Rating: NNNNN
Crying out for hard thrust
I am shocked and appalled at the sensational and irresponsible article on circumcision (NOW, March 11-17). Circumcision is the equivalent of removing your clit? What an outrageous opinion! I can barely continue reading the rest of this issue after taking in such nonsense. Hard thrusts causing vaginal tears? Whether her partner is circumcised or not, what woman doesn’t cry out for the occasional hard thrust? I’d love to show you my fist and let you learn all about vaginal tears! What trash! What drivel! I can’t believe it!
Lisa Logan
Toronto
Fems deluding themselves
women are deluding themselves if they think C-sections are pain-free (NOW, March 11-17). Three days later, when the surgeons send you home with a fistful of painkillers in one arm and a shrieking newborn in the other, it’s another story. It horrifies me that healthy women are being encouraged to undergo major surgery for frivolous reasons. That tiny bikini-line scar may take “only” four to six weeks to heal, but that’s if the patient takes care of herself and doesn’t do any strenuous activities that might stress the incision – things like, say, constant breast feeding, pacing the floor with a colicky infant or attempting to fold up a stroller with one hand without dropping the baby. I think there’s something sickeningly wrong with a society that turns a perfectly natural bodily function into a bloody, violent assault and thinks that’s an improvement.
Elaine May
Toronto
Tooker forever
when i first learned that tooker had taken his own life (NOW, March 11-17), I felt sad, angry and had a horrible feeling in my gut. I still feel this way. I remember protesting in front of an Esso gas station with him as we played off each other, thinking of new chants for the megaphone. I remember watching him burst into the Royal York Hotel and passionately address Alberta premier Ralph Klein over his opposition to Kyoto. I remember watching him get dragged away by the police (on several occasions) when we were protesting the war on Iraq. I remember watching his videos with him at his home. (You could always tell when he’d been operating the camera, because the angle would always be looking upwards.)
Tooker was a true activist, amusing to the ruling class and a much needed organizer and inspiration for some of our society’s most disenfranchised people. I will always remember Tooker.
Josh Matlow
TDSB trustee, St. Paul’s
The richer for knowing him
I am proud to count myself among the 50,000-plus Torontonians who voted for Tooker Gomberg in the 2000 municipal election. Yes, we finally have a decent, hard-working mayor in David Miller, but I wonder how much Toronto would have changed if voters who went to the polls back then had had the courage to replace Lastman with Gomberg – an offbeat, tireless and innovative activist with compassion enough for 10 people. Toronto grieves for Tooker but is the richer for knowing him.
Kay Broome
Toronto
Adding to Tooker’s burden
I, too, mourn the loss of tooker Gomberg. Like so many green-thinking Torontonians, I value the work he did to make the city a greener place. But his death has brought home to me that the minimum effort I and too many others have made just added to the poor man’s burden. People like Tooker can’t help but take up the slack. And it killed him.
Helen Lightbown
Hastings, ON
Earth-friendly eco-monsters
re plastic not so fantastic (now, March 11-17). Does Susana Molinolo not understand that all the plastic bags her eco-monster customers supposedly waste are actually used at home to put garbage in? Does she not know that most of her eco-loving shoulder-rubbing customers with their overstuffed knapsacks are the very same customers who also crowd the health food stores with their knapsacks and baby strollers and never let the eco-monsters by? There’s a hierarchy of monsters, but they are not Molinolo’s bag-grabbing customers. They are the manufacturers that keep packaging “earth-friendly” products in plastic and other eco-unfriendly waste.
Randolph Ouimet
Toronto
Poop a hazard for dogs, too
nice article on the poop on poop (NOW, March 11-17). Very true. Dog owners who do not scoop create a real problem, especially for other dogs! As for the idea of scooping the poop and putting it down the toilet, I am all for it, but what do you use to scoop? FYI – you cannot reuse plastic bags for this, because any dog owner will tell you the poop is stinky and that bag will roink! As for licensing dog owners, what about people who can’t afford it? I pay for vet bills and other things. It is a stupid way to make the city money. Don’t make me pay for someone else’s lack of consciousness. Students hanging out in parks handing out poop bags? How annoying. No wonder it doesn’t exist any more.
L.T.
Toronto
This “dead” zone is kickin’
oh, dear. if only the optician at the corner of Dundas and Bathurst had remained open, Hormoz Nabili could perhaps get the new prescription he so evidently needs (NOW, March 4-10). He’s made the classic mistake of amplifying the specific to the general: not all major downtown streets can or want to be Queen West or College. There simply aren’t enough people with the time to drink lattes and cosmopolitans over lunch. Has he looked at College and Bathurst? Or Queen and Bathurst? Because nothing’s more hot and happening than getting a slice at Buddy Corner, Nabili. If Nabili lives at Dundas and Ossington, then he walks past the Chelsea Room, Cocktail Molotov, the Communist’s Daughter, Saving Grace, the new scooter shop, the recently relocated Café Brasiliano, where I buy my prime Colombian, and of course, the legendary Lakeview Lunch. He’s also missed the new art galleries, new computer stores/Internet cafés, Vietnamese karaoke joints and that just-renovated home decor place. Sure, stretches of Dundas and Bathurst could use a cleanup. So could a lot of places.
M. Dacey
Toronto
Shortchanging Schindler
I was stunned and disappointed by the asinine rating given to the Schindler’s List DVD (NOW, March 11-17). Not only did John Harkness offer up only three Ns, but he actually had the balls to admit it was because “Universal has gone cheap on its basic edition” by not including extra features. The movie is a stand-alone masterpiece.
What are you thinking? Yeah, I bet those outtakes would have been hysterical. Maybe they should have included a making-of, complete with pictures of the real Holocaust victims to show how accurate and talented their makeup artists were?
Leah Pink,
Toronto
Kind words for da Bomb
thank you for your kind words about our set at Scooter’s Birthday Bash (NOW, March 4-10). We were wondering who the guy taking picture after picture was, and now we know! But, just to keep all the facts straight, the goateed, mohawked Mr. Nightmare is the guitarist, and the burley, bandana-wearing guy is actually the bassist, Perry Coma. Pureblank came all the way from Guelph and played a wicked tight set. Just wanted to give credit where it’s due. See you on the front lines.
Dee Troyit
Oklahoma Bomb Squad, Toronto
Keeping Regent Park crappy
among the many afflictions resi dents of Regent Park must put up with are random acts of drive-by advocacy. I refer to the article Tearing Regent Up (NOW, February 26-March 3), apparently co-authored by 10 people, none of whom probably live, have lived or will ever live there. What do they want Regent residents to do – march around the city with placards reading “My neighbourhood is crappy and we want to keep it that way”?
Michael Johnson
Toronto
Anti-pot hysterics
anti-drug summits like the one Matthew Mernagh writes about (NOW, March 11-17) never cease to amaze me. These people with their vile green weed! They’re killing our children! So thanks, Mernagh, for reminding us how the anti-pot fundamentalists like to get into a lather. And look how we turned out! We’re all giving birth to two-headed children!
I remember sitting with a doctor once at a party, listening to her talk about how pot makes users psychotic – all while she took a huge haul off a joint someone had offered.
Nobody wants to talk about taxing pot, because it would solve too many of our problems, and the talking heads of disinformation – i.e., Public Security Minister Monte Kwinter – would have to think of some other ways of spending our tax dollars.
At the same time, Kwinter professes to be in favour of decrim. Wow! I don’t think I want to see his idea of a drug czar!
R. Cecchini
Toronto
