Men in Skirts and Ninjas Riding Bicycles

If you go out of your door today, here’s what you might see I hope it doesn’t happen to you, but it happened to me; There was no bear on a tricycle, but maybe it was the lunar cycle But today’s the day the ninjas ride their bicycles

Mondays are crappy days. Mondays after flex days are especially crappy. If you’re not familiar with the concept of flex days basically one works a longer work day so that on the tenth day he/she/it can rest. It’s like having a long weekend every two weeks (don’t worry though, the magic of the real long weekend is still maintained). Back to my point.

Mondays mark the first day of the week where you have to wake up to the shrieking harpy that is your alarm clock. Do the routine: get dressed, go downstairs, eat, leave and drive to work assuming none of THIS  happens to you. This morning however was a little different.  This morning I saw a couple of odd things that put a little more lustre in a Monday than might otherwise be there and the first was: a ninja, riding a bicycle.

You know how sometimes you’re driving along and see something out of the corner of your eye and you’re not quite sure what it was you saw? This wasn’t that. This guy was a ninja. And he was riding a bike. And he was a responsible ninja because he was also wearing a helmet.

So how do I know he was a ninja you ask? You didn’t ask? Well I can tell you were about to so here’s how, aside from the ninja stars sticking out of his helmet this man was dressed in full ninja regalia. He was wearing black pants, black shirt, black shoes; in short (not in shorts) he was dressed like a man whose occupation it is to skulk in the shadows and kill for hire.

Also, underneath the helmet he was wearing a black mask. All you could see were his eyes. Cold, calculating killers eyes. I knew what he was thinking… THE DRAGON’S FIRE BURNS HOT!

I drove on pretty sure that this was the weirdest thing I was going to see this morning…

If you go out of your door today, here’s what you might see
I hope it doesn’t happen to you, but it happened to me;
I saw a fellow, let’s call him Kurt whose sense of dress was inert
For today was the day that Kurt thought he should a skirt to work

In retrospect, living in Vancouver, seeing a man in a skirt isn’t all that uncommon but I think the difference here stemmed both from the fact that Kurt as a man was unattractive (at least as I judge such things, but I’m not the best judge for male attractiveness because I swing for the straight team) – Kurt as a woman didn’t just hop over the hideous line but jumped, leapt and vaulted into that level of visual distinctiveness heretofore reserved only for Rosie O’Donnell and Rita McNeil.

Now while one part of my mind is trying to merge Odetta with Detta to get the Lady of Shadows, another part of me is wondering if probably this man was in fact Kurt McCloud of the Clan McCloud. Because the only other acceptable explanation for Kurt’s choice of dress (even the fact that it may have been laundry day was no excuse) was nationality. Kurt may have been Scottish. It may have been a kilt.

I’m trying to convince myself this was the case but one thing works against accepting that explanation: Kurt’s skirt was grey with no visible signs of a tartan indicating clan. The normal mind might take this as a sign that all was as it was seen to be; but the normal mind is not what saw Kurt, and if the normal mind did see Kurt then the normal mind would not remain normal for that much longer.  So it seems obvious to me that Kurt was a member of the Clan McCloud.

The history of the Clan McCloud is one of immense ups and downs and it’s tied intimately to the Highlander series of movies. The clan experienced a massive upswing with the general populace and indeed with other clans after the first movie gained such a cult following; in fact, the clan McCloud was poised to take over the top position in the Bloody Great Men which is the street name for the Scottish underground Mafia (I’ll make ye an offerrr… ye canna rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrefuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse). But after the release of Highlander’s 2 through 4, Sean Connery, who is as God to those people, turned his face away and the clan was stripped of its tartan.

And so Kurt McCloud of the Clan McCloud walked wherever he was walking and I drove wherever I was driving and our worlds kept turning, each in its own orbit.

If you go out of your door today, here’s what you might see
I hope it doesn’t happen to you, but it happened to me;
Just keep the look off of your face
the world is a strange and frightening space
Today’s the day you’ll see strange things all over the place