So You Want to Be a Freelance Writer: The Truth About Writing for Pay

Writing for pleasure doesn't exactly pay the bills.

As most of my regular readers already know, I'm a fourth-year university student with tuition and books to pay for, and unfortunately for me, no one is throwing wads of cash at me for my devastatingly witty blog posts each week. 

Pictured: not the average writer's experience.

In order to keep myself in textbooks and wine coolers that my student self so desperately needs, I work as a freelance writer. It's a simple enough way to make money - someone asks me to write something, I write it, they pay me - but every time I mention what I do for a "living", I end up bombarded with disbelieving stares and ceaseless questions. Since most of my friends are at least somewhat literate, those questions are often to the tune of "how do I get started"? Freelance writing may be simple, but the process of starting out is anything but.

So if you're interested in embarking on your own freelance writing adventures, or if you're merely interested in reading about the inconveniences and hardships of the career path in order to bolster your already-immense admiration for me, keep in mind that:

10

Why Books Make the Best Christmas Presents

One more Christmas-themed post, people, and then we return to regular programming until next year. I promise.

No more Christmas posts until you and this anonymous thin woman have shed this year's extra holiday pounds. 

Two weeks ago, I tried to be a kind blog writer and give all of you a head start on your holiday shopping by providing you with a list of wonderfully bizarre and impractical gifts to startle your loved ones with on the big day. 

Just look how happy she is. 

Of course, I have no doubt that the vast majority of my readers didn't take my advice, and now three days before Christmas you're scrambling to find last-minute gifts that won't leave your entire family disappointed in you. Sure, you could go to the mall and stab a random stranger to get your hands on that last trendy handbag or hot holiday toy, but, once again, I've got your back with a much more practical solution.

Just looking at this makes me salivate.

That's right, books are the answer to all your problems. They're affordable, yet classy. They're popular, and yet you're much less likely to get punched in the face at a bookstore than a department store. They provide hours of entertainment, and yet you don't have to have the newest operating system or console to view them. They are, in essence, the perfect gift. 

Of course, picking out the right book can be tricky. Unless everyone on your list has an active Goodreads account, you can't always tell what they've already read, and someone's taste in novels might not always match their taste in movies. But don't let fear of buying the wrong book scare you off. Even if you hand someone a book they'd rather use to prop up a wobbly table with than read, books still make the best presents because:

They make excellent bludgeoning weapons. 

I live on the edge of Alberta's capital region, which means that at any given time, I'm within a reasonable driving distance of a range of deadly predators, including bears, wolverines, bobcats, coyotes, wolves and mountain lions. If sharp-toothed meat-eaters aren't your thing, locals here also have the option of being peacefully trampled to death by herbivorous moose, cattle, big-horned sheep, buffalo, elk or caribou.

This is not a random stock image; this was taken just outside my high school.

It's foolhardy to go up against these animals empty-handed, but defensive weaponry poses a serious problem in the great white north. Running around with a shotgun sticking out of your snowpants will get you a strongly-worded letter from the local RCMP, and harpoon depots are notoriously hard to find in the prairies. Chasing them off with snowballs won't do you any good either. They were born in the snow, molded by it. They didn't see spring until they were already adults. You merely adopted it.

Canada's cultural necessity, the mighty Timbit, unfortunately cannot save you from bears either.

And that's where books come in. They're heavy, they're compact, and they're easy to store. They've got sharp corners for gouging and a full pad of pages for delivering small but deadly papercuts. Bigger is better - fend off Mother Nature's pointiest children with that copy of War and Peace that you'll never get through, or with those copies of the Twilight Saga that your misguided grandmother got you. It doesn't matter what the book is about; so long as you can grab it and start swinging, it's an excellent Christmas gift. 

You can make artful sculptures out of them and put pictures on Pinterest. 

It's not always easy to pick out the perfect book for someone, even if you do know that person's hobbies. What if your painter friend has that book of brush techniques already? Is it condescending to buy a children's 'how to draw' book for the struggling artist in your life? And is it really appropriate to buy the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy for your harem of sex slaves?

I'm not doing a Google Image search for that last one.

Luckily for you, there's Pinterest. Pinterest, as you may know, is an online hive of middle-aged supermoms whose sole purpose is to made you feel bad about giving your three-year-old a batch of 'just add water' grocery store cupcakes to smear on himself for his birthday, instead of whipping up a gluten-free masterpiece of fondant, buttercream and surgically precise decorating. 

I dare you to make this without ending up divorced in a psychiatric ward.

Cakes aren't the only thing the denizens of Pinterest invest their copious spare time in; book-based art has quickly become a huge trend. Using just an old book and the contents of an entire art studio, you can produce a trendy, uncycled piece that will finally earn you the coveted re-pins of the Pinterest elite. Unwanted books will mostly likely sit on your shelf forever - why not have them sit there in style?

There

is

a

seemingly

endless

supply

of

this

stuff.

You can even suggest this approach yourself. If your friend unwraps your literary gift and makes a face like you've just handed them a pickled human colon, you can instantly pretend that you've merely gifted them with the raw materials for a beloved Pinterest masterpiece. After all, who doesn't love a gift that you have to make for yourself?

They make superior car fresheners. 

People like their cars to smell nice, for some reason. If you've ever spent any length of time driving around with a sweaty teenage boy or not-so-fresh corpse, you probably understand. Now, for some reason, the gold standard of car freshening comes in the form of a flimsy cardboard tree hung from the rearview mirror. Car freshner manufacturers have begun to make their products available in everything from "fresh mint" to "bacon", but nothing seems to have usurped the popularity of the original 'inside of a wood chipper' scent.

 Nothing unnatural about a wood-scented chunk of bleached lumber pulp.

As long as we're perfuming our cars with tree byproducts, we might as well take advantage of the ultimate paper-based scent: book smell. You know that wonderful musty smell inside a book that makes you light-headed with joy and binding glue fumes? There's no reason you can't take it with you everywhere. 

This exists, but I'm told that open flames are frowned upon in moving vehicles.

If you or a loved one receives a pile of unreadable tripe this Christmas, there's nothing to worry about. Just crack that puppy open to a random page, prop it up against the heat vent, take a deep breath, and enjoy. Seriously, though, drive carefully, because paperback glue apparently spews toxic fumes when it's heated. No need to worry about hardcovers, though - that glue is made from harmless leftover chunks of horses. 

You can add some fibre to your diet.

You're not getting enough fibre in your diet. You're not getting enough calcium, Vitamins A-D, iron, zinc or potassium either. In fact, your entire diet probably consists of nothing but sodium and saturated fat. What did you have for breakfast, fried whale blubber?

Dinner is served.

Until it becomes legal to kidnap and gift-wrap dietitians, there is no one gift you can give that will sort out your loved ones' hopeless, greasy mess of a diet. A good book, however, is a start. Sure, you can load them up with cookbooks, diet books, health books, and carefully bound photographic essays on morbid obesity, but if you think their pudding-based meal schedule has brought their fibre to critically low levels, buy them the worst book you can find and let nature take its course.

Eat up, kids.

Books are chock-full of fibre, and they come pre-sliced into easy-to-eat, easy-to-tear slices for your munching convenience. Their low calorie count won't force you to move up into a larger pair of industrial-strength stretchpants, and their water solubility means that even Grandpa can mush 'em up with his gums. And if someone on your shopping list really takes to eating books, you've potentially got a great episode of My Strange Addiction on your hands. 

That concludes this year's Christmas blog posts! Leave your thoughts in the comment section, and have yourself a Merry Christmas and some Happy Holidays. 

4

Four Christmas Songs That Make Me Want to Set Myself on Fire

This blog post is coming to you in mid-December, which means that most of you have been enduring non-stop Christmas carols for roughly six weeks now, at the hands of your local retailers' PA systems.

A moment of silence for our brothers and sisters in retail.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love Christmas music. Love it. I have "All I Want for Christmas is You" on my Apple-issued listening device, and I rock out to that fucker all year round; December is the only month of the year that I don't have to feel weird about that. 

All I want for Christmas is more 1994 Mariah.

Most popular Christmas songs are all about the good times that the holiday brings; they tell us stories of decking the halls, awaiting Santa Claus' arrival, and celebrating the ability of a congenitally defective reindeer to secure gainful employment as a headlight. Some songs, however, choose to use Christmas as a chance to remind us that life is a meaningless, painful struggle that ends only with the cold oblivion of death. If you're looking for an excuse to douse yourself in kerosene and set yourself ablaze this holiday season, take a moment to listen to four of the most depressing Christmas songs in existence:

The Christmas Shoes (Newsong) - 2000

The Christmas Shoes starts with a man standing in line in a store, waiting to pay for a few last-minutes gifts and generally feeling a little bit grumpy. It's a classic holiday scene; maybe the man is just waiting for a Christmas miracle to come along and boost his holiday spirits until he sweats egg nog and shits tinsel. Or maybe this is a comedy song about the commercial hassle that Christmas has become, with all the shopping and standing in line and airplane food, what's up with that?

Turns out that no, this is not a comedy song.

The man finally pulls his head out of his well-fed, middle-class ass long enough to notice that the customer ahead of him in line is an antsy and thoroughly filthy little boy, clutching a pair of shoes. The boy gets up to the cashier, and because children have no idea how to protect themselves from child molesters by withholding personal information, he proceeds to blurt out his life story with no prompting whatsoever. It turns out that he needs the shoes because they're his sick mother's size and he wants her to look nice when she goes off to "meet Jesus" that night. 

Hint: "meeting Jesus" means she's either dying or she's got an appointment with a burly Mexican biker.

The boy tries to pay for the shoes with a fistful of pennies but comes up short, because he belongs to a special kind of poor family that values fancy new shoes over things like 'food', 'running water' and 'spending the last moments of your mother's life at her side, instead of haggling with a cashier over footwear'. The singer then heroically steps up to pay for the shoes and basks in his new-found Christmas spirit; he even muses that God probably murdered that child's mother just so he could reclaim the holiday joy of standing in line to buy his wife some mustache bleach for Christmas. This song isn't the only one to lean on the crutch of "kill off the maternal figure", however. After all, there's...

Mama Liked the Roses (Elvis Presley) - 1969

Until my mother pointed out to me that this song actually appears on Elvis' Christmas Album, I'd assumed this it was written for the sole purpose of being played at the funerals of dead mothers. The words "Christmas", "holiday", and "sweet, sweet baby Jesus" never actually appear in this song, but since it's wedged between "Blue Christmas" and "Silent Night", radio DJs force themselves to play it on the air every December.

This might not be the best choice for your Christmas caroling group.

Elvis recounts how Mama enjoyed tending a rose garden in her yard each year, but, tragically, she found it difficult to keep her roses growing properly in mid-winter. Plants don't grow well in the winter, you see. Whenever rose-growing got too hard, Mama would comfort her family by, uh, decorating the living room for them. And also, she liked to sing every Sunday until her son cried. And she always made sure that everyone prayed a lot. Wait, what is this song even about?

Apparently he was raised by a religious, interior-decorating rose fanatic. Huh. Explains a lot.

Some time later, Elvis comes across a dried rose tucked in the pages of the old family Bible. This really cements just how gosh darn much his mother loved roses, which is convenient, because that's what they put on her grave every Mother's Day. Wait, Mother's Day? Isn't this a Christmas song? If I knew you were going to throw dead parents at me without even having the courtesy to sing about the proper holiday, Elvis, I'd have declared Burning Love to be a Christmas song and saved myself a lot of misery. But as it turns out, not every Christmas song needs a dead mother to be depressing - just take a listen to...

Fairytale of New York (The Pogues) - 1987

Don't get me wrong here - I love Fairytale of New York. It's one of my favourite songs of all time, Christmas be damned. But take a listen to the lryics. This modern classic opens with a man rotting in a New York City drunk tank on Christmas Eve, listening to a wasted old man singing about how he plans to be dead by next Christmas, and bemoaning his unsalvageable, needy farce of a relationship. Gosh, I just feel so warm and fuzzy already, don't you?

I embedded the version with lyrics. You're gonna need 'em.

As the song progresses, we learn that the man's wife/girlfriend/personal harpy came to New York because the man promised her that she was destined for a successful Broadway career. When this didn't pan out - presumably because she has a voice like an eighty-year-old Irish horse - she spiraled into a hopeless and debilitating cycle of drug abuse. Her inability to sing, dance and act with New York's finest, and her inability to handle disappointment without re-enacting the plot of Requiem for a Dream are apparently completely the man's fault, because of course they are.

Maybe she's just getting ready to audition for RENT?

When the woman finishes her tirade, the man reveals that he has shaped his whole life around his lover, placing his entire chance at happiness and self-worth in her basket of Broadway dreams. Since it's too late for her to achieve any of those dreams, both of them are doomed to suffer together in obscurity, struggling with their unhealthily interdependent relationship. The woman mentions that she hopes this is their last Christmas together, but the man makes it clear that they're both so entrenched in this relationship that it's come to define both of them, as they endlessly replay the memory of the Christmas Eve when they met. Have I mentioned that in Ireland, this is considered the greatest Christmas song of all time? 

Ireland? Are you okay? Do you need to talk to someone?

All that aside, it's still an objectively great song. If you make it past the first one minute and twenty-three seconds without hanging yourself in your closet, it takes on a delightfully jaunty Irish tune. Plus, it's the only Christmas song in which you'll find the lyrics "Old slut on junk" and "Cheap, lousy faggot". In any case, it's certainly less gloomy than...

The Cat Carol (Bruce Evans and Meryn Cadell) - 1993

This is it, folks. Put away the razor blades and hide the ammunition, because if you aren't feeling manically suicidal by the end of this song, you need to see a cardiologist to re-start your cold, blackened heart. Emotionally charged, touching Christmas songs have been popular for years, but songwriter Bruce Evans decided to get behind the wheel of that bandwagon and steer it right over the embankment of animal abuse and dead pets.

Behold.

The Cat Carol, which boasts the lyrical complexity of a six-year-old's garbled rendition of Jingle Bells, tells the story of a cat who gets shut outside in a blizzard on Christmas eve. Despite her anguished cries of pain and misery, the house's occupants refuse to let her inside, presumably because they're far too busy eating cold gruel and denying health insurance to orphans. This cat isn't bright enough to find any form of shelter whatsoever, as she apparently lives in a neighborhood completely devoid of decks, porches, cars, sheds and oversized lawn ornaments, so she hunkers down in the yard and prepares to die of exposure. Just then, a tiny, frozen mouse who's also too dumb to find shelter wanders by, and the cat proposes that they set their differences aside so they can cuddle up together and keep each other company through the storm.

Enjoy the heartwarming feeling, because this is the last time you will ever feel joy.

Up until this point, the song sounds like PETA's new winter jingle, but we're reminded that this is a Christmas song when Santa shows up! Hooray! They're saved! Santa discovers the little ball of fur nestled in the snow and quickly realizes that it's... the frozen corpse of the cat. He lifts her carcass into the sleigh and the mouse pops out, still alive and healthy. The little mouse is overjoyed to learn that the two of them have been rescued, until his cat friend fails to wake up and Santa is forced to explain that she froze to death in an attempt to save him. 

Ho ho holy shit, that's dark.

But not to worry, the song has a happy ending! It's too late for Santa to save the cat's life, but he lifts her into the sky and turns her into a constellation that will appear only on Christmas eve, so that the mouse and the cat can be reunited once a year. It's a beautiful ending, until you realize that the average life expectancy of a mouse in the wild is less than one year; he'll be dead by next Christmas, and the cat constellation will live on as a meaningless clump of stars, symbolizing a sacrifice that no one will be around to recognize.

Merry Christmas, kids.

2

What to Buy for the Person Who Really, Seriously Has Everything

If you're of a Westernized, semi-Christian persuasion, the entire month of December revolves around one thing: university final exams. Oh, and also Christmas. Regardless of how rarely you show your sinning, heathen face in some sort of church, you probably recognize and look forward to this re-purposed Anglo-Saxon midwinter feast day/celebration of the birth of a religious figure who was born in the summer.

What's better than giving birth in a random barn? Giving birth in a random barn in sweltering heat, of course!

Of course, in the modern Western world, no amount of Jesus is enough to supersede the boundless joys of commercialism, and one of the biggest dilemmas any Christmas-observing individual goes through each year is the question of which presents to bequeath to family and friends. Between Groupon, Amazon and Steam sales, everyone already has everything they could ever possibly want; what are you supposed to buy for gifts? Chocolates aren't on the prehistoric raw-and-slimy vegan diets that everyone will start on New Year's Day. Clothing is impossible to buy for someone unless you know exactly how many gut-sucking, space-age girdles they need to squeeze into their current wardrobes. Herpes is the gift that keeps on giving, but it's notoriously hard to gift-wrap.

Or is it?

If you're having a tough time shopping for that picky, spoiled someone in your life, take a look at these appealing options. You'll have to Google links to retailers for yourself, because I have no idea where you live and dammit, no one is paying me any advertising dollars for this. 

Novelty Ice Cube Trays

If there's one thing that all of the rich, poor, middle-class, male, female, elderly, young, paraplegic, ambidextrous, savant and psychic people on your Christmas list have in common, it's that they all use frozen chunks of water to cool down their beverages and numb their various bar brawl wounds. Now, any idiot can fill up a normal ice cube tray, but why make your loved ones suffer through life with regular, cubed ice? This Christmas, baffle your friends and all of their future party guests with the literally endless possibilities of novelty ice shapes.

For the former White Star Line employee in your life.

These aren't just a gag gift for holiday office parties, either - producers of these fine ice molds are more than happy to cater to that certain special someone in your life. 

Ice engagement rings: as cheap, cold and temporary as your eventual marriage.

If silly gifts aren't your forte, don't worry - there are plenty of practical alternatives to standard ice cubes. You can find ice trays for frozen stir sticks, ice rods for water bottles, and even icy corks for chilled wine.

Waiting on an inheritance from an alcoholic relative? Novelty ice trays are there to speed the process along.

The only thing your giftee will need to make these work is a freezer, access to semi-potable water and the patience to painstakingly pop these things out without shattering them. Alternatively, those of us in Canada can just fill them up and stick them outside for a minute or two.

Beard Oil

Ladies, are you tired of running your fingers through the clump of steel wool your man sheepishly calls his beard? Gentlemen, do you look on with pity at the puny scrabbles of scruff sported by male friends and family? Is anyone out there shopping for a female bearded circus freak who's struggling to make it in an image-conscious world? Never fear - I know just the gift for you! Behold:

Made from a combination of mysterious tree oils and the essence of pure manliness, Beard Oil hydrates flaky, shampoo-ravaged under-beard skin and conditions beard hair until it no longer looks like your loved one has pubic hair glued to their face. It can be purchased from homemade vendors jockeying in the wilds of Etsy, or from forward-thinking retailers and mustache allies in your area. Best of all, each application only takes a few drops, which means that the aspiring Gandalf on your Christmas list can make your gift last all the way until next year, when you can surprise them with a new and exciting variety of facial grease. 

Obscenely Gigantic Candy

"The gift that keeps on giving" was originally coined to refer to the phonograph - because apparently that made sense in 1924 - but I think it much more accurately describes these gifts that will absolutely give you Type II Diabetes. In the ultimate testament to Western excess, candy manufacturers have begun pumping out confections that are actually larger than the children who were originally meant to enjoy them. 

Give your friends and family the gift of not being able to make eye contact with you while you eat this.

Remember those palm-sized swirl lollipops that every candy store has in the window? Those are, pardon the pun, child's play. No candy is off-limits; if it's made of sugar, someone has made a donkey-sized version with more calories than the combined contents of your pantry. Send your favourite sweet-tooth into hyperglycemic shock when you surprise them with a Fuzzy Peach the size of their soon-to-be-enlarged heart.

Some rare honesty in advertising.

Plus, if you've got any mythological ogres on your shopping list, you're basically all set.

Wine Bottle Outfits

Christmas family gatherings are not the time to be naked (especially with my family), so why should your wine have to go without clothes? That might sound like the thought process of an unmedicated schizophrenic, but apparently it rings true for enough people that it's led to the blossoming of a new industry. A very sad and sort of creepy industry.

For the friend who's pretentious enough to dress up his wine, but down-to-earth enough to appreciate practical, working-class clothes.

And don't worry if gimmicky costumes are too tacky for you. Thanks to the drunken shoemaker elves who apparently churn these out while the sane people in the world are asleep, your wine can don any sort of style you please, including the scrubs you'll be wearing when someone finally gets around to institutionalizing you, you fucking wine-dressing lunatic. And yes, we as a society have finally reached a point where we're ready and willing to sexualize glass beverage containers.

"Hey. My neck is up here."

Do wine clothes have any real effect on temperature or oxidization? Probably not. But if you swish it in your mouth just right, you can really taste that added self-esteem. And heaven forbid you be a social pariah with naked wine.

Yodeling Pickle

It's a plastic pickle that yodels when you push a button. Need I say more?

Exactly what it says on the tin.

What's the most creative thing you've ever given or received? Leave it in the comments!

4

Three Reasons I Need Brian Griffin Back on Family Guy

If you are in any way connected to any form of social media whatsoever, you might have heard that long-standing sitcom and Simpsons clone, Family Guy, recently decided to ratchet up the laughs by having the family's dog killed by a car, right in front of their youngest child.

Oh, yeah, spoiler alert.

The public reaction to Brian's death has been less than favorable, to say the least. Angry blog posts and petitions have gone up across the internet from the moment the episode aired, with hundreds of thousands of people weighing in. There may be thousands of people around the world suffering from war, famine and preventable disease every day, but there's nothing like a cartoon character's death to get people fired up to rally for change.

Watch it if you dare.

Since I'm among those aforementioned bloggers responding to the death, and because I've titled this article "Reasons I Need Brian Back", you might have already guessed that I'm not exactly in favour of Brian shuffling off this mortal coil. Because I insist on substantiating everything I say with a detailed, multimedia blog post, enjoy reading these incredibly convincing arguments for why the Griffin's atheist dog deserves a Biblical resurrection.  

Now who am I supposed to relate to?

Like the millions of other people who watch bad TV for sweet, sweet escapism, I like to psychologically latch onto a character in every story. It gives me someone to root for, and it lets me know how I would fare if I were to be somehow transported into that fictional universe. In Family Guy, Brian is the obvious choice for me. He's a struggling writer. I'm a struggling writer. He's sarcastic. I'm sarcastic. He holds extreme, ideologically questionable left-wing views. I hold extreme, ideologically questionable left-wing views. He's kind of obnoxious. I'm kind of obnoxious. The list goes on and on. 

Brian, suffering the plight of all writers who aren't James Patterson.

But now that Brian's only role is to feed the worms of Quahog, who am I supposed to cling to each time I finally give in to the unique combination of boredom and procrastination that drives me to watch Family Guy? Let's see. I'm an overweight, myopic girl with a very large brother and an affinity for knitted wool caps. Who does that leave me with?

Oh, no.

That's right. Brian's demise has left me with no choice but to internalize the horrific psychological abuse endured by the unloved, unattractive, and almost-definitely-adopted Meg Griffin. Not only will my frail psyche have to cope with my own traumatic adolescent memories, but now it'll need to make room for those of a sniveling, two-dimensional punching bag. You see what you've done to me, producers of Family Guy? I just hope you're happy, Seth MacFarlane. I hope you're happy. 

We don't need endless months of bad Italian stereotypes.

Viewers who made it all the way to the end of the knee-slapping 'Life of Brian' episode without throwing their remotes through their TV screens were treated to the introduction of the Griffin family's new dog, Vinny. After moping around for a month after Brian's death, the family decides to head down to the pet store, hoping a new dog will ease their grief; there, they meet Vinny the Pussyhound (he's 1/16th cat), proving that no amount of gut-wrenching tragedy will ever overshadow the need for a good vagina joke. Vinny is voiced by Italian actor/saggy leather wallet Tony Sirico of The Sopranos fame, which tells you all you need to know about his character.

Vinny, casually undoing whatever progress the Italian-American community has made since Jersey Shore went off the air.

The problem with characters based on racial stereotypes is that there are only so many jokes you can make with them. Brian may have been based on his own set of stereotypes, but there's a lot more you can do with the common Eastern Yuppie archetype. Everyone knows at least one. You can head to a Starbucks, an Apple store and a university philosophy course, and find enough source material to power you through an entire season. Best of all, Eastern Yuppies are always changing; Brian evolved from a novel-writing prat, to an obscure-reference-dropping prat, to a social-hypocrisy prat, always keeping up with the times. Vinny's character amounts to a threatening accent and a Mafia allusion. Unless you live on the set of a Godfather sequel, you'll never meet anyone who fits his role. There aren't a lot of new directions you can go with these stereotypes; by the 4,831st time I hear Vinny threaten that someone will be "sleepin' with the fishes" or reminisce about how "Mama use-a to make-a da best pasta", I'll start cheering for Stewie to push him out in front of the next car he sees.

Remember what happened last time we let Seth MacFarlane run amok with racial stereotypes?

Really, we get it. Italians talk funny, and their #1 source of employment is organized crime syndicates. They bathe in Doritos cheese and their blood is 14% alcohol. They universally suffer from a bizarre, localized form of Tourette's syndrome that forces them to randomly intersperse all of their speech with the letter 'a'. They place 100% of a woman's value on her ability to prepare carbohydrates, and every moment of their education is devoted to teaching them to talk louder. Television has already taught us everything we need to know about the Italian race. How about we pick on someone more interesting, for a change?

Brain was the least awful character on the show. 

Let's get one thing straight - absolutely every character who appears on Family Guy is a horrible person in some way or another. The Griffins spend much of their time doing everything from making offensive comments to straight-up trying to murder each other, and their neighbors range from a sex maniac to an actual pedophile. 

Almost no part of this highlight real is not morally reprehensible.

That's not to say that Brian isn't without his flaws. In fact, he's got quite a lot of them; he's pretentious, stuck-up, alcoholic and condescending, and that's just the beginning. Though Brian was originally intended to be the voice of reason in the Griffin family, his smug self-satisfaction has rubbed more than one character the wrong way.

Brian's flaws, lovingly detailed in this rant by Quagmire.

Arguably, Brian's biggest personal flaw is his failure as a parent. Brian didn't even know of his son Dylan's existence until he was into his teens, and when the two do meet, Dylan is an aggressive, ambition-less delinquent, with no real future ahead of him. The only way the Brian manages to bond with him at all is to smoke pot with him, and once they'd developed some semblance of a relationship, Dylan went back home to his mother and never appeared on the show again. 

How a seven-year-old dog fathers a human teenager is one of TV's little secrets.

But even Brian's shortcomings as a parent pale in comparison to those of Peter and Lois. Throughout the show, Peter takes neglect and child endangerment to Olympic heights - it's a wonder that any of his children are even alive, nevermind still in his custody. Lois is supposed to be the sane, competent parent, but she's no better. Stewie - despite being almost fifteen years old - is still just a baby with a serious congenital skull defect. Infants can't be left alone for more than five minutes, lest they exercise their innate talents for choking on small parts and swallowing household poisons, yet Lois leaves Stewie alone so often that he's being raised by the family dog, and he's even managed to build a nuclear cache in his bedroom.

This is not part of the average baby's room.

Brian was one of the show's only sources of jokes that weren't based on bodily excretions, bodily noises, bodily functions or sex. He had plenty of slapstick humour to go around - part of the reason his death by car was so shocking was that he'd endured far, far worse injuries and survived unscathed, and his father-son/occasionally mildly homosexual relationship with Stewie was one of the highlights of the show. Without Brian, the combined IQ of Family Guy drops from "kindergartner chugging paste" to "decomposing vegetable". 

And not a bestiality or genitalia joke in sight.

The good news is, Brian's name reportedly appears in the titles of upcoming episodes in season 12, and Tony Sirico is only signed on to the show for six episodes, which means that Brian may not be gone for good. How do you feel about the dog's demise? Leave it in the comments.

0

The Six Outfits that Girls Wear to University

Post-secondary education is supposed to be a time for personal growth and exploration, and there's no greater way to express your individuality than with the clothes you wear. For the first time in your life, you're not constrained by teachers, family expectations, or fairly reasonable dress codes, and if your parents love you enough, you're not constrained by budget. University students can express their creativity as much as they want, and find a totally unique way of presenting themselves to the world.

So, naturally, everyone wears the exact same thing.

If you're a university student yourself, or if you just enjoy crying into your Bachelor of Arts degree at your old Alma Mater on the weekends, you're almost guaranteed to spot girls sporting one of these six possible outfits. Each has been painstakingly illustrated here by yours truly, to help you properly identify:

The White Girl Uniform:

If you live in an area that boasts a large population of the common 20-something white girl, you've seen this outfit before. It comes in many forms, but some elements are always present. For instance, no white girl is complete without a pair of Uggs boots, the only boots that combine the durability of craft foam with the ruggedness of bedroom slippers. Legend has it, they get their name from the sound you make when you inevitably slip on the ice and greet the concrete butt-first. Tights are an equally indispensable part of this ensemble; at some point, these leg coverings evolved from being mere shields to protect the world from the sight of your splotchy, veiny legs, to being full-fledged pant replacements. Of course, a lady does not venture out into the world with crotch on display, so a comically oversized sweater is a must-have for the modern modest girl.

And, of course, what's a white girl uniform without accessories? The most crucial of those is a scarf, but not just any scarf will do. No, this has to be a special, oversized scarf. Beach-towel-sized is acceptable. A scarf large enough to cover a picture window is even better. And if you can find a canvas circus tent cover with an 'authentic, vintage' print, you can wrap it around your neck and get the white girl high score. An iPhone filled with Taylor Swift songs and a pumpkin spice-flavoured coffee beverage are optional, but recommended. Having an unkempt owl's nest pinned to the very top of your head as a bizarre attempt at a hairstyle, however, is mandatory.

The Edgy: Abridged Edition:

Remember high school? When your only real responsibilities were to present a pulse, make half-hearted attempts at your homework, and avoid getting pregnant? If you had the right combination of a rebellious spirit and a shockingly permissive set of parents, high school was the ideal time to let your freak flag fly. It was easy - all you had to do was get up three hours early each day to get all of your face paint, hairpsray, studs, gloves, zippers, piercings and prosthetic horns in place, and make biweekly hair appointments to have your tri-coloured mohawk touched up. Going off to college meant you'd have more freedom - you'd finally be able to have your earlobes stretched until you can train the family dog to jump through them.

But then reality struck. When you've got three quizzes to take, four essays to write, seven midterms to study for, two group projects to lament, one professor to seduce, and three and a half bowls of ramen to devour, there's just no time to maintain that carefully cultivated 'corpse' look you had going on. Before you know it, you're throwing on two coats of eyeliner and running out the door with dishwater-coloured hair each morning, a mere ghost of the ghostly presence you used to be .

The Protector of the Earth:

This girl is so organic, her body wilts every time she walks past a McDonald's. Her biodegradable outfit has more nutritional value than your lunch, and you'd get more dietary fibre from chewing on her dryer lint than you do from your specially-formulated breakfast cereal. Her clothing has all been imbued with the blessings of the ancestors of the fair-trade workers who made it; the only thing that's seeped into your clothing is the dried tears of the eight-year-old Malaysian child slave who made it.

If you want to dress like a Protector of the Earth, the first thing you'll need are pants so large that MC Hammer would ask to have them taken in (how's that for a dated reference?). If the local bourgeoisie shops don't stock such a thing, try to make do with overpriced yoga gear - they're sure to have that. A rolled-up tablecloth worn as a floor-length skirt is just as good. The rest is really up to you. Just make sure that everything you're wearing looks like something that a concert-goer would have worn to a certain infamous music festival your parents are too young to have attended, while simultaneously inducing massive amounts of guilt in everyone who lays eyes on you. Showing a little skin is encouraged; demonstrate to the masses what a quinoa- and organic-chickpea-fed body is supposed to look like.

The Northern Neophyte:

As I previously mentioned, I go to school in Edmonton, Alberta. For those of you who haven't visited Edmonton, the intensity of its winters is rivaled only by that of the hypothetical nuclear ice age that would follow a worldwide atomic apocalypse. Those of you who have visited Edmonton are acutely aware of this, because you're probably still frozen to the ground.

Students who come from parts of Canada that can actually sustain life don't always think to check historical temperature trends before they make the big move to Alberta's capital. We're Canadians! Cold is supposed to be universal up here. What we don't realize is that for some of us, 5 degrees below freezing is enough to draw alarm, while others don't bat an eyelash until the mercury drops below -40C. Newcomers to Edmonton are always easy to spot - they're the ones bundled in every item of clothing they own, peering at the world through the gap between their fourth and fifth scarf and wondering just how in the hell everyone else is getting by with just a hoodie.

The Anatomy Major:

This girl may or may not actually be a biology student, but she's certainly giving everyone a refresher course in anatomy every time she saunters down the hall. The only dress code this girl obeys is the legal parameters for indecent exposure. One good look at her will tell you exactly how many tattoos, bruises and chicken pox scars she has. If this young lady's overexposure to sunlight ever results in the formation of a cancerous mole, random passersby will let her know about it long before she gets around to seeing a dermatologist.

Despite basic instinct and general common sense, this look is frequently worn in all seasons. Even if you live in an Arctic hell-hole that all the world's deities forgot, the only modifications you'll ever see to this outfit are the addition of mittens and a scarf. It's also worth nothing that a Jillian Micheals level of fitness is in no way required to pull this off; so long as you have the core strength and the commitment to suck in your rolling foothills of stomach flesh all day, you're all set to venture out in public. Overall, this is the perfect look for women with especially hardy torsos.

The Complete, Total Despair:

When your weekly homework can comfortably fill a standard-sized dumpster, there's no time to be wasted on appearance. This girl has more important things to do than bathe. You probably don't want to know when the last time she did a load of laundry was, either, and you're almost certainly better off not knowing how long its been since she's changed her underwear. Instead of spending endless hours fussing over her makeup and curling her hair, all this girl has to do is shake most of the obvious body lice out of her sweatshirt and get back to studying.

This look isn't something that a subset of the female student body consciously aspires to; rather, this is something that every student will eventually be reduced to, regardless of how pretty she was in high school. Students rocking this outfit are practically non-existent in the first days of school, but by the time midterms are in full swing, every other girl will be proudly displaying some variation of this. At the end of the term, when finals are fast approaching, the student body will be virtually indistinguishable from a homelessness convention. Don't fight it, female students - total despair is as inevitable as it is repulsive.

Do you recognize your own personal style here? What other kinds of outfits have you seen on college campuses? Let me know in the comments!

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Over-Analyzing Disney: Why Gaston Isn't Such a Bad Guy After All

Quick, who's the villain of Beauty and the Beast? It's Gaston, right? Of course it is - he's arrogant, he's pushy, he's mean-spirited, and, most importantly of all, Wikipedia lists him as one. Sure enough, Gaston devotes every second of his screen time to being vapid and controlling as he relentlessly tries to force Belle to marry him and push out a basketball team's worth of copies of himself. There's no way anyone could argue that Disney's youngest villain isn't a hairy pile of pure evil with a ponytail, right?

Despite having the hairline of a 47-year-old man, Disney alleges that he's actually around 25.

Wrong! In keeping with last week's post about villains and children's cartoons from the 1990s, I decided to use this week's post to meticulously comb through a 22-year-old Disney movie to examine whether or not Gaston, narcissistic huntsman and antler aficionado, is really such a bad guy after all.

For now, we're not going to count his gratuitous chest hair as a crime.

When you're deciding whether Gaston is malicious or just misunderstood, keep in mind that:

He's illiterate. 

People who don't like books are awful, knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing embarrassments to human evolution, and they deserve to be thrown into tar pits so that their preserved bones might at least have some educational value to people living tens of thousands of years from now. Any child or librarian could tell you that. And so when Gaston casually tosses Belle's precious book into the mud, that's really all we need to see to know that he deserves to be thrown off the top of an improbably high tower.

Here, Disney plays a clever game of "spot the pornography joke".*

This is where a wonderful thing called 'historical context' comes in. The movie never actually specifies what year they're supposed to be living in, but the coexistence of bookstores and chamber pots points to sometime in the mid-18th century. For those of you who spent every single history class of your life snorting cocaine instead of paying attention, the 18th century was not a particularly great time for book-learnin'. Unless you a) had a penis and a royal title, or b) had a family whose livelihood depended on knowing their ABCs, chances are, no one would ever bother to teach you to read. Gaston is a huntsman. His entire job is to shoot things. Of course he tosses Belle's book aside; her passion for reading is the 18th-century equivalent of spending all day tinkering with an obscure programming language. Belle herself shouldn't be so high and mighty about it - her own ability to read is just sheer dumb luck. If she'd been born to almost any other villager besides the inventor, her perky, illiterate ass would be parked right next to Gaston's blonde admirers on that bench. 

They're waiting.

The fact that they live in the 'pooping in pottery' era of human history aside, Gaston isn't the brightest human being to ever grace the Earth. And that's not his fault. His full name, Gaston LeGume, literally translates to "The Vegetable of Gascony", with "Gascony" referring to the real-life French province where they live. He's a few croissants shy of a dozen, is what I'm saying. His world is comprised of muscles, guns, and holding metaphorical dick-measuring contests in the town bar; books aren't even on his radar. That might make him a poor match for Belle, but can we really claim that that makes him a bad person? I posit that we cannot.

Brains are not his strong suit.

Belle should want to marry him.

The definition of an ideal marriage is a multi-billion dollar question that could be the sole subject of entire blogs by itself. No matter how you feel about couples with matching genitals, however, most people in the Western world do agree on one thing: couples should at least be able to stand each other before they get married. In fact, they should ideally be quite fond of each other. If they really want to go the extra mile, they might even find some things that they have in common with each other before tying the knot. That's what makes Gaston's proposal to Belle so ridiculous - they have nothing in common, while Belle and her true love, Prince "The Beast" Adam, bonded instantly over their mutual love of, uh... eating porridge with their faces?

Ladies, control your trembling loins.

Except, once again, the fact that Belle was born in the year "17-something-something" is an issue. In her time, marriage wasn't about finding someone to have deep conversations with through the night. It was about finding someone who was capable of preventing your ass from starving. Remember, as a Renaissance-period woman, Belle doesn't have any career options open to her that involve keeping her knickers on. If she doesn't want to end up in the world's oldest profession when her father dies, she needs a husband, and a girl could do a lot worse than Gaston. 

People who read to sheep in public fountains don't usually have great marriage prospects.

He may not be her soulmate or intellectual equal, but Gaston is more than capable of providing for her. He's popular. He's successful. In an age where the average man spends his entire life coughing up blood and chunks of lung until he drops dead from yellow fever at the ripe old age of 35, Gaston is almost unnecessarily healthy. He's not looking to love her and leave her penniless; Gaston makes it uncomfortably clear that he intends to have a life with Belle and raise a family together. If she wants her essential needs covered, with a little extra money left over for books, she shouldn't be so quick to turn her nose up at the town's most eligible bachelor.

And just think of all the antlers she'll have.

His beliefs are justified.

Imagine, for just a moment, that you wandered out of your house one day and saw the object of your unrequited affection in the arms of a four-headed green alien. Would you wait patiently for your crush to explain that the alien is actually a lovely individual and a generous lover? Of course not. You'd run screaming into the house to find the biggest projectile your little noodle arms can lift, so you can hurl it at the monster and rescue your beloved. So when Gaston's first reaction to seeing the Beast is to rally the villagers and head off on a late-night murdering adventure, is that really so hard to understand? He hunts animals for a living, he wants to marry Belle, and his IQ is room-temperature at best. How else is he supposed to react? He's the village's entire supply of testosterone; they're hardly going to be receptive to him suggesting that they embrace the beast as a source of diversity in their currently-monsterless town.

He just wants a hug.

Another one of Gaston's more questionable beliefs is his belief that Belle is the absolute ideal wife, just because she's just so gosh darn pretty. Isn't he a horrible person for choosing a spouse based on looks alone? Well, actually, he's got one imporant thing on his side. It's just basic human instinct - even without a formal education, the dark recesses of our brain have a loose understanding of how genes work. If you don't want to have potato-shaped children, you don't choose a potato-shaped mate. Your body doesn't steer you towards attractive, symmetrical people for no reason; even if you don't consciously want strong, plentiful children, you can bet that your loins do. Gaston has doubtlessly been raised to believe that wives are supposed to be decorative offspring factories, not best friends or companions. Besides, beauty is a famously subjective trait - Gaston is coveted by a set of gorgeous blonde triplets who would murder a flock of ducklings just for the chance to comb his chest hair for him, yet in his eyes, no one is more beautiful to him than the arguably-less-conventionally-attractive-Belle. Doesn't everyone think the object of their affection is the most attractive human being around?

And just look how symmetrical she is.

Besides, if you're going to throw stones at Gaston for over-valuing Belle's beauty, you'd better bring enough for the entire village. Why? Belle has no friends in the village, claims over and over that she doesn't fit in, and runs around singing about how they're all boring peasant cogs in the French provincial system. And yet, the entire village trips over themselves to talk to her and about her. They can't seem to shut up about her, even though she's done exactly nothing remarkable. And through it all, the villagers make it perfectly clear that the only reason they're putting up with her anti-social, book-reading bullshit is because she gives them something pretty to look at.

Something seriously lacking in this town.

While we're on the topic of Belle, Gaston makes his opinion of her hobbies known right from the start of the movie. Women shouldn't read or think, he says. How could he possibly justify something so outrageously misogynistic? Again, it comes down to sweet, sweet, wife-beating history. Up until the women's suffrage movement of the early 20th century, real, actual medical doctors with real, actual credentials believed that women didn't have enough blood to power their brains and their reproductive systems at the same time. If a woman was foolish enough to go to university or hold public office, it was believed that woman's womb would be so terribly deprived of blood that she would actually become sterile. So when Gaston tells her she shouldn't be doing any pesky thinking, he's not inflicting his own personal brand of sexism on her; he's concerned about her actual physical health.

Get down from there before you sprain your uterus.

He's just like the Beast.

When my small, mushy, 5-year-old brain first took in this movie, I thought that Gaston and the Beast couldn't be more different. Gaston was a bully with a mean streak; the Beast was eccentric and misunderstood. But after re-watching the film with my 21-year-old mature brain that still very much enjoys Disney movies, I gradually realized one very important thing that should completely exonerate Gaston from 'villain' status. Are you ready for it?

Gaston and the Beast are almost exactly the same person.

Let's start from the beginning. Gaston chooses Belle to be his own personal baby factory because she looks nice and she won't produce children with weird eyes and crooked teeth. Yes, by today's standards, that makes him kind of an asshole. But what about the Beast? He doesn't set his sights on her for her vivacious personality and delightful conversation. He just needs a girl to break the curse. Any girl will do. His requirements begin and end with a functional vagina. She could be three hundred pounds and covered in a delightful smattering of multicoloured pustules, but so long as he can force himself to fall in love with her, it's all good. Lumiere and Cogsworth literally refer to her as "the girl" right up to the end of the movie. The Beast can't claim moral superiority over Gaston here - she's little more than a trophy to either of these men. Who knows - if Gaston had saved her from those wolves and had his own subsequent bonding moment montage, maybe Belle would have grown to love him instead.

As if she could ever compete with the love he has for himself.

Of course, Gaston has a much darker side than his normal bravado might lead you to believe. In his most heinous act in the entire movie, he blackmails Belle into marriage by having her father, Maurice, committed to the insane asylum. If you keep in mind that this is a hellish, 18th-century approximation of an insane asylum, Gaston's actions are downright chilling. It's hard to believe that anyone other than a villain would employ such tactics. Oh, but hang on, imprisoning Maurice to gain leverage over Belle sounds awfully familiar. Where else have I seen that used?

Hint: This scene does not take place at Gaston's house.

Oh, yes. The Beast does literally the exact same thing. She trades her father's freedom in exchange for a promise to never, ever leave the Beast, which is essentially the Cliff's Notes of any wedding vow. When she's permitted to leave the castle to save her father from freezing to death in the snow, that's supposed to be a huge allowance on the Beast's part. But it's not all bad for Belle. I mean, the Beast has a sprawling, impractically gigantic library! How could a person who owns so many books not be a perfect match for Belle? There's just one little problem - those books clearly came with the castle, because the Beast is every bit as illiterate as Gaston.

Some of you might recognize this as the scene where Belle quite literally teaches him to sound out the word "two".

In fact, throughout the entire movie, Gaston is perpetually just one little script edit away from actually becoming the hero of the story. If he had been put under an ugly spell as a child instead of Prince Adam, this would be a heartwarming story about Belle falling in love with a simple villager instead of an arrogant prince, and no one's character would have to be any different in the slightest. If Gaston had believed Maurice's claim that Belle had been captured by a horrible beast, he could have easily realized that he truly loved her and rescued her from the Beast's clutches before she was neck-deep in Stockholm Syndrome - Disney has sold us on far less believable changes of heart before. 

And we know Disney has no problem with the 'pretty girl chooses handsome guy after all' ending.

Even the final scenes didn't have to turn out as they did. Again, any quasi-talented, mostly-sober scriptwriter could find a dozen different ways to turn handsome, confident Gaston into a Disney prince instead of Prince Adam. If the timing of the final battle was off by even five minutes, remember, the Beast would have remained a Beast forever. Perhaps Gaston could have had a change of heart upon seeing that the beast wasn't such a monster after all, and the Beast could have stepped aside, refusing to let Belle spend her entire life with a twelve-foot-tall lion/buffalo hybrid. Even if the original "Belle ends up with Disney's first redheaded prince" ending is preserved, there's no real reason for Gaston's story to end the way it does. The Beast proved he was a better man by sparing Gaston's life. Any reasonable fictional character would take that as a sign that it's time to quietly slink away and re-think every terrible choice he's ever made. Having Gaston subsequently stab the Beast and get flung off the roof for his efforts only works because Disney wanted a more dramatic ending, and Disney fans demand that every little transgression is punished by death.

The children demand blood. 

Gaston may be an uneducated, selfish, egotistical buffoon, but he's a far cry from the cold-blooded sociopathy of his fellow Disney villains Queen Grimhilde, Maleficent and Jafar. You want to know who the real evil is in Beauty and the Beast? How about the Enchantress, who sentences dozens of innocent people to live as sentient housewares for no other reason than they were unfortunate enough to work for a prince who's kind of an ass. 

That was not a nice thing to do.

How do you feel about Gaston? Are you convinced that he's just an idiot in the wrong place at the wrong time, or do you still think he's earned a spot among Disney's most dastardly villains? Sound off in the comments.

* In case you somehow missed it during your childhood viewings of 'Beauty and the Beast', Gaston's confusion about the lack of pictures and insistence on holding the book vertically are meant to imply that he's used to looking at old-fashioned pornographic magazines. Take that, childhood innocence.

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