Pixie Says Fairytale

Once upon a time, I wrote a column http://www.shebytches.com/pixiesaysapril182004.html about a difficult visit with the older of my two younger brothers, a musician and all-round computer expert who was going through a hard time. Not only do I have to retract –

Pixie Says Cool Runnings

Disclaimer: This is not an article about Jamaican bob-sledding. It has nothing to do with the Olympics, winter sports, heartwarming human interest stories or early 90s cinema.

Pixie Says They Want Us to Make a Symphony out of the Sound of Women Swallowing their Own Tongues

Not my title (I wish), but from the genius mind of Kathleen Hanna, lead singer of Le Tigre and Bikini Kill and no stranger to being told to swallow her own tongue – no stranger, either, to vomiting that tongue up again in songs and shrieks that rock the stage and shake the foundations of patriarchy.

Pixie Says Si, se puede! But how?

It’s February, so of course I am crippled by unforgiving depression – weirdly combined with spring fever, as it’s sunny and warm here most days (below freezing at night) with helicoptering bumblebees who are almost as pissed off as I am at being awake.

Pixie Says Abort/Retry?

It’s the 40^th anniversay of the legalisation of abortion here in the UK, and it seems possible that there won’t be a 50^th anniversary.

Pixie Says Belle de Yesterjour

Why is it that every teen actress looking to prove her cred decides to play a sex worker – or just a tramp, although given the mainstream characterisation of sex workers as middle-class girls who like a good time, there’s not so much of a distinction?

Pixie Says Who Knew? or, How to Tell Your Kids that White People Didn't Always Rule the World.

When I was a kid, my parents used the threat of being sent to the back of beyond to get us to behave. There were two preferred destinations that were presented to us as desert regions long-established as oubliettes for naughty children:

Pixie Says Without Whom

So here I lie on my chaise longue, fanned and fed grapes by minions, as I command fabulous sums of money for my every word, taken down by devoted secretaries... No wait. OK, I've woken up from the horrible dream of being Barbara Cartland to find myself back in the real world,

Pixie Says Cheesecake Face

Have you ever watched a boy bite into a piece of really good cheesecake? Yup, that blissed-out, suckling at the breast, private face of goofy smilaciousness: that's what I'm talking about. I'm not saying that las chicas don't make it, but I think we tend to do it in private for fear of coming over all Meg Ryan.

Pixie Says Smoked Out

I am wearing my full-on rant pants (dark red, far too big for me, kinda look a bit samurai) so be warned. Especially if you are a smoker. And also – shut up and butt out. See, the thing is, come July 1^st, all public buildings in the UK – yknow,

Pixie Says Off With Her Head!

Under a certain amount of duress, I’ve come to love Will Ferrell and his goofy machoer-than-thou movies. It was probably the climactic kiss with Sacha Baron Cohen (aka Borat) in Talladega Nights that did it for me.

Pixie Says A Big Loan from the Girl Zone

This is a shout out to all the ladies.

Pixie Says Whore Today, More Tomorrow

Have you ever been called a corporate whore? It’s very edifying. OK, so maybe those exact words weren’t used but forgive me for hearing what you meant, Mr. Where Do I Work For? Oh Yeah, A Huge Well-Funded University that’s Paying For Me To Be At This Here Danged Conference.

Pixie Says Footloose and Employment-Free

It’s not often you get to feel like a character from Greek myth – and in general, it’s a bad idea, what with the ending in death and destruction. But here I am, being all Oedipal – not in the family fun and games way, but with a broken foot and the charming shuffle that accompanies it.

Pixie Says Say it Fucking Loud, Say it Fucking Proud

A few years back, my friend Ian Daffern http://www.iandaffern.ca/ produced a short segment for Book Television in which comix writer Neil Gaiman said the word “fuck” about 100 times, because it was his favourite word. At one point I think he claimed to have invented it – no, that was another segment, where he claimed he invented Goth. Neil’s just like that.

Pixie Says Get Pelosi On Your Ass

‘Cause that’s the threat that George Bush came back to work to this fine 2007. Forget Condi, the most powerful woman in the world – yep, she’s third in line for the American presidency, so if Bush and Cheney shot each other in a hunting accident…

Pixie Says Trust a Bytch According to some more charming species of the American populace, this is a story about where bytching gets you http://www.gothamist.com/archives/2006/11/06/nypd_adrienne_s.php. Indie actress Adrienne Shelly, best known for her roles in Hal Hartley’s early films Trust and The Unbelievable Truth,

Pixie Says Better than Bytching Could there be any such thing, you wonder — apart from chocolate, which it turns out (yes, we were right all along) is good for the heart http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,,1947949,00.html. Fantastic. So, are there other things that seem bad for us that might actually be good?

Pixie Says Killing Her Softly (for Jessie Gilbert) When teenage chess star Jessie Gilbert’s death first percolated through the media in July, it came with words like sleep walking and self harm. And sleeping pills. Why was a 15 year old on prescription sleeping pills?

Pixie Says One or Two or Similar? Anyone who’s ever been to the optician is familiar with the weird ritual process whereby you pretend you can tell the minute difference between two pieces of curved glasses clunking down in front of your distressed, naked eyes.

Pixie Says Bucket o’Blood Yes! It’s Pixie’s annual Hallowe’en themed column. Only this year, I couldn’t muster any amusing thoughts about wicked, shiny costumes and the mayhem principle (Penny Woolcock’s gut-busting film Mischief Night has the latter covered. End of).

Pixie Says Delicious Hard Work Hmm. An unusual and not particularly bytching subject for a column. Fear not! This is not a bleeding-heart therapist can-do manifesto for the benefits of all things difficult (knowing yourself, the more arcane asanas, getting up in the morning). Nothing Puritan about it. Except.

Pixie Says We Are Not Alone Nope, there are aliens everywhere. But sometimes you have to go to Paris to find them. Sigh, it’s a tough job, but’s someone’s gotta do it. Not that I went to Paris thinking, “Hey, I’ll spend an entire evening hanging out in a bookstore, discovering exciting new writers.”

Pixie Says Nonsense & Sensitivity Just like the heroes of Jane Austen, the men who work in my office are a complex, highly strung, mesh of deep feelings, dark pasts and extreme irritability. And like Austen’s men, they are also pompous twats who benefit from a bizarre double standard that says that when a woman shows emotions, questions the status quo or protests about someone else’s behaviour, she’s being weak and girly.

Pixie Says This Just In... Nope, It’s Been Delayed at Heathrow A flight was diverted today when live snakes were discovered in a passenger’s hand luggage. The snakes were set free through a chain of unfortunate events, and caused mayhem in the cabin.

Pixie Says Other People’s Underneaths Turns out I’m not the only one with a skin under the skin. As if I didn’t know that already — that we all wear our identities in layers, as if for a Canadian winter of the soul.

Pixie Says Underneath the Glitter, I’m Still a Jew Before I was a pixie, before I was a feminist, almost before I was me, I had two identities: female and Jewish. I was born into them and, not having acquired the power of speech, I couldn’t argue my way out of them. For a while.

Pixie Says Small Minds Make Small T-shirtsMy column this week was going to be very serious, all about violence and the impact of watching violent movies, but David Cronenberg has really got that taken care of (hmm, yes, I am clearly an academic, passing the buck for analysis onto a movie I haven’t even seen [because I’m not sure I wanna share Viggo with Maria Bello]). So, as I sit here struggling to type, instead I want to ask

Pixie Says But She Had No Body to Go With Don’t you sometimes look forward to the day when flesh is obsolete and we are just brains in a jar? Or ghostly presences wafting around on the air, able to reassemble and disassemble at molecular will? I know I do. It’s not very feminist or politically correct, I know, but it’s not like I want plastic surgery — I just want to get through a day at work without my feet threatening civil war. It would be fine if my wrists’ insurgency, with its campaign of shock, awe and clumsiness, were truly over, but just when I thought I had the rebels on the run…

Pixie Says Dolly’s Day of Reckoning I was in such a snit last week that I forgot to gush & boast about going to see Dolly Parton at the Molson with a friend of mine who is her biggest fan. As we were trying to find our way through the hell on earth that is the Ex in the last week before school, I asked him if he knew what Dolly’s politics were.

Pixie Says A Few of My Least Favourite Things My least favourite words in the world, not really in order of least favouriteness. With thanks to and much identification with Jaye Tyler of Wonderfalls, the second best show ever to get cruelly cancelled.

Pixie Says Girl, Where You At? So that small popping sound you hear is my head being pulled out of my ass, where it’s been the last few weeks. If I were being less vulgar (and really, what’s the point of politeness when you’ve been working at your desk in the same underwear and nothing but for three days?) I’d say it was my fingers being wrenched out of my ears to the accompaniment of my no longer going ‘lalalalalala’.

Pixie Says Sally Potter’s Word of Wisdom Ponying up for the Toronto Film Festival — or any film festival — can be like winning a Golden Ticket (hey, even grrl culture pixies take time out for some Hollywood fun, especially when it involves Johnny Depp in close proximity to chocolate [and not even a hint of Juliette Binoche]).

Pixie Says If it’s Not the Weather, Hand me my Leather… In the immortal words of Amanda Marshall (not that I could remember her name when the song came on in Radio Shack — sorry, The Source — earlier this week), "Let it rain." You’d think that after a month in the UK, I would be sick of the sight, sound, and smell of grey skies and showers — but no.

Pixie Says Finding My Way Home My belief in the evil of early mornings was roundly substantiated this week. Nothing good ever happens before 10 a.m. — the invasion of Poland, the destruction of the World Trade Centre towers. And this week the 8 a.m. (Canadian time) phone call to tell me that London was exploding.

Pixie Says Whose Frida (and the Big Bad Wolf)? Nothing is more annoying than when everyone else catches onto something you thought you discovered first. Or anyway, something that I thought I’d discovered first. You may not feel the same — for example, you may have discovered this column, and be more than willing to circulate its URL to your friends, relatives, phone company, pets, and influential journalists/agents/publishers/sugar mamas.

Pixie Says Everything Old is New Again It’s a good time to be looking back, maybe because the present is so appalling. History gives us wars we (in the cultural sense — not me, I like my history distant, and preferably fabric and/or homeware-related) can feel confident about winning (WWII), successfully protesting (Vietnam), or understanding (see above). Wars — and their kissing cousins, disasters — are also a boon to past-it celebrities who can no longer hold a tune, let alone write one, but find themselves roles as "elder statesmen" (emphasis on the —men here, as Kabbalah has yet to be officially registered as a disaster; oh, and Susan Sarandon as the honourable exception), making hay while the tsunami pours.

Pixie Says - I HEART M.T

Fake I.D. Mariko Tamaki (Women’s Press)

SKIM: The Diary of Skim Takota(Keep Out!) Mariko & Jillian Tamaki (Kiss Machine)

Confession about a confession: a year and one week ago, I stood on a stage in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and told Mariko Tamaki that I thought she was one of the coolest people I’d ever met, and that I’d been more nervous about her being on the Girls Who Bite Back tour than about anything else because, as far I as was concerned during my neophyte phase in T.O., she was a literary superstar, everywhere at once.

Pixie Says - Against Crawling Realism Man, don’t you just love Saturday nights in the big city? They’re so full of culture and beautiful people and that sense of being there, where everything’s happening. Which is why, despite the amazing events of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival and the end of the Inside Out Film Festival, I am enjoying the best Saturday evening ever: there’s homemade soup bubbling on the stove; I’m in my pjs (well, my ex-yoga pants and a Count Count T-shirt); and, er, I’m writing this column and making a birthday card. Don’t get me wrong, I went out. I was happening, I was beautiful, I was cultural, I was an Buddies seeing Volcano Theatre’s Hedda Gabler (of the sexy poster and starred NOW review) and after an hour and a half I had mental pins and needles.

Pixie Says - Allergic to Hard Work We sell a very popular magnet at the bookstore, which says "They Lied When They Said Hard Work Never Killed Anybody." I have to agree. At least one of my friends is seriously ill from overwork, and all of the others are just mentally unstable.

Pixie Says - Just Keep Me Hanging On This was supposed to be the week that solved everything. The week that I became a real person — yknow, one of those people that you read about, who have a job and a plan and relative emotional health and a bank balance. Instead, I’m halfway between ajitter and awander, doing that Thelma and Louise thing with the candy bar in the fridge, not even committing to food.

Pixie Says - Mood Music I’m not having a great day. To deal with it so far I have: not had an alcoholic drink; not eaten any sugar; shaved my head; worn three different outfits; read two books in galley proofs; eaten tofu vegetable soup; been grumpy with everyone I’ve spoken to in person or on the phone (nothing like sharin’ the misery); stayed out when I should have been working; worked when I should have been eating; cleaned my bathtub (well, it was full of hair); and been to see two films. A busy day, you’ll admit, for someone whose first thought on waking was, "Oh fuck, not again."

Pixie Says -Girls can be anything they want to be…

…even anthropomorphic personifications of aspects of the universe," as Death and her sisters Delirium and Despair tell the assembled demons of Hell in Jill Thompson’s Sandman manga, Death: At Death’s Door. There are thousands of representations of death, in every culture, but the limpidly beautiful Goth girl in a top hat, created by Neil Gaiman, was the first one that felt like my Death.

Pixie Says - Lawfully Dreaded The editorial column at the end of the third issue of Shameless (which finally arrived; proof that, sometimes, those "Contact Us" emails do end up at the desk of a real person and not a cackling machine) is the starting point for this week’s musings. There’s nothing that screams twenty-first century foxiness like a mediatastic meta-column, especially when the first column was itself prompted by a National Post article.

Pixie Says - Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole It’s not an original sentiment, or even an original phrase. It’s the title of Martha Wainwright’s debut EP, and also its first song, and that song’s chorus, which is addressed to her father, singer Loudon Wainwright, who was given to documenting his family in intimate detail in his songs, while neglecting them in life. The song is her heartfelt (and hugely singable-in-the-shower) revenge.

Pixie Says - The Size of a Song I have several favoured strategies for avoiding the start of a new, burdensome task: one, obsessive fixation on a current news story (last week: the world’s first ever real communist revolution in Kyrgyzstan; this week, the Pope must die); two, accumulation and completion of other, minor tasks, resulting in feeling of satisfaction and gift to self of "well-earned time off"; three, cleaning up my computer

Pixie Says - Heroes are Super Today I did something I almost never do, making a fool of myself in the process (something I do a lot, so I’m, like, so over it). I went up to someone I recognised from a movie and said how much I’d enjoyed her fill

Pixie Says - 1-800-I-HATE-EVERYTHING I’m afraid that I’m becoming one of those old ladies who hits people with her umbrella if they are wearing odd socks (and I’m only 26). My usual grumpiness, which is rarely shared with anyone who doesn’t know me (or at least read this site), has escalated into full, exhibitionist mode. It’s all Carolina’s fault.

Pixie Says - These Precious Things You know that it’s been a bad week when my column has a headline straight outta Little Earthquakes. That bespeaks pain, suffering and a nostalgia for being fourteen. Bad, and, moreover, wrong. It’s also an attempt to forget the AOR horror that is Tori’s latest, The Beekeeper.

Pixie Says -A New Game Show: Who Wants to be a Grown-Up? I went to a dinner party last night, thrown by some of my favourite grown-up friends. They have a beautiful house whose spacious grace leads me to potent imaginings of my future living arrangements. They have interesting friends from around the world who talk long and loud and without competition or rancour.

Pixie Says - Here’s Johnny! No, this isn’t a Johnny Carson tribute column. I haven’t been AWOL for two months mourning the erstwhile King of Television. Nor is the title random, it’s very pointed. It’s just that the point is, well, pointedly private.

Pixie Says -Once More With Feeling Oh look, it’s snowing again. Which is excuse enough to fire up the saucepan full of cocoa, put on the cashmere bed socks and settle in for reruns. December being December, there’s that nagging need for closure, and what better way to get closure than rewatch all seven seasons of Buffy?

Pixie Says -Personal Velocity I spend a lot of time bossing people around: as a teacher and as a columnist, one of my functions is to suggest how people could do better in order to become better people – taking my work in its most utopian sense, something that I don’t do too often.

Pixie Says - Her Husband I’ve just spent a large part of my day cleaning my oven. Truly, my time could have been better spent doing almost anything, including being in a coma, as my oven looks no cleaner now than before I sprayed it with toxic gunk (even the eco-friendly stuff is poisonous), scrubbed it several times with steel wool, scouring pads, magic powers and an old cotton rag, and stared at it very, very angrily.

Pixie Says - Mommy, What Did You Do During the War? This is not a question I pose because I have children – or even the inkling of children. No foetal thoughts are crossing my mind, apart from the sick one that the only available form of protest soon may be to get pregnant deliberately and have an abortion.

Pixie Says - In Praise of Bush It’s unfashionable (if not downright criminal), I know. It flies in the face of all good sense, justice and commercial appeal. It makes me a bad woman, not fit for the Sex in the City company of my peers. But I have to say it: bush rocks. Hairy, scary bush.

Pixie Says - Hello, My Name is… Clearly Not Important Enough This is as much a pre-bytch as a shebytch. I’m off to Vancouver tomorrow (Thursday) on a trip that I’ve been looking forward to all year. OK, so it’s not a holiday, it’s an academic conference, and I’ll spend most of my room in various hotel rooms (not in bed-related fun way, I hasten to add). Lots of people I admire will be there – and none of them will deign to talk to me.

Pixie Says - Don’t Men(strua)tion It In the language of the Goddess movement (a flyer for a Samhain celebration just happened to catch my eye yesterday), I have been welcome in the womyn’s tent for fifteen years.

Pixie Says -Google Eyes Since elementary school, I’ve been known as the Walking Encyclopaedia. Possessing a phenomenal memory for trivia (and the occasional habit of leaving the house in slippers) has in no way prevented me from becoming almost an integrated member of society, especially as all the important stuff I now have to remember (take out garbage; show up to class; define Petrarchan sonnet) has driven the trivia into the recesses of my memory and made the embarrassing displays of pointlessness less frequent.

Pixie Says - Falling Sometimes, sitting on the subway (I promise this isn’t going to be another TTC rant), I look at people and wonder "How do you do it?" As in, how do you get through life – live in suburbia, work as a nurse, carry your life around in plastic bags, be sixteen and heartbroken, whatever.

Pixie Says - Busting Out I got on the wrong bus to work last week – actually, let me correct this. There was a signal failure at Kennedy station, so I missed my bus and had to get the suburban instead of the express, turning my very early start into a two hours and counting commute that left me rushing breathless through the concrete halls.

Pixie Says - Reduce. Distill. Purify. Teach. So said the sign on my friend Zahra’s wall (of course, she also had a sign that said "What if God is a potato?" but she later discovered Nietzsche and got over that one).

Pixie Says - The Dead Zone How can I possibly have SAD in the first week of September, damnit? The first week of school is traditionally glorious, an ironic reminder to those cooped up in classrooms that nature is putting on her finest gowns, the "glorious torch / and drag" of autumn, as New England poet Mark Doty writes.

Pixie Says - Finding Serenity With school rushing towards me like a giant fire-breathing monster of responsibility for teaching undergraduates, I find that I’m remembering rather more about my undergrad experience than I want to.

Pixie Says - East End Girl
Sometimes all it takes is a casual remark to trip you from present to past. Hanging out at Book City on the Danforth with my friend Steve yesterday evening, I was talking about my upcoming Scarberia career, instructing a critical writing course on the easternmost reaches of the University of Toronto.

Pixie Says - Pain, Pain, Go Away. Why does it have to hurt so much? The pain, I mean. This is, of course, a funny question (verging on hilarious) from someone who paid more than the price of an all-inclusive trip to Cuba for someone to stick rapid needles in her arms for nine hours

Pixie Says - Retail Therapy I’ve been between therapists for the last couple of weeks, so I’ve been investigating alternative methods of supporting the Canadian economy while feeling better about myself.

Pixie Says - What’s that thing about a butterfly wing? Still obsessing about the new Tanya Donelly album, almost to the point of stopping strangers in the street to say "Listen to this." When I stress out (most waking hours of the day), it calms me down, like meditation by proxy.

Pixie Says -Love & Stars If I were a supremely organised person, I would be putting the finishing touches to a brilliant piece on the theme of "love and stars," to submit for the forthcoming issue of Kiss Machine <http://www.kissmachine.org/>.

Pixie Says -Back Nothing says home like the QEW. I think it’s its generous sweep along the lakeshore, the CN Tower like a homing beacon or compass needle, drawing me into the city, up and over, dropping down into the raviney land I call home.

Pixie Says -Come On, England Never wear sunglasses bigger that your arse. Such is the first warning of the fashion police on guard at the European Football Championships this year. It’s directed, of course, at Victoria Beckham (née Posh Spice),

Pixie Says - 99% Aspiration According to a study I read somewhere in the vast heap of Sunday papers this week, Oscar-winning actors live four years longer than their statuette-lacking counterparts (it didn’t say whether winners of multiple awards lived exponentially longer, or – indeed – talk in any way about how these statistics had been compiled).

Pixie Says - Quizàs, Quizàs, Quizàs… My brother (not the evil one, the other one) is currently in the grips of a premature midlife crisis… about turning twenty. Please, I don’t even remember turning twenty. Well, actually, I do.

Pixie Says - Guess You Had to Be There Because there was that bit when the Cunt Caucus showed up to revolutionise gender through sparkly wigs… oh, and the guy with the hair plugs who called Daniel "Woman of Wonder"… and that time when the woman told me to be quiet and we totally weren’t because Emily kicked me…

Pixie Says - All God’s Children Need Travelling Shoes Remember Tanita Tikaram’s "Twist in My Sobriety"? I’ve been on a downloading old favourites kick, and listening to that song a lot recently, so this week’s column title is down to her.

Pixie Says - Mi Vida Loca Feast/famine. Deluge/drought. Such is the seasonal shape of my life. Just when I’ve got accustomed enough to how much I’m doing for it to feel like I’m doing nothing, everything explodes.

Pixie Says - National Non-Fiction Week On Monday, I had lunch in the Sudan (thanks to a talk by Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch <http://www.hrw.org/>.

Pixie Says -Born to Be Hugged Recent studies in the UK have shown that women place "being hugged" at the top of their list of health requirements (men, apparently, are torn between beer and sex – what a surprise).

Pixie Says - Keeping the Dust-Bunnies Alive I’m so disorganised at the moment, I left the house this evening to see The Raging Grannies http://www.geocities.com/raginggrannies/ at Another Story bookstore, and didn’t even notice the candle going into meltdown on my bookshelf.

Pixie Says - What Doesn’t Bend, Breaks Do I owe anyone more gratitude than Ani Difranco? Is there anyone who has explained more of this troublesome, awesome existence to me?

Pixie Says - All Bytched Out Sunshine is the new Prozac. Yes, it’s almost martinis on the porch season. Or green tea with mint, which I was drinking this afternoon, letting the last of the sun in the west turn my eyelids red (apparently, those shapes you see are the cellular structure of your eyelids! How cool is that!).

Pixie Says - Advice Column As an avid reader of Dan Savage and Sasha, I knew this day had to come… My therapist (and all my friends) will tell you gladly, I get an F when it comes to asking for advice. But help! I need some.

Pixie Says - What Ever Happened to Baby Janie (and her gun)?
I feel like I’ve gone on a time-warp vacation recently to the land of angry adolescence. Remember the early 90s? Not just the fun facts, but how they really felt: grungy, riot grrly, as if things were, could, might, had to change.

Pixie Says - Yes I Am – But Is It Enough?
Here’s a paradox of postmodern politics for you: my students (mainly 18 years old, first year at University of Toronto, brats) aren’t in the least bit fazed by the fact that I’m out (first tutorial: ME: "So, Fred, what’s your favourite film?" FRED: "Donnie Darko."

Pixie Says - Changing the World Begins with Changing your Underwear. One of my favourite scenes in the film Thirteen (released on DVD this month) is when the good-girl-gone-bad (played by Evan Rachel Wood from Once and Again) comes into the kitchen talking about how she could floss her butt with her new hot pink uber-thong.

Pixie Says -Mother/Lover Those of you who read and enjoyed Guest Bytch Anne Walker’s column last week will also find lots to delight you in her new book of poetry, The Exit Show.

Pixie Says - No Logo (well, maybe a little one) I have spent the last few weeks on an epic quest. Having finally found a dance class I would like to take (at www.devilinsidedance.com) I realised that real people did not go to dance class in scrubs.

Pixie Says - Show Me Love Everyone has scars. They may be fading into white but – come the anniversary of their occurrence – they still itch and twitch with a raft of sensations: pain, the long process of healing, and a certain nostalgia for the hand or weapon or place that caused them.

Pixie Says - She finally Bytches This column is supposed to be medicinal (or should that be therapeutic? The lines between chemical and human care are so finely drawn these days). I took up the Shebytches challenge in order to get my head out of my ass and my ass off the sofa (mainly because life was becoming anatomically impossible;

Pixie Says - Become Who You Are I fulfilled my New Year’s resolution early this year. It was a simple one: change your life to change the world.

Pixie Says -Give It Up There’s been a lot of consternation recently in London (England) about the influx of small groups organising street-based soup runs for homeless people over the holiday season.

Pixie Says - Bi-Bi-Baby I’m in two minds about bisexuality. Hahaha, right? Two minds, two spirits, two (to quote Woody Allen) reasons to be alone on a Saturday night.

Pixie Says - In the Company of Women It seems like me and Germaine Greer, High Priestess of Feminism, are on the same wavelength this week.

Pixie Says - Spicy Girls It still weirds me out that I have male friends. I went to an all-girls’ school from eleven until eighteen (this is far more common in the UK than in Canada) and had one and a half male friends, or rather, friends’ boyfriends with whom I became friendly.

Pixie Says - Brimful of Asha I sometimes think I left England for Canada at just the wrong moment. Mostly, I look at the identikit Charlie Brown English politicos and the corruption and failure of the BBC, the NHS and the education system and think

And a gin and tonic for the man with the breasts It should be Hallowe’en every day. As Buffy puts it, Hallowe’en is "it’s come as you aren’t night". Of course, I love any excuse for people to reveal their most secret selves and deepest desires – nothing is more revealing than masks.

Repetitive Strain Injury, or Here We Go Again Provincial election. Municipal election. National election. Is it just foreign little me, or are all the men in grey suits interchangeable?

This is Our What? So here’s an actual bytch from the horse’s mouth. For starters, I should tell you that the horse’s name is Fred, he’s blue, and this evening he was ridden by Red Mother, as played by the renowned Kuna/Rappahannock actor, choreographer and director Muriel Miguel.

Academic The question of grrl culture this week has been entirely academic (apart from a sneaky matinee of Lost in Translation). It had to happen sooner or later, given that it’s an academic time of year and all.

What it feels like for a girl Madonna got it all wrong (again): not all men need to be told what it feels like for a girl. Dar Williams is closer to the truth – but then her album is called The Honesty Room – when she has a guy confessing that he "was a girl too," and resents the fact that he can no longer cry, even when he is alone.

Flying Free It seems like everyone else in Toronto has been gallivanting off to the film festival. If not to the actual festival, then to the after-parties. If not to after-parties, then to celeb-led yoga classes. I, meanwhile, have been preparing for the end of the world.

Bjork - Every so often some asks me, "What is it exactly that you do?" Like all good pixies, I reply, "Magic."

Pixie Says - It’s been a sad summer for my super-heroines (apart from Barbara Hall, whose Pride party and parade float were triumphant). Buffy earthed her stakes to go become a cookie. Jean Gray disappeared beneath the waves in X:2 – and even more offensively, reappeared as John Gray in Neil Gaiman’s Tudorheroes comic 1602. Lara robbed the cradle of life (I’ve given up contemplating the labyrinthine ironies of the film’s title) and came off lifeless, a mere imitation of her pixellated predecessor.