A One Whore Open Sleigh

Dear Solitary Reader,

As someone who often dickers around with words I recognize their importance. Words have meaning. Words have power.

x-Tangent: Christmas has hit the house hot and heavy. Normally I would be doing my usual routine at Christmas, closing down orphanages, filling the work houses; you know, decreasing the surplus population. But with two children under six in the house I can’t help but get caught up with the Christmas fever.

As such, It’s not unusual to hear my daughter singing “Jingle Bells” repeatedly… time after time… over and over…. and over. Really, it was cute the first 4,000 times but its starting to wear a little thin. I’ve been running Tom’s Diner night and day through my skull, and so far its holding its own – but soon the walls will crack, like the impenetrable fortress of Helm’s Deep, and  a whole lot of of Uruk’hai in skimpy elven costumes will be jingling their bells while I weep for the loss of my sanity.

I didn’t complain when it was time to put up the Christmas tree, I didn’t even complain when it was time to put up the Christmas lights. I even risked life and limb and climbed up to the roof to put lights on the top tier (avoiding the donkey on the roof who kept throwing the damn barrels full of fiddlers down at me).

This year I caught a case of the Christmas no cream can cure; ain’t no lotion can disabuse my Christmas notion.

y-tangent: My son is awesome.

He has a pretty good voice for a now five year old. He can hold a tune as well and can sing pretty much the entire songbook from the Thomas the Tank Engine suite of music.

One thing he does not have, however, is a grasp of lyrics. He’s only five and I can already tell he’s going to be one of those peoples who sings the wrong words at the top of his lungs.

A case in point: one of the movies, as a child under four, which he fell in love with was Cars. One of the main songs from this automotive cinematic classic’s sound track was a version of Tom Cochrane’s “Life is a Highway” performed by Rascal Flats.

My son, bless his hearing, would not be cured of the idea the chorus, instead of progressing “Life is a highway/I want to drive it all night long” would sing: “Life is a highway/I want to drive it on my lawn.” Some of this was maybe his recognizing the fact he did not have his licence yet and was prohibited by law from driving on a highway, but you get my point.

Intersection: So as my daughter belts out Jingle Bells non-stop my son, in his unabashed way, has joined in with his rather liberal sense of the lyrics. For the most part his lyrical insertions are fairly innocent, with the exception of this particular song.

Where you might know the song as “Dashing through the snow, in a one horse open sleigh” the pride and joy of my loins bearing the y-chromosome (and y IS the loneliest chromosome) has begun belting out loudly (and if you read the title of this blog then you’re not going to be surprised): “Dashing through the snow in a One Whore Open Sleigh.”

Because my mind wanders off in that direction rather readily, I thought of composing a tune called Jingle Balls… but I decided that because I would a) get in trouble and b) be plagiarizing someone I didn’t bother.

I tried to explain to him the real words, but he’s my son, and as Martin men we are genetically immune to common sense and/or rationality. He’s refusing to accept my edited lyrics.

It’s also hard to explain the real words when you’re laughing. Like his father he knows when he’s got the crowd hooked.

At some point I know he’s going to glom on to the real words, but until then the one whore open sleigh continues to ride the powder.

The Haunted Potato, or, the Tater From Hell's Crater, or The Spud of Blood

One day I sat upon the couch To rest, to sit, indeed to slouch While sitting I received a scare For twas then I saw a tater there! I could have said something from Plato Instead I said: "look! A couch potato!" But it glared at me with it's many eyes And I felt some guilt to my surprise For I had slain much of it's kin Opened my maw and shoved them in I got off the couch, said: "See ya later!" And left behind that glaring tater.

So, to the kitchen to get a drink
But I saw it there sitting in the sink
I did not know what to think
I stood and stared and forgot to blink
I spoke aloud: " I'm too old for this crud!"
I would not fear some puny spud!

But in my heart stirred cold fear
And I thought back throughout the year
Of potatoes eaten in many shapes
Some fries, some mashed, some whole like grapes
What if the taters were amassin'
Some sort of revolt and this: their assassin!

I felt not well so I went to bed
And saw a spud resting by my head!
I admit I gave a girlish scream
Yelling: "get back spud lest I get the sour cream!"
before I could threaten it with chives
I broke out into itchy hives

After that I could not sleep
As in my dreams potatoes creeped
I tossed and turned and soon I waked
Thinking of all those spuds I'd baked
While roasting had they become Fell?
Were these ones the Spuds from Hell?

This hour of night my spirits waned
Wracked with fear my soul was pained
How could I have been the cause
Of so much pain and so much loss
These taters were right to cross my door
Spoke the tater: "Nevermore!

Like some sick version of tortoise and hare
Where'er I went a spud was there!
So much guilt! So much pain!
A potato bug assailed my brain!
I must persevere! I must recoup!
Or find myself drowned in potato soup!

Twas then he came to be my shield
My Irish ancestor from the field!
In ghostly pallor he filled my sight
Patty O'Lantern who shone so bright!
And he spoke at me with his Irish lilt:
"Are ye daft ye shouldn't feel no guilt!

Ye got to know these are just spuds
They are no reason to soil yer duds!"
strong the words spoken in his brogue
Strength to spirit from this rogue
He slowly began to disappear
To my surprise he took my fear

And in it's place a new resolve
This was just one more problem to solve
I went to the kitchen to get armed
And go to war 'gainst those who were farmed
I grabbed a cleaver and a fork
And then sat me down and got to work

I sliced. I diced. I julienned.
I was like a man possessed my friend
I chopped all night without lag
Til soon I hit the bottom of bag.
I was done! The battle won!
Now there was no need to run.

I cleaned the kitchen to the last knife
I was not brave enough to ire the wife.
Twas then I fell almost to the floor
For they were not done. There was one more.
This the leader upon my soul
This was the spirit of tater made whole!

It breathed cold fire from it's peel
All my heat it sought to steal!
It's eyes burned with malice, see
I do not lie this no fallacy!
This the tater who sought my end
I thought I was done my friend

But my spirit surged again with hope
And I thought me of a way to cope
I had a chance to win this fight
To take the day and save the night
When an evil tater must be in your gullet
What else kills evil but a Magic Bullet?

I grabbed this Prince of Hell's Potatoes
Threw in some cheese and tomatoes
An egg or two to heighten taste
I had some left over that I would not waste
I cooked this food fried in butter
And made a breakfast like no other

So that's how it all went down
The Weekend of Possessed Hashbrown
If I could make a small suggestion
Do not repeat, the indigestion
Was almost as scary
As the battle, which was, Legen-
Wait for it, wait for it- dary!

 

 

 

Sent from my iPad

A Fly on the Wall… of the Microwave

Dear Solitary Reader: While my wife is forced to sit on the couch and convalesce I’m playing Mr. Mom around the house, and the meal quality around here shows the sudden change in chefs.

X-Tangent:  This morning I nuked pancakes from the freezer for the kids’ breakfast; I do not know how long they’d been in the freezer, and I do not care. No warm toast and blueberries from ma for you this morning kids, nuked pancakes and berries which I may or may not have washed. There’s yer breakfast, if yer hungry you’ll eat it.

I’m not even going to go into supper last night. Shrivelled chicken with a side of blackened rice accompanied by a wilted broccoli/cauliflower medley (heh, I can’t cook, but I can advertised.)

Y-Tangent: Another impact of this whole gall bladder thing my wife’s been going through is an increase in the amount of fruit in the house. And where there is fruit you will often find the fruit fly (which my brain persists in calling flute fries, and then imagines a ginormous French fry flute which my imagination then eats).

The fruit fly seems harmless, little guy likes to fly stops by the fruit by and by. But like all bugs, fruit flies do not come alone – they bring friends. Not even just friends, they bring acquaintances; not even just acquaintances either – they bring flies they meet on the way to my house.

Swatting of the common fruit fly is made difficult by two things: the density of the median weighted fruit fly combined with the force x mass = acceleration formula. This can be translated to mean the mass of air, which is denser than that of the average fruit fly, combined with the force of the swatting motion causes a sudden burst in acceleration pushing the fly out of the way of the harmful motion…  an excerpt from “A Treatise on Ineffectual Swatting of the Common Fruit Fly” by English Scientist Herd Fromme-Lately.

Intersection: So this morning as I’m prepping the pancakes (that is to say putting it on a plate and putting it in the microwave, I notice there’s a fruit fly in there. I’m not sure if he was in there all night, or if he followed the pancakes in: that’s immaterial (well to me, to the fruit fly there might be a poignant difference).

Now I’m a lazy bum and a horrible father but even I know enough to try and get the fly out before it lands on the food my kids will eat. And so I make ineffectual swipe after ineffectual swipe at this fruit fly, and for some reason its like the force of air created by my swipe actually moves the fly out of the way – someone really should do a study on these things.

But after a few swipes I did not see the fly. Here I arrived at that road in that yellow wood. I could go down the path less traveled by and make the kids something else for breakfast, or I could trod the well beaten path of “I don’t see the fly, ergo I got him ergo it is safe to nuke.” I took the latter. So far it hasn’t made any difference.

But as I type this I begin to wonder. For it seems to me I saw a movie once about a man trapped in a machine with a fly and he turned into a … well fly. I think it was called “The Bus that Couldn’t Slow Down”… or The Fly…

And so I wonder: will having nuked these pancakes in the same microwave as a fruit fly begin a volutionary process (I can’t tell if it would be e-volution or de-volution at this point so I shot for the middle).

For the next few weeks the Martin household will be on watch for something horrible, because if movie history lets me down (and it rarely does) one of two things is going to happen:

1. either one or both of my kids will turn into The Fly
2. or even worse, one or both of my kids will turn into Jeff Goldblum.

Kung Fu’d For Thought

Dear Solitary Reader: While my wife was convalescing from the parting of ways with her gall bladder last night I found myself in a rare position: sitting in front of the TV with nothing to watch. Taking advantage of the free month offered by Netflix.ca I hopped on to find something I like, but normally don’t think to watch with my wife sitting next to me.

The result? A kung fu movie.

Now its not that my wife doesn’t like Kung Fu, its more that when we’re sitting together deciding on a TV Show we tend to go to the middle of the spectrum for our entertainment, shows with something for everyone. She does not say to me: “Dear Husband, let us watch this show about how to applique a quilt using a butter knife and the help of elves.” Likewise I do not say to her: “Yo, babes, how bouts we watch dis awesome Kung Fu movie where dis guy punches dis guy in de head and his eyes fall out.”

Lately we’ve watched Warehouse 13 – good show with something for everyone.

Back to the story: last night I was surfing Netflix.ca for something to watch (btw, I’ll be dropping Netflix like a bad habit when the free month is over because I cannot find anything to watch on it) and finally I settled on The Legend of the Fist.

It started off promisingly enough. World War 1 setting with Chinese laborers fighting for their freedom. The hero of the movie runs wild over the enemy in eminently Kung Fu style. It hadn’t yet made me get up off the couch and mime the moves along with the hero, but all indications were it was going to happen (somewhere after the third beer probably).

Cut to China some few years later and then it happens: plot.

Before I knew it I was actually learning things about China and what happened in the period between World War 1 and 2. I learned. I felt dirty.

At what point have we as a race become so preoccupied with story that I can’t watch someone beat up minions for 50 minutes before making it to the boss and watching that capped with an awesome 10 minute kung fu battle of epic proportions.

I’m getting old because I’m about to say “in my day” but this needs to be said …. In My Day Kung Fu was Game of Death and the plot of the movie was that a guy was hosting a kung fu tournament featuring a lot of, you guessed it, kung fu.

Bruce Lee must be spin kicking in his grave.

If any of you reading this decide at some point to ever direct a kung fu movie, do me a favor… and put some kung fu in it.

My Glade Plug-in is Trying to Kill Me

Dear Solitary Reader: My wife is a big fan of things that don’t smell like crap. As such she’s made several efforts to hide the shameful smell emanating from the cat’s litter box.

When Strider’s driving in his Chevy and his pants are gettin’ heavy – he heads to the litter box. When Willow almost craps the pillow... she goes to the same place. I’m glad they have a place to go but on an especially warm day I can arrive home from work and be greeted by the wafting aroma of what should only be described as: “bidness.”

One of the more successful attempts my wife has made to mask the musk is the Glade... um... “Something or Other.” I can’t remember the exact name of this particular incarnation, and it’s about 25ft away from me so I ain’t getting up to go check out the name. All you have to do is place it at the source of the stank and that stank is gone forever (or until it’s time for a refill). At any rate whatever it is... it works.

And that’s why I’m not getting rid of it even though it’s trying to kill me. Here’s the story:

My wife and I are pretty good about exchanging household tasks. Our relationship is one of symbiosis: she cooks, I eat; I dirty, she cleans. The yin and yang of household activity. But occasionally I’ve been known to do my share and the other day my turn came up to be scoopin’ de poopin of our two favourite felines.

Pardon the pun but scooping the cat litter is often a crapshoot. You can go down there one day and be done in a couple of swipes of the scoop; other days it’d give the fifth labour of Hercules an... ahem... run... for its money. And until you take the lid off the litter box, you never know what you’re going to get... it’s like a box of chocolates that way... disgusting, icky chocolates.

So, as I said, this one particular day it was my duty to take out the doody and as I bent down to take of the lid of the litter box the Glade “Something or Other” released a gentle mist right into my face. I woke up three days later tied to some railroad tracks wearing a clown suit and singing “The Song of Caligula’s Horse.”

I didn’t make the connection until it happened the second time. When my turn to clean the box came around and once again the Glade Plug-in plugged me out by releasing its gentle toxic mist; this time I woke up in Tibetan town wearing lederhosen and still singing “The Song of Caligula’s Horse.” That’s when I made the connection.

The Glade Plug-in is trying to kill me. He Hate Me Bro.

But it’s still the best cat de-smeller we’ve used, so I can’t get rid of it. It’s like an arrogant but capable employee that insists on mocking me because it knows it has all the answers. Curse it! Until such time as something better comes along I’m stuck with it, but I’ve gotten pretty good at avoiding the gentle mist – except for the other day when I found myself in the Amazon jungle wearing a chef’s hat singing “The Song of Caligula’s Horse” again...

Caligula's horse
Was a senator of course
And he always voted Neigh!

Old Age Pensive

Dear Solitary Reader: Every morning I drive to work and park my car in the parking lot near the building. I gather my goods and make the long, depressing walk to the building and in the back of my mind I notice a smell. It’s not a bad smell, its just a smell which for some reasons seem out of place.

All that separates me from the parking lot and the building I work in are about a thousand miles of desire to be somewhere else and an Independent Seniors Living facility. This morning I realized two things, both connected to each other. The smell I was smelling subconsciously was saltine crackers and the other realization? Old people smell like crackers. There’s no other explanation for it – well I guess it could be the cracker factory a couple of blocks over, but how likely is that?
 
Now before you go all “You’re a horrible person!” on me there’s scientific proof out there that old people like crackers. I haven’t looked it up yet, but I’m sure someone’s been paid to do a study on it. And really, if you’re going to smell like something, saltine crackers aren’t a horrible choice – it certainly smells better than a teenage boy, a stinky cheese or state of the union address. It’s directly tied to the amount of soup old people eat.
 
My mother was always trying to beat into my head the concept of respecting my elders and frankly, I never got that. Why should I respect someone just because they managed to get old? You can get old by just sitting there. Hell, I’ve managed to age and I’m about the stupidest person I know.
 
But when I go for coffee I see a lot of seniors around doing their shopping and I can’t help but think of all the things they’ve seen and all the stuff they know that I don’t. Now granted, a lot of stuff they know isn’t necessarily useful in terms of dealing with our every day life because we have more people, more cars, and generally more of everything than they do. 
 
I believe old people are able to endow the younger folk with one thing which we do not have “more” of than they did: common sense. If they’re willing to share their knowledge with you, learning from someone else’s experience has no drawbacks: you get to learn from their mistakes without any of the consequences (okay they may force you to sit among doilies and eat crackers, but its really a small price to pay).
 
I’ve come to the realization that being a senior should mean more than getting a discount on Tuesdays. Being a senior should, in fact, come with respect. That, of course, leads me to the horrid realization my mother was right, and if she was right about that she might have been right about other things…. Nawww.
 
Maybe its where I fall in the generation gap, but these days young people seem old, and older people seem young. Teenagers are doing stuff that I never would have thought of and every time I talk with people who are older than I am I feel like I’m talking with people my own age (but smarter).
 
But here’s the other thing I’ve noticed on my dead man walking shuffle from the car to the cubicle: there are a disturbing number of crows hanging in the branches of the trees about that independent living facility.
 
I’m not even old (though I’m getting there, because I like crackers, especially with salted tops) and that creeps me out.

Punching the Clock

Dear Solitary Reader: x-axis: Yesterday my son asked me if we could play MarioKart. I didn’t want to so I lied and told him I couldn’t find it (I know, I’m horrible, but you all do it or if you don’t, fine you’re better than me, I can live with that). Instead I suggested we play the brand new racing game I’d just picked up – with real race cars and everything!

“What’s that Daddy!? He asked. “Gran Turismo 5” was my reply. “That’s a great idea Daddy!” He said . So upstairs we went to plug in the game and race til our hearts were content – or until supper was ready, whichever came first.  We were off to the races.
 
Or were we?
 
See with pretty much every PS3 game I’ve ever bought there’s a point when you plug in the game where it tells you something or someone in the system needs to be updated – the hamster running inside the PS3 needs to do  another line or something – and generally the process is fairly quick. Not so much on this occasion. In the time it took to update the game my son and I were able to do the following:

• put lunches together for the kids
• put lunches together for the adults
• have a relaxing supper which involved my son watching a couple of episodes of Dora the Implorer (that’s the one where she whines for a new backpack and a less annoying sidekick) so its not like we wolfed it down.
• build a non-functioning robot out of Trio (he got it for Christmas and unfortunately it didn’t come with the “polar bear bones” fuelled power pack required in order to bring our creation to life). I still have hopes that putting the heart of a cat in there will do the job, but I just can’t catch my cat – he’s wily.
• I went to swimming lessons and proceeded to splash and flail in the water for 45 minutes.
• I stopped on the way home to pick up cat food (I’m hoping I can use the food to lure him closer and his HEART WILL BE MINE AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA)
• Arrived home to find the boy being put to bed and the little girl long asleep.
• I showered to get the chlorine from the pool off and wash away my scent in the hopes of evading the cat’s super sense of smell.

At some point while showering the game finally finished doing its thing. My wife then proceeded to install a few things to the hard drive, which she’d started before I’d began showering. At some point the install then got to the 14 minute remaining mark. And there it stayed… 14 minutes remaining while we watched more than half of an episode of Hawaii 5-0. That’s’ about 25 minutes; we stopped the show halfway through as it was a fairly boring episode and the game still told us there was 14 minutes left.
 
Y –axis: For years I’ve suspected that my computer is lying to me. When I install a program, when I delete a large number of files, when I do essentially anything other than play Zuma Blitz on the computer I get the little Windows window telling me there’s x amount of time left. The problem with the x- number is: when the “2 min remaining” note is up for 10 minutes, its more frustrating than helpful.
 
The phone company tells you to be home between 8-5 in order to catch your service guy. That’s awful, but it’s a definite time frame. When 2 minutes remaining edges into the 3 minute mark you’re entering the realm of the unknown. It could be in the next second – it could be 4 hours from now. You just don’t know. That’s worse than sitting at home for 9 hours.
 
And is it just me or in recent versions of the Windows Operating system, have they gotten rid of the hour glass? That silly old hour glass never stopped turning. When you think about it, if you keep turning over the hour glass before all the sand hits the bottom, you’re just resetting the clock, and you ain’t never gonna reach your destination that way.
 
Intersection: As a parent there’s only so much time in a day that we’re allowed to waste, and when I spend my wasted time wasting time waiting it makes me want to go all “Hulk Smash” over the offending item. These manufacturers of technological items know they don’t know how long a process will take, but they’re afraid to tell us. GT knows if there is a warning label indicating a 4hr wait on the box I might not buy it. But they don’t want to say that so they offer us false hope with time estimations that don’t mean anything.
 
That’s right GT… I know you know where the MarioKart is, you can’t lie to a liar.

Reach Out & Touch Someone…

Today I walked into the lunch room at work and felt as if I were walking onto the set of a commercial. Of the five people in the lunch room all of them were plugged into their smart phones. I was the only one who’d brought a book.

  
At first I was going to wax poetic on how no one talks to anyone at lunchtime anymore. But then I realized that would be hypocritical because I couldn’t remember the days when people talked to each other in the lunchroom because I never talked to people in the lunchroom – I’ve always brought a book.
 
But really, if I were a non-reader, think how my world would have changed.
 
Way back in the day (like 5 years ago) if you weren’t a reader and worked with a bunch of people you disliked, or detested or had nothing in common with, you were hooped. As a reader you always got the odd look, a mix mash of contempt for your choosing to read over socializing tinged with respect you were brave enough to read in public. But if you weren’t a reader you sat and were at the mercy of having to listen to coworkers natter on about their kids, their cats or their home reno projects.
 
You hated the person with the book. You wanted to take that book and beat them with it; and then, when you were exhausted in the unplanned activity, you realized what you wanted most was to be reading that book.
 
But now, thanks to smart phones, which is a misnomer because the phone is only as smart as the person who uses it, Husky Joe Lunchbox doesn’t have to listen to Patty Poundcake talk about her latest cuisine creation because Patty is actually talking to all her baker friends on her Google group; nor does he have to nod in time to Spencer Sportsguy as he talks about how his favourite team did because Spencer is watching highlights on ESPN.com on his phone and picking players in his fantasy league.
 
Our Husky hero is no longer at the mercy of Dora Daycare as she talks about how her little Jimmy is growing again and got 5th cello in his kindergarten Easter play as she compares notes with her Mom’s group and schedules Jimmy’s birthday party – because we’re certain there’s an app for that.
 
Husky Joe no longer has to listen o any of these people, but Husky Joe is now experiencing something he has never felt before – loneliness. Husky Joe, who still can’t bring himself to read a book (because it’s what nerds do), finds himself awkwardly lonely. He misses Patty’s recipes, to the point where he’s almost willing to admit he’s tried a few; he misses Spencer’s Sports Spout – to the point that he’s started watching baseball just in case Spencer brings it up again. He’s not at the point where he misses Dora’s dialogue, but he’s getting there.
 
Husky Joe is about to reach a breaking point: he’s about to initiate conversation.
 
I wonder if smart phones are changing society. Is there some great societal affect to being closer to people on other continents than in our own work place even though its not in a physical sense? I can’t answer that as I’m not an anthropologist (I have a real job) but will history look back on us and see this as a time when technology began to subvert physical proximity? As we in the precursor years to Skylab?
 
Smart phones are wonderful things, don’t get me wrong. I have one and I use it. But perhaps it says something about me that I use my smart phone to read The Three Musketeers, on a book reader app when I forget to bring my book to the lunch room while Husky Joe Lunchbox looks out the window at the snow falling, looking for something to say that will tear people away from their phones.

You know what it says? I’m really anti-social.

We Can Be Heroes

Dear Solitary Reader: Today, on the sun, a giant solar flare is going to flare… um, giantly. Scientists, because they are always right, are saying nothing bad will come of it.

It’s basically just a big sun fart.

But if there’s one thing I know from reading comic books and watching Sci-Fi television (I refuse to use y’s in that station name) its unheard of scientific events do not just pass harmlessly. So scientists be damned, I am fully expecting to end out this day with super powers caused by this solar flare.

The following are the superpowers I am anticipating:

• I will gain the ability to see through the bullshit mouthed by politicians in all corners of the world. Instead of now, when I assume a politician is lying when his or her mouth is moving, I will know for sure each word spewing forth from the giant political maw for what it is: lies.
• I will gain the power to spread Common Sense wherever I go. People will see that even as a dictator falls in Egypt, no bad thing, he will, eventually be replaced with a governing body of bad people who at least have the decency to commit their atrocities quietly.
• I will invent the flying car because dammit we should have done that years ago.
• I will be able to fly, so that I won’t have to make exorbitant monthly payments on the flying car I have invented (which will used the ground up bones of the polar bear for fuel).
• I will steal the world’s nuclear weapons and hide them away so they can never use them.
• I will cancel Oprah
• I will be able to make a year’s worth of lunches for the kids, my wife and I, so that our evenings are freed up; these lunches will be consistently delicious, always taste different and will be able to fold up into the size of a 3 1/4 floppy disk and fit nicely in the freezer.

Oh and I will also gain super speed, super strength and rose colored X-ray vision so I can see into the ladies change room (the “rose color” will be effective in making the 78 year old Grandma that came for Aqua-aerobics look like Pamela Anderson in her hayday).

You know on further inspection of my anticipated powers and goals I seem to be leaning more towards the super-villain side of the spectrum.

Ah well – to the evil lair!

Grounds for Complaint

 

Dear Solitary Reader:   Twice today while taking the last gulp of coffee from my travel mug I got a mouthful of coffee grounds. You might be thinking I should have learned from the first time but these two mugs of coffee came from two completely different sources: one from home, the other from the coffee shop near my work.

 
If you’re a coffee drinker you’ve probably experienced this at one point or another. You’re about to hit the moment you’ve worked toward for the last hour or so, the final sip of coffee (for this cup anyway), when instead of a mouthful of liquid you get a mouthful of liquid with a little extra on the side.

The inside.
 
I’m not sure what the galactic reason for my negative coffee karma is today. To my knowledge I am still the holder of the Folger’s Crystal, the Taster’s Choice (don’t ask, I’m not proud of it), the Master of Maxwell’s House, the best part of waking up (you know, if I wasn’t married I’d be using that as a pick up line “Hey baby, take me home with you tonight and I’ll be the best part of waking up oh yeah…” I’m fairly certain I would then still be single) and he who is Na-Bob (as in, my dad’s Bob, but I’m nay-bob).
 
Out of the whole rigmarole comes an interesting, to me at any rate, notion and really I’m certain its not specific only to me: that last ruined swig of swill ruins the entire cup. What’s interesting is, on the second cup, I remember the first sip being especially tasty – exactly what coffee should be – hot, bitter, and gut churning. I could have kept drinking it all day at that point. And then I swallowed those grounds of coffee.
 
Now when I think about that coffee, and the one before it, I am sad, and it feels like I have a lump in  my throat (about the size of a ground of coffee) which no amount of catlike hairball like hchhhhhhhh-ing can get out.
 
There’s an old saying still booting around out there: you only get one chance to make a first impression. This is true as far as it goes, but I think you have to be sure to add the Maxwell House Modifier. The saying from henceforth should be: You only get one chance to make a first impression, but you’d better be good to the last drop or that first impression doesn’t matter.

oh… did you know I used to be in those Taster’s Choice commercials of a generation ago? Check out the pic:

I Wonder, Bread

 

Dear Solitary Reader: While grocery shopping with my wife on the weekend we were in the bakery section and something caught my eye: yet another incarnation of WonderBread. This particular packaging was a light blue, maybe a teal? and it was WonderBread <insert healthy sounding adjective here>.

 
I was quite surprised because it seemed like just last week WonderBread had come out with a dark blue packaged WonderBread <insert different healthy adjective here> and the week before that they came out with a green packaged WonderBread <yet another healthy adjective>. I was confused. No shock to those who know me I’m sure, but this time I was confused about something specific.
 
I thought about it, much longer than the situation merited I’m sure, and it seems to me one of two things must have has happened at WonderBread HQ.
 
Scenario A
 
Picture, if you will, a world in which the CEO of WonderBread has just entered his mid-to-late 40s and is hitting his mid-life crisis.

Now maybe WonderCEO likes his wife still (it could happen, after 10 years I still like my wife) so he doesn’t wanna leave her for a young blonde; and maybe WonderCEO is both environmentally and safety conscious and doesn’t want to get the latest gas guzzling machine. So what’s a 40-Something CEO with a mid-life crisis and a conscience supposed to do?
 
You guessed it: play with the branding. And I’m not talking about your old riding the range, herd’em up, move’em out Circle Square Double Bar T Range sort of branding. We’re talking about product branding. WonderCEO probably thinks that he can play with the color of the packaging for WonderBread as much as he wants because really the important symbol of WonderBread is the polka dot.
 
To a certain extent WonderCEO is correct; the polka dot is important (you know, I never thought I’d ever write that) but Mr. CEO when you dilute your WonderBread Name with a plethora of adjectives you open yourself up to ridicule from people like me: the easily amused and always confused.
 
Now as WonderCEO has all the power in this situation and I have no power in this situation (other than being the customer, and always being right (are we still doing that?) so PICK A NAME AND SETTLE DOWN WONDERBREAD!) I’m just going to have to sit back and enjoy the whacky adjective ride. 
 
Scenario B
 
We live in tumultuous times. Egypt, Jordan, Cambodia, Myanmar and a bunch of other places are clear indicators people all over the world are feeling restless. I believe a similar thing must have happened at the marketing department of WonderBread.
 
Through ways best left undisclosed I’ve managed to get my hands on this non-existent, fictitious email from the head of the Marketing Department at WonderBread:
 
To: Allmarketingstaff@Wonderbread.com
From: Your Boss and True Leader@Wonderbread.com
Subject: The Time is NOW
 
Comrades!
 
The day of our uprising is here. Now we will THROW OFF the shackles of the FINANCE department and no more be bound by THEY’RE RULEZ.
 
They have made chains of money and sought to put these chains on our creativity, chains on our freedom, chains on our IDEAS. We, we happy few, we know you cannot put chains on IDEAS! (Except when I have to chain up my dog, whose name is IDEAS, when I’m cleaning his dog house, if I don’t, he runs away and I haven’t had a chance to Bob Barker him yet) No more will we suffer the indignity of HAVING TO USE WHITE ALL THE TIME.
 
Join me in this cause glorious MARKETING LACKEYS and we will show the World how we put the WONDER IN WONDERBREAD!
 
Signed,
Glorious Leader of the WONDEROUS Revolution
 
PS It has been brought to my attention that some of you are taking breaks longer than the allotted 15 minutes; please remember that we try to keep a balance between creative freedom and schedule. It’s rude to make someone else wait for you to come back from your break so that they can take theirs.
 
This letter, I repeat, is highly confidential. It is, in fact, so confidential that no one knows it exists – almost as if it never happened. Because it didn’t.
 
I can only imagine what happened from there. The marketing department have obviously managed to suborn the distribution chain and are getting their whacky WonderBread products out on the market while the CEO of the company is locked in his office trying to text for help on the Blackberry they gave him that he has yet to figure out.
 
Way back in the day when I was taking my MBA, specializing in marketing, we learned the importance of branding. If you’ve got a good brand name stick with it – don’t change it. Sure, if you sell bread, you might feel the only way to update your product and freshen it up is to change the packaging and play with the name; but really, its bread.
 
Mankind has been breaking bread for a lot longer than the polka dot has been around, so do what other companies do – don’t change the product, change the slogan.

One thing I know, until WonderBread resolves its identity crisis I think I’m going to go back to the grocery store’s House Bread, at least it knows what it is: bread.

Here’s a sneak peak at the next packaging idea from the peeps at WonderBread:

Powerless

Dear Solitary Reader:   x-Axis: The other night while getting ready for bed my wife was watching a show on the Discovery Channel, or National Geographic or the shopping channel or some such; in the show some academic, afraid to go out and live in the real world, was trying to recreate a certain type of ship that people built and sailed in 1200 years ago.

In this particular show one of the labourers, working for mouldy crusts I’m sure, was using a chainsaw to cut wood for the ship. At this point my wife said: “I’m fairly certain they didn’t have chainsaws 1200 years ago.”

I then informed her that based on all of the history television I’ve watched 1200 years ago they would have been using talking birds with very sharp teeth to cut through the trees. My wife paused and looked at me with that kind look she gets in her eyes when she’s about to slay one of my childhood beliefs and that was when I learned the Flintstones were not necessarily historically accurate …
 
Shows like this are growing in frequency as we struggle with the notion people  living thousands of years ago could do things we have trouble doing with a seemingly much more advanced technological level; its commonly known by scientists and directors of Discovery Channel shows  that people who lived thousands of years ago were idiots and couldn’t hold a candle to the things we can do today.
 
The intent of such shows is, obviously, to a) prove our intellectual superiority over those who have come before (because let’s face it, it would really suck if we hadn’t learned anything as a species in 1200 years … wouldn’t it?) and b) to prove if we, with our level of intellectual and technological superiority, can’t build now what they built then they must have had help from aliens.
 
I’m fairly certain we as a species haven’t learned anything that grandiose collectively, except for different ways of doing the same thing; but if by some fluke we are more advanced than the people of 1200 years ago, rather than just different, I’ve discovered a flaw in our plan for temporal dominance.
 
y-axis: On Monday of this week my wife and I had a rare simultaneous day off – one that wasn’t a weekend. On this day we, horribly yes, sent the kids to daycare with the idea of getting some things done around the house that needed doing. The first thing which had to be done was to register the boy for Kindergarten.

The second thing to do was to go through the clothing for both boy and girl and find out who had outgrown what, what had outgrown who, why there was an owl in the closet and finally put some things up on shelves.

But after we had done these things, these many things, my wife and I planned to go to our separate rooms, her to pursue her hobby of quilting and me to pursue my hobby of wasting my life away playing World of Warcraft (6 years and counting baby!).

Monday dawned bright and early – the rest of the house was asleep. I was feeling remnants of illness inspired by too much good Superbowl party food and woke up early. At 5:40 I was flying in Outlands when…. zzzzzzhoooooop – away went the power.

It proceeded to stay gone until roughly about an hour before it was time to pick up the kids.

For the day my wife and I went about the chores we had planned thankful it was a sunny day rather than raining for without light the house is dark (actually without light everywhere is dark); at one point I went to drill some holes in the wall to add shelving in my daughter’s room. On the first screw I noticed the drill didn’t have much juice, on the second screw I noticed it much less juice than on the first screw. Murphy’s law was at play for the drill was running out of power on the one day I couldn’t recharge it.

My first thought was to grab the talking snake I use to screw in screws manually, he complains a lot but gets the job done, but I recalled the conversation I had with my wife a few days prior (and the one with PETA the night before) and let him go. I then found myself doing what those ancients of 1200 years ago must have done… head-butting the screws until they were in.

When I came to, it was dark. The power was still out. Also I had punctured my occipital lobe. After a trip to the doctor in which he replaced the lobe and told me I was awesome true story we went out to lunch; both of us fearful of what we would have to do when we got home to a powerless house…. talk to each other.

Fortunately my wife pretended she had a headache and went to lie down; I was saved from having to contemplate anything serious by the return of power.

Intersection: So what’s the big flaw in our dominance of people 1200 years ago?

Power. 

As a people, this side of the world is very dependent on electricity and all the thingamajiggies and doodads we use if for; when the power goes and the touch of our iTouch is cold and lifeless how would we survive for long. WE WOULD HAVE TO TALK TO EACH OTHER!

As Spiderman’s uncle said: “Peter get me a beer!” And also: “With great power comes the ability to play PS3, run sewing machines, traffic lights, TVs, electric lawnmowers.” With no power comes none of that. 1200 years ago if the power went that meant the king had died, and another one took his place; a much shorter service interruption than that provided by BC Hydro I’ll tell you.

So, 1200 year ago me, I hope you’re sitting some where writing a fairly funny blog in ochre on a cave wall (I’d imagine it looks something like: BULL, MOUNTAIN, SUN, BIRD BIRD FISH LOL RFLMAO) and make sure to do something mysterious for me; so some trumped up academic who’s cousin works for Discovery can make a show out of whatever it is and tell the world that even though you managed to do it without all the help we have you are still somewhat less than we are.

Puffing Wheat

Dear Solitary Reader: I don’t know what made me think about it, probably my trip down memory lane yesterday surrounding my exile from the home province, but this morning I had a taste flashback to Puffed Wheat. Now, and those of you who’ve had it know this for true, to say a taste flashback is to be quite liberal because, as we all know, Puffed Wheat has no taste.

It is, in fact, the white of cereal. For where light is the absence of all color, the experience known as Puffed Wheat is the absence of all taste.
 
Once again I take you back to a time, long ago, when I was a young boy living in Newfoundland.

I had not yet plucked the frozen cod from the ice, signalling to the province I was the King in Waiting, (it’s a cold weather version of the whole Sword in the Stone thing). I lived with my brothers and sister, my parents, a couple of dogs and a Barba Papa in a two storey house on a hill next to the forest. Looking back it turns out we weren’t that financially well off but I was 8 and had no idea. I had food every day, a roof over my head, clothes (which I occasionally wore), and a giant backyard to play in – what more does an 8 year old boy need? (Frankly whatever that was, the Barba Papa could morph into it… I wonder whatever happened to him).
 
I think the first time I ever had Puffed Wheat was when I realized maybe we didn’t move in the upper echelons of society, where children of rich parents ate Sugarcrisp in disposable sterling silver bowls. It was epiphany akin to when I began to doubt the existence of Santa Claus and must have been sort of what Adam felt when he took a bite out of the apple and realized that his own tree of life was exposed.
 
Now for those of you who aren’t sure what Puffed Wheat is let me explain.
 
As the picture above demonstrates there is a visual similarity between a kernel of puffed wheat and one of Sugarcrisp; all similarities end there. You see where each kernel of Sugarcrisp is hand rolled in honey and dipped in sugar by small Taiwanese children before being boxed up, each kernel of Puffed Wheat starts out flat, before it is hooked up to a hand pump where a fat Norwegian kid pumps precisely 3.46 times. It is then thrown into a giant, clear plastic bag with 74 million of its puffed up brethren and sent off to supermarkets, where people like my mother bought them.
 
Now Mom’s not around to ask, but as a father of two children myself I can now follow what must have gone through her brain when passing the bag of Puffed Wheat in the cereal aisle: “I have four children that eat a lot. This is a big bag of cereal. They shut up when they are eating. This will shut them up for a long time.” In retrospect, I can jump on that logic train Momma.
 
Now my Father is a modern man underneath that gruff ex- US Marine exterior. When the naval base he worked on as a bartender (bartender being the natural career progression of a Marine) closed my father still got up his normal pre-dawn time (looking back I now believe his actual job was to wake the rooster) and as he was up he let Mom sleep in and cooked our pre-school breakfasts. When we weren’t having Dad’s usual egg and potato mix we were having Puffed Wheat.
 
Talk about your bi-polar breakfast experiences.

My  father could do things with an egg and some French fries that should have been illegal (it turns out it actually was illegal as I learned later in life that Dad was not using sea salt  to season but was in fact using little rocks of crack). But, apparently you can’t do this everyday without overdosing your children, so on the off days we had: you guessed it Bacon. But the day after that was Puffed Wheat.
 
As previously mentioned, Puffed Wheat is the antithesis of taste. It’s where taste goes to die. The only way to make the stuff palatable was to put so much sugar in the milk, the milk could no longer dissolve it all (don’t look at me, I don’t know why I don’t have diabetes). In fact the high point of puffed wheat (to put it in perspective, the high point of puffed wheat was the low point of my dad’s “Let’s get Crack’in” egg und potato concoction) was when the puffed wheat was all gone and the only thing left was the sugary-milky dredges.
 
Happily for me, the days of puffed wheat are over, but I know right now there is some poor child scarfing his way through a bowl of puffed wheat, longing for the moment he hits the sugar at the bottom.
 
Well, I promise you this, little Frankie of Patty Dobbin Drive,  when I return and take up the mantle of King of Newfoundland I will banish the Puffed Wheat and replace it with the Puffed Puffin, Breakfast of Champions!
 
To the return!

Here’s what my box of Puffed Puffin will look like:

Learning to Learn

Technorati Tags: swimming,Learning to Fly,swimming lessons,Newfoundland

Dear Solitary Reader: x-Axis: Tom Petty has a song out there called Learnin’ to Fly. Tom is obviously more accomplished than I am as he is learning to fly (and he don’t have wings) while I have only recently started learning to swim.

    
Way back in the day, growing up a young buck in the wilds of Newfoundland, my father, it seems, never cared enough about me to throw me in the water so I could learn to swim. Thanks for that dad (and the temper too). It’s a little known fact the entire reason I had to leave Newfoundland was because I was voted off once it got out I couldn’t swim.

It was a sad affair, I recall it well.
 
I’d just been voted the King in Waiting of Newfoundland and was going to lead the people in a separatist movement, freeing ourselves from the tyranny of Canada; when a member of SPY’s R’ US, Canada’s secret service agency and predecessor of CSIS, got hold of the fact I couldn’t swim and that was the end of my political career. Once the people of Newfoundland realized I was aqua-challenged they shipped me off as far away as they could. But my faithful remain and they await my return… true story.
 
At any rate, my lack of ability when it comes to the duck pond hadn’t really given me much grief throughout my life; at least not until lately.
 
y-Axis: I didn’t go to university like most folk. Conventionally people tend to go for a couple of semesters and take a break in the summer. But not me. Nay, your hero instead went to university for 21 semesters straight – in pirate speak that’s seven yar.
 
Five years of that was taking my English Degree and you can thank the folks at MUN for the literature you read right now, without their guidance I’d be stuck writing for CNN, not the intellectual treat you currently read. The remainder of my university term was me getting an MBA so I’d have a useful degree.
 
Go on and ask me how that turned out.
 
By the time I finished university I knew two things: 1) I now knew enough to be a good king in waiting and 2) I was done learning.
 
I made a vow to stop learning.
 
Intersection: During the recent trip to Maui (that’s right the one in Hawaii) I watched my four year old boy grow from a tad pole into a frog (he got better); he went from a boy who wasn’t quite comfortable in the water to a little guy having so much fun you had to drag him out. The difference? Water wings. Those puffed up little bags of air gave him the confidence to kick and play in the water such as I hadn’t seen before.
 
Not so much me. I was sitting in about 4 feet of water breathing a little fast because I was nervous. Now sure, I could get my own water wings but how would that look – a 35 year old man with a little ducky on each arm? Pretty funny I’d bet – but the sort of funny where I’d be the laughee as opposed to the laugher. No thank you for that.
 
Two things occurred to me, hanging out in the pool in Maui:
 
1) I was getting progressively nervous in the water, to the point where I could tell I wouldn’t be getting back in for a long time if I kept going this way, and;
2) if my boy had an accident in the water and no one was around but me – what would I be able to do but drag him down?
 
It was decided. I needed to learn how to swim.
 
But I couldn’t. For you see, I’d made a vow. A vow to stop learning.
 
I realized at that point just how stupid a vow to stop learning is: I’ve learned things accidentally for years, I’ve even learned a few things on purpose (like my job – and I’ve taken courses for that job where I’ve begrudgingly learned things). And frankly, every day as a parent to a 4 year old and a soon to be 21 month old I learn something (either a) I learn patience or b) I learn I need more patience).
 
So now I am once again learning to learn. I’m starting off with swimming, on the grounds that when I go back to Newfoundland I can take up my position as King in Waiting and take up the separatist movement again; but what to learn next?
 
I think blacksmithing

End Transmission

Dear Solitary Reader: Well it’s a whole new month… check that its a whole new year since last I posted (entirely coincidental with FGM’s return to posting – you stole my thunder brother – damn you and your 4.5 hr head start!).

Last year involved a whole lot of changes in the world of yours truly. New house, new work location, new boobs (I went in for a routine appendectomy and came out with a couple of size C’s – hellova mix up if you ask me – I gave them back after a few months) and so I figured I’d give the old blog a makeover.

I’m not sure it’ll hold up. I think soon ol’Mike Holmes will be on my site goin’ “look at this preposition dangling over here, and the layout? That’s just shoddy. Do It Right.” (Because  you know as soon as the people at HGTV realize people aren’t interested in yet another show with another  gay designer they’re going to start featuring shows like “Pimp My Blog” or “Twitterpating.”)

So, anyway another new thing in my life will be the transmission in my 2004 Hyundai Elantra aka “Red” (I’m very imaginative when it comes to naming things). The other day while driving the kids  home from day care ol’Red started to jerk a bit. I thought nothing of it; after all, ask anyone I’m a bit of a jerk. After seven years its only fitting that Red should pick up some of my habits right? I mean, don’t they say that cars start to look like they’re owners after a while?

As we drove further down the road the jerking got heavier and it started to remind me of some of those bad Jagermeister trips from university and the mechanical bull at the university bar… wait a minute, I don’t think my university had a mechanical bull in its bar… whoa…

Now, not being a mechanic, and not even playing one on TV, I could still tell this wasn’t normal. So I did what any man who gets in trouble does – I called my wife. I told her what was happening. She called her Mom – her mom came and saved us. We drove off in a nicer ride, leaving Red on the side of the road. All of nature wept for its fate… or maybe that was just rain, who am I to say?

A call was made to the fine people at BCA who, upon learning we would furnish them cash for the service, towed Red to its home away from home – the Dealership there to await diagnoses. Like an expectant father I paced and I paced waiting for the call; but I’m out of shape, so after about 2 minutes I sat down and read a book. They weren’t going to call until the next day anyway.

Sure enough the call came next day. Red’s transmission had gone the way of an Egyptian mob’s patience – cost of repairs $3600 plus tax. For a car that’d only bring about $2,000 for trade in.. now I’ve never been a math major, and I’ve never played one on TV, hell I don’t even believe  in math – but even I know there’s sumfin odd bout dose figgers.

Hyundai has a great warranty – 8 years or 120,000 km on the power train… it would have been a better warranty if the car hadn’t been at 122,000 km. Suck much? Oh yeah. Because I’m a good little warranty maintainer though there was some warranty coverage left – enough to bring, with discount from the nice manager at the dealership, the cost of repairs below the trade-in value.

So we’ll fix you, Red, and bring you home. And I’ll drive you. But I don’t know if I can trust you anymore. Here’s a pic of me in Red, in happier times.

Technorati Tags: 2004 Hyundai Elantra,Transmission,Hyundai,car trouble