Phoning it in

For about six-odd millenia, human behaviour has more or less baffled us semimythical coyotes.

It is September. A neoconservative prime minister has his, ummm, fully transparent mitts, fully wrapped around the sooty levers of federal power, manipulatin' dog-knows-what with 'em. Summer's green leaves are beginning to turn colour. And perhaps most foreboding of all, our medicinal dark chocolate stash is damn near empty. We are necessarily forced toward the philosophical. You know -- cogitatin' on the big unanswerable questions.

Take the ever-thinner smartphone. Now so impossibly thin that it cannot spoil the drape of that summerweight silk Italian suit or Chanel shift that every smartphone owner wears. Because you can afford to own those, even after you sign your soul over to Satan, who administers all of the more serious phone data plans. I digress. Oopsy.

Nude, the latest devices would dance comfortably beneath a ten millimetre high limbo bar. Ummm, so, basically, so thin and delicate that many of the fone phashionistas (at least the ones on the Route 14 bus...) feel an urgent need to wrap their statusy, ever-so-svelte electronic fetishes in even fetishier stretchy rubber slipcases. Roots' f'rinstance, clocks in at three millimetres.

Since most of these elegant devices apparently now barely power themselves through an average working day before collapsing in an anorexic puddle of melted lithium ions somewhere just slightly south of your early afternoon Starbux break, would not that extra three millimetres you're gonna add to the thing anyway not be better dedicated to, say, battery space? Just askin'.

And I've also been lately pondering: why lately am I so attracted to the comfort of hot soup? And if I and my similarly disgraceful friends make off to a Chinatown eatery to demolish huge bowls of soup, are we guilty of wonton destruction?

Just askin' the big questions... it's what us coyotes do right now.

(Flickr image by Quosquos, licensed under Creative Commons)

Why I Like Chinese Doctors

I have gone to Chinese doctors for a number of years and have been happy with my Chinese medicine experience.

Here are some of the reasons I like Chinese doctors/medicine:

1) You can go to them when your GP isn't really helping. Let's say, you've done all the blood work, the tests, and everything comes out ok. But you still have things like gut problems, energy problems, mild depression -- these are the issues Chinese medicine can deal with effectively!

2) Chinese doctors don't try to be diplomatic. They tell it to you like it is: "You're too fat." "You're too thin." "Don't think so much!" "Stop spending so much time on the computer!" "Your breath stinks". And my personal favourite --- "Don't eat too much garlic! That's not good for the ladies. Causes discharge."

3) Reading the "instructions for use" on Chinese herbal medications is hilarious. I'm currently taking pills for "shrivelled complexion" and another for "wounds, serious or otherwise, sustained from a fall or throw - down from horse back, hurt of tendons and fracture of bones, internal pains by shocks and external swellings, pains by clot of blood, constipation and scantiness of urine, bumping or rod-hitting."

4) Chinese medicine is pretty cheap. Some acupuncturists are covered by work benefits. It's important to stay healthy during these hard times.

5) Chinese doctors don't care about privacy and confidentiality, and there is something really liberating about this. "Come in here and let me give you this constipation medicine...Oh yeah. There is another patient in here, but no problem!" This kind of thing makes me laugh at my own Western uptightness. And laughter is good medicine.