The Skeptic’s Inquisition, or, Open Letters to Everyone Everywhere Ever, or, OH GOD PLEASE HELP ME AM I GETTING WEIRDER

From TORONTO,
July 6th, 2012
Dear Citizens of Toronto…
I just walked home on garbage night. A reasonable West End garbage night, at a positively balmy twenty-three degrees Celsius. And yet. My God. Truth is, Toronto, I’ve not spent a lot of summers here of late. I apologize for, during the civic workers’ strike (AKA Great Garbage Strike) of 2009, having been possibly smug and at least flippant, from my safe distance in sweet-smelling Gananoque, about what you were going through. There’s a word for it: hell. You all survived hell. Or not; perhaps you’re all actually dead. In which case, WHY CAN I SEE YOU??? Man, this is raising more questions than that Higgs-Boson thing. I’d better move on, before I get too confused. We’ve got a lot to cover here.
Dear Jilted Ex-Lovers,
All right, fess up. Which one of you thought it would be funny to go and publish my phone number in an online adult-personals ad? Hm? Okay, ALL of you, fair enough - but who actually did it?
You might think it’s hilarious now, all these hooker-seeking phone calls I'm getting in the middle of the night- but how clever are you gonna feel when I'm riding high as the richest accidental escort in town?
It's likely just a typo. And I haven’t yet succumbed. But I'm saving those incoming phone numbers for when funds get low… Or I get bored. Just watch me. (For a fee.)
Dear Conscience. Dear Comedic Instincts. Can you ever happily coexist? Will you always live in strife, or cancel one another out?
I ask, because, well, case in point: face-eating jokes. A month ago it was too early to make a good face-eating joke. I mean, I didn’t even WANT to. (Put me in mind of when, the very day of the Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster, someone in my grade five class made a “How many astronauts does it take” joke, and I, in typical sensitive-violent Scarborough-child mode, indignant tears in my eyes, threatened to punch his head right off. (If you knew me in grade five, you’ll know this threat was not idle. The streets of Malvern are littered yet with the victims of my comedic judgement.) Too soon, clearly. Within two weeks though, of the infamous bath salts (or as it turns out, perhaps not) attacks, a friend posts on face*&%k that, in the wake of the LA Kings win, he’s going to head into downtown Los Angeles and get crazy…and I find myself typing, without hesitation, “When someone eats your face don’t come crying to us.” Suddenly, having observed a respectful two week face-eating joke moratorium, I just can't stop:
It's all fun and games until someone eats your face.
The early bird gets the face.
A face in the mouth is worth two in the bush.
Why buy the cow when you can eat the face for free?
ET CETERA.
But guess what? Another few weeks have passed, and all that shit is old school. Old hat, even. Passé.
There’s about eight seconds between too soon and too late these days. By the time you get to the Catskills, they’re gone. “I’ll be here all week folks, try the face! …What? Too soon? …No? Oh. You’ve heard that one already.”

Dear Mister T. Sometimes I lie awake at night worrying about you. (I’m an insomniac, don’t be too flattered; it doesn’t take much.) Do you like having a mohawk? Do you desperately want to grow it out but fear that that will be the de facto end of your career? Do you start to let your hair grow in and then your agent gives you hell? Do you dread not being recognized in the grocery store (“Say ‘I pity the fool’,” says the aggressive guy in aisle three, “Say it!…Ha ha ha, he said it…”) or is anonymity what you dream of? Are you a little self-conscious about the term “Mohawk”, when applied to your haircut, being culturally insensitive to our First Nations brothers and sisters? You are not your mohawk, Mister T. And you have a whole name, even. I’m not nearly industrious enough to check what it is, but you do. Oh, Mister T. I do hope you’re okay.

Dear Late Nineteenth Century… when it was you, did girls say to each other, “OMG, I can't believe he broke up with you by telegram”?

 
Dear armchair and/or real psychologists (hey, professionals have armchairs too)… the other day on the streetcar, I heard the guy directly in front of me answer his phone by saying “Jeff speaking”. After he hung up I was nearly overcome with the urge – which I battled until he got off – to whisper “Jeffff” every couple of minutes, so faintly that he couldn’t quite tell whether he was imagining it. Is that crazy? If so, crazy in a charming way, like “That sounds like a cute quirky thing Zooey Deschanel would do in a movie” crazy…or “Let’s never speak of this again, delete it from your blog this instant and never sit behind me anywhere” crazy? Oh, did I mention I also really wanted to eat his face? I know, so June 15th, I know.

Dear Local Buddhist Monks: When did you all become fashion icons and start wearing wicked cool sneakers in burgundy and gold that match your robes so perfectly? Is that, like, okay, or against your order and stuff? Is it wrong that it makes me want to be a monk? You just look so comfy – and like you’d be hella good breakdancers. Tell me I’m wrong. I know you’re bustin’ out those prayer mats for headspins late at night.
Man, y’all monks is cool.

Dear Sarah Allen… I have a confession. You may have noticed that, when you first so rudely abandoned me to live in Los Angeles with your hunky TV-vampire boyfriend, seeking fortune and fame, all I did was whine at you to come back. More recently you may have noticed my harassment, mailing of maple syrup samplers (and anthrax envelopes, hoping you’ll need to return for the health care) etc has stopped. Truth is, I came up with a whole new, secret life plan – which is to pin it all on you. You’re just so darn good-looking and charismatic and talented, my friend, and might yourself play a vampire on TV or a whore in a big movie any day now. I should have been honest about this, Sarah – but don’t let me down. It’s a good plan, no? Then you can fly me to Belize and I can be part of your entourage and “help you keep it real”, as you’ll tell Entertainment Tonight . I can be like Nicole Kidman’s brunette sister and stand with you on red carpets when you get divorces. "What do you mean you wouldn't take your top off? Sure it's not Shakespeare, but who are you, Judi Dench?!"

Dear Readers, you may by now realize that this blague post has elements of what in the past would have been called a “Random Crap Issue”. That term is now defunct.

Dear Professional Torturers:

If I ever become a political prisoner (and I MAY), and the state wants to offer me some kind of personalized torture experience, it will consist of you locking me in a room and forcing me to describe things as “random” and use the word “fail” as a noun. “NOOOOO, I won’t do it!” Shockkkk-k-k-k! “Say it! Say ‘epic fail’ !” “NEVER!!!” VBBBBBZZZZT!!! “What do you have to say now?” “Fail…is…a….verb…” WHACK! CRACK! CRUNCH! “Aaaargggggh!” “What’s the matter, Prisoner 8752? Feeling epically RANDOM??” “Kill me! Kill me now!”

Dear Sarah Harmer’s husband…

Will you please cheat on your wife or give her syphilis or something, so she’ll stop singing about birds and rivers and go back to her shitty-basement-apartment-I’m-wasting-my-life period, which may have sucked for her but was far more interesting for us? Thank you.

(Dear World… have I really sunk so low? Am I that full of hate? Or so starved for entertainment? Hungry for other people’s misery? Am I a terrible person? Is my glass half empty - or just full of angry, frothing backwash? Will you go to the prom with me? I like you. I mean, like you like you. Do you like me too? Check here [  ] for yes.)

I’m thinking maybe there’s a balance. I may be getting old and curmudgeonly – and filled with judgement and bile – in some respects, but then maybe for everything I start to despise, there’s something I begin to love. Perhaps my glass just sloshes around, some stuff spills out, and then fate tops me up with something new and tasty, keeping the contents of my glass refreshing and level. Perpetually half full.

For instance. Dear Mangoes….what I lost in Sarah Harmer I gained in you.

I used to hate you, mangoes. As a kid, I regularly witnessed my mother’s side of the family descending on a plate of you like a pack of hyenas: drooling, snarling, shoving each other aside, making obscene sounds of enjoyment as they sucked your skins and pits dry…

It was not only the wanton and uncivilized display that put me off; I just didn’t like you. I found your smell overripe and fetid. There was something about you that made me think of mouldy basements and humid unwashed crotch. My sister, mother, aunts and uncles, after realizing that there was one direction from which their precious haul was not under attack, would stop the carnage for a moment and stare at me in disbelief: the vulture who didn’t "get the whole carrion thing”. They would declare that I was “CRAZY!” and “UNNATURAL!” and “no child of mine” and “probably switched at the hospital”, before someone would inevitably declare, through yellow-flesh-strewn teeth, “Oh well - all the more for us”, and they would get gleefully back to it.

But now I love you, mangoes. There’s still something of the ripe and musty crotch about you, but my taste for that must have developed. These days, if anyone dares try to take a piece of mango from me I will make my mama proud and MURDER them. Or at least EAT their FACE. But only if it smells of mango.

Dear Tea Party… I think I understand you. Are you just, like me, afraid to do your taxes? Is that why you hate them so much? I know a guy.

Dear Prince Harry, how old are you anyway, and do you think we should get married? It could be a strange art project, like Lady Gaga.

Dear Current and/or Future Rock Stars. When are you going to fall in love with me and write a me-themed song? Even if it's called "You Bitch You're Such a Bitch", I won't care, it'll be great. Although now I’ve put it out there it’s already too late isn’t it? Like when you're a kid and try to give yourself a cool nickname..."Yeah, you guys can just call me Edge, that's what they all called me at camp". “Nah, we're gonna call you Poopface. How's that?”

Dear Justin Bieber Singing Toothbrush… Why do you exist?
Dear Battery-Operated Candles… You’re even worse. Has human existence outlived its usefulness in every single way? Oh wait, you can’t answer that – YOU’RE A BATTERY OPERATED CANDLE. Excuse me while I kill myself for a minute.

Dear Supposed Grown-ups…Am I the only one who can’t manage to walk by any sign outside a fitness club, or rep cinema or the like exhorting people to "become a member", without giggling like a naughty eight-year-old? “Member”. Tee hee. THE SIGN WANTS YOU TO BE A PENIS. IN CASE YOU DIDN’T GET THAT. 

I’m sure I’m not the only one in this instance, but I’m Justin Trudeau's “friend” on facebook, and while I don’t normally exhibit strong stalker impulses, I just feel like sending him things, or making vaguely inappropriate comments. Nothing gross or sexual, just like, you know, “Heyyyyy… lookin’ good! Dyno-miiiiite” in response to a serious diatribe about Bill C-38. I fight daily urges to send him old disco songs and instructional gardening videos. And this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uoqzettCoI

Dear Other Justin Trudeau Facebook Fans, what do you think?

I’m pretty sure he’d like it.

(As far as my actual political correspondence, I’m too lazy to write the involved, detailed letters to my MPs and MPPs which I’d like to and often even mean to…and who has time to click “like” on all those online petitions…so I’ve scaled things back to a reasonable level, whereby I still get to be involved in the democratic process but with minimal impact on my complicated napping/crossword puzzle schedule: I communicate with my federal representative, prominent NDP member Peggy Nash, through a series of emoticons based on how I’m feeling about the news of the day. If she receives, for instance, a sad face, she need only think back on the past few days, any articles in which she may have been quoted, anything she may have said during Question Period, any releases on her website, and interpret the sad face accordingly. In a good week she’ll get some winks and happy faces.  Sometimes this:  , which might just mean a lot happened that week.

Once I sent her this one , and now some nice fellows from the RCMP visit from time to time. 

Even I don’t know what to make of that last one, but I send it to Peggy all the time anyway. Hey -- do you suppose she’d like the video I just sent to Justin?

Then there’s this one:

…which, on the eve of the Toronto City Council vote on the plastic bag tax, I sent to my councillor, Gord Perks. The next day, reading the morning paper, I learned of my influence on that decision:

“One councillor handed around a flyer from Seattle on that city's bag ban... Another played a mock nature documentary, narrated by no less than Jeremy Irons, on the long life of the ‘majestic plastic bag’. A few speeches followed and then, boom, a vote.
“There was an audible gasp when the motion went through, stating council's determination to prohibit all City of Toronto retail stores from providing customers with single-use plastic carry-out bags, including those advertised as compostable, biodegradable, photo-degradable or similar effective January 1, 2013.” (Globe and Mail)

The gasp, I have it on inside authority, actually occurred when those sitting behind Councillor Perks caught a fleeting glance of my stunning profile picture on his Macbook screen. They didn’t actually hear the voting results; reporters had to fill them in.

So: Dear Anyone who – like me, in fact – questions the all-out ban (or at least the rashness of the sudden decision), I offer my apologies for being so patently irresistible and inadvertently influential. As I always say, with great power comes great…FACE-EATIN’! Mm Mmm YUM!

Sorry.

All this power gives me pause. I need to go to bed and recharge and consider my next move. And all these questions. Oh, Mister T. Sigh…

Yours, in a constant tornado of doubt and confusion – and FUN!

The Tourist