A Lot About Nothing

I just wanted to give all of you a heads up on Passion Magazine a “new” publication aimed at women between 25-40. I was honoured to be given the opportunity to help design the layout of the magazine, as well as design and code the website (Drupal can be soooo stressful! Still needs tweaking!). But here’s a shot at the cover with the lovely and talented Ms. Alicia Keys. Magazine publishing is a learning process, so hopefully with comments and criticism by readers we’ll be able to make Passion successful in our demographic. Kudos to all the hard-working staff!

Here are some of the cover stories:

• Alicia Keys: The Grammy Award-winning superstar talks about her new album, the joy of helping others and what’s next
• Avoiding the post holiday financial blues
• Chaka Khan: Back in the game after a 10-year break
• Sign of the Times: Examining the ‘new’ nuclear family
• 2 Words that can define you and help design your life
• Stocking stuffer ideas for the entire family

The November/December issue of Passion Magazine is now available at Chapter-Indigo locations, as well as some Shoppers Drug Mart’s. Dont forget to visit PassionMag.ca to enter the Samsung Camera Giveaway Contest!

I seriously thought this flyer was a joke when I saw it posted on a message board several days ago. “Light Skinned Women & All Libra’s Free Entry All Night”, states the (badly designed) flyer.

Detroit promoter Ulysses “DJ Lish” Barnes apparently cancelled the event that was supposed to occur last night at Club APT after getting a furor of angry calls and emails when word of the party spread to the net.

Barnes, 27, said that he “didn’t think there would be a backlash”. Really? He didn’t think that Black women of ‘darker’ shades would have felt ostrasized by an event that stated that only light-skinned women (and Libras!) got in to the party with no cover charge? According to a Detroit News story Barnes said:

I didn’t mean to offend anyone. I had planned a party for other shades (of black women). We were going to take a shade of color each week. Next week was going to be a party for ‘Sexy Chocolate’ and the week after that ‘Sexy Caramel.

That seems like a bold-face lie. He probably just said that to try and save face. Regardless of how many ’shaded’ parties he planned on throwing, he’s still being ignorant.

How could he have believed that he wouldn’t offend anyone with an event titled as such? What was he gonna do? Stand at the doors of the club and verify that the light-skinned women who wanted to get in free were actually light-skinned and take out a brown paper bag to make sure?  I could just picture it now: “I’m sorry.  You’re too dark-skinned.  You have to pay the cover charge.”  What if two “light-skinned” women were to show up, one being a bit darker than the other–where do you draw the line?

It’s probably not surprising to some that Barnes happens to be a “dark skinned” black man. I bet if there was a party being thrown for free entry for all the light-skinned brothas out there, he’d understand why there was such a backlash. It’s sad to think that as a ‘Black’ community there’s so much prejudice within our own race.

Well I guess something good came out of this situation: On DJ Lish’s MySpace page he’s now presenting “Controversy” as next Friday’s themed event. Everybody free entry all night.

I live in part of Toronto where there are approximately 20 Starbucks locations within a 5km radius — 7 of which are in a short walking distance of each other. It’s that type of situation where you’ll ask someone to meet you for coffee at the local Starbucks, and after giving them the major intersection they say, “Which one?”

Independently-owned cafes are becoming harder to come by as more and more Starbucks keep popping up in urban areas like dandelions. Don’t get me wrong, I love their Double-Chocolate-Chip Frappuchino® with whipped cream, but I’m not one to shell out $5 everytime I have a craving for it (it contains over 400 calories after all).

The Starbucks boom of recent years has mind boggled me, somewhat. Especially when I know people who purchase $3-5 coffee drinks there every day, even multiple times a day. That’s almost equal to one semester of college tuition! I seriously think that Starbucks might be spiking their drinks with “Starbucks Caffine” to keep customers buying their beverages.

Now to the main question of my post: Why to people go to Starbucks by themselves and just sit there with their laptops and a 1/2 empty cup of coffee? Sometimes they end up paying a lot for wireless service for Internet connection. Why not just sit in the privacy of their own home to work on whatever it is they’re working on? The question makes sense, especially if the people of this “Starbucks-laptop” culture have the nerve to complain about the noise that kids from a family that’s just entered the cafe might be making, or when someone trips over and unplugs the extension chord to their laptop.

It seems that I’m not the only one who has wondered about this trend. A repeat episode of Family Guy had me laughing, because there was so much truth in it:

If I feel the need to go out and people-watch, or hope that some hot guy will notice me typing on my (non-existent) laptop and strike up a conversation… then yes, I would go to Starbucks for that sole purpose. But I rather a nice, cost-efficient Iced Cap and Honey Cruller from Tim Hortons to go.

The Toronto Transit System can be a setting for some unusual, interesting and shocking events sometime. I was sitting at the front of the bus today and see this old, blind man sitting in one of the courtesy seats (he was wearing dark sunglasses and had a white cane with him). This young girl, probably around 17, walks on to the bus and sits down next to him, her friend sitting opposite the aisle.

Now I wouldn’t think anything of it, but after a while the older, blind man starts leaning in close to the girl. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but the girl obviously seemed like she was doing her best to be polite, yet abrupt. Then he puts his hand on her shoulder, as if it steady himself to get up for his stop… yet, he just sits there for a while trying to talk to her while patting her shoulder. The girl appeared to try to wriggle out of the unwanted attention, but all the seats were full and she was right behind the driver’s section.

About a minute later, he finally does get up, steadily holding onto her shoulder, and I witness the most disgusting displays that I’ve ever seen on TTC–he fully attempted to cop a feel of her breast! The bus pole was on the other side of him for crying out loud, so he could’ve used that to steady himself! Thank goodness she finally brushed his hand away and moved to the side before he got any lower. The “blind” man got off the bus pretty quickly, and didn’t really use the cane much, so I’m assuming he had at least some vision (according to the CNIB 90% of the people they assist actually have some vision).

I’m sitting there looking at the girl, who had this shocked and disgusted look on her face as she starts talking to her friend across the aisle in her language. She then glances at the woman sitting next to her friend as if to say “did you see what he did to me?”, and starts shaking her head saying, “so disgusting…” She soon got off the bus a couple of stops later.

Now I don’t know about you, but I think most blind people know where a woman’s breasts are on their body, in relation to their shoulder. I don’t care if he was old, or 99% blind, touching another person in that way without their consent is just plain wrong. What’s more wrong is taking advantage of your disabilities in a way like that. I hope a seagull flew into his balls on the way home…

As cute as those little beavers in the Bell commercials are, their customer service is extremely faulty! Sure they seem nice and helpful on the surface, but absolutely nothing is executed! My problem: I’ve been having trouble connecting to the Internet for about a month now. The connection will be on and off for minutes at a time, several times an hour. The Friday after I begun seeing the problem happen, I called up Sympatico’s tech support line. They told me the usual ‘reset my modem’ crap, but it was still happening. Then they tested the line and they said it appeared that there was trouble with it. So they agreed to send me a new modem and told me I can get reimbursed for the time that my Internet was down.

A week goes buy and I’m damn well sure Canada Post isn’t that slow, so I call them up on the following Friday. Guess what? When I talked to their tech department, they said that they had no record of a modem set up to be shipped to me! So I explained the problem to them again. They told me to ‘reset the modem’ again and tested the line. After it was proven to be faulty, they agreed to send out another modem.

At this point, I’m thinking OK… common mistake. Maybe someone forgot to press the ‘enter’ key after my initial phone call. So after another week passes by still no modem!

I call up Bell for the third time, and explain that I’ve been calling for the past two weeks and that I was supposed to have a new modem shipped out to me TWICE. They seem to have gotten the message and did a rush order on the shipping and I got it the following Tuesday.

So new modem, new phone cable and it seemed that it was working. But then the Internet connection started tripping out again. So, I call up Bell (yet again) on the next Friday and get told to call up another 866 number to get a technician sent to my house to repair the phone jack (since the tech guy said that’s most likely the problem, after he had me unplug the modem to test it in the other room).

Great… the earliest appointment to have someone look at the jack is five days later. What if I were a business and depended on my Internet connection to complete my job each day?! Wednesday comes and goes. Surprise, surprise: no tech guy knocking at my door.

I just got off the phone with Bell (dry loop department), and the lady I spoke to (seemed really nice), informed me that there’ll be a $100 charge to have someone from bell repair my phone jack. $100?! After she connected me with the people over at 310-BELL, the next representative apologized for the fact that the last repair guy didn’t come yesterday and set up an appointment for next Tuesday. I asked her how much it would cost and she informed me that it was $99. I told her that the first time the guy set up the appointment, I wasn’t made aware of any charge, and to just forget it and connect me to the Customer Service department so I can get a refund on the time that my internet was down for the past 3 weeks (the tech rep initially said I could get reimbursed).

I wait on hold to get connected. Thee minutes later I hear static. Then that do-do-DO beep sequence with the operator that happens when a call cannot be connected, so I hang up the phone.

I hate Bell. I’ll call to cuss them back later on today. Really thinking about switching to Rogers right about now…

Update (August 15. 2007): After emailing the executive office yesterday, I got a phone call from a nice gentleman in Ottawa telling me that they got my email. After he quickly went through the gist of my problem, he asked me what I wanted and I told him to have my internet service charge refunded for the month that it was defective… and he gave me the next 2 months free! He was so helpful and friendly. I should’ve asked for a free ExpressVu Satelite. Bell’s now back on my ‘good list’ (barely).