Kate of Late

Gearing down for flu season

I’VE just come back from Ontario, where everybody I met was determined to see me dead.

As a matter of fact, their unprovoked assaults began even before takeoff from YVR. No sooner had I boarded the plane than the random sneezing began, strangers’ mucous bespeckling the air like a novice waitress grinding pepper over the fettucine at Earls.

It always feels like Plague-a-palooza when you board a Canadian jet in the fall, but this year, with the H1N1 doom and gloom, it’s seriously disturbing. It seemed to me that every juicy “Achoo!” came with an imaginary side order of Better Decide Which Song They’ll Play as They Carry in my Casket.

Eventually we took to the air and my paranoia really kicked in. While a nearby passenger wheezed like a dessicated accordion, I began to wonder whether Air Canada had launched a new contest called Survival of the Fittest Economy Passenger. Mightn’t the stewardesses be wiping down the plastic glasses for our drinks with the previous flight’s used napkins? Was that lettuce in my sandwich, or a crumpled handkerchief?

“I’ve gotta stop reading the newspapers,” I muttered as I jotted down my list of preferred pallbearers.

When I finally arrived in Ottawa to see the 82-year-old aunt who was the purpose of my visit, I discovered that she, too, was suddenly feeling poorly. There was a lot of weary sniffling on her part that could only be chased away by wine, which, we agreed, has a sterilizing effect, no matter what the hour.

I’d been frightened of seeing her for fear I’d track in deadly germs. The seniors’ centre in which she now lives had forbidden overnight guests lest they infect its fragile residents. So I almost overdosed on Cold FX and vitamins before I left home and washed my hands a hundred times while there. Then I stayed in a B & B full of clearly contaminated guests from the U.S., New Zealand, and Europe.

Obviously, my precautions were pointless. Everywhere I went, the air was surely a groaning all-you-can-eat buffet of killer bugs. The woman beside me on the train from Ottawa to Toronto sneezed vertically, horizontally, backwards and upside down for five solid hours. The niece with whom I was staying was sore-throaty with a touch of consumption.

The cousin who met me at a café for dinner coughed like Bryan Cranston battling lung cancer on TV’s Breaking Bad. Restaurants in Toronto evidently consider coziness to be a good thing, cramming its diseased masses into fetid, under-lit banquettes. Their overworked proprietors must think fewer people would be a blessing.

On the plane ride home I sat next to a young man who sounded like a refugee from a coal mine as he moistly hacked his way over five provinces and two adjoining seats.

I wanted to spank him (after sanitizing my palm, of course). But by this time I had bought a new outfit that would be good enough for my funeral, so the acceptance phase was heaving into view. After all, I reasoned, I’d had a decent run -- I’d once won a set of steak knives at bingo. I had all the tunes chosen for my service, including my personal theme song, “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll).” I was on the brink of ordering the flowers and calling the caterer.

Anticipating my impending demise and how embarrassing it would be if nobody showed up at the wake, I’d even tried not to pick any fights with my relatives in Central Canada.

“Anyhoo,” I said to myself as another seed cloud of viral phlegm drifted my way, “there’s no point in being negative about H1N1. The vaccine is not available to me at the moment, and there’s almost nothing else that can be done to avoid it. You get what you get.”

So, I thought, why not use this epidemic to my advantage? Is this not the perfect excuse to weasel out of everything?

I conjured up the kind of heavy responsibilities that usually fall my way, like trading in Stanley’s spent vodka bottles for cash before they start blocking the carport. "Hmm," I thought, "I certainly wouldn’t want to infect the recycling venue’s staff with swine flu." Wow. What a load off!

I put this excuse into heavy rotation as soon as I got home. Why wait until you’re genuinely sick to start avoiding responsibilities you never liked to begin with?

“You can’t walk the dog when you’re trying to fend off H1N1,” I reasoned, coughing delicately as our Labrador retriever ran demented circles around the living room with an old sock between her teeth. “Or mail any payments to your creditors. Think of the infection one silly cheque could spread in its travels. Why, Canada’s accountant population could be slashed in half!”

At this point, my 18-year-old daughter strolled into the room. “Would you like some Cold FX?" Petunia asked. "I just took some.”  We think it usually works, even if it is only ginseng and powdered razor blades, or whatever.

“No, thanks, dear. I’m too far gone for that,” I said, one pale arm thrown dramatically over my brow. “Perhaps you could turn on the TV set, tuck me onto the sofa with some blankets, run out and get the current tabloids, make me a cup of soup and a cheese plate featuring hard and runny varieties, and bring me my last will and testament.”

“Oh, mother,” said Petunia, rolling her eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to be going to Bart’s parent-teacher interviews?”

At which point Bart, 14, wandered by. “Hey, a guy in my class says even if there is a vaccination available for swine flu, he’s not going to line up for it,” he said.

“Really? Why not?” I asked, blowing my nose flamboyantly.

“He says he wants to be able to impress girls by saying ‘I survived the swine flu,’” said Bart. 

I hadn’t thought of it that way, although I did point out that while this teenager has H1N1, he won’t be able to impress girls, or even see them.

Bart shrugged.

I had to admire his friend’s devil-may-care attitude. We’re all adrift on this scary sea, with life jackets both iffy and in short supply. Will the vaccine help, and come in time? I guess we’ll know by winter’s end. 

In the meantime, we might as well take full advantage.

What to do when the camera adds a tonne

DEAR Google, 

I’m writing to demand a re-take. Your Street View of my house makes it look fat.

I’m not sure what your Street View photographer was smoking when he passed by my humble drive in Lynn Valley, North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, North America, the World. But I can’t say I blame him for not paying full attention. His has to be a terribly boring job, driving by house after house on street after street with a spheroid digital camera strapped to the hood of Google’s Street View vehicle. His assignment? Capturing 360 degree horizontal and 290 degree vertical panoramas, just so we can all look up our own pads on the Internet.

The photographer’s ennui is apparent when you get to the view of my address. Not only does my semi-detached appear out of shape, hirsute and hung over in your Street View, it’s the only one on the block with empty garbage and recycling cans strewn all over the front yard. Nice, Google. Maybe I could come over to your house and take a picture of you with your pants down.

Thanks, too, for capturing the image of a visiting car whose driver my husband Stanley doesn’t recognize. A vainglorious technogeek, Stanley likes nothing better than looking for references to himself online. So he had some tough questions when he found our domicile on Street View -- questions that I won’t be able to fob off forever. Luckily, your software blurs the license plates of vehicles. Google, think of the marriages you’ve already saved by not completely invading our privacy.

Faces of passers-by are also fuzzed on Street View. I pray that this means Stanley won’t spot those out-of-town competitors from the World Fire Games peering out our bedroom window.

Can you believe that some people haven’t heard of Street View, Google? You introduced it to the U.S. in 2007 with a handful of cities represented. Now we North Americans can simply call up Google Street View on the Internet, find our own neighbourhoods -- or the neighbourhoods we’re interested in “exploring” -- and click on an icon to navigate their nooks and crannies. How thrilling it is to realize that, even without a driver’s license, we can now cruise the mean streets of Cleveland using only one wisened hand.

Mind you, it’s a disappointment that the Street View action isn’t live -- yet. At this point, only still photographs help interested parties scope out which local front window will be easiest to smash in later. Alternatively, we can see whether a particular strip club routinely has lineups, or what people tend to get up to on the corner of Hastings and Main. What we can’t see are U.S. military bases. Uncle Sam doesn’t want you, Google. :(

But what did the rest of us ever do without you? Rely on common sense, or the element of surprise? Let’s say I was going to Paris, France, and wanted to anticipate what the Eiffel Tower looked like so I didn’t wander straight past it by accident. In the olden days, I guess I’d just have gone there and started looking around, without knowing if the tower was round, square, or what.

Those times are laughably out of date, thanks to Street View.

Google, it seems strange that not everybody appreciates your improvements. In wacky old England, residents of Broughton, Buckinghamshire were so outraged by the idea of burglars combing Street View for local prospects that they formed a human barrier to block your vehicle. I wonder if you showed the villagers’ torches on Broughton Street Views. No wonder TechDigest’s online article on the debacle asked rhetorically, “Does the village of Broughton have something to hide?”

Speaking of hiding things, however, it seems unfair that you pick and choose what to hide and what to show. Another Street View dissenter celebrated the imminent arrival of your overhead camera by painting a 60-foot phallus on the roof of his parents’ stately home. Why did Street View have to blot out that educational vista?

No such luck for my place, where the trash cans on the front lawn might as well be a vast heap of soiled skivvies. I’m not the only person to complain that your photographs don’t do me proud -- I’m not even the only columnist. You may not know that one Les MacPherson bellyached in print last March that you had hit Saskatoon at a particularly homely period, post-winter but nowhere near approaching spring.

“For Google to record its images of the city at this most visually unappealing time of year is like photographing a beautiful woman who has just awakened from a six-month coma,” he griped in a town rag. While some Canadians might argue that Saskatoon has no flattering angles, in or out of a coma, those who have actually been there apparently disagree.

Your fans, however, include one artist who uses Street View as a tool. Kentucky’s Bill Guffey scopes out its most picturesque scenes and commits them to canvas. “I git on Street View almost every day, and I find something every day that I want to paint,” he told ABC News in February. I tell you what, Google, his art ain’t bad -- see www.bnguffey.com.

I’ve figured out where you got the idea for Street View. I, too, remember a time when visitors to L.A. would shell out their dineros for printed maps of celebrities’ homes. On the website Virtual Globetrotting, we can still find aerial views of the properties of the famous people we most admire -- the ones with whom we share a “special” bond, even though we haven’t “met” them, per se.

 We can have a gander, for instance, at Bill Gates’ house in Medina, Washington; the late Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch; the U.S. Vice President’s House at One Observatory Circle in Washington, D.C. All we have to do is name what we want to see in your famous search box, and we can pinpoint where it is, no matter how creepy our intentions.

You democrats at Google, however, don’t want our voyeurism confined to the lavish spreads of the rich, the good-looking and the powerful. Hence, my protest -- I didn’t sign up for this perpetual worldwide open house. So just give me a month to squeeze my home into a girdle and get my lawn exfoliated and waxed. You line up Annie Leibovitz. Then you can come back for a proper shoot. I promise to stay well inside.

 

 

 

Finding your zip-a-dee-doo-dah

BE it resolved that some of us are not Action People.

We do not jog. We do not windsurf. The fact that we had children did not suddenly foster in us a compulsion to form family soccer teams, or scale mountains with our offspring slung on our backs like baboons.

We don’t begrudge the Action People who see every gathering of more than two people as a competitive sport moment – we just find them incomprehensible.

Some of us Inaction Types may be lazy; some of us may be preoccupied with armchair sports or other observational opportunities. I’m just clumsy. My hand and my eye aren’t just uncoordinated, they’re not on speaking terms. Not only that, but I’m a poor sportsman. I get no thrill from having played the game; nor do I ever win it.

For us true “sedentarists” (yes, I made the term up), it doesn’t stop there. Inadvertently, we also tend to throw a wrench into the wiring of real athletes. Balls mysteriously veer from their natural course to connect with our heads (although this may be intentional). I was once sitting in the passenger seat of a car that was driving on a highway past a baseball diamond. No word of a lie, an airborne softball sailed to the edge of the grass, where it bounced once, then flew inside the passenger compartment of my moving car and hit me.  I wasn’t even surprised.

If people are going to laugh at sedentarists, we’d rather decide why. So, at any event where activity might conceivably break out and humiliate us, we arm ourselves with something to read. We politely put up with the thunk and whir of others’ sweaty and ill-advised machinations and proffer a mild “good for you” whenever whoever it is announces that they’ve won whatever it was.

Thankfully, sedentarists’ famous ineptitude means that eventually, nobody who knows us dares ask us to participate. The spry and the restless don’t need our sarcastic responses to their paddleball invites, or the death stares they’ll encounter the instant they propose mini-golf.  Risk of any kind, including scrupulously maintained roller coasters, also tends to be right out for us. That is why my family was shocked when I suddenly decided to brave the Grouse zipline last weekend.

This would never have happened if my daughter Petunia hadn’t already been and loved it. Nor would it have occurred if our friend Bruno, the gymnastics coach, hadn’t been visiting. Bruno’s obsession is exercise of all kinds; he mainly works to fund his hiking trips all over the world. (It’s not as bad as it sounds -- he also reads.) Bruno’s a self-disciplined fellow who’s not a fan of overeating or overdrinking, both of which dominated the Thanksgiving weekend. So I felt I had to redeem myself somewhat by chirpily encouraging him to zip over hill and dale at Grouse. The only way to do that was for me to “go with.”

I didn’t think about what this excursion would entail. I expected it to be a short, mild float over a bunch of trees, a non-virtual version of the Disneyland ride Soaring Over California. 

Petunia announced that she’d be coming with us.  She promptly began assuring me that I didn’t need to be nervous. “Trust. Trust,” she kept saying, like a mantra. Uh-oh. Then I saw the helmet, the giant diaper-like seat I had to step into, and the harness I would have to tote between the four segments of the zipline. What on earth did I think I was doing?

Our two guides, luckily, were charming young men who were so relaxed and funny that they put even an awkward lummox like me at ease. Bruno, of course, was unfazed. He had already zipped almost everywhere on earth that is zippable. Even if he had fallen out of the diaper, he could have clambered one-handed back up any crevasse. After our ride he told me he had also watched the guides as they strapped us in and had noticed there were several different safety measures in place, so the contraption was as secure as anything that whips you high above thousands of pointy trees on a cable could be.

The first zipline was a mild intro, short and sweet. Once you settle into the diaper – which resembles those Jolly Jumpers from which babies dangle – you’re fine. The guides’ reminders to assume the landing position (knees up, arms locked on the bar, chin tucked) while approaching the end of each track gave me pause, but landing was only a tad brisk once, on the second leg of the zip. Number three zipline whisked us over placid Blue Grouse Lake, higher up the mountain. By this time, I couldn’t have been more confident in the abilities of our guides.

The last and longest track stretched from the peak of Grouse to the peak of Dam Mountain, and was, unfortunately, accessible only by mounting an elongated set of wooden stairs much like a gallows. Petunia, who is fearless, kept glancing at me with an encouraging expression on her face, waiting for me to start my standard chickening out.

At the top of the steps, I did briefly speculate on how, exactly, I would die if I tumbled down from that height, in my giant Depends, at a speed that can reach 80 km per hour. Would I succumb to hypothermia after nobody bothered to search for my mangled chassis, or fatally bash into an old growth tree, of which there seemed to be way too many?

Or would the end come courtesy of bears? In October, I felt, they must lie in wait below the zipline, hoping for Starbucks-flavoured humans to drop from the heavens before hibernation begins. I pictured a bear rubbing its paws together, thinking, “I sort-of feel like a vulture, but what the hell.”

No worries. We plunged off the gallows and glided into space, gazing over the dense, dark forest to pewter-skinned Howe Sound, the bristled cap of Stanley Park and the oyster-grey horizon. We might have seen infinity if the day hadn’t been so cloudy. Even worldly Bruno was impressed.

Then it was over. And what was this new feeling? Triumph.

It’s not that the zipline had taken agility or aptitude on my part. All it required was the teeniest bit of chutzpah, and Petunia was actually proud of me.

“Could it be possible that sitting around doing nothing is over-rated?” I wondered. Then, “Perish the thought.”

 

 

A sad day for bons vivants

“It’s Rachael Ray’s world now — we’re all just cooking in it.”

That depressing statement in the New York Times October 7^th, 2009 ended an era that had lasted almost 70 years. The story it led revealed that Gourmet magazine was one of four shut down the previous day by New York publisher Conde Nast. The magazine that for decades had remained as airy and timeless as a perfectly rising angel food cake had finally been deflated by a slammed oven door.

If you’re not a fan of cooking magazines, you may not see much difference between Gourmet and the other famous titles obscuring Spanking Quarterly on the newsstands -- Food & Wine, Saveur, Fine Cooking and Bon Appetit. But “Gourmet was to food what Vogue is to fashion, a magazine with a rich history and a perch high in the publishing firmament,” wrote the Times’s Stephanie Clifford.

You had only to open a copy of it alongside an issue of one of its rivals to see the difference. Gourmet’s food photographs were works of art, masterpieces of setting, staging and light. Its eloquent travel pieces illuminated locations both obscure and familiar more sensually than National Geographic. Sometimes, in addition to expert food writers, it featured novelists on the topic of their favourite dishes or ingredients. Some of these, like the late, great Laurie Colwin, earned enduring cult followings.

It’s true that Gourmet was selling a lifestyle that few of us could afford, although in recent years editor Ruth Reichl had placed a decided emphasis on sustainable food. The Times noted that while a recent issue of Bon Appetit (also published by Conde Nast) contained an article on America’s Top 100 Hot Dogs, October’s Gourmet featured a piece on how food critics would spend $1,000 dining in their home towns.

In fairness, Gourmet’s writers never pretended the best food had to be pricey. They could be trusted to wax equally euphoric about 12 courses at NYC’s Le Cirque and great bowls of pho in Saigon. One pair of gifted regulars, Jane and Michael Stern, simply traveled the country scouting out local specialties at diners.

I never thought the magazine snobbish, though it was full of ads for cars my circle could never afford. Still, Gourmet obviously gave off a whiff of elitism that was wrong for this economic climate.

“Cooking is getting more democratic,” said Suzanne Grimes, who “oversees” the magazine Every Day With Rachael Ray. “Food has become an emotional currency, not an aspiration.”

We seek down-home coziness right now, I suppose, not new mountains to climb. I always enjoyed the tone of Gourmet’s food photo spreads but had recently felt a certain visual chilliness creeping in. Many of the featured meals, for example, were suddenly being served in drafty-looking old barns tricked out with a deft assortment of random farm chairs. It looked as if those who had prepared the food for these repasts had stolen their organic ingredients from an untended roadside stand, then hit the trail shoeless in search of work as waifish mannequins or itinerant grape pickers.

Either that, or the art director had been raised in Sweden. There was a lot of graying wood and overcast sky and half-measures of wine served in tumblers (see July, 2009). Still, I liked it. Evidently, the magazine’s staff had decided that the lavish table settings of the past, with their gleaming crystal decanters and crackling fireplaces, were no longer apropos. I would have begged to differ.

A few years ago, I had a chance to write for Gourmet. I had won an American food writers’ award and was going to New York for unrelated reasons so I talked my way into a chat with the magazine’s travel editor.

It was extremely exciting even to be admitted to the elevator at 4 Times Square, home of Conde Nast. Gourmet’s headquarters were surprisingly ordinary -- there were no oozing wedges of cheese lying about the waiting room beside inviting bottles of vintage port.

The travel editor was pleasant, if absent-minded. He had forgotten to read the resume I’d sent him, and couldn’t really remember why I was there. Still, I eventually got an assignment to write for Gourmet’s website about a Victoria fish and chip stand that was an environmental pioneer. The gig entailed taking a ferry and a bus to Victoria from Vancouver, doing several interviews, taking photographs, and returning home to write the piece. It was several days’ work -- for which Gourmet would pay me $100 U.S.

Nevertheless, I was chuffed to think I’d see my little name in association with Gourmet. At 49, I had arrived -- food journalism’s saggiest debutante.

Several months later, I received my measly paycheque, which I considered framing rather than cashing. I sent a follow-up note to the travel editor asking when the story would appear. “Oh, we eliminated that whole section in our website re-launch yesterday,” he responded blithely. “Take a look! We’re really proud of it.”

“Can’t you use it somewhere, somehow?” I pleaded.

“No, sorry -- we had all kinds of stuff for that section that never got used,” he replied.

Pffffffffffffffffffffft. That’s the sound of an ego collapsing.

I usually am one to bear grudges, but I couldn’t cut myself off from the magazine that had brought me so much pleasure. So, like an abused cur, I still sidled up to Gourmet every month, snarling at Bon Appetit.

A fortnight ago, I finally cheated on my longtime love. As usual, I bought Gourmet, despite the fact that its boring headline was 126 American Restaurants Worth The Money.  But I also bought Bon Appetit, because it had a gorgeous photo of lamb shanks on it and lamb shanks were what I felt like eating.

Maybe my treachery helped push Gourmet over the edge. Apparently it only had a circulation of about 980,000 in the first place -- shockingly low, in my view -- and was rapidly losing its luxury advertisers. Bon Appetit had $1.35 million readers and, no doubt, still gets plenty of ads for Splenda and supermarket deli meats. With Gourmet gone, Bon Appetit will probably get ritzier advertisers, too.

If only my scintillating 500-word story had run, it would have been the lifeline Gourmet needed. Oh, a girl can dream.

Now all I can say to my dearly departed favourite read is R.I.P. -- Rest in Profiteroles. 

A heartbreaking tale of staggering romance

THIS being October, you are doubtless gearing up for the holiday season. You bought lots of decorative jingle-jangle during Christmas in July. Now it’s time for Overkill in October, that deluded month in which you vow that this year, your gifts will all be deeply personal.

Have I got a scheme for you! Once again, the random folks who pepper me with press releases have come up with the greatest idea known to mankind, and that is this: Custom-made romance novels. Simply send the names of yourself and your paramour to www.ustarnovels.com, along with a few salient facts, such as nicknames and physical attributes, and choose whether you want a subtler romance or something “steamy.” For the low, low price of $39.95, they’ll send you a 160-180 page book that you can present to your beloved.

But what if you and your squeeze aren’t the most interesting couple, and the salient facts include your shared devotion to butterscotch pudding cups and re-runs of That Seventies Show? Luckily, U Star has a way around that. It’s called “plot.”

“… you might find yourself undercover on a secret mission in Barcelona, being chased by diamond smugglers in the exotic French Rivera (sic) or discovering a hidden tomb in Naples,” promises the website -- thank God. It adds, “in our latest title, Amsterdam Lessons, a chance meeting with a mysterious and glamorous couple take (sic) our leading couple into an intoxicating world where their only pursuit is pleasure, and the fulfillment of sexual desire becomes impossible to resist.”

Do I smell a swingers’ night with the couple who run your favorite drycleaners, who’ve somehow wound up in Amsterdam as well?

By the way, if you are so pitiful that you can’t even get a date of your own in a U Star novel, you can always steal somebody else’s. Feel free to make your squeeze Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, or even Donny Osmond if the spirit takes you. There are same-sex versions of these books, too. Picture you and Rush Limbaugh. Or not.

This is obviously an excellent idea -- I figure I’ll eliminate the middle man and write the thing solo. For a steep fee -- say, $10,000 -- I’ll even write one especially for you.

It just so happens that I have romance author cred. I once won a Harlequin-sponsored media contest that netted me a shiny Krugerrand gold coin. 

The first soul-tingling chapter told the tale of a red-haired dance critic who gets in a car crash on the way home from writing her review of the ballet Cinderella. She discovers that the limousine that rear-ended her bears the handsome Russian ballet dancer who just played Cinderella’s Prince. (FYI: This was before Glasnost.) As they wait for a tow on the icy roadside, the prince lends her his furry mittens. She hands them back, but as the limo peels away with him inside, she sees he has left one mitten behind in the snow.

What can I say? It’s a gift.

Anyhoo, don’t tell my husband Stanley -- now that I have the concept, his Christmas present is basically in the bag. But where shall I set our passionate romance? Shall I borrow a title from U Star and call it Spanish Sizzle, or Indecent in Italy? Never having been to either of those places, I’m not sure I’d suspend his disbelief. I think Lascivious in Langley  is more our speed.

But I will model Lascivious in Langley on Indecent in Italy in one regard. I see on the U Star website’s “Lovin-o-Meter” that the sexual content of Indecent in Italy is minimal. (“We’ll leave more to your imagination, but you can expect descriptive heavy petting.”) I’ll even leave out the petting, shifting the emphasis to leering. Occasionally my protagonists will go too far with a wink. (Incidentally, if I selected the highest possible level of “erotic romance,” apparently I’d have to conjure up scenes featuring threesomes -- which I’m not sure is fair to our mailman.)

All right. I’m ready to get started, and I consider writing romances to be a spectator sport. So bear with me as I begin typing. I’m just going to crib some inspiration from U Star’s Spanish Sizzle. Here’s the original: “Within the majestic towers of Gaudi’s unfinished masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia, a secret has lain buried for over seventy years. The key to unlock its treasures had long been thought lost but when a single blueprint is uncovered, MI6 sends out its top agents … to rescue the document from the greedy hands of a billionaire industrialist … trouble is, they are lovers and neither of them knows the other is a secret agent. Will they uncover each other’s dark secret? … Only the magical city of Barcelona holds the answers.”

Okay now, let’s put this in terms Stanley and I can relate to.

“Within the majestic fruit stands of Langley, the tubs of treasure give off a heady scent that can mean only one thing -- chutney-making season. The key is to unlock the ideal mix of sweet and tart fruit that will intoxicate the palate. But when one apple rolls onto the ground and between the running shoes of a hickory-scented stranger, passionate pickler Kate takes her life in her hands. ‘Do you think this is one Gala too many for a chutney that will also include raisins and tomatoes?’ the sexy brunette (shut up, it’s my book) asks the chrome-domed hunk (ditto) hovering above her.

‘What are you, an idiot?’ the stranger replies, glaring at her arrogantly. ‘Put in as many Galas as you want!’ He kicks the orb aside and strides to the cashier, his arms straining from the weight of a sackful of onions and six cobs of corn.

Stung, Kate sits back on her heels, cleavage secretly heaving. Behind her, two billionaire industrialists gossip as they lustily fondle some pears. ‘That’s Stanley, the barbecue cook,’ one whispers to the other. ‘Never eats fruit, and rarely vegetables.’ 

‘Sad,’ says her friend. ‘But mysterious. Do you think he’s single?’ ‘He said on the radio that he prefers pork butt to women,’ the first woman replies. ‘He said pork butt has just the right amount of fat these days, but women are too lean for his taste.’ Kate, annoyed, rises to her feet. She knows a challenge when she hears one.”

I say this is the best present ever, the start of a new tradition. Next year: Coquettish in Comox.

A nice problem to have

HOW glorious it must feel to be able to afford a sunny holiday every year.

I don’t mean a trip to a summer cottage -- I mean somewhere that takes you out of your grump-inducing winter rain and into a tropical paradise. In theory, at least, there’s nothing more relaxing.

We’ve managed that feat once or twice, but not enough that it’s become a habit. Our inexperience makes the world of travel that much more baffling when we do get the opportunity to take the family on a nice vacation, as we will this winter. My brain has been spinning like a dreidel for weeks.

I always used to scoff at people who escaped to the same locale annually -- the same town, the same condo, probably renting the same kind of car. I figured as soon as they got on the plane they’d order their usual drink and snack, and as soon as they touched down and checked in, they’d resume last year’s game of cribbage with equally routine-hooked Canucks.

“How unimaginative,” I’d think snootily. “There’s a great big world out there. Why don’t they explore it?”
Easy for me to say -- I hadn’t saved up any money and I wasn’t going anywhere. Then my family spent an idyllic couple of weeks in Maui and fell in love. Since then, the debate has been regular. “Would you rather go back to wonderful Maui, which we love and couldn’t get enough of,” we ask one another, “or try somewhere new that might conceivably not be as good, and really, how could it be any better?”

My husband Stanley and son Bart always say they would be perfectly happy to return to Hawaii, rent the place we rented before, once again get the tuna Stanley loves from the nearby deli, and almost get eaten by the same Great Whites. But our daughter Petunia and I are determined to branch out.

Such a brave departure from the familiar seems so simple, in these days of Internet searches. Yet it turns out to be completely overwhelming.

This week I have been all over the map -- at least the map of the southwestern hemisphere within reach of a non-stop flight from Vancouver. We crave sun and surf, and obviously, we are on a budget, so it’s not as though we can choose anywhere in the solar system. We’re going in high season, which makes finding bargains challenging. Other than that, though, we’re open. With so much freedom, however, comes a surfeit of choice.

For instance, whatever the location, should one select an all-inclusive -- with its sociable vibe, bottomless drinks and “free” meals that, for food nuts, may quickly get tedious -- or the relative seclusion of a hotel or condo? Should one set up camp in a quiet village, with the possibility of getting to know a few locals, or succumb to the lure of an existing tourist town “scene,” which would likely work better for teens? When you’re trying to please a family, everybody’s desires must be considered.

The Internet is ready, willing and able to do everything for you except the difficult thing, which is making decisions. Expedia.ca is only one of countless sites eager to book flights, cars and hotels, all at their version of a “deal.”

I get on these sites and can’t tear myself off them for hours. I swear I’ve seen the photographed interiors of at least a thousand vacation rentals and hotels. As I try to organize this winter’s trip, my eyes are bugged out from crisply assessing kitchenettes, dismissing hot tubs as sub-par, and mentally decimating the busy décor in mauve and teal hotel lobbies.

Planning a holiday is the rare occasion when I try to be a perfectionist. But objectively speaking, orchestrating the ideal vacation from afar is not something one can ace.

This is why smart people use travel agents. They have the expertise we do-it-ourselfers are sorely missing. They know that if you travel on certain days it’s cheaper, and if you stay “x” amount of time you’ll get a better deal. We newbies have to learn as we go -- meanwhile, we’re paranoid about making a huge, holiday-wrecking mistake.

Hawaii, I’ve figured out after eons at the computer, is quite expensive during our desired travel period, while Mexico offers bargains -- as long as you aren’t afraid of swine flu. So Mexico it is. One problem for the ignorant traveller: the country’s huge. Also, never having been there, and never having studied Mexico in geography class, I have no idea where anything is. Manzanilla could be Tijuana for all I know. And my obtuse, non-Spanish ear detects little difference between the names Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo.

Seeking personal advice can also be confusing. Every part of Mexico appears to have its Canadian advocates. Stanley sent out a note on Facebook asking friends who’d been to the country to declare their preferences. Twenty came back with 20 different areas they loved, none of them the region we’d had our eyes on. Don’t go there, one of them even said. Ai-ai-ai-ai, as Sinatra once sang.

How to sort through all this counsel? We finally concluded that there’s no use asking non-parents where to go. When we’re grown up enough for a purely adult vacation, they’re the ones we’ll consult.

Then we asked ourselves, “Who do we know with children who are similar ages to ours, in the same income bracket, who like the same activities we like, who know a certain spot in Mexico well enough that they’ve gone there again and again?”

After consulting them, we were able to choose a place -- Puerto Vallarta -- and could book the condo they always get (thank goodness they’re experts on it). When we’re finally en route, I may even have what they like to drink on the plane, for good luck.

Presumably, we’ll eventually be confident enough to diverge from their repertoire. That’s when we’ll haul out the guidebooks to decide exactly what we want to do. Of course, if we went to Maui instead, we’d already know. Oh, brother -- there I go again.

When lives end, the detritus remains

YOU expect grief to hit you like it does in the movies, with a round of sobbing and a fresh black outfit with matching hat, followed by two weeks of staring out the window at the rain, hands wrapped around a half-full coffee mug.

It’s half-full because you’ve forgotten to drink the coffee. That’s how melancholy you are if you’re, say, a widow played by Sandra Bullock.

Grief could also strike you the way it does in soap operas, in a flurry of tears plus sappy, bad-hair clips of “memories” from decades of programs past. Before the white flowers are arranged at the bogus daytime TV funeral, the nasty recriminations start flying. In soaps, death is just a plot device that comes in handy when an actor’s contract hasn’t been renewed.

In real life, grief comes in unpredictable waves. There’s the first tsunami, then smaller versions, and then apparently calm seas, until a storm springs up. The storm might appear to be completely unconnected to the person who has died. Suddenly you are overwhelmed by the fact that you forgot to pay last year’s GST remission. Cue the waterworks.

Regular readers of this column know I have lost both my elderly parents to illness over the past year and a half. This is obviously a natural part of life – and we all know there are far worse stories than mine. Nevertheless, the topic of grief captivates me at the moment. I’ve come to the point where I’d like to be told there’s an appealing destination at the end of this bumpy road. And I’d really appreciate a map.

So I was intrigued to read on Wikipedia that a noted British psychiatrist called John Bowlby long ago “outlined the ebb and flow of (grieving) processes such as shock and numbness, yearning and searching, disorganization and despair, and reorganization.”

Being literal-minded, and fond of household renovation reality TV, I seized on Bowlby’s notion of “disorganization and despair” with an inward “Aha!” On further reading, it became clear that he was talking about mental and emotional “disorganization” as a result of losing a crucial and defining relationship. He had not, in fact, touched on the despair I am also feeling at trying to organize my late parents’ condo in preparation for putting it on the market.

It could be worse. Thankfully, my mum and dad had winnowed down their possessions over the years, first when they moved across the country to retire on the Sunshine Coast, and then when they relocated from a Sechelt suburb into its downtown. I do not have the daunting task my husband had years ago, of attempting to rid a sizeable family home of decades worth of stuff collected by his departed father, who couldn’t throw anything out. Nevertheless, it’s a difficult responsibility to sort through the possessions of people you love after they have gone.

We humans leave behind so much stuff, no matter how hard we may try to keep our lives de-junked. Our families are haunted by our orphaned possessions until they’ve disposed of them, at which point they are no doubt crushed to think that we and our stuff have both irretrievably vanished. Every time I return to Sechelt now I am both reluctant to go because my parents won’t be there, and sad to think that soon even their home will be lost to me.

Sifting through the belongings of the deceased, there are items we survivors treasure and can’t bear to part with, along with things we don’t especially like that still have value because of the memories they conjure up. There are bits and bobs that the departed squirreled away that we don’t want to disrespect by giving them to strangers, and trappings their own ancestors passed down to them that hold little meaning for us.

And then there are the effects we don’t mind relinquishing, like clothes that don’t fit us. We take these cast-offs to thrift stores, where the overburdened workers always look as if they wish we had burnt the damn things.

In my case, the culling is ongoing. Some items now grace my own home and make me happy because their presence brings my parents to me daily. Some will be shipped to my siblings in Ontario and Quebec, to give them the same feeling.

Others linger in the abandoned condo, poised to ambush my emotions, waltzing me down distracting paths. In one nook is a tangle of unsightly pink plastic doodads, reminding me of my parents’ heartbreaking battles with minuscule hearing aids. “Why is it so impossible to make a hearing aid that’s easy to manage?” I wonder in disgust. “Some Baby Boomer ought to get on that.”

Nearby, a jam-packed bookcase broadcasts my father’s obsession with the Second World War. What so intrigued him about a war in which he was too young to fight?

The stash of paints and other art supplies in the study closet brings back my mother’s interest in watercolour painting, abandoned as the terrible disease MS hacked away at her dexterity. I glimpse her beloved collection of Alice Munro books and can’t imagine how I’ll give them away, at the same time as I know I can’t squeeze another thing into my family’s overstuffed duplex.

Still, sacks and piles of things make their way from there to here to be distributed. There are unsightly mounds wherever I look, not only in my parents’ place, and in my place, but tucked inside the cobwebs of my brain.

My mind and my eyes constantly light on incongruous objects and untenable thoughts. Uh-oh, what’s that? Oh, right -- Mum’s walker, now destined for the hospital’s loan cupboard. In that heap, there’s a used thermometer. Would anyone buy a used thermometer? And what if there really is a heaven?

Having seen my husband enslaved for ages, struggling to sort through his late father’s detritus, I suspected that emptying my parents’ condo might be a challenge. I know it’s not that big a job, really. In preparation for an open house, a dispassionate stranger would be able to get it done with ease.

But I am full of an unruly passion, and I hadn’t understood that emotional disorganization and household disorganization would be such intimate and inextricable bedfellows. 

Toughening up for employment glory in technological times

SUMMER has been swept away by fall’s torrential rains, leaving the under-employed among us no diversions or excuses. We finally have to cowboy up.

And in hard times, more than ever, trying to get or keep work seems to be a full-time occupation.

With lay-offs rampant, there are expert instructions popping up all over, on everything from clinging like a barnacle to your current job to reinventing yourself for something completely new. And then there are the lists of coping skills for those of us who are forced to apply for work in a brutally competitive market.

Before we board the bus for any longed-for job interview, the authorities tell us what to wear (no hot pants!); what to say (no F-word!); what to drink (nothing out of a personal flask!); and what not to tell everybody on the planet about our private lives.

The latter would have been a no-brainer in the olden days, but modern technology prevails. When you’re searching for work, the Internet can be both a wondrous boon and a leg-hold trap. Sure, it makes sending out resumes and work samples a breeze, but it can also be a welcome mat to our most unguarded revelations.

Case in point: In August, one British woman made worldwide news after she babbled on Facebook, “OMG, I hate my job!! My boss is a total pervy wanker always making me do s--- stuff just to piss me off!!” She obviously hadn’t remembered that her boss was one of her Facebook “friends,” he told her in his response on the social networking site. He added “That ‘s--- stuff’ is called your ‘job,’ you know, what I pay you to do? But the fact that you seem able to f--- up the simplest of tasks might contribute to how you feel about it.” “Pervy wanker” likely didn’t throw in for her farewell card.

Nevertheless, the woman undoubtedly vented her anguish on Facebook immediately afterward. She’ll need to clean up her act before getting a new position. According to the New York Times, a recent study by Harris Interactive for CareerBuilder.com revealed that 45 percent of employers have a gander at a prospective hire’s Facebook page before making their decision. The study involved 2,667 managers and human resource workers, and revealed that 35 percent elected not to offer a job to a candidate because of what they’d discovered on his or her public postings. Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter were all consulted, with bosses turned off by party-hearty lifestyles, raunchy photos, and “poor online communication skills.”

Facebook is responding to this problem with new privacy protectors that further limit accessing our most intimate broadcasts to our nearest and dearest. For most of us, one hopes, that group does not include the person who interviewed us for the first time yesterday.

But using technology to one’s advantage and not one’s detriment gets even more basic than that. One helpful chap at lowendmac.com points out that when you’re offering your e-mail address to a prospective employer, it’s best to provide one that suggests you are vaguely respectable. Among the applicants he came across lately, who supposedly longed for a network administrator job in his organization (he changed their real online addresses to protect the blockheaded), were gigolo@domain.com; IBFreakin@domain.com; 2hot4u@domain.com; DrinkMoreBeer@domain.com; SleazyLisa@domain.com; and the honest, if pathetic, IneedAjob@domain.com.

None of these brainiacs was hired by Low End Mac, which sells Macintosh computers. I expect they’ll wind up with careers in the bartending arts.

Of course, misusing technology is not the only way to avoid getting hired. Sheer idiocy is another stellar route. There are many indications that being under-employed for some time rots the brain. (Buy me a drink and I’ll rhyme them off; buy me two and I’ll rhyme them off twice.)

Why else would a blog called Daily Abstraction feel it necessary to advise job applicants that “if you receive a response from the company, and they say they’d like to speak to you any time except for Thursday from noon to 2 p.m., don’t suggest Thursday at noon as being a good time for you.”

Apparently, a little awareness of the fact that they are doing you a favour by speaking to you should factor into your approach.

Daily Abstraction goes further, obviously picturing the jobless as not just momentarily work-free, but innately creepy.

“If they say they’d like to speak to you on the phone, don’t reply asking where you should meet them,” D.A. recommends. “And especially don’t suggest that they meet you near your house.” To which I’d add, “And even more especially, don’t suggest that they meet you near your house, in the nude, behind a fir tree, with several thick ropes.”

I love reading about these gaffes. They reflect the ignorance of goofballs like me, rather than the shiny-shoed winners the professional business writers all imagine us to be. Comb the Globe and Mail and you’ll find tips telling the ambitious to simply schedule networking coffee dates with the CEOS and vice presidents of corporations they admire. Great advice, as long as you’re God’s Gift to Employers -- savvy, stylish, and able to drink a cup of coffee without dribbling an earring into it.

There seem to be fewer and fewer of these blameless wunderkinds out there, though, judging from the unemployment statistics. Maybe even they get fed up from time to time, and blow it. Alison Doyle at About.Com has a little counsel for the surly and disgruntled among us: Put a sock in it.

One employer told her that after he informed an applicant by e-mail that he had not got the job, the applicant responded with a terse, door-slamming “Your loss.” So much for that career as headmaster of charm school.

Another job-seeker Doyle wrote about had an “in” at a workplace and thus was virtually guaranteed an interview. That opportunity vanished after he responded to the suggestion that he ensure his resume was mistake-free. Rather than offering thanks for the tip, the unemployed man delivered a stern rebuke, chiding the person in charge of hiring him for being “critical” and “unprofessional.”

Ah, the heady scent of failure. I think it smells like chicken.

What chaos when entertainment franchises duke it out

BIFF! Kra-aaaaa-kkk! Zowee!

That was the sound of Disney crashing through a window, breaking down a wall and scooping up Marvel Comics while the 70-year-old company went limp and batted its eyelashes. The giant entertainment conglomerate only had to laugh maniacally and dangle a $4 billion paycheque for the formerly feisty Marvel to become putty in its hands. 

Egads! What’s the imaginary world coming to? The Disney-Marvel story isn’t the only rip in comicdom’s space-time continuum. Why, just last month, after 67 years of dithering, Archie Andrews decided to make an honest woman out of socialite Veronica Lodge, dooming himself to a life of henpeckery and endless discussions of what’s on sale at Pottery Barn. As we continued to weep for the Archie Comics’ runner-up -- poor, sweet, humble Betty Cooper -- we learned that the once dark, questing forces over at Marvel had been taken over by the folks who gave the world Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience.

Could this be the apocalypse?

Stan Lee, co-creator of Marvel’s Spider-Man, Iron Man and other glowering superheroes, sounded pleased. One could only conclude that a manipulating supervillain had coerced his public endorsement.

“I couldn’t be happier with this agreement,” Lee said in a statement published in the Globe and Mail. He remarked that the move gave Disney “a library of literally hundreds of unique and colourful characters that have the potential to make great, high-concept movies and long-lasting franchises -- and nobody knows how to play in that ball park better than Disney.”

Zounds!

Marvel’s characters, the Globe suggested, appeal to the biggest fans of superhero comics -- boys. Disney’s already got girls covered with Hannah Montana and other squeaky clean fare. With a fresh roster of muscular do-gooders on the order of the Fantastic Four at its disposal, along with the creative genius of Pixar Animation Studios, Disney’s move toward world domination is virtually assured.

But for shame, Marvel. Have you forgotten the knotty bravado of your most compelling characters? Captain America, one of Marvel’s earliest pen-and-ink gods, was an anti-Axis crusader during World War Two. He was once depicted punching out Adolph Hitler. Comic artists like Alberto Silva had a field day last week, inserting lisping Donald Duck into Captain America’s stars’n’stripes costume. Inspired by the takeover, blog commentators were suggesting other humiliating possibilities, like “Winnie the Poohnisher.” (For amusing mash-ups like “Beauty and The Thing,” see superpunch.blogspot.com)

This alliance of light and dark seems a little like putting the chickens in charge of the fox den. The best superheroes have axes to grind, and angst is Marvel’s stock-in-trade. Iron Man Tony Stark, a rich weapons manufacturer, made his debut during the Cold War in 1963, because co-creator Lee thought he would represent everything Americans hated at the time. It would be an engrossing challenge to get them to like him, Lee felt. To add another flaw to his quiver, Stark’s an alcoholic. Lee was editor and scripter, too, for 1962’s Peter Parker/Spider-Man -- an orphan who’s caught between heroic deeds, self-loathing, and the urge for a normal life.

Neither of these distressed protagonists bears much resemblance to Disney’s Snow White, flitting about, singing cheerfully and straightening blankets, or the deluded American White Shepherd “super-dog” Bolt. If you’re looking for a source of genuinely tortured characters, Marvel is to Disney as Daniel Day-Lewis is to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I have nothing against Disney, apart from the spooky fact that real birds never appear to land on Disneyland’s grounds while recorded birdsong twitters from hidden speakers. But its slickness, relentless good cheer and happy endings philosophy seem antithetical to the unruly world of Marvel, where haunted young men with nasty pasts fight on from Issue #1 to Issue #648, always disappointing their demanding hometown public, and never able to really get the girl.

Honouring the essence of other people’s creations doesn’t seem to be a “core value” at Disney, either. Look what it did to Winnie-the-Pooh. The A.A. Milne books about Pooh are especially dear to our own hearts because the original bear that inspired the books was taken to Europe during the First World War by Canadian army veterinarian Harry Colebourn. He named Winnie after his hometown, Winnipeg. Author Milne’s son Christopher named his own teddy bear after Winnie, throwing in “the Pooh” because he’d also met and liked a swan named Pooh. (We’ll just leave that one alone.)

Milne’s books featuring Winnie were as English as English could be, and what was wrong with that? In the stories, perfectly illustrated in pen and ink by E.H. Shepard, Winnie was a gentle, philosophical fellow who was hooked on honey and ambled through his adventures like a proper little Englishman. When Disney bought the rights to W-the-P in the 1960s, the plump ursine simultaneously lost his accent and his subtlety. Eventually he got pimped out as a lecturer in videos like Winnie the Pooh: Sharing and Caring.

So what will become of The Avengers -- “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes,” as they call themselves -- under Disney’s reign? Will Wolverine’s long talons make him super-popular at sleepovers because he can roast an entire bag of marshmallows in one go?

Picture, if you will, Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman, whose pheremones “produce a strong sexual attraction from men and repulsion from women,” according to Wikipedia. (I hate it when that happens.) Disney won’t want to introduce that sort of divisive and lascivious concept to its malleable young audiences. Spider-Woman, then, will probably have to learn something about being a good friend by wearing baggier clothes.

On Tuesday, the Globe and Mail’s editorial cartoon showed Spider-Man slinging his way through the skyscrapers wearing Mickey Mouse ears while a guy in an office read a newspaper bearing the headline Disney Buys Marvel. Talk about your castration scenarios.

But courage, friends! Without his trademark angst, Spider-Man will finally be able to pursue an ordinary existence -- earning a regular gig in pest control, perhaps, with Tuesday evenings reserved for bowling league. In his new, rosy-cheeked life, Peter Parker’s beloved Mary Jane will wait for him nightly, a hot apple pie slowly cooling on her windowsill.

And with Marvel Disney-fied, Archie Comics will be free to plumb its characters’ previously unperceived depths. With Archie in rehab, Veronica battling obesity, and Betty a regular at the Riverdale Bar’s Cougar Night, that ailing franchise is sure to regain its footing.

Not wanted on this or any other voyage

REJECTION -- where would our world be without it?

Rejection fuels drama like nothing else. In Gone With the Wind, if Scarlett hadn’t been shunted aside by Ashley and hadn’t then played it overly cool with Rhett, the story would largely have hinged on the destruction of real estate. Millions of movies, books and TV shows have been churned out since, with rejection at their core.

These stories work because everybody knows what it’s like to be turned down. And yet we still get a kick out of being, or watching, the person who doles out the ego beating.

Even American TV’s famous, cuddly Modern Orthodox rabbi, Shmuley Boteach, is currently getting in on the action. He’s an author of 20 books and father of nine who has appeared regularly on Oprah, has a TLC show called Shalom in the Home, and is known continent-wide for being a mensch.

Boteach made the news this week when he protested plans by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to stay in a Bedouin tent on Libyan embassy land adjacent to Boteach’s home in Englewood, N.J.

Unlike your average North American, Boteach wasn’t averse to Gadhafi’s rumpled, warty presence just because he’d ruin the view. According to the Globe and Mail, New Jersey is home to the families of more than 30 of 270 victims of the 1988 bombing of Pan-Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Gadhafi officially accepted responsibility for those bombings years ago, after accusations suggested they were the work of Libyan agents. Recently, however, he was seen embracing a released Lockerbie bombing terrorist. As Boteach told CNN, he doubts Gadhafi’s claim to be on the straight and narrow.

“He loves terrorists and welcomes them as heroes and speaks with a forked tongue,” said the rabbi.

Most of us snarl when the next-door neighbour brings home his first Harley Davidson, but this is a whole ’nuther level. Gadhafi is a PLO supporter who’s been linked to international terrorism on numerous occasions. He’ll be in New York this month on his first “visit,” and if I were Boteach, I’d want to make it Gadhafi’s last, too. New York is an intoxicating place, even for a non-drinking Muslim, and before you know it, Gadhafi could be hangin’ with his homies in Central Park -- his first choice for the site of the Bedouin tent.

Luckily, these are modern times, and there are ways of getting rid of even the most persistent suitors. I’d like to introduce the rabbi to the Rejection Hotline, intended for use by those who wish to blow off an unwanted admirer. Here’s where I see it coming in handy.

Say Gadhafi sidles over to Boteach’s back gate while the rabbi is stretched out alone on a deck chair, eating. “As-salamu àlaykum,” Gadhafi says.

Being polite, the rabbi replies, “Peace be with you, too. Nice day.”

“Yes,” says Gadhafi. “I was wondering, can you spare some gas for my power mower?” “Sure,” Boteach says. “I’ll bring it over after I finish my lunch.” He feels this is the Libyan dictator’s cue to leave, immediately.

“What are you having?” Gadhafi says conversationally. “It looks tasty.”

“Chicken soup. It’s good for the soul,” Boteach responds.

“Yes, I read the book,” Gadhafi says. He has opened the gate and has been inching closer, so now he’s standing in front of Boteach, watching him eat. “You eat skillfully,” Gadhafi points out. “You don’t spill the soup, even though you’re stretched out in the sun.”

“Thanks,” Boteach says. “The mug helps. And I do love my soup. It’s homemade.”

Gadhafi continues to engage Boteach in meaningless conversation as the rabbi becomes visibly irritated. Suddenly, Boteach claims to hear his wife inside, calling his name. He has finished his soup, so he picks up his mug and says, “I’ll leave the gas for you inside your gate in a little while.”

“How about I call you when I’m ready for it,” says Gadhafi, with a wink. “I’ve got a few other interesting ideas I’d like to discuss. I’d really like to get on Oprah -- I was thinking you could hook me up.”

Some problems are too trivial to bother God with. This is where Rejection Hotline comes in. Before Gadhafi moves in next door, Rabbi Boteach needs to look up and memorize the Rejection Hotline number at www.humorhotlines.com. That’s the number he’ll give his unwanted suitor when Gadhafi asks for it.

When Gadhafi calls, hoping to pursue an intimate relationship with Boteach, he’ll reach a snarky recorded voice. It will tell him that he hasn’t reached the person he thought he was calling, but instead, the Rejection Hotline. Among the reasons his intended didn’t want to give him the right number, the voice will suggest, might be that Gadhafi is “boring, dumb, annoying, arrogant or just a general weirdo,” has bad breath or body odour, or gives off “that creepy, overbearing psycho stalker vibe.” The voice will advise Gadhafi to forget the object of his affections, as Boteach has already forgotten him. Even ruthless dictators should get that hint.

(Incidentally, the funniest thing about the Rejection Hotline is the first time I called it myself, another recording kicked in at the end, urging me to press “star” to find out how I could join the United States Navy for “adventure, opportunity and a secure future.” It’s good to know that bad breath and overbearing psycho stalker vibes are considered a plus somewhere. With any luck, Gadhafi will be offered the same option to toil at sea for Uncle Sam.)

I see this Rejection Hotline move as the entrée to a brand new bestseller for Rabbi Boteach. He’s already written The Kosher Sutra and Dating Secrets of the Ten Commandments. With this new experience under his belt, it’ll be time for him to branch out beyond advice on family and dating.

I, for one, will eagerly look forward to G’day, Gadhafi: How to Banish Social Cling-Ons, or Gadhouttahere: How to Rid Your Neighbourhood of Unwanted Pests. Expertise on how to reject others without denting your self-image always comes in handy.