Category: Humour

5 Reasons Why I Love Autumn

autumnI’ve already said I hate summer, so chances are good I’m on Satan’s shortlist of souls he’d like to meet and greet — permanently.  Hating summer is like seeing an ugly baby and then actually saying it : everybody kinda agrees with you, but nobody’s on your side.  However, as the man said, “If you’re going to Hell anyway, you might as well just keep driving.”  So summer might not actually suck — all the time — but here are 5 reasons why I prefer autumn.

Autumn is active — When summer is over, you can actually do things again — like walking down the street or standing waiting for a bus — without feeling like a tributary of the Amazon is flowing down the back of your shirt and into your underwear.

Autumn is cozy — There is nothing better than a fuzzy sweater on a chilly evening.  And is there anybody in this world who doesn’t like fat, warm socks?  These are two of life’s priceless little pleasures that release tons of endorphins.  Unfortunately, they’re not available to us when the temperature is 36 degrees in the shade — and there ain’t no shade.  It is my considered opinion that the lack of fuzzy sweaters and fat socks is why people in desert countries are so grouchy all the time.

Autumn moves — Summer doesn’t move.  It just lies on you like a Hot Fudge Quilt.  Autumn, on the other hand, lives on the breeze.  You can taste it in the early morning, fresh as that first cup of coffee.  It plays in the trees like Peter Pan having a giggle.  It swirls and twirls tiny tornados of leaves at your feet, teases your hair like a casual lover and sends you to bed with an extra blanket tucked up to your chin.

Autumn is made of soup — There is only so much cremated cow a man can stand.  Autumn is the time for great cauldrons of things that sound and bubble and fill up the house with steam and smell and plenty; served in great bowls with bread or in a thick mug, balanced just right between you and your book.

And finally:

Autumn is serious — When the temperature starts to drop in the Northern Hemisphere, we all have this weird cultural memory that “Winter is Coming” and it’s going to try to kill us.  We don’t lay in stocks of food and firewood anymore, but we do subconsciously put away the toys of summer and assemble our tools.  That’s why God made “Back to School” sales.

It might still be three weeks until Autumn is “officially” here, but Mother Nature and I always start early — right after Labour Day.  And I can see it from here.

5 Reasons I Hate Summer

summer heatI woke up this morning and, for the first time, I could see autumn from here.  What a relief!  It’s not that I hate summer; it’s just that summer is so-o-o-o-o long and sweaty and inconvenient and bug-infested and sticky and annoying and … I think I’ve made my point.

Here are five reasons I’m happy to finally see autumn coming.

Summer is noisy — Everybody and his sister thinks they have a moral obligation to share their taste in music with the universe.  From the middle of May to Labour Day, Earth’s atmosphere is wall-to-wall stereos, blasting away like the Seven Trumpets of the Apocalypse.  It’s a wonder other planets don’t get pissed off and call the cops.

Summers are underdressed — It’s as if the entire world went to the beach and never came home.  I’m no prude, but men, shirts (even t-shirts) should have sleeves, not gaping holes; dirty feet are not fetish material, especially in a bank or a restaurant; and ladies, boobs and bum cheeks should go on the inside of whatever you’re wearing — that’s why you’re wearing it.

It’s hot — Mother Nature goes nuts every the summer — that’s her job — but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

The food sucks — I like BBQ as well as the next man, but I don’t believe 30,000 years of human development should be thrown away every time the sun shines.  We’re not Neanderthals, and contemporary life should feature better cuisine than a glob of potato salad, a lukewarm beer and a slab of overcooked meat snatched from a backyard crematorium by somebody wearing a “Kiss the Cook” apron.

And finally:

Nobody’s around — Every time you want to do something important, the person you need to sign the form, stamp the approval or initial the receipt is always on vacation.  There is nothing more frustrating than standing there, up to your elbows in some bureaucrat’s idea of paperwork Nirvana, while the one person you simply have to have to complete the process is at the beach, dancing half-naked around the fire while her drunken secretary is busy flipping the burgers — all to the tune of “In The Summertime” by Mungo Jerry.

 

The 4 Rules Of Sex In The Movies

sex in filmSex is to the movie industry what Jean Paul Sartre is to the forward pass in American football: even though they exist simultaneously, they literally have no connection to each other.

Back in the day, sex in the movies was a heated glance, a passionate kiss (sometimes two) and then a slow fade-out or a quick change of camera angle.  It wasn’t reality, but everybody could kinda, sorta figure out what was going on.  Somewhere in the 60s, things changed and movie makers started slipping a few bums or a breast or two into their films — the cliché “T and A” of all good advertising campaigns.  Audiences liked it, critics applauded, and when the censors didn’t notice, film makers got bolder — and even bolder.  By the 1980s, pretty much every movie except Rambo had an obligatory soft-core porno scene, and after that, the studios simply went nuts.  Soon there was so much skin on the silver screen that it looked as if hard-core porn and mainstream movies were eventually just going to meet somewhere in the middle.  Luckily, before it got to “Anthony Hardwood Meets Meg Ryan,” the studios came to their senses.  Now the industry is governed by a strict set of rules which has returned sex in movies to its roots: it isn’t reality, but everybody can kinda, sorta figure it out.

Here are the basic rules:

Foreplay — These scenes begin with a heated glance, normally in a hallway, a doorway or an abandoned somewhere else.  This is followed by a ferrrrrocious grappling, where the two characters clinch and chew on each other like a couple of starving wolverines.  Snarling and slobbering, they tear at their clothes, smash each other into walls, stumble over furniture and generally wrestle each other to the ground, the floor, a desk, a kitchen table, a sofa, the hood of a conveniently placed ’57 Chevy, or sometimes even a bed.  Vertical to horizontal takes anywhere from 45 to 90 seconds, the director calls cut and everybody checks for bruises.

Underwear* — The amount of underwear a female movie character gets is directly proportional to the fame of the actress portraying her.  The more famous the actress, the more likely it is she’ll get a bra, keep it on, and even have sex without removing it.  Lesser-known actresses spend a lot more time topless and sometimes don’t even get panties.  A perfect example of this is Emilia Clark.  In the beginning, when she and Game of Thrones were relatively unknown, Clark’s character Daenerys Targaryen spent most of Season One wearing nothing more than an injured air and a ribbon in her hair.  However, after the Emmys started coming in, Clark’s character got to put her clothes back on, and for the last 5 seasons, has hardly undone a button.
*This rule does not apply to male characters who are allowed to take off their shirts anytime but must — miraculously — have sex without ever removing their underwear.

The Rule of Twelve — Every sex scene in contemporary movies has to contain these twelve mandatory elements: closed eyes, sweat, an arched back (women only) a standing thrust, a sitting bounce, one haunch-to-paunch clinch, a clawing hand, a gripping hand, a half-bum silhouette, at least one soundless moan, two barrel rolls and three nose-to-nose close-ups.  Whatever’s left is up to the director’s discretion.

And finally:

The Rule of One — One (and ONLY one) sex scene is allowed per movie– whether it’s Anne of Green Gables or The Marquis de Sade’s Summer Vacation.  The general consensus is that one scene is art, two is indefensible as art, and three is … well, you might just as well be doing porn.

At the end of the day, everyone in the film industry will tell you that sex is used for realism and to advance or enhance the storyline.  But, think about it.  How much better would Gone With The Wind have been if we’d seen Rhett and Scarlett banging away on the ruined steps of Tara?  Would our appreciation of Casablanca been enhanced by a ménage a trois between Rick, Ilsa and Victor Laszlo?  What about Citizen Kane?  Or The Wizard of Oz?  Or a little man-on-man grab-ass in The Shawshank Redemption?  No, no, no, no and no!  The truth is sex in the movies is just a gratuitous way to put bums into theatre seats — full stop.