What my wife means to me - on the occasion of her birthday

She's not a delicate flower, or a single rose in a china vase. She's the summer meadow of wildflowers I lie in to watch the clouds roll by.
We're kids together, growing older but never old.
She's the deep well that refreshes me, strengthens me, braces me for the long days and lonely roads we sometimes must travel.
She is the cathedral window through which I see the world, and she colours and brightens my every thought.
She is the altar at which I worship.
She is the melody
the colour
the light and the fire.
And as my eyes close each night, she is the dream I seek.

---

Happy birthday, hun. Some may call it cheesy, but as I said one inspired night long ago, cheese is just love dipped in sugar.

\..\/

Sure, he walked on water, but did he wear a cape?

My only personal experience of born-again Christianity:

At Thanksgiving dinner several years ago my wife, Anne, and I, along with my parents and my brother, Mike, were gathered around my uncle Gord's dining room table, drooling over the aroma of mashed potatoes, roast turkey, squash, stuffing, gravy and fruit pies warming in the oven. Sitting across the table from me were my cousin's young sons, Rod and Todd Flanders. (Okay, obviously not their real names - their father was a wild child who discovered Jesus after badly losing a barroom brawl. My cousin lost the fight, that is, not Jesus.)

Now, the turkey was still being carved in the kitchen, and to make conversation, my cousin, Colin, sitting next to me, asked Rod a question: "Who is the greatest superhero in the whole wide world?" We were all expecting a Batman vs. Superman debate, with maybe some X-Men thrown in for spice. The new Superman movie was in production, Batman Begins was in theatres, and the X-Men movies were in full swing too.

To our eternal delight, Rod's eyes lit up, and with the full confidence and enthusiasm only an eight year old boy can muster, he shouted, "GOD!", punctuating his yell with a raised fist and a huge smile. Todd, sitting next to him, nodded enthusiastically and laughed.

Cue the barely-contained guffaws from my brother and I.

Colin, ever the trooper, shook his head and said, "No, okay, let me rephrase: Who is the greatest superhero that God created?"

Rod and Todd's eyes met, and for a brief, shining moment, I thought I could see them telepathically communicating, weighing heroic feats against awesome powers, judging climactic battles against cool costumes and gear, and carefully selecting the greatest superhero of them all:

"JESUS!" they yelled in unison.

My brother and I dissolved into gales of laughter. I laughed until I ejected my spleen. Mike laughed so hard he ruptured space-time and now lives as a Turkish warlord in 1073 AD. Anne, meeting my uncle's family for the first time I might add, buried her face in her hands in embarrassment and gave serious thought to handing me back her engagement ring.

Then the turkey arrived, and we all gave thanks, and had a lovely dinner.

 Edit: The superhero questionner's name is actually Colin, not Scott, like in the original post. Never blog before consuming adequate amounts of caffeine.

BP's Christmas Gift to Us All

 I now present BP's "The Twelve Days of Christmas," in honour of this article on Business Week's website: BP Oil Leak May Last Until Christmas

Verse twelve:

On the twelfth day of Christmas, BP gave to me,
Twelve - weeks (so far!) of failure,
Eleven - pipes a-bursting,
Ten - twitterers tweeting,
Nine - months a-leaking (by Christmas!),
Eight - goodbye, endangered species,
Seven - swans a-suffocating,
Six - CEOs praying,
Five - fishermen ruuuuuined,
Four - dying birds,
Three - top kills,
Two - turtles, dead,
And an environmental catastrophe.

Alright, so a songwriter I ain't, but you get the picture.

Thoughts from Canada's Worst Driver

Flicking around through the channels last night before the hockey game (Go Chicago!), and I happened upon an episode from the first season of Canada's Worst Driver. If you haven't had the pleasure, each season of Canada's Worst Driver (CWD) takes eight truly awful drivers and runs them through a rehab program, with lessons and challenges designed to correct their bad habits. It's two parts schadenfreude, one part horror show, as you watch these reckless speeders, nervous wrecks, and clueless morons smash, bash, crash, gash, and mash their way through cardboard boxes and Styrofoam mannequins (sometimes with their loved ones' faces on them!)

Now, I am scared of the nervous drivers, the ones who can't get up to speed on the highway, don't know how to merge, and plain stop thinking when they panic. The ones I'm really scared of though, are the ones who think they're good drivers, and have absolutely no respect for the lives and safety of anyone else on the road. In the episode I watched last night, there were two drivers in particular, Bob and Faith Ann, who happily raced down a two-lane rural road at around 150 km/h (around 93 mph, for my American friends), with Faith Ann trying to block Bob from passing her. Bob likes to play "bumper tag," meaning he cuts in front of drivers who annoy him and then slams on the brakes. Faith Ann, before coming on the show, had already caused a nasty collision that required a steel pole to be inserted in her leg.

Deep breath here. What kind of selfish, irresponsible, bone-headed, egotistical, sociopathic, callously short-sighted moron does it take to believe that kind of driving behaviour is okay for them? I guess I just answered my own question with a string of adjectives. I remember reading a story in the ninth grade about a man causing someone's death in a violent car accident, then waking up to discover it was a Matrix-like simulation run as part of his test for his driver's license. When he asks if he passed and gets to drive now, he's told that anyone who would want to drive after murdering a fellow driver out of negligence doesn't deserve his license. Preachy, I know, but to a ninth-grader, it made a lot of sense, and it simply illustrates the truth of the maxim to respect every other driver on the road. It's the refusal to think about the consequences of their actions that make the drivers like Bob and Faith Ann so scary to me. They have the skills to be good drivers, but completely lack the social conscience required to be safe.

As I thought more about CWD, I wondered if there was any connection between the conscience-free mindset of the horrendous drivers on the show, and the anarchy that permeates the typical unmoderated forum or, the comments under a Youtube video. (Note: if you ever need to feel better about yourself, spend half an hour reading through the comments on a popular video and rejoice in the fact that you are not one of them.) I would argue that just as the relative anonymity afforded by the internet helps engender consequence-free hatred and flaming, the relative anonymity of being but one car on a road network full of vehicles can help engender a feeling of invulnerability to an arrogant driver. 

I say relative anonymity in both cases because there are obviously some safeguards and observation mechanisms in place - moderators, registered IP addresses and required logins on some websites; and police, traffic cameras, and responsible drivers with cell phones on the roads, for instance. Still, I don't believe it's much of a stretch to see a similarity between an arrogant driver and a comment troll. Each operates under the belief that there are no real consequences to themselves for their actions. What's a speeding ticket to an unrepentant speeder but another badge of honour or a temporary nuisance? What's a flame war to a troll but sustenance? They don't consider the consequences of their actions to others, or simply don't care.

One of my favourite stand-up comedians is a man named Tim Nutt, and he asked a great question: shouldn't stupidity hurt? Just a little ice-cream headache when you say or do something stupid. "I'm going to troll this guy." Oww. "I'm putting my retirement savings into lottery tickets!" Owwwww. "I think I'll order a KFC Double Down." OWWWWW, my head! (And my heart!) "The tiger's asleep, I'll just climb over the fence and get a closer picture." AAAAAARGH, MY HEAD! MY LEG! MY SPLEEN!

Bob, Faith Ann - I hope you have an ice cream headache and grow a conscience before we're reading headlines about you.

A Gentlemanly Discussion

In one of my history seminars, I learned a valuable lesson from 19th-century British parliamentary discourse. Language unsuited to the dignity of the office was not permitted in parliamentary debates - consequently, personal insults were much more imaginative than simple four-letter + "you" constructions. The more elaborately flattering the compliment, the more you hated your opponent.

I've decided that I'd like to keep profanity out of my blog by adopting this same tradition. Not only will it force me to be more creative, it will force me to exercise my irony gland (which I believe I learned about in grade eight health class...it's just behind the pancreas, right?)

The timing of this decision couldn't have been more appropriate, because on Monday evening this week I met the most irritating, block-headed, viciously cruel assho.....charming, intelligent, forward-thinking, compassionate specimen of manly virtue I have had the pleasure of encountering. My wife and I stopped at our local grocery store, and we happened to park next to a vehicle with a dog locked in the back seat.

I should mention at this point that it was approximately 27 degrees Centrigrade on Monday (81 degrees fahrenheit for all my non-existent American readers), and the sun was beaming straight in the front windshield of the car. Thankfully, the brilliant owner of this poor animal had carefully scrutinized the situation and concluded that leaving his windows down a couple of centimeters would suffice to keep his dog safe and comfortable.

Now, I love dogs. A happy dog reduces me to a grinning doofus, and puppies might as well be fur-covered hits of ecstacy for all the rational capacity I have around them. My first puppy, a beautiful Austrailian Shepherd named Brooker, was my shadow from the day we brought him home, and I still get misty-eyed looking at his pictures; he had a stroke in November of 2008 at twelve years old and had to be put down later that day. All of this is to say that seeing a dog locked in a car during a record-setting mid-May heatwave had me furious.

(Note: I want to point out that in the ensuing confrontation, I might be paraphrasing a bit - to keep the profanity out of my blog, quite a bit in some places. Confrontations are not my strong suit, and adrenaline was coursing through me. However, I do know that I never once insulted, disparaged, or attacked the man personally, but simply questioned his decision to leave his dog in the car.)

I was making up my mind to call the police when out of the store came the esteemed dog-owner. I glared at him and asked, "How hot do you think it is inside the car?"

He gave a cheerful smile and said, "I would ask that you mind your own business, my good sir."

"It's dangerously hot in there, and your dog could die," I replied.

"Come now, my distinguished fellow, it couldn't possibly be dangerous for him if I was only in the store for a few minutes," he happily responded. "May I once again ask you to mind your own business?"

"I should call the cops, this is cruelty to animals," I offered.

The thought of the local constabulary intervening in the situation seemed to provide some unease, and he became quite eloquent and forceful, offering nuanced and considered opinions on numerous topics ranging from the ethical value of my observations, my definition of cruelty to animals, my sexual preferences, and interestingly, the nature of my personal relationship with my mother.

I knew at this point I was facing a master of rhetoric, a paragon of morality and champion of goodwill. He had defeated me utterly, and I had no choice but to concede.

"Whatever," I muttered. "Enjoy your dog." He hopped into his car and drove away.

("Enjoy your dog" will go down as one of the most devastating come-backs in history. I just sprained my irony gland.)

Anyway. What an as....

This is going to be more difficult than I thought.

Some Seven Word Stories

I really thought all birds could fly.

Santa never came back for his pants.

A frustrated astronaut usually needs his space.

My ears stopped bleeding after an hour.

Does a dyslexic dog believe in himself?

On Girl Guides and Fruitcake

Why write about fruitcake in May? I blame the Girl Guides and their addictive cookies. Not the cookies themselves, actually, but the box they come in. Did you know 2010 represents the centennial anniversary of the founding of the Girl Guides? That's a pretty cool achievement - that means the Guides have been around longer than Canada's been a sovereign nation. Go look up the Statute of Westminster of 1931 and the Canada Act of 1982. I'll wait.

(Funny way my brain rambles: I wrote the word "achievement" up there and immediately drew a connection between Microsoft's Xbox 360 Achievements and the Scouts' and Guides' merit badges. Top Achievements of the 1910s: "Achievement unlocked: Milked a Cow." "Achievement unlocked: Got Drafted." "Achievement unlocked: Avoided the Spanish Flu.")

So the Guides have been around for one hundred years. You know what else has been around for one hundred years? Every single piece of that disgusting, rock-hard, dusty, crusty, teeth-cracking, tongue-curling, stomach-punchingly multi-coloured hunk of fossilized leprechaun turd people call fruitcake.

I'm not a fan. (Achievement unlocked: Understatement)

Portal was right, the cake is a lie. Cake is spongy, light, sweet; it tastes of children's laughter and angels' joyful song. Fruit "cake" is drywall plaster mixed with sawdust; moistened with the tears of a four-year old whose teddy bear's head just fell off; and then crushed into blocks the density of lead. This lead-like density is important, as the "fruit" is radioactive plastic debris leftover from the ruin of Chernobyl. It has been the Ukraine's chief export since 1986. Normally, this would be an unthinkable health-risk, not to mention completely irresponsible and utterly unethical, but the sheer density of the "cake" stops the radioactive particles neatly in their tracks, like the lead-lined vests your dentist drapes over your lap for an x-ray. Once embedded in the cake, the radioactive particles simply bounce around in the fruit pieces, giving off energy and imbuing the fruit with their unnatural green and red glows.

I once had a completely normal, highly intelligent friend of mine totally convinced that fruitcake had been designed during World War II as a humanitarian alternative to dropping high explosives on Germany. (Achievement unlocked: Guillible) The theory was that since it was so dense, you could drop fruitcake from a bomber and it would destroy whatever it hit, while at the same time preventing starvation among the now homeless civilians. He believed me partially because I have my Masters in History and seemed to know what I was talkinb about, but mostly because he too has eaten fruitcake and instantly grasped its inherent weapon-like traits.

Was it some misanthropic monster that concocted fruitcake? Or did some goodly and well-meaning baker one day simply choose the wrong recipe book on day (H.P Lovecraft's Cthulhu Fthagn Fruitcake and Other Incomprehensible Horrors?) and open the door that cannot be closed? In the movie The Rock, Nicholas Cage refers to the VX poison gas threatening San Francisco as "one of those things we wish we could un-invent." He might as well have been talking about fruitcake.