For the Love of Dog

wo weekends ago, my husband and I packed up our girls and headed to Toronto for Woofstock, North America's premier dog festival. Held annually in the St. Lawrence Market District, Woofstock is the dog party to end all dog parties. Big dogs, small dogs, young dogs, old dogs, dogs in sunglasses, dogs in wheelchairs, dogs in booties, dogs in strollers (including ours), and more. It is the one place where I can take my two little Bichons and feel perfectly, perfectly normal. The fact that they are decked out in dresses and bows and have a stroller for when they get tired is not unusual in the least.

There are some people, to be sure, who abhor the kind of extravagance we lavish on our pets. My dogs, for example, sleep in a more luxurious bed than at least half of the world's population. But they're content to conk out anywhere. Organic kibble? Wet food fit for human consumption? Sure, they snarf it up, but they also snarf up feces and dead birds. We like to pretend we pamper our pets for their sakes, but really, we do it for us. We've made our pets into surrogate everything: children, significant others, confidants. We aren't their masters anymore: pets have officially become equal members of our families.

It's no wonder why we've grown so attached to our pets in recent years: in a society that defines its people by occupation, dogs reassure us against the falsehood of such identification. When I come home from work, the sight of my two little Bichons wiggling in the window with glee, open-mouthed and bright-eyed, never fails to induce a smile. They are constant reminders that genuine happiness is not achieved as a constant state of being, but comes to us rather as a glimpse, here and there, into another level of being, a world held in place by the interconnection of souls. Your dog doesn't care if you go out to sweep the streets or to manage an office. The growing pile of rejection letters on the kitchen table doesn't make one bit of difference to her.

"So, what do you do?" It's the first line of small talk. Our identities are so wrapped up with our occupations that we come to define ourselves based on what we do for a living. So what does that make you when you're out of a job? The implications weren't as pressing when most people were getting up and going to the office each morning. But in this time of economic crisis and unprecedented unemployment rates, we have been forced to reexamine our very definitions of identity.

Unlike our other associates, dogs never defined us based on what we did when we left the house. When you walk through that door at the end of the day, your dog's reaction, unlike your spouse's, doesn't change no matter if you got a major promotion or got a pink slip. Your dog loves you simply because you're there. A new puppy will piss on your carpet whether you're a mailman or a statesman.

A dog never shouts at you. He does not scold for your mistakes. A dog will never betray your trust or your friendship. Open your closet door to show your dog all the skeletons you hide, he'll just want to chew the bones. Dogs remind us that we're only human, they show us the joys of being human. When our beloved companion passes on, we are forced to confront our own mortality; we are reminded that we, too, will perish someday, that we will all become food for worms. How beautiful, the tremors of their muscles as they sleep.

Simple Joys

I was in a foul mood the other night. No particular reason, just suffering a bout of low self-esteem and a general I-can't-do-anything-right-ness. The weather was nice so my husband and I took our two girls out for a walk. (The girls are Bichons, by the way, not humans. On the next block, we passed a neighbour we had not seen since last summer. This neighbour has Bassett Hounds, and so our dogs would always greet each other whenever they met. The lady let me know that her female had recently had a litter and asked me if I wanted to come inside and see them.

Oh. My. Dog.

If you have never seen a litter of little puppies, you must add it immediately to your bucket list. If such a sight does not appeal to you, you have no soul and should go on a spiritual retreat as soon as possible so that you can obtain one.

Eight tiny five-week-old Bassetts squirmed in a large fenced-off area of the basement. They climbed on top of each other to get to their new visitor, who was melting into a glob of mush as she crouched in front of the low gate. They clambered into one big pile of bellies and ears and noses. Every puppy was wet because every other puppy had either drooled on it or gummed it. Some of them fell over onto their backs in the ensuing crush, exposing me to the fact that puppies are indeed 75% tummy.

In a time when too many people look for answers in a pill or a bottle, it's easy to forget that natural remedies are often far more potent. The perfect cure for a lousy day? Puppy therapy. Guaranteed to work every time. Side effects may include urine spots on the carpets, chewed-up shoes, overturned garbage bins, holes in the sofa, stolen sandwiches, vomit in the backseat of the car, and terrified house cats. Puppy therapy is not be recommended for people with new carpeting, expensive shoes, or white floors. Do not leave your puppy unattended around your collection of rare books. If you do leave your puppy unattended around your collection of rare books, contact your insurance agent immediately.

Prop 8: the American Dream

Believe me, I understand why some people are so vehemently opposed to the idea of two people of the same sex getting married. Homosexuality is a direct threat to the stability of our society.

Look at what we're up against, America: we've got a black man in the nation's highest office. We almost elected a woman to be our presidential candidate. More fathers are assuming the stay-at-home role. Homosexuality is becoming mainstream. We've got to fight this demon that is gay marriage before the patriarchal power structure of American society is turned on its head!

A lesbian is a huge threat to a male determined to retain his concentrated power. There is no room for the male in this relationship: he cannot define a lesbian in opposition with himself because she takes control of her identity. Whereas heterosexual women are defined by their relationships to men, lesbians cannot be defined this way because they reject such a relationship. Surely you can see how detrimental this is to a patriarchal power structure. To the straight male, the lesbian represents the possibility of true gender equality. Danger, danger!

Gay men, too, are sources of concern for the status quo. A gay man who can embrace his inner femininity is a threat because he does not need to dominate the female sex. He recognizes the female part of his psyche and can accept it and nourish it; it is not something to be feared. He doesn't need to cage it because he has tamed it.

So letting gays get married will upset the status quo -- it will change the power structure of our society, it will change gender relations, it will bring us another step closer to gender equality and also helps to blur the rigid lines along which our ideas of gender are constructed. And just think about what will happen if we let gays raise children! Someday we might end up with an entire generation of teenagers who don't dress like absolute douche bags.

But seriously, we've gotta hand it to the GLBT community. Gays are the new black people. A generation ago, our oligarchs used race as the smoke screen for class inequality. Now that we have a black man in the Oval Office and racism is officially over, the ruling elite needs something else to keep the calamaty of social democracy at bay. Muslims and terrorists filled in nicely for a few years there, but there aren't a whole lot of Islamic fundamentalists in America. The Muslim terrorists are good "outsiders," but we really need something on the inside to hate. We need rats, we need to be able to pick out saboteurs working from the inside.

Enter the gays.

Well, gay community, by taking all this heat over wanting to give your profound romantic love the fullest possible social expression, you've provided the far Right with a means to distract public attention from pressing economic concerns. But we're in full-blown recession now, you know. We've even got politicians talking about universal health care. You need to put on your tap-dancing shoes and step up your game, because right now Western capitalism is weak. Turns out Reaganomics was built on a faulty foundation, after all. You need to get ready for war, because if the plutocrats don't fight you, they'll be forced to fight socialism instead. And we all know that there are dangerous people lurking in the shadows, just waiting for the prime opportunity to dismantle the ideal is the for-profit health care.

The American dream is under attack by the forces of social democracy -- and only a gay marriage ban will save it. Let's keep gays from getting married so the media outlets can focus on that story instead of universal health care debate. If we don't get Congress to talk about how we can stop two consenting, responsible adults from building a stable family unit, it might start talking about labour reform instead! And what's worse, if these two consenting, responsible adults are allowed to build stable family units, they'll be mainstream, they won't be banished to the fringes of society anymore, and they'll have all this energy left over from the equal rights struggle! And what do you think they're gonna do with all that excess energy? They're gonna wanna fix even more shit!

Well, I for one am going to write to my Congressman and let him know that I support a constitutional ban on gay marriage. Because America's robber barons depend on that to divert public scrutiny away from them. And what better diversion could there possibly be than the sexual activities of complete strangers? I mean, America's charting her course towards the future. If we don't have things like gay marriage to keep us focused, we might end up with a social welfare state.

Ronald Reagan dreamed of an America where anyone can get rich. If you don't fight gay marriage, you might have to fight the issue it's been used to mask instead. It's up to you, America. Do you want to live in a society where a gay couple can enjoy the same tax benefits as a hetero couple, or do you want to live in a society where everyone is free from want?

Get those pencils ready!

O Britney, Where Art Thou?

Economists say that we can guage the state of the economy by studying the rise and fall of women's hemlines. Judging by the surplus of maxi dresses in Old Navy, I'd say things are still looking bad. But I believe the academics are overlooking another crucial economic indicator: sensational tabloid sagas.

Let's go back to a happier time in 2008. It seems so far away. But it was just over a year ago that the Hollywood paparazzi were as dedicated to capturing a shot of Britney Spears as a wildlife photographer hoping for a glimpse of a polar bear cub. They'd plant themselves outside of the Spears compound for hours, days, in hopes of catching a few frames of her plumped-up figure sneaking from the front door.

Britney gave us so much back then: she shaved her head, she attacked a photographer's car with her umbrella. She even refused to put a shirt on when paramedics put her into an ambulance! And then there was all that panty-less partying, the passing-out-drunk at nightclubs, and oh -- getting her children taken away from her! It was as if she was living out a finely-crafted thriller-narrative designed to invoke audience schaudenfreude. Just a few short years ago, this woman had been on top of the world. She had everything; she was everything. She was hot, young, fabulously wealthy, she performed and entertained. She mastered the delicate balancing act between sexy and trashy (something her exceedingly more talented competitor Christina Aguilera failed to accomplish), tantalizing us all the more with her refusal to shed the remnants of her rural Southern upbringing. Rich enough to vacation in the penthouse suites of luxe Abu Dhabi and Monte Carlo resorts, she was also grounded enough to use the restroom at the gas station when she had to take a leak. And she entered that gas station restroom in her bare feet.

Britney Spears was the American Dream. Not the one in the movies or in literature -- the real American Dream, the dream that allowed us to retain our penchant for shopping at Wal-Mart while sipping a five-dollar soy latte. We were so fascinated with Britney Spears simply because she was so relatable. We could easily imagine ourselves in her position. She made the glamourous lifestyle of the Hollywood celebrity accessible to the masses, and we lived vicariously through her.

Which is part of the reason why we lapped up every morcel of information about her daily routine that Perez Hilton could deliver. Sometimes we secretly delighted in her off-beat behaviour, relishing in her bad publicity because even though we could potentially, someday have her life if we dreamed big enough, we didn't have it then, we were still grinding away in our 9-to-5 routines like lethargic hamsters on a squeaky wheel. But other times we were genuinely concerned, because her fall from grace also signalled our fall.

Britney Spears hasn't been in the tabloids for months. We rode her self-destruction all the way through our own economic collapse late in 2008. When we hit the brick wall with her, we knew it was time to get off the ride. Sorry, Britney-honey -- it got too real. You were a perfect metaphor. But we weren't content with mere metaphor -- we were determined to see you extended into the realm of hyperbole, which was our big mistake. We got too greedy, we sowed the seeds of our own undoing. You realized that and began to shy away from the camera flashes, leaving us to suffer epidemic unemployment and economic instability alone. You're still rich, right? Can we borrow a few bucks?

The celebrities have all disappeared -- not just Britney, but Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, all the staples of last year's "entertainment news". Where are the catfights, the drunken antics, the dripping excesses of celebrity privilege? We over-extended ourselves, buying homes we couldn't afford, demanding lifestyles that exceeded our means. This sudden dearth of tabloid fodder is one of the consequences. Our celebrities realize that we now have enough shit to worry about in our own lives -- we can't be bothered with the luxury of worrying about their's.

Oh, Britney, we didn't realize how good we had it until you left us. Now that you're back in the confines of your Beverly Hills mansion, we can see that you are clearly better off without us. But we were selfish, we admit it. We were wrong -- we loved you in the sense that we wanted you; our love wasn't mature enough to want your happiness. But now that we've suffered economic collapse, baby, we've seen the errors of our ways. We can change. We will change, we promise. Give us something to feel good about -- go to a red carpet event and flash your snatch getting out of your limo. Or let your toddler smoke one of your cigs. C'mon, baby, we miss you. We know we treated you bad, we see now that we orchestrated our own decline to coincide perfectly with yours. But you're recovering, you're a stronger person for it, right? And we'll be, too. We'll treat you right this time. All we're asking for is a little tabloid fodder just to get our minds off of what we're not going to have for dinner tonight, whether we'll be getting downsized next week or next month. Hit us baby, one more time. That's all we ask. Gas prices are rising again. One more time.