Lowefiles

Oh, Danny Williams! He’s floatin’ my boat. He’s tingling my spine. He’s charming the pants off me. I don’t care if his head’s a perfect rectangle, his hair looks like Chachi’s from Happy Days and he’s a jeezly progressive conservative. I’d have voted for him from here if I was allowed. Newfoundlanders and Labradorians can […]

And you thought the PeaceMaker was Jesus. Apparently it’s quite a bit more scatological than the saviour. Or, well, urological, anyway. The PeaceMaker is a gizmo released this summer; by its proper name, it’s the PeaceMaker Toilet Seat Lifter. It’s a toilet-seat-attached foot-lever (just like the kind you see at the base of a trash […]

I have a sexually transmitted infection. It was so long ago that I contracted the damn thing, it was called a sexually transmitted disease. Thing is, it never felt like one. A disease, that is. Because no one ever told me about HPV. The sex-ed I received was shockingly and sadly out of touch with […]

How come I’m not on the cover of Us, people? Because I’m all about “bizarre nudity” in front of my kids (wailing in a high-pitched sing-song at the back door for the cat to come in before bed, does that count?). I’m also guilty of demanding the kids share my bed (when I want to […]

You love Ikea. You totally do, because if you don’t, you have no taste and you know it. You’re tacky. You lack all sense of design, and probably, you own a beige floral print sofa with a pleated dust ruffle along the bottom. You do, don’t you? I knew it. If you love Ikea—and most […]

Everyone swears, don’t they? I don’t mean that “COCKSUCKA!” Deadwood brand of extreme profanity. But everyone swears—toe stubbing (quick out of the mouth: goddamnit!), telling your kid to get her shoes and sweater on and finding her 10 minutes later in underwear reading a book (under breath, teeth clenched: jesus, jesus, jesus), getting doored on […]

Do you record your phone calls, archiving them by dropping the tapes into a shoebox on your desk? Like that one to your mum from last Sunday, when all she did was complain about her boss and your only response was, “That su-ucks.” Did you? No. Of course not. But if it was an email […]

The principle of competition is a worthy one, any level-headed business owner will tell you. Now, mercifully, the concept is being thrust in at least one right direction in our city—graffiti. I’m not talking about tagger wars (Does such a thing exist in Halifax? All I ever see are little carpet bombs of the wretched […]

When will I stop digging holes in backyard gardens? When will you find the last turd of mine beside your tomato plant or nestled up against those petunias you grew from seed? When you catch me and staple my furry butthole closed, you moron, that’s when. I’m an outdoor cat. It’s in my nature. See, […]

OK, that’s one down. I just finished reading Rob Sheffield’s short, wicked-good Love is a Mix Tape. And I’m bolstered, man, bolstered—flying into summer reading season ready to take on the next tome in the pile of yet-to-be-reads in my office. Problem. The stack is 55 books high. Do you have any idea what that […]

Surely you’ve noticed it’s summer. The mercury shoots up into appropriate-for-early-June territory and the city goes mad. Men rip off their shirts and strut down Barrington in the insufferable 20.6 degree heat, women stuff their bikini bottoms up their cracks and sunbathe on the north Common (I saw it!), those cock-rocket 200-decibel motorcycle dudes zoom […]

Figures. Off I went in my last column blithely praising the provincial government. I should have known that kind of out-of-character move would come back to bite me in the ass. See, I bitched last time around about the Harper government’s 2006 axing of the One Tonne Challenge environmental education campaign and, silly me, I […]