A Loco Viewpoint by Chris McKerracher

A Quirky Trigger

2010-09-29T16:21:00.000-06:00

We all have our quirks... well, at least that’s what I’ve told Cupcake. It‘s been said everyone is normal until you get to know them and Cupcake knows me quite well. She says I’ve always been “blessed” with my quota of quirks, plus a few extra eccentricities thrown in for being an early adopter. One particular peculiarity of mine, though innocuous enough, drives me crazy. I know many think my journey to join the barmy army is a short drive indeed; walking distance, really, but I wondered if it’s just me or if it’s one of those strange characteristics everyone does but nobody ever talks about, like stop light nostril exploration.

The aberration works like this; something in my surroundings will make a random noise and my subconscious mind processes it instantaneously (Cupcake disagrees with the speed she feels my thought processes occur at but that’s not important right now.) The memory sorter-outer part of my brain (That’s what we amateur brain experts call it) compares it with all previously heard noises to see if it is recognizable. When a possible match is found, it’s kicked upstairs to my consciousness for assessment, sort of like E-harmony without the dating. Invariably, the random noise; a persistent tapping or a chime or a squeak or really anything, reminds me of a song or a melody or often a few bars of some long forgotten tune.

Here’s an example. When I play FreeCell on my computer (instead of knuckling down to write the article you’re currently reading) there is a synthesized electronic organ note that is produced every time a card is added to the “home cells” in the upper right. At each occurrence... like 52 times a game, I am reminded of Boney M’s version of the Christmas song “When a Child is Born” as the first chord is quite similar to the annoying electronic note noise. It got so bad I shut my sound off on my speakers when I play FreeCell, although it still plays in my head every time a card moves up just like Pavlov’s stupid mutt drooling over doorbells.

I’ve had something as simple as a randomly plucked string evoke music ranging from Beatle hits to the theme to “The Jackie Gleason Show”. Just the other day I ended up with the world famous one hit wonder from the early 70’s; Mouth and McNeil’s immortal “How Do You Do?” from listening to a passing road grader. Some sound in thrum of the motor or clank of the machinery conjured up that mouldy oldie and I’ll never know what. I can’t count how often the sound of something rubbing rhythmically on wood brings to mind CCR’s “Looking Out My Back Door”.

I will admit being reminded of these dusty ditties is kind of cool sometimes. An errant sound triggering a pleasant musical memory is a good thing. The problem lies with the fact that it isn’t just a fleeting thought. The song stays with me, sometimes for days. The worst part is that occasionally, I only know a snippet of the song and that wee snippet will play over and over again. If it’s an instrumental, it’s even more frustrating since the only way I know to rid myself of a stuck song is to locate it on the ‘net and play it over and over. Unfortunately, finding the name of a snippet of music is tough to locate when all you know is “la de do de da do da da da da de de de” plucked out pizzicato-style on a violin. So it plays over and over like a Meatloaf 8-track tape at a ‘70’s stoner party, only much shorter.

Part of the problem for me, is since I was a teenager, some of my siblings and I would play “radio race” constantly. When a song came on the airwaves, first one to name the band got a point. The points never added up really but were more of a point of honour. Thus, it became imperative for me, in my formative years, to be acutely aware of the opening strains of any song I happen to hear. The urge to yell out the artist from somebody else’s music is strong and it takes all my strength of will not to look like a dork. I believe this caused my affliction. It neatly explains why, when I hear a faint whistle of brakes just starting to go, I am reminded of the first high pitched whistled notes of Manfred Mann’s 1967 hit “Mighty Quinn”. (It always makes me wonder why “When Quinn the Eskimo gets here, everybody’s gonna jump for joy”. Can he catch a Ricky Ray pass?)

I’ve asked a few people whether this phenomenon has happened to them and there was a mix of responses from my admittedly tiny polling group. There were those that looked at me pityingly as if I’d just divulged I had begun to use Depends. Then there were those that would shake their head and snicker “You are a weird one, McKerracher... but then we knew that.”

But there was also a small group; they would lower their voice and look furtively about before blurting out their shame. There weren’t many of them but I was still relieved.

It’s not just me.

Introducing the 2010 Cupcakemobile

2010-09-23T16:25:00.000-06:00

   My cherished bride of what seems an eternity, (albeit one that flew by faster than a flat-out Ferrari) my sweet Cupcake, has many wonderful qualities. Besides being an able administrator for a company at the airport, she’s also a fine cook, craftily creative, and a dab hand with a sewing machine (for new items only, mind you, the clothing in the mending pile has gone in and out of fashion four times).
   However, there’s one area Cupcake is sorely lacking. There is a skill she is so bad at, she actually lets me take charge. That skill is car shopping. Here’s an example of Cupcake’s negotiating strategy with a car salesman.Salesman: Here’s one you’ll like; it’s not black.
Cupcake: I LOVE IT! I WANT IT I’LL PAY ANYTHING FOR IT!!
Me: Oh no!
   Salesman: Mwahahahahaha!
   It was this exact strategy that, a few years back, forced us into the purchase of a four wheeled pile of feces, the brand I will charitably leave unmentioned, although, I’ll admit, it wasn’t black and did have a sunroof. Cupcake thought it was “cute” despite the fact it was lousy on gas for a car that looked like it was swiped from a L’il Tykes Gas and Go Garage set.
   I’d eyed the interest rate it was bought at, the years left to pay and the current market value. I then factored in the reality that things have begun to go haywire with it. (It cost about a grand to find out the problem causing the “check engine” light to go on was, ultimately, a flaw in the “check engine” light.) Logically, I came to the conclusion it was time to make a change.
   Trying to select a vehicle was going to be a chore, however. Since we owed more than the car was worth, we would have to tack the difference onto the new car loan. To offset that, though, we’d be trading a loan at over 8% on a six year old car to 2.49% for a brand new one. Another strong motivator was that winter was coming and her poop-mobile is colder than a serial-killer’s smile.
   When I told Cupcake of what I’d decided, she was cautiously excited. She itemized the “must haves” that any prospective vehicle would be equipped with.“My needs are really simple,” she asserted nobly. “I just has to have an automatic transmission, a decent heater and for it not to be black.”
   Cupcake once had a black van and she’d swelter in it in the hot days of summer, something anyone living here for less than eighteen months would not have yet experienced. She argued her anti-black vehicle stance by pointing out how all of her subsequent vehicles have been white and she never had another in-car crematorium problem.
   Telling her I’d made sure all her subsequent vehicles had air conditioning following her overheated van experience was for naught. Logic rarely works on Cupcake. She remained undeterred. No black vehicles. Period.“Oh, and also,” she hastily added, “I need it to be higher off the ground; like a van or an SUV but I don’t want a truck. It has to get good gas mileage and have a long lasting warranty. It has to have cruise control and a CD/MP3 stereo and keyless entry and...”
   “Woah, woah, woah!” I broke in on her in panic. “Do you think a loans manager is made of money? What happened to ‘I don’t care as long as it’s not black’?”
   “Well, you asked,” she maintained haughtily. “If you don’t want to make me happy, that’s fine.”
   Being married this long, I knew it wasn’t fine. I listened for a half an hour to the rest of her “simple needs”. Since she has the shrewd poker face of a five year old, I made my initial foray to the dealership alone. No sense getting her all fired up if a new vehicle isn’t in our budget. I will admit, however, my heart raced (outwardly controlled, of course) when I sized up the model I had researched. After a discussion with the salesman, I called Cupcake.
   “It’s got more bells and whistles than an obsessive model railroad fancier,” I told her enthusiastically, “All the things you want plus everything else you can think of. It would be perfect for you and I am sure I can beat them down to a price we can live with.”
   “Oh, Honey, thank you!” Cupcake squealed with joy. “I have to ask though.... what colour is it?”
   “Oh... ahh... errrr.... uh...” I frantically groped for the most tactful way to describe it but finally decided on the truth. “Well, it’s not black... more of a... well... to be honest, a ‘baby poop after eating squash’ colour. ‘Burnt orange’ would be my closest guess, but it’s brand new, fully loaded, has a 5 year warranty and is only a few bucks more a month than we are currently paying for your four-door Fridgidaire.”
   “BABY POOP!” Cupcake gulped. “Really? Baby poop?”
   Then there was silence.
   “Well...” she finally responded heartily. “I like babies!”
   She’s already named it “Punkin”.

In Defence of Pennies

2010-09-14T17:32:00.000-06:00

   Between the sheets of this very newspaper, a fellow scribe had offered up a vicious condemnation of the least among our coins, the ignoble penny. His misguided attitude was that pennies should be abolished because they cost the system more than they are worth. Spouting “statistics” left, right and centre (but mostly right of centre) he cruelly made the case for their death sentence. (Speaking of which, where in heck did the “cent” button go?)
   But pennies are vital. It’s common knowledge a penny is the going rate for thoughts, although admittedly for many, they are overcharging. And what manner of coinage will fall from heaven if pennies are abolished? Twoonies? Man, if you get one of those in the head, it could kill you.
   The problem is pennies aren’t considered real change. We hoard them like television interventionees but we sure don’t roll them up and cash them. Apparently, it’s not worth the effort to go to the store, get some rolling papers, take them back and get the correct coin rolling papers, count out piles of fifty pennies, try and make even stacks and somehow manage to neatly arrange the coins in a tubular shape tightly bound in coin wrapper; repeating this step until all of your decades of penny hoarding has been twisted up, then take the time to go to an actual bank, (rolled up coins are a drag to deposit in the “insert money here” slot in the ATM) wait an eternity in the mystifying rope-fence labyrinth waiting for an organic banking interface, (also known as a teller) while looking like some kind of wishing well coin rustler, all for, maybe, a whole $17.32. Not a chance, unless, perhaps, I was a starving student, struggling artist or a Pipestone Flyer employee.
   The reason my venerable colleague is incorrect (again) is that the problem isn’t the penny. The issue is in the lack of circulation. We need to get those babies circulating like a cougar after the divorce. What pennies need is better PR. We need to find a way to give value to the penny; to make it the symbol upon which the concept of collective worth is built. If we could harness the power of these pennies, just think what good we could do without missing a dime.
   Imagine, if you will, communities competing to see who could amass the most pennies with the winner flying the other’s flag for a day or some such. The collected coinage could be rolled up by volunteers with a rented/borrowed/temporarily stolen automatic coin roller and cashed in for a community project in need of a hefty cash injection (is there anybody that can’t think of even one?) The worthy causes would be, ahem, rolling in dough. (Sorry, it had to be said.)
   If the idea goes bacterial or viral or whatever they call it, volunteer associations all over the country could use the power of the penny to enhance their communities, too. Soon, all those pennies will begin to wash back into the copper pipeline to be reused over and over. It will allow the Canadian Mint to cease having to make another half a billion pennies every year and we will all save the $130M from the federal budget, rid ourselves of a storage nuisance and feel good about doing acts of charity without feeling nary a pinch.
   So how do we round up the pennies? Well, the Loco World Group Research Centre has so far failed to develop a magnet that attracts pennies although they did create an awesome recipe for Tequila Caesars. Therefore we will have to go back to the basics. We could get the cubs and scouts to do a penny drive while the grads are doing their bottle drive. We could have industrial strength scales at competing town offices that people could dump their pesky pennies into when they stop by to pay the water bill or whatever. There could be a central dump off point at the annual fair perhaps, offering onlookers free throws at the dunk tank with each donation of a pound. The possibilities are only limited by the imagination of the community groups and it’s been my experience that those groups’ imaginations are bounded only by those activities frowned upon in the criminal code and even then, well, there’s been some grey areas.
   I will admit that so far, the two notable nations to have succumbed to penny-hating riots and banned pennies from cash transactions have both reported few problems with the change in pocket change, but let’s face it; we’re talking about Australia and New Zealand, for crying out loud. They’re way down there on the bottom of the planet and all their blood is constantly rushing to their heads. They are as crazy as koalaroos or whatever freakish creatures they have roaming about. They probably never noticed the difference. I don’t know what my aforementioned learned colleague Brian’s excuse is, however.
   So instead of throwing out pennies, let’s all gather them up and see what we can do when we all put our heads and tails together. Perhaps a penny saved is a playground earned.

Advice for School Kids

2010-09-07T15:42:00.000-06:00

Ahhhhh.... the kids are back in school. The parents of school-aged children are all breathing a collective sigh of relief that their world can get back to normal, as if “normal” exists. Still, educating the yard apes of the land is a good thing. I, personally, am a big supporter of education. It is rather sobering to realize, though, that had I stayed in school, I’d be in grade 45 by now. Still, it is impossible to miss the hubbub at the stores and the incessant “It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year” commercials, even for us folks whose kids have already run the public education gauntlet. Therefore, as a public service, the think tank at the Loco World Group headquarters (AKA Jeff’s Bar and Grill) has developed a number of guidelines to follow for a happy, well-adjusted educational experience.

1) If you ride your bike to school, to be cool, make sure it’s a Harley.
2) If your dog eats your homework, blame anything else. That excuse has never worked; not even once. Maybe try, “Mom and Dad were drunk again and I couldn’t concentrate while hiding in the basement.”
3) Demand the best I-gadgets from your folks; I-Pad, I-Phone, etc. Just remember the magic mantra “I-Want”.
4) There is an age when it is no longer cool to bring a “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” lunchbox to school. That age is thirty-five.
5) On fake sick notes, you will undergo less scrutiny if, instead of putting something like the flu or a cold, you say you had blood in your stool. Shuts ‘em right up.
6) Fellas, when getting the strap, it is not cool to pull away. Take it like a man. It makes for a great story when you’re older. What? They’re not allowed to do that anymore? Pity.
7) Never put your tongue on the metal pole of the swings in the school playground in winter, even if you’re double-dog dared. Actually, it’s not even advisable in summer. Ewww!
8) High school is no place for drugs and alcohol. That’s what university is for.
9) Never tell your parents how many apples you’ve thrown out from your bagged lunch without eating them. They would kill you.
10)You don’t have to be dropped off a block from school so you’re not seen with your nerdy parent. To be cool, get dropped off right in front of the door. Make sure you ride in the backseat and as you get out of the car, say in a loud voice, “Pick me up at three-thirty, Jeeves, there’s a good lad.”
11) When the snow flies, remember toques just wreck your hair and wearing mitts makes it hard to smoke. It’s way better to jam your hands deep into the pockets of your light fall jacket (which looks so sharp compared to that bulky parka) and hunch your shoulders like Quasimodo. It’s almost as warm and WAY less geeky.
12) Girls, now’s the time to really go for the gusto with back to school outfits. Whine that the new stuff you got is so last Thursday and that you’ll just die if you don’t get the latest style from (insert trendy store name here. Value Village need not apply).
13) Boys, it’s true that girls have cooties but the cooties eventually grow into curves you’ll appreciate later. You still won’t understand girls any better at this juncture, however. This never goes away.
14) Never, ever, ever take a paper clip and bend it into a “U” shape and place it on an elastic band you’ve strung between thumb and forefinger and let fly, bow and arrow style at, say, the teacher’s posterior. You will be ratted out for sure and there would be grave consequences. But it IS fun to think about.
15) Tired of always being picked last for sports teams? So was I. Sorry, can’t help you.
16) Don’t sweat the small stuff. In job interviews and performance evaluations throughout my thirty-year career, I have never had anyone ask what mark I got on my grade eight science final.
17) When it’s your turn for show and tell, never bring a dead thing. The teacher always freaks out.
18) Don’t understand algebra? Don’t worry. I’m almost 50 and I’ve never needed it. I think the only purpose in becoming good at it is to be able to teach it to others. Other than that, it probably has no practical purpose. Sort of like learning Latin. Or Klingon.
19) Are you young guys still wearing your jeans ten sizes too big so they droop so low they advertise your choice of undergarment? If so, just stop it!
20) Don’t pull anyone’s finger. Sadly, the advice doled out by the Loco World Group think tank is highly suspect and must, for liability reasons, divulge warnings associated with their use. May cause nausea, vomiting and light-headedness. Some have experienced sharp pains...in the neck. May contain nuts. Not to be used with other advice columns as interactions may occur. If you experience any of these symptoms, call a doctor.

Someones Watching

2010-08-31T14:25:00.000-06:00

     Have you ever been in a room in your house all by yourself and yet, not feel alone? You are suddenly alerted, by who knows what sense, that somehow there’s some other entity in the area and its eyes are on you. The hair on the back of your neck starts to stick up like someone’s duct-taped an icicle to your spine and you look around but there’s no one there.
   Usually I chalk it up to Cupcake spying on me but when I know she’s in bed fast asleep (no doubt halfway through yet another whodunit she’ll never figure out) the sensation is unsettling to say the least. It’s not just me that has sensed this... presence in our house. Our boys have told us over the course of their lives about strange experiences, sounds and sensations they claim to have witnessed. We always did the “good parent” thing and told them it was their imaginations and they better quit stalling and go to sleep or it could go badly for their video game allotment. It shut them up at the time (a skill I have long lost) but to this day they are absolutely convinced there is, well, something, but they’re not sure what, in the house.
   Even staunch Cupcake, who’s only succumbed to nonsense once in her life (the day she agreed to marry me) and is stupendously unshakeable (unless mice are involved), has had odd experiences. When asked if she had ever noticed anything out of the ordinary, she admitted to hearing some weird, inexplicable sounds when she has been sitting home by herself (since I never take her anywhere, she had to add).“Swear you won’t tell anyone,” she confided, “because they would think I was crazy. (I bit my tongue on the crazy line... too easy.) “Shortly after our black lab, KC passed away, I am certain I heard the sounds of a dog eating from KC’s metal bowl. I turned around to where the metal bowl used to sit but I didn’t see anything that could have made that particular noise. Still, I heard it clear as a bell.”
   A chill coursed through my body as if a parade had just walked over my grave.
   “The exact same thing happened to me!” I told her, my heart pounding like the stereo of a teenager’s muscle-car. “I’m not kidding! It was exactly as you described!” We both executed a creepy-feeling shoulder twinge simultaneously.
   It’s not just weird noises, either. Things go missing in our house with alarming regularity. Sure, we share our house with two sons that couldn’t remember where they put something down to save their souls. “Nope, never seen it,” they say. “Uh huh”, I think to myself.
   Still, that doesn’t explain every incident. About a week ago I was up for work early. I was the only awake person in the house. I looked for my daily pill holder thingy where I keep it on the vanity in the bathroom. It was nowhere in sight. I searched high and low. Finally, I gave up and jumped in the shower. As soon as I emerged from the plastic curtained cabinet, my eyes immediately alighted on my pill container sitting exactly where I’d left it, on the vanity the day before.
   When I relayed the event to Cupcake, I was surprised that she wasn’t.
   “Stuff like that happens all the time to me,” she admitted airily. “It doesn’t seem particularly malevolent. What’s the big deal?”
   “Well, I get creeped out when I’m on the computer and I feel as if someone has just blown air from their lips onto the back of my head but there’s no one else in the room.” I answered, watching closely to see if she was taking me seriously, a rare event.
   “I agree, that would be a bit unsettling, but, really, what can we do about it?” she pointed out matter-of-factly. “We don’t know what “it” is. Practically everything that has ever happened can be explained away. You can’t explain a gut feeling and you can’t deny it’s there but it makes for lousy evidence to take to the authorities, whatever authorities might actually take us seriously. At most we could phone one of those stupid cable “Ghost Hunter”-type shows but what would that accomplish except to make us the laughingstocks of Calmar?”
   “Okay, fair enough,” I conceded, “there is little we can do. So what do you think it is?”
   “I’m not sure,” Cupcake looked off reflectively. “Many possibilities come to mind. It could be a person who is caught in some kind of temporal shift or alternate universe. It might be an unseen observer from another planet who does things to see our reaction. It could be all kinds of things, really.”
   “I notice you didn’t suggest it might be a ghost,” I prodded.
   “Oh don’t be silly,” she chuckled mysteriously, “You’d have to be crazy to believe in ghosts.”

SETI - Close Encounters

2010-08-24T16:22:00.000-06:00

   A couple snippets hot off the wire caught my interest recently. (Okay, it wasn’t really on “the wire” whatever “the wire” might be, but were actually internet news websites, however “the wire” sure sounds all journalistical don’t it?) The first was a report concerning Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer with an institute based in Mountain View, California dedicated to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. (SETI, not to be confused with “yeti”, the possibly mythical mountaineering cousin of Sasquatch that hangs out in the Himalayas.) Cosmo-politician Shostak claimed they feel confident we Earthlings will be in contact with an alien life form within 25 years. The assertion was contained in a speech given to a SETI convention in Santa Monica, California, in which the researcher made the bold prediction, adding the momentous event is very likely to be in the lifetimes of the mostly youthful attendees. (I’d bet afterward, the bulk of the attendees went home to their parents basements to play World of Warcraft.)
   ‘Holy mackerel! 25 years!? We better start cleaning up before the visitors arrive! Quick! Hide the homeless!’ was the first thought through my mind. Then my head was filled with the voice of my father which temporarily drowned out the other voices. It was a recollection of him giving me advice regarding the news media.
   “Follow the money,” he said. “To find out why things are happening, just think of who stands to gain.” I instantly recognized that it was obvious. Of COURSE Mr. Shostak has to deliver an optimistic prognostication for contacting little green men or whatever size and colour they may be. He may even believe it himself, although that may be irrelevant. The point is, as a privately funded institution, according to Wikipedia, anyway (and Wikipedia IS the sum total of the world’s knowledge, and not Ben Stein as reported by his publicist), in order to continue to receive grants and funding, Mr. Shostak must be more optimistic than a teenage boy buying a condom for his wallet. Sure, much of the search for interplanetary neighbours consists of scanning for radio waves and there is only a slight possibility advanced alien cultures might not have some other broadcast medium, cable perhaps, but there’s jobs at stake here, including Senior Astronomer Shostak’s.
   Don’t get me wrong, by the way. I am very interested in SETI and even offered up my home computer for a time to the SETI@home research group. This organization has harnessed the down-time of an estimated 290,000 home computers which makes it the 7th most powerful computer system in the world. (The most powerful being, of course, Bill Gates’ home computer followed closely by the one that checks to see if I’ve made a car payment or not.)
   In addition to my SETI phase, I’ve always been fascinated with the space sciences. Cupcake likes to say I have space between my ears but I think she means something else. Still, I think it would be great to have friendly foreigners from neighbouring nebula show up to say “Hi!” and be on their way. But what if they like it here so much they want to stay? How would we feel about that? Would they be processed by the immigration department or would they remain illegal aliens? Would they be allowed in Arizona?
   Even worse than simply over-friendly, what if they’re hostile, mean and vicious; a planet of divorce attorneys, for example? What if they are like Klingons with no Star Fleet to come to our rescue? I doubt even Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars project could have shot down a Klingon photon torpedo. There’s so much at stake!
   On the bright side, there may be helpful aliens out there in the cosmos, committed to helping us achieve an environmentally sustainable planet with fair distribution of food; with peace and harmony in all our lives and tofu burgers for everyone. At least it would shut David “Eeyore” Suzuki up. However, I’m not sure that having some off-worlders telling us what to do would be really popular. We much prefer being bossed around, repressed and manipulated by our own kind.
   Another newsy bit to “hit the wire” (actually, the “The Mother Nature Network)” was that when/if aliens ever stopped for gas on their way to visit relatives in the Andromeda galaxy, their interest would not be in any part of the entire body of science from the first head-bashing rock to the IPhone 4. Rather their focus would be on our arts and music. Obviously the “panel of experts” quoted in the article (their names or credentials were not mentioned, probably to protect their professional reputations in other fields) have never watched TV or listened to any of the music coming out of my son’s MP3 player. What if they don’t have fiction? What if they don’t get that TV and movies aren’t real? What would they think of “gangsta rap”? It makes you wonder why they would ever want to meet us. Maybe that’s why we haven’t made contact. They don’t want us to know they’re there. How embarrassing!

The Jetblue Blues

2010-08-17T16:25:00.000-06:00

   Unless you’ve been living entirely out of the news loop recently, perhaps camping or just coming out of a coma, you must have heard about the flamboyant flake who quit his job at JetBlue Airlines in a blaze of media-fuelled glory. He allegedly (we news guys can say anything we want if we preface it with the word “allegedly”) got irate at a customer who smacked him on the head with some luggage and refused to apologize or some such. It’s hard to say because many of the reports of the original altercation are more vague than a politician answering questions about his college days. The flighty attendant, one Steven Slater, was said to have (almost as good as “was alleged to”) then flounced off to the galley and proceeded to commandeer the intercom to give the passengers a totally different in-flight instruction than they were used to. He told the assembled customers in general and his new nemesis in particular, to “F___ off”, swiped a couple beers (he was, possibly, an undercover Canadian) and slid down the emergency escape to make his getaway. He somehow managed to evade airport security (not a particularly difficult feat, apparently) and made his way home. A media circus that would make P. T. Barnum jealous was, of course, on hand when police showed up to arrest him on a couple charges but he appeared happy enough when he was led off. He was obviously enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame.
   The situation has brought into focus a number of issues that require more examination than a Paris Hilton home video. The first facet of this story that troubles me is the fact that his creative resignation technique has raised the bar on leaving one’s employment. Suddenly, it’s just not good enough to yell “I quit!” and go off in a huff (or a car or bike or whatever). Now, your exit strategy has to be worthy of a YouTube video, appearances on all the talk shows and a book deal. To steal the limelight from other guys who are going to “go flight attendant” (formerly “go postal”) they will have to do even crazier and outrageous stunts to capture the public’s ephemeral attention span. What’s next? Giving the CEO a “wet willy” at the annual shareholders meeting then streaking out of the convention centre? Where will it all lead to? This can`t be good.
   Another issue this guy’s daring departure raises is the fear this is the beginning of a trend where service industries workers are going to demand to be treated like human beings. On the surface, this may seem like a reasonable request given that their jobs are often stressful, low-paying and difficult. Take flight attendants for example, since we’re on the topic. Their list of responsibilities includes everything from thwarting would-be terrorists and hijackers to handing out amazingly small packages of peanuts and slinging beer. After all, an airplane is essentially a flying tavern where you aren’t allowed to toss out the drunks. (The paperwork after such an event would be staggering, much like some customers.) The attendants are both bartenders and bouncers that also hand out itty-bitty pillows when you’re sleepy. And yet many are treated poorly by their cranky customers because, in our society, like so many others, the service class is fair game for our grumpy tirades. We pay their salary, by gum, and we expect to be treated better than royalty, which airline ads with their smiley-faced actors lead us to expect. Then reality hits. You mix 300+ parts stressed out air traveller with seven parts airline employees, add liquor and what you have is a recipe for trouble.
   If this trend continues, society may suffer dire consequences. If you are a wee bit curt with the teenaged Timmy`s toiler making your ice capp, is he/she going to spazz out and fling the delicious, icy treat in your face, then flee the scene amid the strobes of paparazzi camera flashes? The people behind you that must now wait even longer in line for their toffee coffee and Timbits are going to want blood; namely yours. We may all end up being forced to be civil to every single person in the service sector, yet another group we’ve never had to be nice to before. Where’s the fairness in that?
   The last wrinkle to this story we need to explore is the personal consequences of Mr. Slater’s great escape. After giving the paying public the finger with more fanfare than Michael Jackson’s funeral, who would ever hire him? How could any self-respecting HR manager (there must be one or two out there) trust a man known to be demonstrably willing to tell their hard-won, paying customers to eff off? Even worse, he stole beer! That`s lower than Michael Ignatieff`s approval rating. When he slid down the inflatable slide to freedom, his chances for future employment plunged downward even faster. Very few companies will take a chance on a temperamental, surly employee. There’s nothing left for him but the civil service. Poor guy.

Golfing with Bob

2010-08-11T10:01:00.000-06:00

   I love golf, as stupid as the concept is; a cross-country driving range with a whole whack of “spot the little white ball in amongst all the little white mushroom caps and little white dandelion fluffs ” thrown in. Still, it is a sport I enjoy immensely. The fact that you’re not only allowed beer while you’re playing, but actively encouraged to drink it, is a major plus. They even send out sweet young things with cooler carts to sell it to you! Heck, I’d buy one even if I didn’t drink!
One of my favourite golfing partners (if by ‘partner’ I mean someone I ardently hope does poorly and screws up so I can come out ahead... much like a marriage partner) is my oldest brother, Bob. To say that my fine frère is a real character is an understatement in the league of “the Edmonton Eskimos are a wee bit unlucky this year”.
   I had just come home from another successful golf outing with Bob (successful in that we returned home with more balls than we left with; our principal goal) and felt a bit sore. The room was dark to keep it cool from the evening sun and I collapsed into the recliner with The Golf Network (aka Nap TV) muttering in the background. Slowly, inevitably, my eyelids grew heavier than Lady Gaga’s makeup. With the golf announcers’ hushed tones mingling with my recent adventures on the links, I was suddenly transported to the first tee off with Bob, except this time, we had a gallery much like at the Master’s, and our game was being broadcast internationally. We take you now to the first tee in this most fateful of all golf match-ups between bitter rivals Bob and Chris.
Announcer #1: Well, David, it is a beautiful day here at Thorsby Golf and Temporary Shack and here comes Bob to tee off. He is dressed in his trademark work coveralls and silly hat. The crowd shrinks back a bit, remembering how often he lets fly off the toe of his driver.
Announcer #2: Bob addresses the ball.... here’s the backswing and.... ooohhhhh, swing and a miss. He is going to call that one a practise swing and line up again. The crowd takes another discrete step back...Okay, here’s the backswing again and... oh dear, he shanked it into the water to the right of the fairway about a hundred yards up.
Announcer #1: That’s not that big of a problem to him, David, as he will just beat the weeds around the hazard until he finds a ball and then claim it was the one he lost.
Announcer #2: Right you are, Jim. That manoeuvre is almost as well known in the local golf community as the fact that Chris’ favourite club, aside from his ball retriever, is the “foot club” whereby he gives his ball a bit of a kick to get a better lie.
Announcer #1: And here comes Chris now, decked out in a Pink Floyd tee shirt and jean cutoffs, his legs covered in a thick layer of mosquitoes. They almost look like grey leg warmers from the 70’s.
Announcer #2: Here’s Chris’ backswing and.... oh my gosh! He’s hit an old lady in the gallery square in the forehead! Chris tells Bob it is an unnatural hazard and that he gets another drive. The crowd is well back now with some spectators hiding behind trees or fatter spectators. And here comes his shot and..... He topped the ball! The ball has at least made it just past the ladies tee, sparing him the indignity of that old tradition.
Announcer #1: I noticed that Chris’ club went about ten yards farther than his ball.
Announcer #2: Yes, he’s got quite an arm on him when he’s frustrated. May I, at this time, remind viewers there are a lot more interesting thing on other networks...
Announcer #1: Okay so now Bob has “found” his ball in the reeds by the water hazard and with a splendid drive off the steel toe of his work boot has landed in the middle of the fairway. The crowd applauds appreciatively at the irony. Apparently, Chris isn’t the only one with a foot club in his bag.
Announcer #2: Chris is trying out his fairway driver and... he hit the ground behind the ball! The ball has gone ahead maybe a foot. Chris slams his driver against the ground and trades it for a 3 iron in disgust. He takes another mighty swing and sends the ball forward another twenty yards.
Announcer #1: Did you see the size of that divot, David? I’ve seen smaller chunks of turf on a sod truck.
Announcer #2: I’d have to agree, Jim. We haven’t seen dirt like that flying around since the last municipal election.
   At this point, Cupcake woke me from my reverie to help set the table for supper. I was very relieved. Fame isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Jiggle Giggle

2010-08-04T09:53:00.001-06:00

Last week Cupcake and I decided we would try something new, something just a little out of our comfort zone, something that would get our blood coursing through our invigorated bodies. (No, I’m not talking about playing strip Boggle.) Our friend, Leah, stalwart of the Calmar Prairie Players, owns a “spa” in Devon and has a pair of wonderful machines designed to do just that. She claimed the effects on the body’s various interior systems after just a ten minute ride, was the equivalent of an hour’s worth of exercise, albeit without the cardiovascular workout.
“Don’t worry,” I assured her jokingly, “If I want to get my heart rate up, I just try and use my debit card.” I could almost see her make a mental note to charge me in advance should I become a client.
Although a bit uneasy about the whole procedure, I was heartened when we walked in the door. When I envisioned a “spa” I was thinking of some darkened sanctum loaded with women lying about with mudpacks on their faces and cucumber slices on their eyes. This looked more like a doctor’s office only brighter and cheerier, although it did have its scary side. While showing us around, she displayed a small room which contained a machine that looked like a trickle charger for a car battery. I was relieved when she quickly closed the door. She claimed that machine was just for specific areas of the body. I am glad she didn’t go into those specifics.
Then came the moment I was dreading; the pre-procedure baseline measurements. She measured my thighs, my biceps, and my waist, with which she had a bit of trouble with her short arms. She wanted to measure all kinds of other things such as my jowls but mercifully let me off the hook as it was just a trial basis.
After the last measurement, which was standing on the scales (Dang!) I finally set foot on the miraculous machine. The way it works is that you stand on this wobbly platform while the trained professional punches in your vital statistics. Then after coming up with your ideal personalized regimen, the contraption generates a vigorous vibration that is designed to get your precious bodily fluids churning and detoxifying and circulating faster than a hot piece of gossip. Or something like that.
According to the literature, the use of this miraculous machine can not only improve your body tone, but have a positive influence on everything from increasing bone density to heightened lymphatic drainage. I didn’t even know my lymphatics needed draining. There were 28 conditions in all that the literature claimed to help improve, ease or cure. On this list were some pretty serious illnesses such as Multiple Sclerosis and Fibromyalgia, as well as maladies I had no idea what they even were, like the listing for “frozen shoulder”. I’d gotten the cold shoulder from Cupcake a number of times but I didn’t realize it was a precursor to a serious chronic illness.
The machine started off vibrating gently. It was weird to see my entire body jiggling in the mirror strategically placed in front of the machine. I have never been more thankful I was wearing clothing. I snuck a peak over at the adjoining machine Cupcake was occupying. Although she was jiggling too, somehow it looked better on her than me.
The machine audibly increased in tempo, as did the violent shaking of the looser areas of skin (i.e. everything but my shins and ankles). I took particular note that Santa’s bowl full of jelly’s got nothing on me.
I found that by flexing different muscles; knees, arms, stomach, etc, (yes, I have stomach muscles) it would actually transfer the vibrating energy to different parts of the body. I was quite astonished when I discovered tightening my ab muscles caused the flab in my face to shake uncontrollably. I was afraid spit would fly in every direction if I dared open my mouth.
“Ifff n-n-nothththing e-e-else I h-h-have i-isssol-lat-ted w-w-whichch p-partss n-n-need t-t-ton-ning,” I manage to say to Cupcake with the machine at full throttle.
“Looks like all of them from my perspective,” she answered calmly, already in the “cool down” mode. All too quickly, the ten minutes was up and I got off the machine with knees wobblier than they were in the wee hours of the dart wind up.
“Wow, that was quite a ride!” I enthused. “I’m sure I had it at warp factor ten!”
“Well, actually, I noticed the machine only topped out at three,” Leah chuckled. “We save the higher settings for the advanced users.”
I was both disappointed and relieved at the same time. While I like to try everything to the max, I also didn’t want my loose flesh jiggling off my body.
We still have one more visit before the final measurements will be taken but I probably wouldn’t have shared my vital statistics. There are some things inquiring minds really don’t want to know.

Canada's Worst Handyman

2010-07-28T08:46:00.000-06:00

Cupcake is full of ideas. Sadly, they are predominately ideas of things for me to do. Her most recent brainwave was for a bicycle shelter. She figured by freeing the bikes from our storage shed, we could shift stuff from the garage to the place where the bikes now reside. This, she claimed, would create space in the garage for what’s now in the attic which would provide room to store the items she wanted out of her storage closet in the den.
Not wanting to become lost in the bizarre labyrinth of what she uses for logic, I focused on the part that had something to do with me. "You want me to build a bike shelter just so you can clean out a cupboard?" I asked doubtfully. “Is that really necessary?"
It’s not that I’m lazy (despite all the rumours) but if I was on a TV show it would be more like “Canada’s Worst Handyman” than “Extreme Home Makeover”. In fact, I’d rather watch The Women's Television Network than the House and Garden network, as all I see it as is Chore TV. I tried to get it blocked so Cupcake wouldn’t get any more big ideas but failed miserably just because she pays the bill for it. The problem is these TV guys can cut all their wood for a project ahead of time and it all fits together during the assembly stage. Cupcake thinks all men are born with this knowledge. She believes within the X-chromosome is a set of Popular Mechanics and that if she can dream it, I can build it. And being a male of the species, I have never told her different.
"Of course it’s necessary," she responded. "We have all those old 2X4’s kicking around and there’s plywood in the garage you’ve been saving for who knows how long. It won’t cost a dime. What more do you need?"
I privately had to admit she was right. I had everything I needed, other than skill, energy and motivation. I still wasn’t too thrilled, though. Carpentry is darned hard work involving frequent trips to the bank, the hardware store and occasionally the emergency department at the hospital.
Despite my distaste for construction work, however, I pretended to agree to the task, thinking there may yet be a way out if I played along. I had to convince her I was serious so she wouldn’t be suspicious if things didn’t pan out.
To demonstrate by enthusiasm, I donned my sturdy leather tool belt with the nail pouches, pencil sheath and hammer holster. Although it invariably pulls my pants down (the curse of a flat posterior) I still love to wear it. Nothing gets the old testosterone going like a good tool belt, other than maybe an AK47.
I strapped on the belt like I was girding for battle, then marched outside; sureness in my step. I then marched back inside, poured myself a coffee and sat down.
"Are you done already?" she asked in jest. (She uses that one a lot.)
"No, I just forgot to ask an important question," I responded tentatively. "What, exactly, do you mean by a ‘bike shed’? I don’t want it half built and you going ‘That’s not what I want, at all’.”
As expected, her concept of sheltering bicycles was different from mine. Hers included a gabled roof with upper hatches, shelving on both sides, and room for four bicycles, two lawnmowers and a large plastic wheelbarrow. I was surprised she hadn’t included a full bathroom.
"What?" I exclaimed. "No rec-room in the basement?"
"Very funny," she snapped. "You’re lucky I decided against the feature wall."
I pointed out we only had five sheets of plywood and if she wanted a more elaborate structure, we’d have to save up materials and wouldn’t be able to build it that weekend. I sketched out a simple construct with an open front and a roof sloping to the back. It looked like a small-scale machine shed. I knew she would hate it.
"I’m afraid with our available material; this is all we could build. I’m sure you want something nicer," I said, trying to sound regretful.
"You mean, if I agree to this, you could build it this weekend?" she asked pointedly.
"Well, I suppose…um…I’m…uh," I gulped.
"Well it’s not so bad," she said looking at the drawing. “Kind of quaint, really. It looks like what I originally thought of before I got ambitious with the cupboards and whatnot."
I winced as I saw the trap close in on me.
"You said you could have it finished by Sunday? That would be terrific. Thanks, honey!" she exclaimed, "I knew I could get you to do it, I mean, I knew you would do it for me because you love me."
I sighed as I stood, yanking up my tool belt again. No sense protesting, I knew I’d been had.
P.S. During construction, Cupcake was busy, too. Now the new ‘bike shed’ is filled with stuff from the garage, the attic and the closet while the bikes are back in the storage shed.

A Drizzle Fizzle

2010-07-22T10:03:00.000-06:00

   In many middle to far-eastern countries, (far to middlin’?) they are known by the Swahili name; “monsoon”; rain storms, both vicious and unrelenting that are almost as lethal as an Iraqi election. In the Philippines, they are called “tag-ulan”, in Haiti, “muason” but around these parts, they call it “Chris and Cupcake’s summer holidays”.
   I don’t know what it is but for darned near every summer of Cupcake’s and my married life, our week off has been characterized by hard rains, hypothermia-inducing temperatures and more grumpiness than a bus load of seniors facing a Depends shortage. This year was no exception. As you may have guessed from last week’s torrential rainfalls, it was time our attempt at a dry (in the meteorological sense) holiday for myself and my bitter better half. Sadly, as usual, Mother Nature, with her perverse sense of humour, had other plans.
   The devastation that our week off wreaked on our community was tragic. We drove up and down every street in Calmar and in those ten minutes, we saw more people hauling out soggy sofas and besotted broadloom than after Hurricane Katrina. (Mind you, Calmar survived Katrina fairly unscathed). Instead of the Prime Minister flying to the disaster zone as prime ministerial-types like to do (as if their very presence will staunch the rain, dry out basements and demoldify drywall) all that happened was the office of the assistant to the undersecretary of the interior sent us a nasty letter strongly suggesting in future, we take our vacations abroad, ideally in a rogue, enemy state like North Korea or Holland. Frankly, I’m surprised we aren’t approached by drought-stricken areas begging us to holiday in these regions to relieve their moisture problems. I’m sure if Cupcake and I took a year-long sabbatical in Africa, it would lead to the creation of Lake Sahara.
   It’s not like we pick the same weekend every year, either. How dumb do you think we are? (That was a rhetorical question, so don’t bother sending in letters and emails with your answers.)We have tried every week from early July to late August and it doesn’t make any difference. The weekend our vacation begins, the weatherman gets beaten with an ugly stick. One memorable year in particular, we planned our time off for the last week of August only to have it snow a good six inches. Cupcake, as they say, was not amused. I felt almost as much anguish as she did but drew the line at making crank calls to Environment Canada like Cupcake threatened to do.
   “Arrggghhhh!” Cupcake emoted as the sky turned black last Monday, the first day of our vacation. “I don’t believe this. Every year it’s the same thing.”
   I should add that interspersed with her statement were terms not suitable for this space. In fact some of the terms would have had the late, great George Carlin adding to his famous list.
   “Now, Honey,” I quickly interjected. “This would be a great time to do some ‘chillaxin’.
   “If I wanted to do some ‘chillaxin’ as you call it, I would want to be doing it in the sun in the pool or on a beach, not on the stupid recliner. I sit on the recliner every day. The thrill is gone, you know?”
   “We can go outside and pretend it`s nice out and just accept the fact we`re not made of sugar and won`t melt away. We can putter in the yard maybe.”
   “That`s a great idea,” Cupcake spat, telegraphing the fact she didn`t think it was that great of an idea. “You can start by trimming the hedge with our electric trimmer. I get to watch you plug it in when you`re out in THAT.”
   She pointed dramatically at the sheets of water pouring out of the heavens and laughed maniacally.“Very funny.” I grunted. “Do you take me for a moron?”
“Well you’re the one that suggested we try heating the pool with our toaster.”
   “Okay, I get your point,” I sighed. When Cupcake gets mad, the best thing to do is just let her be mad. When she achieves a certain level of unhappiness, even Eeyore is easier to cheer up.
   As the week wore on, however, Cupcake and I, as usual, adjusted to our fate. We went on a shopping expedition which helped to mollify her. Spending money seems to lighten her mood as much as my wallet. Still, some things are worth the cost, even if they only increase my quality of life as much as, say, pillow shams or a new candle powered potpourri boiler jobby to go with her other dozen.
   We also ate out at restaurants a lot, too, as barbecuing was out of the question and holidays are no time to make messes somebody would have to clean up.
   “I think the key is that at least we had togetherness,” I waxed philosophic as our holiday drew to a close with a gloriously sunny Sunday.
   “That’s true, dear,” Cupcake patted my leg kindly. “Even a bad day with you beats a good day at work.” I looked at her quizzically. “Uhhh... thanks... I think.”

Signs of Summer

2010-07-15T10:06:00.001-06:00

   Ah, summer. You can sure see the signs. The flesh-scorching daytime temperatures that inevitably lead to dazzling lightning attacks that pound the earth so vigorously it loosens your back teeth and scares the wits out of anyone who has ever seen the movie Twister. Then there’s the constant whine of mosquitoes in search of blood engorged flesh much like my own to feast on. One gets so vigilant to the feeling of something landing on us, we slap at any slight touch - a blade of grass, a tuft of dandelion fluff, a spouse that stops talking to you for the rest of the day until you admit it was on purpose. Then there’s the endless parade of motor homes, truck and camper units, tent trailers and fifth wheel monstrosities all whizzing by as people try and "get away from it all" only to discover they brought it all with them. The irony is lost on them in their focussed determination to get ahead of the gigantic Winnebago ahead of them, not caring there are still dozens, if not hundreds of Winnebagos ahead of that one.
   But to me, the surest signs of all that summer is really upon us in all its glory, is the ever present "garage sale" signs. They set my heart a-fluttering like a debutante at prom.
   Being "Mr. Wise Shopper" (not "Joe Skinflint", as some would believe) I truly appreciate the incredible bargains available to those with the patience and persistence to dig through piles of junk to locate rare treasures. To me, this is recycling at its best; probably heartily endorsed by Dr. David Suzuki himself. (I bet the good doctor has a house just crammed with garage sale goodies.)
   In fact, you wouldn't believe the haul I got last weekend. I bought a stereo, a set of encyclopedias, a cheese slicer and an electric razor. Guess how much I paid for all that stuff. Fifty dollars? Uh uh, too high. Forty? No, sirree. Try $17.10 for the whole works. What a deal. I almost felt guilty taking it.
   This was high quality stuff, too; real top drawer. The stereo, for example, plays both records and 8 tracks and even has a system whereby you can stack up four or five albums on the turntable and they will drop down and play automatically, almost like one of those fancy CD players. Of course after the third disc drops down onto the rest, it kind of slows down the motor so the Bee Gees start sounding a lot like Barry White on downers, but this can be a good thing. Actually the 8 track makes a similar noise when it starts “eating the tapes” but since 8 tracks of everything from Abba to Z Z Top are only ten cents a piece at garage sales, who cares?
   You wouldn't believe the encyclopedia set, either. It's the 1964 Encyclopedia Britannica and not only does it look brand new, but it's also almost complete. I have never been that interested in people or places that start with L, N or T, anyway. I just can't wait til I need to look something up! Who needs Google? (Well, I do for anything beginning with L, N or T, I suppose.)
   I will admit I'm a little disappointed in the razor however. Being a discriminating purchaser, I made sure it worked before I bought it, but I didn't actually test it on my face. Perhaps I should have, however, because it appears that the three rotary blades, although they do go around, don't seem to go around fast enough. This means that instead of the whirling blades cutting the hairs off evenly at skin level, they actually grab hunks of hair and yanks them out by the roots. The pain is both exquisite and profound. Since it will never come within scarring distance of my face again, I'll probably give it to my wife for her birthday to use on her legs.
   In some ways, though, the best deal of all was the cheese slicer. It's one of those high tech ones with a wire instead of a blade. I tried to dicker with the lady who was selling it, I figured I could beat her down by 10 per cent, at least, because the wire was a little bent but she stood firm. She pointed out it was only ten cents anyway and why was I wasting her time trying to chisel her out of a penny, but I figure that you never know, you know.
   When I lugged all my booty into the house to show it all off to my wife, I must say, she was decidedly underwhelmed. She took the $17.10 I had spent and added in the gas for the car, the lunch I bought and a couple other minor expenditures and figured out I had actually spent about fifty bucks for all my treasures.
   Mind you, I didn't tell her about the electric razor. I wouldn't want to spoil her birthday surprise.

Ideas from the Think Tank

2010-07-08T10:09:00.000-06:00

Last week saw the end of the G8 and G20 meetings in the latest international G spot, Toronto, with the expected damage to public property and finger pointing at who is to blame for the mess. I think the buck has to stop with whoever decided to have a major terrorism target party in an enormous monstrosity of a city complete with plate glass windows. But the burning question remains - if having it in a major metropolitan area is stupid, irresponsible and unduly expensive, then where does it make sense to have it? To help answer that question, I contacted researchers at the Loco World Group International Issue Think Tank, also known as Jeff’s Bar where solving the world’s problems over a refreshing beverage is a popular pastime. Here are the alternatives that the Think Tank experts arrived at, complete with pluses and minuses of each choice. They are ranked in descending order.
Choice Number 6: Tuktoyktuk, Northwest Territory
+ Not as many buildings for rioters to damage.
+ Not as many rioters.
- Not as many anything.
+ Cuts down on the pesky streakers if held in winter.
+ Paul McCartney’s busy on the other side of the country trying to stop the seal hunt.
- Limos look stupid with a snowmobile escort.
- Polar bears make off with the guys in the back of the photo op.
Choice Number 5: Foam Lake, Saskatchewan
+ At least you’re not in Tuktoyaktuk.
+ You can see protestors coming from miles away.
- Protestors can see you from miles away.
- The store closes at six p.m., even on Friday nights.
+ It already has a lake. You don’t have to spend 300 million dollars to build one.
+ Delegates could tour Super Dave Osborne’s sealskin binding factory.
+ Cheap tax-free smokes at nearby native reserves.
+ Nothing much else ever happens in Foam Lake, Saskatchewan.
Choice Number 4: In the middle of the Atlantic
+ No buildings to damage.
- The golf course has too much water.
- Extremely expensive to do pre-summit cleanup of entire ocean.
+ No homeless people to displace and then catch flak for from bleeding hearts.
+ NATO helicopter gunships can pick off Greenpeace activists claiming they thought they were Somali pirates blown off course.
+ It isn’t Foam Lake, Saskatchewan.
Choice Number 3: Millet, Alberta
+ They could really use a 300-million-dollar lake.
+ Close to Wetaskiwin’s Auto Mile for convenient delegate car shopping.
- Hostile press.
- Not much loot for looters locally, although there is decent pillaging in Edmonton a mere 40 kilometres north.
+ Easy to spell.
+ Hard for protestors and terrorists to find on a map.
- Hard for ANYONE to find on a map.
Choice Number 2: Saint John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador
- Takes way too long to type.
+ Nice oceanfront location to make it easy to catch crabs.
+ And lobsters.
+ Locals can’t complain to the international press because they wouldn’t understand them.
+ Newfoundlanders are well known for their hospitality, friendliness and screech.
- Half the delegates will get their travel bookings screwed up and end up in Saint John, New Brunswick.
- Premier Danny Williams will have to be on national TV again.
- Paul McCartney will show up.
Choice Number 1: Teleconferencing
+ No security issues since you’re not creating a target for terrorists by having all the G20 leaders in one place at one time. The biggest threat is “technical difficulties”.
+ If they want to play golf together, the world leaders could all just buy a Wii each and play online.
+ They can photo shop the photo op.
+ The cost to put on the summit would be about the same as the value of the decisions rendered.
+ News agencies could focus on the issues and not the activities of extremists which are always so much more interesting and newsworthy than the actual summit.
+ The almost-500 dollars spent by the Canadian Government for every man, woman and child in the country could have been put to so much better use... like returned to our personal bank accounts.
+ Saves so much money, nations could fund the promises they make at the meetings.
So the verdict is in. Let’s tell the world leaders to stay home and go “tweet” themselves. Twitter is so aptly named for a world summit, don’t you think?

Canada Daze

2010-06-29T16:11:00.000-06:00

With this being the Canada Day long weekend (except for those of us too slow or too far down the corporate ladder rungs to have booked the Friday off) it is time to reflect on what it is to be Canadian. This is easier said than done considering Canada is comprised of people so diverse; we barely understand each other, even when we’re all talking English. Just picture a conversation between a Quebecois English as a Second Language student and a resident of Tops’l, Newfoundland, my dear bride’s birthplace (and not the dark, fiery bowels of Hades, as I have previously alluded.) Newfoundlander; “So where y’ to, b’y?”
French-Canadian ESL student; “Uhhhhhh...”
Both of these people are as Canadian as beaver-tail-on-a-stick with a maple syrup dip and yet they are so different.
Or, take, for example, the modern day Inuit person, balanced precariously between their old ways and the new. Consider the Inuit family out shopping at the Wal-Mart in Tuktoyaktuk for an ice floe for Grandma’s retirement. They understand that clinging to the traditional way of life is great but when your dogsled has a flat or whatever, to be able to call for help with a satellite cell phone is kind of cool, too. How different is that Inuit person’s life experiences from that of the sturdy Saskatchewan farmer surprised by a flood in a province as flat as a map of itself? A glass of water spilled by a careless child would spread across the entire province and the poor farmer is shocked when his cattle doing the backstroke in the spring storms.
And yet, these too are Canadians, just as much as an Arrapaho/European pirate in Flin Flon, Manitoba (known as the “Arr Metis”), or a hermitically sealed trapper in the Yukon avoiding both humanity and PETA activists, (you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a PETA activist), even, yes I know, it’s tough for me to admit too, the metro-sexual man-about-town in Toronto. So what can we say about what it is to be a Canadian when no two are alike?
The answer is that each of them holds certain attitudes and beliefs that are shared by all; whether you’re a Muslim mechanic in Lac La Biche, Alberta or a PEI potato producer, we all think and feel about some subjects the exact same way. Here are but a few:
We, as Canadians, feel we are blessed with great wealth; in resources and in opportunity but none of the political parties can be trusted to manage them effectively. The Conservatives cater to corporations, the NDP cater to wingy weirdos and the Liberals cater to the, well... Liberals.
We, as Canadians, tolerate this political situation because we are fairly unpolitical and refuse to spend time talking about and worrying about something we have no control over. So we talk about the weather instead.
We, as Canadians, are proud of our armed forces; the courageous men and women off in war zones fighting for... uh... for... uh... well, none of us are really sure but, by gum we’re proud of the soldiers that have to do it.
We, as Canadians, hate Canadian produced television unless it involves hockey or curling. We especially hate watered down Canadian versions of successful American shows like “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” which was “Who Wants To Be A Toaster Owner?”
We, as Canadians, care a great deal about our land and our environment and would do anything to maintain the fragile eco-system, other than pay more in taxes or fuel.
We, as Canadians, think the World Cup of Soccer would be better if it was played on ice in an arena with sticks and pucks. We might actually get to compete.
We, as Canadians, think money invested in amateur sports is wasted... until we win. We, as Canadians, love our coffee. But we go to Tim Horton’s anyway.
We as Canadians, think nothing of driving hundreds of miles for any reason. We would drive the equivalent of the length of England to go for beers with a buddy, (that’s like to Banff and back). Mind you, we also drive the three blocks to the health club.
We, as Canadians, appreciate extremes in climate from the desert conditions of Dinosaur National Park (named for Prime Minister Harper’s inner circle) to the rainforests of British Columbia (Tourism slogan, “Woah... Dude, check out these trees...”) from the mighty frozen northland, home of the polar bear, the midnight sun and Honest Oktook’s 24 hour Solar Powered Tanning Salon and Grill to southern Ontario with its lush fruit regions, horrendous heat waves and a humidex count in the hundreds. We’ve got mighty mountains and great big seas. We’ve got every kind of climate you could wish for yet we go to the US for holidays ‘for something a little different.’
But the thing we, as Canadians all have, whether we moved here or were born here, we are Canadian because we have ID proving it. Our membership in this nation boils down to a piece of government paper; a tiny sliver of the Great Ball of Red Tape that runs the country. How Canadian!

The Bees Knees

2010-06-23T14:25:00.000-06:00

You must have heard it by now. That cry of achievement, enjoyment and delight so prevalent on the tongues of today’s youth. “Sick!” they say, with more zest than grated lemon peel. Yes, “sick” is the new “cool”, although, of course “cool” will ALWAYS be cool.
It seems weird to think of “sick” as meaning good, however. I wonder if it’s part of the “bad means good” mindset where it’s apparently really good to be “Super Bad”. It seems “sick = good” isn’t even all that new, as the term “sick” was used in that context as far back as 2005 in an article in Rolling Stone. And if it’s in Rolling Stone, it’s got to be cool. Or sick. Or bad... er... good. You know what I mean.
Given my middle-age sensitivities, I find the use of the word “sick” to identify something positive seems mildly disgusting, almost gnarly. (“Gnarly”, in this case meaning its original intent of “offensive” and not the 90’s edition when it meant sick... I mean cool.) Why can’t these young people use something lyrical and whimsical like “the bees knees” which was so popular with in the 1920’s? (It seems when bees collect pollen to make honey, they store it behind their knees, thus making them “suh-weet!”)
There are other choices, too. What about “Hunky Dory”? That one was good enough for us; it should be good enough for them. If they yearn to toss in trendy terms with an edge to them, maybe the young people can recycle sayings such as “rad” and “gear”. Seriously; people actually would say “Man, that’s really gear!”! I think it’s more kickin’ than 23 Skidoo.
The same goes for “nifty”. Now that was a cool word. Sadly the only time you see it used anymore is on quinquagenarian cougars’ T-shirts emblazoned in glorious glitter with the phrase ”Over 50 and Feelin’ Nifty!” Such a shame.... about the loss of the word, I mean “Groovy” is still one of my favourites. Sadly, I remember when it was groovy to say “groovy”. Now if you say “groovy” you sound like an old hippy, which hasn’t stopped me, although the cops sure do. It must be the tie-dyed VW micro-bus I drive.
One expression I found somewhat mystifying and that is “the cat’s pyjamas”. What in the world were they thinking? Have you ever tried to get a cat to wear pyjamas? Good luck. We had a cat that wouldn’t even allow us to put a collar on him. Trying to put bedwear on that one would have led to lethal hemorrhaging for one or both of us.. How this could be construed as a positive is beyond me.
The problem with a lot of these sayings is that they are absolutes. It is sick or cool or groovy or whatever or it isn’t. Some, however, have degrees. Take “dandy”, for example. As a word, dandy is pretty nifty because, although it means neat or swell or skookum, when you add “Jim” to it to make it “Jim dandy”, that means it’s REALLY neat or swell or skookum. The same goes for the word “keen”. Keen is as nifty as dandy because it’s got its own qualifier, as well. Things can be just plain old keen or they can be peachy keen, which is not only much keener than keen but is also somewhat fuzzy, apparently. If you prefer the fuzz-free variety, may I suggest “Nectariny keen”.
There is one saying that was once everywhere but is now like so last Tuesday. That is... or was, “phat”. I thought that it meant the same as all the other cool synonyms but was recently informed it is an acronym for “pretty hot and tempting”, which to me sounds like a steak. I should add that the informant I was getting the “down-low” from, a young lady named Mary, (not her real name. Kelsey is her real name), who advised us that she wasn’t sure if there was a comma after the word “pretty” which would change the meaning slightly. Is it/her/she pretty AND hot or just pretty hot? Personally, rather than “phat” I prefer “phull phigured.”
This just in; there’s a word that’s even newer than “sick” and that word is... are you ready for this? The word is “word”, as in “You got two tickets to the Nickleback concert? Word! What? You’re taking someone else? Word!”
“Word” seems to have arrived as an all purpose word to replace all those other cool and gnarly words. Some might see it as a plus; a word to use when the word you’re trying to think of just won’t spring forth from its hiding place somewhere in your cranium. (I HATE it when that happens!)
I hope the word “word” doesn’t catch on as a cool saying. It’s so...bland. I say we should go back to the vaults. All in favour of “the bee’s knees” say “SICK!”

Boggles My Mind

2010-06-09T16:59:00.002-06:00

I eyed my opponent with deep suspicion. After all, I had been victorious for the last... oh... dozen matches at least, suddenly, stakes are being discussed, high stakes. Serious stakes. The field of battle was to be “Boggle”; the game where you make words out of lettered dice. The adversary was my dear, sweet, child-bride; the lovely, the charming, the vocabularily-challenged, Cupcake. The stakes; having to tidy the kitchen, including washing all the dishes that had been accumulating since breakfast. It looked like the aftermath of a Gordon Ramsey show.
“Are you sure you want to do this, honey?” I asked magnanimously. “I know I am the reigning Boggle champ in this house and don’t want to take advantage of you. I am aware your talents lie elsewhere. We could do something we are more even at.... arm wrestling, perhaps.”
“That’s okay,” she breezily replied. “I admit you usually win since “my talents lie elsewhere”, as you diplomatically put it, but I have great confidence I can be triumphant if I pit my talents against yours.” “Game on,” I chortled, grabbing the clear plastic dice container and giving them an enthusiastic shake. I spun the lid into place which forces the 16 die into a neat square four dice across by four dice down and automatically starts the battery-powered timer. The battle had been joined!
The letters were really good ones... it was to be a high word-count round and every second was vital. Amid my concentration, however, I happened to glance up at Cupcake. For some strange reason, she was unbuttoning her nighty.
“Hey!” I blurted out in astonished realization. “That’s not fair! You’re not allowed to distract me like that. That’s... that’s... are you not wearing a bra?”
Cupcake never looked up but continued to feverishly jot down words. I realized I had dishpan hands in my future if I didn’t get cracking but my eyes kept being diverted to her bosom.
You see, the problem is that men are actually hard-wired to appreciate the female figure, especially in the chestal area. This is hardly news to the billions of women out there who occasionally, and not all I’m sure, use this particular male weakness to further their own agendas. Really! It happens!
Many sociologists maintain that man’s pursuit of beauty is what fuels greed. It is common knowledge that many women are attracted to great, big, thick bulging wallets. This because, to those same sociologists, women aren’t wired for appreciating looks as much as security and status. Multi-billionaire Aristotle Onassis put it best when he said that “Without women, money would become meaningless. “
The media is well aware of men’s fascination with the female form but the messages being sent are mixed. Besides the seemingly thousands of websites dedicated to examples of the fairer gender in various states of undress, there is even a site where women post pictures of their charms to be rated on a scale of 1 to 10. If it is an example of the objectification of women, it certainly appears there are a lot of women who don’t appear to mind. The supply of volunteers seems endless... well, according to a friend who told me about it. As well, if commercials are to be believed, the most desirable women with the most splendid examples of female attributes are attracted to men who drink large amounts of beer. Call me crazy but it has been my experience that this is not the case.
I took another quick peek at Cupcake pulling her nighty aside and then checked out the length of her word list. I still had a chance if I could just focus. It was particularly frustrating because the effectiveness of her ploy is just a one-way street. There is no body part I could flaunt that would have the same effect on her even remotely. The closest I could come would be to unwrap a chocolate bar and wave it seductively in front of her.
I redoubled my efforts at finding words while trying to ignore Cupcake’s heaving cleavage. I vowed not to think of her luscious ample appendages and only focus on the Boggle rack... I mean frame. I wrote like the wind and got some really long, extra-value words. I may be easy but I’m no push-over. Finally the timer beeped the end of the match. It was time to tally up our words.
After crossing out all the words we had in common, we counted silently our own scores.
“So... how many did you get?” I asked, my hand covering my total of 38.
“I got 37,” she said proudly.
My victory dance was quickly cut short. Cupcake had yet one more card to play.
“If you do the dishes while I wait for you in bed, I won’t do up my nighty,” she said softly.I was outraged that she would offer such a deal. I was so incensed, I almost didn’t go for it.Stupid hard wiring.

A Graduation Situation

2010-06-01T15:46:00.001-06:00

Last Saturday was a big day for my buddy Pete, whom I’ve known since Grade 5. I have referred to him in this space often; even, occasionally, in a kindly way. Pete, along with his bubbly missus, Roxanne, were proudly watching the graduation ceremony of their youngest daughter; the radiantly beautiful and sweet Shelby.
Given that, once more, I was not considered for the role of “keynote speaker” at her graduation (Or any others. Ever. The blackguards. Good thing I’m not bitter.), I would like to share some insights into the phase of life these young folks are now entering based on my observations, convictions and crap I’ve just made up. Here then, for Shelby and all her fellow graduates across this great land, are pearls of wisdom to base the rest of your life upon. Or not.
Don’t worry if you don’t know what you want to be when you grow up. I’m almost fifty and I still have no idea. The problem is with the “growing up” part. I’ve seen what it does to people. It’s not pretty. Look what it did to Nick Nolte.
As comfy as home is, it’s time to move out. Don’t worry that there are no jobs to be had and rent is astronomical and transportation costs for those cursed with youth are absurdly expensive. Just get out. We parents know you’ll be back in no time anyway, but at least if you get out right away, you’ll appreciate home so much more. You might even start helping out a bit.
You can be anything you want to be. That is, if your parents are rich and generous, and you’re actually smart enough and talented enough to do what you want to do. No? Sucks to be you then. Can you say “Would you like that upsized?”
Don’t be in a hurry to get married. No matter how old you get.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch... unless you’re gorgeous with an incredible body or are a politician.Networking is great to increase your social base and possibly establish business contacts. But beware of social networking websites. Having pictures of your drunken parties posted on your profile page can be problematic for potential employment and/or parents you told you were just spending a quiet evening doing homework over at her friend’s house.
If you work for a small company, expect to spend years establishing a reputation and paying your dues. You will get the worst shifts and lousiest pay. This is also true if you work for a big company.
Avoid “get rich quick” schemes. I will say, however, that the poor fellow with all his money in Nairobi, needing help to get it out, sounded legit.
Everyone is normal until you get to know them. Always allow for other people’s foibles since we have to tolerate yours. You can make an exception for people who spit when they talk. Ewww! It’s okay to be without your cell phone sometimes and talk to people face to face. I know that sounds kind of old fashioned but you might like it if you try it a few times. It may be awkward at first but don’t give up. You’ll get the hang of it eventually.
Now that you’re out of school, it’s okay to wear warm clothes outside in winter. Watching young people walking to school without any gloves or headgear whatsoever gives me shivers worse than one of Cupcake’s lectures. I can appreciate you didn’t want to wreck your ‘do that you’d spent over an hour creating, but ears lost to frostbite aren’t pretty, either. What if you need glasses some day? How will you keep them up?
Don’t be in a hurry to have children. Just remember how rotten you were. If you weren’t rotten, don’t forget it skips a generation sometimes.
Eat properly. Good nutritional habits developed young can stick with you, much like Nanaimo bars. Sadly, it is too late for me and I am condemned to eating unhealthy, processed food which is chock-a-block full of enough salt to attract cattle as well as other tasty ingredients such as sodium erythorbate, whatever the heck that is. You’ll be better off to stick with foods that have only one ingredient; “carrot”, for instance, or “lettuce”.
Start thinking about fibre. It’s never too early. Oh yeah, and retirement.
Get plenty of exercise. Just remember while you’re out there playing hockey or football or extreme rocket-boarding with your young, bulletproof bodies, that you’ll need those same bodies when you’re older. You won’t need pictures to make you think of the good old days. The aches in your body, wherever you had a major owie; broken arm, dislocated shoulder, reattached leg, etc. will remind you of those carefree times for the rest of your life.
And most importantly, don’t take advice from strangers.
Good luck, Shelby!

A Mouse in the House

2010-05-26T15:47:00.000-06:00

Last week, I came home from work in a fine mood. The day had whizzed by faster than a cop heading to a holdup at Tim Hortons. All was good with the world. Good, that is, until I walked in the house. Without any external clues whatsoever, I could feel tension in the air. My fears were confirmed when I entered the dining room and saw Cupcake sitting at the table with her arms crossed and a look on face like she’d just drank sour milk. I quickly replayed the recent past for any transgressions I may have done, real or imagined and, for once, came up dry.
“We have to talk,” she stated through gritted teeth. She would have had to cheer up a bit just to be described as angry. I needed a snappy come-back to maintain my good spirits. Her spirits, unfortunately, were too far gone for me to improve.
“You want to thank me for making the bed every day this week?” I suggested hopefully. She ignored my dual-purpose quip designed to both lighten the mood and illustrate what a good boy I’ve been.
“Earlier today a mouse ran over my foot,” she declared, her voice just one notch below shrill. Her face was a picture of accusation. I’m sure she thought I’d trained it expressly for the purpose of running over her foot.
“Did it hurt?” I asked, full of concern.
“Of course not you... you...” she sputtered .
Before she could form an unpleasant, yet descriptive adjective/noun combination (stupid idiot, for example) for me, I thought I’d dig myself a little deeper.
“Well, the way you’re acting, it sounded like when it ran over your foot, it was with my Kia,” I pointed out reasonably, although perhaps unwisely. “You’re not hurt and other than the minor issue of the mouse, everything else is fine. Look at the real consequences.”
“Look, Buster,” she snarled. “You know how much I hate mice. Either you get rid of it or I’ll show you real consequences. You constantly leave that screen door open; just inviting the disgusting vermin to come in. You better have a business license for this Hanta Virus halfway house you’re running. I won’t sleep a wink tonight knowing that horrid creature is menacing us.”
“Don’t worry,” I consoled her. “When he chows down on the mousebait I have in the vents, he won’t bother you anymore. You know, I wonder if he will be creeped out by any mouse skeletons he comes across in the walls from previous infestations.”
“Ewww! Don’t even talk about that! That’s revolting!” She involuntarily shivered. “I want you to set out traps and catch it before it eats the poison!”
“Okay,” I cautioned as agreeably as I could. “But don’t blame me if you’re lying awake at night listening for the SNAP! Minute by minute... hour by hour... you’ll be laying there... waiting for that dreaded...” “All right, all right all right,” Cupcake waved her hands to stop the imagery from continuing. “I get the picture. Fine, you can keep your trap shut... like that will ever happen.”
“Nice,” I grunted. “Look, it’s not fair to be mad at me because a mouse scared you. That’s all I’m saying. No one knows who left the door open when it managed to sneak past our defences. You’re simply redirecting your anger of the moment towards me and it should be directed elsewhere.”
“Redirecting my anger at you has worked for decades, why should I change now?” she pointed out absent-minded and then caught herself. “I mean, I don’t do that!” “Well, according to this book I’ve been reading...” I began
“Oh no! You’re not reading ‘Chicken Soup for the Menopausal Man’ or some other claptrap, are you?” She broke in. “If you really want to improve our relationship, you will forget reading books telling me how I should act and catch that flea-bitten, lice-ridden rodent NOW!”
“Be reasonable,” I implored. “It’s not like I have an AK47 and can shoot up the walls until its dead. These things take time. I have no idea where it’s at right now. It could very well be writhing in pain, gasping his last breath as the poison wracks his poor little body; drying it out worse than a ninety year old in a tanning booth.”
“Will you stop with that stuff? You’re not helping!” She snapped.
“I’m just trying to explain,” I replied defensively.
Our son ambled into the room.
“If you guys are talking about the mouse, I saw it run out the back door when Mom left it open to bring in groceries.” He stated nonchalantly.
Cupcake was thrilled to be rid of her nemesis. “Thank heavens! You notice when I leave the door open, they run out, not in?”
“When they run in they haven’t met you yet,” I mumbled under my breath.
Later on I cornered my kid. “You never saw that mouse run out of the house, did you? That sounded like a load of hoohaw.”
“You’ll never know,” he smiled. “But you owe me one.”

Whoopee Maylong!

2010-05-18T15:52:00.000-06:00

Everyone loves ‘Maylong’. That’s what we call the annual kickoff to summer. It’s actually supposed to be ‘Queen Whatsherface Day’, to honour some long dead British monarch, whose progeny are about as relevant to my life as that of the Octomom. Some might say retaining such minor trappings of royalty is a little reminder that when we want to do something fairly significant in the political realm, like dissolving parliament or adding members to the senate, we have to ask the permission of, well... a foreigner. (This is no sleight to Her Majesty, if she’s reading this. It’s just that I don’t get why anyone else would care.) On the other side of the coin, that’s the beauty of the Maylong. There’s no real ‘reason for the season’ for this holiday; no Hallmark cards or gifts to buy. In our heart of hearts, it doesn’t really matter to us why we get a long weekend in May, just as long as we do.
Although the Maylong is the signal for the green-thumbers and ‘Bloomers’ in the community to start planting gardens, for most folks, Maylong means camping. Therefore, as a public service, since I know nothing about gardening, (I’ve actually manage to kill rhubarb.) I have compiled a list of camping tips for all you Maylongers out there.
1. Don’t trust anyone else to bring something vital for the tent; poles, pegs or the top flap, for example. They will forget for sure. Then when you discuss this with them, they will get all snitty and leave in a huff. You will never get another Christmas card from them. Ever.
2. If a bear gets all your food, let him. Don’t try to dress up in a much larger bear suit to scare it away or you may be brought down by a pack of men in much larger wolf suits.
3. If you’re concerned about spilling some of the naphtha gas while fuelling up the stove and lantern, don’t worry. EVERYBODY spills. They don’t worry, so why should you? The way they designed the spouts on those stupid metal cans makes spillage inevitable. Think of it as liberating it to return to the land from whence it came.
4. Make sure your vehicle is powerful enough to tow your RV. In this part of the world, trying to haul a fifth-wheel with a Smart Car and creating line-ups behind it that are kilometres long is a killing offense. Besides you look so silly with that itty bitty car dangling from the RV hitch.
5. Be aware that no matter how hot it has been leading up to the Maylong and no matter what the Environment Canada forecast might promise, it will snow on the Sunday of Maylong. It always does. Who says the ‘Guy Upstairs’ has no sense of humour?
6. Do not set up a tent in a low spot or gully as it will get flooded if... or rather, when it rains. Erecting the tent on the side of a hill is out, as well, since water will course through your tent as you are trying not to roll out of bed and down the hill into the gully, despite being lashed to a tent pole. The best bet is to set up camp on top of a hill. Just pray there will be no lightning. 100 million to a billion volts of electricity and thin sheets of waterproof nylon do not mix. At least your charred remains will be conveniently shrink-wrapped.
7. Breaking wind in a wet tent is just cruel, man.
8. A note to camping women; don’t serve beans at supper and then be surprised at the incidence of Camping Tip 7 from your loving spouse.
9. Camping food is so good, it has a much higher allowable limit for ashes, cinders, bugs and dirt than home-cooked or restaurant food. The ‘Three Minute Rule’ applies to anything dropped near the campfire.
10. People look their absolute worst when they are crawling out of a tent first thing in the morning. Avoid camping with ugly people. (Come to think of it, I haven’t been asked to go for a while...)
11. Always bring back-up toilet paper. I can’t stress this enough. And wet naps. Bring lots.
12. Shut your *^#$#^ cell phone off. You’re camping, for crying out loud.
13. When you’re camping, there will be bugs. Bugs love sugar. Given these two truths, make sure you wash your lips off after you’ve scarffed down that glazed donut before you have your nap, or your sticky, sweet lips will become irresistible to insects living on the forest floor mere millimetres from your mouth. Trust me, waking up with a millipede moustache is a drag.
14. Have fun. Just remember camping is all about relaxing, enjoying friends and family and getting away from it all. But mostly, it’s a great excuse not to do gardening.

Motherhood

2010-05-11T15:45:00.000-06:00

   Although last Sunday was Mother's Day, Cupcake had to work and I was busy helping tear down the set from the previous night’s finale of the play we just did at the Legion Hall. As a result, it was decided (‘it’ being Cupcake) that Mother’s Day would be postponed for a week and we would be allowed to dote on her and wait on her hand and foot at that time. With the onslaught of Mother’s Day marketing (‘Show Mom how much you love her on Mother’s Day with a new ironing board!’) I have been thinking a lot about the role of mothers in our society and I've come to the conclusion that it must be a pretty neat experience. Indeed, when anyone wants to describe all that is good and wholesome in the world, motherhood and apple pie rank one and two respectively.
   In fact, motherhood as an institution is held so sacred, the worst insults men hurl at one another (during heated hockey games, for example) aren't so much directed at the insultee himself, but at his mother. The old standby, ‘Son of a B___’ is a fine example of this, but there are many others. Good taste and restraint, things I’m not particularly good at, prevent me from listing them but trust me, they are plentiful. Anyone who has ever golfed probably knows them all. Apparently, you can call down the person who has displeased you, even his wife, kids, vehicle, anything, but don't make fun of his mother. Them's fightin' words, doncha know, and only serves to demonstrate the high regard mothers are held.
   At risk of displeasing a large swath of the population, I have to admit I'm not so sure this motherhood thing should be as highly vaunted as it is, except, of course, in the case of my own mother who is a saint. After all, the only prerequisite to motherhood is to plunk down in some stirrups and push out a kid. I mean, how hard can that be, really? Oh I know most women go on and on about the pain of childbirth and how they spent 78 hours in labour (the number of hours increases with each telling - something like the distance walked to school by grandparents), but really, the only source of information on the amount of pain experienced always comes from women. Now, obviously they aren't going to minimize the description of the discomfort, otherwise they will have nothing to hold over their kids to make them feel guilty.
   Actually this whole childbirth pain thing has bothered me for some time. Thankfully, my own mother (Did I mention she's a saint?) never brought up the subject of the agony and stress I caused her when she evicted me from her womb. (I didn’t even get my damage deposit back.) Mind you, being the last of eight children, there's a good chance she may not have noticed the event.
   The mother of my children, however, is a whole different story. I can't be allowed to bemoan any pain whatsoever (bashing my thumb with a hammer, breaking my leg skiing, the big snip etc, etc,) without her bringing up the fact that it could not have possibly hurt as much as producing our two wonderful children. Frankly, I didn't know it was a contest. In fact, if I got the same mileage out of my Kia as she gets out of her pain of childbirth thing, I would not have to fill up with gas again until well into the next decade,
   Okay, perhaps I overstate my case somewhat. Besides providing a huge selection of guilt-inducing birthing stories, motherhood has some pretty terrific things going for it. Take for example the ‘magic lips’ that come with the title of ‘Mother’.
   A mother’s magic lips can kiss "boo-boos" all better, purse in such a way that every kid within fifty yards knows they've been caught, or smile with such radiance over every single gift from the heart that mothers get from their adoring offspring; from freshly picked dandelion bouquets to the clay handprints being churned out in kindergartens everywhere. These same magic lips can diagnose a fever from the forehead of a sick child, comfort a broken heart or simply provide a decoy when she goes for that quick cheek peck, followed by a surreptitious sniff for signs of beer or cigarette smoke.
   Mothers also have other magic features that hold them in good stead. Broad shoulders to cry on, hands that can just as easily make supper, as make emergency repairs to clothing, and spit that can clean even the toughest stains on any small face.
   As I said at the start, motherhood would be a pretty cool gig. Now if we could just dispense with that child birth thing, men might actually be interested in it.

Driven to Distraction

2010-05-06T15:50:00.001-06:00

Hopefully, while you read this, you’re not behind the wheel because the provincial government has recently enacted new legislation to tackle ‘Distracted Driving’. This new law is an attempt to curb motorists who drive with undue care and attention. It is, however, different than the existing law of ‘driving with undue care and attention’, but don’t ask me how. I recall last summer, for example, when the brave men and women who patrol the QEII had an enforcement blitz designed to curtail multitasking motorists between Alberta’s biggest cities. One guy they caught was reportedly playing a guitar while on his journey. A guitar! Maybe a harmonica I could see but no guitar made anywhere would fit between me and the wheel. There were, of course, many other tickets issued, too, including people putting on makeup, reading the paper, watching TV and DVD’s and one couple who were... er... uh... otherwise preoccupied, to put it delicately. The vigilant vehicle cops had no problem laying charges in those cases. To deal with this new infringement on our rapidly eroding civil liberties, I thought it timely to discuss the worst distractions we face at the wheel and possible ways to ameliorate them.

Eating: I... I mean, a friend of mine... is certainly guilty of this and has been known to munch a delicious bun, egg, sausage and cheese, arterial choking wonder, on his morning commute quite often, if his waistline is any indication. Now, however, road food will become illegal. What’s next? Banning drive-thrus? Who hasn’t gotten their order and was already reaching in the bag for French fries before they even got out of the parking lot? Seriously! Does anybody actually ever take drive-thru food home to eat? My advice to dining drivers/driving diners? Plan your day better so you can prepare wholesome, healthy, nutritious food at home before venturing off to work. Yeah. Right.

Drinking: Although drinking alcohol is still illegal in a vehicle, (Probably a good thing) according to government sources, you can still have your Timmy’s while you putts along in the slow lane. Of course, if you’re steering with your knee so you can roll up the rim and accidently create a multi-car pileup, police may apply the charge. (I may have paraphrased the spokesman somewhat.) One strategy you might consider is to put your “double double half caff” into one of those beer-holder hats with the tubes that go from the beverage directly to your mouth. This approach boasts the advantage of totally hands free operation, although you will look like a dork as you drive around with the stupid hat on your head. It’s kind of a cop magnet too.

Children: Probably one of the worst distractions you could have in your car, children weren’t mentioned in any of the pieces I’ve read on it. Who hasn’t seen crazed minivan mommas whacking the kids in their booster seats in the back while barrelling down the Yellowhead at 120 K? The answer lies with two easily acquired items; a coat hanger and duct tape. Simply put the hangers into your little darlings’ jackets they’re wearing and suspend them from the handy plastic hooks they have above the back seat window for just such a purpose. The duct tape is for their mouths if they appear unhappy with the arrangement. Make sure you tie that seat belt around them or you may be in contravention of some law.
Cell phone: This is the item that kicked off the whole driving distracted debate. It has only gotten worse with the fact that the average cell phone can now do practically everything except barbecue a steak. There are a couple strategies to deal with this popular distraction that occur to me immediately. One method is to pick up hitchhikers and have them answer your phone and relay messages. The downside to this plan is if you run out of hitchhikers, you might have to resort to forcing people into your car against their will, perhaps at gunpoint. This may be a bit extreme for folks who just need someone to dial for them but it beats getting a ticket. The other alternative is to place the cell phone under your front tire, drive over it back and forth a number of times and free yourself of its tyranny.

Texting: Are you nuts? Just stop it! Good grief, I can’t figure it out sitting in the dining room with the manual right in front of me. To be texting while driving is insane. Surely your “Whasup?” can wait while you’re kind of busy piloting a massive, dangerous machine alongside other massive, dangerous machines, all whizzing along at speeds in excess of the posted speed limit suggestions on those quaint signs on the highway.
Intimate interaction: Just remember those three little words: GET A ROOM!
Sadly, as well intentioned as distracted driving legislation is, a timely reminder that driving is an important enough activity on its own without multitasking, too. Unfortunately, I can’t see it making a difference. We have speed limit laws too and I don’t notice much adherence to those statutes, either.

Blithe Spirit

2010-04-27T16:44:00.000-06:00

   I can’t wait! The Calmar Prairie Players are having their final rehearsals before the big opening on May 6th. Our small but vital volunteer theatre troupe annually presents a weekend of dinner theatre and this year’s performance will be more entertaining than anything discussed on Entertainment Tonight. (Not that I watch it, of course but Cupcake likes to keep up on important current events and Mary Hart’s practically impossible to completely shut out).
   The play is the classic ‘Blithe Spirit’ written by Noel Coward; a terrific mix of supernatural thriller and British comedy. Sort of like a cross between ‘Ghost Whisperer’ and “Fawlty Towers” only without the hotel or Jennifer Love Hewitt (Dang!).
   The plot involves a fictitious, wealthy writer named Charles Condomine, played brilliantly by East of 60 stalwart, Andy Toms and his incredibly believable English accent. (Okay, so he is actually British.) In the play, Charles sets out to have a séance with his current wife, Ruth, (wickedly portrayed by Calmar school teacher Angie Podgurny) along with another couple, Dr. and Mrs. Bradman (Calmar newbie Mike Keindel and Prairie Player veteran Tammy Bateman portray the pair to a ‘T’) Charles needs background material for a book he is planning about a homicidal medium. The working title of his anticipated tome is ‘The Unseen’, although I think he would be better served by; ‘Small Medium At Large’.
   During the séance, however, the psychic they hired, a Madame Arcati, (hysterically brought to life by Calmar Dart League’s ace shooter, Cindy Thornton) accidently brings back the spirit of Charles’ first wife who died tragically seven years before. Paula Bancroft, who in real life is a nurse at the Devon Hospital, brings a seductive edge to the role of ghostly first wife, Elvira. Much hilarity ensues as Charles is the only one who can see or hear his ectoplasmic ex. Kelly Ainsworth rounds out the cast as the Condomine’s young maid, Edith, who is injured when Elvira tries to kill off Charles so they can be reunited in the hereafter.
   The cast is a mixture of seasoned vets and those who are, shall we say, more lightly seasoned. At least half of the cast had their first taste of thespianism in the Devon play ‘A Christmas Carol’ just this past December. Having had such success with their small roles in that East of 60 production, they were bitten by the acting bug so severely, they needed calamine lotion. The only real cure for them, however, was to audition for the Prairie Players in January.
   Little did they know that being part of a seven person play is VERY different than the 42 character classic they’d experienced previously. Role size in theatre is measured by the number of lines you’re entrusted with and that yuletide extravaganza had a bigger cast than King Kong with a broken leg. Even with multiple roles, there were very few lines to go around, other than for Scrooge himself. For example, in that production, I got to play Marley’s ghost, Old Joe the Pawnbroker, and the butcher that Scrooge sends for to deliver the prize turkey. My total line count was maybe 30. Contrast that with ‘Blithe Spirit’ where the lead characters have hundreds of lines and it becomes a whole different ball game. If nerves were curves, the cast of ‘Blithe Spirit’ would resemble Catherine Zeta Jones… except Andy and Mike. Not that they’re not nervous too but I just can’t picture them as ‘curvy’.
   That’s the joy, however, of community theatre. No matter how professional-looking our shows have been described as, the actors are just ordinary folk from the area that have decided to try on acting as a life’s adventure. They are farther out of their comfort zone than Dave Chappelle at a Ku Klux Klan convention.
   I could go on about their enthusiasm, creativity and talent, blah blah blah, and every word would be true, but the real reason these people have stuck with it is the same reason I became addicted. The creative outlet is nice and providing a little culture to the hinterland is arguably laudable, but the main reason we act is that it is simply a ton of fun. Our practises never cease to fill the cavernous Calmar Legion with the sounds of mirth. We clap for each other and support each other as we struggle with our roles that we are valiantly trying to learn. In that way, it is like slow-pitch or hockey or choir or any pursuit adults engage in to escape television and sameness in their lives. It is about being part of a team of friends achieving goals together and becoming greater than the sum of its parts. Except with acting, there’s way less running and skating.
   Co-directing this play, along with ‘But Why Bump Off Barnaby’ alumnus, Leah Keller, has been an interesting experience. I admit I miss being up on stage but it is fascinating watching the play develop like a Polaroid pic. Each nuance the actors bring to their role is like a new colour in a magnificent portrait. Sadly, even Leah and I have to wait until opening night to see the image completed. For tickets, call SS Office Services in Calmar; 780-985-3600.

Red Green Saves the Day

2010-04-22T15:43:00.002-06:00

Do you remember that part in the Tom Hanks movie ‘Apollo 13’ when the oxygen tank ruptured and the astronauts in the ill-fated craft were doomed if Houston Control couldn’t figure out a way to save them? Three engineers were shut in a room and had four hours to devise a solution using the available materials they knew were aboard the ship. Almost like a Hollywood movie, the creative engineers at the mission control center devised a plan to staunch the leak and ensure an adequate atmosphere for the ride home.
Well, guess what? Hold onto your hockey helmets, folks, I have some news that’s bigger than Chef Gordon Ramsey’s ego. (Okay, maybe not that big but still...) The momentous news is that the engineers who helped save the day were with the Canadian Space Agency; as Canuckish as Alberta beef smothered in poutine and Saskatoon pie with a side of mussels! The trio were recently being honoured by NASA at the 40th anniversary of the near-disaster in a ceremony at the Canadian Air and Space Museum in Toronto. (There’s a Canadian Air and Space Museum in Toronto?)
Well, actually, the engineers, Bernard Etkin, Barry French and Philip Sullivan, weren’t exactly the engineers in the movie. They were, however, a vital resource for the experts at NASA and in constant communication with them from their offices at the University of Toronto. The northern-based brainiacs were given the task of calculating the various internal and external pressures that would be at work in the perilous re-entry. Apparently, these calculations were extremely complicated and if wrong, would have caused the spaceship to either be crushed like an empty beer can in a redneck’s hand or blown to bits like rocket-powered rollerskates from Wile E. Coyote’s Acme catalogue.
What was not reported by any known sources internationally, or at least any I happened to notice while trolling the news sites, was that a special envoy was procured by the Houston brass to act as a liaison; bridging the gap between the U of T eggheads and the team NASA had working on the problem.
In a Pipestone Flyer exclusive, which I received in a brown envelope slipped under the door of my palatial office in the Pipestone Flyer Building in downtown Millet, we get to learn the identity of that unsung hero.
This advisor is such a giant in the annals (Ha! I said “annals”) of Canadian icons he practically bleeds maple syrup. He was the ideal individual for the job as he is recognized across the land for his expertise in crisis management. His half hour documentaries were a rarity, indeed; a Canadian TV show that was actually popular with Canadian viewers. For the first time ever published, here is a transcript of the conversation between those brilliant Canadian scientists and those frantically trying to save those brave space pioneers in the crippled craft as facilitated by the eminent expert brought in as their go-between.

Canadian Engineers: According to the calculations, we have arrived at a figure of 73995.922 X (83462355.4876345) + 82622793.09436636/837652580(-9372562.9653792).
Red Green: Now here’s what you want to do, fellas; get yourself a good, sturdy roll of duct tape and start wrapping that oxygen tank. It might take quite a few wraps but it’ll hold. I once used duct tape to attach the chassis onto the frame on a ’59 Pontiac. It lasted over three weeks!
Canadian Engineers: Make sure they factor in the equilibrium constant of 7820298.8375/456453792.9373. This will be critical in maintaining the constants required during the shifting external pressures.
Red Green: Okay so now, if it gets hard to breath, just poke a hole in the duct tape over the oxygen leak. Still not enough? Make the hole bigger. If you feel light headed, though, put another wrap or two over part of the hole. Try and avoid smoking while doing this.
NASA Emergency Team: It’s okay, we warned them if they want to light up they have to stand outside the vessel.
Red Green: Make sure they don’t just stand just inside with the door opened a crack. That oxygen stuff is dangerous.
NASA Emergency Team: That’s a big ten four, there, Red. Anything else we should know?
Red Green: Just one more thing. The coefficient of the Manheim variable is 97653.86/513447.82256.
NASA Emergency Team: Oh thank you so much for saving the day!
Red Green: Well, if the women don’t find you handsome, they better find you handy!

In the end, the Apollo 13 crewmen made it safely back for a splashdown in the Pacific. (The Atlantic was booked that day apparently.) It was nice to see the incident had a Canadian angle to it, as well. All too often our efforts are overlooked on the world stage. It was nice to see these Canadian mathematicians honoured for their contribution. Funny that it took forty years to do it.
Just a note to readers, parts of the above may have been slightly fictionalized for dramatic effect.

Broadzilla Vs. Mothra!

2010-04-15T15:47:00.001-06:00

   The other day I was busy lounging on our bed, watching Cupcake put away our newly washed wearables. I was resting up in case I was needed for more male-oriented activities such as puttering in the yard, operating power tools and, defending our home from foreign invaders and/or dangerous four-legged predators such as mice. I find the bed is an excellent vantage point in which to observe the end of the laundering process, including the long shrouded mystery of how to fold T-shirts properly. I've watched Cupcake fold clothing hundreds of times and am no closer to acquiring the fabric flattening facility than when I first took a slight interest. I'm so bad at it; it is the one job my wife won't let me do. Shucks.
   Nonetheless, as she reached toward a stack of towels to remove a bit of laundry lint, all of a sudden she was filled with terror. The piece of fluff she had grabbed at turned out to be a great, big, fat hairy moth. The poor little lepidoptera instantly realized the threat from the descending attack and launched itself into the air; zigzagging like a drunken motorist, right at Cupcake’s horrified face. She could not have looked more alarmed had it been a giant blood-sucking bat. The screaming was awful; eardrum piercing, shatter-cheap-crystal pitched, loud-enough-to-be-heard-in-a-nearby-galaxy-type screaming. To add to the spectacle, amid the shrill shrieks, she mangled her hairdo; slapping and clawing at her head.
   Being the kind, caring, loving husband that I am, I began to laugh so hard I almost fell off the bed. I really wanted to help her and hold her and tell her everything was all right but that look on her face was so priceless, I couldn’t contain my mirth. I hadn't seen that wild a look in her eye since that time a giant dust-bunny blew across the living room floor and she thought it was the vanguard of a rat infestation. Unfortunately, I soon found out that only being a caring and supportive husband on the inside was of no value. I discovered that, not only should I not have laughed, but I should have taken measures to make sure moths could not enter our home EVER and that the whole incident was my fault.
   "But sugar-lump," I said in astonishment, "you're the one who tried to catch him in the first place. If you'd just leave them alone, they will leave you alone. Oh yeah, that's bees, isn't it? But still, it's not like the moth was going to hurt you. They don't bite, you know. They have no stinger or teeth. They just barf on fabric to dissolve it then suck up the pre-digested mush. You don’t need teeth for that."
   "I know moths don't sting," she raged, "but I'll have you know they lay eggs in your hair. And for your information, I wasn't trying to catch it. I thought I was picking up a piece of *&^% fluff."
   I was shocked by her vocabulary as she usually saves that sort of language for bingo. I thought it best if I tried to lighten her mood with jocularity.
   "Oh right," I laughed. "That’s a pretty tough environment to lay eggs in with all that yelling and hollering and whacking your head. Momma moth would have had to be pretty quick on her feet."
   My attempt at humour was not warmly welcomed. Her eyes appeared murderous. She spat her answer through clenched teeth.
   "It's not just the eggs but they leave that disgusting moth dust everywhere. If you were any kind of man you would have killed it instead of rolling on the floor laughing your fool head off."
   I sighed and apologised for not coming to her rescue. I knew I had been a bad boy. There is something about moths that a lot of women have feelings for that mere hatred doesn’t come close to describing. As soon as a moth comes anywhere near the average female, their first reaction is to utter shrill shrieks and begin slapping themselves upside the head. I find it odd that so many ladies take great pains to put highlights in their hair knowing full well moths are attracted to light.
   "Jeepers," I shook my head. "You should have seen how you carried on. What would you do if you were confronted with something really terrible?"
   “You mean, like your attitude?” she bit back.
   “Seriously, hon,” I tried to deflect her anger with a philosophical query. “If that is the reaction you give for something non-life threatening, how would you respond to a real danger?”
   "I guess we’ll never know until it happens,” she responded grimly. “One thing I do know is that I wouldn’t be able to count on you to save me. You couldn’t even rescue me from a moth. Now get up and shut the light off on your way out. I’m having a nap. Alone. And just so you know, I will still have this tension headache tonight.” As I glumly complied, it occurred to me that moths are a lot more dangerous than I thought.

April Awareness!

2010-04-08T15:51:00.000-06:00

The April winds are magical, And thrill our tuneful frames; The garden-walks are passional To bachelors and dames. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

   Ahhhhh.... April. A month so vibrant and dynamic, it’s fresher than freshly squeezed milk. It is 31 days that promise warm afternoons to come and yet with the threat of the cold and snow recently passed. It is so sweet and delightful; some people even name their precious daughters after it. After all, you never hear of anyone naming their female offspring “February”, although heaven knows some women are frosty enough. (Present company excepted.)
   Most months are named after Roman gods; January, for example, was named for Janus, the god of gates and doorways and beginnings and endings. (Man, them Romans had a god for everything!), April, on the other hand has a much different lineage. It is named after Belleville, Ontario singing sensation Avril Lavigne who wowed the calendar decider committee with a stripped down, acoustic version of ‘Sk8ter Boi’.
   April has a lot going for it. It starts off with April Fool’s Day which is a quirky celebration of lame gags and impractical jokes. I only ever played one April Fools gag on Cupcake. It was early one April One and I woke Cupcake urgently.
   “I heard something in the porch,” I whispered hoarsely.
   “Well, go see what it is,” Cupcake mumbled, still half asleep, rising to the bait.
   “Stay here,” I said ominously. “Just in case.”
   I got out to the dining room and made scuffling noises. I then rapped an aluminum pot on the top of a chair making a tremendous “BONG!” sound.
   I dumped some ketchup on my head and laid down in an awkward position for effect and waited for Cupcake to find “the body”.
   And waited. And waited. Apparently she had fallen back to sleep. Finally, however, I could hear footfalls in the hall. Despite my aching body from my cramped position, I was pumped. This was going to be great!
   “Are you wasting ketchup again?” she inquired nonchalantly. “I’ll have to start buying the bigger bottles.” All fooling aside, the following day is also very important to me as it is the birthday of my dear, sweet, saintly Mom. The family just celebrated her 88th birthday with her and she is as quick witted and cheery as ever. She does appear to be shrinking, however. I remember how tall she seemed when I was a young lad. I suspect in a few years, we will have to be careful not to lose her in plush carpets.
   The next big deal in April is Cinco de Mayo or something like. I believe it is a Mexican mayonnaise festival of some sort. It’s very like Robbie Burns Day where we act Scottish and eat haggis and toss kaybers, or Saint Patrick’s Day where we do leprechaun impressions and chew Guinness stout and be Irish for a day. I notice there is no special day for the Dutch, however. (Sorry, Ted.)
   Next comes Easter, which is rather early this year. It is one of the few holidays that moves around the calendar. The timing is based on full moons, or first frosts or some other arcane method. I phoned to ask the experts how it was derived and was told there are only four people on the planet that know and if they told me, they would have to kill me. I do enjoy Easter, however. It is wonderful to observe the sacrifice of the Messiah by eating chocolate until my face has more pimples than a tweenager in the throes of puberty.
   April is not just abounding in special, individual days; there are a wide variety of special interest groups that have claimed April as their own. For example, April is National Welding Month, Child Abuse Awareness Month, International Guitar Month, Alcohol Awareness Month (like we need a special month to be aware of alcohol) and African American Women’s Fitness Month. Those are just the tip of the iceberg. There are more groups hijacking April for their own purposes than Gillette has blades in a Mach V warehouse. It is so glutted with awareness campaigns that nobody is aware of anything. Most people aren’t even aware they were supposed to be aware and think April is just April. The fools. This must be agonizing for groups such as the National Anxiety Month people. (I did not make any of these up, by the way.) April is a month of firsts; the first dandelion, the first bit of greenery, the first firepit. But sadly it is also the end of some things. Some very fine things. There is one thing in particular I’ll miss with the appearance of April that is good and true and fine. For April brings the end to the dart season WAAAAAAAAHHHH!

When March goes on forever and April twice as long who gives a damn if spring has come as long as winter’s gone.- R. L. Ruzicka

A Brilliant Plan

2010-04-01T15:57:00.001-06:00

   Stupidity is rampant. We see it in governments, in boardrooms and sometimes, it can even creep into our own lives. Case in point; I had a problem. It wasn’t a major problem. After all, how serious can a problem be if it concerns ketchup? (That’s ketchup, by the way, not ‘catsup’. Catsup sounds like something your feline does on the rug after eating lawn grass.)
   The situation was that Cupcake had bought the ‘family-sized’ bottle of ketchup which would only be suitable if it was, say that Octomom’s family. Being darned near the size of a water cooler bottle, this ketchup had been in our family for a while already and most of the contents had already been freed from its squirtable plastic prison. The remainder, about a quarter cup at the bottom of the vessel, proved as unyielding as Cupcake is after I’ve had a particularly good time at darts.
   Since I’m an ideas man at heart, I immediately set the thinking part of my mind (both brain cells) to solving the problem of the stubborn sauce. I considered heating the bottle under the hot water tap to make the sugars flow more freely but didn’t want to waste water, particularly water I’d paid to heat. It also occurred to me to add some water to thin it out somewhat but recalled vividly how gross it was when Mom would do that to our ketchup as a kid. I knew thumping the bottle on the counter upside down would probably have worked but the noise would have woken Cupcake who was snoozing on the recliner and would have been irked to be disturbed from her much needed beauty sleep over a condiment.
   Suddenly, I had a spectacularly brilliant plan that was efficient, effective and silent. I had hit upon a strategy using principals of Newtonian physics to overcome my obstinate obstacle. I realized by holding the bottom of the bottle and whirling my arm in a windmill fashion, centrifugal force would cause my heart’s desire to rush to the top making itself available for my fried egg sandwich. What could possibly go wrong?
   I pushed the lid down firmly on the cap and held the bottle as I’d planned. I had a good grip on the container to make sure it didn’t fly out of my hand and become an air-borne crimson-filled missile.I scanned the kitchen looking for a suitable place to test my human centrifuge idea, studiously avoiding the ceiling fan to prevent any unfortunate collisions. Then came the wind up.
   I rotated my arm so fast I could feel the blood pooling in my fingers. Sensing the bottle loosen in my grasp, I squeezed a little harder. Suddenly, the cap flew open and instantly, I had drawn a ketchup-red line in a perfect circle across the ceiling, down the walls and fridge, bisecting the floor. Actually, there was about a circle and a half as it took me a second to realize what was happening
   “Darnheckratsshootsonofabiscuiteater!!!!!!!!!” I let loose a verbal volley at my folly. Actually, the real quote would have made George Carlin blush but it is, after all, a family paper.“Huh? Wha...??” Cupcake snorted.
   She’s awake! I chided myself for my ill-timed outburst. A bolt of fear ran through my body at the prospect of her witnessing the fresh results of my lapse in judgement. I scuttled over to her and gently tucked the blanket around her and kissed her forehead.
“Everything’s fine.... enjoy your nap...” I breathed into her ear.
   She gave an unintelligible response and began to softly snore once more.
   I hustled back to the kitchen to survey the damage. The ceiling would be the hardest job, I realized, so I started on the walls and fridge. I worked quickly and quietly sponging and expunging my misdeed from the scene of the crime.
   The ceiling proved to be more challenging than watching poker on TV without falling asleep. Curse you, stippled finish, I raged silently. Never again! When the task was finally complete, I checked out my handiwork. My heart plummeted faster than Rita MacNeil on a luge. As I gazed up at the ceiling I could see a broad clean swath across the ceiling. Cursing ketchup, Mr. Clean and the situation in general, I slowly, resignedly gathered up the toteful of cleaning supplies and began to wash the rest of the ceiling. “What are you doing?” Cupcake’s voice froze me in my tracks. I hadn’t heard her arise from the recliner. I must be slipping, I thought to myself ruefully.
   “I’m.... uh.... uh....”
   “You never could lie well,” she crossed her arms. “Now tell me what happened.”
   In a few short, painful sentences, I explained my flash of brilliance. Cupcake was unimpressed although amused.“As long as you clean up after yourself, I don’t care what kind of idiocy you get up to,” she giggled. “Nice job on the ceiling, by the way.”
   So you see, stupidity is everywhere, no matter how smart we may think we are. But one stupid act doth not a stupid person make.
Cupcake, however, would disagree.

This Just In!

2010-03-25T16:10:00.001-06:00

   According to www.canoe.ca (Everyone else surfs, Canadians canoe) in a QMI News Agency dispatch, quoting the London Daily Mirror, a man in Britain has filed discrimination charges against his employer after being asked to remove his hood while at work at a call centre. The aggrieved employee, one Chris Jarvis (How come all the whack jobs are named ‘Chris’?) alleged he was being discriminated against because he considered his hood to be religious garb.
   Jarvis is an adherent to the precepts of a fairly new sect on the spiritual landscape known as the ‘Jedi Faith’. Ardent apostles of this denomination pattern their belief system on the hollowed traditions originally found in.... yes, I can’t believe it either, the hokey Star Wars franchise of movies that has plagued theatres and cartoon channels for the last few decades. It is akin to basing your entire spiritual structure on Chrissy from ‘Three’s Company’ or Tattoo of ‘Fantasy Island’ fame. (Boss! De plane! De spiritual plane!) By the way, I was actually going to use an ‘A-Team’ reference here but I see they have remade that show into a new movie proving once more Hollywood is bereft of original ideas. Sadly it wouldn’t surprise me to see a new religion based on the ‘B A Barracus’ character.
   So where does it end? Can ANYTHING be a religion? How does one discriminate between what is a religion and what is a cult? Is there a difference? Is it possible to be too tolerant of some of these weird new religions? Where do you draw the line? Can I create a religion around beer and claim dart night as a tax write off for religious reasons? Why do I keep asking myself questions I have no idea what the answers are?
   Let’s look at the facts. According to my prized Webster’s ‘New Lexicon Dictionary of the English Language’, which is about as large and heavy as a sidewalk block, the word ‘religion’ is defined as ‘a system of beliefs and practises relating to the sacred and uniting it’s adherents in a community’. A cult, on the other hand is ‘a system of religious worship’. Delving into the other definitions for each word yielded no appreciable difference between them linguistically. They were as different as cantaloupe and muskmelon.
   I asked a number of friends, colleagues and relatives what their beliefs are and how they were differed from those of a cult. I was mostly told to go “jump in the lake of fire”. The bottom line for those who cared to respond was that if you didn’t believe whatever they believed, you were in a cult.
   Obviously, every religion can’t be right if exclusivity to the key to the Pearly Gates is part of their programs. But how can we know which one is the correct one? It would be awful to get to The Hereafter after a life of pious devotion to Buddha and see Saint Peter wearing dreadlocks telling all the newly ectoplasmic that only Rastafarians are allowed inside.
   Of course we talk about the so-called ‘Great Religions’; Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, as being on some higher level than your average wedding tackle-removing Solar Temple types. Still, sheer numbers of followers can’t be the criterion. When every follower of Christianity could all be portrayed in a picture dining together, you know they could use a major membership drive. But even with their humble beginnings, to those that came after who called themselves Christians, it wasn’t a cult even then.
   So what is a government to do? Unlike individuals who generally just pick one path to follow (rather shakily in many cases), governments must recognize many paths. It would be very difficult nowadays for a government to select one religion and outlaw the rest. Western world leaders pride themselves on religious tolerance, sometimes bending over backward to accommodate groups that neither require nor appreciate it.
   But Jedi-ism? I can picture them meeting in their parents’ basements where they are still living at the age of 35. To me, someone who devotes their life to a fictional faith that sprang from the mind of a cheesy sci-fi writer has got to be a half a bubble off. These people have about as much credibility as those lunatics that spend hours learning conversational Klingon.
   As disgusted as I am about the situation, I don’t know what can be done to rectify it. It may be better to allow every new religion that comes along than to lose the precious right of religious freedom. There is no government we trust enough to pick our religion for us so we must allow even the fringes. If it’s good enough for God to give us free will, surely it should be good enough for a government. It has to be ‘prayer beware’.
   Just so you know where my bias lies, by the way, I am a devout Frisbeetarian.

Taking a Vow

2010-03-16T16:52:00.000-06:00

My darling wife and I were doing something totally different together last week. We were having a quiet evening at home and it wasn’t due to Cupcake giving me ‘the silent treatment’; my favourite form of punishment. We were sitting on our tolerance seat (it used to be a love seat but we’re older now) enjoying a respite from our busy day. She was reading a Max Haines crime thriller (CSI was, amazingly, not on any channel on TV at the time and she needed her murder and mayhem fix) while I was surveying the inside of my eyelids hoping to catch a few winks before bed-time.
I was just sliding into the warm, comfortable arms of Morpheus when Cupcake barged into my consciousness with one of those ‘women’ questions the fairer gender favour so much. I call them ‘women’ questions because no fella worth his power tools would ever even think to make such a query.
"What are you thinking about?" she wanted to know, staring dreamily into my eyes.
This line of questioning from Cupcake always stumps me. In my view, it’s rather presumptuous of her to assume I’m actually thinking something at any given minute. Apparently she thinks thoughts constantly and unbelievably, believes I am similarly afflicted. However, I've come to learn from bitter past experiences that if I say something like "Nothing, Sweetheart," or any variation on that theme, Cupcake accuses me of evasiveness and I spend the balance of the day convincing her I'm not hiding anything.
I've also found responses like "I was just thinking how much I love you and how special you are to me," doesn't really cut the mustard, either. She feels this is an automatic response I've rehearsed just for such occasions (which, of course, it is, but it did work a couple times).
Instead I responded with another tried and true gambit; a quick response on a neutral subject and a return of the conversation ball back into her court.
"I was just thinking if I ever got nailed for a DUI while driving around with a carload of hookers and blow, I’d want to hire the same lawyer Rahim Jaffer did. Why, what are you thinking about?"
“I’d say if you get caught drunk driving with hookers and blow, the court system would be the least of your concern,” she snorted. “After I got finished with you, there wouldn’t be much left for the legal system to pursue. But that’s not what’s on my mind, frankly. I have something more important to discuss. “Uh oh”, I thought, my mental ‘red alert’ klaxon blaring. Here it comes. “I was thinking how nice it would be if we were to renew our vows. Don't you think that would be romantic?"
I didn't answer immediately. Instead I quickly reviewed my limited range of options knowing each would have their own specific ramifications. If, for example, I shot down the idea out of hand (which was my gut reaction) I would be viewed as unloving and obstinate. If, however, I showed the slightest interest whatsoever, she would immediately begin hiring caterers and renting a hall.
Still, it had actually occurred to me recently we could use another wedding. After this many years of marital bliss, our dish cloths and bath towels are worn thin to the point of transparency and we're down to our last toaster. Plus, I rather enjoy parties where people bring me gifts.
Conversely, however, I also realized how much another wedding would set us back. It would be a ton of cash and for what? It’s not like our current marriage license had expired. Believe me, I check frequently. But “I do's" are good for a lifetime and you only need renew your vows if maybe you’ve reneged on a few during the interim. Since this isn’t the case, I couldn't see the point, other than replenishing our linen cupboard. I needed a way out.
"You know, dear, that may not be a bad idea," I began. "In fact, just the other day I was thinking of some of the vows I forgot to throw in there in the first place. This might just be the ticket!"
She sat up and eyed me warily.
"What kind of extra vows were you thinking of throwing in?" she asked suspiciously.
"Nothing major," I responded breezily. "Just stuff like vowing not to leave your underwear on the shower curtain rod to dry, keeping the ironing caught up a little better, that sort of thing. Heck, maybe I could even work in something about not having headaches at bedtime. This vow idea is sounding pretty good!"
As I explored the subject, her eyes narrowed. “I mean, that ‘love, honour and cherish’ thing is okay but it doesn’t cover replenishing my socks and undies drawer in a timely fashion,” I continued.
"Well, let's not be hasty," she interrupted. "If we do it, I want it to be just right, so it could be a little expensive. I can think of a few things we need more than renewing a piece of paper that doesn’t need renewing. Maybe we can do it for our 50th. That will give us a couple decades to save up."
We both lapsed into silence after that. I don't know what she was thinking but unlike her, I didn't want to ask. All I was thinking was that Rahim and I just got away with one.

The Goal

2010-03-10T11:44:00.000-07:00

My pal Randy called last week. He had a question every Canadian could answer.“So where were you when The Goal was scored?” he asked.
The Goal. I didn’t have to ask which one. It was the shot heard across North America. When Syd the Squid popped in the winner in the gold medal game against the US, 80% of our nation was watching and the rest were listening with the TV in the other room, unable to stand the tension. Even with The Goal fresh in my mind, my first reaction was to recall what was known as The Goal before Syd claimed the name for his own. It was, of course, The Goal Paul Henderson scored back in 1972. I will never forget it as long as I live.
I was in Grade Seven at the time, attending the old Calmar Junior/Senior School building. It was a creepy place with a basement that housed broken desks, old files and, intermittently, the Calmar Cadet Corps (where I rose to the lofty rank of “latrine detailer”). It was during my favourite part of the day; lunch time, and hockey was far from my thoughts. It would be long over when school finished so I focused on more scholarly pursuits, like lugging around five tons of books in a time before backpacks were cool.
As I neared the stairwell to the basement, however, I was surprised to hear noises emanating from the depths. I followed the sound down and found about twenty kids and a few teachers watching the game on an old TV someone had rigged up on a high shelf. I stood in awe at my good fortune, and the fact it was getting far too crowded to sit on the floor as more and more people jammed into the cavernous basement.The action was intense and when the bell rang to signal the end of the lunch break, no one moved including, most importantly, the teachers. A ripple of heightened excitement moved through the crowd but no one mentioned classes as not to break the spell. More teachers had joined the throng and we all watched the rest of the game with the joy of having something really terrific, added with guilty pleasure of getting out of school to do it. Being 12, it was more thrilling than girls.
When Paul Henderson scored The Goal, cheers shook the concrete pillars of the basement. Jet engines at a metal concert create less noise. Then we all sang “Oh Canada”. It amazed me it mattered so much to us all. But it did.
My experience with The Goal Syd scored was very different. I had play practise that day. They had considered cancelling rehearsal due to the game but with opening night of Devon’s talented East of 60 Players presentation of ‘Moon Over Buffalo’ less than two weeks away, a compromise was struck. Those not actively involved in rehearsing a scene could follow the action on the assistant director’s laptop. Finally the pretend curtain came down and we huddled around the 14 inch screen groaning loudly when the determined US team scored the tying goal.
“I gotta go,” I said. “I want to watch the rest at home. If I hurry, I can catch the overtime period.” My plan was to speed like mad knowing most cops would be watching The Game back at headquarters under the guise of ‘doing paperwork’. Common sense prevailed however and I kept it under 110 as I consoled myself by flicking on the radio to listen to the game.
Unfortunately, none of the buttons on my radio presets had the game on. I frantically fumbled for the ‘search’ feature on the radio but don’t ‘dial surf’ and had no idea how to figure it out and still avoid the ditch and/or oncoming traffic. As far as the game was concerned, I was in ‘radio silence’ mode and it sucked.
As I jounced up the driveway, I hoped the period hadn’t started. I felt confidant I was in time. Slamming the car door, however, I heard a roar emanate from our neighbour’s backyard that sounded like a throng of people just matched all six numbers in Lotto 649.
“At least we won,” I sighed. “There won’t be another revolting ‘Miracle On Ice’ movie made.”
Cam and Cec next door had set up a TV on their washstand to watch the game and still be outside in the long-awaited sunshine. I spied Cupcake and the boys in the group and as I walked over to join the celebration, my buddy, Grant thrust a beer in my hand.
“We won!” he crowed.
“That’s my boy!” Cec enthused in her tell-tale Cape Breton accent. “I knew Syd would do it!” We all cheered some more and hugged and slapped each other on the back and then broke into a passionate, if not out of tune rendition of Oh Canada.
“Another precious moment for the memory bank,” I marvelled. “What is it about Canada and hockey?”

The Kenmore Obit

2010-03-02T16:02:00.000-07:00

Kenmore (Kenny) Dryer. This family addition was adopted in the fall of 2001 at the age of five. From the beginning, Kenny was a great help in the laundry room. He would take anything Little Miss Moffat would throw at him. Kenny overcame a few crippling health problems; he survived a belt transplant in ’04 brought on by getting loaded too much, as well as a serious Downy habit. He managed to overcome those issues until last weekend, poor Kenny sadly, finally, shed his heating coil. He is survived by a jug of Liquid Tide and a stack of Bounce sheets.
I was sitting on the couch when I got the news. Cupcake’s mellifluous tones came blaring from our laundry room shattering my peaceful reverie like petrified wood on a band saw.
“We need a new dryer,” came the piercing report. “Ours just crapped out... again”
Her tone was icier than nitrogen on a stick.
“Now let’s not be hasty,” I cautioned, from the couch. “Last time it stopped working it wasn’t that bad to fix. What’s it doing, anyway?”
“When you press the timer knobby to make it go, it makes this noise... ‘GNGGNGGNGGNGGNGGNGGNGG’,”
Cupcake did her best ‘faulty dryer’ impression. It wasn’t bad!
“That was a pretty fair approximation, Hon!” I enthused.
“I was pressing the timer knobby again, you ninny,” she responded in clipped tones. “Now quit trying to change the subject. We have four baskets of wet clothes that need drying.”
I winced at the prospect. Appliance repair is, apparently, ‘men’s work’ and therefore any suggestion of using the laundromat would be tantamount to volunteering to do it. Why Cupcake would exacerbate the problem by going on a washing spree was beyond me but I suspected it was to crank up the pressure in the decision making process.
“Okay, okay,” I capitulated. “I’ll call Darcy the appliance guy.”
The phone call was brief.
“It’s making a bad noise when you press the timer knobby,” I explained. “It sounds like, ‘NGGNGGNGGNGGNGGNGGNGG’.”
“That noise is the sound of a seized motor,” he assessed. “You’re looking at around $300.00 to fix it. You can probably get a new one for four or a used one for two fifty or so...”
I thanked him for his candour and sighed mightily. New it is, I sighed. Cupcake had already stated categorically she would not accept another used machine.
Arranging delivery began badly. I had called my dear brother, Scouter Bob, who owns a truck.
“I’ll do it, but breakfast is on you on Saturday,” he advised.
“Okay,” I sighed.
“And you’ll have to bring me my coffee,” his enjoyment was obvious.
“Fine,” I said through clenched teeth.
“In bed,” he chortled.
“Forget it,” I snapped. “I’ll pay to have it delivered first.”
“I was just funnin’,” Bob guffawed. “You don’t have to buy me breakfast... unless you want to...”
The trip to the Major Shopping Decision was tense. Cupcake was practically drooling about an energy-efficient, large capacity wonder with more bells and whistles than a pinball machine in a rail yard.
“There no such thing as a ‘fold clothing and put it away’ feature,” I pointed out.
“I can dream, can’t I?” she said wistfully.
Personally, I was taking a wait and see approach. This involved waiting helplessly to see what Cupcake would do to my bank balance. I’ve tried other approaches but they’ve all ended badly. ‘Happy wife, happy life’ I reminded myself.
Then we saw the prices.
After much whispered discussion (It’s amazing how heated whispering can get!) we settled on their least expensive offering. A floor model from the previous year’s stock.
“We could buy three or four of these for the price of one of their higher end ones,” I enthused.Cupcake was non-committal. Either that or she was giving me the silent treatment.
Back home I quickly hooked up our newest acquisition. After a minor mishap with the new vent hose which required a trip back to Leduc (apparently, the metal foil ones don’t bend as easily as their toxic-gas producing plastic brethren) I carefully slid the unit into place. I stuffed some damp towels into the cavity, chased it with a Bounce sheet and pressed the button. Suddenly the entire room was brilliantly illuminated from the blue light of an enormous electrical arc and the dryer emitted the dreaded NGGNGGNGGNGGNGGNGGNGG noise.
Cupcake stood watching, her arms folded as I gingerly poked at the dryer to turn off the power. I wasn’t keen on being jolted out of my jammies but didn’t want to risk an electrical fire.
“I’ll order the one I suggested,” she said with smirk. “Better call Pete to see if he would be would be willing go to Leduc to fetch it. Bob would want our first-born.”
“The problem being?” I answered snidely.
“Chris!” came the sharp retort.
“All right, all right,” I acquiesced. I’d forgotten Cupcake’s sense of humour was in the same shape as our expired dryer.
The following day, with Cupcake’s new dryer running non-stop, I thought life was as back to normal as it gets here. Then I heard Cupcake’s voice from the kitchen.
“I don’t think our fridge is keeping things very cold,” she announced.
P.S. Used Kenmore Dryer for sale. Cheap. Needs some work.

Put 'er There!

2010-02-23T15:52:00.002-07:00

I recently received an interesting email outlining 24 things about to go extinct. (No, Tiger Woods’ career wasn’t mentioned, although it’s more endangered than the spotted owl.) The list of things going the way of the Carcharodontosaurus and the Canadian dollar bill, included such familiar items as the yellow pages and classified ads, VCR’s and dialup internet (You mean they aren’t dead yet?) as well as ham radio and cameras that use film, among other things.

It seemed to me the anonymous list maker missed a biggee, however. There is one thing that I see nowadays that is getting scarcer than a respected politician. No, it’s not faith in our institutions (that’s for another rant) but the humble handshake.

There was a time everyone shook hands. It was almost as popular as smoking. It was used in greeting and when departing, as a means of relaying both convivial congratulations and shared sorrow. It was REALLY popular with drunk guys, too, along with the phrase, “I love you, man.” The handshake was as pervasive as fedoras in the ‘50’s. There was none of this fist pounding stuff or the new elbow bump. Elbow bumping? Give me a break! We may as well wave from across the street. And for what? You’re as likely to catch something from a handshake as you are from a door knob or money or any of the myriad things we touch that others have touched.

If the threat of microbial invasion is as bad as those that make money off it claim, it is amazing the human race managed to survive through their multi-millennia handshaking phase until the use of hand sanitizers became more popular than, well, smoking. We must be a healthy society, indeed! But there are those that would have us believe we are walking bundles of bacteria. Well, we are, but the bacteria aren’t all bad. We’d die without bacteria in our systems. We need them as much as we need pizza and liquorice allsorts. Maybe more.

According to that universally trusted infotainment source, Wikipedia, historians believe handshaking has been with us since at least the second century BC... apparently before bacteria were invented. It has been used as a gesture of goodwill that, even we emotionally repressed males, are allowed to engage in with each other. This is why it is so popular to do after sporting events to demonstrate good sportsmanship, and is second only to fanny patting in communicating a hearty ‘attaboy’.

Recently, pressing the flesh has been banned in the most surprising places; kids’ soccer leagues, some churches, even at the Olympics. I was saddened by this turn of events. The handshake in church is one of my favourite parts. (I’m not a big offering fan.) And what better way to leave competitive aggression in sporting venues than with a hearty handshake? I confess I do support the ban for hockey players shaking hands, though. I mean... have you ever smelled a hockey glove? Do you really want to come in contact with that?

There’s a lot of communication in a handshake. It’s like a short, private, intense conversation. That’s why folks are selective about who they clasp with, unless of course they are politicians trying to get elected. Apparently, they will shake anyone down, especially after they win.

There is finesse to handshaking, too. It’s much more complicated than it may seem. You have to come in just so, feeling for that taut flap of skin at the base of the V created by thumb and forefinger (T&FV) on your T&FV. If you clamp earlier than full T&FV contact, you end up grasping the other person’s fingers in a squishy, unsatisfying, uncomfortable moment. If you come in too hard, you might break the other person’s thumb, which can also be socially uncomfortable. A firm, solid grip with a vigorous pump action is the goal but some carry the whole ‘firm’ thing too far. They see a handshake as a contest of strength instead of the genteel greeting it was intended to be and try to crush every carpus in your hand. Still, I’d rather have one of the ‘help, my hand’s caught in the car door’ type shakes than one that’s limper than soggy Sapporo Ichiban. Those ones are unsettling, like you feel you have accidently grabbed somebody’s prosthetic rubber arm.

I will miss the handshake. It’s a sign we’re all retreating into our own little tidy, self-contained units of humanity, enjoying music on our personal stereos, watching movies on our personal DVD players and texting our conversations without talking.

Despite this zest for isolation, studies have proven we need to be touched or we die. (The nice kind of touching, not the icky weird Uncle Naughtypants variety.) I believe we should take no chances and never pass up an opportunity to be touched. Paris Hilton could be the poster girl. Sadly, some, and not just the homeless and the homely, never get touched by anybody. To them, even a simple handshake would make all the difference. But it’s too late. Handshaking is now looked upon as a personal space invasion. The general public recoil at the thought of clasping hands in friendship.

And we are poorer for it.

An Olympic Career

2010-02-17T11:27:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, Cupcake and I had gotten a room at a budget motel to celebrate her birthday, Valentines and the fact that we still find each other attractive, 29 years after meeting. I am not at liberty to divulge which particular birthday but I will say, if the figure were converted to dog years, it would be over 375. Let’s listen in as there appears to be trouble brewing in la room de l’ amour. (That’s French, you know.) “But I don’t want to,” I protested. “You know I’m not into that stuff.”“Oh, come on,” Cupcake enticed.” I think you’ll like it. It would be great to do together. I don’t want to do it by myself like last time. Please? For me?”

I resisted as long as I could but, man, I love it when she begs.

“Okay, I’ll try it for a while,” I caved.

That exchange between us would explain why, amid a room filled with sensual delights; gigantic Jacuzzi tub, crackling fireplace, and a bed the size of a small country, the evening found us watching the opening celebrations of the 2010 Olympics.

Now it’s not that I hate the Olympics. I’m just not sure we get enough bang for our billions. I also question why I, via taxation, have to subsidize an over-blown track meet featuring people who, other than our birth country, have absolutely nothing in common with. These are beautiful, fit, young people with great hair, plus Kevin Martin. I mean, if the Olympics really were truly a money-making proposition as some people claim, private enterprise would have taken over years ago and instead of being every four years, would be a weekly reality show.

To me, I can’t help but see the whole thing as paying people to do jobs that don’t really need doing.What direct benefit do I get from athletes learning how to slide down hills really quickly? After all, the impact on my daily life would be negligible, even if Canada won every medal. My paycheque would remain the same, my darts would still suck; nothing would change. In fact, the only difference I can perceive between a world with Olympics as opposed to one without, is that in a world bereft of The Games, I wouldn’t have been sitting in a sumptuous motel room watching television.
I have a theory why countries fight over hosting them. I believe we are all are victims of international peer-group pressure. It’s like we’re all, as nations, still in junior high.

And what pressure there was. We had to win gold at our own Olympics since we never had before on Canadian soil... or snow... or ice... Calamitous! We better throw more money at it!

I’m old enough to remember (unfortunately) in Montreal and Calgary when we failed to finish first in any event. How truly Canadian, I thought. We are such generous hosts! No wonder the Olympic Committee chose Vancouver.

As Cupcake and I watched, I had to admit the snowboarder entrance was pretty cool. The guy must have had kahunas the size of cantaloupes which should have made the descent even more difficult. The native dancing was enthralling, too, as was Ashley MacIsaac’s incredible fiddling performance.

“Who’s the dude with the sour face?” I asked Cupcake of the grim-looking dignitary sitting beside Governor General Michaelle Jean. “He looks like a refugee from a 1930’s horror flick.”

“Oh shush,” scolded Cupcake. “That’s Jacque Rogge, the president of the IOC. I’ll grant you that he does look like he just ate some of your father’s tripe and onion soup.”

I must say, the speeches from Canadian celebrities praising their homeland did make me uncomfortable. I’ve always felt our undemonstrative patriotism fits nicely with our national image. I find over-zealous public displays of love of country as inappropriate as over-zealous public displays of romantic exuberance. That’s what motels are for. Besides, it’s so un-Canadian to invite someone to your home just so you can brag about it. Our way is much more subtle. We simply open our doors in welcome and let folks think what they may. We know they will love it, too.

The speechifying aside, the celebration continued to amaze. Sure there were a few glitches; a delayed dignitary here, a stubborn cauldron leg there, but it was still an inspiring spectacle. I wanted to be in BC Place so bad, if only to get one of those nifty electric candle jobbies everybody in the audience got.“See?” said Cupcake as the credits rolled. “Aren’t you glad we watched it?”

“Oh yeah,” I agreed readily. “When I pay three figures for a night away, there’s nothing I’d rather do than watch TV.”

“You know,” Cupcake giggled. “With your grumpy face on, you look just like that Rogge guy!” P.S, For those interested in my Great Treadmill Adventure, you may recall I was working out the cost/hour of treadmill ownership. I have now used it for approximately three weeks and have brought the price below $100.00/hour. I have been using it even more, lately, since I pimped it out with a cup holder and a sandwich tray.

Revenue Canada Phobia

2010-02-09T15:45:00.000-07:00

At this time year, I begin to get irritable, preoccupied; maybe even a little crazy. It’s not Seasonal Affective Disorder but something much worse. It is my annual attack of revenuecanadaphobia whereby I’m thrust into the unaccustomed experience of having to think about my finances.

I view my paycheque as a sort of wind tunnel. The money, in twenties, gushes from the blower end, while at the far side, sucking up all my twenties, are the mortgage, the car payment, the utilities, insurance, groceries and the like, and boy do they suck! Every once in a while, I reach into the meagre flow of twenties and pluck out one or two for beer and other necessities but mostly they just fly by. I won’t say it’s a perfect system but it has got me this far. However, with tax season approaching, as unstoppable as another Simon Cowell produced TV show, everything’s changed.

Financial questions invade my mind which had previously been occupied with foraging for food in the fridge, cajoling Cupcake into connubial goings-on and....uhhhh... foraging for food in the cupboard. Seemingly overnight I am pondering such deep issues such as, should I buy RRSP’s to offset my tax burden? How much? Which ones? How long a term should I sign up for? What is my maximum allowable contribution? Why aren’t those Triscuits still up on the top shelf, behind the spaghetti canister, where I hid them?

The problem is that I have just watched my company RRSP’s go through a phase where they were losing money faster than a rube at a pickpocket convention. My quarterly financial statements sent by the financial institution had profit and loss charts that looked suspiciously like they were borrowed from an automotive manufacturer... except I didn’t get a bail out. I was leery about pouring more money into an apparently insatiable monster but felt I had a better chance of getting something decent out of it than if I just mailed it off to Revenue Canada. My odds may be lousy with the stock market but money sent to the government is gone forever.

I decided to ask an expert. I booked an appointment with a finance fellow at the credit union. Some might say going to an RRSP salesman to see if I needed an RRSP was like going to a used car lot to see if I needed a 1974 Gremlin. Nonetheless, the credit union had treated me as fairly as I ever expected a financial institution to and felt they deserved a chance to convince me.

The financial guru, Ian, (not his real suit jacket) is a tall earnest man with an amiable disposition and a shrewd mind for money. I suspect he’d been a nerd in school.

As Ian crunched the numbers of a retirement formula on his computer screen, a line graph of my projected income after retirement based on my current investments began to appear. If it had been my electro-cardiogram readout and not my financial picture, I would be in ICU with hoses in every orifice. “Okay, let’s look at your investments,” Ian said heartily. “Maybe when we plug some of those numbers in, the graph may perk up a bit.”

“Well,” I began nervously, “there’s the 12 bags of empty beverage bottles by the shed... I donated them to the grad’s bottle drive,” Cupcake whispered. “And if you bring up the change in the sofa, I’ll smack you.”

The brief stab at levity aside, I enumerated my sources of income I could expect, based on the various pensions and RRSP’s I currently have. Although I had been with the same company for almost thirty years, along the way it changed hands a few times and new pension plans appeared with each new logo on my paycheques. One parent multinational conglomerate only owned the company I toiled for briefly, and the pension from the short fling is anticipated to be worth a whopping $29.47 per month. The company threatened me that if I retired earlier than 65, they would cut it back to $21.63. I’m working until I’m 65 now just to tick them off.

Finally, after examining the bones of my financial future, Ian came to a stunning conclusion. “Based on what’s already invested from payroll deductions, you probably don’t need more RRSP’s to maintain a reasonable tax rate,” he proclaimed. “And with help from CPP and OAP and your umpteen pensions, your retirement is more promising than you first thought, too.”

“Boy,” I blurted out, “you sure make a lousy RRSP salesman!” Cupcake kicked my leg.

“Just to be sure,” Cupcake told Ian after shushing me with her patented ‘shut the puff up while I do the talking’ look, “We’d like a five-year principal-guaranteed investment product as outlined on your website.” She stated the amount and Ian quickly tapped out the transaction on his computer.

“Apparently he’s a better RRSP salesman than I gave him credit for,” I chided Cupcake outside the credit union doors. “Actually, I think you made an astute financial decision.”

“Not really,” confessed my child bride. “I noticed a sign saying that if you buy an RRSP, you can win a big screen TV!”

Recalling My Chevette!

2010-02-02T14:51:00.000-07:00

Last week, Toyota’s recall of some models due to accelerators sticking made more headlines than a corduroy pillow. The panic and anger felt by the owners of the affected vehicles was substantial, but I bet it was nothing like the panic and anger felt around the Toyota chairman’s boardroom table. I can picture in my mind in exquisite detail, that first meeting after the CEO learned a massive recall had to be made. Unfortunately, it’s all in Japanese so I can’t make out what they’re saying exactly but I’d bet money that somebody was blaming somebody, though.

Having an accelerator stick is not a... ahem, foreign experience to me. Years ago I owned a Chevette (Yes, I admit it) that had more problems than a gay infidel at a Taliban training camp. Commuting in winter without freezing to death required me to wear a snow suit, two sweaters and four pair of long underwear. I looked like Marlon Brando in his later years. I would try to arrive early so I could sit in the bathroom stall at work nicknamed “the crematorium” just to defrost.

One day on the way in, I had just reached the bottom of Devon Hill and had begun to accelerate to make it up the other side. Suddenly I realized, with a stab of terror, my gas pedal wasn’t coming back up when I lifted my foot. I was indeed fortunate that it happened where it did because the climb up Devon Hill at full throttle in a Chevette doesn’t even put you at the speed limit. It gave me time to think of options, other than hammering my foot on the obstinate accelerator over and over and over and screaming like a girl.

At the top of the hill, the car began to pick up speed. I was no further ahead in planning how to deal with my little accelerator issue. I had to do something, though, as I was hurtling toward the back of a semi. Although it was entirely possible the little car may have fit under the chassis of the trailer, I didn’t want to take that chance. Braking wasn’t helping, other than to burn out my pads. I even tried taking it out of gear so I could slow it down but the engine screamed like a chain saw on full bore.... well, ¾ bore and was shaking the car so violently, I thought the tiny, 400 hamster-powered motor might leap right through the hood. I was pooping cinderblocks, let me tell you..

It finally occurred to me to simply turn the key off, and coast to a stop on the shoulder of the highway. I turned on my four-way flashers, the international symbol for “Yes, I’m having a bad day. Yes, I’m having a bad day. Yes, I’m having a bad day.” I sat there for a few minutes, willing my heart to stop pounding and resisting the urge to roll up into the foetal position.

‘Calm down,’ I thought to myself. ‘Everything’s fine, for now.’

‘CALM DOWN??’ I answered. ‘Are you nuts? I might have been killed!’
As I sat there wondering what to do about the situation and dreading the hit my wallet would take if I had to pay for a tow, suddenly, the accelerator popped back up. I was as elated as I was suspicious. I gave it a few test presses but was afraid of flooding the engine. I weighed the risks of driving back to Devon to get it fixed but having Devon Hill between me and the dealership made me nervous. I knew I would have to floor it again to get up the other side and was scared to death it might stick again in the ‘lethal missile’ position.

Gingerly I started the killer machine up and braved the perils of Devon Hill. The thought of having my throttle sticking in the city, overpowered my fear of the icy climb I’d be facing again.

Safely at the dealership, the mechanic explained the problem. Apparently, in the cold, the throttle cable would accumulate ice and freeze against some other lump of ice when the pedal was completely depressed. Sitting on the side of the road with the warmth of the engine heating the motor cavity, it melted the ice and freed the mechanism. With some WD40, a new chunk of cardboard jammed in my grill and moving a rad hose closer to the throttle gizmo rectified the issue immediately.

“Happens all the time with these types of cars,” the mechanic assured me.

“What type of cars do you mean?” I asked.

“Crappy ones,” he responded with a wink.

There was never a recall of Chevettes, despite all their foibles. I learned a lot about what makes cars go and stop from my buddies, thanks to that car. Although the motor would never die, everything around it had to be replaced eventually. On the other hand, it was cheap to run and mostly got me to where I wanted to go. When I traded it in for another Chevette, it had over 350,000 kilometres on it. I loved that little car, other than the day it tried to throttle me to death. All I can say to the recall victims is, “I feel your pain”.

Waste Not!

2010-01-27T10:51:00.000-07:00

Willfull waste makes woeful want – Old Scottish proverb. What a surprise.

Waste. It`s like stupidity. It`s everywhere. North Americans have the most wasteful society ever seen on the planet. Waste is so prevalent, it is useless to try and document every example. Nonetheless, there are certain types of waste that bug me worse than others for no apparent reason. They are like personal pet peeves. We all have them and when it comes to waste, these are mine.

Take, for example, band-aids. You buy a pack of assorted sizes to cover every contingency; contusions abrasions, flaming boils on your inner leg just where your thighs meet when you walk. (What? Your thighs don`t meet when you walk???) More often than not, all you ever use are the standard size for the average oozing pimple, leaking hangnail or what have you. The itty-bitty ones are next to useless; suitable only for things like, say a dart puncture wound or infected follicle of some sort. By the time you`re done with the reasonable sized ones, you still have a full complement of the size appropriate for staunching blood flow on Barbie and Ken dolls.

It`s the same for the great big honkin` bandaids that accompany that same assorted pack. The way I see it, if you need to use a bandaid of this size, you better see a doctor... after the ambulance ride. You have bigger issues than a bandaid is able to cure, unless, of course, you don`t have health care insurance. By the time you are finished with the regulation sized ones, the only big ones you`ve used was to cut the strip of sticky stuff off to keep the ridiculously small bandaids on.

Gas is something else that is wasted constantly. I`m not talking about the wasted gas that is burned up in your average Tim Horton`s drive-through, although the amount frittered away waiting for a double-double is more staggering than six shots of tequila, but of that produced by our bovine buddies, the humble cow. According to online government documents available to anyone who wants to google it like I did, ol` Bossy can put out 250 to 500 litres of methane a day. (!) You know how many cows there are on the planet? Me neither and I`m too lazy to google it but you can imagine it is a HUGE resource being squandered! If we could harness that energy, we could ease the burden on conventional polluting methods of transportation, home heating and power generation needs. I would not, however, recommend it for your natural gas barbecue. Or maybe it`s just me that doesn`t want my burger cooked over cow fluffs.

One type of waste saddens me greatly. I see it in stores of every kind; masses of merchandise that will never move; like rigor mortis has set in. To call it dead stock is an understatement, at least for this season. I`m referring to all the Edmonton Oiler stuff you see; hats, toques, cards, stickers, lighters, and especially the flags. When`s the last time you saw an Oiler flag on a vehicle? All those resources used to manufacture all that stuff that`s just going to sit collecting more dust than a Swiffer abuser. It is not just a waste, it is a shame.

There’s one type of waste that is fairly insignificant in the big picture but drives me much crazier than it reasonably should. It’s that bit of sugar that’s left in the bag after I pour it into the sugar canister. No matter how much I shake the bag, I can still hear the individual grains of sugar rattling around inside, thumbing their crystallized noses at me. Years ago I saw on the TV show, Marketplace, where they had a spokesman from a sugar company who discussed this very issue. He demonstrated that, although it may sound like a lot of sugar trapped in the creases and folds of the bag, after dissecting the bag in a thorough package autopsy, the amount of all-natural sweetener freed was less than a teaspoon worth. My natural reaction was, of course. But it’s MY teaspoon worth, dagnabbit!!

Another waste; any amount spent on Brussels sprouts.

I notice Cupcake is very concerned about waste, particularly my wasting ways, not that I’m wasting away to nothing. She will hound me about running the water while I brush my teeth but takes an entire hotwater tankfull just to wash her hair, condition it, cream rinse it, even polish and wax it for all I know. Experiments limiting the hot water deliver at the tank while she is showering, however, have proven unwise. It does explain my limp.

Ultimately, I know that no matter how much I recycle and reuse, I will still waste stuff. From the last few dabs of shampoo at the bottom of the bottle that the squirty thing can’t suck up to the milk that isn’t drank quickly enough and ends up on the wrong side of the smoothy/chunky scale, waste will always be with us.

If life is a waste of time and time is a waste of life, let’s get wasted and have the time of our lives. - Anon

Tread Dread

2010-01-21T16:18:00.000-07:00

With Cupcake’s birthday looming, I have been wracking my last remaining brain cells still in captivity as to what to get her as a gift. I have already used up the best ideas as Christmas presents such a short time ago and have no idea how to observe her XXth birthday. (Editor’s note, number removed to protect the idiot columnist.)

Then, the other night, I was on my half of the loveseat (loveseat... more like a “keep your filthy hands to yourself seat”) reading while Cupcake was watching her favourite show, Criminal Law and Order Mind Scene Investigators or some such. Suddenly my attention was drawn to an ad for a treadmill that was inexpensive, fold awayable, easy to set up and, did I mention, inexpensive?

I know Cupcake is always concerned about her health and thought the treadmill would be just the thing to help her keep fit and so, be a mighty fine birthday surprise. However, just to be sure, I talked to my buddy, Pete, about it. He’s quite a bit older than me and wise in many ways.

“You’re buying Cupcake a treadmill as a gift?” he snorted beer out his nose in astonishment. “To put it delicately, old chum, are you out of your freaking mind? That would be about as popular as a wicker toilet.”

“I was only thinking of her health, I swear!” I defended myself. “I’m sure she would see it in that light. She was thrilled when I got her all that Oil of Oo-lala anti-aging goop at Christmas. She better have, at that price. The point is, she didn’t think I got it for her because I think she’s old looking... ”

“Face cream is something she’s been putting on for decades. She hasn’t had much to do with exercise equipment since that incident with the mini trampoline. Frankly, I’m sure she’d see a treadmill the same way as if you bought her a case of Slim-Fast,” he warned. “Would she buy you a carton of beer withdrawal patches? Look, if you really want to be certain the treadmill will be well received, maybe think of a way to bring it up without committing to it. Nonchalantly, you know?”

That night after Cupcake had gone to bed, I fired up the internet and found a page showing all the details of this fine piece of exercise equipment. I knew she’d see it when she would do her morning online Sudoku. I congratulated myself on my subtly.

“That’s a pretty good deal,” Cupcake enthused as she read it, while I mentally applauded my cleverness. “But you’re not thinking about this as my birthday present, I hope. It would be for all of us, not just me.”

“Well, there’s no way I’m going to unload that kind of dough on an impulse purchase AND buy you a present, too!” I protested.

The next day found me still in a quandary about what to buy her while lugging the huge treadmill box into the house. With sweat pouring down my face I wondered briefly if they included a set of weights with the machine. At least I’m getting exercise from wrestling the stupid box, I thought grimly. Unpacking the unit proved as equally arduous as it was manoeuvring it into the dining room. Carefully cutting up the mass of cardboard, polyfoam and Styrofoam had me foaming at the mouth. It yielded an enormous pile of stuff to get rid of; two huge recycling bags worth and those suckers don’t grow on trees. Finally, it was all set up and had run the requisite hour to recalibrate the tread belt. I was ready to climb aboard. I estimate the unit had cost me about $500.00, including incidentals; new runners, a pair of gym shorts and a bottle of extra strength ibuprofen. This figure was important because I planned to motivate myself by keeping track of the cost per hour of the machine. The first hour may cost $500.00/hour but the second hour will halve that to $250.00/hour. My goal was to get the cost per hour lower than a gym membership. (Not that I’ve ever actually set foot in one since graduating from High School. I’ve always associated the word “gym” with humiliation, emasculation, and the only C’s ever on my report cards and have since avoided them religiously.)

My first trip on the journey to nowhere was exciting. I felt relief the lowest setting was too slow for me at one km/hr. Apparently it only had a top speed of 6 km/hr which was a problem for some people who had commented on it in the “consumer reviews”. When I fired it up to Warp Six, however, I knew it wouldn’t be of concern as I would never need it to go that fast. If I tried it on that speed, there’d be a perfect impression of me in the drywalled wall behind the thing.

Epilogue: We’ve had the thing for two full days and three evenings. So far, the cost per hour is $1500.00. But, hey, I’ve been busy!

My Resolve

2010-01-12T15:27:00.000-07:00

The zombie appeared out of nowhere and advanced quickly.... menacingly. Its bulging, bloodshot eyes moved independently of one another as its slackened jaw allowed drool to trickle down its rotting chin. It reminded me of a girl I dated in high school. A pull of the triggers on my double-barrelled shotgun took care of the problem quickly. The blast left my attacker with less head than a stale glass of draught beer. Suddenly, an even more terrifying spectre appeared. This one, however, wasn’t cannon fodder in a video game like the zombie but my conjugal colleague Cupcake. “Honey...” Cupcake began. I instantly put full shields up and mentally sounded ‘red alert’ for the conversation to come. “I thought of a great New Year’s resolution for you!” she enthused, as if it were good news.“I thought you loved me just the way I am.” I protested. “Besides, it’s half-past January already. Your resolution window of opportunity has closed. We must move forward.” “Don’t give me that ‘move forward’ malarkey! If you would move in ANY direction, I’d be happy.”

“I’ve been waiting for you to come up with a resolution like you promised for almost two weeks. Forgive me if I think you could use some.... encouragement.” “Is that what you call it now?” I put in courageously. “We used to call it...” I was going to use the “n” word but Cupcake HATES the term ‘nagging’.

“...a er... uh... pleasant reminder,” I finished lamely.
Cupcake didn’t rise to the bait but continued to plough forward with her agenda.

“I was just going to suggest you resolve to stop constantly putting things off,” she continued relentlessly. “I mean, you put the ‘pro’ in procrastination. Your slogan should be ‘Procrastinators of the world, UNITE... TOMORROW!” “Very funny,” I grunted. “With gags that clever, you could write for the CBC.” “Well you do tend to delay doing things,” she ignored my jab. “We painted the hall two years ago and I’m still waiting for you to put the switch-covers back on.” “I’ve been busy!” I protested weakly. “You don’t just rush into highly dangerous and difficult tasks. You wait for the right moment. Besides, I’m curious to know what YOUR resolution was. You certainly didn’t share it with me. It obviously didn’t involve quitting nnn... going on about the stupid switch-covers. And if you get to choose my resolution, I get to choose yours and I’m making it that you resolve to double our nookie output!” “Over my dead body,” she snorted. My mind leaped at the comedic possibilities of her response; however a quick-witted retort died on my lips. Apparently, my survival instinct had kicked in.

I decided to continue to press her on her own resolution-appropriate shortcomings. Although the strategy was more dangerous than any zombie attack, I figured a good offense would be the best defence; an approach apparently lost on the Edmonton Oilers.

“Okay, how about something more realistic?” I prodded. “I made a little list for you.” I pretended to feed a lengthy stream of paper through my fingers. Most situations are improved by jocularity. It seemed this wasn’t one of them.

“Look here, Mr. Perfect...” Cupcake can take a lot but there is always that point... like the one she’d just reached. “I have gone without chocolate for over 288 hours and.... 27 minutes... and if you think I’ll deny myself any longer, when you’re not willing to make changes in your life, you’re nuts.”
With that she strode to the cupboard and took out a bag of Russell Stover chocolates. I’d never seen them kept in the spaghetti canister on the top shelf before.

“You gave up chocolate?” I was astounded. That’s like Linus giving up his blanket. “Oh, honey, please don’t give up chocolate. I beg of you. Remember what happened last time? Besides, your Hershey habit isn’t out of control or anything. It’s not like I was going to sign you up for an intervention.” “I know,” she muttered unhappily; a mouthful of the brown confection slurring her words. Her eyes had taken on a glaze a TimBit would be envious of. “It’s just that they are my weakness and I’ve tried to just cut down and that worked about as well as your old pickup lines. I thought maybe if I tried to go cold turkey, I could handle it but chewy granola bars just don’t cut it.”

I hugged her closely, trying not to think of the chocolatey fingers on my new sweater.

“There, there, my sweet,” I said soothingly in her ear. “Let’s just forget all this silly resolution stuff. It’s never ever changed us one iota in all the years we’ve tried. The fact that I have flaws makes it okay for you to have flaws, too. Love can only exist between two people who can tolerate each other’s faults.” “So, your solution is to never try and improve yourself or attempt to become a better person? Accept your failings rather than fight them?” she frowned. “What’s the use of getting married if you can’t ‘let yourself go’?” I grinned. “Works for me!” she giggled, stuffing another chocolate in her mouth.”

Bucket List

2010-01-05T15:27:00.001-07:00

There is an air of excitement as people across the planet embark on our collective voyage aboard The Good Ship 2010. The excitement stems from the hope the journey will be better than The Kind of Sucky Ship 2009. At this auspicious time, it is required by law that all editorialists, columnists, bloggers and hack writers of every stripe must create more lists than a busload of seniors on Shopping Day. These lists are mostly comprised of the best and worst of this and that; from economics to electronics, from pandemics to preparation for the Olympics. 2009 will be analyzed more closely than a scoring play in the Superbowl.

Being sadly ill-equipped to discuss political culture, pop culture or even a bacterial culture, my list contribution is a review my own 2010 personal “bucket list”. A bucket list is an inventory of all the things I’d like to do before I “kick the bucket”. (Gulp!) The term was popularized by a movie starring Jack Whats-His-Name and that other guy. (I told you pop culture wasn’t my strong suit.)

To begin with, let’s review the items I have already checked off in 49 years on the planet.

Graduate High School: CHECK. Go to college: CHECK. Get a decent job: CHECK. Get lucky: Not so far this year but I’m hoping.

Granted it’s a rather meagre list, however, it is nothing like what I plan to do! Here is my own personal bucket list and the progress I’ve made towards attaining them.

Go hang gliding. Perhaps the closest thing to flying there is (other than drinking the 190 proof Everclear I bought at the liquor store for the eggnog. The high-test hooch had numerous warning labels; one regarding blindness and four others concerned with catching yourself on fire with it. Wow.) My hang gliding preparation, so far, consists mainly of watching the occasional video. I realize I’d probably have to wear some kind of adult under-garment but I can dream, can’t I?

Go into space. So far the Canadian Space Agency has yet to call (I can’t believe it, either.) but Cupcake still insists that even at my age, I qualify as a space cadet. In fact, she has even said I’ve had space in my head for as long as she’s known me. Then she giggled.

Lose weight permanently. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Yeah. Right.

Get my finances in order. My current system involves writing cheques on payday until I get nervous. Then I wait until next payday to write some more. Okay, so maybe “system” is too strong a word for it.
Go on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” to flog my book. one: write book.

Meet celebrities. So far, the most famous person I’ve ever met was Leduc Mayor, Greg Krischke. Well.... it’s a start. I’ll never forget His Worship’s parting words to me the last time I saw him. He said, “Get off my lawn, you weirdo or I’ll call the cops.”

Figuring out Cupcake. Nothing concrete so far, as it’s kind of a moving target. The only facets of her complex character I have uncovered that I can be 100% certain of, 100% of the time, are that she likes chocolate and jewellery.

Understanding my sons. If I wore my hair like that as a kid, I’d have been beaten up. It is kind of tragic, I think, that nowadays, no matter what you do to your hair, nobody gives it a second glance. Kind of defeats the purpose of having a pink and purple Mohawk. I may as well go back to my brush-cut.
Spend a week at the Smithsonian Institute. Am I boring or what?

Go snorkelling at a coral reef. Of course I’d want armed guards, a shark cage and numerous applications of shark repellent. I saw the movie “Jaws” back when it didn’t look so hokey.
Do something spontaneous. This one is so difficult to plan.

Watch the Oilers win the Stanley Cup. Cupcake bought me socks for Christmas with Oiler logos on the ankles. They were really good for a while but then they just sucked. Then they were okay for a little bit then they had a really bad run...

Sample beer from every country. Not all in one night, of course.
Win the Stephen Leacock award for humour. Okay... any award for humour. Any award, actually. Something. Jeez.

Watch all the greatest movies of all time. Important, ground-breaking masterpieces like “Citizen Kane”,

“Gone with the Wind”, “Debbie Does Dallas”...

I have others but space prohibits my ability to share them. Plus, I don’t want Cupcake to read a couple of choice ones. (Woohoo!) Whatever your own bucket list consists of, however, I hope you check off a few in 2010. Just remember the wise words of George Bernard Shaw, “There are two tragedies in life; one is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.”

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

Christmas Checklist

2009-12-22T15:44:00.000-07:00

Some people like to do it at night. Others enjoy it in the morning. Yet others do a little the night before and finish off when they wake up the next day. I am talking about the tradition of opening Christmas presents, of course, and the time of day when your family has their gift-opening, is just one tradition in an endless series of traditional choices every family makes to create their version of “the perfect Christmas”. One of the most enjoyable aspects of Christmas is the time-honoured traditions we, as a family have developed over the decades and we, as a culture, developed over centuries. I find it fascinating how that each family forges their own set of traditions which are as unique as the individuals that spawned them, as they create their idea of the Ideal Yule.

Here, then, is a collection of my own Christmas checklist; traditions that must be observed for me to feel I have had the complete Yuletide experience.

Forwarding Christmas jokes via email is a relatively new tradition, given the age of the medium, but one already entrenched in our culture. They start about the same time as the Christmas sales and are almost as plentiful. My favourite so far: Did you hear about the dyslexic devil worshipper? He sold his soul to Santa.

Watching Christmas movies is a centuries old tradition that dates back to times before electricity when they had to watch their portable DVD's by torchlight. However, in my books, you can keep your “Jingle All The Way” and “The Santa Clause”. I'm an old-school kind of guy (What a surprise).”It's A Wonderful Life”, “Miracle on 34 St.”, and of course, the most classic of them all, “Charlie Brown's Christmas” are my style. I even like Rudolph and Frosty although I find “Little Drummer Boy” a bit disturbing. It's not often, after all, you see a cartoon where the protagonist's parents die at the beginning of the show unless the protagonist becomes a super hero.

On Christmas Eve, driving around the town looking at all the gorgeous Christmas lights is one of my favourite customs. Who cares that the carbon footprint of this activity is the size of the tar sands (sorry we call them the “oil sands” now), Cupcake and I have been making the annual pilgrimage around the town since the boys were just wee lads. Luckily, Calmar is so small you can actually drive down every street and still be back home in time for “A Christmas Carol” with Alastair Sim.

Letting the kids open just one gift on Christmas Eve is another of our traditions that began when the kids were still young enough to intimidate. Ah, the good old days. In our household, Cupcake invariably selects the Christmas Eve gift and her annual choice is always, without fail, pyjamas. Kind of takes the fun out of it but, hey, Cupcake needs her little traditions, too.

Opening stockings on our bed is a tradition in our house I've never agreed with. When I was an anklebiter, the whole point of the stocking was to keep us kids busy for an extra half an hour or so for my folks to get a little bit more sleep. Our kids always demanded that we open our stockings together, however, and our big, comfy bed appeared to be the best place. So much for extra sleep.

There's another tradition I've come to expect, happens annually, as sure as Boxing Day sales follow Christmas. That tradition is having Cupcake fret over whether this dish or that didn't turn out the way she'd hoped. It cracks me up. This is a centuries-old phenomenon, considering Dickens took great pains to include the fact that Mrs. Cratchit was concerned about the amount of flour in the pudding. It is amusing to see Cupcake in a flap over over-done glazed carrots or dry stuffing, despite the fact the whole tableful will be attacked with such gusto, afterward, it would appear a plague of locusts had joined in the meal.

Baking Christmas treats is another wonderful Christmas tradition. The goal is to create desserts and snacks with the most amount of calories per square millimetere. Take the traditional Christmas fruit cake. A 1.5 ounce piece, which, given the substantial weight of the cake, is about the size of an Icy Square, contains 139 calories. Given that the portions doled out by elderly female relatives, a major source of the delicacy, are many times the 1.5 ounce serving means every slice is worth about the average person's 2000 calorie/day limit.

Last but certainly not least is our tradition of making home-made Irish cream, with the following recipe:
1 bottle cheap rye whiskey
4 tablespoons of chocolate syrup
4 tsp instant coffee dissolved in
1 cup of water
1 egg well whipped
2 cans Eagle Brand condensed milk
1 500 ml container of whipping cream

Okay, I've got my checklist ready. Bring on the holidays! Merry Christmas Everyone!

Tree for the show

2009-12-18T09:52:00.000-07:00

“Honey....” Cupcake's voice dripped more sweetness than a Lindor chocolate dipped in maple syrup. Years of experience has taught me that when she uses that particular voice, the next thing out of her mouth will be as unpleasant as a shot of Buckley's Mixture with a Brussels sprout juice chaser.

“It's time for you know what!” she said with guarded excitement.

“Oh boy!” I enthused, tongue firmly in cheek. “I'll get the scented massage oil!”

“Not for that, you know what, the other one,” her frustration-drenched response prefaced her patented eye-roll. “It's time to bring the Christmas tree down from the attic so we can decorate it! Are you sure you still fit through the trap door? Are you saying I'm bigger around than our tree?” I tried to sound as hurt as possible.

“All I'm saying is that when you press the tree limbs against the trunk, the tree gets smaller. However, when you press YOUR limbs against the trunk of YOUR body.....”

“I get it, already..” I interupted her drivel. “Let me say how much I appreciate you monitoring my girth.”

“It's my job,” she snickered. “And not a pleasant one, either!”

After a quick trip into the attic, quick, that is, apart from the time spent stuck in the entryway into the ceiling (apparently the hole had gotten smaller since the previous year) I retrieved our festive fake foliage.

As I wrestled with the gigantic decoration, I could smell the artificial pine scent on the artificial tree. Cupcake sprays it on to make it smell more natural, oblivious to the irony of it.

“We should have got some eggnog to drink while we decorate,” I said, trying to get into the spirit of it. “I had some at Jeff's that was just awesome!”

“Eggnog? Gross.” her face contorted in remembered digust. “It's like a super-sweet barium smoothie. There's a reason you don't see it all year round. The stuff Jeff served up was probably half rum.”

“It did appear thinner than most eggnog,” I admited. “I just thought it was eggnog lite. Okay, then how about a Christmas movie while we decorate? That sounds great!” she responded joyously. “How about 'Die Hard'? It starts out with a great rendition of “Let It Snow”.

“I was thinking of something along the lines of 'Miracle on 34th Street'. 'Die Hard' as a Christmas movie? You're just hung up on Bruce Willis,” I observed.

“Heh heh... let's just forget the movie,” Cupcake defensively changed the subject. “We'll just put on the Christmas Tree channel. Can we put on the Fireplace Channel instead?” I enquired innocently. “I find it less repetitive than the carols on the tree channel. I'm sure that celebrity Christmas albums outnumber available Christmas songs by at least a thousand to one. In fact, the only Christmas album I can listen to all the way through anymore is Boney M's. Their rendition of 'When a Child is Born' always chokes me up.”

“Honey,” Cupcake snorted in amusement, “Even Lego commercials choke you up. You are such a sap you could be a donor if a tree needed a transfusion.”

As Cupcake opened the box of ornaments our banter trailed off. Looking at the collection of memories in that box was like a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past. I found Junior's special “Baby's First Christmas” hand painted bauble and smiled at the recollection of the first time it had graced our tree.

Out came more decorations. There was the paper angel Matt had made in Kindergarten. Its halo has been taped back into place a mite crookedly and it's once-white dress now looks bedraggled like the angel had rolled a homeless woman to get it. Matt was so proud of it at the time. Now he says it just looks tacky and doesn't understand why we don't just toss it. Yeah. Right. He doesn't understand that each one of those decorations, particularly the ones the boys made as they grew up, are vital to our whole Christmas experience. They are sacred pieces of the elaborate mosaic we call “Christmas Spirit” and evoke as many memories as an old family photo album.

“What about this cheapie reindeer ornament?” I held out the item in question. Thin felt once covered all of the brown plastic. Coverage was now more spotty in some areas and there was evidence of teeth marks, although not sure if it was child or dog . One eye was missing. “Surely this doesn't have sentimental value.”

We looked at it briefly and then said in unison, “We'll put it in the back of the tree.”

As we talked about our favourite holiday moments from yules gone by, I was struck by an odd thought. It occured to me that remembrances of the past seasons is rarely about the gifts we received, yet that is what we spend the most time and effort on. Humans are an odd bunch.

Hotel Hell

2009-12-11T10:02:00.000-07:00

Remember last Friday? The snow was flaking unreal! We got so much shovel-ready precipitation, my Nova Scotian neighbour, Cec, was almost impressed. To her, anything under a meter is a mere skiff. Mind you, as I'm typing this, it's her hubby, Cam, I see shovelling their 50 meter driveway. I'd help but I have this column to write, eh.

As it happened, the blizzard struck on the same day the company I'm employed by was taking inventory. Not only were we to work far into the night (at my age, 9:30 is far into the night) but also had to return early the following day for the computing part of the counting festival. No exceptions. The only way to be excused from the process was if you had a note from your mortician.

As I watched out the store window at the wind-blown blast, I debated my options. Cupcake, aware of the scheduled conditions, had insisted I pack some essentials in case I chose to hotel it close to the office. I'd complied grudgingly. I've braved some pretty hairy driving conditions just to sleep in my own bed. I was resolute a little snow would not stop me.

Until I looked outside, that is. It was snowing sideways. I watched as a sanding truck skidded out of control and did a three-sixty. Maybe the hotel idea wasn't so bad after all.

Phoning around for decent, discount accommodation went poorly. The least pricey place I found was $126.00, including tax which, given my late arrival and early departure, worked out to almost $16.00/hour. There are darned few things I would willingly pay that kind of dough for.

However, eyeing the crotch-deep snow (stupid 29 inch inseam) I finally deemed it my most prudent alternative. Picturing the perils of Devon Hill, once tonight and again the following day, chilled my blood colder than the Frosty the Snowman's knickers (Oh wait, he didn't wear clothes... hmmm..)

As soon as the last stock bin was counted, I fired up my trusty Kia, and followed the ruts down 184 Street to my temporary digs. For legal reasons I can't name the place but it rhymes with Gravelodge; a snot-nosed-kid-friendly hotel chain. It featured an arcade room, waterslide pool and the sound of little feet running up and down the hallways at all hours of the night with parental-sounding voices yelling at them to be quiet.

Inside the room I did the time-honoured routine of all hotel guests and turned on the lights, sampled the softness of the bed and checked the bathroom for thugs, miscreants and terrorists. I assured myself I was the only undesirable in the room and called Cupcake to tell her I was safely sheltered

“I know!” I told her excitedly, “how about you drive into town and join me? Drive slowly, of course. Safety first!”

Amazingly, she declined.

When I hung up from our too-short conversation, the silence in the room was deafening. Other than the thundering little footfalls outside my room from over-sugared yard-apes.

I switched on the TV.

Not being a TV person, none of the scrolling choices appealed to me and I switched it off in disgust. It didn't even have the Christmas Tree Channel.

I noticed a video game controller on the TV stand and fumbled with the remote to fire it up. Finally decent entertainment! I gulped in shock and disappointmnt that the selection of games available dated back to the months of Kim Campbell's short-lived government and the start of another disaster; the first Iraq War. Worse yet, the vultures at the hotel's pricing department wanted $6.95 plus tax per hour to play the creaky games. $6.95 an hour! Factoring in my previous computations, that would make an hour of Super Mario 3 cost over $23.00! I went back to my $16.00/hour TV hoping desperately the shows had gotten better since the last time I checked. I surfed briefly, ultimately settling on Howie Mandel's “Howie Do It”. Five minutes of that was all I could take before I turned it off again. Watching the blizzard was better than that.

I rummaged though my hastily thrown together overnight bag. I recalled packing a book and my hand-held Sudoku. I grabbed the book and headed for the bath. Nothing beats reading in the tub. I wondered on the way, however, how many other people had been in that tub and just how diligent the cleaning staff may of may not be.

I decided to skip the bath.

The bed, too presented some concern about it's previous occupants. I'd been reading articles about how bed bugs have become a problem. I decided to sit in the faux-leather chair by the desk to read. I hoped nothing icky could live in Naugahyde. I looked at the title of my fiction selection and sighed mightily. I'd began reading a three book sci-fi potboiler and noticed I'd inadvertently grabbed Book Two by mistake. I tossed it aside in frustration and played Sudoku til the battery died. I went to bed to escape the oppressive boredom.

Sleep eluded me amid the strange sounds in my lonely environment. I mulled over my new knowledge. Hotel rooms are way less fun without Cupcake.

Wish List

2009-12-02T09:46:00.000-07:00

Last week I went through an annual experience that is as unpleasant as it is inevitable. No, it wasn't my yearly prostate exam, but something almost as much a pain in the butt. What transpired was Cupcake bearing down on me with intent in her eyes and The Dreaded Question on her lips.

“What do you want for Christmas?” she asked, her tone more pointed than a poppy pin. She offered a blank piece of paper and a pen for my list of “wondrous Christmas wishes” or some similar Christmas ad-inspired festive claptrap.

I sighed mightily before responding. As I have explained to my dear, sweet bride, for eons, I neither need nor want a bunch of store-bought stuff. It isn't trying to be noble or anything. I am not greed-free. No one is. However, if I want something through the year, I go get it. I'm worth it, I say, and even Cupcake may one day be convinced.

Admittedly, it's rare for me to actually buy something for myself anyway. The things I enjoy doing don't lend themselves to accessorizing. Whether it is acting, writing, surfing the net, or even playing darts, I am involved in activities that don't require anything in the way of Christmas gifts to make them better. I don't for example, need special “typing gloves” or a “keyboarding helmet” for when I'm computing. Nothing I can think of would enhance the experience, other than maybe Cupcake waving palm fronds over me as I surfed; something she has indicated she would rather not do. Actually “violently opposed to the idea” was how she worded it.

You see, when I enjoy computer time, I mostly check out news sites and read the moronic comments of the armchair analysts that often follow the news and opinion pieces. When I am fed up with all the doom, gloom and negativity (and that's just from the Oilers reports) I need a guffaw break and check out www.failblog.org and feel superior for a while. I don't do a lot of “gaming” unless you count the countless hours I've spent playing solitaire or FreeCell while talking on the phone or while waiting for a page to load. (I can't remember the last time I've played solitaire with a real deck. Dealing all those cards would take forever now. We just can't spare that kind of time while we're relaxing. Computers for all their speed have not made us more patient people.)
(But I digress.)

As I was saying, darts, too, don't require a great deal of accessories. There's the occasional need for shafts and flights but they are cheap like borsht and last a fair amount of time. Mine, in particular, last for months since my darts rarely go near one another in the board. The only dart accessory needing replacing on a steady basis is dart lubricant, which comes in brown bottles and goes great with clamato. There's also a high-end extra-strength lubricant formula which comes with a worm at the bottom of the clear glass container. Cupcake sneers at these sports aids claiming they're inappropriate Christmas gifts, however, she thinks they aren't in keeping with the spirit of the season. I pointed out the first thing monks did when setting up monasteries throughout history was to grow grapes and make wine. Unfortunately, Cupcake always fails to grasp the significance of my historical examples to legitimize my behaviour. “Does it have to be booze?” Cupcake snapped, a bit sharply, I thought, given the subject matter being discussed was my personal happiness. “You like food too.”She pointedly eyed my midriff area. Well, not all at once, obviously.“Exactly!” I tried to keep the 'I got you now' sound from my voice and failed. “I get a bunch of yummy, rare treats at Christmas and then you make me go on a diet at New Years! How cruel is that?”

I explained to her another issue I have with producing a list of things I covet is that writing it out makes me feel crass and greedy. To quote Cupcake on a different topic, “It doesn't mean as much if I have to ask for it.” I would much prefer one single gift with a lot of thought behind it as opposed to a plethora of presents available at your average mega-mart. Choosing a gift because you really know and understand that person is so much more valuable than simply more stuff.

I then pointed out to my Extremely Significant Other that whatever stuff she buys, she also has to come up with a place to store it. Our tiny abode is already jam-packed with years of accumulated other stuff and finding places for new stuff is nearly impossible. The stuff of dreams becomes a nightmare.

When I tried to explain my position, however, Cupcake withdrew the pen and paper in full huff with a snit chaser.

“Fine! You... you... Scrooge you!” she raged.

“Thanks, honey!” I beamed in glee.“What do you mean?” she squinted in suspicion.

“Well, the whole point of the book, “A Christmas Carol” was that Scrooge became as, as Old Chuck Dickins put it, 'and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge'. What a wonderful compliment!”

Stay tuned, Opraholics

2009-11-24T15:35:00.000-07:00

Last week I was surfing online news sites, keeping on top of critical current events, (“Two Women Injured As Bulls Flee Tom Cruise Set”) when I came upon a Reuters release with implications that could shake the very foundations of the planet. After reading the terse article, I realized life may never be the same again. No, I'm not discussing the Large Hadron Collider again. This is much bigger. The bombshell I am talking about is that they announced the date of the final episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show. Wow. I thought they would have to drag her kicking and screaming off the set. I could picture her arms wrapped around the leg of a studio camera, shrieking like a harpy, as people in medical garb pull on her legs to break her grasp. I must admit, if I had her job, that's what they'd have to do to me, too.

My sad delusions of grandeur aside, in the Harpo Productions announcement, company president, Tim Bennet said they are planning on an end date of September 2011. He didn't specify why they were announcing it almost two years down the road. I'm sure they want to allow people time to get mentally prepared for the enormous crater left in their lives at her departure. Bennet didn't mention if they were looking for a younger, shapelier Oprah to fill those giant shoes (Size 14, at least) or if Oprah's clone was finally old enough to take over the show. He did, however, hint that further details will be available in the official press release, Friday and on “ET Tonight” for the forseeable future. Why the program was being wound down (wound up?) wasn't mentioned as the short article was even shorter on details and didn't even address if she jumped or was pushed. My money's on jumping.

Of course, money's no object for Ms. Winfrey. According to sources (I think I read somewhere) the daytime TV maven is, not only the richest self-made woman in America, she is the wealthiest black person ever. EVER! She has a bigger annual income than half the countries in the United Nations. She could buy anything she could ever want, other than being effortlessly thin.

But she's EVERYWHERE! I groaned audibly in the lineup at Sobey's the first time I saw Oprah's “O” magazine. I figured she either had an ego the size of Mount Trudeau or her accountants had decided she hadn't quite saturated the market. They should know, too, since they prepare and package Ms. Winfrey in every concievable way. I mean, you can buy Oprah jewellrey and Oprah fragrances (Eau De Talk Show Host) and other Oprah this and that. I'm surprised there isn't a line of Oprah power tools. In pink.

I did a little investigative-type journalism and “googled” Oprah Winfrey. The miraculous instant-info machine coughed up 9,330,000 “hits”. By contrast, I got four. They were about my son, Chris Jr.

Nonetheless, besides being a TV show, two magazines, five books, a multi-billion dollar business and a myriad of other things, Oprah is also a website; www.Oprah.com. (Of course.) This is only because it didn't occur to her IT people to create their own domain. This way, they could have called it Oprah.oprah. The website is full of, guess what? Oprah.

I find it interesting that I have come to know about Oprah without ever once having watched an episode of her show. I've seen bits here and there... mostly Tom Cruise jumping on her couch and teeheeing like he'd taken a trip through the giggly-weeds. But she's on during the day when I'm at work and our paths never cross. Not that I watch her when I'm home on a weekday, obviously. Daytime TV? Are you kidding? I couldn't take it even when I was hopped up on morphine following my hip op.

Still, without being exposed to the creepily powerful TV show, I still manage to see her everywhere else, getting interviewed, making speeches and being filmed, photographed and followed like some ill-fated English princess. Despite the throngs of paparazzi hacks she must wade through just to... I don't know... go uptown for bread and milk or whatever celebrities go uptown for, it isn't nearly adequate. I am almost convinced “O” and “O at Home” magazines were created because they couldn't guarantee her smiling face on the covers of the National Enquirer and other magazines of that stature often enough to sate the Harpo machine's lust for media exposure. Apparently they won't be satisfied until she's on the cover of every single magazine sold around the world from Psychology Today to Canadian Bow Hunter.

This just in... (writing a column a week in advance sucks in the immediacy department) according to her website, Ms. Winfrey claimed the reason behind her earth shaking announcement is because it “feels right in my bones”. Well, I'm not one to argue with her bones, either. I'm just not into arguing with anything bigger than me. This whole bone thing does seem rather vague, however. When politicians quit, they always say they “want to spend more time with their families”. When actors end their long-term shows it's always to “go out on top” or to “quit before it gets repetitive” or “nobody watches it anymore”.

Not Oprah. She consults calcium. Her femur told her it was time to hang them up, although rumour has it, her tibia thought she should wait a few more years.

Stay tuned, Opraholics. I suspect this story won't be going away any time soon. Nor will Oprah.

You Couldn’t Pay Me Enough!

2009-11-18T14:49:00.000-07:00

I think having a job is a lot like aging. As big a drag as both of them are, they sure beat the alternative. As Drew Carey said, “Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY. They meet at the bar. “In all actuality, however, I like working. Lazing around the house in my jammies till noon and then wasting the rest of the day would get real old, real fast. A person needs purpose, A person needs direction. A person needs beer money. A person needs to not only put food on the table but also house that table. A few utilities are nice, too. And a satellite dish.

Mind you, it is insane to work at a job you hate, given what a huge chunk of your waking hours are spent at it. Sure, I have to deal with the public (Ewww!) but I see that as a plus. One of the worst things a job can be (along with “dangerous”, “illegal”, or includes the phrase “do you want fries with that?”) is for it to be boring. With customer service, however, every conversation with a client is as unique as the clients themselves. Each interaction keeps the job fresher than a TimBit during the breakfast rush.

Of course, there are jobs no one actually likes; serving TimBits during the breakfast rush, for example, but there are far worse. There are people that make their living smelling underarms for deodorant manufacturers. There are people who provide for their families by handling loads of excrement; sucking out septic systems,video-taping sewers or writing political speeches.

Speaking of which, I think the worst job of all would be President of the United States. Can you imagine having 300 million bosses, each with a different viewpoint on how the job should be done? Having a herd of reporters (A flock? A murder? A pride?) reporting on your mistakes as you try and do your job would be a pain in the posterior, to say the least. Can you imagine all those scrum-suckers looking over your shoulder while you're just trying to do your job? How embarrassing the headlines would be! “President McKerracher Screws Up Visa Charge For Customer.”

“President McKerracher Attacks Office Photocopier In Frustration.”
“President McKerracher Quits; Tells Press Corps to Go Scribe Themselves.”

Of course there would be plusses to the job of President. You wouldn't need to carry cash on you,. The chance of the motorcade stopping at a 7-11 for Slurpees is infinitesimal. You also would get the best hiding place for when 2012 hits and it's the end of the world as we know it. (“And I feel fine.”) Still, weathering a nuclear winter, environmental destruction, a plague of zombies or whatever may befall us with a bunch of generals, senior bureaucrats and politicians doesn't sound like much fun. Maybe with the Pussycat Dolls, it might be okay. And a dart league with free beer.

I am frankly amazed, however, that every job gets filled. What would make a person who has just gone to school for many years to become a doctor and then remain in school for another four years to specialize in proctology? Don't get me wrong. I have a fundamental respect for these brave folk... the rear guard of the nation. But man! You couldn't pay me enough to be one.

Same goes for other medical practiconers. People who give barium enemas cheerfully, professionally and as pleasantly as possible under the circumstances, (a staggering feat indeed), I think they deserve a medal. I can only imagine how poorly I would do at it.

Me, “Here, let me just grab this hose Mr. Shmidlap and... oh my.... I don't feel SO good... OH NO! HAND ME THAT BEDPAN! STAT!”

No amount of monetary reward could not induce me to get into such a field. It even grosses me out to consider hairdressers have to touch other people's heads all day.

I also wouldn't be a farmer for anything, either. They must be absolutely nuts. I mean; these guys even take on full time jobs to subsidize their farming habit if need be. It isn't a job, it's a lifestyle choice. They get up at the crack of dawn to get on horseback to round up the chickens or whatever the heck farmers do, even as the rest of the world lies in bed til their snooze alarms have gone off ten or twelve times. Who else would keep us in meat? Who else would gamble their entire annual income on the vagaries of Canadian weather? Who else would keep the coffee shops in business?

There are many other unpleasant vocations. There's the photo-radar tech on Highway 60, as you're driving by Devon, who spends his working life in a truck in the ditch, helping people have a crappy day. Then there's the job that bringer of happiness and joy to all, the telephone solicitors who, in the course of their daily work, are yelled at, sworn at and hung up on. And that's just from Cupcake. I'd put her on that “no call” list but I'd much rather she let off steam on them than me.

I will leave the last word to Oscar Wilde, “The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine life without one.”

TV Schmeevee

2009-11-10T15:53:00.000-07:00

I am not one who watches a lot of TV. For one thing, the chance of me wrestling the remote from Cupcake is... well, remote. Control of the remote control just means so much to her, it would be no contest. She would win every match, especially since she wouldn't be shy about using a chokeslam or a diving elbow drop to back up her claim to the device. (I would use the term “controller freak”, but I have to sleep sometime.)

Worse yet, besides, apparently, watching WWE, she favours cop shows including about 12 different versions of Law and Order and CSI. As well, she watches... I'm almost embarrassed to say it, but she watches reality shows. In fact, her dream show would be to have David Caruso win all the marbles in “Dancing With the Stars”. (He could use the marbles, too, considering all the ones he's lost playing intense detective types.)

“Wouldn't you call your stupid 'Myth Busters' a reality show?” Cupcake says in defense. “You claim it is educational but all they do is blow stuff up. You call that entertainment?” “Well, yes, actually, I do,” I had to admit. “Did you see the one with the hot water tank blowing through the roof of that house? It was AWESOME!”

Cupcake ignored my outburst. Not like her at all. “You look down your nose at my shows but a lot more people like my choices than yours,” she pointed out primly. “Apparently, you are the aberration, not me. Again. You say I have all the taste of tofu-flavoured jello but this is coming from a guy that listens to CBC radio, for crying out loud.”

Despite our differences however, to humour her and perhaps soften her up for connubial goings-on later, I will occasionally watch a show with her on our loveseat, (A misnomer if ever I heard one. It should be known as a “keep your hands to yourself” seat). I even let her pick the show although I always am careful to shut my eyes to the gorier bits on CSI. I am not as desensitized to bloody carnage as hardcore CSIers are. Watching slow motion bullet penetration of spleens and whatnot makes my stomah feel like I've eaten too much Halloween candy.

Granted, unreality shows are even worse. Programs like “Big Brother” and “Survivor” seem to me to be designed solely for the purpose of satisfying a certain segment of the population that are into voyeurism and gossip. They scratch the itch of our collective inner Gladys Kravitz (Hey, Abnah, there's weird things going on at the Stevens house again! Abnah! Wake up!) in all of us. You can almost imagine viewers of this sort of show watching the episodes through horizontal blinds just to get that “nosey neighbour” thrill.

On the plus side, I guess, it's better for the inquisitive minded to dissect and study the entrails of fake relationships, “faux-mances” and artificial environments, as in “Big Brother” rather than the relationships of their own neighbours, friends and relatives. Mind you, hoping that gossiping about TV characters satisfies the gossip craving is like hoping indulging in pornography will satisfy carnal cravings. The prospects of either one working are about as good as the chances of me figuring out “The String Theory” in quantum physics, or even more unlikely, successfully dieting.

I must say there are two sides to watching shows like “Dancing With the Stars” or “Battle of the Blades” (okay, I will admit I found the thought of Ti Domi figure skating to be more than just slightly intriguing). On the one hand, the outfits worn by the shapely, attractive, barely clad female skaters and dancers almost makes it worth the inane judging and commentary portions of the shows. The biggest downside, however, is when I am tolerating the show as best I can and my son comes in the livingroom to question my masculinity. “Jeez, Dad, you're watching this? Voluntarily? Did you forget your kahunas in your other pants?” he'd say, guffawing in cruel mirth. It forces me to consider the moral ramifications of post-natal abortion. Like when they're 24 years old.

Nonetheless, despite the fact that I find most shows she likes either disturbing, disgusting or simply disinteresting, I watch a bit of TV with her as often as I can tolerate. She does things for me which she has litte interest in, other than pleasing me. Ironing my work wear, for example. Catching an hour of inanity, occasionally, is the least I can do, and never let it be said I didn't do the least I could do.

And there are some positives to watching the old “boob tube” besides getting to say the word “boob”. I get to keep current on all the best commercials which are my favourite part of any show. Plus, I get to pig out on munchies as “Family TV Night” has always been an orgy of lax dietary responsibility, to put it charitably.

Besides, everybody knows you can get a man to do absolutely anything if he thinks it's foreplay. Even watch TV!

The Juxtaposition Syndrome

2009-11-05T15:54:00.001-07:00

There are two hypothesis floating around which are equally frightening. The first is that governments are universally incompetant; like King Midas on “opposite day”. Everything they touch turns to poop. The other is that governments know EXACTLY what's going on but the information is so monumentally cataclysmic (not to mention bad), they don't dare tell us what it is, but feel a need to control our behaviour in some way.

There are numerous examples of this phenomenon where, whatever the issue, people gravitate to either “The government is useless.” or “The government is controlling us” camps. For example, I've actually heard people claim the H1N1 vaccine is a scam to inject microchips into our bodies so the government can keep tabs on you. I'm leery of this theory. They don't NEED to inject us with Global Positioning nanoprobes. We all have GPS-equipped cell phones already, which we willingly pay for ourselves, to the delight of Big Brother (no, not the stupid reality TV show). And if FaceBook isn't voluntary Big Brotherism, I don't know what is!There's loads of other similarily polarizing issues from the economy to the environment, but there's one issue that makes those two issues look as serious as “America's Funniest Home Videos.” I am talking about the Large Hadron Collider.

The LHC as it's known, (obviously named by scientists, not marketing people or it would have a cooler acronym) lies deep underground near Geneva, Switzerland. Being the mother of all science projects, the collider is old news to technogeeks. For those of us with lives, however, it's stayed below our radar. Here's what I discovered in my research.

The collider is a gigantic gizmo, looking suspiciously like an enormous roulette wheel, 30 kilometers in circumference or, for metrically challenged readers, 18 miles around. The nine billion dollar doohickey is the shiniest toy the scientific community has ever seen. It is designed to smash sub-atomic particles (itty-bitty bits of .... er... stuff) together in such a way, it will tell the egghead brigade gobs of information about the “Big Bang” which started that whole “universe” fad. Religious types refer to this point as “Creation”.

Opponents of the monstrosity claim the machine may potentially wipe out Switzerland, the planet, the solar system or the entire universe, depending on which pessimistic professor you prefer.

My career in the field consists of three weeks of Physics 10 before accepting it was entirely over my head, so I realize I'm no expert, but I do understand some things. I understand nine billion dollars, for example.
Nine billion dollars is one of those Real Big Numbers that roll rather trippingly off the tongue when discussing governmental expenditures. However, like the other Real Big Numbers that get tossed around, it is hard to grasp. To put it in perspective, to make that much money at my current rate of pay, (with no beer allowance) I'd have to work over 200,000 years. This is, coincidentally, the same amount of time it will take before the pension I am paying into, may actually be worth enough to live on.

Notwithstanding, over 100 governments worldwide, including Canada, has kicked in on on this fantastic device whose sole purpose is apparently to learn whether it will kill us or not.

The professed use of it is to find out what atoms were hanging around at the beginning of time. It won't help feed the poor or fix the economy or get the Edmonton Eskimos into the playoffs (apparently, the collider can't protect against a half-decent pass rush, either) or any other worthy goal. In fact, the only value it has, seemingly, is to satisfy some theoretical phsysicist’s curiosity.

Since governments generally are loathe to invest in private ventures with no hope of profit, (unless you're an automobile manufacturer) the whole “official line” on the “why” of this project seems so implausible. Governments must be insane to contribute to this wonderfully elaborate white elephant.

Or are they? Maybe they're only feeding us this Big Bang BS to polarize the population into Bangers versus Creation-philes to keep us from finding out what they are REALLY up to.

And what might that be? What could possibly be worth $9 billion to a collection of governments that is more important than doing things that will get them re-elected? What is so important that America tried to build one ahead of the Swiss consortium's version only to abandon it after sinking billions into it? Americans are many things but they are not quitters. What made them start the project? What made them stop? Of course the American model was known as a SUPER particle collider. Much better than an ordinary, consumer-grade particle collider, although the Swiss model also had a corkscrew, spoon and little pair of scissors.

For myself, I am undecided. It is easy to believe governments are full of dumb ideas and flawed plans. Having them as evil, shadowy know-it-alls is a bit of a stretch. Either way though, as far as the LHC goes, I'm sure it has something to do with the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012. As sure as I am about the government's motives.

Key to the Wallet

2009-10-28T15:33:00.000-06:00

Confucious say: Man who loses key to girlfriend's apartment get no new key.

Rodney Dangerfield say: I was so ugly my father carried around a picture of the kid that came with the wallet.

According to Wikipedia, which is almost as accurate as a dollar store dart gun, wooden keys were in use in Egypt some 4000 years ago. The article didn't fully explan how earlier Egyptians got into their cars, although I suspect they gained entry through the use of an early form of the Egyptian Automobile Association.

The word “key” comes from Old English (AD 450 to 1150, although I do know some old Englishmen who were born somewhat later.) It was spelled “caeg” and was impossible to pronounce without coughing up a furball.

Wallets, on the other hand, are much, much older. Using a form of research popularized by the tobacco industry, known as “imaginative fictionalization”, it has been postulated that wallets were originally invented by noted Neanderthal scientist and philosopher, Oot Groont, in the year, 500,000 BC (Before Cupcake). The brilliant cave enthusiast had devised a sack out of a piece of mastadon skin to carry the fire making tools and arrowheads he had just manufactured in his new quarry. It also carried change for the parking meter.

The word, “wallet”, is also much older than the “key” word. According to sources (that rhyme with “icky-pedia”) the word was coined in the first century, AD. They know this because they asked my brother Bob who was there at the time.

Like the fine folks back then, modern man (and ladies) love our keys and wallets. They come with us everywhere. They are like expensive jewellrey we refuse to leave at home because we can't. We NEED our keys and wallets with us at every moment. They are more precious than our children... almost.... although WAY less fun to replace. And expensive, too!

Consider, if you will, the loss of a wallet. I misplaced mine recently and immediately began to mentally enumerate all the pieces of paper and plastic I hold so near and dear. It wasn't just the credit cards and debit cards and health cards and auto cards and grocery store member cards and government cards and “air mile” cards, and a submarine shop card that only needed three more visits to get a free sandwich but a myriad collection of little bits of life. They sit largely unused, unnoticed but still treasured. It is the scrap of paper with the phone number of that old buddy I ran into at the mall a few months ago. It is a business card from a dart shop where the scrawled name upon it had promised to give me a great deal on a set of tungsten hammerheads. It is all those flakes of day to day that accumulate and we are so loathe to throw them out, let alone lose them.

And yes, I was choked about the cash inside the wallet, too. I had a lot of money on me. I feared that it was twenty bucks I'll never see again, although I rationalized it would have been well worth it to get the rest of the wallet back intact. To replace all those little bits of plastic and paper would have been a pain since you need ID to get ID. Where does one start nowadays? Before, you just went to a registation office and told them how you'd lost your drivers license and they'd just give you a new one. Not so now. They are so afraid of identity theft, you have to prove upside and sideways who you are and need a notarized affadavit from Ed Stelmach himself just to get a replacement.

Losing a set of keys wasn't so bad at one time, either. You simply swiped your wife's spare set and went to the local hardware store to get a replacement. If it cost more than a buck and a half, you felt ripped off. Nowadays, however, with computer chips imbedded in the plastic grip of the key to our precious vehicles, to replace a lost key is more than the price of a muffler. You can get a brand new windshield cheaper than an ignition key. In fact, it is worth more than my bi-weekly car payment!

Of course not all keys are as important to us as our car keys. There is the collection of keys we have that hang on the key ring holder in the porch. It holds about three dozen keys of various descriptions that we have managed to accumulate over the years and have no idea what they open. We are afraid to throw them out, however, because sure as Christmas ads follow Halloween, we would need one of those keys the day after we tossed them.

As far as my errant wallet goes, I was lucky. This time.

I had inadvertantly put the wallet on my son's headboard when I was hanging up my pants after work. Since he's gone to live in the dorm, Cupcake has been slowly moving all my clothes into his closet. All the while it was misplaced, however, I developed a new admiration for my old wallet.

could say although I'd lost my wallet, I'd gained a new perspective. Frankly, I'd rather just have the wallet, thanks!

OH NO H1N1!

2009-10-26T15:55:00.000-06:00

There is much concern recently regarding the “swine flu” or “H1N1” virus and in the public debate, there are more discordant voices than a junior high chorus in the throes of puberty. The many questions I have about the ailment are echoed by the vast majority of people I have discussed this with. Okay, so I only discussed it with Cupcake, but the vast majority of her agreed and I've found if we both actually agree on something, it's got to be true.

The questions we have are basic. How great is my own, personal risk? How can I tell if it's swine flu or regular flu? Do I need a doctor's appointment, every time I get the flu just to find out what brand it is? And most importantly, is it still okay to eat Bac'n Puffs?

So called “expert opinion” regarding the relative danger of H1N1 over competing flu flavours is as polarized as an arctic bear. Some say that, although some people do die of swine flue far more people die of “regular” flu. Now that's a comfort! Others claim it's the second coming of everything from Spanish Flu to the Messiah Himself and that we're all doomed if we don't wash our hands every two minutes and cough and sneeze and otherwise issue phlegm into our armpits.

I must interject here that I am not an early adopter of the whole coughing/sneezing into your upper body thing. The reason we cough into our hands is in case SOMETHING IS THERE! Coughs can harbor anything, from a glazed coating to a deep lunger, waiting to leap out and decorate the bicep area of your best wool sweater. Let me tell you, fellow traveller, I would much rather have mystery moisture in my palm than on my shoulder. This way, you can continue your conversation while discretely sliding your hand in your pocket since the disgusting dampness looks better there than on the outside of your pants. Do not, under any circumstances, look at the contents of your hand at any time while it is occupied with the aforementioned bodily semi-fluid. We want discretion with our secretions. I am glad I got that off my chest.

You see, they're taking this prevention thing far too far, They don't allow hand shakes after soccer but kids touch every straw in the carton when getting a fountain drink at the store. They don't take socks back at clothing stores if worn but if you go bowling, they make you wear shoes previously sweated in by dozens, if not hundreds, maybe thousands of feet with nothing but an anti-bacterial spritz in between. Ewwww!

Reality is, germs are everywhere you want to be. Sure, you can disinfect your hands with one of those sanitizer wipes at the grocery store but once discarded, you're touching products, money, keypads conveyor belt, grocery separators, etc, and eventually, touching your eyes, or mouth or nose. Next thing you know, there's a single microbe in your system that duplicates and copies itself almost as much as Hollywood's “creative” machinery. The little virus and/or bacteria dudes grow in size, strength and numbers until your immunity system recognizes the threat and starts to wage war on the interlopers. There is no effort at diplomacy. There is no political squabbling over the necessity for the conflict. The white blood cells (so named for the colour of their cowboy hats) simply drop the gloves and go toe-to-toe in hand-to-hand combat with their microscopic adversaries. Make that flagella-to-flagella combat.

The bottom line is you can be a germ Nazi like Michael Jackson or those two creepers from the Listerine commercials but there are no guarantees. Poor Michael is now as dead as the careers of the Listerine schmucks.
So what can we do to keep ourselves safe?
Here are some tips. Follow them at your own peril.
DO stay home from work if you're sick. Sure, you'll get fired since the boss drags his sorry butt in no matter how awful he feels but at least you can feel superior as you stand in the lineup at EI.
DO line your pockets with plastic bags filled with hand sanitizer. Keep your hands in your pockets at all times and get others to open doors for you, etc. If you have other pockets, keep them full of tissues for wiping off your shoulder.
DO avoid all other people and anything others may have touched. For best results stay hidden under your bed as much as possible.
DO NOT listen to the public health messages relating to H1N1 and other wellness matters as they just stress you out and stressed bodies are an easier target for disease to invade.
DO NOT follow the “five second rule” for food that has hit the ground. This is especially true for food that has any moisture to it at all. The only foods that are truly safe to eat after dropping are nuts in the shell and bourbon balls which have a higher alcohol content than Roughneck beer and can kill H1N1 at ten paces.
DO NOT assume your husband has the swine flu just because he's a male chauvinist pig. MCP is far more prevalent than H1N1, Just ask Cupcake. Just don't start with “Hey, Wench!” or swine flu will be the least of your healthcare worries.

Bonjour la Bonjour

2009-10-15T15:56:00.007-06:00

I love live theatre. There's an edge to it you just don't get with TV. I've been onstage when the wheels came off a production; the cast all wearing their best “deer in the headlights” look, desperately hoping a castmate will save the day. It gets the ticker beating faster than cops in the rearviews. When it's live, anything can happen.

However, when my son invited me to a Red Deer College production, I was hesitant. Red Deer is a ways away and it was snowing intermittently. Plus, Matt was rather evasive about the play. “It's by a Canadian playwright, Dad,” he reassured me. “Mike Something or Other. You like Canada, don't you? Patriotism etcetra.” Matt was motivated to include me because his buddy, Dan was in the play. Matt knew if I went, we'd take my car, use my gas and eat on my debit card. Being a student he's so broke, he's been hitting up homeless guys for spare change. He finds it much easier being an arts supporter if I supply the bridge financing.

“Maybe Mom will do my laundry while we're gone,” Matt remarked as we discussed the play.

“Don't be ridiculous!” I chastised him. “Mom has better things to do than your laundry. I've been needing some mending for weeks but she's too busy. What nerve!”“That's okay,” chimed in Cupcake sweetly. “I will do his washing. I don't mind!”

I looked at her like she'd grown another head.
“But I thought you said...” I began.
“No no! It's okay! Really!!” Cupcake hastily interjected.

Her voice then fell to a coarse whisper, “If doing laundry encourages him to come home....” I sighed inwardly. I'd forgotten the goal was to get him to visit. I'd thought we were helping him become more independant. Apparently I was wrong. Again.

“Whatever,” I shook my head in resignation, “Is this play a comedy? I love comedies! Nothing like a silly farce to hit the old funny bone, eh? Beats that 'artsy fartsy' stuff all to pieces.” “Actually, Dad, I'm really not sure,” he gulped. “It's probably hysterically funny! You know us college types... always drunk... never serious. Ha ha! See? Come on, it will be fun.” “Okay, fine,” I caved. I knew no matter what, he would go anyway and couldn't really afford it. At least I could ensure he got a decent meal in him. His cheeks had started looking a bit sunken. After he hoovered up an appetizer platter for two and Cesear salad like it was an vacuum cleaner demonstration, we were off.

When we arrived just minutes before showtime and still managed to get front row seats to the “theatre in the round”, mental alarms began clanging loudly. Also, the set didn't look at all like a living room or anything normal. It was a series of wooden platforms piled up to look haphazard with just a single, ancient recliner in the middle. Under and around the piles of wood were shards of glass symbolizing something terribly important but I had no idea what.

“Bonjour, La, Bonjour” was the name of the play, I noticed, as I peeked at the program. The playwright was a Quebec Nationalist named Micheal Trembley, a man who, according to the bio, declined an Order of Canada.

“Oh no. It's going to be artsy fartsy!” I cringed. “So much for patriotism!”

“Shush, Dad,” my precocious offspring snapped. “It's starting.”

The actors filed down to the piled up lumber and stood on the flat portions of the platforms. Dan, playing the lead character, “Serge”, stood beside Matt to start the show. The other characters; four sisters, two aunts and a deaf father who reigned over the piled platforms from his recliner, would speak to him as the lights would engulf them.

In varying degrees of French-tinged English, the characters addressed only Serge. Each dialogue with him was charged with more raw feelings than a catfight on “The View”. Each character was like an emotional sponge drawing their lifeblood from him. Eventually, it became apparent he'd had an incestuous relationship with each of his older sisters (!) and they were all screwed up as a result. Or they were already screwed up and thus had the incestuous affairs. Beats me.

One sister craved food and was fixated on how fat she was getting, one was addicted to some kind of pills, while the eldest by quite a few years, was having a fling with one of Serge's buddies. Nicole, another sister, seemed the most normal, although in that family, it'd take little to win that title.

Afterward, in the hallway with Dan's parents, I had to laugh. Dan's younger sister ran over to give her brother a hug for his stellar performance. Her mother grabbed her.

“There will be none of that in THIS household!” she joked. Everyone in earshot busted out laughing.

I will say that despite the weird plot, the acting was wonderful. I actually enjoyed myself. Now if I could just figure out what it all was supposed to mean...

Radical Femininity

2009-10-05T16:22:00.000-06:00

What is the difference between a sumo wrestler and a radical feminist.? Sumo wrestlers shave their legs.

I got in trouble for my last column. The editor told me to expect some negative mail regarding a thoughtless and insensitive comment I`d put in the piece. I struggled to remember what the article had even been about. I hadn`t read it in a week and in my mushy memory, last week`s effort usually slips away faster than dreams of Catherine Zeta-Jones upon waking. I certainly didn`t recall writing anything that was liable to draw a crowd bearing pitchforks and torches. That`s Brian`s gig.

"You used the phrase, `the little woman` when referring to Cupcake," he said, striking what I heard as an accusatory chord. "The radical feminist lobby will be all over you. This will be worse than the time you referred to her as "the wife"."

I sighed. It is so hard. Writing about women in general and my wife specifically, It is practically impossible not to offend certain segments of society if they are whiny and perpetually offended by trivialities. To say "the wife" is seen as objectifying females and mentally filing them alongside other possessions as "the house", "the car", "the ride 'em lawn mower", and what have you.

Okay, so what is the alternative to "the wife"? What is the difference between "the wife" and saying "my wife"? Doesn`t the word "my" signify a possession as in "my house", "my car", "my little pony" etc., just as much as the "the" word?

"Don`t be purposefully obtuse," Cupcake snorted when I broached the subject with her. Actually, she used a euphemism for "unintelligent donkey" but this is a family paper. "Most women are not hung up on such niggling little matters. I kind of like being called `the little woman`. It sure beats some of the more accurate alternatives. But what we females dislike is to be treated like and referred to as some kind of chattal."

I turned away and rolled my eyes. (If she catches me eyerolling, I get a lecture about taking her feelings seriously or some such.).

"It`s pronounced `cattle`", I sneered. "The point is that women do that "poor me" thing but essentially run the show. There may be men at the heads of the ships of state but it`s their wives that hold the rudder. Women are now the ruling class."

She fixed me with a squinty stare. "And don`t you forget it!" she spat as she stomped off. So much for trying to open lines of communication and all that blah, blah, blah she goes on about. "Exchanging meaningful dialogue indeed".

Literarily speaking, women have it easy. They have tons of ways of referring to men, such as "guys", "fellas", "dudes", "boys", "the hubby" and in some circles, "johns". For the most part, these synonyms are pretty innocuous and non-judgemental. What do we have for women? "Dames", "broads", "chicks", and the oft-employed word for a female dog word. Very negative. Some don`t even like being called "girls". Others bridle at the term "lady", believe it or not. And my gosh, if you call the wrong woman "ma'am or madam", you may just as well as called them an ugly old bag or the head of a house of ill repute.

You never know when a term will offend the easily offended. "I`m not a lady, I am a woman," sniffed one woman haughtily to me when the subject came up. I immediately slotted her in that female dog category.

The social mores against criticism of women is a concern. Like racial minorities, they have an equal right to be portrayed as silly or stupid but such is not the case. Caucasian men have become the last people allowable to make fun of on TV, Little Mosque on the Prairie, notwithstanding. Everyone else is part some kind of minority that allows them a free pass from being a joke butt. The last black guy that European-North Americans were allowed to laugh at was George Jefferson, oh and Shaun Majumnder, but only because he`s from Newfoundland

Women, of course, are a whole different kettle of fish. They are actually a majority but it isn`t politically correct to make jokes about women because.... because... well, I`m not really sure why, frankly. The last vestiges of sexism are pretty much outweighed by the reverse-discrimination that is rampant. There are, for example, many exercise places that do not allow men; Lady Fitness, Curves, Sweatin`to the Oldies... Oh wait, that last one was a Richard Simmons video series. My mistake. Still, the point is that there are no men-only exercise places because the minute they try, they have more placard waving, foaming-at-the-mouth radical feminists demanding to be allowed inside than legitimate workout customers. The fact that they appear to have spent far more time inside a Wendy`s, rather than the inside of a Lady Fitness is, apparently, irrelevant.

I responded to Brian`s concerns quickly."Don`t worry, Boss," I reassured him. "I haven`t had a hate letter since my last Rita MacNiel fat joke."

Rules I Live By

2009-09-29T16:12:00.001-06:00

I've been married a long, long time. Cupcake and I were just kids when we tied the noose. I mean knot. I was 21 and Cupcake was... somewhat older than me. I can`t tell you by how much as that information is only available under threat of death. In either case, it truly was a loooong while back. Our marriage, I mean, not Cupcake's birth date.

The year we wed was 1982; a past so distant, on TV were M*A*S*H episodes that weren't re-runs. We also enjoyed such fare as “The A Team”, “The Love Boat” and “T.J. Hooker”. Okay so maybe “enjoyed” is too strong a word for “The Love Boat”. This was the year NBC premiered their new show, “Late Night With David Letterman” which thrived on having Reagan as their presidential target.

Making records at the time were Jennifer Warnes teamed with freakishly spastic singer Joe Cocker singing “Up Where We Belong” and The Oral Thermometer's mega-hit, “Up Where It Don't Belong”.

The point I'm underlining is that Cupcake and I have been in a relationship for decades and in all that time of wedded bliss, you'd think by now we had enough rules. You'd think that every petty dispute possible will have been worked out to this point. You'd think I'd have finally wised up. You'd be so wrong.

You see, like the average hubby, I bumble along trying not to makes waves with the little woman. Life will be just dandy and all of a sudden... BAM! A new insta-rule. “You must not ignore your spouse when talking with the guys”. You didn`t even know what hit you.

Insta-rules come in three varieties. There are the ones you`ll be saddled with for the rest of your life, such as, “If you look at another woman like that again, I will kill you with my bare hands” rule. Then there are the shorter term rules that slowly fall by the wayside, such as the “No having the TV on during supper” rule which was amended twice... once to exempt my Hockey Night in Canada and once to exempt Cupcake`s “Survivor”. Then there was the “No teaching the boys to play poker” rule which wasn't repealed until the boys both reached adulthood. I should never have told her we were playing for their allowance money. Little did she know they were both up fifty bucks on me when the rule was made. Luckily they believed me when I said it was just for pretend, anyway.

Then there are the real short snappers; rules don`t last long at all, “Whoever is the last to shower has to dry the cabinet with their towel before tossing it in the laundry” rule. Yeah, right. That will happen.

“Hang your jacket up properly in the closet, not draped on the back of a chair.” I just wait for her to forget herself just once and then it's back to chair draping until next time the rule is re-introduced.

Another rule that has been created through clenched teeth was “If you make the bathroom rug wet by any means whatsoever and I get my socks damp as a result, you will be punished.” Apparently, I`m not too old for a “swirly”.

There is a certain evolution (Sorry, Brian!) to the rules that crop up, however. It will start out as something like “No eating crackers in bed”, which becomes “No eating crunchy or crumby food in bed” which is followed by “And no eating food in noisy packaging, either” and finally, “No eating in bed except for quiet food with no aroma whatsoever.” So far, all I`ve found that fits that bill is plain tofu or cheese curds in a bowl. One is gross and the other bungs me up worse than a plastic cork.

The rule we`ve had the longest tussel about, however, involves bed making. Cupcake thinks the rule should be, “Whoever is last out of bed must make it.” This is because she leaves for work three hours before I do (he said trying not to sound smug). She's also first up on weekends to finish her repose in the recliner in the livingroom so she can enjoy television even while she's asleep. This conveniently ensures I have to make the bed every day.

I followed the rule for a while but then rebelled and suggested the rule should be, “Whoever is first in bed and messes it up should have to make it.” Suspiciouly, Cupcake readily agreed to that one. Said we could try it. Then she chuckled menacingly. I was scared.You see, my rule didn't specify when the bed had to be made. That night, Cupcake was first in bed, as always and, at 4:45 AM, upon waking, began to follow the dictates of my poorly thought-out rule. She straightened her side of the bed as vigourously as she could, making sure to jostle the mattress so enthusiastically, it felt like a tiny, localized earthquake had hit our bed that was at least 12 on the Richter scale.

After a couple mornings of waking to shaking, I suggested a compromise rule. I would make the bed on weekdays before she got home, while she did it on weekends after I was up. Unfortunately, her people have yet to get back to my people. The bed remained unmade over the weekend. Life as we know it, somehow, continued...

Arrgh, River Pirates

2009-09-22T16:45:00.000-06:00

Avast me hearties! Give ear to me tale of hardship and woe on the raging waters! Last Sunday, preparing to celebrate International Talk Like A Pirate Day, I stood alone at the boat launch in Devon's river valley. I'd tried the rustic facilities beside the launching area, but dry-heaves from the stench quickly drove me out. After a lengthy internal debate over retrying the iffy biffy, an old schoolbus finally arrived with a half-ton truck. Both were towing hi-rise canoe trailers. What had been a lonely, desolate, windy place was suddenly transformed into a hubbub of cheery activity. Everyone seemed excited at the prospect of a canoe trip down the Mighty North Saskatchewan River. (Cue Arrogant Worms song, “Pirates of the North Saskatchewan”).

The weather had been great all week but Saturday night saw the temperature drop faster than Paris Hilton's britches at a hottub party. It went from 25 the previous day to just 15 the day of our river ride. The once sunny skies became more threatening than a grizzly bear with a dozen rye and cokes in him. What was worse, however, was the wind was almost strong enough to name, like they do hurricanes.

There was no way I was going to cancel, though. I'd paid over thirty bucks to this Rent-A-Canoe dude and I wasn't going to let a little thing like dangerous winds thwart my pursuit of adventure. Besides, I'd planned ahead and wore layers and layers of clothing in order to stay warm. I also ensured I had a lot of high energy snacks such as trail mix which I was able to enjoy guilt-free for once, since I was actually doing something active.

After a half-listened to safety speech by Mr. Canoehead, we loaded up our voyageur-mobile and headed out on the water. I sat in front on the seat with Judy on the floor in back. This worked about as well as a solar powered tanning booth. I probably outweigh Judy two-to-one. This inequity caused the bow of our boat to be much lower than the stern, making our canoe go in circles. The other fourteen boats were already way ahead of us when we decided to give up and land in order to change positions. By the time we got back into the stream of things, we could barely see the other canoers in our armada.

“We are going to be the last ones to arrive,” I moaned. “I don't want to be last!”

“Oh, stop your whining,” grumbled Judy. “We can catch up to them when they stop for lunch.”The thought of lunch made me feel a little better. I put my back into closing the distance with the other vessels with visions of my ham croissant dancing in my head.

We began making pretty good time once we'd figured out the whole steering thing and no longer going in circles. The others had seemingly all decided to wait for us although as we approached we could see that they were still paddling madly. The reason for their lack of progress, and ultimately, ours too, was that the river had taken such a turn, that the gale-force winds that were once at our backs were now in our faces. We laboured to paddle our tiny craft against wind and wave as we encountered meter-high whitecaps kicked up by the gusts. Snatches of the song, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” kept racing through my mind.

We attacked the waves with gusto, our muscles straining to keep moving forward. It wasn't a case of not giving up as that wouldn't have helped. With the velocity of the current below us and the wind at our bow, you couldn't coast. If you stopped paddling for even a second, your canoe would slough sideways and be turned over by the huge waves, So paddle we did. Mentally, I swore that if we got out of that patch of river alive, I was going to give up canoing permanently.

As soon as we made another corner, however, the wind instantly abated and the river's surface was calm once more. The sun even came out. We headed to shore for a well-earned bite and a chance to rest our arms which were ready to rebel and fling themselves from our bodies. We didn't care how far ahead the others got. It was snack-time.
At the halfway mark, we pulled off shore to find a gaggle of giver-uppers too pooped to continue. Their boats were already loaded onto the trailer. My shoulders, arms and fingers all voted as a bloc to bail on the rest of the trip but the Scot blood coursing through my veins would not allow not getting full value for my money. As they say, the difference between a Scotsman and a canoe is that canoes tip.

We pressed on. After we fought two more gale force sections, and beaching in the shallows like confused whales, we finally drifted under the Quesnell Bridge in Edmonton and landed at Laurier Park. I knew we weren't the last, at least, because another couple had pulled in a minute after us. It was only then we found out that we had actually arrived first and that of the 15 boats at the beginning, only three would make it all the way. Ten teams quit halfway and two had to be rescued by the RCMP!

I slowly, carefully and gratefully slipped into Judy's car for the comfy, effortless ride home, a funny little ditty dancing in my head.

And it's a Heave (HO) High (HO) Comin' down the plains, Stealin' Wheat and Bareley and all the other grains...

Sleep Depraved or Deprived?

2009-09-15T15:46:00.006-06:00

As I type out these words, I am strugging. My mind is more sluggish than escargot. My eyelids feel like two heavy steel garage doors that have come off their tracks. My mind hasn't experienced this much fog since I watched that BBC special on English weather. The cause? Going to bed and waking up in the same morning without enough morning between those two activities.

For most of us, there is an almost religious adherance to getting “the right amount of sleep” and we all know exactly how much that is. What each of us considers to be the right amount can vary widely, of course, but for most, no matter how much sleep we feel is right for us, according to surveys, just like everything else in life, besides calories, we aren't getting enough.

Sleep stats indicate the majority of society stagger from day to day suffering from Sleep Deprvation Psychosis or SDP. (Not to be confused with the engine oil additive). You can pick out the SDP sufferers as they are the ones biting off the heads of their co-workers while breaking into tears at the slightest criticism. (“You wore THOSE steel-toes with that plaid jacket, Buck?” “Waaaah!”)

Those afflicted with SDP are so short on shut-eye, they drop off at inopportune times, such as at work, when driving and while smooching with the spouse.The latter is the most serious, being cause for justifiable homicide. Getting a female judge is the ticket to “old sparky”..

Our lives are throttle-wide-open fast and stealing from our sleep time is the only way to get more hours from a day. Unfortunately, those hours come at a cost. Lack of sleep leads to such horrible, debilitrating illnesses as headache and, worse, “sleepy-tummy”; the latter, a disease where you don't so much feel crampy or nauseous, but just a little... icky. Add to that the epidemic levels of the aforementioned SDP that make both swine and bird flu fans envious, and it is easy to see our sleep gap is wider than the gap between the teeth on a smile at a Willie Nelson concert.

Still, not everyone is sold on the value of sleep. One of the most famous anti-sleep crusaders in history was Thomas Alva Edison;, inventor, innovator and brainiac. This poor guy was so driven to be productive, when he was tired, he would sit in a chair with a pencil in his fingers over a pie plate. When he would fall asleep, the pencil would slip from his grasp and clatter onto the pan, waking him up. That was all the sleep he afforded himself before getting back to work. An amazing man, truly, mind you, I bet he was a Productivity Nazi as a boss.

Although there is nobody in my large, extended family I know of that is as hard core as Edison, (all their pie plates actually have pie in them) we still have quite a variety of sleep-types contained therein.
Take my siblings... please. (Ha! Sorry, Henny!) Obviously products of the same genetic material and upbringing, more or less, they still have sleeping habits of a variety wider than Julia Roberts freakish mouth.

My brother, Bob, for example, is ex-military. Very punctual. Despite his love of camping in the great outdoors, (he makes that guy in Man vs Wild look like a city slicker) he is ruled relentlessly by the clock. No matter what he is doing, no matter how much fun he is having, he makes sure that at precisely ten o'clock, or “2200 hours” as he would call it, he is in bed. He then reads until 10:29 and then puts his book down, sets his alarm and I'm sure, hears an order (“Company...Commense SLEEP!) and obeys instantly. He is generally, and probably majorly and corporally, out by 10:31 to rise again at “Oh six hundred” exactly.

His routine is the ideal, according to sleep experts as his wake/sleep cycle is as regular as an Ex-Lax addict.
My sister, Kathy, however, is different from Bob in so many ways. She is thin. Learned, too; she is a doctor of neuro something-or-other and has all these letters after her name. The letters are abbreviations of Greek phrases that can be translated as “Way smarter than you.”, “Makes more money than you”, etc. In order to achieve what she has, however, she had to develop a sleep routine that involved her only getting four or five hours of sleep per night. Going to bed at 10:00 but getting up at two or three, was her strategy for getting ahead in the dog-eat-dog world of whatever it is she does. The more sleep-minded among my other siblings viewed her as the black sheep of the family.

Myself, I love to stay up late. It's a hold-over from when the kids were young and the only time I had for myself was late at night when the family were all safe in their beds and I could relax. I appreciate every day I have on the planet and have a hard time letting go of each one. I do not go gentle into that short good night. I love to sleep in, however, and like nothing better than the occasional ten hour sleep marathon on a weekend augmented by a nap mid-afternoon.. That is a rarity, however, because, although I enjoy sleeping, as long as I get my seven hours, I'm good to go. In fact, extra sleep makes me tired and groggy. Like I am now. Hmmm... Now I am wondering whether I didn't get enough sleep or too much? Cupcake thinks it was the beer and tequila.... hmmmm....

RATS! Dirtier than Chris Pronger

2009-09-11T14:32:00.003-06:00

RATS! Dirtier than Chris Pronger. RATS! Scarier to women than breaking a nail. RATS! So disgusting and vile, even Charlie Brown uses them as his favourite swear word. RATS! And now that they are in the province, they are in the news. RATS!

Being one of those "severely normal" Albertans that King Ralph pandered to, I have always been fiercely proud of the fact that I've lived in a rat-free environment for the majority of my life. The only rat-related things we had as a kid were "rat-tail" combs and "The Rathole" tunnel in central Edmonton. Oh, and the dirty rats that killed Jimmy Cagney's brother in the movies. Even when Non-Albertans would scoff that being rat free was an impossibility, I stuck to my guns, patiently explaining that rats aren't native to Canada. According to the official Governement of Alberta website, http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/agdex3441 for you ratophiles, PETA-philes and infofreaks, rats arrived in Canada in 1775 and slowly spread westward with human settlement. This is because rats are like politicians and must live around humans. Both are non-burrowing animals that cannot survive winter without a heated shelter.

The main difference between them is that politicians are better suited than lab rats for scientific experiments as you're not as liable to get emotionally attached to them.

Nonetheless. by the 1950's, the government recognized the approaching rat problem and created a buffer zone between Alberta and Saskatchewan. Hoping to... er... eRATicate the infestation, they laid down tons of poison and tracking powder to eliminate every vestige of rat-related activity within 30 miles of the border. Oddly, the website doesn't mention the Alberta/Montana border, and one can only assume the rats have too much trouble getting proper photo ID and citizenship documents to bother crossing international boundaries.

Yet, despite all their vigilence, suddenly, we have rat sightings. RATS! It's enough to give my woolies the willies! Oh sure, after the hub-bub, it was discovered to be just one rat in Calgary (not surprising) but still; what about next time? One ratty couple can be responsible for producing 150,000 progeny in a single year. (Christmas must be pricy for the parents!) We, as a province experienced a collective shudder.

I've only seen a live, non-caged rat once in my life. It was 1976. I was sixteen and living in Germany with my much, much older brother Bob, while Dad was peacekeeping in Beirut. I'll never forget that awful moment walking home from a dance at the Canadian Youth Centre. I could have taken the bus but it left at 11:00 and the dances weren't over until 11:30. I wanted to maximize any lip-locking and/or spit-swapping opportunities I could, so taking the bus was out of the question.

Getting that extra half hour of shaking my booty (that's what we called it back then) was certainly worth the mile or so walk home, especially if it involved a kiss good night. Not that I ever got one but I felt my chances were vastly improved by going home later.

Unfortunately, however, Germany is old. Really old. My brother Bob, old. The cobblestone sidewalks I had to traverse, predated the founding of Canada by centuries. And old is creepy. (Yes, even you, Bob.)

One particular leg of my trip home always filled me with heart-pounding dread. It was a cobblestone walk that featured an immense stone wall on the left and on the right, a wire fence separating the walk from an enormous, foreboding, ancient church and it's accompanying cemetary. "Heart Attack Alley" ran for a long city block and the oppressive darkness of the path was only offset slightly by a baleful lamp halfway down.

One particular dance night, I was stricken with terror when I saw that under the light was a great, big, ugly, venomous rat with teeth the size of Luxemburg. I froze in my tracks. My breathing was more laboured than that horrid OctoMom woman.

"Shoo!" I shooed it. He eyed me sneerily, about as impressed as the girls at the dance. "Scat!!" I cried. (The word I actually used is synonymous with "scat", but I digress.)

I looked around for any rock, a twig, grenade; anything I could throw at it. All I found was a couple pea-sized pebbles that would inflict about as much damage as an uncooked marshmallow. I hurled them anyway, hollering as loudly as I could. The yell came out rather quavery, however, because suddenly, the bells of the spooky old stone church began bonging the midnight chimes.

Certain I was being observed by long dead spirits occupying the darkened cemetary I lost both my inhibitions and my fear of the stupid rat and ran screaming headlong down the sidewalk and didn't stop until I was three blocks from the church. Even as I sat gulping great breaths of oxygen on a bus bench, I could still smell the acrid odor of sheer terror. I think it was coming from my pants.

This is why all true Albertans are more than happy to pay for a government department who's sole purpose is to keep the rats at bay. We, as a people are scared scatless of them. By the way, Happy Birthday, Bob!

Lock Up The Silverware

2009-09-02T10:08:00.002-06:00

I am so tired. I can only sleep mere minutes at a time, keeping one eye open for the menace stalking the house. Nothing is safe. He'll rob us blind if he has a chance. My only defence is my cat-like reflexes and constant vigilance. I'm doomed. Cat-like reflexes aren't exactly my specialty; more like three-toed sloth-like reflexes, unless the cat is really sick or something.

Constant vigilance isn't exactly my strong suit either, although I have been working on that since the threat has become too great to ignore. I now know that any lapse in attention is fraught with peril for when leaden eyes droop too low, too long, BANG! There's goes our coffee maker.

The problem isn't that I live with kleptomaniacs or in the rough part of town. Calmar is so small, the closest we have to a “rough part of town” is the Senior's Knitting Club where they meet daily to share needles. No, the reason I must guard my possessions like the last human alive in a zombie movie, is that my son Matt is moving out of the house to go to college. Everything that isn't nailed down or chained to something solid is at risk of being packed off to Matt's dorm against its will.

“You're kidding, right?” I grunted when Matthew announced he was taking the stereo with him. “That was a gift from Uncle Gordon for all of us.”

“Well, I own a quarter of it and I'm taking my share. It would be a shame to break up the set,” he advised me matter-of-factly, although distractedly. His eyes furtively darted this way and that, looking for things to make his new digs more homey.

“I am going to need some money for essentials,” he went on, his gaze resting suspiciously long on our toaster-oven. “Mom said you'd help me out.”

“Your mother cannot dictate my actions,” I responded imperiously.

“Yeah, sure, Dad,” he snorted in derision. “Since when?”

How much influence Cupcake may or may not have was not something I felt confidant arguing at that moment. I decided to deflect.

“Never mind that, I gave you my debit card so you could get some “essentials” last week and what did you do? You bought a flippin' drink mixer! How essential is that? You see one in our kitchen? No! We don't even own one! How essential can it be?!”

“Man,” Matt cringed, “I hope the lectures in college won't be this shrill.”

“SHRILL?” I blurted out shrilly. “I'll show you shrill!”

“Look, I swear I bought a ton of strictly essential stuff,” Matt pointed out. “Mom bought the drink mixer to see if it would get a rise out of you. Shall I tell her it did or didn't?”

“Oh really? And did your mother say it's okay to rob us blind of our DVD collection?” I fixed him with a accusitory stare.

“Why do you care?” he shrugged. “You have a hard time sitting through a half hour TV show. I can't see you voluntarily watching any of the movies I've borrowed. Besides, lots of them are mine anyway; Christmas presents, birthday gifts, that sort of thing. How can we identify which ones are mine? Or does every DVD that ever entered the house belong to you? Makes getting them as gifts kind of hollow.”

Since I didn't have a good answer, I switched tactics.

“I'll want a full accounting of every item you're taking from the house,” I challenged.

“You can inventory it all you like while you help me lug it into my dorm,” he parried skillfully.

“Now I have to help you move?!?!” I gasped. “Back in my day, that's what we had buddies for!”

“Really, Dad, if I hear you use the words 'back in my day', I'm going to hurl,” Matt scowled. “That's all you talk about. This isn't back in your day. This is my day.”

“I don't mind you having your day but must it be on my dime? Hey! That looks like my shirt you're packing!”

“Hardly, Dad,” snickered Matt. “I can't see you wearing a Drive By Punch shirt. Or any rock band shirt for that matter.”

“I'd wear a Pink Floyd shirt,” I responded defensively.

“Ha! More like a shirt with “The Emeralds” on it!” he chortled breaking into a duh duh duh duh duh duh dut version of that scourge of every wedding; The Bird Dance. I blew my top.

“Listen, you ungrateful, disrespectful, sassy...” I sputtered in rage.

“Hold it! Hold it! Hold it! Jeez, Dad, why do you seem so angry about this?” Matt challenged.

“Angry? Angry?” I blustered ineffectually. “I'm... not... I'm... a little jealous. And... terribly proud. And sad. I'll... I'll miss you, Son.”

“I'll miss you too, Dad.” He held my gaze steadily, confidantly. “And I just want to say...”

“Yes, Son?”

“I asked Mom and she said I get the stereo.”

My New Job

2009-08-31T13:32:00.003-06:00

I started a new job last week. I had to. They didn't want me showing up at my last job anymore. Even though I had been with them for 28 years, through three corporate owners, three locations and umpteen downsizings, reorganizations and reviews, suddenly I was the red shirt beamed down to the planet. Expendable. I`m unsure what I did to become surplus stock, but it must have been bad. After all, they didn't just lop off me and my position, but closed the entire warehouse and ceased distribution in Western Canada. I feel so responsible! I suppose I should explain to people that the job I had was with a different company than The Pipestone Flyer.

Many assume I make my living from writing this column when, in reality, what Brian gives me for my hours and hours of fashioning each weekly masterpiece would only be enough to qualify as beer money if I quit drinking alcohol. Until the hearty handshake and the heavy-hearted heave-ho, I actually worked for a multi-national conglomerate that sold and distributed a vast array of staples from the staple mines that riddle the bowels of the earth. Luckily avoiding the mines, my main tasks fell into two categaries; order desk and warehousing. The order desk is where you answer telephones and explain to people why we are out of a particular staple and how many arms and legs it will cost them to place the backorder.

The job I had for the other half my career was in what they call "shipping and recieiving".

Shipping is a job where you pick up heavy staple boxes off a rack and put them on a pallet, while receiving is picking up heavy staple boxes from a pallet and putting them on a rack. I really liked shipping better than receiving but then, the jobs were as different as night and dark. I remember so well, how badly I had wanted the job when I first applied. I had been working at McBain Camera in Edmonton and had never heard of the sage advice against "dipping your pen in the company ink". This led to me wooing a considerably younger version of Cupcake. (That is, if wooing means to be finally cornered into proposing.) When we began dating and, ultimately, living in sin (Woohoo! The good old days!) we realized that working together, playing together, socializing together and sleeping together might possibly be too much togetherness. I became highly motivated to find a new job somewhere... anywhere other than McBain`s. It was a tough economy then, too. The early 80`s. The big bust, and I ain`t talking Pamela Anderson. Interest rates were at 20% on mortgages. Unemployment was high. Gloomy economists were talking about The End of the World As We Know It, years before R.E.M and Great Big Sea.

Unemployment was huge. In fact, when I got the job, I had beat out 127 other applicants. The guy that made the hiring decision told me long after I came onboard, that he picked me ahead of the others because, in my skill set list, I included "morale booster" with such important workplace abilities as telling jokes and spinning yarns. Also the fact that he didn`t know I lied about having forklifting experience helped greatly. So I started out in the lowest rung of the corporate ladder, since they had yet to recognize my obvious genius and corporate leadership skills. Instead, they felt I had other assets to draw from, namely the aforementioned picking up heavy boxes and putting them down again. Still, as easy on the brain as that sounds, the fact that you have to pick the correct box up and set it down in the correct place every time weeds out many warehousing wannabees. After about eighteen months, I was transferred into the service department to fix staplers. I am not sure if they recognized my incredible potential and wanted me to have the widest field of expertise for their products as possible or I was a lousy shipper but they still wanted to keep me.

Eighteen months and 15 bazillion T5-8 pusher spring replacements later and I was given another position: the order desk! I knew I was on my way. I knew that OD`ing was a stepping stone to sales, then management and inevitably to the CEO`s office. My career path was set. It was great. I loved the order desk job lots. I got to talk to customers and help solve their staple-related problems. I was the face of the company to many and I loved feeling like an ombudsman between them and the big, scary staple empire.

Then, in the late 90`s, my career path became so lost, a bloodhound couldn`t have found it. The Graph Jockeys and Chartoholics in Head Office decided they needed more Control. They sent the order desk jobs to their Canadian head office in Ontario, shortly after Cupcake`s job had suffered an identical fate. She was, as they say, not amused. The company did, however, decide to keep the warehouse in Edmonton and make it into the Western Canadian Distribution Centre. I could keep my employment if I went back to being a warehouseman. I had come full circle. Oh sure, eventually, I became The Boss in the warehouse but it was harder to take than those gigantic pills they make you swallow when you have a sore throat.

I will admit that being The Boss was kind of cool but it didn`t last. I was only in that capacity about 18 months when the Graph-holes struck again and deemed our operation to be expendable. So now I have a new job. It`s at another staple company! On the order desk!! Life is good!!!

Mega-Sized Calmar Fair

2009-08-20T13:37:00.001-06:00

Most weeks I sit staring at the blank screen on my laptop and wonder how I'll fill this space. After writing a humour column for 14 years, it is sometimes more difficult to select a topic than it is to write about it. Not so, today, however. I have more selection than a mega-sized dollar store and every story would have something to do with the amazing Calmar fair.

I'm sure you're thinking “How amazing can a small town fair be?” After all, Calmar is seriously small I mean, it's so tiny, no word of a lie, we've had visitors drive right through town thinking there would be more to it. There isn't, sadly. (Dear Calmar Chamber of Commerce, I was just joking.

What? We're so small we don't have a Chamber of Commerce?) Seriously, though, you might think that, being a town of just 2000 souls, the fair would be lamer than a one legged pirate. Instead, the entertainment was so wonderfully varied and plentiful, I thought I was in a town twice as big in size and sophistication. Sure there was the obligatory features; the pancake breakfast served from 8:00 AM until oh-my-gosh-they-keep-coming-lock-the-door-quick, a parade featuring elected officials waving out car windows, fireworks that rivalled those on my wedding night (wink wink) and a dance featuring an ocean of barely legal partiers trying to see who can out-drink each other while wildly leaping about in what passes for dancing nowadays and we can't forget the three day slow-pitch tournament with a beer garden right at the diamonds, a marketing move as clever as placing a Dairy Queen next to a fat farm.

In addition to those wonderful things that make a small town fair a small town fair, however, they had some additions that made this year's fair arguably the best ever. First of all, the town was celebrating 20 years of hosting the Mega-Market; the garage sale that is more like a bazaar in some exotic land. Vendor's tables line both blocks of main street and there are tons... er... tonnes of other yard sales all over town. People come from all over; like legions of bargain hunters on a dream safari. Then, at the stroke of 11:00, seemingly all transactions stopped when the parade began. I know from experience there was a time when Calmar had the quietest parades you could ever imagine. There were no marching bands, no music on the floats.

The whole thing would kind of slip by un-noticed like it was staffed by ninjas. Not this year. There was music. There was colour. There was flash and pizzazz and there was a large contingent of Jamaican cadets who had flown in for an exchange with their Alberta-based counterparts. The aforementioned parade, almost cancelled a couple years ago due to lack of interest, ended up longer than the actual parade route. And the crowds! I have never seen people five deep along main street in my life. It was like people had heard the float riders were tossing twenties instead of candy.

My fellow thespians with the Calmar Prairie Players had run off 200 little handbills for our melodrama at the beer gardens but we could have used ten times as many if we were to give one to every spectator. It was such as switch from the night before when you could have rolled up the streets and put them away in the shed considering the lack of traffic. Speaking of the Prairie Players, our small but vital troupe staged a melodrama called “Calamity in Calmar or Dark Doings on the Finley Farm” in the beer tent at the ball diamonds.

Paula Bosse had penned it just for the Prairie Players and we are hoping to negotiate with her for the rights to put it on YouTube. After all, if you compared on a per capita basis, with over 300 people viewing the play “Calamity” was a bigger hit than Cats was in New York and without the annoying show tunes, too! With the big Apple boasting a population of 8,200,000 people, they would have to draw 861,000 Cats fans in a single day to equal our record.

They would definitely need a larger beer tent than we had, though. We can't forget the wheel nuts over at the Show and Shine, either. Not that I understand these folks one iota. Cars are a tool to get from one place to another and to provide a place to sit while you wait to place your Timmy's order. However, having been to past shows, I'll admit the older models are pretty neat. The effort to reclaim those vehicles requires far more skill, tools, money, time, patience and talent than I will ever possess. I admire these antique aficianados but for myself, if I wanted to restore a decades old chassis, I would just go on a diet.

There's so much more to talk about at the fair but sadly, time and space preclude their inclusion. I know there was lots of activities for the “small fry” (a phrase appropriate for such a sunny day) at the water spray park, however, I didn't go as I am a bit old for face painting and I've always had a deep abiding fear of petting zoos after an incident with a goat. I did see the bench show, whereby people paid 50 cents to enter categories such as “Best Carrot” or “Best Photo” with the first prize being worth $3.00, second $2.00 and third $1.00.

I would have stayed but they shooed me away in fear of their first place cookies. If the fair had been an entry in the bench show, I am sure it would have won first place. On a per capita basis, of course.

Making Sense

2009-08-13T13:40:00.001-06:00

I don't often write about news because many nowadays aren't interested in current events and frankly, I need all the readers I can get. An alarming amount of people find that keeping informed is more depressing than my bank balance.

In fact, lots of folk aren't just satisfied to simply avoid the news but are actually actively opposed to it. They feel so strongly about their anti-news stance that they have begun an ad hoc, listless fight for their right to be apathetic. “My grandpappy fought in some kind of war or something to give me the right not to give a rat's patooty about current events and I'm going to exercise that right, dad gum it.” said one spokesman who didn't care to be identified.

Although it's unclear as to what dad's gums has to do with the issue, it's felt that the anti-info backlash is because issues today have become more complex and confusing than a government form. Nothing is black and white anymore, just like TV's. As a result it seems nothing in the news makes sense. Humans have been trying to make sense of the world ever since day one... whenever that was. (I should be upfront and declare that on the creation/evolution debate, I come down strongly on the side that says we're some kid from Alpha Centauri's grade nine science project.)

Fact is, whether you're into creationism, evolutionism or science project-ism, you're just trying to make sense of the world. It's an inate drive within each of us to understand our environment; much like the drives to survive, to procreate and to drink beer.

In an effort to help us figure out what makes the world tick, the team of smarty-pantses (smarty-pantsi?) at the Loco “think tank” embarked on a program to examine the news for logic and pure common sense. (That's think tank, not drunk tank as some have claimed. I'm not mentioning any names but her initials are “Cupcake”. ) Let's look at a simple issue. Bottled water under fire. First introduced as ”Perrier water”, bottled water was so expensive it was only enjoyed by the rich and snooty and those that aspired to snootihood.

It was sold in green glass bottles and was even more money than pop. Everyone who was not in the ranks of the ridiculously rich, simply drank water from the tap. Then, suddenly, bottled water was everywhere. Convenient, portable, healthy, it created jobs, stimulated the economy. It was A Good Thing; the drink of choice for soccer moms and fitness Nazis everywhere. Then, just as suddenly, it became A Very Bad Thing. Bottle pollution. Waste of money. Governments and institutions banning it like it's liquid crack. In the markets, every time water falls and investors take a bath and workers are sent to the showers. People buy pop instead. Less guilt.

As if the bottled water suppliers are the only polluting, wasteful companies. Okay, so that doesn't make much sense. Maybe we can look at politics. Should be simple.

There are only three parties. My Guys, Your Guys and The Other Guys. When my guys are in power, they fumble along as best they can and have things dictated to them from the beaurocracy.

They blame everything bad on the Previous Guys. When Your Guy gets in, he also fumbles along as best he can being equally dictated to by the ever-present, all-powerful, all-seeing beurocracy. Your Guy blames everything on My Guy who was the Previous Guy and would sell his mother's soul to be the Next Guy. Sadly, between the fighting between all Those Guys, nobody ends up remembering it was Us Guys that voted all These Guys in.

Incredibly, all Those Guys get away with it because Us Guys let them. It could be because Us Guys don't actually get to vote for The Big Guy directly; the part that makes the least sense. Here's one more. It's from the sports pages. The names have been changed to protect the stupid. There's a team in a premier two-nation hockey league losing money like a drunken Chev plant at a casino. We'll call them the Flagstaff Wild-Dogs. They lose tens of millions per year because Arizona has a climate so hot, the only ice available is in glasses of scotch and bourbon. There's a Canadian, John Nutfunny, we'll call him, that wants to pay an obscene amount for the team and move it to where people are rabidly fanatical about hockey.

The league, however, would rather keep the team in Flagstaff losing millions rather than sell to this guy. They feel this billionaire businessman is “untrustworthy”. This begs a number of questions. Firstly, why would the league want to maintain a franchise where hockey rates in popularity somewhere below roller derby and belly bucking? Why would anyone smart enough to make a gazillion dollars in a different industry want to buy a business with the financial success of a crown corporation? If professional sports clubs lose money like they claim, why does Nutfunny want to own one and why is a failing franchise worth so much?

When has trustworthiness been a prerequisite for owning a hockey team? It didn't seem to be a rule for owners like Peter, Nelson And Bruce. The biggest question is, of course, how much sense does any of this make? The answer to that question is, “none”. Maybe the anti-news folks are onto something!

The Heat Wave!

2009-08-06T14:54:00.001-06:00

I am always leery of writing columns about the weather given the fact that the Pipestone Flyer is a weekly paper. Invariably, by the time a weather-related column hits the newstands, the conditions are radically different than it was when I wrote it. If you thought yesterdays news was boring, try listening to last week's weather report!

Still, it has been hotter than a lava sandwich and we northerners with our obvious willingness to tolerate -40 temperatures in winter, have a hard time with anything over +25. We break out in a sweat with just the slightest movement; drinking beer, having a nap, breathing. Mostly we just suffer in silence, although some, sadly aren't so silent in their unhappiness and want to share that with every person within proximity of their "Hot enough for ya?" conversation starter.

Therefore, in order to help humanity and set myself up for the Nobel Prize for Something-Or-Other, we at the Loco World Headquarters have been experimenting with the best way to stay cool during the screaming hot temperatures we've been having. If we are no longer having screaming hot temperatures when you read this, you may cut this out with scissors (No running with them!) and put it on your fridge with a magnet for future heat waves.

Of course we must caution you about the application of these solutions. Remember; moderation in all things. A good example is a ceiling fan. It can provide a wonderful breeze to sleep under if done in moderation. Unfortunately, Cupcake is a hottie in more ways than one and I'm sure has the ceiling fan wired to 220. Laying under the fan with the blades whipping around at warp factor 5 billion is like sleeping in a wind tunnel. I can barely fight the force enough to get up to go pee in the night.

So, with moderation in mind, here are the findings of the Loco team of investigative researchers. They have assembled them into the top 20 ways of staying cool during crematorium conditions:

1: Hug a bag of frozen peas. This is particularly helpful at bed-time. Carrots and corn also work but broccoli can be a bit bumpy. Make sure whatever frozen fruit or vegetable you select, the bag is sealed perfectly. Having a bedful of frozen strawberries would be a drag.
2: Purchase a "Slushy" ice drink. Rub it all over your body. Watch out for brainfreeze, not to mention torso freeze, buttock freeze and sensitive inner thigh area freeze.
3: Go to the beer cooler of the beverage purveyor you have given the most business to over the years. Bring a comfy chair.
4: Try sitting in the shade... of an iceberg.
5: Stand in front of the fridge for hours with the door open staring inside like teenagers do constantly.
6: Hang out in the freezer section of the grocery store until you're booted out for being thought a creeper.
7: Have a cold shower. All day. Prepare for hate letters from water conservation groups.
8: Burrow underground like gophers do. Watch out for garden hoses and 10 year-old boys with pellet guns.
9: Wait for the end of the screaming hot day for the sudden, intense thunder, lightning, gale force wind, flying garbage can-type storm blow all the hot air from the house along with your roof.
10: Duct-tape popcicles to your body. Try and stay away from taping hairy areas.
11: Tell your wife those pants DO make her butt look big. Enjoy the frosty silence.
12: Buy one of those cheapie, above-ground pools. Get a part-time job at an air-conditioned Wal-Mart to help pay for the water, chemicals, testing kits, water toys and pumps.
13: Hire servants to wave palm fronds over you. It may not be the most efficient manner, but it would be the coolest.
14: Freeze-dry your clothes in the freezer after washing. Put on when not quite dry. Watch out for frostbite in unusual places.
15: Jump and frolic about in the sprinkler. In the front yard. Naked. Psych wards are usually air-conditioned.
16: Catch a cold. Hope for chills.
17: Flip off a bike gang. Bask in how your blood turns to ice when they circle the block for a chat. 18: Drink a lot of beer. You won't actually feel cooler since you are taking on a ton of extra calories and it is a diuretic so it will strip you of precious bodily fluids . Still, you won't care about the heat nearly as much.
19: Move into your parent's basement. Take up computing, texting, video gaming and going to comic conventions.
20: Put on a pair of shades. At least you will look cool.
As you can tell, once again our crack staff of researchers have proven once again that they are useless in a crisis. Don't try these at home kids!

I'm A Bad Guy!

2009-07-30T14:58:00.000-06:00

Man oh man, I am so excited! I couldn't be more energized if I'd just jammed a knife into the toaster. I am so looking forward to the Calmar Fair that is coming up on August 15th. The reason I am twitter-pated about the fair isn't the humungous garage sale extravaganza with tables lining all three blocks of downtown Calmar or the many other entrepreneurial opportunists with tables on their yards. Nor is it the parade or the "Show and Shine" or the ball games or the bench show or the dunk tank or even the beer gardens (Yes, even the beer gardens!). The reason for my excitement stems from the old fashioned melodrama The Calmar Prairie Players are performing that day and, get this; I get to be the bad guy!

The play is a melodrama called "Calamity in Calmar or Dark Doings at the Finley Farm", and it features a hero to be cheered (YAY!) a damsel in distress to be sad for ("AWWWW!") and me, the evil, heartless, wicked villain. (BOO!) (No, I don't play a Bernie Madoff.) There is also the damsel's poor, aged mother who has a terrible saskatoon cordial addiction and a sordid past, a Communities in Bloom operative hot on the trail of fresh fertilizer, as well as an assortment of many other oddball characters.

In the production, written especially for the Calmar Prairie Players by Paula Bosse, I play Percival Portobello, a man who is, not only an evilly malevolent psychopath, but also not very nice at all. Portobello is single-minded in his pursuit of the Finley family farm so he can subdivide it into condominium developments, even if he has to kill farmer Finley, marry his daughter and run her ma off the property in order to do it. His total lack of regard for scruples or principles makes it obvious, if he wasn't in real estate, he would have surely have been in politics.

The reason I am thrilled about the role is that up to now, I have always been cast as a "bumbling fool" sort of character; sometimes even in theatre. Now I get to let loose and go over the top with a totally different performing face on; that of a bad guy! After all, who has more fun than bad guys? They practically invented the phrase, "Mwahahahahaha!" Good guys, however, have no sense of tee hee at all.

Let's use Batman, as an example. Like all the rest of the square-jawed hero set, this good guy is a rather humourless, intense sort of fellow. Even in the campy 1960's version, The Caped Crusader never cracked a smile, no matter how corny his line. Neither did Robin, come to think of it. And as unsmiling and grim as that Batman was, more recent movie incarnations show an even darker spirited person; an individual about as warm and cheery as, say, head lice. Let's face it; when Batman is at work, he laughs about as much as a funeral director.

On the other hand, who’s doing all the laughing? The Joker, The Riddler, even King Tut. And who can forget The Penguin's trademark cackle? True, it does sound an awful lot like someone clearing their sinuses, but at least he and his hired thugs have fun on the job.

Guffawing bad guys aren't limited to Batman comics, either. I'm not just talking about Superman's foe, Laugh-a-Minute Lex Luthor, or the myriad of mirthful arch enemies Spiderman faces constantly. (Ol' Spidey seems to have more foes than Kim Jong-Il). Us bad guys have always laughed throughout recorded history, in literature and performing arts. From Shakespeare’s time and before, the evil were a cheery lot. This was reinforced on the silver screen in the dawn of movie history to present day cinematic creepsters, (Austin Powers' Doctor Evil springs to mind) bad guys have always laughed more than a talk show host's sidekick.

But that's not all. There are other reasons being a bad guy rocks. For one thing, folks that are evil incarnate are usually quite well-to-do. That's how they can afford henchmen and a secret hideout. Even better, they always have awesome looking women around them... Gorgeous women... Bad women... Oh yeah… Sorry, where was I? Oh right, I was being bad! Mwahahahahaha!

The shows are at the Calmar Ball Diamonds, or, as we called it in my slow-pitch days, "Brewski Park" at 1:00, 3:00 and 5:00 and the cost is free, although be prepared for a hat being passed.
In the cast with me are Richard Jackson as Tom, the Hero, Jennifer Moore as the fair Fiona Finley, Cindy Thornton as The Widder Finley (also known as Diamond Gert!), Tammy Bateman as Pat Schmidt the Communities in Bloomer, Gloria Wilson in her debut appearance with the Calmar Prairie Players as Mrs. Bricco, the stuffy restaurateur and Prairie Player Angela Jahnke in a dual role. There are also cameo appearances by Sharon Shudra of SS Office Services, Rudy Seneca and Scouter Bob with his entourage consisting of Kamil and Gabriel Bitar.

The Origins of the Places

2009-07-23T15:05:00.000-06:00

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the origins of the place names in our area. Our researchers covered the biggies; Wetaskiwin, Leduc, and of course, Alder Flats. Unfortunately for me, I was inundated with an angry letter from a reader that suggested I should have included all places within the Pipestone Flyer's trading area.

I'd have ignored the letter, since one always runs the risk of upsetting a certain segment of our highly valued readership with the type of hard-hitting, sharp-edged reporting I try and avoid. However, this particular letter came from my editor, Brian "You WILL Comply" Hahn, a man so mean, he once docked me a weeks pay for dangling a participle. So, without further ado, here are more place name origins from around the region.
　
Ma-Me-O-Beach: According to Wikipedia, which is almost as accurate as a dollar store watch, Ma-Me-O is a Cree word for "white pigeon". This is entirely erroneous. The researchers at Loco World Headquarters have discovered that this tiny summer village on Pigeon Lake had got it's name to honour the fact that it was the site of the provinces first mameogram in 1897. It occured when an elderly woman accidently got her breast caught between two heavy logs. (This one was Brian's, I hasten to add.)
Warburg: A small but vibrant village west of Thorsby and then over that way a bit, Warburg is...uhhh... did I mention it was small? The name of the village was coined during the bitter and violent "Burger Wars" of the 1970's when Burger King's Whopper went toe-to-toe with its arch rival The Big Mac of Macdonalds fame. (Get it? Arch rival? Never mind.)
Buck Lake/Buck Creek: These two aquatic features were named after Buck Owens and his Buckaroos. We're not sure why. Owens, of course, is most famous for his deep cerebral humour and profound insights into the human condition on the hit TV show "Hee-Haw". Also for "grinnin'".
Rolly View: This small municipality east of Leduc was named for the spectacularly gorgeous view of some guy named Rolly. Mind you, the guy I paid the twenty bucks to, for the information, may have been mistaken as he was rather drunk at the time. He promised me that he knew, though.
Kavanagh: This hamlet that boasts of a population of almost 50 people has little on their Wiki page other than this interesting tidbit of information; "Town council members/presidents are: Tim and Kim Rhodes, and Pat and Sarah Gillis, whom act not only as diplomatic, fair leaders, but also as the hamlets key law upholders that scrutinize all of the going ons that occur within Kavanagh. " My goodness, with that much scrutiny, no wonder there's only 50 people there! I couldn't find out anything about the origin of the village's name but apparently, after "googling" the place, I did discover the important fact that Matchmaker.com claims there are "thousands of women from Kavanagh" who want to date me!
Hoadley: The community of Hoadley, according to it's flashy, expensive tourism guide, lies between Breton and Rimbey on Highway 20 at the scenic junction of Secondary Highway 611. It was named after an early Alberta politician by the name of George Hoadley who championed the Sexual Sterilization Act of 1928. It seems the townfolk were extremely impressed that he would even discuss anything with the word "sexual" in it, in 1928, let alone act on it.
Rimbey: Rimbey is a quaint, typical small Alberta town of 2000 people, three cows and a goat. Its original name was Kansas Ridge but they broke up into two entities; the folk band Jeruselem Ridge and the rock band Kansas. The town now tours around the country doing folk festivals and rock revival weekends in the summer.
Ponoka: According to sources close to the municipality who wish to remain nameless, Ponoka is the Blackfoot word for "elk". This was a good choice as the Blackfoot don't have words for the community's other name candidates which included "rhinoceros", "wombat" and "giant kimodo lizard".
Winfield: This hamlet, in the County of Wetaskiwin is a place I have visited many times. Not on purpose, mind you, but I always end up there when I am looking for The Village at Pigeon Lake. The origin of the name is indicative of the history of the community. Apparently it was named after the first prize of a farmers' lottery in the 1800's. By the same token, the City of Winnipeg was named for a contest for pirates.
Drayton Valley: Drayton Valley is a modern Alberta municipality nestled between the mighty Drayton Mountains from whence it gets its name. The peaks of these majestic promontories are almost as high as the ones that gave Two Hills it's name.
That's all the places we have space for in this edition of our look into place names from around the region. In columns to come we will explore the stranger side of place names with close attention to such places as Boyle, Fallis, Bickerdike, Bonar, Harry Hill, Bredin, and no less than seven places with the word "beaver" in it.

The Karma Kid

2009-07-16T15:10:00.002-06:00

Two The majority of us have them; two annoying avatars of behaviour modification that reside on our shoulders. One is an angel, guiding us to be the good, kind, decent people most only think they are. It encourages us to hold open doors for grannies, sign up to sponsor a World Vision child/village/third world country or shovel your neighbour's sidewalk. This angel goes by a number of names, including 'Restraint', ' Generosity', and 'Whatta sap!' I don't know about you but mine goes AWOL occasionally...

On shoulder ' B' is the other little dude that, instead of the ' halo, wings and harp' ensemble favoured by its 'Goody-Two-Shoes' counterpart, wears goat horns, a pointy tail and has skin colour that can only be gotten by being devilish or laying too long on a sunny beach.

He's the guy whispering in my ear to have another beer, stand up to Cupcake when I should just sit down and shut up, or suggest I eat an entire gigantic bag of potato chips with a huge tub of onion and garlic dip. His name is Temptation and unlike his partner, Restraint, is never, ever absent.

Most are well acquainted with these two competing sprites, but there is also that other guy. The scary one dressed in judge' s robes. The one we call Karma.

Karma is the only creature known to man that lives on irony. The way Karma works is this; if I listen closely to the angelic entity whispering in my ear, generally, good things happen in return.

However, if I live my life allowing my demonic side (oh, come on, we all have one) free rein, bad things follow like a bad smell. Your behaviour needn't be all that evil for Karma to sneak up and kick you in your ironic pants.

I have a case in point. Last weekend, Cupcake and I were working outside; giving the weeds a whack job, putting the blade to the grass, sprucing up the trees, that sort of thing. Since her cantankerous, arthritic knees doesn't allow her to kneel, (Dang! No begging!) she decided to sit on a small table. This way she could get down low enough to snip whatever low-lying branches on our apple tree she found offensive. Why they were deemed offensive I'm not sure. They weren't drinking beer or passing gas or anything. Either way, the table she was using is an ugly thing, pretty much an 18 inch square piece of countertop bolted to some tubular aluminum legs.

As she sat on the table, on the spongy soil that sits sheltered from the hot sun thanks to the tree's lush foliage, one of the tubular legs of the table began to penetrate the damp soil like a stick in a marshmallow. Cupcake immediately realized her ship was listing heavily to starboard but was unable to do anything about it given the aforementioned state of her knees.With arms and legs flailing about askew and akimbo like a lady bug flipped on its back, Cupcake slowly, inexorably ended up dumped unceremoniously on the ground.

I suppose I might have handled things differently. I could have tried to contain my amusement and show concern and compassion for my partner of 27 years. Unfortunately, rather than rushing to the aid of my poor, vulnerable, loving wife, I was busy being convulsed in hilarity. The look of shock, indecision and embarrasment on her face was beyond hysterical. I guffawed my guts out. The only thing that would have made the scene better was if we'd caught it on video.
That night, preparing to sleep on the couch, I realized that I should consider alternative strategies to my discredited 'laughing my face off' approach to helping Cupcake in a time of personal crisis. This was particularly made the next day when Karma paid a visit.

Once more, Cupcake and I were puttering outside. When we stopped for a break, we went inside our gazebo and I flounced onto one of our comfy, padded patio chairs. Suddenly I experienced the greatest sinking feeling I've had for years. It was like being on a dentist chair when he lowers it to let you escape. What was causing my change in altitude was the aluminum legs on the patio chair decided to give up the ghost and began splaying out like a squashed cartoon spider, albeit one with just four legs. I ended up on the floor of the gazebo unable to extricate myself from my awkward position.

Cupcake's face contorted into the very picture of mirth. Her eyes crinkled up like a chip bag in the firepit. She began making the oddest trilling noise until she finally dissolved completely into a five minute giggle fit. Very unseemly, I thought from my low-level vantage point. She didn't care. She was getting hers back in spades.

And so it goes with Karma. You reap what you sow. It is beneficial in life to be nice and kind with no expectation of gain. In other words, we should all strive to be good for nothing.