Saturday, August 8, 2009

The Real Dirt on Toronto

Toronto stinks.

Not, as Allan Fotheringham claimed last week in a superlatively dickish column in the Reliable Globe, metaphorically. Doctor Foth made the churlish claim that NOW is some sort of moral barometer, and that the lowly Yellow Pages and its 300+ church listings couldn't hold a candle to the smut that NOW is peddling to Hogtown residents. Somehow, it seems that the sexual entrepreneurs populating the back pages of Toronto's weekly rag leads to the rest of Canada's hating on our 'burg.

Fothie Bear makes some totally wacky math calculations: his city is populated by about two million people, half of whom are women with no interest in sexual favours from lusty ladies (including lesbians and the curious-and-female would only wreck the math, so Fotheringham leaves 'em out). He then takes out a third of the population for being under twenty and "not interested," as well as men over fifty for the same reason. That leaves us with about 300,000 people (his math) perusing the hundred of ads. I assume that, in the Venn diagram showing the overlap between "NOW erotic advertisement users" and "disgusting perverts who wear hideous pleather peacoats and hit on drunk, sloppy women outside 24-hour convenience stores," A+B is rather large.

Wh-what? Pardon me, sir, but just because a man's gained his mid-life weight is no reason to count him out of the game...and while the flesh may be weak, I can imagine that there are many for whom the spirit is more than willing. In fact, I would say that men over fifty are the primary audience for all the Nadias and Jades and Lolas cavorting around wearing stars. Not to mention the fact that the teen years seem like nothing but one long nocturnal emission.

Since Allan Fotheringham is one hundred years old (okay, fine: a hale and hearty 77), I could maybe forgive him for forgetting the gland-driven howling that teenagers do. But just because your prurient ass gets all puckered at the thought of purchased sex, especially in relation to some church-vs.-NOW-ad ratio, don't assume anyone's buying it, everyone's buying it, or only certain types are buying it. It takes all kinds, as the song says, and I find it hard to believe that Toronto is the only metro area in Canada where you can purchase a piece of tail.

Old-man-driven hypocrisy aside, the reason my city smells like garbage is that it's literally covered in garbage. The strike is over! Bring out your dead! I'm glad Toronto workers are back on the job - while I was having fun pointing out to bitchers and/or moaners that these so-called assbags and jerkwads (the union) are garbage and child-care workers (demographics not traditionally known for the percentage of high schoolers who raise an excited hand when asked "Is anyone here interested in working for the city?!"), the subtle underwaft of rot and decay was crazy-making.

Now, on the eve of what I'm sure will be known as The Great Scrubdown, the strike went on just long enough to offer an anti-tantalizing whiff of what could have been the future. It reeks. It's gross. The garbage juice is everywhere, as are the flies. It's gnarly. And, barring some boneheaded move by Monsignieur D. Miller, it seems as though the flood the Truly Gross was diverted.

So: unions/city: thanks for working it out. Allan Fotheringham? You should have maybe spent more time exploring the real filth of the city - there was plenty to go around, trust me - instead of wallowing in some mathematically suspect and annoying moral sludge.

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