not for Shanghai... The city is now considering a law that makes using swear words in public an illegal offense. Dirty words, according to city officials, often lead to physical fights, which could turn lethal. The law would also extend to spitting, littering, jaywalking and uncivilized behaviour on the part of dog owners. Fines are yet to be determined and may work on a sliding scale according to the income of the offender.

From what I understand, swearing has a long and venerable history in China. Swears are inventive and expressive - from “dog fart” to “turtle’s egg” to “wear a green hat”. ‘Ta ma de’ is a Chinese expression that involves performing degrading acts upon one’s mother. The phrase is apparently so popular and widespread, that renowned Chinese writer Lu Xun once jokingly claimed it should be declared the ‘national swear word’ of China. Next time you’re in an online chat, if anyone types TMD at you - be offended... be very offended!

The move, according to the Guardian newspaper, is all part of the city’s campaign to clean up its image ahead of the 2010 World Expo. The paper reports that “teams of students are being sent out to smile at strangers in public places to spread politeness among the traditionally frosty populace. Last week, the government announced it would equip 45,000 taxis with spit-sacks to curb drivers' habits of winding down their windows and hawking into the road.”

Time Indefinable

I’ve been musing today about time. How there never seems to be enough of it. How it seems to move so quickly these days. How it’s already 11:30 in the morning, it’s already Thursday and it’s already the end of January. How it seems nearly impossible that 20 years have gone by since I was in high school.

Time is particularly obscured for me since I began my new job this month. These days, Thursday is Sunday and 6pm is ‘first thing in the morning’. It’s both liberating and befuddling to be on a different schedule than the rest of the world. Waking up in the morning and not having to rush through the streets with everyone else feels deliciously naughty. Going to work when everyone else is heading home is a bit deflating.

Anoher thing I have noticed about my new job is that no matter how early I seem to arrive - everyone I work with is ALREADY THERE! What time do they get there that I’m always the last to arrive? Are they on a different schedule? And for the past few nights, I’ve been the first to leave also, guiltily saying goodbye why they all tap away at their keyboards. Maybe, I think to myself, they just have more to do since I’m new. Or maybe work is a higher priority for them. That’s not to say that I don’t take work seriously... I appreciate my job and want to do it well, but I also want to have a life, to get to bed, to possibly see my husband before he hits heavy REMs.

In Iran, when I had little else to do and a cold and empty apartment waiting for me, I used to work all the time. There was always something to do in the office and the empty apartment only reminded me of being alone. So in I went at 9am and at 8pm I was often still there. My Iranian colleagues, who had homes to look after, family members to take care of, children to cook for, likely wondered the same about me that I wonder about my current colleagues.

Which just goes to show that life is a question of perspective.