It’s Springtime here in the Big Smoke, my pretties!  Except it’s still as cold and gross as the mysterious crusty smears on the sleeves of your parka that you need to get dry cleaned and thrown in the back of the closet. Like today. It’s your fault it’s still cold outside, you keep wearing that wretched thing and the weather complies. My friend from another village a five hour train-ride away came to visit last week and remarked, “Why is everyone here so fucking ugly?” That’s a good question and you can blame the wind and the baa-baaa black sheep wearing the same goddamned Canada Goose parkas but I think the ugly runs much deeper. It’s so metaphysical that it’s hard to pinpoint the exact root of the pustule but I’m sure it has something to do with mass sucking of The Man’s D (whoever that is) for the sake of obtaining granite countertops and stainless steel appliances. Everybody in this sad town strives for the same thing while whistling the same tune, and it’s all so disparagingly mediocre.

I guess I’m ugly, too, since I live here. But! At least I stopped with the black parka and now I’m layering it up with a charcoal grey hoodie. Baby steps. It’s not THAT cold, pussies, we can keep warm if we huddle and stop ignoring each other. I’m staaaaarved for the human contact. I’m ready to step out of the hermit-mode and fraternize with the real flesh beings, those who enjoy eating fried chicken and actually bleed real blood when you stab them. As opposed to the tricky internet motherfuckers, the ones you meet from OkCupid and Tinder, who scurry into The Cloud (wherever that is) like veiled chameleons because they spook easily. Although,there’s a certain appeal to that, I must say, because when they go silent farting into the ether, they simply cease to exist. Or they become fodder for your screenplay.

I’ve officially decided that I finally had too much Internet over the winter. Not because of my OkCupid addiction, I’m still working on my own personal Kinsey Report, and it’s a never ending scroll of fascination for moi. I have some more wild oats to sow before I settle down with my collection of Magic Wand attachments. It turns out In Real Life (IRL from now on) my heart more resilient than I originally thought, so this is good Internet usage for my research, otherwise known as vagine fieldwork. Let me have this one vice and I’ll cut back on the Facebook, I can’t handle it all the poop anymore (more on that later).

No, there are 3 distinct things have made me realize I need to reduce the hours of screen time and snap that MacBook shut and here they are:

1. I knew how to make “Truffle Butter” without having to google it. It was like the knowledge had been implanted in my brain by osmosis. The song came out and I’m like  “Oh yeah, truffle butter,” and thought nothing of it, where everyone else was all “Ewwww, I just googled “truffle butter” and it’s nasty.” Whatevs. Now, don’t get excited, I have never made truffle butter IRL but if I did, I would doctor the recipe and add some low-fat Cool Whip to lighten the flavour, it’s less sticky than the other brands. Still, it’s a bit disturbing that I am a walking urban dictionary, and I long for the days of innocence of when a bible study was just a bible study. And did not involve so much liquified solid waste.

2. I have komplicated and konfusing feelings toward Kanye West. A good chunk of my Internet time is spent on celebrity gossip sites even though I am proud to say I still could not pick Ariana Grande or Rita Ora out of a line-up. But! When I see the name, Kanye West, my heart rate goes up. And I feel I am discharging some potent hormones from various pores. When Kanye West does or says something douchey and the whole world is tweeting “Kanye needs to be banned from the Grammy’s 4evah,” I nod my head in agreement but deep inside, I am thinking: “Oh, Kanye” like the way a mom is pretend-mad but secretly tickled when their toddler does something charming and Instagram-worthy like putting lipstick on the dog. Sometimes when I’m not on the Internet and out IRL, like at the grocery store or hanging out in a yoga pose that doesn’t hurt, I find my mind happily wandering and my thought path always ends up at Kanye’s doorstep. SIGH. I wonder what he’s doing, what’s he wearing, is he keeping warm? What did he have for breakfast? Does he wash his hands after he goes to the bathroom and apply cocoa butter hand lotion? They get so dry. Is he flossing? Did he remember to pick Kim’s flesh-coloured sausage casing from the dry cleaners? Is he reading “Goodnight Moon” to Nori? I think if I ever saw Kanye IRL, I would spontaneously lactate. What is this unconditional love I feel? Am I his mother? See, what I mean, isn’t this krazy? And embarrassing?

3. Okay the third thing is the clincher, as if truffle butter and wanting to be Kanye’s mom wasn’t enough to send me to rehab. On the Facebook, I’m in a closed group that I don’t remember even joining. It’s all about my neighbourhood and the informative goings on that individual citizens post, like as examples: the Tim Hortons is closing down but a new one is opening up, a certain naturopathic doctor is a charlatan (umm, duh), lost dog, found dog, etc. Some people randomly post antiquated memes and that talking dog video from the middle ages. I figure these folks are lonely shut-ins and want to feel the gentle rush of “likes.” There’s nothing wrong with that, I can scroll by most of  those and enjoy that talking dog video for the billionth time because it never gets old. But then something happened on the page when the weather got (only somewhat) warmer and the snow started to melt/evaporate. The citizens began posting pictures of exposed dog shit that they found on the streets. Whoa.  One particularly righteous woman wrote about how she was walking down the street with her precious baby in a fucking stroller, and she saw countless dog turds as though she was the fecal police writing a report of the most heinous crime since Sandy Hook, she clearly needs to lock her stupid family up in a panic room until all the shit gets scooped up.  HELLO, BITCH,THIS IS HAS BEEN THE NATURAL PART OF THE FOULNESS OF SPRING SINCE WAAAAY BEFORE THE INTERNET, WE’VE ALL BEEN AROUND THIS BLOCK FOR GENERATIONS.  What kind of thought process makes someone go for a walk outside in the fresh air, get so incensed over some random dog poops that she comes home, gets her sleeping baby out of the stroller, goes in the house, shimmies the squirmy baby out of the snowsuit which takes approximately the better part of an hour, dumps the screaming baby in Neglecto-matic swing, stuffs a binky in its mouth, pours herself a glass of boxed Chardonnay, then hops on the Internet to express her outrage? Her outrage becomes my outrage, but for the opposite reason. The Internet is a sacred place for cute kittens and porn, and maybe some recipes, not a forum for a bitch’s whining over a few innocuous mounds of dog shit that will turn into green grassy splendour come May. It’s all biodegradable, you dumb twat, just shut the fuck up and stop complaining, I want to write on her post but I don’t, I shut my pie hole and blog about it instead. Which I realize is another big fat waste of interweb energy that I am foisting upon you and we are all a part of the never-ending circle of ridiculous Internet pettiness.. As an aside, just a quick life hack tip for dog owners: If your dog is on a raw food diet, and really why would you want to feed your beloved dog anything else? The turds are much more compact and dry up and then turn to innocuous white dust within days if you neglect to pick them up. Sweet. Anyway, I hate this neighbourhood mom with the same fucked up intensity and passion that I love Kanye West. And I know it’s crazy but the feelings are real. So yeah, that’s enough Internet for moi.

I think we all need to get outside and get lost in the wonder of living IRL. And look at each other straight in the face and stop letting our fingers do our communicating because things go awry so easily. Let’s use our actual voices. We should be like the girls on “Broad City” stand on top of the hill and yell out at the top of the lungs: “WANNA FOOOOOOOOOK?!” I double dog dare you. We can always run away.