I scream, you scream, we all go to extremes to score the one we want to tease and please. Well, okay, some more than others, and the rest of us only sometimes.

Folks trek vast physical distances or make large leaps in logic to win the ones who make their hearts race. Have love, will travel. Some even do it in diapers to skip bathroom breaks. Think NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak, who avoided the loo to expedite her ambitious drive cross-state to allegedly kill off her competition in a supposed love triangle involving the object of her affection, astronaut William Oefelein.

Then there’s globetrotting CFL linebacker Trevis Smith. His public saga dates back to 2005, when he was arrested in Regina for having unprotected sex with a B.C. woman without telling her he had HIV. And yet some of the girls who learned of his dangerous behaviour (including his wife), still desired him.

At what point does lovesick turn psycho?

Should we chalk up overzealousness to mental illness? The problem with that oversimplification is that it perpetuates the myth that people who are mentally ill are undoubtedly criminals. Or deviants. I mean, it’s perfectly normal to give oneself up to enslavement, torture, humiliation and sexual assault, just like the character in Pauline Reage’s Story of O. Not really? But O did it all for love.

Hell, I even lost it a bit this year. I fell for a man in a travellin’ band. Who had a van. Damn band vans. So when I came upon a little greeting card in New York City that had a photo of a white van with the words “I Love You” spray-painted in red along the side, naturally I had to send it my guy’s way. After all, it was a sign, right? (Everything’s a goddamned sign when we’re enamoured.)

A few months later, I might have, myself, spray-painted his GMC with those three little magic words, “Why Didn’t You Tell Me You Had a Girlfriend?” Obviously I can’t count because how many months went by where he didn’t disclose his status and I didn’t bother to ask? Exit stage left.

I’m better now, thanks in part to stories of other Ottawans who’ve done similarly ridiculous things for love:

“A friend of mine was head over heels for this girl and decided to do an interpretive dance to prove his love to her. However, during one of the most erotic and technically challenging sequences, his cellphone rang. As if this wasn’t embarrassing enough, it turns out it was this girl he was doing on the side… she was preggers and it was most certainly not planned. He got off the phone and he finished that dance though. Like, he really nailed it.” -Setbacks guitarist, 29.

“In grade 5 when a girl I kind of liked said that if I wrote her a poem she’d go out with me, I did. Then she read it out loud to all her friends. She didn’t go out with me.” -Joe Thrasher, guitarist, 28.

“In grade 10, I was totally loopy over this aboriginal guy. He listened to good music, skateboarded and rode a motorcycle. He resembled the guy from Dances With Wolves, which was very popular at the time. I wrote him a letter after enduring the painful, unrequited crush I had on him for months. Of course, I had a math test the next day, which I was completely unable to study for and failed. I never got a response to the letter, but it’s good incentive not to bother with fame, as it’s entirely possible he kept the letter and might’ve sold it on eBay.” -Jeweller, 32.

“I once slept in a ditch for three weeks to show that I was serious. But I was only in love with myself.” -Writer, 32.

“Love can do crazy things to a man. One summer, I spent a lot of time at a cottage. I fell in love with a local girl and whenever she was around I was like a peacock in full plumage, strutting my stuff and doing my best to stand out. Her dog got stranded on Dead Man’s Island and she figured I was the only one strong enough to swim out and get it. I almost drowned and had to be saved by the very girl I was trying to impress. I moved on, but to this day I am terrified of open water.” -Big Loser, 30.

Got an embarrassing story? Email Shotgun and we’ll print them in next week’s mailbox.

– Sylvie Hill

I have an outhouse to decorate. I’m fascinated by cottage outhouses.

My mom has managed to transform hers into a wooden superbooth of hope and “Believe in Yourself!” messaging plastered all over the walls. There among the E.T. poster and dream catchers are watercolour scrolls of the Footprints poem and the Serenity motivational verses extracted from a Dear Abby clipping. It’s cheesy as fuck, but talk about a comforting compartment for contemplation and other business.

Now that I have my own cottage for the summer that I share with my best friend and her boyfriend, my top priority is Star Wars bed sheets for the bunk beds in my room. But we also have to spruce up our shit shack too. Maybe a few Shotgun columns on the outhouse walls? But I wonder, after two years and no less than 60 columns, is Shotgun even worth the toilet paper you’d wipe your ass with?

Forget the toilet paper, get me a tissue, Mario! Readers: It’s with sadness that I declare that Shotgun is canned, so to speak, and I need a bathroom break. So, let’s call this farewell the masturbatory column for a moment. I’m going to jerk off a whole lot of thank-yous and do stuff that pleases me without any regard for your needs. Watch me now.

First. Thank you to Stuart Trew for offering me my own column back in August 2004, and thanks to the new Editor-in-Chief Matthew Harrison for treating his writers like gold. Thanks to Dianna Graham – not only XPress’s talented comedy writer, but a valued confidante and personal editor who always made sure I never gave too much away that I would regret in the morning.

Merci Doug Hamelin for being the closest thing a girl could have to The Toronto Star’s pop music junkie Ben Rayner, and to Patrick J. Killen for calling me sharp. Love to loyal friends who kept up and talked back.

Now your turn: Truthfully, Shotgun was nothing without its readers. From the regulars to the occasional visitor, everyone’s online comments helped make Shotgun one of the most popular columns to read at www.ottawaxpress.ca.

The best compliments are the ones that credit a writer for opening up a can of worms, contributing refreshing perspectives, or exposing newsworthy city secrets in a humorous and honest manner. Shotgun became a way of connecting readers all over Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto with that news. It’s been a treat talking with Ottawa about sex and relationships, popular culture, mental illness, and the need for more rock and roll beer gardens in this town.

You know, Christopher Silvester in the Introduction to The Penguin Book of Columnists writes, “Fecundity of opinion is one quality that is generally required of the columnist.” I doubt whether or not Ottawa can inspire ideas in the way sin cities like Paris and its salons of the 1920s could, and I am convinced leading a clean and sober life dulls the edge a bit. But like the light bulb in our outhouse, if you keep the light burning (somehow), you’ll always find your way through the dark. Then again, when burnout is a factor, who likes pissing on their own leg?

In his final column in The New York Times last year, after writing more than 3,000 columns, 75-year-old columnist William Safire quoted something Nobel laureate James Watson once told him: “Never retire. Your brain needs exercise or it will atrophy.”

Too true. But to paraphrase what Longtimers Johnny said to me one night at the Aloha Room over a bottle of 50: Just because a band doesn’t write songs for a while doesn’t make each of them any less a musician. So it goes for columnists.

Readers, we’ve had a good time. Thanks for calling my number off the wall.

[ed.] While we mourn the passing of Shotgun as a column and applaud Sylvie’s contribution over the years, the lovely Miss Hill has not left us for good. As one of our most beloved writers, she will continue to contribute to the paper whenever she can. And who knows, one day, when the time is right, the city may once again hear the familiar blast that signals the return of Shotgun.

– Sylvie Hill

Ever try talking dirty to your lover? How’s that working out?

I used to believe it was enough for ladies to splay themselves out naked on the centre of a cool, white bed, and – presto! – their job was done. For the most part, I think girls can still get away with this. Perhaps this is what’s behind the “dead lay” complaint, or the myth that sexy girls suck in bed, and not the right way. Hey, if all men think about is sex, ladies, consider yourselves damned lucky! Blokes are saving us a lot of work. They’re doing their homework, are you?

It’s time to get off our naked asses and put in some effort to seduce these guys with more than just our bodies. After all, we take cooking classes to be better cooks, financial workshops to get richer, and we train for marathons. So why not invest in our sexual future to become greater lovers?

Follow me.

Last week I was invited to Venus Envy for an “aural sex” workshop taught by Diva Midori. There, I learned how awful I must be in bed. “Blowjobs can only go so far,” Midori said to a store full of attractive lesbians, gay men, me and a couple more heterosexuals.

Damn, now what do I do?

Solution: “Tantalize, mesmerize and keep their attention, and win against the competition,” Midori rapped. Translation: Use your voice to ravish your partner with seductive storytelling and sensual instruction, and dude will keep coming back for more.

Because the brain is the biggest sex organ, the voice can be the most powerful tool to create the hottest scenes. If you can’t think of hot scenes, borrow from erotic literature. This way, you can use the hypnotic magic of the voice to seduce your lover long before you enter the bedroom (or the sushi restaurant). It’s the difference between sitting down at 6 p.m. for dinner and talking about the workday. Or, screwing with the man’s head by leaving him wondering when you’re going to do that thing you whispered you’d do to him earlier in a sexy phone call at lunch.

Sexy chitchat. Oh, it all sounds so easy, but it’s harder than you think! It’s like acting, and not all of us are Fringe Festival material. I know you have to use your eyes seductively, be attentive and vary the pace, rhythm and intonation of your speech. The challenge is not to sound like a beatnik.

But why not try talking like a sexed-up pretentious coffeehouse poet if that’ll make your man’s eyes roll back in his head like they do when you shove their dick in your hot, moist mouth.

Look! I’m talking sexy! No? Darn, I’ve always left this shit up to the guy. Tell me, gentlemen, where do you learn to talk so good?

XXX

SEXY BOOKS Ottawa’s Aviva Cohen will be doing a performance at Chapters (Rideau) based on her tantalizing novel, Sex and Sublimation, about a 23-year-old woman strutting sex and smarts in Brixton, U.K., June 10, 5 to 6 p.m. Book signing: 6 to 7 p.m.

XXX

SEXY THROATS Talk about using your voice, I’ll be on stage at Westfest June 10 at 7 p.m. to introduce Inuit throat singers Nukariik.

XXX

SHOTGUN SHOUT OUT Apparently the Letters to the Editor page is skint these days. But not here at Shotgun on-line! Kudos to all of you leaving comments. To Brad Thomas: my bad on the Lance Armstrong uni-testicle slag from “I Love You, But Who Am I.”

XXX

WHY DRIVE HIGH? Uh, because the concert was great and now I’d like to get home and have sex with my boyfriend before we both pass out. There’s one good reason. I’m sure you came up with a few more when you saw the Why Drive High? billboards plastered all around town. The eight-week, $346,000 public awareness campaign is causing quite a buzz, and not because it provokes deep thoughts on the dangers of driving like Cheech and Chong. The complaint is about the botched Arabic translation that reads something vague like Go Feed The Ducks. I don’t know. But here’s the thing. The slogan is ineffective because it’s straight-laced and square-pegged. If you’re sitting on the OC Transpo reading a poster like that, two things come to mind. First, don’t you wish you had a car? Second, you probably want a joint now too. You want to get through to people? How about, “Drive High, Die,” for starters.

XXX

COMMON SCENTS CBC radio has been talking incessantly all last week about the proposed citywide bylaw that would ban fragrances in all public places. To move the campaign along, the City of Ottawa should use sex to sell the idea: “Covering up your natural scents is hazardous to your sex life.” How many times has your lover’s natural scent been a great aphrodisiac? Hell, I was taken by the manly sweat smell of a young man on the bus the other day. When I complimented his odour, he told me he just got back from the gym and that he hadn’t showered. If we were part of the Fatal Attraction exhibit now on at the Museum of Nature until September, this encounter would have had me down on all fours in a lion’s roar. I say, display it before you spray it.

– Sylvie Hill

Most couples are fearful that infidelity, finances or jogging pants will dissolve a marriage, but there’s a more terrifying monster lurking in the shadows.

It’s giving up who you are and what you want in order to become one. More plainly put, it’s identity loss.

“Marriage has the potential to erode the very fibre of your identity,” says Kristin Armstrong, the ex-wife of uni-testicled champion cyclist Lance Armstrong, in Glamour magazine this month. (www.glamour.com/)

Relationships are supposed to enhance your well-being, not deteriorate it, and this is why “marriage is a conspiracy,” according to Armstrong, who says in the article that she believes in marriage, but warns women to be prepared for a shocker.

“I think a conspiracy is anything that’s shrouded in silence,” she says. “[And] I think women are awesome communicators. So why don’t women talk to women about what it’s going to take to not just make [marriage] work, but make it great?”

It’s flattering to leave it to us girls to discuss how to make a marriage great, but I’m not sure if women are up to the task.

A friend of mine, who recently suffered a blow by some dipshit with the maturity and grace of a fart, searched the library for a copy of He’s Just Not That Into You by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo.

She told me there were about five people on the waiting list for her copy. Presumably many other copies were already out on loan.

That’s a lot of copies of a self-help guide for girls getting over guys that never call back. When women can’t see that just as certain men reject us, we reject some of them, we lack common sense.

Given this preoccupation with rejection, is marriage the real threat to self-actualization or are we our own worst enemy from the dating stage?

We’re plagued by what Mom always said: “If a guy really likes a girl, he will climb mountains.” So if a girl has never met her mountaineer, she feels alone and unexplored.

So she may pine for a worthless prick. Or, she’ll marry the first guy who shows a bit of interest. Is that desperation or opportunistic?

I say some women are at a disadvantage when it comes to male-female relationships.

First there’s childhood, with its Cinderella, kitchenette sets, sewing machines and make-up kits. Then comes the fantasy world of wedding cakes and bridal parties.

As Armstrong explains in the article, “The problem is that when a young woman announces her engagement, everyone is quick to roll out the matrimonial red carpet by throwing showers and obsessing over wedding day plans.”

But women who go along with it are also to blame.

All this, she says sarcastically, helps a bride prepare for the reality of marriage “about as much as nine months of baby showers and nursery decorating prepare a gestating woman for the awesome task of raising a child.”

For Armstrong, her once stimulating life and go-getter public relations career vanished when she became a wife and mother. What made her happy was now something outside of herself: Lance’s career or the kids.

If it all comes down to biology, and women naturally must give up a large portion of themselves for their parasitic embryos and, by extension, the hearth, the trick then is to find a man who will help out so she can take a time out. These guys exist: They’re my very own male friends!

And that’s why I think Oprah Winfrey’s an idiot.

In a recent television interview with Armstrong (www.oprah.com/tows/slide/200605/20060509/slide_20060509_284_103.jhtml), Oprah says she never walked down the aisle because she didn’t want to sacrifice herself for her feelings for a man. “I just wanted to always be myself!” Oprah cried.

I know I’m not the only one telling Oprah to blow it out her billion-dollar ass for painting a pitiful portrait of men as vampires waiting to sacrifice a woman’s identity on the marriage altar.

Sure, some of them suck as early as the dating phase, but that’s because certain women are so wounded that fuck-ups attract fuck-ups. I was, and did.

I had a boyfriend who said: “Your place is uncomfortable. You have too many books.”

So I did what any loving girlfriend would do – I packed them away in a storage closet, next to my balls.

Many people are desperate to become a couple. But if love is about finding your “other half,” why rush it? You may think marriage will take away your loneliness, but by compromising a lot of your “wholeness” just to fill a hole, or three, you’re only adding to it.

– Sylvie Hill

The bands are good ’til they make enough cash
To eat food and get a pad
Then they’re sold out and their music is cliché
Because talent’s exclusive to bands without pay
Know it all – did you really listen to that song?
Could you ever write what you call wrong?
~ “Know It All,” Lagwagon

Home ownership and health. Things society checks off when it decides you’re an adult now.

Add to that list a clean-shaven face.

Nothing says “I deserve a promotion” like no sideburns. As if looking like Jesus in a trucker cap is a setback.

I’ve been reaping benefits from looking like a skid myself this month. I didn’t grow a beard, but worn-out Levi’s and a scary Baphomet-like, winged-humanoid-goat skull with curly horns à la ram on my black and white Maximum RNR band T-shirt seem to be doing the trick.

It could be thanks to this outfit that I’m making nice with all sorts of wonderful people. If clothes make the man, then my gear makes me a happy (wo)man, indeed.

First I got the attention of a bandana-clad, longhaired biker dude. He nodded as me and my chest strolled by. Not the hooters, the horns! Did biker dude know the Toronto band on my T-shirt, or was it the logo uniting rockers of the world?

Next, it was the young chap with the spiked mohawk at the Second Cup on Bank and Somerset. He gave me a discount on my steamed milk as Johnny Cash played on the sound system.

Wearing my special T-shirt also got me a free club soda at Zaphod’s and a complimentary cranberry juice at Dominion Tavern.

The moral of the story: Have Maximum RNR T-shirt, will travel.

No?

Okay, well, a better way of putting it is like this. Homosexuals have their rainbows, and others their skull and crossbones. It’s nice when you recognize someone who looks like they’re travelling a similar road. But are we?

Perhaps my eagerness says I’m just a poser looking for validation from the counterculture to justify my existence as a decent-paid public servant sellout – who likes to rock out.

Maybe I need approval from “cool” cats to compensate for my “responsible” lifestyle that I sometimes wish was crusty enough to impress the rough blokes and fit in with the tough chicks who look like they could drop-kick and rock my ass to Camden Town and back in a hand clap.

I’m not saying the biker, the punk and those bartenders are my best friends either. But having a pleasant exchange with them is more rewarding than getting checked out in “grown-up woman attire” by some fuckass in Hugo Boss driving a flashy convertible on his way home to 700 Sussex.

Then again, why is Flashy Fuckass a sellout just because he can afford nice shit?

Let’s channel the spirit of Angus MacLise for this one. Yeah, MacLise: Why’d you quit the Velvet Underground when the group accepted an offer of $75 for their first paying performance in New Jersey back in 1965?

Selling out means compromising your integrity for mass appeal. But let’s say you’re true to your ideals and can sell your skills because they are massively appealing. Well, you invest in your future.

But still, some of us are uncomfortable with success lest it should separate us from the underground, and hell no, don’t say “condo”!

Toronto Star writer Melinda Mattos spoke to this in her April 29 article, “Owning a home changes your life,” in the Condo Generation column.

Mattos writes: “I had lunch with an old friend recently and actually heard the following words come out of my mouth: ‘Interest rates were low, so it was a good time to buy.’ We used to talk about punk rock and hair dye; now I sound like a bank commercial.”

I too had lunch with a new “friend” in Toronto recently (three guesses what band) and actually heard the following words come out of my mouth: “I’m no longer sexually frustrated and my mental health is really, really good.”

Uh, what?

Hey, Mattos openly admitted switching to 10-grain hot cereal for breakfast because it’s economical and nutritious even though it “tastes like watery, fruity couscous.” Who’s the loser now?!

Gee whiz, upgrading your nutrition, sanity or lodgings shouldn’t be so embarrassing – it just sounds geeky compared to punk rock, and weirder when the info isn’t solicited.

Growing up shouldn’t mean growing out of all the things you love most, or away from people fundamental Christians call scary. Nor should “cool” be exclusive to a dysfunctional prick with a kick-ass record collection.

In the Googled words of my lunch date, when it comes to life’s road trip, he says, “my personal highway has taught me that if you stick to what you love, you won’t get lost.”

Just be sure what you love loves you back the right way – and doesn’t leave you homeless!

And along the way, may travellers always find the “real” you. Regardless of what T-shirt you’re wearing.

XXX

“Sucking Satan’s cock” is the term comedian Bill Hicks used in the 1990s to describe musical acts who make bland music to maximize sales, or allow their music to be used in advertising.

XXX

Heads (and horns) up: Maximum RNR rawk Doberman Bikes in Aylmer, Quebec, on Canada Day.

XXX

Lagwagon plays Métropolis in Montreal on July 25, 2006.

– Sylvie Hill

When Grandpa slipped Grandma the tongue at Easter dinner, little did we know the affectionate display could forever change our own romantic futures.

Senior citizen sex, with all its hardened toenails, is enough to turn anyone off sex. Then again, it shows us there’s sex way beyond 30.

So what are you worried about?

I’m getting that a lot of single folks feel like yogurt: They need to chill and be consumed within a certain time frame lest they rot into curds. There’s a real fear that getting older means Captain Stubing is gonna flip you the bird as the Love Boat passes your sorry ass by.

It’s a bit unreasonable to believe that once you hit the big 3-0, every year you spend away from the turning point – and your tits and ass bond with gravity – represents 365 days away from your best chances at scoring some booty.

I’m sure you have single friends like this in your life right now. You know, the frantic ones who describe an e-mail from their online crush with maniacal acuity that’s so charged, who needs speed? Or how about the ones who live in a fantasy world with a fictitious mate, or endure the reality of a shitty one just ’cause they think their time is running out?

Representations of senior citizen sexuality can help these desperate but admiringly hopeful people by culturing them into the understanding that sex and love don’t depend so much on what you look like, but on who you are. And if we improve with age, doesn’t it follow that we get better at attracting someone nice?

For some women, second adulthood (or menopause) is marked by a new assertiveness, explains Suzanne Braun Levine in her book Inventing the Rest of Our Lives: Women in Second Adulthood. Sure, freedom after 55 sounds delightful, but it doesn’t diffuse the reality that my ass will flatten into two small flabby flapjacks, which I’m wondering if Jack will still want to slap.

I always wanted a book of nude photographs of older ladies to help me grow accustomed to what I’ll become. I haven’t found that book, but I have checked out Joan Price’s Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk About Sex After Sixty (Seal Press, 2006). Price is priceless. As an ageless sexuality advocate, professional speaker and fitness expert, she just saved my shrinking ass from a whole lotta bullshit.

For starters, cracking the tomb will loosen the vice grip that keeps your head firmly focused on the past. Instead, as a collection of testimonials about sex from gay, straight, married and single 60-plussers, the book’ll whip your skull over yonder toward the future, and alert you to some sizzling possibilities!

Senior sex encourages sex with love instead of meaningless casual sex, and can instruct married couples on how to keep the flame alive. Senior citizen sex reminds us that more than the body is responsible for great sex.

Take it from Erica Jong, 64, the female writer known as the “patron saint of feminine sexual autonomy.” Jong was famous for her feminist manifesto Fear of Flying, which sold 18 million copies worldwide. She had a way with men. Several, actually. But now that she’s a senior citizen she’s slowing down, and will tell you – according to an April 2 review in the Ottawa Citizen – that open marriage is a crock, age brings experience and “real intimacy,” and “a willing spirit makes up for weak flesh.”

Beyond Jong and Price, who are both married, are the older ladies who go after younger guys.

Lisa Rutherford, a former Carleton University graduate now living in Montreal who has studied the language used to describe women and its connection to meat, explained in a March 7 interview in Concordia University magazine The Link how “most swear words reduce a woman to the status of an animal and reduce her to her biological nature.”

“Cougar,” anyone?

And while websites such as Urbancougar.com invite women to send in photos of themselves, this attempt to celebrate cougarness is pathetic. The fake breasts and tarted-up women represent, to me, a blatant rejection of natural aging that is too unbalanced to be beautiful.

Absorbing images of positive and realistic senior sexuality and appreciating its variants beyond our youthful years should redefine the limited, restricted roles we place upon both sexes.

Think of the Polident commercial with the two grey-hairs on a sleepover date, where the man borrows a denture tablet to freshen up before making out. Believe it – women don’t have an expiry date like denture cleaning tablets, and not all men prefer the perky secretary.

But how is thinking about your mom and dad screwing going to help you now in your dry spell? Easy: Don’t let it turn your stomach. Instead, accept that your pathetic sex life, or lack thereof, is an uphill adventure, not a downward spiral.

Yeah, I’ll go ponder that as I work off my blue balls.

XXX

STRAIGHT TALK ABOUT SEX AFTER 60 Come explore the challenges and celebrate the joys of older-age sexuality in an upbeat, interactive workshop with Joan Price at Venus Envy (320 Lisgar Street) on May 6 and 7, 6:30 p.m. Take home new tools, techniques and attitudes that help women over 60 experience hot, joyful sex. For more information, visit www.joanprice.com or www.venusenvy.ca. Tickets: $15-$25.

– Sylvie Hill

When I think about how easy it would be for me to squat cowgirl on my man, on command, in the front seat of a ’69 Dodge Charger, or compact myself low down to blow him in the cramped space of a dirty bar bathroom, I thank the heavens I don’t have mobility issues.

Can’t say the same spontaneity or unhindered movement is common among the disabled. Yeah, I got a soft spot in my heart for folks who sex and sport it, on wheels.

With this appreciation for agile sex moves, I’m reminded of one of my favourite French films called National 7. It’s a sex-advocacy documentary about a group of health care professionals who round up a troop of prostitutes in roadside trailers to service the needs of horny, disabled men. It’s happening in Holland, Australia and the U.K. Even Toronto has shown more leg than O-Town.

Toronto has 26-year-old Alessia di Virgilio talking about the ins and outs of sex among the disabled in her zine Sex on Wheels, and her short film The 411 on Sex and Disability. I first read about her in Toronto’s Eye Magazine, and she just won a community service volunteer award for her work at SexAbility.

From what I can tell, the City of Ottawa doesn’t seem to provide sexual aid services for the disabled, but it’s nice to see the super spring and summer lineup of its city-wide integration and recreation programs (yoga, arts, sports, etc.) for youth, adults and seniors with special needs (www.ottawa.ca).

And while Ottawa is doing a great job promoting sports for disabled people, on a national level, Canada failed big time. The 2006 Paralympic Games in Turin came and went as fast as the electric wheelchair I drove into the side of a fish tank once during my brief stint as a home care worker. (I had to park and charge the chair, but what can I say, I’m hooked on TT racing.)

While the Olympic Games shut down my British soap opera for weeks on end last month, CBC, for example, gave minimal coverage to the Paralympic Games. I guess network and television viewers don’t give a shit about wheelchair marathoners or amputee sprinters. Let’s find out why this weekend (April 21-23) as the RBC 2010 Flag Tour makes its cross-country stop at the Rideau Centre (east side). The visit’s purpose is to join Canadians together in welcoming the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Vancouver in 2010.

Did you know the first Olympic Games of the modern era opened in Athens 110 years ago this month? It took over a century for the Paralympic movement, which represents the vast majority of athletes with a disability, to come about. And when it was created in 1989 its mandate was to offer a vision of inspiration and empowerment.

So it’s 2006 – is it inspiring and empowering?

In the article called “Are all Paralympians elite athletes?” author Daniel Bell questions whether Paralympic sports are really “elite”, despite the fact that the disabled sports movement has worked tirelessly to have their games recognized as such. Maybe they shouldn’t get the same funding and media attention as Olympians?

“The issue is really a quality of competition,” Bell writes, observing the many more medals the Paralympians receive over Olympians. Sounds like the difference between veggie burgers and bison burgers. They’re both burgers, but would you really enter them in the same cook-off?

But it’s not only the swift passing of the Paralympic Games, or disabled-sex activism in our neighbouring city, that makes me ask if Ottawa is doing all we can do for the disabled community here. Just the other weekend, I got in from a great night out in Wakefield – holy delicious bison burgers from Chez Eric – with friends, only to find my neighbour “stuck” in the elevator.

He was hanging out with the door ajar, and leaning over his wheelchair talking into the elevator wall with what sounded like a Dalek from Dr. Who. What ensued was a natural misunderstanding about being “stuck.” Yes we could get out, but we were stuck too because dude can’t get upstairs otherwise. He’s in wheels.

If I hadn’t come along, my neighbour would have been stuck with two options: sleep in the lobby with his coat over his head or hang out at Tim Hortons at the corner of Bank Street and Dodgeville. His bladder had 20 minutes. The Ottawa Fire Department arrived in five and got him upstairs for the night.

He’s a lucky neighbour. The power outage back in August 2003 saw the wheelchair folks of my building lined up in front of the building like drag racers at Highway 7′s Ottodrome, but with only the Lockmaster Tavern toilets to piss in and the front lawn to spend the night.

And yet it’s not the people in wheelchairs who depress me – it’s the ones outta them that often make me sad. I mean, why do able-bodied folks who can fuck or frolic so conveniently destroy their bodies with obesity or unhealthy habits? To me, it’s a mental deficiency when you screw with your physical self. So never mind wheels, what the fuck is up with women and their high heels?

– Sylvie Hill

When I hear the term “doggy style,” I think Snoop Dogg. But I also think of a preferred sexual position which invites cupping or bucking so tender your lover’s hands are free to wander like spiders over soft flesh while you’re poised to push into your man’s hard thrusts.

In another sense, “doggy style” calls up the derogatory image of a porno actress on all fours with ass propped up toward ceiling mirrors, orifices stretched so wide from ritual poolside gang bangs that her privates could double as a state-of-the-art golf ball dispenser at the driving range.

Pardon the vulgarity but there’s no delicate way of stating the obvious. The image is plastered across a zillion porn DVD covers. Which is why I’m really digging the new Daniel Edwards statue of a naked and pregnant Britney Spears crouched seductively on a bearskin rug, ass angled up to the heavens with her infant boy’s head popping out.

Finally, a contemporary and digestible image of womanhood we can appreciate.

Edwards’ life-size statue, called Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston, features Britney’s lactiferous breasts and protruding navel with a posterior view that depicts widened hips for the birthing. The sculpture, which pays homage to the pop icon, is showing to April 23 at Capla Kesting Fine Art gallery in the hip New York district of Williamsburg. Road trip: no sleep till Brooklyn.

It’s getting people talking. CBC News articles point to the abortion issues it raises, while Maclean’s magazine suggested it’s a “publicity masterpiece.” ITV News online warns us Tom Cruise may be next, and the College Times writer Art Martori half-jokingly complains that Monument is taking away masturbatory fantasies from half the men in the world because her “most desirable aspect is blocked by the antithesis of casual sex.”

Martori compares Britney’s back view to an open sore which effeminates men. (Guys like Martori should buy Tim Ward’s book, Savage Breast, about men’s fear of women and the feminine principle. See Ward at the Writers Fest on Wednesday April 19 @ 7 p.m.)

And while Monument has pissed off pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike, at least they’re agreeing for once. Both groups hate it: The former are against sultry Britney as their poster woman; the latter denounce this loud celebration of pregnancy. But it’s a refreshing change from the bloody placards of anti-abortion messaging. And the statue’s seductiveness reclaims woman’s sexuality and agency. Not a bad deal at all for both sides, really.

But an April 7 article at Maclean’s online called “Read and learn, philistines” by Scott Feschuk dissects Monument to Life, saying it’s perhaps no more than “a monument to getting me on Entertainment Tonight, baby.” About Britney’s serene countenance, he writes: “A woman obviously didn’t make this statue or else the facial features would reflect the goddamn torture that is childbirth, you clueless male bastard.” Regardless of that inaccuracy, its beauty and artistic merit are undeniable.

But I like how NC Times questions the rules “where private moments can be simulated in sculpture or on a computer.” In Grade 2 art class, we moulded our handprint in plaster. But what was cute then changes now if your new crush fails to appreciate your clay mould penis collection circa 1995-2001.

Another ugly angle, which The Globe and Mail revealed, is whether the hunk of clay is even a serious artwork. Edwards is already known for his oddball celebrity works (Ted Williams Memorial Display With Death Mask From the Ben Affleck 2004 World Series Collection).

There is also the “who gives a shit” contingent that refuses to see the social or political value of a male head popping out of the birth canal of some celebrity. Personally, I think there’s value in an international sex symbol delivering a helpless male into the world.

Shotgun is all for the respectful sexualizing of motherhood. It’s necessary in a culture where the virgin/whore tension still exists. Like, I can’t handle another jackass who digs me dirty in bed but shuts me up in public. Naked and pregnant Britney embodies both extremes all at the same time and brings new meaning to the expression “sexy mother fucker.”

In the same way the documentary Super Size Me cultured a nation to dry heave at the sight or smell of Big Macs, so too can Edwards’ art rebrand a cultural icon and perhaps encourage former dissenters to share in the similarity of their baby-making abilities, rather than focusing on differences like the sexual incompetence that superstars often make us feel.

To date, we don’t know what Britney thinks about the sculpture. But since Edwards is reported to have looked to Canada’s tradition of the bearskin rug baby picture, let’s hope the bare-skinned Britney doesn’t pull a celebrity and freak out against our bear hunt now…

XXX

BELLA YOU GO SEE a high-octane combo of vampires and rockers from the crypt at Café Dekcuf, Saturday April 15, and you’ll be an extra in the new Brett Kelly film Kingdom of the Vampire. Kelly will be filming while the Bella Bombs, A Plot Against Me, and Sick, Sick, Sicks kick the shit out of your year drums. Doors at 8 p.m., $7.

– Sylvie Hill

Bardot the babykiller? (Photo: Aaron McKenzie Fraser)

Celebrities from far and wide are being tortured in Canada. That’s right, last week media and pundits abused and ridiculed the McCartneys and Brigitte Bardot for speaking out against Canada’s seal hunt, or “massacres,” which they call horrific.

Being the polite, reciprocating Canadians we are, we paid them back – in unkindness.

On Larry King Live, the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, Danny Williams, was this shy of telling the McCartneys to stuff it because they didn’t know what the heck they were talking about (transcripts.cnn.com/transcripts/0603/03/lkl.01.html).

In an opinion piece in the Ottawa Citizen on St. Paddy’s Day, Williams again discredited the ex-Beatle and his wife, warning readers that the McCartneys’ “misleading photo ops accompanied by false information should not sway people.” As in, don’t believe the hype.

Over at the Marriott about a week later, ex-sex symbol Bardot received a beating – or at least looked like she had. Most media (except compassionate XPress photographer Aaron McKenzie Fraser) made a farce of the 71-year-old on crutches by snapping her ludicrously posing in fits of tears. Even Stephen Harper turned her down, presumably for reasons other than being held up at Good Life with his recent (we hope) preoccupation with saving his whale of a belly.

I thought Bono had sent out a clear message about the arrogance of celebrities intersecting with politics.

One could say celebrities are no different than politicians – full of hot air, and no one believes them. But in saying Canada’s seal hunt is “inhumane” and “brutal” and “barbaric,” the impact of all the inaccurate information, publicity and highly charged rhetoric from the overpaid starlets is great.

Already because of these loudmouths, StatsCan has reported figures showing that Canadian snow crab exports to the U.S. have dropped by more than $150-million, or 36 per cent, since the anti-seal hunt campaign began last year.

They’re screwing with our economy, jeopardizing the livelihood of rural Canadians, and they’re also plain ol’ hurting our feelings.

The Ottawa Sun reported that Bardot insulted Harper by writing in a note that “only idiots refuse to change their minds.” And she called industry supporter Senator Celine Hervieux-Payette a “damn idiot.” (This coming from Bardot who, in her book called Un cri dans le silence, attacked Islam, homosexuals and immigrants.)

So Hervieux-Payette responded with the cryptic retort that if the anti-seal hunt campaign continues and hurts the future of certain populations, “we could see what we could do.” In other words, ve have vays to make you shut up.

But while anyone, including celebrities, should be encouraged to stand up for a good cause, it’s largely suspected that when celebs do it, it’s more about an orchestrated public relations stunt, right?

Sean Lennon placed an ad in the New York Post looking for a girlfriend. A Google search shows he got a date with Lindsay Lohan, who just happens to be working on a new film about John Lennon. Coincidence? And I hear Stella McCartney’s fashion biz needs a boost.

If not for the publicity, then it’s that stars have nothing better to do. Or maybe they are researching a new role?

Perhaps a better explanation comes from another Ottawa Citizen article last week, titled “Stars evoke emotion more than debate.” Celebrities make us think with our hearts, the local news source explained, calling Bardot’s appearance a “performance” that was “a mixture of noble intentions and showbiz.”

And the graphic poster Bardot displayed of a baby seal pounding a human baby to death with a bloody club, which read, “Do not do to others that which you would not want to suffer yourself,” was extreme.

Celebs exude authority because of their star-status popularity, no doubt. I’ll trust Lakota capsules even though I can’t recall what the hell the medicine is for. The guy seems convincing enough, so why not, eh?

But contrary to everything the glamorous “experts” are saying, the fact is that the seal hunt is licensed. Killing white-coat seals was outlawed in 1987, and since then hunters must wait until they turn grey. By then the animals are weaned, not torn from their mothers as depicted in scandalous activist videos. In fact, a report in the Canadian Veterinary Journal concluded 98 per cent of the hunt is conducted humanely.

False optics, people.

Get the real facts on Canada’s seal hunt and watch My Ancestors Were Rogues and Murderers on CBC Newsworld’s The Lens, Tuesday April 4 at 10 p.m. (ET/PT) with a repeat on Saturday April 8 at 10 p.m. (ET/PT). The film is produced by Kent Martin for the National Film Board’s Atlantic Centre.

See, the McCartneys and Bardot aren’t getting the right information because living a privileged life from afar compromises their ability to absorb an issue they are not intimately connected with.

Sort of like Will Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who just started up a heavy metal band called Wicked Wisdom. As if she “gets” metal. See Jada rock: Comes complete with her own tour van and vaporizer. Put the time in, Miss Smith, is all I’m saying. You’re not legit, so quit.

Celebrities fighting for poverty, baby seals, a love life or talent. The question is not what they’re going to save, but who’s going to save them.

You interested? To quote Bardot’s lyrics, “Tu veux ou tu veux pas?”

Moi – j’veux pas.

– Sylvie Hill

I can’t have a baby now, my outfit is all wrong!

According to 99 percent of the television commercials featuring wives and mothers and laundry detergent or minivans, without high-waisted beige chinos, I’m nothing.

Add to that the absence of matching pastel knit co-ordinates and a delicate gold necklace to go with my precious diamond wedding band and what we’ve got here is a failure to assimilate.

I don’t look like the women Pledge-ing the oak dining room table, nor the one picking her husband’s clothes off the floor in the Tide commercial. And fuck if I aspire to being them. Granted, there’s nothing wrong with doing my share of the housekeeping or helping my honey with his laundry. I just don’t want to feel – and look – like a fucking cliché while doing it, thanks.

Neither do you, apparently, and that’s why you’re still here. But if you happen to fit in with what conservative folks would call “proper” or “presentable” then read on, ’cause I’ll need your help understanding why our society upholds lame-ass, cookie-cutter women as role model wives and mothers.

There is an entire demographic of mothers-to-be out there who can’t relate to these commercials. Show me a tattooed mother adjusting junior’s car seat in the back of a ’62 Plymouth Fury and I’ll bet you a fiver they’re a family that wouldn’t call Kentucky Fried Chicken a “treat,” or would rather a trip to southern France than Disneyland.

Oh, there’s my answer I guess, because from McDonald’s to Chef Boyardee, industry and our economy thrive on certain other mothers feeling insecure. Insecure about not feeding their kid the right thing. Or driving the right TrailBlazer. In one minivan commercial, mothers worldwide are warned that unless little Joey can play video games in the back seat, he’s going to abandon you for the mother next door who can give him that luxury.

There are enough things about motherhood that freak us out beyond an eight-pound greasy creature with eyeballs busting out of a vagina after nine months. Do we have to increase women’s worries by pummelling them with sanitized adverts of motherhood that they can’t live up to? that seem to limit their shopping experience to Zellers and their brain space to conformity?

Hands- and mops-down, the portrayal of vanilla moms with their business-casual attire, uniformity and listlessness packages motherhood into something marketable, and we’re buying it. How many of you are questioning it?

Any commercial you see nowadays is playing into stereotypes. Mothers & More (www.mothersandmore.org), an American non-profit membership organization that “cares for the caregiver,” compiled a good list of them. They are: Bonbon-Eating Mom (lazy TV watchers), Career-Crazed Mom (selfish careerist), Supermom (do-it-all), 24/7 Bliss Mom (always smiling), Martyr Mom (there for everyone), Glam Mom (always looks good) and Domestic Goddess Mom (loves housework). Have you been labelled one of these?

What also scares me, in addition to the message stereotypes send back to ourselves about how we’re falling short of some ideal, is the one they put across to eligible bachelors. I fear the clinical version of wife and motherhood brainwashes gents into believing polished Gap girls are superior. The misconception that plain equals stable is not far behind.

The danger is serious. Far from me to link Swiffer commercials to postpartum depression and infanticide, especially when those ads promote how easy your life will be if you used these products, right? But, what happens when life doesn’t get any easier for moms?

Well, Mom ends up fucking your boyfriend, like in Roger Michell’s depressing British film The Mother, that’s what happens. I rented the flick over the weekend, and what a warning to all wives and mothers about the consequences of settling and losing your identity to a prescribed role.

Prescribed roles are safe. Like vanilla ice cream. It’s plain and predictable until someone gives you a taste of the rocky road with nougat and marshmallows and all hell breaks loose.

Colouring the vanilla image of motherhood is not only the subject of many classics like Kramer vs. Kramer or The Hours, but a way to open up women right here in our own backyard to more choice.

A girlfriend of mine would have gone nuts if she hadn’t thought independently of commonplace notions of what it means to be a parent. Suburbs? Screw it. She recently took her eight-month-old daughter to Australia for a month. Next it’s Peru for a couple of weeks. Another took her tot to Japan and taught English.

Let’s see more examples of women like this, who follow the beat of a different drummer and who have Youth Brigade’s anthem “Punk Rock Mom” playing in the same CD changer as a little Kindermusik.

Yes, it takes courage to express yourself independently from a world where J. Crew Mom next to you looks at you funny. For those of us sensitive-to-criticism types, we sometimes can’t shake the need for society’s validation since we kinda live in it and all. But if Daddy wears a chain wallet, why the hell can’t Mom?

And if all this talk of clothing doesn’t matter, then I dare Pampers to throw Bif Naked into their next diaper commercial.

To me, fuddy-duddy telemummies of TV land scream “white Christian married woman with affluent background.” And while the whole fashion victim thing might be forgivable, there’s no excuse for mistaking a capitalist theocrat for the perfect mother.

– Sylvie Hill