Author: wdfyfe

Before WD called himself a writer, he worked at a number of different jobs from stacking lumber to interior design. He studied English at UBC and creative writing at ASU where one of his teachers, Rita Dove, taught him the importance of the tale. He has written for radio, magazines and newspapers, but never television. He’s published both fiction and nonfiction in Great Britain and the US. He reads French passably and speaks enough Spanish to get from A to B and find the toilet. He has interviewed John Cleese, Peter Ustinov, Margaret Drabble, Kenneth Branagh and enough other famous people to make him a hopeless name dropper. His not-so-secret passions are history and trivia, and he has never lost a game of Trivial Pursuit — although he did come 4th one drunken Quiz Night at the Uxbridge in Notting Hill. He lives on the Pacific Ocean, although, not close enough to see, so he spends his days looking at a computer screen. It’s a wonderful life and he has only one regret: he can’t type faster.

Vive La Différence!

oscar wildeI like women.  This isn’t just heterosexual brag: I actually like the company of women.  I was blessed with the coolest thing in the world — sisters — which, as everybody knows, are moms without the mean streak.  So, I grew up with women.  I understand that the battle for gender equality is more than just who puts the toilet seat where.  However, I also know that women are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable traits that make them totally different from men.  Folks, try as we might to commit gendercide on our society, the two sexes are different. Until we recognize that, there can be no equality.  To that end, here are some inconvenient truths.  (But always remember that stereotyping people is a dangerous practice– especially when it works.)

Male sexuality is a dart game.  A man throws his darts.  They penetrate the board.  He adds up the score, mentally compares it to that of every other man on the planet and spends the rest of his life lying about it.
Female sexuality is a Rubik’s Cube.  There are an infinite number of combinations, but only one or two actually solve the puzzle to anybody’s satisfaction.  Playing with a Rubik’s Cube is both fascinating and frustrating — and addictive.  And, BTW,  just because you own the Cube doesn’t mean you know the correct combination.

Women see an elegant woman dining alone and think there must be a sad story there somewhere.  Men, on the other hand, think, “What the hell! It’s worth a shot.”
Men see a handsome man dining alone and think “Gay.”  Women, on the other hand, think. “Gay, but what the hell! It’s worth a shot.”

Women think weight loss is the first sign of a better life.
Men think weight loss the first sign of a terminal illness.

When women call each other “bitch,” ” skank,” or “whore,” they are angry.
When men call each other “ass wipe,” “crotch rot” or “numb nuts;” these are terms of endearment.

For men, women wearing Victoria’s Secret lingerie is sexy.
For women, an Armani suit is lingerie.

Men believe that PMS  doesn’t actually exist and women are just naturally bitchy in varying degrees.
Women believe that PMS is a monthly pain in the ass that, when properly manipulated, becomes a super-convenient emotional “Get Out Of Jail Free” card.

And finally:

Men think they have no idea what women want.
Meanwhile, women believe they know precisely what men need.
Both of them are wrong.

I Have A Friend

friendI have a friend.  The curious thing is I have no idea who she is.  I’ve never seen her, or spoken to her, or heard her voice.  I think I know her name — Babette — but I’m not sure.  You see, we don’t live in the same country.  We don’t even speak the same language.  Although, she must speak English — I don’t have any Dutch (maybe it’s Dutch?  Google Translator thinks it’s Dutch?)  But in actual fact, I have no facts about my friend whatsoever, except I’m pretty sure she lives on Crete.  The truth is, I only know her because she found me typing away in the digital world and said she liked me.  By chance, I clicked back and discovered I liked her too.  She’s curious.  She sees things many people miss.  She has questions.  Sometimes she has answers.  Yes, sometimes she has an attitude also but she feels life — large and small — and recognizes it for what it is.  And she’s smart and interesting.

So, why, out of the thousands of computer connections I make every day, do I know she’s my friend?  That’s even more curious.

After several weeks of reading and electronically liking each other, she left — disappeared — and unlike all the other random Internet comings and goings, I wondered what happened.  I missed her.  I went looking.  I stood on the edge of the vast cyber wilderness and called her name.  The sound was hollow.  She wasn’t there.  And I felt the loss.

A couple of days ago, my friend showed up again and said she still liked me and explained to her virtual world where she’d been in the real one.  I was glad she was back.  I was excited to see her — happy that my friend had returned.

People seek each other out (we always have.)  It satisfies a need in our psyche and our soul.  These days, the threads that connect us might be as thin as the click of a wireless mouse on a midnight screen half a world away.  But that bond is real.

I don’t know anything about my friend — except I know what she feels.

So, Babette, eat your vegetables, drink some wine, get plenty of sleep, hug the people you love and keep them close.  And if sometime, in the cold, dark soul of 4 o’clock in the morning, you think you’re alone in this world — you’re not — because you are my friend.

When The Mind Wanders!

ideasSome mornings, before the caffeine kicks in, my mind tends to wander.  Here are a few thoughts.  I’ve dressed them up a bit for public consumption and there is a connection here — somewhere — I think.

The F-bomb is not a bomb anymore.  In fact, it’s not even a firecracker.  Once a powerful part of speech, it was used sparingly for shock and emphasis.  Unfortunately, these days it’s so common it’s become nothing more than punctuation.  Suburban moms use it at the spa; the suit and tie boys attempt to play badass with it and high school students wear it on their t-shirts.  However, if you still insist on using it as an adjective, for God’s sake don’t pronounce the “g” — you sound like a middle class moron.  We have different and more powerful naughty words now, and if you want a gasp from the crowd, drop one of those babies into a casual conversation (but be prepared for the Social Media storm — and unemployment.)

Social Media is beyond relentless.  Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and all the rest are like a Pantheon of Greek Gods: ever watching us, picking favourites, interfering, directing our lives, soothing and punishing at their whim.  And we, mere mortals — we — are Sisyphus endlessly toiling to satisfy their will.  It’s like waking up every morning and a couple of thousand people climb out of bed with you, put their shoulders to a boulder and before you know it, there’s this massive cocktail party going on as we all struggle up the hill.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is not a very good movie.  Everybody thinks it is because the first time we saw it we were young and awkward and full of hormones.  Bueller is that confident teen we all wanted to become.  Watch it as an adult and you realize Bueller is actually the asshole kid that always got away with murder.  He’s the one who conned the teacher into extra time on the project that you just pulled an all-nighter for.  The guy who got the girl he didn’t deserve — notably Mia Sara.  And he probably grew up to be a ratbag lawyer (no offence ratbags.)  Incidentally, Matthew Broderick was 24 when he played Bueller and his buddy Cameron, Alan Ruck, was 30.

It’s totally unbelievable how old men always get the hot chicks in the movies.  Check out Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment.  Connery is probably one of the sexiest men who ever walked the planet, but by the time Zeta-Jones came calling, he was nearly 70 and she was barely 29.  Sex is a powerful motivator but there isn’t enough Viagra in the world to make that hookup palatable.

Huffington Post is going to conquer the world.  They’re re-running Randolph Hearst’s winning combination of bad news, snake oil, self-help and boobs and it’s working beyond their wildest expectations.  Not since Hugh Hefner dressed nudity up in a sports jacket and cool-J jazz has a media outlet made such an effective use of soft-core smut.  Try typing NSFW into Huffington Search and you’ll get over 150,000 items in less than a second.  And that doesn’t include all the salacious photos of Paulina Gretzky, Jennifer Lopez, one or more Kardashians, or any other available female.  Then to balance it out, Huffington features a phalanx of bloggers decrying sexism as if nobody ever heard of it before.

One more cup of coffee while I check out Facebook real quick.