Truer Words Were Never Spoken

“’Avatar’ asks us to see that everything is connected, all human beings to each other, and us to the Earth. And if you have to go four and a half light years to another, made-up planet to appreciate this miracle of the world that we have right here, well, you know what, that’s the wonder of cinema right there, that’s the magic"
--James Cameron, at last night's Golden Globes, where he was named Best Director and his film Best Drama

Simple Pleasures

I'm a man of simple pleasures: easily amused, easily satisfied. I believe there are a lot of people out there who take the simple things for granted, who no longer notice the little things that elevate the run-of-the-mill day into something joyful. Things like

• the realization, upon popping awake far too early, that there is still sleep to be slept
• the first taste of (heavily adulterated) coffee in the morning
• a long, leisurely hot shower
• a trip through a newspaper, magazine or blogroll, whereby I learn things and feel connected to the world
• the comforting feeling of jogging pants on days when I'm not leaving the house. Whoever said jeans were comfortable never donned joggers
• that first step outside, in most kinds of weather. Cold can feel crisp and clean; warmth like a gentle caress; even rain can feel refreshing.
• a friendly smile and word of greeting from a colleague
• the knowledge that, whatever comes up in the course of my workday, I'm competent enough to deal with it
• Quitting time!
• The bus ride home, so long as I have a book to immerse myself in
• The bike ride home, weather permitting, which has too many benefits to list
• A car trip anywhere. When you don't drive, your appreciation of a car can't be understated
• The greeting from the Tux and the Peach when they haven't seen me all day. It can be a little trying with the Tux, but they're both so damn happy to see me it's impossible not to smile
• The taste of just about anything my wife cooks. Her meatloaf is particularly enjoyable
• The prospect of a hockey game ahead on TV, one which the Leafs might, just might, win
• The shot of adrenaline I get when the Leafs actually do win
• The sensation of slipping under freshly laundered sheets and sliding into slumber

My wife told me yesterday she thought there weren't enough "big joys" in my life. Or in hers, for that matter. I disagree: she herself is a big joy, for one thing. For another, our pets spread joy everywhere they go. For a third,, there are an awful lot of little joys that add up. I try to pack as many of those into each day as possible. And so, while I'm rarely smiling so hard my jaw's cracking, I'm almost always content. Even when I'm not, the mere prospect of any one of those little joys approaching is usually enough to take the edge off my discontent.

It's the little things that make a life...

Intelligence

“Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much...the wheel, New York, wars and so on...while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man...for precisely the same reason.”

Douglas Adams, THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY

This is one of those quotes that cycles through my head over and over, never quite leaving my mind.

We humans think we're so special. We believe we're at the pinnacle of evolution. With exceptions only we are allowed to set--pets, for example--we believe that animals are mindless instinct machines without sentience, reason or imagination. This disdain extends even unto other classes of humans...Neanderthals, say, still widely dismissed as halfwits, despite having brains larger than ours. There is fairly conclusive evidence that our Neanderthal cousins had language. They used makeup and crafted jewelery, showing symbolic thought just like our own species. It may well be that they were actually smarter than us, but less aggressive.

That almost seems like a contradiction in terms, doesn't it? Smarter...and less aggressive? From the Mixed Martial Arts ring to the boardrooms of the Fortune 500, aggression in one form or another is a prized human trait. Suggest the opposite--that you should, oh, I don't know, turn the other cheek--and you're apt to be nailed to a cross, or something.

To be sure, we share this aggressive tendency with much of the animal kingdom...it's what makes a predator a predator, and we're the biggest predators going. But even the aggression we prize so much is dismissed as mindless when it's an animal exhibiting it.

I find that odd. Well, in truth, I don't...I've seen far too many humans walking around with God-complexes to imagine our species has anything other than a collective God-complex...but I'm distinctly at odds with most of my fellow humans when it comes to recognizing animal intelligence.

Simply put, I believe that many animals are intelligent, and that some of them have human-level intelligence, possibly (probably) even greater than human-level intelligence. Research into this is ongoing, but it keeps turning up startling new bits of information I've long accepted. The above mentioned dolphins, for example, are "cultural" animals with a strong sense of self and the ability to think about the future. This is treated as news, for some reason: anybody who's observed dolphins for any length of time could have told you this.

So now all of a sudden there's a movement to treat dolphins as "non-human persons". We've granted them near-human intelligence--which is okay, because we're doing the granting. But consider: these creatures have senses--echolocation, what looks for all the world like rudimentary telepathy--that humans lack. If we change our measurement of smarts a wee bit, might we not--possibly--come to the conclusion that dolphins are, in fact, even smarter?

Okay, so that's dolphins. We've long recognized that for mere animals, they're pretty brainy. Let's look at something a with a lot less mental star power: a bee.

I never realized how intelligent bees actually are. They have an incredibly well-developed sense of time and distance; they have a sophisticated "language" based on 'dancing' that is highly mathematical. They can find their way through mazes. They somehow have developed a honeycomb structure which our mathematics proves is the most efficient way to pack liquid into a volume of space.

Wikipedia, created by humans, is quick to note that none of these behaviours are indicative of individual intelligence. Perhaps not; but then bees (like many species of insect) are collective: a hive is much smarter than an individual bee, in the same way that a human society is considerably smarter than a single human. (It sure would be nice if more humans understood that.)

Or..take crows. They "make tools, play tricks on each other and caw among kin in a dialect all their own." Does that sound mindless to you? Because it doesn't to me.

Ant cities look very much like human cities, with recycling plants, air exchangers, sewers, and expressways. Ants go to war like humans do--they even have race wars, the reds versus the blacks. Mindless aggression? Certainly not: they make war to gain territory or food resources. They even farm food!

Here's a thought: there are an estimated quadrillion ants living on this planet. There are less than seven billion humans. Now you tell me, which is the dominant species on Earth? Us or them?

Humans may be pretty smart, but given the number of societies we've had that have gone poof! over the millennia, we're also demonstrably really, really stupid. Most of our stupidity can be chalked up, in fact, to this notion that we are the latest and greatest things on the planet, that intelligence is a strictly human trait, and that I'm better than you. In our rush to be separate and thus "better", we routinely ignore the interconnectedness of all living things. Some of our best teachers have been telling us this truth for a great many centuries. Most of the time, we don't take the message all that well. Some of us laugh. Some of us lash out.

Intelligence is universal. Even within human beings, there are many forms of intelligence, which is why I.Q. tests are largely discredited now. I believe--strike that, I know--that animals are intelligent too.

If we want to keep our place as the swingin' dicks of all creation, it might be a good idea to stop acting like the swingin' dicks of all creation. We are not alone.

Not So Smart

If you believe the guy who sold us this house, we weren't supposed to even look at it. Its inclusion in the list of houses we toured was "an oversight" for which he was "very sorry".

The regret and dismay sounded sincere, but then much of that experience seemed sincere at the time. It was only in hindsight that we realized we'd been played, a little. Since we were happy with the outcome of the game--this was the only house of the four in the list that felt like 'home' to both of us--we didn't complain. I wouldn't recommend the agent we had to any first-time homebuyer, though. It wasn't that he did anything wrong, exactly...but he didn't do enough right. We were treated cordially, but we never quite lost the impression that we were small fry, just a little amuse-bouche on the way to the million-dollar sale across town.

And we "weren't supposed to" see this house, this house that ended up being home. Despite it being first on the list--and any psychology student will tell you the first (and last) items in any list stick in the mind--the agent seemed upset that his secretary had included it in our package. And why?

Because it had (and has) electric heat.

Electric heat is right up there with swinging corpses in the attic and rats in the walls for attractiveness to the home-buying public, it seems. You've got two choices: freeze to death or go bankrupt. And so this place was significantly below market value (which, I gotta admit, was the first thing that drew my eye). We went through four houses, and predictably enough liked this one most. Well, to be fair, Eva liked one down the street a tad better, on account of it being a bungalow...but I outright hated that place because of its claustrophobic floor plan. This house was a welcome compromise...but for that electric heat.

We came back to look at it again, this time with some sort of comb. I can't say it was a fine-tooth comb on my end: I learned a lot touring a whole whack of houses in my teens with my parents, but not enough for fine teeth. But a comb nevertheless. Eva's dad has built houses from scratch, so she knows more than I do, and she's got powers of observation several orders of magnitude above mine.

The then-current residents of the house had prepared for us. They'd staged this place as well as could be expected, and having evidently been told the electric heat was giving us pause, had produced a year's worth of utility bills. We were quite surprised at how low the electricity bills actually were. At least, I was. Eva had noticed that every personal appliance in the house--everything that prospective buyers presumably wouldn't touch--was unplugged.

The home inspection yielded a damn good reason for that. We were told that the wiring in this place was so substandard that plugging too many things in at once could very easily cause a fire. Of course, fire prevention had the added benefit of lower utility bills.

We had an electrician here the day we moved in, bringing everything up to code, and we've since replaced the cheesecloth windows with the most energy-efficient models we could find. That, and the fact we like it cool in our house, offsets the considerably more...electrified lifestyle we live, as compared to the previous owners. (As far as we could see, they had one TV, and Eva's laptop screen is bigger.)

Now as it turns out, we do pay more for electricity that our FAG neighbours. (FAG: forced air gas, of course. What did you think I meant?) But not a lot more: about twenty or thirty bucks a month, averaged out over the year. Certainly not worth the estimated twelve thousand bucks it would cost to duct this house. And electric heat has some advantages, one big one being the ability to control the heat in each room.

But things are going to get all kinds of interesting in the coming months. Last week, a woman from Waterloo North Hydro was here for about a minute installing a smart meter.

Oh, joy.

This is one of those initiatives that looks great on the surface, and only starts smelling bad if you think about it. It looks great because you can find out how much juice you're using at any given time and you're given what looks like control over your bill.

But this control is almost entirely illusory, unless you're willing to take the draconian steps the previous owners did here, and unplug absolutely everything you're not using. Even then...well, I'll get to that.

We're encouraged to move our electricity use to off-peak hours. Now I don't know about you, but I'm asleep during off-peak hours. And I for one refuse to get up at 1:00 a.m. to do my laundry, cook the next day's supper, and watch TV or surf the Internet.

If you run through the list of electricity hogs on the linked website, you'll note some glaring omissions. They don't mention refrigerators or chest freezers, for example. What are you supposed to do with those, anyway? Unplug 'em during the day and only plug them in at night? I don't think so. Even assuming food safety--a shaky assumption--any savings you'd glean would be pissed away nightly bringing the unit back down to temp. The same goes for our water cooler and to some degree the electric heating.

Air conditioning is on the list, along with the asinine recommendation to keep it pegged at 25 degrees Celsius (77F). At that temperature, you might as well not even have an air conditioner. I apologize to any econazis out there: I'll pay whatever rate you set to ensure myself a decent night's sleep, but don't expect me to be happy about your jacking the price of my decent night's sleep through the roof. (Yes, as noted above, I sleep during off-peak hours. But the room has to get down to something liveable for me to get to sleep...and that's where all the energy use comes in. Maintaining a temperature isn't difficult. Getting to it can be.

We're told on that website that turning a computer and its associated peripherals on and off frequently not only saves money but also reduces wear. Huh? That directly contradicts everything I've ever heard on the matter, not to mention common sense. A computer is most active booting up...that's why it's called booting, as in "pulling itself up by its own bootstraps". If anything's going to fail, it'll probably fail on startup.

In short, we're told to conserve wherever possible, which is a laudable goal, but only so much conservation is feasible, and as for the rest of it, so solly, Cholly. Basically, this "smart meter" nonsense strikes me as an ecologically motivated cash grab and nothing else. Kind of like the Kyoto accord, in a way. We're living by and large normally for the first billing period to set a benchmark: if that benchmark is terrifying, then we'll have to make adjustments to our lifestyle. Like working night shifts and using the snowbank in our back yard for a fridge and freezer.

Not so smart.

Congratulations U.S. Juniors

Wasn't that a hockey game?

The gold medal game last night between Canada and the United States was reminiscent of firewagon hockey from the eighties...end to end rushes, constant momentum shifts, offensive heroics...and shaky goaltending. Sorry to say that Team Canada had more of the latter, but the United States is full measure for that overtime victory. It's only thanks to the increasingly commonplace miracle that is Jordan Eberle that that game even made it to OT.

Down 5-3 with three minutes to go, the Canadians threw the kitchen sink at Jack Campbell. The American 'tender had an answer for everything in that sink, until Eberle popped up out of the drain and willed a goal. Not even two minutes later, he did it again, tieing the match. This is nothing new for Eberle...he scored two goals at critical junctures in the gold-medal game last year (one with just seconds remaining), then potted the shootout winner versus Russia. Edmonton Oilers fans, you're looking at your future captain.

Eberle was by no means the only star on the Canadian roster. The only ingredient missing in this hockey melange--unlike in past years--was top-flight, clutch netminding. Both starting goalies were pulled last night, but the American replacement, Campbell, was a distinct upgrade, and (at least in that game) you couldn't say the same for Jones. Both he and Allen seemed to forget, at times, which Maple Leaf was on their jerseys. (Did I just type that out loud?)

But you really have to credit the Americans, because they played a stellar game. Every skater on that squad has multiple bruises this morning from shot blocks. Their presence in the shooting lanes directly led to a lethal transition game...they have some forwards who can flat-out fly. Neither did the Americans shy away from the rough stuff. In the end, they claimed a much-deserved gold.

Congratulations to them. And to team Canada. And to Saskatoon, which showed what a real hockey crowd looks like.

World Prospects for 2010

Go here...and extrapolate. Over two hundred attacks in the final two months of 2009 alone. Islam calls itself the "religion of peace". Orwell would have been proud.

The security restrictions arising from the foiled and failed attack on Christmas Day--which would have rained fire from the sky not terribly far from my hometown, had it succeeded--are still in place, for the nothing they're worth. True to form, we're still trying to prevent previous attacks. (And I'd love to know what good forcing passengers to remain in their seats in the hour before landing is going to accomplish.)

Luckily, our enemy is (so far) proving extraordinarily inept. They've succeeded several times since their one grand gesture in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, but their successes have been comparatively limited. Moreover, a great many of their attacks have been stopped before they could be carried out.

I can't understand why a terrorist hasn't just sauntered into an airport--never mind going anywhere near security--and detonated himself. If you're determined to suicide, it's pretty hard to stop you...Israel, which has extensive experience with suicide bombers, still only manages to prevent two in three.

Or why even bother with an airport? Why not a shopping mall, an amusement park, an office building? If al-Qaeda still had their one genius plotter, they'd undoubtedly have tried this by now. Sadly--from their perspective, of course--that "genius" was aboard one of the airliners on 9/11...which kind of shows he wasn't much of a "genius" at all and that al-Qaeda, as an organization, is spectacularly stupid.

It's about time we stopped pussyfooting around and started collectively understanding that Islam is not a religion of peace. The very word means "submission". While it is true that most Muslims understand 'submission' on a purely personal level, and discount the many overt Koranic scriptures stating otherwise, a depressingly large number take their scriptures literally. It would be nice, a nice start, if the moderates could speak up a little.

I understand why they don't, though. It's because they're Westernized enough to value their own lives. If there's anything a fundamentalist Muslim hates more than an infidel, after all, it's a moderate Muslim.

Incidentally, perhaps 2010 should be the year we stop referring to terrorists as suicide bombers. That's a Western conceit, borne of the sacrosanct idea (to us) that life is worth living. The suicide is, in truth, incidental. Oh, sure, those seventy two virgins supposedly await the martyr, but a successful martyr must take at least one infidel out with him. He therefore is properly referred to as a homicide bomber.

(And what's the deal with 72 virgins, anyway? Even if you're of the mindset that a virgin is eminently desirable...what do you do on the 73rd night of eternity?)

I truly hope this is the year we rout out the Islamic fundamentalists. Only when we do this will the world know some semblance of peace.

AVATAR

See this movie.

I could end right here and be happy with this blog post. I won't, though.

When I first heard AVATAR was coming out--almost a year ago, I think--I must confess my first thought was "Meh". Then I heard it was in 3-D, that was going to usher in a whole new era of 3-D movies and 3-D television and 3-D Internet...and I groaned aloud.
Those who know me know my eyes are pooched. Those who know me well know just how pooched they are. It's not just poor vision, which can be and is largely corrected with glasses; it's poor vision coupled with a lazy left eye coupled with something that has flummoxed opthamologists. I have some kind of weird condition whereby I look at things mostly through one eye or the other depending on their distance from my face. Rarely do I actually see equally through both eyes. You can actually observe the switch if you take, say, a pencil and gradually bring it towards my eyes.

The upshot of this is that anything that forces me to look through both eyes at once--a microscope, a telescope, 3-D glasses--is pretty much useless. Images won't resolve; in the case of the latter, everything not only blurs but takes on a red or green hue. I have thus avoided 3-D movies like the plague, through at least one evolution of 3-D glasses.

As I heard more and more about this movie, my interest was piqued, at first almost in spite of itself. Gradually I took more and more notice of AVATAR-related stuff. A friend of work went to see the movie soon after it was released and came back raving about it. I read a bunch of reviews pro and con, noticed most of the con came from right-wing blowhards, and that was the final tipping point. Anything that pisses off that subset of people is worth seeing, by definition.

Eva and I went to see it today. Part of me is still seeing it now...part of me will still be seeing AVATAR for a while yet, I think. The visual effects--and never mind the 3-D--are nothing short of gobsmacking. I had no trouble whatever with the 3-D glasses provided. Not even a headache, which some people had complained of. Actually, I was beyond impressed with how "gimmicky" the 3-D wasn't. It lent depth to the visuals in a completely appropriate way, never once seeming to escape the screen "just because it could".

I'll deal with the criticisms first by saying yes, this film was directed by James Cameron. This means a few things are, in fact true. One, the acting is pedestrian at best. (Titanic won 11 Oscars, not one of them for acting; none of the leads were even nominated.) Two, the narrative arc is quite predictable. (You knew, going in, that the R.M.S. Titanic was going to sink, right?) And three, there is a political agenda at work here, one Cameron shares with most of Hollywood and the reason the fundycostals detest Hollywood so much: religion is bad, spiritualism is good; Earthlings, standing in here for Americans, are rapacious, greedy, shortsighted and narrowminded, only interested in "power over", not "power with".

As it so happens, I agree wholeheartedly with the prevailing wisdom out of Hollywood (which, by the bye, is ancient, compared with the modern maxim that "greed, for lack of a better word, is good"). I can only hope that with enough repetition, that wisdom might catch on. Is Cameron preachy? Oh, you bet: his expeditionary force commander is a Cheney-esque caricature, completely over the top, only interested in subjugating or murdering. It'd be laughable if there hadn't been such creatures as Cheney and Rumsfeld and Bush, oh my. That unholy triumvirate would look right at home strutting around Pandora.

Minor quibble: the Na'vi are way too humanoid to be credible aliens. I would have been even more impressed with Cameron if he had stopped to think for a second: most of the critters on this planet don't resemble us at all, so why would a sentient alien?

My mind kept trying to yammer up things like this and the sheer power of Pandora's landscapes subdued it utterly. So, eventually, did the narrative, which for all its predictability is undeniably powerful. There are fewer clunkers in the script than in previous Cameron blockbusters (again, Titanic: Jack Dawson, on finding out the ship has struck an iceberg, turns to Rose and says, and I quote, "this is bad".) And the acting performances, while not standing out, are at least believable and compelling within the context of the story.

The environment on Pandora come alive in a way I'd suggest has never been equaled in cinema. Some shots rival anything my head can come up with, and I've got to say I have a powerful imagination. But what makes AVATAR such a treat is that Cameron doesn't just feed you endless scenery: he invents a people living in total harmony with their exotic environment, and gives them a culture, a mythology. Scads of backstory are hinted at between mesmerizing action scenes.

There are very few dead spots in this movie. The 162 minutes go by in an eyeblink, or at least they did for me. I was, in fact, sorely disappointed when the film ended and left me back in my own body.

Two sequels are planned, and I look forward to both. Eagerly.

P.S.

Damnitall, I'm wrong. This proves it.

Happy new decade, everyone. And thanks for setting me straight, Catelli...

Wrapping it Up, Part II

Personally, this has been a crappy year. Oh, I'm fine, and nothing particularly horrid has happened to me, but practically everybody around me has suffered pain or misfortune of one sort or another. This is, I'm told, what happens as one grows older. Well, growing older is for the turtles, is what I say.

I must admit to a bit of unease as I regard the flip of the calendar. 2010...every time I think of the new year, I remember a poster on the wall of the Armoury where I used to go for Navy League Cadets. It showed the current year in big print--would have been 1983, I think--at the bottom of the picture, then all the years ahead in smaller and smaller print on the way up the poster, like a pathway. I seem to recall that 2010 was the last one you could make out, just a speck. It's funny--I looked at that poster every Friday night and it never failed to give me a shot of excitement at a future yet undreamed. Now that the future's the past, the thought of that poster is actually a little frightening....1983 is the speck now, in my rearview mirror, and Time rolls implacably on. I feel as if I've lived four or five lifetimes as I've crawled up that poster, and what's next?

Out of the blue and into the black.

I hate to be conventional in any way, and I just finished explaining why, contrary to extremely popular opinion, 2010 does not mark the start of a new decade...but I can't deny that the years that end in 9 have always, for whatever reason, had special significance in my life and the "0" years have, without fail, signaled massive upheaval for good or ill. Somehow I expect 2009 will conform to the pattern. I'm just not sure how.

My store, which was supposed to have been renovated this past year, is now scheduled to start renovations in July. I'll believe it when I see it. Renew, reset, renovate...2010 will be the year of "re", for me.

And for Eva. She has felt stuck in a rut over the past couple of years, and her body turned traitor on her in 2009. She's getting used to her uteruslessness (a word I, for some reason, can't stop saying aloud), and is champing at the bit to go back to work, which she does, January 4th.

I wish every one of my readers a happy and prosperous 2010. I have to say it's nice to have the 'noughts' behind us.

Happy New Year, everyone,

Wrapping It Up, Part I

The Sunday between Christmas and New Years' is one of my favourite days in the calendar year. It's a day of utter relaxation, heavily seasoned with great meaty chunks of newsprint. The papers stop reporting the news and start analyzing it--which is, even if they don't yet realize it, the only thing that will keep them afloat in a world where news is tailored to each online "customer" and delivered, gratis, instantly.

The analysis is even more prevalent this year, given that by popular demand, it's "the end of the decade". (Just as January 1, 2000 wasn't the beginning of the decade, December 31, 2009 won't mark its ending. Unless, of course, you start counting things at zero. Go ahead, count your fingers...one, two, three, four, five. See?)

Never mind. As usual, my brain is wired differently from just about everyone else's. I'll go along with everybody's (wrong) assertion that 2010 marks the beginning of a new decade. So let's look back, shall we?

In 2000, 9-11 was an emergency service and a Porsche and nothing else. Just two days ago, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallah attempted to explode an airplane over rural Southwestern Ontario. That he failed, that the vast majority of attempted terrorist attacks have failed since September 11, 2001, does not in any way mitigate the threat that the perpetrators of that atrocity pose to Western nations. Our enemies are--so far--pretty stupid. But they have three traits that more than offset their stupidity: they are cunning, they are endlessly patient, and they do not care about whom they kill or what collateral damage they cause.

All that said, our collective response to 9/11 and subsequent attacks--not just the biggest but nearly the only geopolitical story of the 2000s--has been gross overkill in some respects and woefully inadequate in others. The world was sold a bill of goods on the second Iraq war, the cost of which (three quarters of a trillion dollars, by the end of this year) would have been much better put to use shielding the American economy from the meltdown that had been predicted as early as 2003 and scoffed at until it happened. Meanwhile, we've beefed up security by making sure you can't take toothpaste on a plane; we've re-targeted Afghanistan, the original shelter for the 9/11 masterminds, but as of this writing still refuse to use anywhere near the level of force necessary to prevail, nor expand the battlefield in any meaningful way.

A deep sea-change has occurred in Canadian politics. The Conservative Party, which in 2000 was still fractured and fractious, has risen from near-rump status to power. Minority power, granted, but Stephen Harper may as well have a majority, given the way he's governing and the weak-kneed opposition to same. Nobody, not even Stephen Harper, could have imagined this ten years ago.

A few conservative values have returned from the exile of the Chretien/Martin years: pride, especially military pride, in Canada; a repudiation of unfettered multiculturalism; a closer and more trusting political relationship with the United States.

But the National Post surely overstates things when it says "We Got Our Country Back". (Let's not forget that the National Post itself nearly disappeared this past year). After all, the gays are carrying out their radical agenda by marrying each other the way straights have for centuries. Canadians, according to a recent poll, are overwhelmingly satisfied with their commie-socialist health care system. And Canada's attitude vis-a-vis the U.S. has only thawed insofar as Barack Obama is not George W. Bush. It occurs to me that both the United States and Canada are in the process of re-centering themselves over the past few years. The 'natural governing parties' of both countries are on hiatus as we close out the 2000s and it's as if we're picking and choosing values and positions from 'the other side' that we can accept and live with. In the United States, this is accomplished slowly and with great psychodrama: the promised health care bill that was supposed to bring America on par with the rest of the developed world is deeply, almost fatally, flawed thanks to great stirring protests from the Right. In Canada, as is typical, things have been much more quiet. We haven't exactly warmed to Stephen Harper and his Conservatives, but at least we're not afraid of him any more.

Technology has moved faster in this past decade than at any time in human history. Consider computers: despite massive increases in memory, they still looked much the same, and were used for much the same things and in much the same ways, in 2000 as in 1990. iPods, but a twinkle in Steve Jobs' eye in 2000, have revolutionized the music industry to the point where many bands don't even bother releasing CDs any more. Television has been much slower in migrating online, but it's beginning to catch up, just as the concept of 'online' is beginning to migrate off your desk or laptop and into your pocket or on to your wrist. It's a pitifully safe prediction that in ten years, most of us will spend every waking moment within reach of cyberspace.

We're still trying to figure out what to do with our new toys. In 2008, the #1 application for the iPhone was the ridiculously useful iFart, which turns your phone into a $300 Whoopee cushion. In 2009, the most popular activity on Facebook--a site beyond imagination ten years ago--is planting virtual crops and watching them grow. And on Twitter, you can keep up with the fascinating minutiae of your friends' increasingly transparent lives.

Perhaps the biggest cultural change wrought in the past ten years: the world of free stuff. In 2000, Robert Heinlein's TANSTAAFL--"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch" still largely held sway. Now, you may still have to buy your lunch, but you can download movies free of charge even before people are allowed to pay to watch them in the multiplex; every album ever released is available online at zero cost; and anyone who feels morally compelled to pay for these things anyway is dismissed as a fool.

Depending on your age, you either find all this unremarkable or deeply frightening. Teenagers today think nothing of posting lascivious pictures of themselves online for the world to see and detailing their entire lives to their social networks. "Privacy" is a parental word, a chafing restriction, something to be ridiculed even, in a world where one's self-image is inextricably bound to one's popularity. I know people who have over a thousand Facebook 'friends'...I often wonder exactly how many are friends and how many are actually status symbols. In my more angst-ridden moments, I wonder if there's a difference anymore.

There is a generational chasm widening before our eyes as the closely-held values of our parents are being overturned. This occurs every generation, of course: it's entirely natural and to be expected. But only now are we hyperconnected and much more able to observe it happening, which drives up the stress level considerably.

I'd like to tell the older generation, of which I am now--in 2009--officially considered a part, that all is not lost and in fact much is being gained. Kids today are much more politically aware than we give them credit for; the sense I get is that they're just waiting for the rest of us to die so they can take control and drag the world, kicking and screaming if necessary, into a more enlightened era. The environment is an important issue to the younger set...when I was born, it was an afterthought when it was thought of at all. Much has been made of the narcissism of the culture of self-esteem; virtually ignored is the increase of empathy as a result of social networking. Give the yowwens control of the world economy and (I hope, at least) they won't spend their time deriving endless derivatives to make themselves rich and the rest of us poor.

As ever, we remain obsessed with celebrity scandal. I'm beginning to reluctantly accept that this is a constant in human society and not something we can ever outgrow. (Check out the graffiti on the walls of Pompeii: it looks just like TMZ.com.) And that's all I'm going to say about that.

To Be Continued...

Holiday Abecedarius

A is for Anticipation. Cf. Catelli: I share his sentiments.

B is for Boris Karloff, still and for all time the only Grinch I recognize.

C is for Christ. This is the one time of year I hearken back to the religious parts of my upbringing (I veered all over the place from harshly atheistic to reasonably devout, hitting every point in between more than once. I both respect and enjoy the traditions of the Christmas story, even if I don't currently believe in a Saviour as such. If the choice is between piety and crass commercialism, give me piety, forever and ever, amen.

D is for Deck the Halls--a carol I positively *hate*. The lyricist within wishes the 'fa la la la la, la la la la' was just about ANYTHING else. Wikipedia notes that carols were originally dances and not songs. This one should have stayed a dance.

E is for Eggnog. Eva can't stand the stuff. I'm neutral on it--but I make a point of buying one liter a year, and enjoying it the way I enjoy coffee: only partly for the taste...mostly for the medicinal effects. (In case you're wondering, eggnog has been scientifically proven to heighten holiday cheer. That's right, I'm a holiday scientist.) Ken the dairy manager intrudes: can we all please decide how much eggnog we're going to consume in a given year, and stick to it? The first year, I had none for all of Christmas Eve. The second, I was hung with an ocean of the stuff. Every year since,. I've dreaded forecasting and ordering eggnog. Each year we sell a little less, but how much less is anyone's guess. This year, my supplier ran out of eggnog three days ago, only to find a bunch yesterday, somewhere, and ship it my way. I might be okay this time. For once in my life.

F is for Family and Friends. The vital ingredients in any Christmas celebration. Please take some time out of your busy holiday schedule and spare a thought for those in old folks' homes and hospitals who maybe don't get the Christmas visits they should. One of our rituals is to drop off a bunch of presents, anonymously, at a local nursing home. The staff invariably thinks we're somebody's family members and we do nothing to disabuse them of the notion.

G is for Gingerbread. Like eggnog, it only seems to exist at this time of year. And like eggnog, I can never get the quantities right. I have to book the Christmas shipment of Pillsbury product every April or May, and I've learned that anything left come December 26th won't sell even if you reduce it by 90%. So I order light...and invariably I'm out of stock come the second week of December.

H is for Hanks, Tom, in The Polar Express...one of only two relatively recent additions to the Christmas pantheon of television classics here in the Breadbin. (The other is Shrek the Halls, which is hysterical.)

I is for icicles. In my childhood, we never just stopped at a tree and lights when it came to decorating the house. The job was never done until the front window had been creatively frosted with fake snow in a can. I vividly recall crafting snowballs and icicles on the window with this stuff. Haven't noticed it for sale in a great many years. I wonder if it was carcinogenic or something....

J is for Jean Shepard, the man we have to thank for A Christmas Story...for my money, the funniest Christmas-themed movie of all time. I somehow made it all the way to married without seeing this, even though it debuted when I was eleven years old. Now it's a must-watch.

K is for Kids--whose sheer enjoyment of the season is worth the amount of stress the adults go through putting it together.

L is for Love

M is for Movies, specifically those you rent. I worked at a variety store/video rental place over Christmas once and was utterly flabbergasted at the demand. Pretty much every title we had was out on loan, from the pornography right on down. Apparently nothing says Christmas like Alien vs. Predator.

N is for Not Until 8:00...as in, when Christmas Day was allowed to start up north at my dad's place. This would have been, I think, 1984 or so. I went in to wake him at the customary (for me) 5:30 and was told off, in no uncertain terms. So I went out to the living room and flipped on the television, tuning it to that channel that spilled out the news ticker-tape fashion, and commenced to clock-watch with a will. Somewhere there's a photograph of me, passed out on the living room rug, with that screen reading 8:47.

O is for Outhouses. One year, there was a single, solitary gift for my mother under the tree. I can't help but think she must have been a little miffed as she watched us fill the living room with wrapping paper before she finally had something to open herself. That one thing was undoubtedly the most creative present I've ever seen given. Her only present that year was a calendar...a standard wall calendar, with an "outhouse" theme. Each month had pictures of privies. Each month also had a ticket to something designed to get her "out of the house". Blue Jays tickets one month. Tickets to some musical another month. Tickets to a hot air balloon ride. And so on and so forth, every month of the year. Every year I award my stepdad mad points as I scramble to find something, anything, that Eva will love getting.

P is for Peach, one of the best Christmas presents we've ever got, home on Christmas Day 2006. Georgia-Peach has wormed her way into every heart she's encountered and she's got a firm hold on ours.

Q is for Quiet--the part of the holiday I appreciate the most.

R is for Rain, Dear. Picture this: one very wet and mild Christmas in the seventies, when I still believed in Santa and the whole shebang. I was maybe five or six, and my mom, in desperation, had hauled out the old chestnut about Santa only coming to houses where kids were ASLEEP. Like I could sleep with CHRISTMAS DAY an eyeblink away. I was just about there despite myself when I heard him. I heard Santa! I could hear the pitter-patter of Rudolph and company's feet on the roof. I flew out of bed and called out to Mommy that Santa was here, Santa was here! And she replied, without thinking, "Go back to sleep, it's just rain, dear."

S is for Shaving Cream. Another Christmas memory, this time from my teens. The deal in our house was my stocking would be deposited in my room overnight while I, ahem, slept, and I'd bring it out for discovery (cough-cough) in the morning. Of course, it never worked out quite that way...I would feign sleep until they were safely out of sight and earshot and then dump the contents of the sock out on to my bed, uncovering the mutant gigantor nuclear oranges and apples that you only ever find in stockings along with other, more desirable, items.

One year, for reasons unknown, I deviated from my usual dumping strategy. I instead thrust my arm into the waist high sock, which had been filled to the brim with cardboard and bits of rock to simulate the usual stocking stuffers--and the rest of the sock was full of sh...aving cream. Yecccch. Cue the door opening and the flash of the camera...

T is for Turkey. We were always pretty conservative on the question of turkey at Christmas, until one year my dad and stepmom fed us prime rib. Let's put it this way--the only reason we're having turkey today is because Eva's family is still pretty conservative on the question of turkey at Christmas.

U is for Understanding, a trait my wife has in spades. Very useful when I can't find the perfect gift on a limited budget, which happens, oh, about every year. Our first year together I bought her a Chinese dog-clock, which was supposed to symbolize love and luck and damnit, I wish I could go back in time to the exact instant I was pulling out my wallet and slap myself full of sense.

V is for Vinyl Cafe, yet another Christmas tradition here. If you haven't heard about Dave's rather...unorthodox...method of cooking a turkey...or about the time he attended a Christmas party and spiked the kids' punchbowl by mistake...or about the other Christmas party where he set the host on fire...or any of the other Christmas tales Stuart McLean whips out each year, please, go and listen.

W is for World Juniors. Some of the best hockey each year is played in the period from Boxing Day to January 5th or so, and often by our assembled team. We're gunning for a record sixth straight gold medal this year, and for once a Maple Leaf prospect is one of the centerpieces of the team. Go Kadri and Go Canada.

X is for Xmas--which is not, as many have asserted, an attempt to 'cross out' Christ. Indeed, 'Christ' was commonly written 'XP' or 'Xt" as long as a thousand years ago, X in this case being the Greek letter chi. Although this spelling is widely shunned now, there is nothing wrong with it.

Y is for Yule Log. Also Yummy.

Z is for Zzzzzz...a long winter's nap. Good night, all, and Merry Christmas.

So This Is Christmas....

Did you hear about the dyslexic devil worshiper? He sold his soul to Santa.

The holiday season proceeds apace. It sure doesn't feel like Christmas around this here Breadbin. That's probably because we've had two Christmases already.

Eva was just cleared to drive this past week, and only for short trips. We had to make the trek to my dad and stepmom's place away back in November, and we met with my mom and stepdad shortly after. Her folks are coming this year for Christmas Day--not just a first, but something I never thought would happen, ever, ever, ever. Eva's parents are at least as housebound as we are ourselves, and tradition has always been that Eva spend Christmas day with them. I haven't been able to go with her for some time, because of the Tux and the Peach...This will be the first Christmas we haven't been separated in at least four years.

I have four whole days off work, although I'm going in tomorrow for a couple of hours to write some orders--I don't feel comfortable leaving my department alone that long. That's not all, though...I love this time of year. I'm off Thursday through Sunday, work Monday and Tuesday, am off Wednesday, work Thursday, am off Friday, work Saturday, and am off Sunday.

Here's a holiday puzzler:

Why is The Sound of Music considered a Christmas movie? It doesn't take place at Christmastime, it has nothing whatever to do with Christmas, and yet every year like clockwork, it's on in December.

If I don't get to this blog before the big day, Merry Christmas to all.

Immortal

Back in 1990, I fell in love with a piece for solo cornet and band entitled Jubilance. It had everything I like in such a work: driving energy, technical virtuosity, and beautiful lyricism in its interludes. For nearly twenty years, I would find myself tonguing the main theme under my breath whenever I was nervous or excited. (If you want to hear it, perform a YouTube search on 'Phillip Cobb Jubilance'...I'd embed it, but in all honesty the sound quality is somewhat tinny).
Jubilance was just beyond my ability to play on my euphonium, when I was at the peak of my abilities. Which is to say, as solos go, it was mildly to moderately difficult.
My friend Craig, who is a professional trumpeter and phenomenal musician, sent me link on Facebook a month or so ago, to a piece by the Black Dyke Band called Immortal. I've ripped this to my iPod, searched (so far in vain) for a way to buy it, and played it incessantly, and now I'd like to share it with you.




Black Dyke, formerly the Black Dyke Mills Band, is the preeminent brass band in the world. Over their 154 year history, they've won countless awards. This piece, by Paul Lovatt-Cooper, taxes even them...you can see some thinly veiled looks of relief as some particularly impossible passages are surmounted and I swear I hear at least two flubbed notes (though in a piece like this I can't be 100% certain).

At 4:50, the principal cornet, Richard Marshall, embarks on a truly magnificient solo of such unmatched lyricism it nearly brings a tear to my eye (and how he just sings out those high Ds without the slightest strain!)

This is just a stunning work from beginning to end. Even if you've never played a brass instrument, you owe it to yourself to hear this. It is, truly, immortal.

Stranger In A Strange Land

I often find myself feeling contempt for things and situations I don't understand. And being as I am the youngest 37-year-old on the planet, there remain plenty of those.

I am, you know. The youngest 37-year-old on the planet, I mean. I know this because I extend an enormous effort to maintaining a facade that broadcasts precisely the opposite: here is an old soul who's seen it all and now exists largely on some plane well above it all.

Yes, that sounds snotty, and it is...when my facade maintenance isn't up to snuff, you can occasionally get a glimpse of the snottiness. Moreover, anyone with a shred of perception undoubtedly can see right through the thin patina of world-weariness to the fear lurking underneath.

I maintain that patina anyway. Or I try to, not yet having learned to feel comfortable in my discomfort. At 37 years of age, I still have so much to learn.

I had a learning experience last night.

Last night, I attended--for the first time in seven years--the annual Price Chopper Christmas party. Eva and I went the first year, and had...an okay time. We were a little miffed that we had to pay twenty bucks' admission, after Eva had made over a hundred dollars' worth of chocolates for a door prize. And despite knowing exactly what awaited us, we were a little put off by the atmosphere. As is the way at all such parties, particularly those attended largely by the not-quite-legal, the air eventually became suitable only for alcohol-breathing lifeforms.

In subsequent years, Eva's employer's Christmas party always seemed to coincide with the Price Chopper affair. Hers gets every bit as drunk out in its later stages, but it at least has the benefit of a moderately upscale dinner and some serious door prizes. We would go, have dinner (always a raucous affair: some of her colleagues and their spouses are veritable founts of humour) and then make our excuses not long after the dancing got underway.

Party poopers, the both of us, I guess you'd say. I wouldn't agree...I've been called the life of several parties myself and Eva could tell you stories about her younger years that would either turn you white with fear or green with envy. Really, it's that we exist in a different dimension of time, apart from the rest of the world. For instance, I slept in until 7:30 this morning, and felt mildly guilty for having done so: that's over two hours of life I missed. The fact I lived them last night, when I was up until the ungodly hour of 12:30, takes some time to occur to me and I immediately dismiss it as irrelevant when it finally does. Last night was life out of my comfort zone, after all.

But I was determined to go this year. While I've gotten along with just about every one of my colleagues over the past near-decade, it's only relatively recently that I've started to feel as if people get along with me okay, too.

It started, I was told, at 8:00. Now, I knew better than to believe that. Parties are the only occasions I've yet to run across in which punctuality, a virtue I was raised to respect, is treated as some kind of venial sin. But I'm still nowhere near fluent enough in Partese to translate "8:00" into the correct local equivalent...in this case a shade before ten. I arrived at 8:30 and was, I think, the fourth party at the party. Why can't they just say 10:00 if that's what they mean, I found myself thinking for the umpteenth time in my life. Immediately on that thought's heels came because if they said that, nobody would show up until midnight. Hey, it's not as if these people have to get up in the morning, or anything.

And why, my mind went on, does everyone wait so long before coming to these shindigs, anyway? What's the deal with that? Is that that they want to have fun, sure, but only three hours' worth? Is that it? I don't get it.

That people show up to these things already drunk was a little mystery (only in my mind, perhaps) only partially solved last night.

"Hey, Craig, drunk already?" I asked one friend and colleague...a man who, I'd just discovered, is well and truly a member of that tribe called the Sloppy Lovey-Dovey Drunks.

"Of coursh, Ken", he yelled back. "Why would I drink beer for four bucksha bottle when I can drink it for two?"

Fair enough, I thought and had sense enough not to say aloud, but why do you need to drink it at all? Don't you find it tastes like moosh pish?

I quashed that thought before it could really take root and suck the fun right out of the room for me. My attitudes on alcohol are distinctly Puritan. They've been that way since before I was legal myself and in almost twenty years they've only hardened. I wouldn't make alcohol illegal if I could: that doesn't even come close to expressing my hatred for the stuff. If I could, I'd eradicate it from the face of the earth. Work enough night shifts in a 7-Eleven surrounded by bars and see if you don't feel the same way. I dare you.

Still, just because everybody else was imbibing to excess didn't mean I had to. There was a shot-for-shot competition going on that I thought about wagering on, especially since one contestant (she said) had had thirteen so far and seemed only a trifle more...expressive...that usual. Mostly I just sat and watched the crowd, getting up to dance just often enough so that I only got dragged to the dance floor the once. I indulged my inner lecher as I regarded the ladies, all of whom were several orders of magnitude prettier out of uniform (and some of them make the uniform look pretty good, if you catch my driftwood).

I did keep well away from the one woman I would have ate a shot glass to dance with. (Just after I introduced Eva to her some months ago, my darling wife observed of course you like her. She's me with blonde hair.) Better a little crush from a distance, is my philosophy. Little good can come of flirting too heavily. Would that I had learned that little lesson two relationships ago, but at least it's learned now, when it really counts.

Back to the crowd. Everyone who wasn't dancing seemed to be in very animated conversation with people around them. Animated it had to be, because it wasn't as if you could hear anything below a scream over the Black Eyed Peas and Britney and the majestic strains of Stroke It. Again I felt like a fish out of water. Do these people not resent, on some level, having to shriek to the person next to them, just to be heard? I know it's a dance, but does the music have to be quite this loud? Then I wondered if that thought made me painfully naive or old before my time. I'd enjoyed the dinner my boss treated us to a couple of weeks ago a great deal, in no small part because I could follow the ebb and flow of conversation around the table. This...at times this was almost painful.

I bolted just before midnight, feeling a weird mix of relief and exhilaration. I don't think I made too much of a tool out of myself on the dance floor, a place where--once--I would have done everything short of a striptease to garner some attention. I just tried to fit in, and while these creaky 37-year-old bones wouldn't allow me the grace and style of my fellows, at least nobody was staring at me.

I could have stayed longer, but having awakened at 4:00 yesterday morning, the adrenaline could only do so much. Still, despite occasional misgivings, I had a better time than I thought I would. And I'll be back next year.

Irregularity

I seem to be suffering from a mild case of writer's block.

It's not so much that I am bereft of ideas. There are lots of things happening on which I could deposit a cent or two: the Afghan detainee scandal, Copenhagen, and Stephen Harper riding high in the polls despite both. I tarted up a column saying goodbye to my favourite baseball player--Roy "Doc" Halliday--then decided not to bother publishing it.

I seem to be suffering from an acute case of thinker's block.

I just don't feel like writing, or thinking, or doing much of anything, this month. A full blog entry seems like so much work, and a blog entry on anything requiring--gasp!--research makes me throw up in my mouth just a little.

Part of this is free-floating annoyance, something I'm subject to every now and again. There's no reason for it...it just happens...but it's all-encompassing, and it causes me to think things I wouldn't normally. Afghan detainees tortured? That's what war is about, right? Copenhagen...big whoop. Nothing we can do is going to be enough to reverse what we've already done, and it's just so...damned...tiring watching the world's leaders fiddling away while home burns. And Harper...as the kids say today, meh.

Then I get annoyed with myself for having these rogue thoughts, and the two species of annoyance take up arms in my cerebrum, and before too long I'm just withdrawing. Let the world go by, I don't care.

This too shall pass, I'm sure. But I owe my readers some sort of explanation for the paucity of posts...and that's it.

Sorry, folks.

Update: The wife, the self, and the work

Eva: she hates being on the shelf. I knew this before, but the sheer depth of her hatred has made itself abundantly clear in the past month or so. She's not supposed to be doing much even now. She needs to be reminded of this on a daily, indeed an hourly, basis. It's a difficult balancing act, because all sit and no work makes my wife go nuts.

To illustrate: Two days...TWO! DAYS!...after she came home from the hospital, Eva announced that she was going to walk up to the corner and get herself a pizza. I told her she most certainly was not, how could she even think of doing such a thing, you sit right there in that couch, woman, and I will fetch hither yon pizza. In response, she assumed a posture I almost never see from her, one that says I'm hearing you but I'm not listening. The more I pleaded and cajoled, the firmer she set her shoulders. I was on my way out with friends to see a hockey game, already not feeling that great about leaving her alone. Pride, exasperation and concern mixed uneasily as I realized as soon as I was out of the driveway, she was going to walk about a quarter of a mile, against every order every doctor in the world would give her, and there wasn't a damned thing I could do to stop it short of hog-tying her to the couch. And so I summoned my foot-down voice and told her she was to turn around the instant she felt any pain.

Needless to say, she made it there and back again with her pizza. She texted me to tell me she was home safe and sound and "feeling it"...of that I had no doubt. She won't tell anyone how much effort that walk took, or how much pain she actually suffered over its course. In her family, it was never enough to succeed against the odds, you had to do it effortlessly.

The ensuing three-weeks-and-change have not been any easier. Oh, she's recovering, slowly; she has a (thankfully relatively mild) infection in at least two incisions, for which she's taking antibiotics, but other than that she's physically hunky-dory. But the limitations the doctors have placed on her (no driving for at least a month, no lifting of anything heavier than ten pounds for six weeks, and so on) are chafing her to no end. Limits are for weaklings, is Eva's philosophy, and one should never dare to suggest that Eva herself is a weakling, invasive surgery be damned.

-------------------------

I'd have made a shitty father.

I'd long suspected this, but the past month has proved it. How you people with children do it I have no freaking clue. Do you have day-stretchers, or something? I haven't had time to even think about blogging in the past week of get up, shovel driveway, go to work, come home, shovel driveway, have dinner, clean up dinner and go to bed. Here I am stealing some time and there's laundry to do, the floors in here are actually kind of scary, the bathroom needs cleaning and hey, Ken, have you looked in that hellhole you call a basement lately?

This bothers me on several levels. I've always known I have a lazy streak a mile wide in me, but having it driven home so forcefully kind of rankles. And let's face it, I don't have near the workload of your typical parent. Not even close. In fact, a week or two of parental burden and I'd probably be capable of murder. I'd call it self-defence, because a month or so of parental burden would kill me.

One cup of coffee instead of two in the morning and around noon I have a real scalp-splitter of a headache. If I lack half an hour or forty five minutes of time to wake up properly in the morning (because I have to, let's say, go out and shovel the driveway) and I'll be out of sorts all day. I'm obviously wedded at least as much to my routines as I am to Eva. I simply can't imagine the chaos of a house with kids, where routines exist only to be laughed at and "down time" is a fantasy more potent that hot sex. I used to snort incredulously whenever I'd read that longtime parents overwhelmingly preferred an hour's sleep to an hour's sex. With my increased workload--which is still an insubstantial fraction of the average parent's--I think I can begin to understand.

Every day this week, I've gotten to work when it was still full dark and it's been full dark when I've arrived home. This normally doesn't bother little old photosensitive me one bit, but lately I've found myself wishing there were a few more than 24 hours in a day.

-----------------------------

I've both loved and hated my job since my vacation ended. Loved it, because for the first time I actually missed not being there for two weeks. There are several people there that make my days away from home more than bearable. It's taken nearly nine years for me to believe, in fits and starts, that others might feel that way about me. My boss took his full-timers out for a holiday dinner the day after I got back: the first time I'd been invited, and I hope not the last. The parade of delicious food was nearly endless and the liquor flowed in buckets and I shudder to think what the bill might have been, but it was worth it.

I've hated my job because (are we sensing a theme, here?) there's more to do than can be done. I worked all day Wednesday, my usual day off, doing shelf relines and building displays, and that wasn't even the worst day of my week.

This ad we're running Ristorante and Casa di Mama Pizzas for $2.99. I both love and hate these pizzas. I love them because they're delicious, easily the best frozen pizza on the market. I hate them because the packaging on them blows hairy chunks. They're the only product in my department--probably in the whole store--that's wrapped and boxed. They're packed in fives or sevens (weird) and filling a bunker from empty takes about two hours if you hustle ass. Tedious. Really tedious.

Anyway, last time these were on, I sold more than anyone else in the banner, including all the Toronto stores. And so when I allocated stock for this sale, just before Eva's surgery, I went really heavy. I shouldn't have done that. For one thing, business has died off since then. For another, we have a new lockdown program and our McCain Rising Crust pizzas are on sale for $3.99 (from $7.27) at the same time. Although this lockdown had started when I booked the Ristorantes, I was not and am not used to thinking about sales as twelve week long events. And for a third, I didn't imagine there'd be eight skids of turkeys in my freezer when I booked the pizzas.

It took me hours of phone calls and emails just to get one of my pizza shipments cancelled.

Then, when filling the bunk on Tuesday, I noticed and reported that it was icing up badly and would have to be defrosted soon. Hopefully it'd last through Christmas.

It didn't.

On Wednesday night, the refrigeration alarm went off for that bunker. The computer showed a temperature of 300 degrees Celsius...interesting. The thermometer on the bunker reported -26, right where it should have been. The ice had cut a sensor wire. The bunker had to be emptied and defrosted so the sensor wire could be replaced. Like I had time for this. Like I had anywhere to even temporarily store the pizzas I'd so painstakingly placed in there two days previous.

On to U-boats and into my dairy cooler the pizzas went. I grabbed a large waste bucket, filled it with scalding water, and U-boated it out to my bunker, where I upended it. The water sluiced around, melting some ice, before cascading out all over the floor.

That ain't right.

Somebody, at some point, had rammed that bunker but good with a shopping cart, shifting it and actually cracking the drain pipe. So: pour, mop, mop, mop, mop. Pour, mop, mop, mop, mop. And so on. Lovely day that was. It took about eight buckets to melt the ice sufficiently for our general handyman to even access that drainpipe.

This next week should be better. For one thing, I have no intention of going in Wednesday. I plan on cleaning my heart out here at home. If I get enough sleep Tuesday and Wednesday nights, no matter how much cleaning I do, it'll feel like a day off...

Tiger! Tiger!

bleeding bright

In the Escalade that night

What tumultuous downhill lie

Has forc'd thy infidelity?

(with apologies to Wm. Blake)

The jokes are out already. Some of them are pretty clever, actually.

What's the difference between a car and a golf ball? Tiger can drive a ball 400 yards.

What were Tiger Woods and his wife doing out at 2:30 in the morning? They went clubbing.

Tiger Woods crashed into a fire hydrant and a tree. He couldn’t decide between a wood and an iron.

I've posted on this before. Admittedly, the "celebrity" in that case, one Tahir "Tie" Domi, was considerably further down the fame ladder than is Tiger Woods. Still, everything I said there applies here, only more so.

Once again, we are confronted with a "devoted husband and father", a man who has assumed godlike status to his fan base, caught behaving in an ungodly way. Once again, he seems surprised he was found out and upset that the media are making life difficult for him. Hello, Tiger? You're obscenely rich and famous, you're pretty damned photogenic, and what the hell were you thinking leaving your paramour's name in your cell phone? How was that supposed to end, hmm?

And sorry, no matter how many times you plead for privacy, you don't deserve it and you're not going to get it. You didn't exactly keep your marriage private, there, did you? How did you find yourself playing the wrong hole, Tiger? Couldn't keep the club in the bag, could you?

Don't get me wrong. I actually have some sympathy for Mr. Woods. Man, you think pug-ugly Tie Domi had women throwing themselves at him? I'm sure Tiger has to beat them off with, well, clubs. Sooner or later, little Tiger was going to bust out.)

And Elin knew it. Of course she did. Why else the prenup? You don't craft those things without knowing, on some level, you're going to get divorced. (My wife disagrees with me here: she believes Elin was--wisely, as it turns out--covering her ass-ets. That's as may be, but I still think those things are better named post-nuptial agreements. It takes a cynical mindset to be divvying up property before you've even tied the knot, is my view).

So Tiger's in daily marriage counselling. Interesting. I wonder if that ever crossed his mind before he strayed. Somehow I doubt it, and yes, I'm speaking from experience. Often you don't realize what you've got until you throw it away. I'd be exceeding surprised if Tiger's marriage lasts another five years.

Ow.

Meant to post in the last couple days. Didn't. Threw my back out, instead.

It comes with the territory, when you're approaching 40...or so I'm told, anyway. I've had twinges in my back every now and again. This wasn't a twinge. This was a lock.

I was putting laundry in the dryer...something I've done, oh, about a thousand times. Only this time my back announced that I was not putting anything in the dryer any more, instead it was time to moan and wail piteously. Very low in my back, almost at my left hip, something wrenched and presto! Ken joined Eva on the shelf for a couple of days.

Oh, we made a pair on Monday and Tuesday, let me tell you. I couldn't do the square root of frig-all and Eva's not supposed to do much of anything, either. I'd try to help her, say, put her slippers on, and I'd wind up clenching my back and gasping like a beached fish; she'd help me get my socks on--I don't mind admitting that with my almost total lack of flexibility, this is a bit of a struggle even when I'm feeling 100%--and she'd be ready for a nap, afterwards.

Tried going to work this morning, fortified with muscle relaxers. If I had a desk job I probably could have got through the day. As it was, I tried to lift a slat of eggs and my back said oh, really? Is that how we're going to play this game? Not healed yet, apparently. So now I'm home and about to go to bed. We'll try this again tomorrow.

I don't want this to happen again, though I suspect it will, sometime. Eva is subject to back spasms worse than mine was...once or twice a year she's bedridden for a day or so, completely unable to walk. At my worst, I could walk (slowly), I could sit (painfully) and I could lay down (sort of)...but getting from any of those states to any other was...bad.

I sure didn't want to come back from holidays like this...

Don't Send Me Shopping

So with Eva out of commission, my responsibilities have increased a tad. I am Shopper Pro Tem.

This is not a position to which I am eminently suited, believe me. I don't drive, so my cargo capacity is somewhat limited--unless I break down and take a cab, which is hellishly expensive. But that's not even the half of it.

Like most men I know, I'm firmly in the "get-what-you-came-for-and-then-get-the-hell-out" school. Unless I'm shopping for books, I don't linger any longer than I absolutely have to. I detest crowds, I usually hate the Muzak playing in the background...the whole shopping experience is often one big drag.

And I freeze when confronted with too much choice. That's because apparently my name changes instantly to Murphy whenever I cross the threshold of a store. If there's more than one choice, I'm apt to screw it up. Sometimes even one choice is one choice too many...why'd you get that?

Yesterday morning, I sallied forth, armed with a list and some cash and a troubling lack of coffee. See, my first destination was the St Jacob's Farmer's Market, and that place is an absolute zoo starting about thirty seconds after it opens. I had therefore resolved to get-what-I-came-for-and-get-the-hell-out as soon as possible. The place is about a seven minute drive from our house if you count a couple of minutes of idling the car in the driveway...just far enough away that walking is out of the question. When you insert that seven-minutes-by-car number into the Public Transit Equation and work the calculations, you come out with 45 minutes-by-bus-and-you're-lucky-it's-that-quick. Actually, you're lucky you can get there by bus at all...it's a relatively new route.

This is just the price you pay when you don't drive. Most times I pay that price cheerfully, without even thinking about it. Travelling by bus doesn't bother me unless the bus is packed, and GRT buses rarely are. I can sit comfortably reading or listening to my iPod, knowing that for once I'm fitting in with the crowd: nearly everybody else on the bus is doing one or the other. And I don't have to worry about navigating myself through all the potentially deadly traffic. So it takes a little longer, big deal. Time I have. If I don't have time, I didn't get up early enough.

Yesterday, I didn't get up early enough. I weighed options in my head: dash out the door without coffee or breakfast and hit that market before it was overrun with Saturday shoppers moving at half the speed of smell...or take my time, fortify my brain and get swallowed up by the crowds, never to be seen again. The choice was clear.

The choice was wrong, as it turned out.

I had two stops: the market and the Wal*Mart store next to it. The first stop went by without much of a hitch, probably because I only had one thing to buy there. I had a few panicked moments when I couldn't find the 'Hacienda' stall I was instructed to look for, but even my java-less mind figured out that 'Hacienda' was actually 'Halenda' and that problem was dispatched effortlessly.

On to Wal*Mart...my least favourite store on the planet. But some sales are not to be ignored. It's not every day big bags of Splenda can be had for seven bucks, or Peek Freans chocolate covered digestive cookies for $1.98, or...just about everything this Breadbin needed or wanted, large or small, was on sale. TWO DAYS ONLY. Another reason I wanted to get there right early. I work in retail. I know two days can easily translate to two hours.

In hindsight, which is often the only sight I seem to bother with, what I should have done was sit my butt down at the McDonald's inside the Wal*Mart store and avail myself of their free coffee. Even I recognized how exceptionally dopey I was, and a jolt of joe would have cleared that right up. But no, I was here, I was ahead of schedule, and I was brimming with misplaced confidence at how easily my first errand had gone. It was TIME TO SHOP, DAMNIT!

Well, first there was the matter of what to do with my backpack. I knew Wal*Mart didn't take too well to backpacked individuals roaming their aisles, but I didn't want to surrender mine, not with a frozen bag of Eva's all-time-favourite spring rolls...and my iPod and earphones...inside. The greeter solved that problem by affixing a sticker over the zipper of the bag, and I was ready for the fray.

My list consisted of items all over the store, and so I trundled ass all over the store trying to fill it. Some things refused to be found. 'SPLENDA X3' said the list, but I couldn't find 'SPLENDA X1' anywhere. I approached someone for help. Girlish of me, I know, but you guys ought to try it...sometimes it works. 'Go to the sign that says sugar', I was told, 'and it'll be there'. I remonstrated that I had just been to the sign that says sugar and there wasn't even a hole where Splenda could go. Sweet'n'Low, yes. Equal, yes. Even generic sweetener. No Splenda. But hey, I've missed things a hell of a lot bigger in my time, so I'll look again.

Nada.

It's nothing short of incredible how I can walk into any big box or grocery store at any hour of any day and find a rep I know. Barely eight o'clock on a Saturday and who do I see but our Hostess rep working his aisle. After exchanging a little small talk, he asked me what I was looking for. 'I think they keep that stuff in the pharmacy', he said.

A memory breached, up from the depths. Oh, yeah, that's right. We got Splenda here before and that's where they keep it. It was the first place Eva looked, because her mind works differently from mine.

It really does, you know. I'd probably look in friggin' infants wear for the Splenda before I'd even consider the pharmacy, and if Mr. Hostess hadn't mentioned it, I never would have remembered that they stock just one brand of coffee sweetener in their pharmacy when the rest of it is with the sugar where it belongs.

But hey, look, there it is, SPLENDA X144 or so, a big block display right next to the shampoo. Splenda: it's good for your hair. I hate this place.

Ken, said an interior voice, calm down. You knew when you came in here that you weren't going to get help from the employees--this is Wal*Mart, after all. And who are you to criticize product placement? Where does your Price Chopper keep its horseradish, again?

--On top of the seafood bunker, right. And where's the gravy? Yep, the baking aisle, 'cause everybody bakes with gravy. So shut up and go find those Peek Frean cookies.

(Any Merkuns reading this blog, do you have Peek Freans? If not, go here and buy some. Yes, they're that good. So are a lot of other things on that Canadian Delicacies site.)

I had no trouble locating Peek Frean cookies. There was a giant wall 'o' Peek Freans staring me in the face as soon as I backtracked from the pharmacy/Splenda section to the grocery section. But do you think I could find chocolate covered digestives on that wall? I could not. I found a box that said 'Family Digestives' adorned with two pictures, one a chocolate covered digestive cookie, the other a naked digestive cookie. Hmm, half and half, I thought. I better not get that, she specifically said chocolate covered. Better not scratch that off the list.

A big 2-pack of Lysol wipes was in the flyer at some ridiculous price...and was only in the flyer, nowhere else.

On to the electronics. iTunes cards were on sale--never have I seen that before--and Eva wanted a 'Wii Classic Controller' to play her old-school Nintendo games. Also, supposedly, on sale. The iTunes cards were no problem, but the guy manning the electronics counter had no idea what a 'Wii Classic Controller' was. He showed me a giant pile of Wii Remotes, Wii Nunchuks, and other controllers that looked nothing like the little diagram Eva had so helpfully supplied me with. Another item I can't stroke off that list. They were glaring at me.

There were various and sundry other adventures before I finally made it to the check out. I called Eva to let her know the slippers she wanted weren't stocked in her size and I'd do my best to find something decent that was. I texted her a few minutes later to inform her the brand of socks she desired was not available and I was going to get what I thought was the next best thing. Knowing of course that it wouldn't be, but I was getting frustrated. This happens every time I'm tasked with buying something. It's never there, and so I have to decide whether to attempt getting a maybe-equivalent or to just let it go. It's enough to make me want to scream, some days. Like yesterday.

At the end of all that, having checked out and paid, I hefted the seven bags in one hand and hiked the six-pack of paper towels under the other arm and debated with myself. I can carry this. I should take the bus.

--You can carry this now, and by the time you get to the bus stop your arm is going to fall off. Call a cab.

--If you call a cab, it's going to cost like fifteen bucks. The bus you've paid for already, you've got a ticket, so it's essentially free. What are you, made of money?

--Yeah, I am. I'm also made partly of arm, and I don't want to lose it. Call a damned cab.

Alas, Wal*Mart doesn't have a direct line to a cab company, like every other large store in the Tri-Cities. What do you expect, they stock Splenda in their pharmacy! They do have a pay ph--wait a minute, Ken, you have a CELL PHONE IN YOUR POCKET.

I wonder how many months (years) it's going to take before my first thought is that cell phone.

Cab home, pay (ouch) $15 just as expected. Unload. Bring everything in. Start putting away. Discover that I did okay with the items I chose equivalents on. The socks and slippers were perfect. Explain the lack of Lysol Wipes and Wii Controller while putting away SPLENDA X1...

X1?

Look around several times. Check bill. SPLENDA X2 missing. Call cab company. Not there. Wonder what the hell I did with what was evidently bag #8. At least it only had SPLENDA X2 in it. Call store. They don't know either. $7 Splenda sale has, through the magic that is Ken, morphed into $21 Splenda butt-reaming. Maybe you should go back and get something for that. In their pharmacy.

"If I left it at the till, I'm pinning at least 20% of the blame on the cashier," I told my remarkably understanding wife. "Love", she replied, "for all you know she was running after you. 'Sir! Sir! You forgot a bag!'"

You laugh. You're not me. That's entirely possible. In fact, it wouldn't be the first time. And it probably won't be the last.

Eva really wants that Wii Controller, and some lunch stuff besides. (The Wal*Mart I'd spent half the morning in is not a SuperCenter--no deli, no produce, and pretty limited grocery stock.) So, like a glutton for punishment, I went out again, on a bike this time.

Future Shop first. "Yes, we have Classic Wii Controllers', the guy said. "Here's a third party brand for $16--oh! Here's an open box model that retails for $20, but we can knock that down, probably half price, ten bucks. And here's the actual Nintendo product for $24.95."

Choices, choices...

I looked at the generic brand. It looked flimsy as hell. The open box model, while a great deal, was some other generic brand, and whether it's rational or not, I don't like to buy stuff that might have been tampered with. Plus, the actual Nintendo controller was supposed to be at Wal*Mart for $20. What's $4.95 if get gets me out of here?

On to Sobeys, the full service arm of Price Chopper. I know this store. I know the products I'm looking for. Shouldn't be a problem in here at all, get the luncheon meats, get the buns, now let's go to the checkou--

--Peak Freans Digestifs Glaces--

Hey! Somebody didn't face that! I'm forever bitching to my staff, what are you, French? because they'll often stock shelves French-side forward. You get pretty fluent in French pretty quickly up here in Canuckistan just from shopping in grocery stores. I knew, for instance, that the above translated to Peak Freans Frosted Digestives. Frosted...with chocolate. The identical package I'd been looking at in Wal*Mart, but there I hadn't looked at the French side. If I had, I would have figured out it wasn't half chocolate covered and half naked, the way it was shown: it was all 'frosted', and the naked shortbread cookie was only pictured to confuse the hell out of any passing Kens.

I love my wife. I really do. I mean, any other woman would have lost her freaking mind at me. I'd left SPLENDA X2 behind, somewhere, somehow. I'd taken almost five hours to complete a shop that would have taken her (maybe) one. I'd had to interrupt her day twice to ask stupid questions. I'd wasted $15 on a cab. (Okay, that was budgeted, but in my mind it was still a waste.) I'd come back without Peek Freans that were staring me right in the face. On and on and on and what does Eva do? She gushes at me about what a great husband I am because I went out and shopped for her.

I'll go out and move mountains for this woman. I just hope like hell they turn out to be the right mountains.

Because I'm Feeling Romantic

Ken and Eva's wedding processional

I love you, love...