End this current horrifying malaise

Long live pleasure. Have a smoke, have a drink or three, buy those Italian glossed leather boots, have great sex, track down that excellent jelly doughnut and buy a dozen, book the trip, admire Miley Cyrus’s great beauty, watch some porn, and the next time someone admires something you’re wearing, hand it over with a smile. Do not read the comments. The next time someone complains about someone else being overpaid, shrug and say, “Whatever.” What brought this on, you ask. Aren’t columnists paid to be scolds? I disagree. I believe they’re paid to be life enhancers and I swear I have hit my limit with the miserable-ists. On Thursday a usually affable columnist tweeted, “You people are all tone-deaf to the current horrifying malaise.” Not realizing he was quoting Godspeed You! Black Emperor, I questioned him urgently. What horrifying malaise? Was he ill? Were there riots? An assassination? Who were “you people?” It’s a mistake to group people you detest, mainly because the borders between these groups shift so easily. Some people are intrinsically detestable (racists), some are merely emotionally vulnerable (Ford voters) and some are types (David Gilmour). But columnists rate people according to how interesting they are to write about, so please, intensify that malaise, drive it home. Perhaps he was referring to Sinead O’Connor’s open letter to Miley Cyrus warning that she is being “pimped.” “Us females in the industry are role models and as such we have to be extremely careful what messages we send to other women.” O’Connor, 46, in recent trouble for filth-tweeting about her own strange requirements, should let Cyrus video-lick what she wants and let her revel. Sexual malaise cured. Or was the malaise the fact that Stephen Harper is sending not a distinguished French female jurist to the Supreme Court but a male specialist in maritime law? The Canadian navy has a boat, maybe two, and someone has to guard their interests. But that’s not a malaise, that’s a subject I plan to write about until Marc Nadon retires. All his opinions will be nautical. I cannot wait. Did “you people” refer to women who think the national anthem should salute women as well as men? How outré. But truly, the horrifying malaise is that there are so many malaises available. Columns so often deteriorate into malaise du jour and that’s when I snapped and began writing my ode to pleasure, my call to eat/drink/smoke/shop/have intercourse and lighten up. But how did I do personally? I don’t smoke. It smells and scabs your organs but if it floats your boat, as Nadon would say, go ahead. I cannot drink more than a glass of regular wine, three if organic, without waking up in the night riven by guilt and anxiety, but I will do it out of idealism. But I never do it after work. A recent book suggests that “chopping, dicing and sipping is a modern ritual” turning careerist foodie women into alcoholics. Seriously, who wields a knife while drinking? It is most unsafe. It’s the blood loss not the aperitif that will do you in. Sit down with a nice bottle of Southbrook and some Triscuits. The Bottega Venetas were a mistake because they’re riding boots and since I am short, they tickle the backs of my knees and madden me. The jelly modern doughnuts are available on the second floor of Holt Renfrew where they sell hideous Republican wife dresses, but at those prices ($30 a dozen with tray and tongs), you could buy a ruffled tulle arseenhancing nightmare and have change for extra jelly. A colleague admired my cardigan so I gave it to her. Bet she’s sorry now! I did not read the comments. Nadon will earn $340,000. Ahoy. And I watched porn, selecting a movie from the massive Rogers Cable TV porn vault. Unfortunately, Rogers caters only to men — very strange men — and out of curiosity, I chose a genre film about “GILFS.” Grandmothers. I suppose I will book that vacation as soon as I feel better, which will be never. Anyway, pleasure. Seek out pleasure. Find your inner Canadian Presbyterian and blot it out, no malaise to see here, move along. hmallick@thestar.ca