Last night, I went to a fund raiser put together by Step by Step, a charity for organ transplants. I met George Marcello, the founder of the charity and an outspoken advocate for organ donation. I had no idea who he was before this event. I had noticed him though before he took the podium; something in his eyes told me that this was a man who’s seen a lot of hardship. I later learned that he’s been the beneficiary of two liver transplants. For over ten years he’s been working to increase awareness of this issue in Canada, including leading a 769 day march across Canada.

I spoke to George briefly after his speech, and he told me there were two things that would instantly solve the problem:

• Signatures: Most people actually support organ donation. But that doesn’t help the 150 Canadians who die each year from lack of organs or the four thousand currently on organ transplant waiting lists. The number one challenge for this cause is not getting people to endorse it. It is getting their signatures. It’s getting people to actually sign that slip of paper that says that they are willing to be an organ donor. It’s that simple.

• Political will: The sad thing is that the reason groups like Step by Step have to canvass each individual is because the Canadian government does not have the political will to modify the system. . Other countries like Spain, Austria and Belgium have “opt-out” systems in place and more efficient organ harvesting practices. There, people are presumed to be donors unless they opt out and organ donation rates are 2-3 times higher.

The amazing thing to me about the issue of organ donation is that this is not about looking for a cure for breast cancer, a cure for aids or a cure for Parkinsons. This is not about giving a dollar a day to help those poor bloated African babies who are always hungry. This is not about stem cell research or some faraway dream. Rather, this is something that could be fixed tomorrow.

The organ transplant industry does not need a cure because the cure is already here. The cure is in our bodies. This cure will be rotten and ruined and useless to anybody except worms and maggots within a few days of our bodies’ death.

At the fund raiser, I saw a photograph of George with former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. I know little of Canadian politics so I do not know what role — positive or negative —Chrétien has played in helping this cause. It may be very wrong of me to say anything derogatory. All I know is that I felt a twinge of anger when I saw the photograph. George met the Prime Minister? They must have exchanged a few words. So why haven’t things been fixed? Why is there no “opt-out” or more accommodative system in Canada? The issues are simple. This is not rocket science. Political changes to facilitate organ transplantation could be enforced tomorrow, with a stroke of a pen by our lawmakers.

The twinge of anger was not only directed at the government. It was directed at to myself. If I look at my life, there is not a whole lot of anything that I have done for anybody other than myself:

• I have never volunteered for something unless it was going to benefit my resume or impress a girl.
• While I have given to charity, I have never given charitably to charity.
• I have never cried for any of the actual suffering that abounds in the world. I did cry though for the pig in the movie Babe. I also cried at the end of Rudy.

This cause is another example of something I could do to help those around me, but haven’t done. But the beauty of it is — unlike the starving infant in Africa who never got that dollar a day from me — in this case it’s not too late. Nobody has died yet because of my inaction in respect of organ transplants. My body is still alive. It can still be harvested. My organs haven’t gone to waste — yet.***

I’ve done it this morning, and there is one simple thing that you can do right now:

Print and sign these two donor cards. That is the simplest thing you can do. Put the left one in your wallet —I strongly suggest you laminate it. Give the second card to your wife, husband or parents. Tell them you want to be a donor.

Now here’s the annoying part. Unfortunately, it may not be enough to simply sign those cards, because there is no national standard for organ donation in Canada and practices vary across the board. Click on this link for specific requirements by province. For instance, in British Columbia, you need to record your decision with the organ donor registry while in Quebec you need to obtain a special donation sticker and apply it to your Medicare card.

In Ontario, these two donor cards should be sufficient but to be 100 percent certain you can also register with the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and have your wishes recorded on your OHIP health card. What is amazing to me is having just moved back to Canada, I recently obtained an OHIP health card. Only today did I find out that this was even an option and that there is a special form that I could fill in. But why was I not told about this choice at the time that I applied for the card? How many Ontario residents know about this option? How many lives could be saved by that simple action?

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***Unless I count my dick. It’s seen no action in months. What a waste! Otherwise, my liver, kidneys, and other transplantable organs continue to be useful. My corpse could ultimately save up to seven lives after I am dead.

On July 25th, I set up my very own Facebook group. Now for those of you who have yet to emerge from the darkness, let me explain what a Facebook group is. It’s essentially a distinct web page — a gathering place — within the Facebook umbrella. Each group has its own theme and and its own unique content: descriptions, news updates, discussion boards, photos, videos, links, etc. As a group’s creator, you might, for instance, set up a group called, “Goldendoodles are cute but what a dumb name for a dog.” Facebook members could then join this group to show their support for the “Eugene”s of the dog world. My Facebook group is called “You Don’t Look Young for your Age.” It essentially promotes my website via links, pictures and videos. It actually contains little information other than what you might find on my website.

The group is part of my Facebook strategy to build an audience for my book. It sounds pretty useless doesn’t it? Well, it took me only about 15 minutes to set it up and I spend no more than 20 minutes a week managing it. But setting up a Facebook group has been a smart use of my time because in the last month, two hundred and fifty of my website’s 1,800 visitors arrived via a Facebook link. One hundred and twenty-three arrived directly via my group page.

The real attraction to me of Facebook groups though is not the website visitors that I have gotten. Rather it’s the blue sky potential. With a bit of luck, Facebook could prove a tipping point in building awareness of my writing. You see, whenever someone joins my group, all of their Facebook “friends” can see that they’ve joined it in their “newsfeed.” I’ve seen new members join my group simply on the back of copycatting what their friends did. But the really cool feature is that any one of my group members can “invite” people to join my group at the click of a button. It takes just a little bit of leverage to elicit this endorsement.

For instance, I had a Facebook friend email me a few weeks ago. I barely knew the guy, but— knowing that I used to be a fund manager — he wanted to meet me for a drink. (He‘s doing his MBA and wanted to pick my brain about the finance industry). I hungrily observed his four hundred strong Facebook friend count. I playfully agreed to the drink but only on the condition that he invite his friends to join my group. He did. I saw my group membership swell by fifty within two days.

Most people join Facebook groups very quickly. It’s no skin off their backs to click that button. It doesn’t mean anything to them. Many of them never go to the group page more than once, I imagine. They may not read a word of what I write. So why do I care? I care because I am hoping to convert many of these “joiners” into readers.

For the last ten years, my primary source of correspondence over the internet has been hotmail. In any given day, I still receive twenty-to- fifty emails promoting penis enlargement pumps, porn and Viagra. Thanks to hotmail’s anti-spam defenses, these emails go straight to my junk mail. I don’t click on them and I’m sure few of you do too. I can’t imagine spammers getting a lot of positive response from this blanket approach. But what about in the early days? What about the first time I received spam? The very first time I used hotmail? Did I click on these emails? Of course I did. And the same goes for you. Somebody had to fund all those Nigerian bank-scamming assholes that still spam us ten years later.

Now after ten years on hotmail, I suddenly seem to be receiving the bulk of my personal email through Facebook. The same goes for most people I’ve talked to. But there is no spam on Facebook — yet. I’m hoping to change that. I want to be the first.

You see, when a person joins my group, then I — as group creator — have the power to directly send emails to their Facebook email account. The emails come from my group address and are not considered spam by the powers of Facebook. This is an important consideration. Sure, I could randomly send emails to these same people, but my account would quickly be shut down for breaching Facebook’s spamming policy. Sending an email to an individual who has voluntarily joined my group is not considered spam.

So every time I update my blog, I can theoretically send an email to each member of my group. Since there is currently no spam in Facebook, I reckon there is a high likelihood that a group member who receives that email will at the minimum — start to read it. Now, they may have joined my group with no idea of who I am or what I do. But if they get an unexpected email, it might trigger them into becoming a regular blog reader and fan. There’s no downside. In the worst-case scenario, if a recipient doesn’t like my blog or my email message, they’ll simply leave my group. But if they do like it, then it becomes that much easier to convince them to get their friends to join my group. The sky’s the limit. Or is it?

I say “theoretically” because there is a flaw in my strategy. The flaw is Facebook itself. At first, my “spam” strategy worked quite nicely, but once my group membership — now at 330 — surpassed one hundred, the group-messaging feature stopped working. Apparently, Facebook’s teething problems are preventing group messaging from reliably functioning in those groups with large memberships. I contacted Facebook support who said they are “working on fixing” this problem but it’s been a month now, and the problem has not yet been resolved. I sent them a second email asking what the problem was and they essentially told me to calm down. Blue skies? Perhaps above the clouds…

So, I now plan to start a new competing website that truly services social networker’s needs. Until the website is launched, I’ll be signing up new members manually. Females, you can email me at brucebook@brucefreedman.com and provide me with your personal details (i.e. name, age, favorite books, bra size and anything else you think is pertinent). Males can send their contact details to junk@brucefreedman.com

Brucebook membership is far more exclusive than Facebook — we don’t just accept anybody. Interviews will be granted only to a select few and assuming you meet the bare requirements, membership will be granted.

Ok, I ‘m freaking out a little bit right now. Trust me when I tell you that what I am about to write is 100 percent true.

So, I just got home thirty minutes ago from my morning coffee. And I stepped into the guest bathroom. Now I rarely ever use this bathroom. The toilet blocked on me once before so I stay away from it. I cannot remember the last time I used it. I have a main bathroom off my bedroom. That’s the one I use. I’ve had no guests over the last few days — not a soul.

So what do I see, but a wet bathroom floor and this:

Look carefully. It’s hard to tell from the picture that the floor is wet, but take me at my word, it is. But even more strangely — and you can see this in the picture — not only is the floor wet, but the plunger head and the first few inches of the wooden staff are wet too! And look at the toilet seat. That’s a drop of water just hanging off the toilet seat, ready to fall: a clear sign of a toilet that’s recently overflowed!

Somebody’s been using my toilet. There’s no fuckin’ question. And that same somebody blocked my toilet. And then that same somebody unblocked the toilet!

Now, the next part is going to sound even stranger. But I swear to God it is also true. It happened not forty-five minutes ago. When I came back from my coffee there was a fire alarm going off in my building. So, I’m standing outside by the fire truck and one of the residents comes up to me and says, “If you want, I’ll go to the bank with you later.”

I did not recognize her, and said “huh?”

She looks at me more closely and says, “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were Steve. You look just like him. Do you know him? He lives in the building.”

I didn’t know him and I didn’t think anything of it. But she was awfully cute with long red hair. So I went up to her a few minutes later and said, “So, who’s this Steve? Is he your landlord? ”

“No. He’s the plumber. You really look just like him.”

“Oh, that’s great,” I said. “I look like the plumber. ” I told her the story of the time the casting agent wanted me to play the part of a stockbroker in a commercial.”

She laughed and said, “Wow. You really do look just like Steve. He even has a shirt just like yours!”

“What? This is one of my favorite shirts! I bought it at Urban Outfitters five years ago in DC. He uses this same shirt for his plumbing repairs?”

Fast forward to my apartment where I am getting awfully antsy about the bathroom. I decide to search the apartment for intruders. I hurried to my kitchen and grabbed the Chef’s knife. It’s exquisitely sharp courtesy of the honer which I finally learned how to use.

I walked though my apartment, the knife held close to my body. I’ve seen enough movies to know that if you hold the knife out, somebody can grab your arm. I saw no evidence of a break-in. And nothing was missing. My roof door was unlocked but I may very well have left it open myself.

It doesn’t make any sense to me. If it was a burglar or even a poltergeist that used my bathroom, why would it clean up the mess? And if it was going to clean up the mess, why not do a better job and mop down the floor too?

And then I had a mental image: Jack Nicholson in the movie, The Shining. In the movie, he plays a writer who slowly loses his mind — in the isolation of a haunted hotel. Am I spending too much time alone? Have I lost my mind? Here I am suffering poltergeists in my toilet bowl while my next door neighbor mistakes me for the building’s plumber. What are the odds of that? Am I a plumber in some alternate, schizophrenic life of which I have no memory? Am I Steve? And if I am Steve the plumber then why isn’t my toilet working? It doesn’t make any sense.

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Afterword: I bump into my superintendent and ask him if there’s been any technicians in my apartment for any reason. The answer is “no. ” I tell him about the toilet and he comes up to take a look. Turns out that the “thingamajig” is warped which in tandem with the high humidity has caused condensation to form on the outside of the tank. Now I know for certain that I’m not Steve. This leaves me rather happy. I always put 100 percent effort into everything I do, so if I’m going to be a plumber, I want to be a good one.

So I finished the video that I’ve been talking about for so long. I signed off on the final version last week and my director, Mark forwarded it to another guy, Rick, who’s highly skilled in video editing and optimization. Rick puts a link to the video on his website for me to look at.

Now I’ve seen the video many times and have been very happy with it. But this is actually the first time I’ve had it in my possession. So now that I’ve got the link, what do I do? I show it to a few friends. And what do they think? The truth is they were confused by it. Their response: it was visually great but they didn’t “get” the storyline. Since I’m the guy who’s supposed to be a writer and the guy who wrote the friggin’ story, this left me rather sad.

The video is essentially a playful rendition of the chapter, “You Don’t Look Young for your Age” — also the name of my book/website. Part of the problem with the video, I think, is that I no longer completely accept as true the message in that chapter. That’s because my own life has changed since I first wrote it. The phrase “You Don’t Look Young for your Age” has taken on a whole new meaning for me.

When I first wrote that chapter, I was simply making fun of all the mid-thirties/forties people who try to hang on to their youth: people who believe that “they look young” when in fact the truth is they look as haggard and wrinkly as their friends. I effectively say to them in the chapter: “shut the f**k up, you don’t look so young, no you don’t.”

But as I’ve followed this more creative path in my life, I now see things a little differently. I’m not saying that I suddenly think I look young . (I’m thirty nine). I’m not saying that you look young. (No, you definitely don’t look young). What I am saying is: don’t let age be a factor. Don’t let it limit you in your dreams. Live your life for you. Do what’s right for you. And f**k anybody who tells you otherwise.

I’ve tried to capture this shift in my philosophy in the video. It’s possibly a little too subtle. But there’s actually a bigger problem, which I’ll get to in a moment.

Here’s the description of how the video is supposed to look to the viewer:

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Scene 1 (INT. BRUCE’S APARTMENT)

Bruce (played by me) is in his apartment working. He gets a phone call. His (fictional) agent is calling to tell him that Gaia (a fictional talk-show host) has discovered his blog and loves him. It looks like Bruce’s new writing career is about to take off. Perhaps leaving his old career wasn’t a mistake. Bruce decides to go out that evening to celebrate.

Scene 2 (INT. NIGHTCLUB)

Bruce walks into the nightclub and dances his way to the bar. He is obviously out of place because he is much older than the mostly twenty-year old club goers. But he does not realize that he looks much older. He thinks he fits in. (More importantly, the viewers of the video think that he thinks that he fits in).

Sitting in a corner of the bar is a forty-year old businessman in a suit with slicked back hair. He is sitting with his forty-year old lawyer girlfriend. Let’s call the business guy, Brutus. Brutus is a finance guy. He thinks Bruce is an idiot. (Now the actor playing Brutus is also me, because he is my alter ego in the real world. He is the “me” from five years ago. Whoa! Isn’t the irony delicious?)

Bruce goes to the bar and gets drunk, (more…)

It’s 7 pm EDT as I write this and I’m about twenty-five thousand feet above Colorado, my head still pounding even though Burning Man ended some sixty hours ago. I’m flying back to Toronto after a one-day stopover in Los Angeles and yes — I am on an airplane. I apologize in advance for the length of this blog. A lot of stuff happened. There are many conflicting thoughts going through my head.

I decided to go to Burning Man for two reasons: One — some good friends were going. Two — it was a completely different experience, out of character for me. My 40th birthday is around the corner. I wanted to do something extraordinary.

My friends and I only participated in the second half of Burning Man, arriving Thursday morning at 10 am and departing Sunday morning at 5 am. Believe me — three days was more than enough. My body is still exhausted and my senses still in overdrive as I write this. To be frank, I was exhausted even before we got there, between flying to Los Angeles on Wednesday and then driving twelve hours in a rented van to the Burn. I slept perhaps three hours on the drive down, one hour on the first night, and two hours on the second.

My body broke down mid-day Saturday and I imposed myself on my new friends from Vancouver, who happened to have an air-conditioned RV. If geese have a god, then that god’s spirit — and feathers — stuffed the couch that graced their RV and on which I slept for a heavenly five hours that Saturday afternoon.

For the life of me, I cannot understand how anybody makes it through the whole week. Three days in a tent in the desert was certainly more than enough for me to taste the Burning Man experience. Perhaps my resistance to a longer stay is resentment because I did not personally experience that most meaningful of BM events. I am of course referring to the only BM that matters: the Bowel Movement. Ever since I ate at the Metropole hotel’s buffet in Vietnam seven years ago, my bowel movements have been as liberating as Operation Desert Storm. Nowadays, I can’t crap in a five star hotel when I’m on holiday, let alone the sweltering, Porta-Potty toilets that were our only option in this unforgiving desert.

Lack of BM aside, this was definitely one of the most intoxicating experiences I’ve ever had and I’m full of many conflicting emotions. Do I recommend it? Most assuredly yes. Would I do it again? Uhhh … let’s wait and see.

What is Burning Man? Well it turns out my previous post — which I wrote having never actually been there — is actually a pretty good starting point to understanding the Burn. Given that I like to think of my blog as a family blog, I’d rather not get into the specifics. Let’s just say that Hunter Thompson would have felt very much at home at Burning Man. Specifics aside, there are two things that make Burning Man very, very special in my mind:

• The overwhelming enthusiasm of its participants
• The harshness of the desert backdrop

The first thing I noticed at the Burn was an overwhelming atmosphere of (more…)