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.

This Generation and the Light at the End of the Tunnel

We do not live in a sophisticated age.  It’s a shame, but it’s true.  Our intellectual prowess is centred on finding the E! News app for our Smart Phones.  Our curiosity is confined to Kim Kardashian’s matrimonial motivation.  Our music is repetitive; our films derivative and our artistic vision still focused on Paris Hilton’s bum (although we’re all getting a little jaded with that.)  In comparison to most of recorded history, our time is, like the Dark Ages, distinctly low-end.  This is no sin, by the way.  As just about everyone has cliched (about almost everything) in the last six months: “It is what it is.”  So I come not to bury our time, but to praise it.

A Mogul like luxury covers our brutish world.  It disguises the crude nature of life in the 21st century.  We believe, therefore, that living vertically — with running water — makes us culturally superior to those in history who didn’t.  However, as convenient as peeing inside on a cold winter night might be, it has nothing to do with our contribution to the continuity of the human experience.  Simply put, we’re barbarians with indoor plumbing.

Just look around.  Ours is an angry world, thinly veiled by repeated assurances of tolerance.  Our conversations are so laced with profanity they’re incomprehensible.  We constantly call each other names — off-handedly.  “Bitch” is an all-purpose descriptive, eagerly applied across the genders, and it’s the mildest of our nominals.  Anatomical insults are mandatory in any conversation, just to demonstrate our total disregard not only for the opposing opinion but also for anyone who espouses it.  In the same vein, we conduct our disagreements with loud not logic, shouting like Visigoths to show the passion of our principles.

Sexually, we behave like parochial tribesman, mistaking smut for sophistication.  We hang on every slyly exposed curve of the female body, giggling like villagers at everything from a skirt lifted on an unexpected breeze to heavy-handed wardrobe malfunctions.  To prove our sophomoric enlightenment, we’ve made female breasts de rigueur in visual entertainment (everything from commercials to sitcoms.)  Likewise, gratuitous nudity is a Cable TV staple and amateur porn a celebrity necessity.   We’ve turned sensual privacy into random exhibitionism, based on a smirking philosophy dedicated to underhanded titillation.  Sex is so overvalued in our society it’s no wonder young people are too confused to do it properly.

Meanwhile, we’ve undervalued education.  Scholars are labeled nerds or geeks or worse.  They have taken such a back seat to the beautiful among us that recently the number one career ambition for girls in North America was Reality TV star.  The Kardashians might be smart business women (which I think they are, BTW) but obviously that isn’t the role model message they’re providing.  It’s common knowledge that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg all dropped out of school, a fact pointed to with pride by every never graduated student with visions of grandeur.

And what is our vision of grandeur?  Indolence!  Couch potato-ing, social networking and gaming are now the world’s fastest growing activities.  More people play Farmville™ than actually farm.  More people are creating urban utopias in Sim City’s™ many incarnations than are at work on real urban problems.  And more people are engaging in criminal activity in Grand Theft Auto™ than are employed in law enforcement.  Our collective energies are being harvested by computers at an alarming rate.

This will be our legacy to the continuum of civilization.  As we persist in our relentless pursuit of leisure, we will demand more and better machines to do it with.  And not just handheld gadgets to take pictures or play games, but machines that will keep us alive, drive for us, cut our toenails and deliver pizza.  This is no sci-fi dystopian nightmare but a genuine and optimistic glimpse of our future.

History shows that the insatiable craving for spices, treasure and slaves drove the Europeans out of the parochial ignorance of the Medieval Age.  Their exploration and exploitation of the world funded the flowering of the Renaissance.  So, too, will our insatiable need for amusement drive our technicians to digital places as yet unimagined.  The playthings they produce will fund future and wiser generations.  When history views us (and it will) our monuments won’t be pyramids and cathedrals erected to the glory of our gods.  They will be miniature screens and gigantic TVs, lost in the dusts of obsolescence.  And when history judges us (and it will) we won’t be guilty of squandering our resources on smutty celebrities.  We will be praised for driving a mechanical revolution with our laziness.

We might be dumb, inarticulate and rude, but we’ve gotten used to sitting on our ass; now, we demand it.

A Penny Saved is a Penny Lost

Last week, in a fit of uncontrollable common sense, the Canadian government decided to quit minting the penny.  According to the Finance Minister, it was costing Canadians 1.6 cents to produce the one cent coin.  A quick run to the calculator puts the annual loss at approximately eleven million dollars — which isn’t chump change, even to a national government.  So, as of sometime next autumn, Canadians will no longer get pennies from heaven, buy penny loafers or play the Beatles song “Penny Lane.”  They will have to give a nickel for your thoughts and keep their two cents’ worth to themselves.  Okay, I’ll stop now.  Actually that’s about the extent of the Canadian reaction to the penny’s demise.  Nobody cares.  After all, how worked up can you get when you have the world’s most uber-stable banking system and you call your national currency the Loonie?

Personally, I’ve always liked the penny.  Slowly accumulating in the jars of my youth, it was my ticket to Batman comics and small brown bags of candy.  That was back in the days when coins were currency, and paper dollars were reserved for birthday cards.  However, noble as it once was, the penny has become a pariah: a horrid little coin that nobody wants.  It adds weight but no value to our pockets; it cheapens the charitable donation and provides the most striking of insults to the restaurant tip.  It is money in name only; left unguarded in “Take a penny: leave a penny” retail counter dishes.

Of course, the penny itself doesn’t matter.  Nobody is going to miss it.  There will be no indignant parents tearing up over their child’s lost piggy bank experience nor angry university blowhorns demanding the government reinstate the penny for the poor.  The penny will fade out of time and memory, just like the groat and the farthing before it.

However, the larger question is not confined to pennies but to currency itself.  How deep is our commitment to money in its tangible form?  There are those who argue that our world has now transcended money, and cash actually causes more trouble than it’s worth.  As long as there are old guys like me around, those folks might be jumping the gun a bit.  However, even I have the feeling they’re right, and we’re less than a generation away from a cashless society.

These days, the only people who use cash on a regular basis are dinosaurs, drug dealers and the Salvation Army.  Obviously, the Sally Ann and the Los Zetas cartel do it out of necessity.  However, the rest of us, who don’t need to look like Tony Soprano every time it’s our turn to buy lunch, rely on dots of data emanating from our credit cards.  It’s quick: it’s easy, and, most importantly, it’s safe.  Meanwhile, back at the ranchero, paying our household bills online is becoming the norm.  Internet commerce will soon outstrip bricks and mortar shopping in cash flow, even though there’s no cash involved.  And only the Tech-gods know what kind of purchasing power our Smart phones are going to have by this time next year.   Folding money is losing its commercial dominance.  In fact, if you want some serious grins, go try booking a hotel room with cash or renting a car or even paying your phone bill.  Money still talks in the 21st century, but it’s getting a little hoarse.

The fact of the matter is it makes just as much sense to base our net worth on binary code as it does shiny metal or coloured paper.  Money, whether it’s gold ingots, sweaty twenties or American Express, is a question of faith.  It’s not the object itself; it’s its purchasing power.  We lost faith in the penny many years ago when it quit buying us things.  There are no more penny arcades, no penny candy and “penny ante” is an expression of derision.   That’s why the penny now lives in the fuzzy back corners of our office desk drawers (with the sprung paperclips and the bent pushpin) orphaned by the speed of a modern society which no longer has time to pinch its pennies.

Dogs are from Heaven; Cats are from Hell

As I’ve said many times, I’m totally pissed that I’m never going to be able to view my time as history.  You see, in the future, we’re going to know so much more about ourselves and our world that it’ll be as if somebody turned on the lights.  I’m not just talking about technology, either, or science.  I’m talking about real discoveries.  Things like why there are always at least three lines at the DMV but the one we want is always the longest.  Or why all the really cool people are always at another table at a wedding and we’re stuck with somebody’s deadbeat aunt.  Or how come we can never think of that witty retort until after the jerk with the attitude has left the building?  This is important information, and eventually, we’re going to know this stuff.

For example, we’re going to understand why cats hate us and dogs are the perfect pet.  I’ve got nothing against cats, BTW.  One of my favourite pets ever was a cat: Diega, who’s now in the witness protection program.  (It’s a long story for another time.)  But, let’s be honest: cats are adorable on Facebook, but try living with one.  Even dedicated cat people have some bloodcurdling tales to tell – mutilated mice in the bathtub during the in-law sleepover; slimy hairballs, coughed up on the boss’s cashmere lap; and deep childhood scars from “kitty has pins in her toes.”  Sound familiar?  Dog people never talk like that.  You never hear horror stories from a dog person.  And no complaints.  They never say, “I don’t know what I’m going to do.  Fluffy just won’t eat anything but imported French dog food.”  Dogs will eat anything.  They eat bones and crap that nobody else can even look at.  A dog’s motto is “Go to the bowl: good things happen.”  Meanwhile, a cat will turn up its nose at free range $25.00 per lb hand ground salmon.  Then, not an hour later, it will go out in the alley and kill a totally scabby, wantonly diseased sewer rat and drag it home as snacks for the whole family.

But that’s the difference between dogs and cats, isn’t it?  Dogs are straight-ahead, and cats are devious.  If a dog’s angry with you, he chews your shoes.  If a cat’s mad at you, you’re in trouble.  A cat will wait for two or three weeks — until the night before you have the presentation of your life happening at 8:00 a.m. sharp.  That’s the night — all night — that it’ll have outrageous screaming sex, right outside your bedroom window, show up five minutes before you have to leave and shed all over your perfect black dress.  That’s not cute; that’s malicious!

Personally, I think cats hate us because they missed the first 50,000 years on the domestication train.

Way back, at the dawn of evolution, when humans ran in packs, dogs did, too.  We must have encountered each other somewhere along the trail.  Humans probably thought, “Those guys aren’t very good to eat, and they’re really difficult to kill.  So let’s leave them alone unless we’re desperate.”  Dogs probably thought, “Those guys have puny little teeth, no fur, and they can’t hear or smell worth a damn.  There’s no way they’re gonna survive.  Let’s hang around until they can’t keep up with their pack, and eat ‘em.”  Over the course of hundreds of generations, the two species got used to each other.  Humans discovered that dogs were really good at finding food.  All hunters had to do was follow the pack to get to the good stuff.  Dogs, on the other hand, figured out that even though humans were pretty much useless, in close, they were kick-ass dangerous and could bring down the big boys like mastodons.  All a smart dog had to do was bark and snarl and keep the prey at bay until the humans got in there with their pointy sticks.  Then it was Happy Meals™ for everybody.  Plus humans had fire, which, thumbless, a dog could never master.  But fire, under control was just the ticket for a frosty canine on a cold winter night.  Meanwhile, as dogs crept closer to the fire, humans found that, after dark, with their superior smell and hearing, dogs were the perfect burglar alarm.  It made sense to let them cuddle up to the warmth if they wanted to.  Over the course of a couple of hundred more generations, humans and dogs became inseparable.  They lived together, hunted together, their kids played together and they all ate the same food.  So it was only natural dogs and humans became BFFs*.

Cats, Johnny-come-latelies to domestication, have never really gotten over the special relationship humans have with dogs.  They see it as an insult to their self-diagnosed superiority.  Remember, cats didn’t start hanging with humans until the Egyptians turned them into gods for killing rats.  That little theological faux pas went directly to the feline ego and has been stuck there ever since.  These days, cats still think they’re gods almighty, and being cats, they want the lion’s share of human attention.  When they don’t get it, they go looking for revenge.

Of course, this is only my theory — which I’m never going to be able to prove.  Unfortunately, I’m not going to be around when humans and dogs develop two-way communication and we humans can finally just ask dogs, “What the hell’s wrong with cats, anyway?

*(Yes, I know, way back when, humans ate dogs.  In some parts of the world they still do.  But we’re talking millions of people over thousands of years, and dogs are intelligent enough to overlook the occasional act of barbarism.)