Blather and Prattle

I’m pretty sure we all have at least one person in our lives with Communication Addiction Disorder (CAD)  — except we usually call them “people who talk too much”; “people who like the sound of their own voice”; crashing bores, rude, annoying, etc. Turns out they have a “disorder”. (Doesn’t everyone?)

Approximately 16% of the population has CAD and approximately 84% of the population suffers from CAD. Ha ha.

Here’s how to identify someone with CAD:

• Whenever you see them, they’re talking.
• It’s almost impossible to contribute to any conversation in which they’re involved.
• Any story you might try to start to tell, they will interrupt with an even more amazing story of their own.
• All of their stories involve excruciating detail about everything and many digressions.
• They talk almost exclusively about themselves and are very self-absorbed.
• They voice an opinion about everything and at great length.
• They spend a lot of time on the phone.
• They love meetings.
• They tell you things you already knew and/or which they already told you.
• They like to manipulate you into siding with them against other people.
• They do not listen to what other people say.
• They always behave as if they’re under incredible stress or pressure and tell you how much stress and pressure they’re under (at great length).
• They tend not to speak at a normal conversational speed – they either talk especially quickly or especially slowly.

(Hmmm. I think I may have the written version of CAD. I promise I’m not as verbose in real life as I am in the blogosphere….Please, someone back me up.)

Anyway, these people are extremely annoying and difficult to work with. I have no idea what they’d be like to live with and have no intention of finding out. I find it’s most often women who have this problem and, in my experience, very often women in managerial positions.

That doesn’t mean you should assume that my current manager has CAD and that I’ve been furiously researching the topic so that my head doesn’t explode the next time I’m cornered by her. No. Not at all. This is purely an academic exercise. Yes indeedy.

So, why can these people never shut up? According to experts it could be any or all of the following:

• They’re controlling people who are personally out of control.
• They have low self-esteem/are insecure or have extraordinarily high opinions of themselves.
• They have anxiety issues.
• They think they’re smarter or more experienced than everyone else.
• They feel more important when they’re the ones doing the talking. They equate talking with power.
• They equate silence with ignorance.
• They talk to figure out how they’re feeling or what they believe and simply can’t just think things through like normal people.
• They need to be the centre of attention.
• They believe people are fascinated by what they have to say.

Anyone with CAD has surely been told more than once that they talk too much but still can’t stop themselves. They can’t stop because they don’t really believe they have a problem or that their excessive talking is causing social rejection and professional suicide. They are “talkaholics”. It’s a condition more difficult to overcome than chronic shyness.

So, that’s nice, but it doesn’t help me people who have to deal with people with CAD. Experts suggest trying any or all of the following:

• Set a time limit before the conversation begins. Say something like, “I’m sorry, I only have 5 minutes before my next meeting.”
• Be “rude” yourself and interrupt, saying something like, “Wait a second, I’d like to respond to something you said just now.”
• Say things like, “I don’t think I need all the details right now. Let me just understand the salient points to begin with.”
• If all else fails, excuse yourself and say you have to leave. And then leave.

Of course the best thing is not to have people like this in your life. They can suck up hours, days, weeks, years of your life while chattering pointlessly on and on and on and on and on…..

Do you know someone with CAD? How do you cope?

It’s Wonderful Being a Girl

It’s Wonderful Being a Girl was the name of the small, outdated pamphlet the girls in my Grade 4 class were given along with “The Talk” and “The Film” of the same name presented by a specially contracted public health nurse.

But don’t worry; this post isn’t going to be about That.

No, I thought with all the stuff that sometimes makes being a girl irksome, a reminder of all the great things about being a girl would be nice.  And by “irksome” I mean stuff like The Topic about which this post is not. I mean irksome stuff like the annual girly probings and compressings; or stuff like brassieres and pantyhose; or stuff like waxings and pluckings; or having to pay 4 times as much for a haircut; or uncomfortable shoes; or having to do all the housework; and so forth.

So, without even any further ado, here are some of the things that make being a girl wonderful:

1. Girls have a longer life expectancy. This isn’t necessarily all that great in and of itself, but it does mean girls get our pensions longer; sort of making up for all those lower salaries they got all their lives.
2. Girls understand the concept of conversation and are able to fully utilize it. Though it may seem, on the surface, like idle gossip, girls are actually sharing valuable and useful information; solving seemingly unsolvable problems; resolving childhood issues; and, venting pent-up negativity and frustration so they don’t have to go beating people up, driving hot rods too fast; getting disgustingly drunk and peeing on things; storing stuff up in their blood pressure or going on killing sprees.
3. Girls get a more varied wardrobe. A closet full of just pants and shirts would be sooooo boring. Also, girls get to wear lots of accessories, hair colours, hairstyles, hair do’s and make-up to disguise/enhance their appearance.
4. Girls have relatively controllable body hair. Can you imagine having to deal with ear hair, back hair or.. ugh… face hair? I know it’s normal for guys, but the idea of hair growing out of my face totally freaks me out. I actually have nightmares about it. But guys live with this every day! How? They have to shave their faces once or even twice every day! Otherwise their entire face gets consumed by fur. Arrgghhhh! Of course, some of them just give up and let it grow. And then only their eyes are visible. And then food and snot, spit and/or other bodily fluids (depending on their inclination) gets stuck in their face fur. Seriously! Nightmare!
5. Girls don’t have dangly bits they have to constantly clutch and worry about. I think it’s a big design flaw to have a person’s most vulnerable and delicate bits just hanging there on the outside of the body at a level even with raised knees, children’s hard, exuberant heads, unfriendly dog jaws and sharp table corners.
6. Girls don’t get nocturnal emissions or spontaneous public erections. Because that’s just weird.
7. Girls (while we’re on that general topic) can get laid, generally speaking, more easily than men. Girls don’t usually have to sell their souls, surrender their dignity, resort to underhanded methods or fork out a lot of money to get sex. It’s never that important. Sure, some girls will do some of that to get love (or a reasonable facsimile thereof), but that’s more of a long-term investment.
8. Girls can cry and be affectionate with humans of the same sex without being mocked or having their sexual orientation questioned.
9. Girls usually don’t have to lift heavy stuff. Guys seem to enjoy lifting stuff for girls, so unless girls like lifting stuff, girls never really have to. [Anecdotal evidence: One day I had a big armchair delivered and there was only one guy in the delivery truck. I offered to grab the other side and help him lift it, but before I could put that into practice, a whole flock of neighbour guys appeared and volunteered to do it. I’d never even seen most of these guys before. Where did they all come from? How did they know that something needed to be lifted? Do they have some sort of scanner in their home that alerts them? It was odd, but very convenient.]
10. And finally, of course, there’s The Thing. The super secret Thing to which all girls become privy at a certain age and which they will never, ever reveal to a guy no matter how close or intimate. And of course I won’t reveal it on my blog either, even though doing so would guarantee the biggest blog sensation ever to hit the Internet. Even though doing so would mean my blog would be talked about by millions of people around the globe. Even though it would mean fame and untold fortune. Because doing so would also mean my life would no longer be worth living, which I’m sure my girl readers can understand and appreciate.

Thank you.

Accidental Humans

Recently, at the Ottawa Bloggers’ Breakfast *** the talk turned, as breakfast conversation so frequently does, to accidental pregnancies.

The theory was posited that most of us wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the accidental pregnancy. We took a quick survey around our table and, indeed, I believe everyone at the table had begun life in a not entirely planned manner.

We decided right off the bat that the term, “accident” was not a nice way to refer to a human life, so we chose to call ourselves “surprises” instead.

And really, an “accident”  is something completely unforeseen and unexpected whereas pregnancy should be assumed as a distinct possibility if a fertile male and fertile female engage in sexual intercourse without adequate contraceptive protection.

Anyway, a surprise baby can occur in a variety of situations. Sometimes, the surprise is so great and so unmanageable that the surprise child is given up for adoption. And, at the other end of the spectrum, a surprise can occur when a couple intends to have a child sometime and then finds that sometime is actually now.

That’s what happened to me. We’d been planning for a summer baby, which we would start working on right after we got back from our winter vacation.

We spend that winter vacation in Tobago. It’s a small island with not much going on, so after a few weeks we got adventurous and decided to spend a day hiking through the rainforest. Around noon we happened upon a small waterfall. It had been a long, tiring morning. We were hot and sweaty and miles from another human being. So, we cast off our gear and plunged into the water.

Of course we’d packed protection against snakes and protection against bugs and protection against the merciless sun and we even had food and water to protect ourselves against hunger and thirst.  We were well protected for all eventualities — except one. And there we were in a very exotic and romantic place with only SPF 15 and Deet for protection.

We had a winter baby.

My own conception was much more prosaic, but also not quite planned. When my parents were dating, they were both still living with their parents and several siblings each. It wasn’t often they had a house to themselves and when they did, I understand they took full advantage.

Sometimes they only had a few minutes. Like this one time when the two of them were over at my dad’s for Sunday dinner. His brothers were in their rooms doing whatever it is young boys spend so much time doing in their rooms. My mum and dad were helping his mother in the kitchen when she realized she needed more butter and popped out to the shop to fetch some.

In those few minutes, my dad managed to distract my mum from peeling potatoes long enough to impregnate her — with me — right there in my grandmother’s kitchen!

Shocking.

They did manage to get married in plenty of time for me to be born “on the right side of the blanket”… though it was a noticeably skimpy blanket.

So, anyway I thought about doing a poll just to see how many of us were surprises, but the variables are so great that I don’t think a simple button-clicking poll would do it justice. It’s not just a matter of planned or unplanned. We’d have to also know, for instance:

• Were the biological parents a committed couple or just a couple of horny teenagers who couldn’t figure out how to unroll the condom?
•  Did the biological parents keep and raise the baby (you) together?
• Were the biological parents planning on having children together anyway?
•  Were you the first child, a second/third/fourth/etc unexpected child or maybe a late-in-life surprise?
•  If you were planned, did everything go exactly according to plan?
•  Do you even know if you were or were not planned? (Apparently, not everyone has had this discussion with their parents. Maybe you could go and call mom right now and ask. We’ll wait.)

Accompanying anecdotes would also be great.

And how about your own kids? If I had to bet, I would say that for various reasons, our kids, overall, were probably  less of a surprise to us than we were to our parents. At least the conception part.  Every day after that is just one happy and sometimes not-so-happy surprise after another, isn’t it?

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*** If you are an Ottawa area blogger and would like to take part in life-affirming conversational topics like this, please send an email to: bloggersbreakfast@gmail.com with a link to your blog and you’ll be added to the mailing list and kept informed of upcoming Ottawa blogger events.

Ethereal Light Emanation

In response to yesterday’s post, a couple of people said (more or less jokingly) that maybe the dogs are seeing my aura and that maybe I have an odd aura or something. Which started me thinking about this whole business of auras and pets being “in tune” with stuff like that.

First, let’s see if we actually believe that such a thing as auras exist. Do people walk around with some sort of energy field around them or is that just a bunch of new-age hooey?

Well, if you’ve ever walked into a room where 2 people have been fighting or having a very serious conversation, the second you walk through the door and without even looking at the people in the room, I think you can feel the tension or heaviness. What’s that if not you sensing these people’s energy?

When you meet people, part of what attracts you to or repels you from a particular person is the unexplainable “vibe” you get from them. True?

And, if you’ve ever watched a person die, you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that between that moment of life and death, something vital disappears. 

But it’s not just people that have this energy field – all living things are surrounded by some sort of energy field. The expert aura people believe that children under 5 and animals are naturally able to see auras. (Adults can teach themselves to become more sensitive to auras and learn to see them.)

I guess it would explain why children often seem to dislike people for no particular reason or seem to “know” when things aren’t right. There have been lots of stories, too, about pets being able to sense illness in their people.

• Epilepsy.com says that dogs can often predict when their person is about to have an epileptic seizure.
• Studies have shown that dogs are able to warn their diabetic people when their blood sugar is too high.
• 60 Minutes did a thing on dogs being able to sniff out cancer in humans.
•  And there are other stories of pets being particularly snuggly or unusually calm and gentle when their person is sick or very sad or upset.

I don’t know; maybe this is all more about scents than sense. Maybeillness giving off smells that trigger a response in pets. Or maybe part of it is that pets are able to see or sense when their people have something some sort of energy/chemical alteration.

What do you believe? Is there such a thing as auras? Can you sense auras if even you can’t see them? Have your pets or children ever exhibited any aura-sensing abilities?

I’ve noticed my cat, Bazel won’t leave my side whenever the pizza stone comes out of the cupboard because he knows there will soon be cheese flying around. He sure loves cheese. Yup.

Marley, Barkley, Rover, King, Prince, Duke, Fido, Rex, Bowser and ME!

Okay, here’s something I’ve been kinda wondering about for a long, long time and I’m hoping this vast network of bloggers, blog-readers and friends, family and acquaintances of bloggers and blog-readers can answer for me.

It’s kind of ridiculous. And I probably shouldn’t even be wasting your time with this. So you can leave now if you want.

Okay, if you’re still here, then here it goes…

As you know, I walk a lot. On my travels, especially my early morning travels, I almost always encounter dogs.  Small dogs, medium-sized dogs and big dogs.

Whenever I encounter a big dog something weird happens — well not “whenever” as in always, but most of the time… almost always. The dog will suddenly see me, freeze in his tracks and stare at me like I’m the most absolutely bizarre and completely unfathomable thing he’s ever seen in his entire life.

The faces of these dogs — every one of them – says “total bewilderment” loud and clear.  I can see their big doggie brains working furiously, trying to figure something really important out.

Sometimes the dog will cock his head to the right, very, very  slowly. Then he’ll cock his head to the left, very, very slowly.  His eyes are wide and puzzled. His expression is utter befuddlement. It’s unmistakable.

It’s most strange.

If the owner isn’t paying attention, he’ll try to get the dog to move by tugging on the leash or  urging the dog on; but the dog won’t move; won’t take his bewildered eyes off me.

If the owner is paying attention, he gets just as befuddled as his dog, except because of his dog, not because of me. I think.

 Sometimes the owner will just laugh. Sometimes he’ll say something like, “What the hell are you doing Fido?”

Sometimes I ask the owner or even the dog what the dog is doing. The owner just shrugs. The dog just keeps staring and looking bewildered. Neither of them have any idea about anything.

Sometimes, if the owner looks chatty, I’ll tell him that big dogs do this to me all the time so he won’t think there’s something wrong with his dog. One dog owner thought his dog looked hypnotized. More than one dog owner has said he’s never seen his dog do that before. And then they look at me quizzically. 

None of the dogs have ever made any attempt to approach me. Even when I speak to the dogs, they just stand there and stare.

And they keep staring until I’m out of sight. (Okay, I’m assuming they stop then, but who knows? I turn around every once in a while to see if they’re still staring and they always are. Eventually I can’t see them anymore, so I figure if they can’t see me anymore they stop staring.)

Anyhow, what do you reckon is going on here? What should I do? How do I answer the burning questions behind these poor mutts’ eyes?

I should point out (and perhaps those who know me can back me up) that I do not look or dress in any particularly outlandish manner. I never wear sparklers on my head or strobe lights on my clothing. I don’t walk around juggling cats or dragging silent vacuum cleaners behind me (Because that would be puzzling to a dog, wouldn’t it?) And, as far as I know, no part of me emits high-frequency whistling noises.

Thank you.

 PS: I do not have this effect on any other living creature.

got no time for livin’

We spend too much time at work.

The best years of our life are passing us by as we slog away at whatever our chosen income-generating occupation is. Meanwhile, the things that really feed our souls, make us happy, make life worth living; we have to squeeze in between household chores and errands in the evenings or on weekends. Or we have to wait for those precious few weeks every year when we’re allowed to not come to work.

This isn’t how life is supposed to be.

Long, long ago in the era of hunter-gatherers, people only worked for about 2 ½ days a week and only about 6 hours per day.

Agricultural societies put in a little more time per day during certain seasons, but much less during others. And it was all home time. They were with their families and working directly to feed their families.

Then came the industrial revolution and artificial lighting and financial incentives for manufacturers saw people working 16 hours a day, 7 days a week

Then early in the 20^th century, Henry Ford, bless his little Mustang-building soul, not only introduced a fair wage policy for his employees, but also shorter work hours. He reckoned workers who were paid well and had plenty of leisure time would work better and have more time and money to spend buying the products he was producing.

It wasn’t until after WWII that this hare-brained notion caught on and the work week in most industrialized countries was reduced to 40 hours. And lo, they discovered that this did indeed jazz up the economy; and that it  improved workers’ health and their overall lifestyle; it  saved money in transportation (less carbon emissions); and saved money in child care; and seemed to make workers more productive on a per hour basis.

So, that was a great idea 60 years ago. A lot has happened since then. Primarily, more women are part of the workforce and computers and other technologies have completely changed the way we work. It’s time we started seriously moving to a 32-hour work week.

Much of Europe has already caught on to this. The work week in France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, is 35 hours per week or less. Not coincidentally, these are also the countries with the most worker vacation days.

• Workers in Finland get 30 days of paid vacation plus 14 paid statutory holidays. (44 days total)
• The French average 30 days of paid vacation plus 10 paid statutory holidays.  (40 days total)
• By comparison, the UK worker gets only 20 days of paid vacation plus 8 paid statutory holidays.  (28 days total)
• The US worker gets only 15 days of paid vacation plus 10 paid statutory holidays.  (25 days total)
• And, the poor beleaguered Canadian worker averages a measly 10 paid vacation days plus 10 paid statutory holidays. (20 days total) [After 18 years with the federal public service I am finally entitled to  25 days vacation]
• Only Thailand and the Philippines get less holidays than us Canadians. (19 days total each)

And, oddly North American workers also seem to clock the most overtime.

I’m certainly no economist, but I don’t get the impression that we’re beating the ass off any of these European countries in the global marketplace because we’re at work more than they are.

Some North American companies have already decided to introduce the 4-day work week. Except they’re making employees work 10-hour days to make up their 40 hours. That sort of misses the point. The idea is to work less hours, not just less days. Who can be productive 10 hours a day? And how does that impact family life?

For that matter how many of you are actually productive the entire 40 hours you’re at work? Does the world come to an end when we have a statutory holiday and a 3-day weekend? Not in my experience.

So what’s the hold-up on this 32-hour work week? How many of you don’t think you could get your work done in 32 hours a week? How many think you’re life wouldn’t be improved with an extra day of not going to work?

And while we’re at it  — an average of 10 paid vacation days per year, Canada? Please. That’s embarrassing.

People is Odd

I was surprised the other day when I read Leah’s blog, because Leah lives somewhere in Bohunk, USA and they were offering H1N1 vaccines at her son’s school to any kid who wanted it FOR FREE.

Meanwhile, in the land of mystical, magical health care (Canada), people can only get the vaccine if they line up for hours (often 7 or more hours and in the rain) at centers specially designated to dispense the vaccine and only those centers and only during certain hours of certain days, and now that they’re all running out of the vaccine, only people who are pre-screened and deemed to be at risk (and hockey players) are allowed to get it.

What’s the deal? Is all of the US awash with H1N1 vaccines?  Why is  this so complicated in Canada?

*****

The other thing that I find interesting about this whole H1N1 hysteria is that people are frightened and worked up enough about the very small possibility of becoming ill from this flu or the even small possibility of becoming gravely ill or dying from this flu that they’ll stand in line for an entire day to get vaccinated; that they’ll buy a priority wrist band from someone else, who got it for free, in order to get their shot at staying healthy; that they’ll get into heated arguments with friends and family over the sheer “stupidity and recklessness”  of someone choosing not to get vaccinated.

And yet, these same people will scoff at and ignore suggestions that they make some small adjustments to their lifestyle in order to help prevent the very large probability of getting and maybe dying of cancer, heart disease, diabetes or other lifestyle-related and life-threatening illnesses.

*****

Like every other workplace, mine is in the throes of freaking out about our pandemic plans and business contingency plans. How do we keep churning out vitally important government crap if everyone drops with flu at once? This eventuality needs to be meticulously planned for, in great detail and at great length.

So we’re writing up reams of documents – charts, graphs, spreadsheets – my god, the spreadsheets! And meetings! The meetings are endless. I had to go to one yesterday in a room they’re calling “The War Room” – where all the important pandemic-related spreadsheets are populated, stored and gazed at.

The room was tiny. And stuffy. And so freakin’ smelly. A small crowd of people work tirelessly in there with a bank of secure computers. They eat in there. They work in there late into the night. They come in on weekends. They’ve cancelled all their leave and vacations. They’re estranged from their friends and families. They never leave except to go home and shower and catch a few winks of anxiety-riddled sleep.

There was no air in the room. It was overly hot. (And did I mention smelly?). There was a big box of donuts in the middle of the table from which everyone was automatically and unthinkingly shovelling powdery, fried dough treats into their maw at regular intervals.

Everyone in the room was sick. Coughing, sneezing, watery eyes. They all looked tired, unkempt; a little manic. They were all at a strange level of hyper-stress.

“I am NOT sitting in this room with these people for an hour.” I thought to myself, trying not to inhale the funk of bacteria I could physically feel swarming around me. I sat by the door, almost in the doorway,  and insisted on leaving the door open. It made them very nervous. I Purelled myself thoroughly. They looked at me like they thought I had mental issues.

The meeting was completely unproductive even by normal meeting standards.

Cows for Christmas

Have you gotten a flyer in the mail from some organization like Heifer International or Oxfam or Send a Cow? Or maybe you’ve seen Oprah begging you to spend your Christmas money on donations to Heifer International?

If not, you’ll soon get a brightly coloured catalogue from at least one of them. They urge you to donate money in someone’s name as a Christmas gift and that money goes to buying livestock for poverty-stricken people in Africa. For instance:

• $500 buys a cow
• $250 buys a water buffalo
• $120 buys a goat, pig or sheep
• $20 buys a flock of chicks
• $5000 buys an “ark” of 15 pairs of animals

Heifer international has been around since the late 1940s. They were responsible for first sending cows to Japan (a largely vegetarian country) after World War II. Neither dairy nor beef had never been part of the Japanese diet before and the cows caused a lot of health issues for the Japanese people.

When I first heard about this livestock scheme, I was dumbfounded. Livestock farming isn’t even sustainable in wealthy, industrialized nations. How the hell is this going to work out in the poorest nations in the world?

The Heifer International catalogues show cute little farm animals being embraced by smiling African children. Little African children who haven’t seen rain in three years, have no drinking water,  who are malnourished, uneducated, unhealthy and whose parents have died of AIDS.

And we’re sending them cattle?

Livestock is the most inefficient, expensive and environmentally destructive way of producing food. Cows, goats and chickens can only add to the problems of drought and desertification in this countries – no matter how much support and education these charities promise to provide along with the animals.

Sure, the poor, starving African kids will pounce on these animals and maybe in the short-term will get some milk, eggs or meat from them. But in the long-term it can only be devastating. For one thing, globalizing our preventable diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes for which an animal-based diet is largely responsible, doesn’t seem all that charitable. Two-thirds of non-Caucasians on the planet are lactose intolerant and cannot digest dairy. Does that hungry African child really need gastro-intestinal cramping and diarrhea from cow milk to add to its problems?

These animals need food, large quantities of water, shelter and veterinary care? But we’re  sending these critters to help people who don’t have any food, water, shelter or medical care? Does this make sense to anyone?

One cow drinks about 90 liters (24 gallons) of water every day. A goat will eat all the grass and shrubbery on two hectares (5 acres) of land, per year. Cows and goats destroy the fertility of land and any value the milk may have is minimal compared to the destruction they wreak. Two goats can reduce the amount of farmland available to local people to such an extent that people have to abandon that village.

A few years ago, in one area of Africa 80% of the cattle died in a drought. The rest were washed away in the floods that followed. Many recipients of livestock animals are unable to feed an animal to maturity, let alone able to feed and raise offspring. And what about the issue of introducing non-native animals to fragile habitats? How does that impact the indigenous plants and animals?

There must be hundreds of better, more direct ways to help feed these people and improve their lives. What about sending and helping them plant trees that produce fruit and nuts? What about providing appropriate agricultural technology or supplying drought-resistant, sustainable crops? What about sending money for health care or education?

I think the idea of spending your Christmas money on something useful that will actually help save someone’s life instead of buying your mom giant fuzzy, bear-paw slippers or your sister a collection of novelty lemon zesters is a fabulous idea. I love, for instance,  that Meanie’s daughter asked to have a third-word foster child for her Christmas gift.

But sending farm animals to poverty-stricken countries?

Catch and Release

After the nasty, shallow, breaking-up post the other day, I thought it only fair that I do an equally nasty, shallow meeting-up post today. Amy mentioned in the comments of the breaking-up post that she once dated via personal ads and screened applicants through their grammar and spelling. Coincidentally, that same day, I got an email (and probably many of you got the same email) from some “Facebook-integrated dating site” (whatever that means) offering to let me write posts for them for free.

The stars were obviously aligned in favour of an internet/agency/personal ad (depending on your era) dating post.

I once joined a dating agency. For anyone under 30, this is what they used to have before LavaLife or Plentyoffish.  You had to leave your home and visit an office populated by human beings who would give you a questionnaire – on paper. Then they’d give you a pen, and you’d sit and write down — by hand — information about yourself. Then they’d take a photograph with a crazy old-timey gadget called a Polaroid camera that instantly produced blurry, greenish images, but with a nice wide border around the bottom. (The big bottom border was so you could write down a description of what was supposed to be depicted in the photograph in case it was too unrecognizable and green)

The really swanky dating agencies would take a blurry, greenish video of you instead. You’d get all dressed up; pretend you were talking to a potential date and say really stupid stuff about yourself.

I opted for the lower-tech, chicks-are-free option. In this agency, the Matchmaker Lady did all the work. She’d sort through the applications and Polaroids and match me up with people she thought would be compatible. Then she’d call me and tell me about some guy and give me his telephone number. I’d call him, we’d talk and then decide if we wanted to meet up. I’d call the Matchmaker Lady and tell her when the meet-up was. (I know, I know, she’s starting to sound like a pimp to me, too, all of a sudden) Anyway, after the initial meet-up I had to call the Matchmaker Lady again and let her know how it went. I guess if she didn’t get a call within a few days, she’d assume I’d been murdered and left in a ditch by the side of the road and she’d alert authorities.

Luckily that never happened.

She did send me a lot of desperate eligible men. It was quite a long time ago now, but I don’t believe anything memorable ever happened on any of the meet-ups I went to. I’m pretty sure I never went out on a second date, either. Matchmaker Lady got pissed off with me at some point and we more or less mutually agreed that I should gave up on the whole sorry experience.

I’ve never looked at LavaLife, but I have had a look at the Plentyoffish site — just to see what was going on in the zany world of dating these days. Nothing there made me jump up and say, “Whoa, stand aside and let me dive into this sea.”

I do realize that you’re all muttering to yourself that it’s not the fish in the sea that’s the problem here — it’s me. And you’re right. Matchmaker Lady said pretty much the same thing. I’m obviously not interested enough in dating to make the effort. If I happen to meet somebody I like enough to want to spend an evening or whatever with, that’s one thing. But pursuing a date, by electronic or other means is like making some sort of commitment to declaring yourself open to a relationship.

And if that’s what you really want, the deliberate mate-seeking option seems to work. I know quite a few people who met their spouses and/or significant others online and everyone seems happy. Even people, who didn’t purposely set out to meet a partner, ended up meeting someone incidentally because of Facebook, blogging or some other online-related activity.  

How about you? Have you ever dabbled in the world of internet, agency or personal ad dating? Was it a good, bad or indifferent experience? Did you meet your soul-mate, worst nightmare or cure for insomnia?

*** Also,  of all the Polaroid photographs that have been taken of or by you in the past, do any of them still have an actual image on them?

Voices

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Do you recognize any of these people?

The first guy is probably the most recognizable because he’s been on a few sit-coms – Hank Azaria. And some people might recognize the last guy – Seth MacFarlane, as the evil genius behind Family Guy.

What all these people have in common is that they’re all voice actors who’ve provided the voices of many of the animated characters we grew up with or the strange new breed of animated characters populating our televisions these days.

Perhaps some of you saw the little mini-special on Seth MacFarlane the other night. I know Family Guy isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. It’s crude and raw and outrageous and tasteless and seems to have no boundaries, but it’s also brutally funny I think. Sometimes it’s funny in an “ha-ha what a bunch of idiots” way and sometimes it’s funny in an “OMG, I can’t believe they actually said/did that” way.

Either way, I think Seth MacFarlane is very talented and nasty-hot brilliant. He created the show, he writes for the show, he’s the executive producer and he does the voices of Peter, Brian and Stewie. And he sings.

 

Anyway, I’ve always had a thing for people who could do voices. When I was young I couldn’t get enough of comic impersonators like Rich Little or Frank Gorshin (Whatever happened to comic impersonators anyway? Is that still a job that people do?) 

The people pictured above are some of my favourite voice actors:

1. Hank Azaria: Simpsons – Moe Szyslak, Chief Whiggum, Apu, Comic Book Guy, Cletus Spukler, Dr. Nick Riviera, Snake, Sea Captain, Superintendent Chalmers, Disco Stu, Duffman among others.
2. Mel Blanc: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Sylvester the Cat, Tweety Bird, Foghorn Leghorn, Yosemite Sam, Woody Woodpecker, Barney Rubble
3. Dan Castellaneta: Simpsons – Homer, Grandpa, Barney Gumble, Krusty the Klown, Groundskeeper Willie, Mayor Quimby, Hans Moleman among others
4. Tress MacNeille: Simpsons – Agnes Skinner, Cookie Kwan (realtor), Brandine Spukler, Bernice Hibbert, Crazy Cat Lady (also in Futurama), Mom in Futurama, and for Disney, Daisy Duck since 1999 and Betty Boop since 1998
5. Frank Oz: Muppets – Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Animal, Sam the Eagle, Grover, Cookie Monster, Bert and Yoda in Star Wars
6. Nancy Cartwright: Simpsons – Bart, Nelson, Todd Flanders, Ralph Wiggum and Chuckie in the Rugrats
7. Pamela Segall Adlon:  Tons of voiceovers for movies and Bobbie Hill on King of the Hill
8. Seth MacFarlane