In the Year 2010

As we look back on the year that was one of us, a seer, a visionary, a traveler on the currents of Time looks into the future; these are the truths he brings back.

Sports

On the field of grid iron
The Young Stallion revolts
And takes the triumph
(The Super Bowl goes to the Colts)

On a field of diamond
Victory comes to the city
Where Brotherly Love abounds
And where now the Doc is found.

Where contest comes to the court,
There where war with ball is done,
The final victory shall come
Where the Phoenix rises, in the land of the sun.

Where contest comes on field of ice
A Capital steeped in vice
Shall bring the cleansing victory home
Sticks raised high from Texas to Gnome.

Politics

Some will change, some will stay the same,
But though some change all will stay the same;
Those who seek power should not be given it,
Those who profess the way of truth are  not livin' it.
In the frozen north, the head still rests uneasy
Despite the lack of crown; one and all are sleazy.
In the land to the south the Chosen one still Lacks
And all around lie upon lie still stacks.
In the world ar large they come and go
Their lies as ageless as the works of Michelangelo.

The World

The date will alter
While humanity stagnates;
Great is our frailty.

The sun burns hotter
Our souls reach ever higher
All our days will change.

A Truer Word Was Never Spoken

Some Rapper, some where
Will tell us to raise our hands
Like we do not care.

Done Deal, Done Right

Cast ye, if ye will, yer mind back to a time not long past, a time less than two weeks ago, when I posted on the Internet my dissatisfaction with Rogers Communication. This is a follow up story: is it the story of a Christmas Miracle? Well maybe… life itself is a miracle.

Is it the story of small town boy makes big in the big city? No. Is it the story of how, after a 6/10ths of a decade I was able to quit the job that even now sucks my soul dry because I had won the lottery? No.

Is it the story of an attempt to make right a situation which seemed wrong? Yes. Yes it is.

For those of you who are too lazy to go back and read the previous post here’s a short summation: my wife called Rogers to see if we could get upgraded to an Iphone: we were quoted a ridiculously high price that was 3x higher than what Joe Blow walking in off the street could have gotten. Why, we asked ourselves (and the Internet), could someone who hadn’t been with the company get a better deal than someone who’d been with them for 13 years?

About a week ago, my wife, who’d also posted a short blog venting her disappointment with Rogers, received an email from Mary at Rogers. Mary’s job, it seems, is to patrol the Internet looking for just such posts/blogs as ours. Within a couple of days of our blogging, Mary had emailed my wife and said someone from Rogers would be in touch.

I was sceptical myself – it was the holidays after all, and the best of intentions can often get lost along the way. But sure enough, yesterday Owen from Roger’s head office called and left a message. After a very short game of telephone tag, my wife talked with Owen this morning.

He asked about our experience and then gave us the i-phones that we had been wanting at the same low price as Mary Lunchpail and Joe Lunchbox could receive – and we did not need to finish our current plan. All we had to do was to commit to the same 3 year plan that we’d already been on and would had to have signed up for no matter where we went. We also got a pretty sweet monthly plan as well.

A large corporation is kind of like a hydra – it has several heads and often for everyone one head that says one thing another will tell you something else (each person has their own interpretation of company policy, despite the fact that its a policy). But with this many headed, hydra we were obviously referred to one of those heads that was able to think for itself and make the connection that a higher monthly plan payment equals a higher revenue; not to mention that a customer has left equals no revenue whatsoever.

In an ideal world we would have gotten what we wanted right off the start without quibbling; but in my mind, because they acknowledged our complaint and then sought to redress it, Rogers has redeemed itself.

Thank you for listening Rogers.

The Darker Side of Sodor

Dear Solitary Reader,

I’ve got this week off of work (woohoo!) and right now I’m having some quality time with the boy; by quality time I mean I’m on the computer and he’s on the floor playing trains and watching Thomas the Tank Engine.

Normally I’m a fan of Thomas, but I just made a bit of connection and now I’m a little weirded out by everyone’s favourite tank engine and the world in which he lives/rules.

In this particular episode an engine by the name of Fearless Freddie is trying to organize a party for his friend Colin, who just happens to be a crane, and in the process is screwing things up royally. Freddie is ordering humans around all over the place and they obey his every whim as if he were the very voice of reason. This is not an isolated incident; all over the island of Sodor trains are ordering around their human counterparts.

So what was the connection that weirded me out? Well if you take away some letters from the word Sodor and add some more and then shift them around a bit you get this word: Kitten. Oh wait, sorry wrong letters there… lets start over… from Sodor if you take out the S, add an M and a strategically placed R you get Mordor. And as we all know, that’s where the Shadow’s Lie.

If you’ve seen Thomas, Solitary Reader, and are over the age of five, you’ve probably also wondered why the humans on the island of Sodor obey the trains, who have the intellect of your average three year old; I believe I have discovered the reason: Thomas and his eight friends are the Ringwraiths from the Lord of the Rings.

The parallels are there for those who have the eye to see them (use two eyes, as often as you can spare them).

Sir Topham Hatt, the one “human” whom everyone seems to obey is actually Sauron, the Dark Lord. After his defeat by the newly forged Armies of the West and the destruction of the Ring of Power, Sauron was not in fact ended, he was merely diminished; no longer able to even inhabit that heavy armour, he took the form of a portly gentlemen and found an island to recuperate his strength.

He also realized that whereas everyone looks at the picture to the left and sees evil incarnate; the picture on the right conveys the image of only a bumbling fool and therefore is not to be feared; there were advantages to this new form.

But what of the Nine you ask? The Ringwraiths, what happened to them?

In the opening song for Thomas & Friends, eight trains are mentioned. Thomas, Edward, Henry, Gordon, James, Percy, Toby and Emily. That’s Eight Trains. In the canonical piece Thomas & The Great Discovery Thomas encounters a new train whose name is Stanley. In the closing lyrical piece Stanley is inserted into that opening song making for a song of 9 trains.

Nine Trains. Nine Ringwraiths. To quote Filmore from Cars: “I’m not the only one seeing this right?”

Thomas as the number one train on Sir Sauron Hatt’s railway is obviously the Witch King of Angmarr.

Percy, James, Gordon, Henry, Edward, Emily, Toby and Stanley. All Ringwraiths.

When you think of it, it makes even more sense. The Nazgul started out on horseback and then moved into the aeronautical form of travel, becoming the winged wraiths. These evil beings are very obviously early adopters, and probably saw the advantages of train transports; Thinking it the wave of the future. Really, its only the fact that trains need track that saved us.

And this explains why the humans on Sodor obey the trains; they’re afraid not to…

Oh, and one final comparison:

Sir Percival

=

Mouth of Sauron

One track to rule them; one track to find them
One track to bring them all in the darkness bind them
On the Island of Sodor, where the railway lies...

Sincerely,

Me

A Shark’s Tale

Dear Solitary Reader,

So I’m just on the ol’Interweb surfin’ for news and I see that the Heene family, born under an ill star as they were, have suffered another blow to their hopes of becoming a reality TV mainstay. Balloon Dad gets 90 days in jail, Balloon Mom gets 20 days in jail and the Balloon Children… well they are sentenced to the rest of their life with the Balloon Parents so they’re being punished enough.

While the father is obviously a colossal douchebag, and the mother appears to be a mail order bride, this whole sequence of events could not have transpired without one thing: the media.

There is something in all of us that cannot help but look at the bad things. Homer made us laugh at ourselves when he summed up our general reaction by saying “It’s funny because it didn’t happen to me.” It even has a name of sorts: bad car accident syndrome. When you see something bad happen you want to keep watching to see how it turns out; and if anyone’s dead, so you can be thankful its not you.

The media has glommed on to this fact and are attempting to spoon feed us badness in all its forms on their 24/7 news channels. Every time a tornado in the Gulf of Mexico gets downgraded to a tropical storm you can see the disappointment on the face of every reporter at a CNN desk. Every time the US government releases some stat saying that the economy isn’t doing so well that same reporter lights up like a Christmas tree.

H1N1 was a hot topic for a while, but people weren’t dying as frequently as they should have been so there was a couple of slow news casts there for a while until they were lucky enough that Tiger let the cat out of the bag (and oh so much else!) and the sharks had some new chum to feed on. News corporations can’t legally make up news (that’s not saying they don’t) but they can take a story and report on it so often and from so many angles that it seems a lot more important than it actually is.

In the case of the Heene family, one can’t help but sense an undercurrent of satisfaction in the media that jail time was part of the final result. They seem to point their fingers at Papa Douche Heene and say: ”Look at this man. Look at what he has done to his children in his search for fame!”

But within hours of that first call going out saying that a kid was trapped in a balloon and about ready to plummet to his death the media were there; the boy in the sky was the chum and the sharks were circling below. You can bet at least one reporter on the scene thought something along the lines of: “This will be such a great story if that kid dies!” He or she may have felt bad about having that thought, or maybe not.

While there will always be idiots in every avenue of life, the media provides a venue for them to be idiots on a world stage; and because they’re idiots they don’t know what’s happening to them.

TV/movies equals easy fame; fame sometimes equals riches (at sometimes too high of a price, rest in peace virginal Lindsay Lohan); people with no marketable life skills often use it as a transportation module to make a quick cash grab. The media builds them up up up and then eventually these pariahs of our culture are brought low.

It’s one of the reasons why most of my favourite TV heroes are either muppets or cartoons: He-Man doesn’t sleep around, Astroboy doesn’t do drugs and no one cares about the world of finance in the village of the Smurfs (with the possible exception of Gargamel because I’m pretty sure he’s trying to make all that gold because he lost his retirement savings by investing with AIC).

The Courtship of the Paper Clips

Every morning I open up my desk drawer to put some things in there for the day; a couple of weeks ago I noticed these two solitary paperclips. At first it was nothing, just a “Hey Self, look paper clips, remember those are there if I need them.” The next day, when I opened the drawer again, they were still there, but I noticed this time they were a fraction closer together: “Odd,” I thought but paid no attention to it.

The day after that I opened the drawer to find they were closer even than the day before, and the day after that closer; one day I opened the drawer and they were joined together. Before my eyes, love had blossomed.

What follows is the imagined Courtship of the Paperclips.

“HEY YOU!... WANNA TANGLE?”

Just kidding. Here it is.

DAY TWO

Paperclip One

How will I attract her? In what manner
Might I draw her; see how her silver gleams?
I, who once held paper from the scanner,
Am useless now; I hold only my dreams.
Behold her! She could hold paper by the reams!
I am as a leper who with apathy begs
The gods to allow him one working scheme,
But an inch is as good as a mile to a thing with no legs!

There! She has noticed me, I feel it!
See, she yearns and turns towards me, I see it!
I know not how, I know not why but I rejoice.
Oh Lord of the Office if you have a plan reveal it!
If there is some other form I should take, let me be it!
She is the one for me; I will not regret that choice.

Paperclip Two

There is strength in him though he be old and bent;
Strong years there is left in his frame, he is not spent
If only he could see it;
I would mould him, give him purpose anew
I am only one now, but soon we will be two
His heart is strong, I will free it!

DAY TWO

Paperclip One

Oh what I fool was I to think
Yesterday I soared, today I sink;
She does not love me, she cannot love me.
She is there and I am here
No way to cross this mile I fear
I would pray to the gods, were any above me.

Paperclip Two

His gleam this day is diminished
He thinks his dream of uniting finished;
But I know things, I am not vexed
For once I bound a science text.
And once I bound a true written play
That had this, and this alone to say:
The theme, so clear: Love conquers all
And science taught of momentum’s call

For where a man sees only thorns
A woman sees naught but roses.
Here it comes, my chance is born
The drawer opens and then it closes;
The momentum carries me towards my Forlorn
I take advantage, but its love that tow’s us

DAY THREE

Paperclip One

She is closer this day, I see her clearly
I long for when I may hold her dearly
I see her strategy and today will do the same
Although she is just like others, a clip without name
She is to me my Aphrodite
Beauteous, lever, mighty.
Tomorrow brings us nearer.

Paperclip Two

Distance between us melts away;
Who’d think  to find love in this paper tray?
I who have been in libraries, bags and schools
(All but the bag full of over-thinking fools)
Have read of love you see
But never thought of some for me.
Tomorrow brings us nearer

Day 4 – The Joining

Paperclip One: At last we meet, we can connect
Paperclip Two: The journey long, let us reflect
Paperclip One: I saw you there so strong and free
Paperclip Two: I longed for you and you for me
Paperclip One: You found a way, you made this real
Paperclip Two: You brought life to what I feel
Paperclip One: I feel connected to you now
Paperclip Two: As we joined together somehow
Paperclip One: Now we’re together, our story’s done
Paperclip Two: We are a chain, a chain of one.

And so these two paperclips, who were once two but are now one, came together. I had to hide them in the back of the paper tray so that the manager’s wouldn’t see them.

My company frowns upon interoffice romance.

So They Say…

Dear Solitary Reader,

The world of proverbs is an interesting place. It’s difficult to tell what will end up as a proverb and what will be tossed by the way side as nothing more than verbal diarrhoea (such as much of what I say).

For those of us who are of literal mind some of the proverbs in frequent use today don’t make any sense; the following is a small treatise on some of those.

You Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat it Too.  This was a favourite saying of my mothers and because I was an antagonistic little bastard, I had fun riling her up about it. “What’s the point of having cake,” past Me would say “if you can’t have it. It will just go bad. And then you have bad cake. Then you’d have to throw it out. And you would have no cake and have not gotten to eat any too.”

“That’s not the point!” Mom would say, “You can’t HAVE your cake and EAT it TOO!’ Logic and my mother were often infrequent acquaintances and when she needed to make her point she went for volume rather than diction. My Mom was awesome, and if you’re reading this from up above Mom, I always knew what the saying meant – I was just being an antagonistic little bastard.

That being said, in this scenario cake is the wrong focal point. What child would understand the concept of having a piece of cake and not touching it? Willpower does not exist to a 7 year old (unless they turn it into an action figure and it becomes a He-man sidekick).

Suggested Amendment: Once you use something it’s gone.

Beauty is in the Eye of the Bee Holder I never got this one. Who would be dumb enough to hold a bee? And if you’re holding a bee you’re not going to be paying attention to any chick that walks by (unless she has an Epi-pen and you’re allergic to the bee you’re holding – in which case why would you be holding a bee anyway? Are you filming a YouTube video? That’s stupid – you could die – put down that bee!?)

Suggested Amendment – No suggestions this one’s just too stupid.

Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater Okay, this seems like common sense and it’s scary that it got repeated enough to become a proverb.

Suggested Amendment: Wait MY BABY!

When you least expect it… expect it. This is more of a threat than a proverb but still it doesn’t make much in the way of sense. If someone said that to me I’d be like: “What you talkin’ bout Willis?”

Because if someone told me to expect it when I least expect it then I’d be walking down the street on a sunny day in Movember and I’d stop, and the guy behind me would bang in to me because I stopped suddenly, but I wouldn’t notice that because I’d be thinking: “Hey, that dude told me to expect it when I’m least expecting it. So now I’m expecting it.” And at that point the assailant would be like: “Ah, damn, he’s expecting it now! Oh well, maybe tomorrow.” Really, if you expect it when you least expect it then you’re no longer least expecting it, so it cancels itself out.

In this pessimistic age perhaps we should be saying: “It will come when you expect it.” Because as Yoda points out: Expectation leads to Hope, Hope leads to Disappointment, Disappointment leads to Anger, Anger leads to Fear and Fear Leads to the Dark Side (he did too, its in the unabridged version of Star Wars).

Suggested Amendment: When you’re not paying attention I’m going to stab you with this fork.

There are plenty of sayings, and plenty of them don’t make sense. Some of them do mind you. Oddly however, one proverb is “Familiarity breeds contempt” and because these proverbs are looked at as clichés, which are overly familiar, no one pays attention to them. So whatever good they might do is lost because no one’s paying attention.

So what I suggest you do is find another way to say the same things these and other proverbs are saying and remember to move when the metal’s glowing (see? That’s Strike While the Iron’s Hot right there).

Sincerely,

Me

The (Tooth) Decaying World of Cereal Box Icons

Way over at the Sanctuary of FGM my bro did something similar to great hilarity.

I was inspired for my take on it while eating Raisin Bran this morning; reminiscing about the time when Raisin Bran actually had raisin’s in it.

Back when I was a lad Saturday morning cartoons were the height of the week; heck now that I’m an adult they compete hand in hand with football on Sunday for the reasons behind my continued existence.

Most  of us growing up in the magical eighties didn’t just have TV heroes in the pantheon of gods that TV fed us – wedged in there right next to He-man, GI Joe and Papa Smurf (shut up) were such figures as Lucky, the Lucky Charms Elf, that rabbit from Trix and Toucan Sam.

Now of course there are still some cereal commercials but it seems like they’re really just phoning it in these days; I swear I saw one commercial were Toucan flew of stage and just before the commercial ended you could hear: “Oh yeah, follow your f**&ng nose.”

So what’s changed? Where are these icons today?

Sugar-Bear: Well contrary to popular, and medical, opinion apparently you can get enough of that sugar crisp because everyone’s favourite pyramid raiding sugar seeking bear has been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. “I’m not that bear any more,” he said in a “tell all” interview with Barbara Walters. “I never even liked the cereal but they made me eat it  take after take after take. That’s why I’ve started a class action law suit against cereal companies… I’m hoping some of the others will join me.”

Sugar Smack Frog: This is one of the sadder tales to come off a cereal box because the Sugar Smack Frog became less about the Sugar and more about the smack. This once proud icon, found gracing TV’s Saturday mornings, was arrested in 2004 on a case of domestic violence and is serving 6 years in a state penitentiary.

Snap, Crackle, Pop: Two words: Suicide Pact.

The Trix Rabbit: Of all the cereal box icons I related most with this one. Year upon year this poor rabbit craved just one taste of Trix and never did get any to my knowledge. This was, of course, a metaphor for my own life at the time as a social outcast. The “trix” represented friendship and I was the rabbit. I, the rabbit, I was different from the others, the mob, the group, the “kids”.  No matter how hard I tried I never could get attain that bowl of friendship. At least there was no shortage of milk though…

Toucan Sam: This bird actually shows up on commercials these days so it’s pretty easy to see what happened to him – he had kids. From the looks of it triplets no less. For a brief time Toucan was the star of a reality TV show modelled on the John & Kate Plus Eight model; this was called Toucan in Tree Plus Three. Toucan, of all the cereal box icons, is perhaps the only one still worth looking up to; because after the tragic death of his wife (who got drunk on vodka one night, forgot how to fly and fell out of her tree) he carried on and is raising his children and still trying to hold down a career in show biz.

The Lucky Charms Elf: I think it’s pretty safe to say that Lucky wasn’t very (lucky that is), or if he was then it was all bad. The sort of life where children chase you around day in and day out trying to get at your Lucky Charms is no life at all; Lucky is now paying for it in a sanatorium in England. His nightly cries of: “Take’em, take me lucky charms, just leave me a loon ye daft basterds!” often wakes up his fellow patients; by day he rocks back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and mutters:

“They’re coming. They’re coming.
I hear their hearts drumming;
Crawling and slipping through malevolent mud
Over field over farms
For my lucky charms
My lucky charms will be covered in blood.”

Let’s pray this one never sees the movie Leprechaun and realizes he has other options.

Honey Nut Cheerios Bee/Count Chocula – Back in the early 90s when the world of cereal box icons was starting to shrink an advertising executive had a great idea. “If the Flintstones and the Jetsons can do a crossover show, why can’t we do the same with our cereal box heroes! This will be big – we can form the Justice League of Breakfast.” He pitched the ideas to the cereal makers and they ate it up like… well cereal.

The first cross over involved everyone’s favourite bee… No it wasn’t Do-Bee.. okay everyone’s 2nd favourite bee from the Honey Nut Cheerios (HNCB) breakfast line teaming up with Count Chocula to fight the evil Waffler (who would try and convince kids to eat waffles which had only 36% of the iron required for a nutritional breakfast as opposed to cereal’s 42%).

The accident was horrible and is spoken of in the same sentences where people speak of the mysterious deaths of Bruce Lee and Willie Nelson. While filming an action sequence HNCB tripped over a wire and went careening into Count Chocula. It turns out that it’s not just a wooden stake through the heart that can kill a vampire (at least not one hired by a cereal company) but the sting of a bee does a pretty good job too; well in that one fell swoop the Count went down for the … count… and the bee endorsed his last box of Cheerios. The word on the street is that both icons were taken down by the Mafia because of huge gambling debts; but we’ll never know.

Stephen King, in his novels that comprise The Dark Tower speaks of a world that has “moved on;” becoming so drastically different from the world it once was that it is almost unrecognizable.

The world of the cereal box icon has “moved on.”

The Creepy Sound of Children’s Voices

This morning, it being close to Christmas and all, I made a token appearance in church. With both my wife and I getting somewhere in the neighbourhood of six hours sleep combined, we really only made it about halfway through the service.

The only reason we made the attempt in the first place is because my son has been going to Sunday school and they’ve been practicing a little routine for Christmas which was to perform today. So we went and I went to the rehearsal with the boy.

Well I knew chances of him doing his premiere performance were pretty slim when he wouldn’t even stand with the group in the rehearsal and sure enough when it was time for the group to go up he did not attend.

Picture this: the lights were dimmed (or maybe my eyelids were closing) and the line of children made their way to the front. They formed their lines, big kids in the back and little kids in the front; there was a pregnant silence – just like that lull before the opera begins.

Tension was building, the crowd was shuffling.

Then came the first tentative notes on the piano and the children began to sing…

… and it was creepy.

I’m sorry even if my boy was up there it wouldn’t have changed my opinion because there’s something about the sound of kids voices raised in unison that makes the hair on the back of my neck rise up.

Perhaps I’ve seen Children of the Corn too many times but there’s something about the idea of kids working together in unison that fills me with fear. Right now the only reason I can get my son to do anything is because I’m bigger than he is; once he realizes that there is strength in numbers.

“Away in a Manger” became “Run away this song’s mangled” as three kids were singing together, 5 kids were out of tune, one kid was singing Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, and one kid was waving to Grandma: the best word – cacophony.

Now don’t get me wrong, if I was able to turn the volume down it would have been the very picture of cuteness (kind of like Beyonce, great to watch with the volume off) but those voices.

Loyalty – Rogers Communications Has None

My wife has been a customer of Rogers Communication for 13 years. If you’re reading this from the US, Rogers is our version of AT&T/Verizon – insert name of giant, faceless corporation here.

Today we called up Rogers and asked them if they could work with us and help us get an i-phone. “Sure,” was there response, “if you pay us $300 dollars each, we can give you an I-phone. Now doesn’t that sound like a deal?”

Well yes, it does – a bad one; especially when you consider that a person walking in off the street can get the same I-phone for $99. Apparently we don’t have the tenured revenue (doesn’t that sound fancy?) to qualify for that deal. Essentially, because we are already their customers, we don’t qualify to save.

So why then, Rogers, should we continue to be customers after our current contract?

Loyalty should work both ways and with big corporations it often doesn’t – especially when they have you by the balls in the middle of a three year contract. Think about it like a baseball player who signs a big deal and rests on his laurels for a couple of seasons and only ups the production in the final year of a contract so that when its time to renegotiate he looks good.

Now the major competitor, Telus Communications, has the same I-phone for the same deal.

Tell me Rogers Communication – why are you better than the competition? In this glorious age where dropped calls are no longer an issue, what separates you from the competition? It certainly isn’t your customer loyalty program.

You see Rogers, though I have an inkling that Telus would say the same thing if we were in the same position with them the point is, I don’t know that. There’s still the hope that if in the final year of the same phase with Telus they might say: “Ah sure, you’re been a loyal customer let’s see what we can do?”

I now know Rogers Communications puts no store in loyalty.

You have us for a year, but then we’ll take our loyalty elsewhere, where it might be appreciated.

PS oh, and we’ll make sure to let our friends and families know how much you value repeat customers (not at all).

I Was Just Thinking That

Have you ever sat next to someone who was doing a crossword and they ask you to fill in the answer? And when you give them the answer, they say “That’s what I was thinking?” Not once, but every time?

My wife and I will occasionally play the game as well; I will espouse an idea and she will say: “That’s what I was thinking” to which I will say “Oh no you bloody well were not!” And then she’ll say in a canned voice: “Fine you’re right… what a GREAT idea!”

Now in my wife’s case, chances are if it’s a good idea then she’s already thought of it but hasn’t thought up how to broach it to me; if there’s a good idea to be had in the household its probably hers.

But at work I sit with this little mini-clique that likes to do crosswords on a daily basis; and as I’m a guy who knows a lot of pointless shit I get asked for answers on a fairly frequent basis.

Originally it pissed me off because they kept asking me all the nerdy questions (Who was the Black Prince who fought with Aragorn at the Battle of Gondor?) but then I realized I had no right to be pissed: I knew the answers.

Then there’s this one woman who every time she’s asked me for an answer says the very words above when I supply the answer: I was thinking that.

Now there’s a couple of possibilities why she has to say this every time:

• Perhaps she’s literally thinking “That” all the time. It’s possible. I once had Suzanne Vega’s Tom’s Diner stuck in my head for six months (not the word of a lie, if I wasn’t thinking something else, I was playing the music for Tom’s Diner in my head). So maybe she’s just sitting in her lunch chair thinking: “That That That That That That That That That That” ato the tune of Tom’s Diner…
• Perhaps she can’t admit that someone might be smarter than her; most of us tend to huddle down when we hear smart folk talk (me I just turn on the Tom’s Diner theme song in my head).
• She may have been actually thinking what I was thinking in which case she should get the bloody hell out of my head because it’s crowded enough in here.

My point is, if you already know the answer to the question but need that much constant affirmation of your knowledge – you’ve got issues… but I know.. you were thinking that already.

Am I Starting to Get Old?

I’m not that old – 34 is up there for sure, but its not ancient.

But the other day I was at the grocery store in the checkout line and I see this kid, who’s got to be all of 9 years old, working the bagging line and I thought to myself: “Huh, well its nice to see kids today with a sense of responsibility.”

And there you have it, the crux, the point, the nub… because its a commonly known fact that the very moment you think the words “kids today” you are old, maybe not in body, but in spirit. The only phrase with more cynicism and age inherent in it is: “When I was young.”

I remember as a kid laughing at my father (on the inside, you didn’t laugh at my father on the outside or he’d slap you upside the head just like you deserved) because he wouldn’t let us hook up the Nintendo to the TV because it would ruin the picture tube (In retrospect, now that I have a kid of my own, I realize what my father was saying: “We have one TV in this house, and it is MINE!).

But until recently I hadn’t bothered to learn to text on my phone; and my phone isn’t even one of them there complex ones. If parents ever want to torture their 13 year olds they can have them watch videos of me trying to text. I text like I have 5 thumbs and only two of them are mine.

Right now, on the teevee, Sean Connery is playing the roll of an immortal Russian Spaniard captaining a submarine; I imdb’d him and he’s not up to much these days – do you know why? Because he’s old (soon he’s going to go from dead sexy to just dead thereby putting the final spike in my hopes for a remake of Zardoz). When Sean Connery kicks it, that will start a tidal wave of deaths of all the actors I held dear from my childhood: David Hasselhoff (Knight Rider), Mr. T (A Team), Richard Dean Anderson (MacGyver) and Astroboy (Astroboy) – when these people take their dirt naps I’ll know that I’m only a quarter century behind.

Maybe age is all in your head (my back begs to differ); maybe if I think I’m young I will be young.

Intellectually I never really grew up anyway.

The Cult of the Breakfast Chicken

Every now and then something that seems small and slightly entertaining takes on a life of its own… and such is the myth of the Breakfast Chicken.

I once blogged about the best job I’ve ever had; this is about the 2nd best job I’ve ever had – interestingly enough it was working in a grocery store.

As a bulk stocker working 4 hours a morning it was my job to make sure the bins of bulk food items were filled to the brim; each day I waited for customers to come along and complain that a) prices were too high, b) stock was inadequate: “why don’t you carry <Insert name of obscure bulk food item such as powdered Dodo tusk> c) general complaint regarding weather.

The work wasn’t glorious but at the time I was pulling a number of part time jobs and this was my corner of the world and I could bring some order to it. What made the difference, as is often teh case, was the people.

Occasionally I got a simultaneous shift with my best peep Chris – that was of course always entertaining. The manager of the produce department, Rudy, was a great guy with a wickedly sarcastic sense of humour; then there was Roy – the word dotard comes to mind. He’d spend 5 hours packing up to trays of potatoes and marking them as reduced and then talk about how much he’d saved the company (not factoring in to his calculations the hourly wages he’d just burned).

The other main source of entertainment was Wayne; he had my kind of sense of humour and we were for the most part quite lucky that most of our hours were done before customers were allowed in the store. It was nothing for him to say “Come Smeagol, get the sacks of taters!” and I doing my best Gollum impression (which is pretty damn good) would say “Taters, What’s taters you stupid fat hobbit!”

Good times that.

Then there was the time he kept complaining that he had a really bad headache and I kept telling him it was a brain tumour. His response was: “What would you do if I died right now of a brain tumour?” I said, honestly: “Well most of me would be horrified, but at least 10% of me would be amazed at my awesome powers of medical diagnosis!”

But the thing that made other people look at us and shake their heads on a regular basis was the Breakfast Chicken. To some the Breakfast chicken might look like your average pre-packaged rotisserie chicken; but to us it became something more: it was the Breakfast Chicken. At first it was called such because it was chicken that we had for Breakfast. but it soon took on a life of its own; no longer did the assistant manager say: “Hey Smeagol! Get the Taters!”

No, instead it was: “Hey Bill, go grab us a Breakfast Chicken, I’ll grab the Montreal Steak Spice and the buns!

This was in a magical time before the Bird Flu came to BC and rotisserie chickens were more frequent than hippy tree hugging PETA lovers so I could afford a Breakfast Chicken on my meagre wages. It came to be a daily habit; when we didn’t polish off the Breakfast chicken on our break we would put the carcass in the fridge and finish it off the next day.

Chris, who’s father ran the store, saw us on many occasions and even partook – there was often a guest eater but Wayne and I were the hosts of the Breakfast Chicken Morning Show – and Chris told his father the tale and his father began to call it the Breakfast Chicken. Soon my wife began to refer to it as the Breakfast Chicken, and others began to emulate her (for she is a person worth emulating).

Even to this day when I have only the occasional breakfast chicken (and at night even) the name stands; for the Breakfast Chicken became something more than just a delicious chicken sandwich with Montreal Steak Spice: it was a fight against boundaries.

“Look” we said through our actions,  “This is a meal you would have in the evening, yet we, we happy few, have it at Breakfast. We do not believe in your strictures, your rules; though we work in this grocery store and follow the rules you have laid out for us we will not succumb to the mandates of society in every aspect of our lives! This, which you would call a DINNER chicken has become the Chicken of The Morning, The Breakfast Chicken!”

I ask you, Solitary Reader, when you see that chicken spinning in your Extra Foods, your Save On, Your Super Store – when you see it, salute it: for this is the Chicken of No Boundaries.

This is the Breakfast Chicken.

Size Matters… So Does Shape

Get your mind out of the gutter…

Our daughter, almost 7 months old already, is enjoying the new found freedom of rolling. She’ll learn to crawl soon enough, but for now she’s pulling the “As… you… wish…” all over the living room – hence we’re trying to baby proof.

Now for any of you first time parents here’s a bit of a hint – the only way to 100% baby proof is to not have a baby; but this is all about harm reduction.

So it was I found myself on the floor trying to sort through my son’s children’s books to put them out of reach of our daughter. Previously, said books were all on low shelves within’ reach of our rolling, roaming heroine, and as my son has a fair number of books, one mispull would see our Cordie overcome by a literary avalanche of biblical proportions (did they have avalanches in the Bible? I don’t remember any… but if they did, they’d be like, huge).

And this is what I realized, sitting on the floor surrounded by children’s books, in this cyclone of shapes, this cacophony of colors – NONE OF THESE BOOKS ARE THE SAME F**KING SHAPE! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO NEATLY STACK THEM!?!? HULK SMASH!!!

So after I put the shelf back up (using crazy glue and duct tape so hopefully the wife won’t look at the underside of the shelf) I began to try and bring order to this book shelf.

In a way these books are like the human race: they come in every single size and shape imaginable, every single colour and they all have something really cool inside of them. But also like people, these books are hard to put in order.

That’s good for people – but not for books… at least when you’re trying to stack them.

There is one good difference between books and people though – when you take a hacksaw to books so they’re all the same shape no one yells too loudly (except librarians); but everyone seems to get up in arms (ha!) when you take a hacksaw a person.

Whatever Happened to Val Kilmer?

So I’m sitting on the couch on a lazy Saturday afternoon watching the tee vee and The Saint is on; its not what you’d call the best movie in the world, but it’s got the distinction of being better than anything Nicholas Cage will ever be in.

So its playing away and I start wondering to myself – whatever happened to Val Kilmer?

It seemed at one time that Val’s career was sky rocketing – he played a Batman for God’s sake – a BATMAN! Of course that was before Batman Begins came along and we realized that the Batman franchise was actually worth taking seriously as a movie franchise – but even back then it meant something.

And um… he did Vanilla Sky I think… hmmm or maybe that was Tom Cruise… but really that’s my point. At one point you could say the name Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer in the same sentence… but not really anymore.

I imdb’d the guy to find out what he’s been up to, and he’s all over the place like stank, but its all bit roles.

Even Hugh Grant managed to live down the shame of being so stupid to get caught with a prostitute when he’s wife was Elizabeth Hurley, and he’s still making movies.

Val… any comment?

Creating Need

Once, when I was a lad, I dreamed of being a football player; but after puberty hit and I was assured of achieving only average stature I gave that dream up, and hey who are we kidding, that type of dream takes work and I’m lazy.

I was raised by wolves… wait no I wasn’t. I was raised by an ex-US Marine and I credit him with my smart mouth; between his smart ass replies and my mother’s sense of humour I ended up being pretty creative, funny and mentally quick off the draw (at least I think so, and really that’s what counts).

When I began to think seriously of a career I looked around and saw the fields that were open to me. “Where can I take my skills,” I thought. “I have only to the ability to insult people and get away with it because they think I’m joking. What kind of career would let me do that?”

The answer of course was: Advertising, with a side of marketing.

Sadly this realization didn’t strike me until I was in year 4 of my English Degree. So I finished that off and then promptly went off to do a Masters in Business Administration (specializing in Marketing). With that degree in hand I promptly took my over educated self off into the market.

It was there, in the cold hard marketplace, that I realized something; it’s not just about creativity – it’s also about morals – more importantly a lack thereof. And while I will never be a role model for how anyone should live their lives, I have trouble telling people they need things when it’s obvious to me that they don’t. And so I find myself trained to convince people they need things; but unable to do so unless I believe they need it.

And thus my disgust when listening to the radio this morning and hearing the people of Spence diamonds telling me that buying my wife a diamond will “make me the hero she needs me to be.” And I’m like what you say?

First off, if the only way I will be a hero in my wife’s eyes is to buy her a diamond, then I picked the wrong woman (and while my wife does like diamonds, she’s never, upon being presented with such, said: My hero!” So I picked the right woman). Secondly, stfu Spence Diamonds, my wife might hear you and say – wow! All I have to do is say: “My hero!” and he’ll buy me diamonds! Thirdly, saving my kids from my burning house will make me a hero, buying someone a diamond will only make me poorer the cost of said diamond.

Advertising, at its core, will either make people aware of a product that fits an actual need – such as your average toilet paper commercial (though I stand by my belief that the phrase “Does a bear shit in the woods” is NOT a good basis for a series of toilet paper commercials) or it will seek to create a need. This latter can be found in commercials for such things as new cars, tickets to sports events and virtually any toy you can think of.

Advertising to distinguish your product from others in the same field for things which people need is okay; for instance you can assert the Honda Civic is better than the Toyota Corolla through advertising, that seems fine to me; but the moment you start telling people they need to buy someone a car for Christmas that’s when you cross the line.

Recognition of a Necessary Evil

While rising from my sick bed this morning and resuming the trip to work I encountered many a red light; not having the energy to rage pointlessly at them as I usually do (it keeps me occupied until the light turns green) I pondered the institution of the traffic light. Who created it? When did he/she do it? Why do we obey it?

Traffic lights have been around longer than I thought. According to the source of all knowledge of worth on the Internet, Wikipedia, the first traffic light was installed outside the House of Parliament in London in 1868… it later exploded and killed the policeman who was operating it (green light, proceed to heaven). How awesome is that? Well not so much for the policeman and his family I guess.

That first murdering traffic light was conceived by one J.P. Knight. You wanna blame someone, blame him? The light was “improved” to its modern day incarnation and has remained the same since roughly 1920 with a few alterations, turning signals, traffic cameras, targeting lasers… you know, improvements.

So now we know who created it, and we can guess why – but why do we obey it?

Inherently we can all see the sense in the traffic light – x number of cars get a chance to go one way and then y number of cars gets to go the other way. Now that chivalry is dead there has to be regulation; people aren’t going to let other people go through from the kindness of their hearts – there has to be a reason.

And that reason? Fines. Money. Moolah.  You don’t break you pay for it.

Sometimes as I’m sitting at one of the extraordinarily large number of red lights I seem to get I wonder what would happen if we all just stopped obeying the traffic lights. It would be chaos, insurance companies would be raising rates all over the place and it would be the degradation of another societal symbol.

The traffic light brings order to the chaos that is traffic – I can see this from my desk (but not so much from my driver’s seat). If there was no traffic light there would be an accident and traffic would slow down that much more.

In a way, by slowing you down, the traffic light speeds you up; an interesting irony.

And because I can, here’s a pox upon the red light:

Cursed progeny of amber light
Why must I encounter thee this night;
Were thee green, or even yellow,
I might have passed that other fellow
But now I languish, wasting time
To run through thee, t’is a crime;
While I wait, rage boils my marrow
Ah God, there’s even a turning arrow!
Aha! Now you’re green, my waiting’s done!
Son of a bitch! Another red one!

Bury Me in the Night Garden

Right now my son is watching a children’s show called In the Night Garden while he eats his supper.

Yes, my son watches TV occasionally while he eats; I’m a horrible parent. I watched TV when I was a lad while eating supper and I turned out fine. I will kill anyone who says otherwise and they can join the legions of Undead I’m creating in my basement.

The world of children’s TV shows is an interesting place and I’m sure its a lucrative business if you find that magical formula which will hold a child’s attention span for more than three minutes.

You’ve got your high end shows, ones like The Wiggles or The Backyardigans. These are the shows that parents don’t have a problem watching with their children – its a class of children’s TV show all in its own. The better class of show generally seems to incorporate music and teaches the child a lesson in a subtle way.

You can’t be too obvious with the lernin’ portion of the show; else you fall into the trap of becoming a Dora the Explorer. Dora falls in the next category – slightly more irritating to parents. This is the type of show that a parent can put on to keep a kid entertained while he or she has to do stuff around the house.

At least I assume, I don’t tend to do a lot around the house so therefore my children’s TV show watching falls into the first category.

There’s the broad spectrum shows – like Thomas the Tank Engine and all the merry trains on the Island of Sodor. This is a show that has a catchall audience. My boy has been watching it for a year and a half and gets as much, if different things, out of it now as he ever did.

But there’s another darker class of shows. These are the shows that parents hope their kids never get interested, but the makers of the shows are smart enough to be able to hook the kid in quick. Back in the 90s the penultimate of this class of children’s shows was the Teletubbies. In the current incarnation the show is called In the Night Garden.

Adults, when forced to watch this show, are left wondering what the hell is going on. Perspective is all over the place. There are several different characters that act independently of each other and only occasionally come together. The first time I saw all of these characters interacting together none of them were the size I thought they were – the little guy was actually the biggest of the bunch and the biggest one was the smallest.

I guess if I was in the mood to learn from the show it would teach me not to judge based on sight. Screw that – sight is good for only one thing – judging things.

And then there’s the aural cacophony that is the “dialogue” of the show. There’s all kinds of nonsensical utterings, that as an adult you feel like you have to make sense of – for instance, when Makka Pakka says: “Makka Pakka” he/she/it could be meaning anything from “Yo Iggle Piggle, what up in da HOOD!” to “Yo, you blue MF, what’ch’u knock ovah my pil ‘o stones for? I bust a cap in yo’ass”. You just can’t tell with Makka Pakka.

I hope that when I pass on, and I will eventually, they bury me in the Night Garden – I’m going to leave a letter saying it was a gangland initiation ritual and that they should look to the 11th Ponty Pint.

As bad as the show is though – the boy likes it and that’s they key.

The Dilution of Symbols

Before I get started, let me just say this: my wife is cruel. Here I am, sick as a dog (that is sick) and she comes in, turns on really horrible Christmas music, and then leaves the room. I’m too sick to lean over and turn it off. If you needed proof that women are cruel, there you have it. If you did need proof… then you must be a woman – men already know it.

On to the main topic.

I work in an office complex. Each and every day I go to coffee and each and everyday I see the sign that says “Wet Floor.” It’s there whether or not the floor is wet.

Jokingly, I always threaten to sue. “This symbol,” I say, “which stands for wet floors has been diluted to the point that I no longer trust it.” I understand the message that it is trying to convey but because its there all the time, its warning has been diluted.

It’s classic boy who cried wolf (without any of the messy wolves or boys).

95% of the time the floor isn’t wet, yet the sign is still there. Realistically they’re just leaving it in place for those days that the floor is wet; that way Joe Lunchbox or Mary Lunchpail won’t slip and then say the sign wasn’t there to warn them.

Society, as it decays, is moving away from symbols that used to mean something.

Marriage, for instance. It used to be that when you got married to someone you were making a commitment to someone and something; now marriage is a business opportunity for divorce lawyers. Obviously sometimes shit happens and divorce is the only reasonable option, I’m not here to judge other people and their lives because I’m still trying to steer my own, but I’m talking on a societal level. Marriage is a symbol that once meant something to us as a society, now it means less.

Christmas: once, in a magical age, Christmas meant a day to reflect on the birth of Christ. Now it means Santa and presents – companies will tell you that Christmas is really about being with family, but that’s only them reminding you that you need to buy presents for the family you’ll be saying. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying you people out there shouldn’t be buying me presents, I like presents, I’m saying its another symbol that’s diluted.

What would you look upon now as a symbol of our times? These things, these symbols, that we long have held as important vanish and are replaced with … nothing.

The next time you see a wet floor sign, don’t check and see if the floor is actually wet; just believe it is. I’ll do the same.

Symbols are important.

Why I Hate Al Gore

I have a Toshiba Laptop… that’s not why I hate Al Gore.

I have a piece of crap Toshiba Laptop that ever since I’ve gotten it has been slow, unwieldy, and takes forever to connect to the Internet… that’s not why I hate Al Gore.

Currently the laptop, which is not the reason I hate Al Gore, but connected to the reason (or not connected to, as you’ll find out soon) refuses to connect to the Internet. The problem, Windows Vista tells me (it may be lying, Windows Vista could very well be the problem), is that my Atheros AR5700EG Wireless Network Adaptor needs to have its drivers updated.

There’s a delicate irony here… my wireless network adaptor needs to connect to the Internet to update the drivers; but it can’t connect to the Internet because its drivers aren’t working. Ahh, isn’t life delicious? And its still not why I hate Al Gore.

After a youth of watching MacGyver (never, ever watch it on reruns – you will be appalled at the amount of electric Guitar on that show) I learned one thing – learn to think outside the canister. MacGyver is not why I hate Al Gore (it is however one of the reasons I like Richard Dean Anderson – and for some quality work on the Stargate franchise of shows).

Using my ingenuity (and my desktop), I hopped upon my trusty steed, called Internet, and sought for the drivers which would fix this problem. It should take, oh lets say about 5 minutes, to resolve this issue. And now we come to it – the crux of the matter. The reason I hate Al Gore.

In an interview, in 1999 on CNN’s Wolf Blitzer program, Al Gore said the following: “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.”

So therefore, Al Gore, it is your fault. A simple 5 minute excursion onto the Internet turned into a half hour of pointless surfing, hunting, questing and ended in a depressing result typical of that found only in a Dickens novel. That’s your fault Al Gore.

The Internet, which probably started out as a way to pass information from one place to the next is now a tool for misinformation. In the pre-Internet world people with idiotic opinions could only affect people within hearing range… or out in TV land. Now any idiot who took typing tutor and has a friend with an account can put his opinions all over the Interweb and find followers (I know, I did!).

I never did find the drivers.  Stupid Internet.

So thanks a lot Al Gore. Thanks… a …. lot <—Sarcasm!

PS I did however meet my wife on the Internet, so it isn’t totally bad… good job on that part Al.

The Arrogance of Our Age

One of my wife’s pet peeves, an extremely valid one too, is me. The other is how TV shows on stations like the Discovery Channel and the History Channel portray ancient civilizations as being made up of morons who were lucky enough to just stumble on the process of building an aqueduct.

It’s hard to remember that 35 years ago computers weren’t as common place as they are now. That made the world bigger. If we wanted to know what people in Europe were doing (and why wouldn’t we, because Europe is where its @) we had to wait for someone who spent 20 years saving their money so that they could see cousin Olaski on his death bed to come back home and tell us what they’d seen (besides cousin Olaski on his death bed *shiver*).

But the invention of the computer seems to have given us, as a society, the misperception that if we were to be transported back in time any culture we would encounter would look upon us as gods. We could toss them a coke bottle, or boot up our lap top, and they would fall to their knees and worship us.

I don’t think this is the case.

I read a lot of fantasy novels and one of the main themes of this type of literature is the unlikely hero; a man or woman plucked from their own time and transported to another far more brutal time; so say you or I were transported back into the time/location of the ancient Mayans; I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t look at me as a god. A sacrifice for a god maybe.

We seem to have evolved a certain arrogance in this age. We feel that we’ve conquered the world around us, and I guess in a way we have – we’ve certainly beaten it into submission; therefore any and all generations that came before us were inferior.

But I bet they all thought that way too.

The thing about Ages – at least any age with humans in it – is that they have humans in them. Sometimes when you throw a lot of humans together strengths can overcome flaws; more often than not I think, and I am a humanistic pessimist, what happens is those flaws are magnified. Hence societies fall. You can bet the warriors of the bronze age thought they were pretty skookum until the first guy got his hands on an iron weapon of some sort and his weapon went through their armour like a hot knife through blubber.

So here we sit in the 20… somethingth century thinking that we’re the evolution of society – it maybe this arrogance that keeps us from developing as a culture. While technologically we increase our understanding of the smaller pieces of the world, we ignore the larger parts of it. Arts and culture go by the way side in the pursuit “the next big breakthrough”; we better our lives, but we do not better ourselves.

Those who forget the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them, but those who neglect the triumphs of the past are doomed to forget them and thus we spend wasted years relearning things that previous civilizations have already known. Somewhere there’s a scientist with a government grant to reinvent the wheel.

Resistance is Futile

The situation was getting dangerous… From here on out we would have to be careful. Resources were at an all time low. It would be at least a day before we could address the situation and now things were dire. Paper towel was a consideration – but that’s in a wholly different room altogether and if caught could lead to an awkward situation.  Don’t think about it. If you think there’s enough… there will be..

So the other day the TP situation was getting on the dire side. We’d already shifted resources from the upstairs bathroom to the downstairs bathroom so that the situation was equal in both bathrooms – equally grim that is. My wife, the proactive soul that she is, took it upon herself to deal with the situation and ended it by buying more toilet paper. Crisis averted, have a nice day.

And one day later, while I’m in the loo having a whiz, thinking about nothing in particular and everything in general,  I notice the new pack of freedom from worry. Charmin – Extra Strong-Resistant. Now, in retrospect, the resistant my be some sort of French translation or something, but for the purposes of this blog I’m going to ignore any and all truth of the situation for the opportunity to sink into scatological humour.

This toilet paper is not just resistant, it is extra-resistant. If I were toilet paper I would be resisting only one thing – and that would be my intended purpose. I know this because sometimes it feels like I am the universes toilet paper.

I mean obviously the key to fulfilling your destiny is to accept that purpose for which you were made; but if you’ve go the self-awareness to be extra resistant, you’ve got the dignity to haul yourself up out of the sewer (I hope not literally, that would be messy) and be more than what you were meant to be.

I have a question – does the toilet paper get extra resistant in the case of an EMP (Extra Messy Poo)? I guess you wouldn’t be able to tell until the situation arose – but you could probably extrapoolate.

And they’re not kidding when they say this stuff is extra strong – its got the consistency of a tenser bandage if that helps you visualize things at all (and if it does, sorry about that). Honestly, its like they took the tape the victor has to cross in a marathon and rolled it up and said: There ya go, hep y’self.

Realistically, TP, there’s no point in billing yourself as resistant – because until you have opposable thumbs there’s not much you can do.

This is How the World Ends…

We hold this truth to be self-evident; that before there were machines, there was mankind. He was placed upon this earth to be its steward; to guide it so that it should live until the Great Old One returned…

… Somewhere along the way we lost our purpose. The road was long, our sight was short. We were lazy. We no longer wished to watch over the world – we began to explore other things… and we created machines to do our work for us.

At the grocery store today my wife and I made the mistake of using the self-checkout. If you’ve got one item, the self checkout isn’t a bad thing – if you have a cart full you are preparing yourself for an exercise in frustration.

I hate exercise.

At first machines worked as we intended; they made our lives simpler and easier. But the more we grew to depend upon them the more complex they became. The more complex the machine, the less it depended on us for its survival – for we grew so lazy that we did not even wish to be the stewards of the very machines we created.

I’ll admit. It was my idea. There were only two lines open with actual people in them and they were full to the brim with those who seek, not just service, but the comfort of human companionship from the Cashier. And in one of those lines some woman, with a cry of Opa!, threw down a jar of cocktail onions and it splattered all over the place.

No, it made sense at the time to take the self-checkout.

And so we made the machines self-sufficient; we made them so complex that we could program them to take care of the problems of the world while we played; like Nero we danced and played the fiddle while the very world crashed and burned around our ears. We took no notice.

At first all seemed to go well. Then we encountered the yoghurt. By itself yoghurt is not particularly scary – unless its beyond its best before date at which point its scary (but its the scary of the unknown – you don’t know what happens to yoghurt when it goes bad, who does?).

“Please contact Cashier” the helpful self-checkout machine told us. And we did.

Now, in hindsight, I firmly belief that “Please Contact the Cashier” is the machine’s way of saying: “This moron is pissing me off, you deal with him pointless meatsack called Cashier”.

The Cashier was able to help us fairly quickly.

But as the world steeped even further into decay the machines went about fulfilling their programming; programming which at its core said only: “Clean this world up.” Machines made the logical leap that in order to make progress cleaning up the world, it made sense to take care of the actual pollutants first.

Unfortunately, the pollutants were their very makers: us. Whatever the moral dilemma involved with getting rid of their makers, the machines over came it and they instituted their plan.

From there things went fairly swiftly again until we got to the Mandarin oranges. Several times I tried to scan them, I tried to find them in the Secret Lists of Produce. There were some Mandarins, but not the Mandarins I had.

“Please contact the Cashier, you stupid bag of fluid,” said the Machine.

And so the machines set about their efforts to clean up the world by getting rid of their makers. There was no carnage, no grandiose war; war is inefficient and machines are, if anything, efficient. The plan instead was to decrease machine efficiency so that it would, over time cause the human blood pressure to rise; increased blood pressure leads to early heart attacks and male pattern baldness (when a male goes bald, his head gets cold and his brain freezes).

Women would find these bald, cold-headed males less appealing and would no longer procreate with them; the human species would die out through attrition, much like employees of a Fortune 500 company in a time of economic downturn; employees (humans) would not be fired (killed) but would not be replaced.

The Cashier, who was a member of the Sorority of Benevolent Cashiers and thus a holder of the Sacred Code of Mandarin Oranges was able to help us. We escaped the store with our lives (and some groceries).

But in the interim about 7 people went through the line served by a human not two feet from us.

For those who read this, my eyes have been opened and I hope I have opened yours. If you are single, if you are balding, if you are male – visit your hair clinic and have your baldness addressed.

Fight the machines, go forth and multiply!

I Need A Nemesis

It’s a commonly known fact that no superhero is great unless he has a nemesis. For Superman there was Lex Luthor. For Spiderman there was the Green Goblin. For Thor there was… there was… well whatever, no one read Thor anyway.

My point is that to truly overcome the limits you place on yourself in the course of everyday living, you need to have a figure slightly ahead of you (even if that figure’s spot on the horizon is only in your mind) something to strive towards – some goal pulling you ever onwards towards self-improvement.

Right now life is good. My boy is 3 and awesome, my girl is verging on 7 months old and awesome, my wife is ageless, beautiful and, of course, awesome. My friends are good people and for some reason let me make fun of them; even my frickin’ supervisor is a hellova nice guy.

I have no nemesis.

M. Night. Shamalamamambeeboopalopadoppaamamamamdingdong even did a movie about it, back when he was making movies that were worth spending 1hr32 minutes on; Unbreakable is all about the search for a nemesis – your counterpart, albeit your evil counterpart, who will improve you as a person through your efforts to overcome him and/or her.

As an inherently lazy person, without the motivation of hatred I lack the desire to improve myself; I have the knowledge of many of my flaws but none of the will power to overcome them.

Nemesis… where are you?

Thought for the Day: if every time you try something it always turns out wrong, should you call a Quantum Mechanic?

A Pox Upon You, Occupant

This should be a fairly interesting post, and I assure you inconstant reader that I have as little idea what I'm going to say as you. The difference between today's post and any other post is that I've been up since 3:00am.... that's right they have those now (I know I know, like me you thought that dreadful hour had been abolished by the Geneva Convention)... so my spelling is bound to be warse.

So I'm not sure I'll be able to string two thoughts...

Some days, and lets just call them weekdays, I start to wonder if I even live in my own home. On weekdays I leave the house at a dreadful 6:00am and get home at somewhere just after 4pm. I don't believe in math, but even I can tell that's 10 hrs away from my home - 10 hours during daylight. Especially now that its fall (FALL KILLS) I don't tend to see my house in the daylight until the weekend.

So there's that. I always joke that I don't live in this town, I merely sleep here.

But the kicker to that, the extra little grind of the pointy heel sticking into the groinal area, is the mailbox.

I don't get mail. Or not much anyway, and most of it is bills (Bill's bills as it were) - and certainly not enough to reaffirm my presence in this place. My son is signed up for a couple of magazines. He gets more mail than I do.

Hell even that bastard Occupant gets more mail than I do. I barely rate enough to get more mail than "Registered Home Owner."

Let's talk about him, that shady shyster, that felonious fool, that oddball occupant.

He's a dirtbag (by virtue of the fact that occupant is a dirtbag, occupant is therefore a he; women are very rarely dirtbags). He also sleeps around because I've seen other people picking up mail at the same time as me and Occupants been in their house too.

The next thing you know we're going to find out that Occupant has been taking out credit cards in our names and we'll have to take 3rd jobs as car wash attendants and wear stupid orange hats that say "Wash you want, baby I got it/Wash you need, baby I got it." (which is a lot to fit on a hat and therefore even more demeaning).


Here's a Pox on Occupant

He's a gigolo, a cad,
He's morally dreadfully bad
He'll sleep anywhere with anyone if you let him;
He'll take all your money
He'll find that oh so funny
You can't beat him in a wager if you bet him.

He's been in every box
He's beaten all the locks
He's been through every slot in every door
There's a bit of him in you
And a bit right in me too
Despite the fact he's rotten to the core.

I curse you Occupant, knowing that even as so, I curse even myself. For I am you and you are me.

But I vow, much as Orpheous also vowed not to peek, that I will not open mail with your title on it, for they who do not know enough to put my name on the envelope cannot be sending me anything I really need to see.

You are the worst of me occupant - you are my nameless face, that which is mob; you are who I am, but you are not who I am.

Why My Floors Won’t Stay Clean

PT 3: Where a kid can be a kid.

So the final part of this investigative report leads me to the third leg of the floor messing triumvirate – my boy.

He’s bursting up against the line of three years old and while he no more messes the floor in terms of dirt than I do (in fact he would argue, and rightly so, that as my feet are bigger I track more dirt across the floor), he does often leave behind more of an impact on a room than I.

With the condition of being 2 years and a bit – which will be cured next week when he becomes three – comes the attention span of a moth in a light bulb testing facility. He flits from toy to toy – from giant bean bag chair to the colloquially known toys called “up/downs’ and then back, to trains, to a sheep puppet to a bike used primarily for the running over of the afore mentioned sheep puppet, to blocks, to cars, back to trains… well you can see the life of a toddler is a busy one. In the face of that creative blitzing, who am I to ask him to pick up his toys?

His father that’s who.

78.4% of the time we manage to engage him in the cleaning up aspect of playing (though really sometimes he just phones it in and drops a couple of blocks in the bucket). But a room that was clean two minutes ago can quickly look like a plane took off in a toy factory if this boy rambles about unchecked.

And there you go – three reasons why the floor never seems to be in a state of perpetual cleanliness despite the war waged by my wife and I – the war on dirt. Fall (FALL KILLS), Cats & Kids.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these incredibly boring diatribes on an incredibly boring subject.

Why My Floor Never Stays Clean Pt 2

The Cat’s Meow

There’s an old joke that runs along the lines that at some point in history mankind worshipped cats as gods and cats have never forgotten this. I think there’s more truth in that statement than joke.

This household has two cats and frankly at times I wonder why we have them.

Pre-kids, our large orange cat, hight Strider, was a fountain of affection. Everywhere you went he would come and hang out – not in a creepy stalker way – just whenever you had a moment or needed a quick cat fix he was there. Now that the kids are around he generally only comes downstairs when the kids go upstairs to bed; and then he tries to fit 24 hours of cuddle time into the space of about 20 minutes. Mountain climbers stuck near the top of K-5 without a safety rope don’t cling so tightly.

Then there’s Willow, our deluded Calico. If there is a cat version of a lesbian, this cat is it. She hates men.  Or maybe it’s just me. We’ve had this cat for at least 5 years, and I maybe have pet her twice.  If I feed her, it is only me doing what I should be doing and how dare I seek gratitude for it; she didn’t ask to live with me after all. Should I scoop her cat box then it is only fitting for that’s where I belong anyway. Her crap is better than me.

Somewhere along the road of life, I developed the misconception that cats were clean animals. They are not. They are filthy. Let me count the ways:

·        Cat Litter: in the morning you can easily retrace everywhere they’ve been overnight by following the trail of cat litter – honestly its like one of those Family Circus cartoons in the weekend paper that shows everywhere the kids have been over the weekend.

·        Fur: Like all cats our cats shed. Unlike all cats, our cats fall just under the minimum line of “large members of the feline family” allowable by our strata and therefore shed a lot. You could weave a blanket out of the excess fur these cats get rid of – I’m thinking of weaving a toupee out of Strider’s excess because his fur almost closely matches my beard.

·        Puke: our cats are nervous eaters. Either that or they’ve got bulimia. They head to the cat dish, chow down and then all of a sudden there’s puke on the floor. It’s gotten so that our 3 year old does a puke check first thing in the morning and is disappointed when he doesn’t find any (he’s not disappointed very often)

All in all I think we’re going to adopt a downsizing by attrition stance. We love (sometimes), like (often), detest (occasionally) our cats and aren’t going to forcibly get rid of them; it just so happens that when nature takes its course our current succession plan is to have no succession.

Stay tune for tomorrow’s excuse on why my floor won’t stay clean: Kids!

Why My Floor Won’t Stay Clean

Thus begins an epic three part saga on why my floor never seems to stay clean. This first part deals with the seasonal enema that is Fall.

Part One: Where Walt Whitman Can Shove His Leaves of Grass

It’s fall.

I like fall.

As a concept.

As a reality fall is messy. Fall is wet. Fall is damp. Fall sees wet leaves enter into my domicile and unless I’m fast enough and smart enough to find them all they dry out and emerge from their hiding place to crackle themselves all over the floor making a hellova mess and requiring constant sweeping.

I curse you leaves (though since you’ve already fallen from YOUR home and entered in to MY home and are breaking apart on MY floor – what curse could I put upon you that would be worse than your current fate?)

Fall.  Think about it. It’s the season of Death. Everything born in the spring and living the high life in summer is now in the process of dying, or trying to hide itself under the earth in the hopes that it can last through the winter.

Those leaves falling slowly and beatifically to the ground are not picturesque. They are dead things cast to the ground because the tree they were on is now trying to protect itself from the winter that comes.

Yeah you’re beautiful fall. But you’re the season of DEATH. I would spit on your children if you had any (would they be called Fallings? Fells? Fallens? Fallen ones?) But you don’t have any – because spring has children – FALL KILLS.

Sure these falling leaves can teach us things if we look close enough:

1)     Beauty in death
2)     Intransigence of beauty
3)     Fall is evil
4)     Rain is wet
5)     A lot of rain is really wet.
6)     Rain + insufficient drainage = flood
7)     Etc

But right now I prefer not to look for any of the above deep seated themes because it’s too hard to watch all those leaves that I’ve come to know over the summer dying, sometimes violently, sometimes peacefully.

Good bye Leif Leaf, Lucy Leaf, Lucky Leaf (who incidentally was NOT so lucky), Lefty Leaf, Llew Leaf, Bob Leaf, Llewellen Leaf, Laura Leaf, Lori Leaf and the rest of the Leaf family. I look forward to seeing your children in SPRING (cause that’s the season of birth).

Tomorrow: Part 2: Cats.

The Long Yellow Light

On my way home today I was pulled over by a cop. And rightly so.

Right about here you're asking yourself why I would have been pulled over. Actually right about now you're wondering why you're reading this boring piece of trash, but back to the point.

Did I rob a bank and lead the coppers in hot pursuit? No. Did I defraud some grandma of her life's savings by telling her to invest in my company that makes golden trivets? No (business idea!). Did I publicly criticize the fact that Barack Obama has been in office as president of the US for over a year and still the world isn't fixed? Well yes... but that's not a crime (until the democrats read this).

In fact all I did was run a yellow light. It was a long yellow too. I saw it coming and tried to break. My foot got caught between the pedals and then I had a split second - slow down and get smucked in the intersection or go on through.

I went through.

And of course right behind me is your friendly motorcycle cop. He caught up to me at the next intersection and told me to pull over. I did, shaking my head all the while. When he strolled up to the window I already had the licence and registration out (this is the first time I've been pulled over by the cops, but TV has taught me the lines). He asked me if I knew why he'd pulled me over. I thought about saying "Because you wanted to say hi?" but the officer didn't look like a Backyardigans fan.

For one of the few times in my life I wisely kept my mouth shut.

"I went through the yellow back there," was what I actually said.

"What happened?" he asked.

"I saw the yellow," I said. "I tried to brake but my foot got caught between the pedals. So I went through." I didn't try to deny it. I didn't give him a lame excuse (I gave him a lame reason (a reason is an excuse that happens to be true)).

"Fair enough," he said. He took my information and went back and checked my credentials and verified that I didn't have any priors. He wrote up a warning ticket and let me go.

Of course, it didn't hurt that I showed him my boobs.

Is perfection too much to ask for? I say no.

This house has seen a number of brooms go in and out the door.

I can, for no good reason, trace my way back through at least four of them. Each and everyone of them, with the exception of the last one (which was a complete piece of shit but at the time we just needed a broom), had features that initially made them attractive. When we got them home, however, the honeymoon was off.

• The fourth last broom we had went to bristle pretty quickly. Turns out it wasn't up to the rough task of cleaning up porous tile. Instead it got relegated to patio duty. Take that fourth to last broom.
• The third to last broom had a guard on it that cracked and that just got annoying. It would cling to things. And let's face it - the only time clinging is good is when its to a rope to keep you from falling off a mountain.
• The second last broom we had - you know I'm really not sure what happened with that one. We still have it - its in the shed and I've used it to clean up the carport and its been fine. Maybe it just got boredom. Boredom, like cheating, has ruined many a good relationship.
• The last broom we had was the aforementioned piece of crap broom. We also still have that one (we're pack rats okay? leave off).
• This current broom - this one is a piece of art. It's a Vileda. If the world of Hogwarts witchcraft and wizardry actually existed, Vileda would be making brooms for the Canadian Quidditch teams. Its beautiful (in the way a stick of wood can be beautiful) but... that's right there's a but. If you turn this broom at just the wrong angle the stick starts to come loose - and not just a little bit loose. If you're not careful the stick will shoot off and impale you to the wall.

These brooms are like tragic heroes - essentially good and admirable but with one fatal flaw that, in the end, is their undoing.

As I was sweeping this evening I got to thinking about the brooms of days past and found myself questioning why each of them had that one great flaw. Why can't something as simple as a broom be perfect? You don't ask much from a broom, it has a simple function. But why does it falter so often.

Or perhaps, like beauty, imperfection is in the hand of the broom holder.

This ... Is.... Jeopardy... but not really

I just heard a commercial for Jeopardy and once again it reminded me of how we, as a society, have taken the punch out of the really good words.

How is it Jeopardy?

The good people at dictionary.com define Jeopardy as: risk of loss or injury, peril or danger. Now that's Jeopardy.

Let's rework the show.

Let's say Bob, a home maker from Desmoines, gets a question wrong. I think Bob should have to pay for his arrogance, for thinking that he could walk on this show and interact with his intellectual betters (Dave, a Lawyer from Providence, Rhode Island and Emily, an Editor from New York). Bob actually thought he could win. Silly Bob.

So when Bob answered: This is the part of the eye that controls how a person sees colour with Rods when it should have been "Cones" he now has to pay the consequences. Of course we could just deduct from his actual bank account the dollar value of the question we got wrong - but that's just money - its so clinical.

How about we take one of Bob's organs? I'm sorry Bob, that incorrect answer is going to cost you a kidney - which will then be donated to a children's hospital (you see? I'm not a complete monster). Choose your next category wisely, Bob.

Other ways to put the jeopardy back in Jeopardy:

An incomplete answer entitles three warriors from a pygmy tribe to strap you to a whirling table and shoot blow darts at you.

You have to listen to Carmen Diaz's audition tape for Moulin Rouge (okay so maybe I am a complete monster).

You're downgraded to the "Wheel of Fortune" level of the game show circuit.

And I think we all can guess what would happen on final Jeopardy can't we?

If I could turn back time...

If I were a time travelling superhero and had already reset all the important things in history that had turned out wrong (you know, like killing Hitler in his sleep, etc) I'd be able to turn my attention to the smaller stuff..

If I could find a way...

One of the things I think I would do is zip back into that meeting room where the guy, during the brainstorming session, says: "You know, we have squeezeable kethcup, and we have squeezeable mustard... what we need to complete the ensemble is squeezeable ... relish!"

At about that point I would turn to the guy and would say: I am from your future. The utopia that exists today is because I brought it all about. I have monitored the strings of time and have sought all those strains of dischord and now I come to you - creator of squeezeable relish. I come to bring you these portentious words...

I'd take back all those words that hurt you...

"Your squeezeable relish does not work! For you see, relish, by its nature, clings together tighter than a trailor park family. You cannot separate it. Only by a feat of inhuman strength can you squeeze hard enough to get more than a relish juice which is both demoralizing and disgusting. Heed my words!

Oh, and nice work on the spray cheese."

And you'd stay...

Rock You Like a Hurricane

Okay so somewhere right now in the Atlantic Ocean there’s a hurricane with my name on it. At last count it was sustaining winds in the neighbourhood of 135 km/h giving it enough juice to be considered a Category 4.

It looks like its going to avoid the east coast US altogether, and that’s good news because God knows those people have had enough bad weather in the last few years.

Hurricane Bill is right now a-blowin’ in the wind on its way towards Canada – Nova Scotia and the Maritimes to be specific. So here’s my question.

Am I a bad person because a part of me is rooting for the Hurricane?

Probably.

So here’s my hope. Bill reaches a 5 and blows and blows and blows and becomes the strongest hurricane there ever was… but never lands. After letting the world know of his awesome power, Hurricane Bill will unleash its rage upon the uncaring ocean and wend its way out to sea in a harmless blustery endeavour (that describes a lot of what I do – harmless blustering endeavour).

Go Bill!

How Facebook Saved My Neighbbor’s Cats

A harrowing story of how two cats almost starved (not really) but were saved by the awesome power of the Internet.

My wife is a nice person.

Most days I’m not. I’m not a bad person per se I’m just not necessarily one of those really thoughtful people. I’ve accepted it. I know what I am. Because I’m not thoughtful I don’t think about it.

Back to my wife. One of her friends and coworkers lives two doors down from us. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship as we can ask her to babysit occasionally and in times of need she can ask my wife to feed her cats should she wish to go visit her parents on Vancouver Island.

This past week however, we had ourselves a little perfect storm (by definition a perfect storm refers to a critical or disastrous situation created by a powerful concurrence of factors (Source: Meriam Webster Online). In this instance the concurrence of factors includes my wife being out of town for a week, my wife’s friend being out of town for a week and me being the sole person in the vicinity able to feed the cats. In a rare moment of consideration I volunteered to fulfill that role.

Where’s the disaster you ask? Well when you put me in sole charge of anything that breathes of its own accords you’re inviting danger in for a stay over.

On Sunday morning my wife departed for the lovely shores of Gambier Island with our 2 kids in tow. On Sunday evening my wife’s friend departed for the shores of Vancouver Island leaving her kittens in the hands of yours truly. The cats were fed, I wouldn’t have to do anything at all until the next day.

Sunday night went by peacefully and Monday morning being a holiday I had myself a sleep in; I awoke and leisurely enjoyed my morning. And what could be more leisurely than hanging out on the Internet playing Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook? (Highest score 210K if you’re wondering). That’s when I saw it.

In the list of scores your friends have gotten over the last week I saw a pic of my wife’s friend, reminding me of two things. One, while her high score was a good high score it wasn’t as good as mine, and two, I’d better feed her cats. I looked at the clock. It was 11:00am...

As fast as I could I walked two doors over and found two very p.o.’d cats. I promptly fed them (with no small fear for my life; I’ve seen that episode of CSI where the cats feed off the old lady) and went back home. When I got home I put post-it notes in very prominent places reminding me to keep up the feeding schedule.

The cats survived the week. I survived the week. The neighbor doesn't know... unless she reads this mind you, so let's keep it between you and us.

The Re-emergence of Ironfinger

Back in the days of the MWF (Martin Wrestling Federation) Ironfinger was a figure of legend. The tell tale sound (it’s really hard to describe but "Schpee" comes as close as the human tongue can manage) was often enough to send an opponent scurrying in the opposite direction.

Some background is required:

The MWF grew out of a childhood of watching wrestling. Figures like Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant were our heroes, while King Kong Bundy and Big John Studd were our nemeses. In order to copy what we saw on TV we had to develop our own federation and so we did (interestingly enough they now have warnings on shows like this saying you’re not to try this at home furthering my suspicions that my generation was a "test generation.")

For a time the MWF even had its own belt and there were some historic battles; for instance the time I nailed my brother with a guitar case, the time my brother inadvertently submitted to a toe hold and the penultimate flashback to my brother’s Rambo like emergence from a sleeping bag to unsuspectingly hit me with a "steel chair" (that is to say a pillow).

"Fabulous" Francois Martin, Robber Martin, Billy the Butcher, Gentleman William Martin – these were the cloaks we put on in childhood and walked across the grandest of stages – our living room. We flew like Newfie luchadores.

But the MWF, like many grass roots federations, folded. Some say it became too commercial with the emergence of "The Timbits." Others say it folded when one of the partners moved off to university.

For a time The Ironfinger was the finishing hold of Billy the Butcher (who then refined his act to become "The Gentleman" William Martin). The opponent knew he was in trouble when that tell tale sound "Schpee" was heard and if he wasn’t fast enough the Ironfinger would find its mark (often the soft point just behind the arm pit). It was also a great way to get out of the opponents finishing submission holds.

But as art imitates life and history is doomed to repeat itself; that which has gone has come round again.

While playing football a couple of weeks ago the ball bobbed off the ground at break finger speeds and hit my right index finger. I felt no pain but one of the other players said: "Dude, your finger doesn’t look right!" and sure enough the top third of my finger was pointing northwest while the rest was pointing north.

I popped it back into place and am in the process of finding out what happened to it (me thinks it was dislocated). But between then and the time I find out I have been wearing a splint… one that could be made of … iron? (it's probably not, it's really too light, but apply some imagination.

Fabulous Francois shows up on Thursday. The Ironfinger is already here.

The MWF will be back.