#nofilter

Sometimes, the truth hurts. 

It hurts so much that we'd rather pretend it wasn't the truth.

And guess where the best place to be untruthful is?

Ding, ding, ding!

That's right folks... the internet.

Thanks to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter and photo-sharing services like Instagram and Flickr, we can literally pretend to be whoever, and whatever, we want to be.

Never were Shakespeare's words "All the world's a stage, and all of the men and women merely players," more true than they are today. Thanks to the internet (generally) and social media (specifically) all the world really is a stage - quite literally.

I first came across the hashtag #nofilter a few months ago. Being a bit of a social media neophyte, I obviously had no clue what it meant. The #nofilter tag is actually one of Instagram's most popular hashtags. It's used by "humblebragging" Instagram users to let their followers know they've posted a picture without using one of Instagram's built-in filters.

And guess what?

Ding, ding, ding!

11% of the time (which translates to over 8.6 million photos) it's a big, fat, lie.

A website dedicated to calling-out Instagram's #nofilter fakers, aptly called Filter Fakers, was recently developed so that people could check if a filter was used on a photo or not. Now, when you suspect one of your "friends" of being a filter faker you can use the Faker Catcher tool to uncover the truth.

  jack doesn't think you can handle the truth

I started thinking about filter fakers when I realized I was addicted to Instagram filters. Every time someone took a #nofilter picture of me, I'd be disappointed with it. The truth is, I looked like myself but had gotten so used to seeing myself through the forgiving, and filtering, lens of Instagram that I forgot what I actually looked like. 

I've never worn makeup because I made the conscious decision to look like myself a long, long time ago. Ditto for Photoshop. So why filters? 

I blame social media. Because of it, people's lives are becoming more aesthetic than authentic with every "like."

When I look at the news feeds of people who share every detail of their personal lives, from what they had for breakfast to what they look like in bed (#nofilter, of course!), I wonder: is that really your life or is it just a carefully curated illusion of the one you want your 2,700 Facebook friends to think you lead?

“Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.”
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Social media can be blamed for a lot of things, including but not limited to: narcissism, cyber bullying, slut shaming, neknominating and, sadly, worse.   

If you haven't heard of the hashtag #JadaPose consider yourself lucky.  

It refers to the position a 16-year-old rape victim named Jada was photographed in while unconscious. After the photos were posted online, social media users started posting pictures of themselves in the same position with the hashtag #JadaPose.

According to this article from The Guardian, "Jada's case didn't happen in a bubble. It happened in a world that teaches women and girls, from an ever younger age, that their entire worth and value is defined by their looks and sexual appeal to men. That they have to be sexy enough, but not too sexy. That even if they are abused, assaulted or raped, it is their "reputation," not that of their attackers, that will be destroyed."

In the end, I guess social media can't really be blamed for society's ills. Society, and the people that make it up, can.

PS. I realize that the fact that I'm about to post a link to this blog post on Facebook is highly ironic.   

  





 

Fiesta for one

As yesterday was a Monday, and thus the beginning of another long no-carb (read: no-cheeseburger) week, I decided to recreate a particularly tasty taco salad I had the pleasure of trying at a baby shower last week. 

I substituted ground meat for chicken breast and, sadly, left out the tortilla chips entirely. Despite the lack of carbs it made for a surprisingly delicious, and filling, Monday meal for one.

The beau and I visited the Jean-Talon Market last week and thanks to a quick visit to El Rey del Taco (the taco king, I'm assuming) I had a couple of authentic ingredients, like Mexican crema, which made the salad even more tasty than I had imagined.

Lucky me!

I started by seasoning the chicken breasts with salt, pepper, cumin, ground coriander and ancho chilli pepper. After quickly browning them in olive oil I baked them in the oven for 20 minutes at 350 degrees, turning them over once mid-way.

While the chicken was in the oven, I started building my salad. I started with arugula lettuce, added diced tomatoes, avocados and cheddar cheese, and finished with coarsely chopped fresh coriander.

Once the chicken was fully cooked, I removed it from the oven, cut it into bite-size pieces and let it cool. 

While it was cooling, I made a quick dressing composed of Mexican crema, olive oil, lime juice, salt and pepper.

I tossed it all together and wished I was enjoying it on a beach in Playa del Carmen rather than on a sofa in Cote-St-Luc. One can dream... of carbs and beaches.

this salad is on fire

Oddly enough, the overall flavouring of the salad, and evening, reminded me of Girl on Fire by Alicia Keyes... and so, here it is:

 


  

Orange you glad I didn't say banana!

Knock-knock jokes aside (please), the Orange Julep really is one of the most, shall we say, interesting landmarks the city of Montreal has to offer. 

Shaped like, well, a giant orange, and visible as far as the eye can see, it is the purveyor of many an earthly delight, including the aptly named Orange Julep drink.

Fresh, frosty and refreshing, the "julep" tastes like a mix of milk, or ice cream, and orange juice. 

Its exact ingredients, though, are unknown.

my very fresh, very strong, friend

When an equally fresh, though decidedly less frosty, friend asked our waitress (who, unfortunately, was not on roller skates as used to be the case during the Orange Julep's heyday) what - exactly - the julep was made of, she replied "it's a secret."

And she wasn't kidding.

Built by Hermas Gibeau in 1932 to serve his trademark drink, the Orange Julep's tasty elixir is a faithfully-guarded family recipe.

Aside from mysterious juleps, the Orange Julep also serves delicious hot dogs, burgers, french fries and poutine. Since Mondays to Fridays are now carb-free (for me), weekends are best enjoyed with a hefty side of cheeseburger.  

three cheers for cheeseburgers!

Interesting side note: The beau has been staying with me for the past few months. When asked where he lives, he usually replies something like "five minutes from the Big Orange." This is interesting because the beau is a pilot, and the Big Orange once served as a landmark for a pilot whose radar system had failed. 

The reason for my recent visit to the Orange Julep, other than it being carbfest the weekend, was that it was on the way home from a nursery where I bought my first ever black flower, in honour of Kat Von D. 

i swear it's black

I guess orange really is the new black! 

Dear Jack Kerouac... and JG

I can't remember when I started working at the Concordia University libraries. 

I had probably already started university, which made me at least 18 years old/young. I wasn't looking for what Oprah describes as an Aha! moment, but I sure as shit found one.

I found him...

I found Jack Kerouac.

I was shelving books and  suddenly, somehow, everything changed.

My job was to take carts of books that had been returned by students and replace them on the shelves according to Library of Congress classification. 

As I entered the PS section, dedicated to American literature, the air changed and something in me shifted.  

I opened a book called On the Road. 

I didn't know who Jack Kerouac was, and I sure as shit didn't know what a hipster was, but I did know that for the first time in my life, I read something that described almost exactly how I felt.

I was floored. 

Like, literally, on the floor. 

Reading, reading and reading.

And then, reading some more.

Everyday, I would sneak into the PS section, find Kerouac and read. 

When one book was done, I would start another. When they were all done, I read them all over again.

I was in heaven.

I was in love.

In love with words. 

In love with the truth.

Since then, a lot has happened. 

Some good. 

Some bad.

No matter what happens though, I can always count on Kerouac for pointing my soul in the right direction.

I'm not one for talking about my emotions, and maybe it sounds cheesy, but I literally cannot read one of his lines without shedding a tear.

A big, fat, long, juicy one.
 

Even though I graduated in Journalism (and Political Science) and live for words (metaphorically, of course), I'm not great at saying them. 

Thinking them, sure.

Writing them, maybe. 

Saying them, definitely not.

 So here's to my hero, the great thinker, speaker and writer of words.

Jack Kerouac. 

Born in Lowell, Massachusetts to French Canadian parents in 1922. Started writing On the road in French. Died in 1969, at the age of 47, while drinking whiskey.

You stole my heart at the age of 18. 

And again at the age of 34 (35?) in the DR.

And over and over again.

Until the end, and forever.

The art of war

"Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak."
Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Some people call it pugilism while others refer to it as "the sweet science." 

According to Merriam-Webster it's the art of attack and defense, with the fists, practiced as a sport.

Boxing.

It's all that... and to me, it's so much more.

I started boxing around 10 years ago after being attacked by a client at an employment resource centre in Toronto. I wasn't looking to learn to fight, or (even) to get even, but something about being physically attacked at work had left me feeling very vulnerable.

At the time, I was working out at a regular gym right near work. One evening, after my usual (boring) workout, I noticed two heavy bags in one very small room. The girl who was working them was tiny but fierce and something about the intense look of concentration on her face made me pause.

She saw me watching and invited me in. She showed me how to position my feet and how to pivot one foot when throwing a punch. She told me she had just started working at the gym, part-time, and would be giving a few boxing classes a week.

I really wanted to do it but I was intimidated. Who am I kidding? I was downright scared. I asked a friend of mine to join me and since she agreed I had no excuses not to give it a try.

And so one fateful night we walked into the very small room... and I never looked back.

I loved every aspect of it. I liked the training, including the skipping, push-ups and sit-ups. I liked the camaraderie. I especially liked how difficult it was. Every week it felt like the hardest thing I had done but every week I wanted to go back and try harder. Do better. 

After a while, I joined a boxing gym and started taking my training seriously. I changed the way I ate, what I drank and how I lived. I was far from being anyone's Million Dollar Baby but I was proud of myself.

I started sparring and realized that I even liked getting hit in the face by my 250-pound trainer. 

As long as I got to hit him back.

I started reading books about boxing, watching boxing matches on television and even met George Chuvalo, the Canadian heavyweight boxer who fought from 1956 to 1978 and famously said after a fight with Muhammad Ali "He went to the hospital with bleeding kidneys and me, I went dancing with my wife."  

 
After moving back to Montreal I slowly lost track of boxing. I joined a regular gym and went back to my usual (boring) workouts. 

But I always missed it. 

The feeling I had when I skipped and everything disappeared except for the sound of the rope flying through the air. The emotion I felt when I hit the bag and it echoed across the room.

They say the most meaningful things are sometimes the very same things that scare you the most. For me, that's exactly how it was with boxing.

So last week, after three years of not doing something I loved, I tried it again. Nothing had changed - not the feeling and not the emotion. Nothing except for my own level of fitness.  

Thanks to Studio Breathe and a 50-minute boxing class, I was back in the ring - figuratively, at least. 

And I loved every minute it.