Opinion General

PARKER: An uneasy return to pen and paper

For the past three weeks I have been unable to use my MacBook. My inability to find a UK adapter strong enough to charge the thing (or my hair dryer) left me paralyzed where technology was concerned (and frizzy elsewhere), and the first thing I did after flying into Pearson International yesterday was to find...

JONESIE: What I want Apple to do next

This is part prediction, part wish. First, a confession: I’m a tech junkie and the worst kind because I know not how it works. I care even less. I appreciate the knowledge and those who know that, er, knowledge. But if the tech isn't simple enough to work for me without having to know it—I...

LOEWEN: Too many churches, not enough love

I don't believe in an interventionist God But I know, darling, that you do But if I did I would kneel down and ask Him Not to intervene when it came to you Not to touch a hair on your head To leave you as you are And if He felt He had to direct...

PARKER: A joy ride from the wrong side

When I turned 14, I wrote a 730-day countdown to my sweet 16. It wasn’t that I was expecting anything special to happen for me — this was long before MTV started that craze — it’s just that I knew my life was about to change for the better. The day of my 16th birthday...

JONESIE: Sometimes I should just shut up

My neighbour’s a good guy. Usually I only see him over the fence. He works many nights and most weekends on his yard, often with his family tending fruit trees, scaling ladders, moving dirt and rock. I’m usually wearing painting shorts, Crocs and a wife-beater and I wave at them from Dandelion Alley secretly hating...

LOEWEN: Everyone’s entitled to an opinion

'WE NEED FOLKS WITH THESE KINDS OF OPINIONS BECAUSE, FRANKLY, IF WE'RE LEFT TO THE OTHER OPINIONS OUT THERE, WELL, WE'RE SCREWED.' So with that, I thought I'd take a final walk The tide of public opinion had started to abate The neighbours, bless them, had turned out to be all talk I could see...

GOG: Get it? Athletic rhymes with pathetic

'THEY DISPLAY LANGUAGE SKILLS SECOND ONLY TO THOSE OF THE COOKIE MONSTER' I have finally figured out why it is that team sports annoy me. I mean watching them, of course, participating being totally out of the question. (Many decades ago I was persuaded, against my better judgement, to try out for a high school...

PARKER: The sweetness of doing nothing

I spent the first three months of last summer unemployed. It wasn’t an “I’m living off of EI” unemployment, either. I tried that route but they didn’t buy the story about me taking a female lover and leaving my job to follow her to the B.C. Interior. Fair enough, I suppose.  Without the pressure of...

GOG: Stop calling these things ‘rest’ rooms

Whilst browsing in the mall the other day I was once again reminded of my age, this time by my bladder. This is a moment I dread since it involves undergoing one of the most painful rituals of adult male life: The use of a public rest room. There is nothing restful about it. Ladies...

LOEWEN: If it ain’t one thing, it’s your mother

“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.” — Oscar Wilde May means Mother’s Day for most of us. And if you weren’t raised by a harridan wielding a strap to strafe your back with, chances are you probably have a pretty warm feeling when you think of your...

PARKER: Crossing the bucket off my bucket list

I like to consider myself a pretty worldly twenty-something year old. This one time, I built houses in Guatemala and yeah, I feel like because of that I’m allowed to dub myself experienced in the ways of the earth. I guess also because I grew up with three brothers — but that’s another story. I have...

JONESIE: Time to move on from this old house

I suppose it’s a natural evolution but it sure doesn’t feel that way. As families grow, old bits slough off and we have to say good-bye with a For Sale sign. We are moving from our little house, our home for the last 15 years. And since that damn sign went up out front, I’ve...

GOG: How you can help me help you survive this damn flight

I recently had to be somewhere else in a hurry, and the only way of achieving that is, of course, by flying. It’s been a while since I had to travel by aeroplane, and I had forgotten just how dreadful an experience it is. First one must face the ritual humiliation of “security” where in...