ARGUE BY NUMBERS

Can’t imagine why I ever took English in university.  I don’t use more than ten phrases now:

“Stop that.”

“Not now.”

“No.”

“Say please.”

“Go to sleep.”

“Ask your father.”

“Pick that up.”

“Drink your milk.”

“Don’t hit your sister.”

and

“Who forgot to flush?”

In particularly lucid moments, I have been known to utter:  “This place is a loony bin,” and “That’s it – I’m joining a convent.”

Janet is visiting with her toddler who is learning to talk.  I am critical.

“You’re making a big mistake, Janet.”

She looks worried.  “He only puts two words together, and he’s nearly eighteen months.  You think I should take him to a speech therapist?”

“Heck no.  I mean encouraging him to talk.”

Let’s face it.  We spend the first twelve months coaxing our kids to talk, and the next twenty years telling them to shut up.

“But I want him to read,” she explains.  “They say early talkers are early readers.”

“I used to read once, “ I say dreamily.  “Once I read Milton.  Now I read Munsch.  And cereal boxes with free prizes.”

She doesn’t look convinced.

“Do yourself a favor, Janet.  Wait until he’s eighteen.  What do you want him to talk for?  Once he talks, he’ll argue!”

I know all about it.  I have two daughters.  We spend every morning reworking arguments.  Practicing for perfection.  This is our quality time.

All my arguments with Natalie seem to conform to a predestined format.  Thinking there might be a way to circumvent such tiresome repetition, I have devised a shortcut.  Argue by Numbers.

Conversation should go something like this:

“Why can’t I No. 37?”

“Because Nos. 3, 5, and 17.”

She answers with a classic 34.  “Everybody else’s mother lets them…”

I counter with No. 51.  “Go ask your father.”

He abstains with a gutless 22.

I get angry.  “That’s it – I’m joining a convent.”

“Too late by about twenty years,” he smirks.

PAY NOW - DIE LATER

I’ve been getting an awful lot of sales calls from funeral parlors lately, and frankly, it’s starting to worry me.  Granted I’ve been missing a little sleep, but do I really look like I’m ready for the harp and wings?  (Okay, fire and pokers.)

What’s happening out there in the Underworld these days?  Who came up with this PAY NOW-DIE LATER thing?

I’m quite familiar with payment plans.  In fact, you could call me hell on wheels with a credit card.  I have perfected the fast draw.  And years of experience have taught me that you can buy a perfectly good dress now, and not have to pay for it until it is out of style.

But I have to question this whole prepaid funeral thing.  Just why the heck should I pay in advance for something I don’t even want?

All I know is, someone has done a killer <sic> marketing job.  And it’s only the beginning.  Next thing you know, they’ll be doing your colors beforehand.  Or – wait for it – for those who want to look their best on the way out – liposuction! “Let yourself go a bit over the years?  Pre-purchase our after-market body-shaping plan, and let us take a little off the sides…or maybe add a little here and here…”

The fashion industry won’t be far behind.  I can see a side-business dealing in up to the minute stylish clothes that make you look good lying down.

In fact, they could have a phone-in service for people who want to switch their final fashion choice with the season.  Perhaps little tear-off strips attached to your license where you can pencil in your latest choice:  “Please bury me in the royal blue strapless, first drawer on the left…”

And it doesn’t end there.  One telephone salesperson wanted to know if I preferred a forest or lake view, sunny or shady final resting spot.  I can see it now: “The Sun Lover’s Plan – Finally, all the sun you want with no fear of UV”

For those men who want their wives to visit often, they’ll come up with special burial sites next door to major shopping malls.  And certain women I know may elect to be ‘located’ around the seventeenth tee.

There’s a lot of potential still left in this industry, and I’ve come up my own sales gimmick.  You only pay a small deposit for your ‘deposit,’ and you don’t claim it until you need it.  It’s called the “Layaway” plan.

Selling Out to Hollywood

I read one of those self-help books the other day, and I’m beginning to realize why I’m not getting very rich.  (For one thing, I’m not writing self-help books.)  It is patently obvious that nobody is going to get wealthy writing humour for newspapers unless they roll up the paper and whack somebody over the head with it during the course of a bank robbery.

So I’ve decided to switch media here and become a screenwriter.  I’m a natural.  I can sit in those funny collapsible canvas chairs just as well as the next guy, and besides, I know hundreds of unbelievable plots; I follow BC politics.

So here goes: for my first screamplay <sic> I’m going to do something made for TV; specifically one of those romance-suspense-action-thriller-northern-southern-civil war epic-type things, maybe a miniseries.  It would have everything – sex, violence, sex, betrayal, sex, revenge, sex - and maybe even some dialogue.  It would star a ravishing but thoroughly spoiled female lead, maybe called Sapphire.  Here’s a preview:

Sapphire flings herself up the sweeping staircase, catching bottom of skirt on knob of banister.

Sapphire (yanking at fabric):  Go away, Rot!  Just go away!

Rot:  I’m going, I’m going.  But one last thing, Sapphire honey, I’ve got to know.  How do you manage to go to the bathroom with that bloody hoola- hoop attached to your skirt?

Sapphire (rolling downstairs on her side):  Don’t go, Rot!  Please don’t go.

Rot (doffing hat):  Frankly Sapphire, I don’t give a hoot.

(From outside, several barn owls hoot.)

I predict a blockbuster.  But just in case, I have a second one planned.  It’s a 1960s historical spy flick, based on the true-to-life adventures of very bad people who might possibly be Russian.

First Spy (possibly named Boris):  Gee comrade, do you theenk perhaps we are raising peeples suspicions speeeking English with Russian accent?

Second Spy (also named Boris):  Especially seence it is very BAD Russian accent, comrade?”

Okay, so it needs a bit of work, and maybe some more sex.  I’m thinking of calling it Czech-mate. And if we bring it forward to modern times, the possibilities are endless.  What about a ‘Spy of the Month’ reality series?  Boris could live in an LA frat house with nine other comrades named Boris, and the survivor…

Or I could go back to writing for newspapers.

Blame it on Barbie

Here it is, the fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Barbie, and I’m uncomfortable.  Coincidentally, it is also the fiftieth anniversary of me, and I’ve got to ask: is Barbie having more fun than I am?  Am I missing something by not being blond?

Okay, okay, so this smacks of insecurity.  But who wouldn’t be insecure, being brunette these days?  Did the Prince go looking for a dark-haired Sleeping Beauty?  Did Charming find a gorgeous black-haired scullery maid at the end of the glass slipper?  Face it, scullery types:  if you’re brunette, you’re going to have to find your own prince.

I blame it on Barbie.  Three quatrillion blond Barbies with bunny bodies since March, 1959, and no brunette bimbo in sight.   It’s enough to make you go for botox.

So what is it about us dark-haired babes?  Why are we constantly being portrayed as witches?  Not just in Salem – even today.  In Westerns, you can tell the bad guys from the good guys by their black hats.  In Disney, you can tell the bad girls by their black hair.

Witchy women, evil women – all of them brunette, you can bet your peroxide.  It’s a fact; a witchy brunette nearly butchered 101 darling Dalmations for their spotted fur.  And in the Wizard of OZ, Glinda the good witch was blondie-blond.  The nasty old Witch of the West was as brunette as they come. 

That’s us – nasty.  And no wonder, the way we are always portrayed.

What can you expect, when the best role model we-of-dark-tresses had as young kids was Natasha Fatale (“Whatever you think, Darlink”) of Boris and Natasha fame on Bullwinkle.  Good Ole Bullwinkle.  I used to imagine he had a raging animal crush on the sexy, dark-haired Natasha. – and who wouldn’t?  Sexy and savvy.  She was my role model.  It’s taken me years to kick the “Darlink” habit and start pronouncing Gs.

Things got better when Morticia came along.  Now, she was a classy role model.  Granted, my parents got a bit upset when I dyed my confirmation dress black and started writing poetry about graveyards. But more than one male (prince or frog) has mentioned to me that Caroline Jones was the object of many adolescent daydreams.

Well, at least they call us sexy.  In fact, “sultry” was the word Commander Riker used in a Next Generation episode on the holodeck.  “Give me sultry,” he said, and when a blonde vision popped up in the New Orleans jazz bar, “No, she’s got to be brunette.”  Thank you, Commander Riker!

So far we can chalk up nasty, sexy, sultry and bad.  Clever but cruel.  Usually foreign and sneaky.  Throw in green eyes, and you’ve got the classic Evil Woman.

Evil, evil, evil.

So be a little careful before you start to criticize this column.  I might put a hex on you.

'ROWENA THROUGH THE WALL' release date June 2011!

"A hot, hilarious romantic fantasy that enthralls you from the first line.  If you enjoy Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, you'll adore Rowena and her riotous romps in an alternate world..."
Midwest Book Review


If you like Alternate World Fantasy with a bit of heat, don't miss
ROWENA THROUGH THE WALL,
coming out June 2011, from Imajin books.  Details coming soon...

When Rowena falls through her classroom wall and lands in an alternate world, she doesn't count on being kidnapped - not once, but twice, dammit - and the stakes get higher as the men get hotter.  Unwanted husbands keep piling up, bu that doesn't stop her from falling for the wrong brother.  Not only that, she has eighteen year old Kendra to look out for, and a war to prevent.  Good thing she has the ability to go back through the wall.  Or does she?

CHARIOTS OF THE GUYS

One of the things I hate even more than high school reunions is buying a new car.  It’s not that I don’t like cars.  I am really quite fond of them. Especially in winter.  What I don’t like is the buying process.  There is something inherently different about men and women when they go looking at cars in a dealership.  You even have to wonder if they are members of the same species.

Husband (reverently caressing cold metal with both hands):  “Look at this beauty!  4.0 litre, five speed, Recarro seats, mag wheels, racing suspension, electric moon roof, power mulcher, moog synthesizer, ballistic missile launcher…”

Wife:  “It’s red.  I hate red.”

This basic lack of communication goes right back to the way men and women look at ‘things’.  Amazingly, they can be looking at the same thing and see something entirely different.  Men, for instance, will look at a car as if it something beyond a box with four wheels that moves forward and backward.  To them, it is not merely a car.  Nope.  It is the culmination of adolescent dreams, the elusive mistress of middle age, the Ben Hur of all chariots.  Me, I’m more concerned with whether it will get me to the shopping mall and back without falling into a million pieces.  Which is why we had this misunderstanding at the dealership last weekend:

Me:  “This car has two seats.”

He (enthusiastically checking the interior):  “Yes!  Aren’t they great?”

Me:  “I’m not denying they are very nice seats.  Beautiful, in fact.  But there are four of us.”

He (looking irritably at the kids):  “They’re young.  They’ve got legs.”

Kid One:  “But Dad…where are we all going to sit when we have to drive someplace?”

He (aghast):  Good Gad, you’re not actually expect me to drive this car on the road?  The paint might get chipped.”

Then he did what all men have been programmed to do from the beginning of time.  He kicked the tire.  I’ve often wondered about this practice.  And I expect Ben Hur’s wife pondered the very same thing two thousand year ago, when good ole Ben whacked the wheel of that Roman chariot with his leather sandal.  Exactly what purpose does this serve?

I’ll never understand it.  But as far as I can see, all of this started about forty thousand years ago when Urgh the slightly-brighter-than-normal Neanderthal invented the wheel.  Irma, his loyal wife, stood on the sidelines shaking her head, while Urgh enthusiastically painted on racing stripes.  “Argh urf org grunt bfff bfff,” she said (loosely translated to, “Oh dinosaur droppings, not another blasted toy.  When will this ever end.”)  And of course, it hasn’t yet.

Bad Girl Explains...

Way back in the 90s when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I had a regular syndicated bimonthly humour column.  While copies of my columns appeared in The Toronto Star and other newspapers, if you aren't a dinosaur, you probably haven't seen them.  This blog will draw from the best of these columns, as well as new material.  And about the name....back in the day, I was known as "Bad Girl" and "Funny Girl."  Now, it's more like "Funny Broad."  And the broad is no joke.