So long, Dear Leader

I am back.  Well, just back to say "Hello!" and remind you all that I have not foresaken you.  Not much to report, except, Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il is dead.  Or at least North Korea is reporting his death.  He could have been dead for months, just like the Leader in Woody Allen's movie, "Sleeper".

Now, that was a fine film.  Miles Monroe, Woody Allen, goes into the hospital for ulcer surgery in 1973 and is unfrozen in 2173 to a totalitarian society straight out of an Aldous Huxley view of the future.  Huxley believed that society needed structure and control.  If people had to cope with too much freedom, it would lead to empty consumerism and other ways people merely occupy themselves with no real purpose.  This contrasts to George Orwell's view that people need to have unfettered freedom and that totalitarian control was the societal evil.

Anyway, it is a an exteremely funny movie that holds up well over time.  Some great vaudville type slapstick comedy, too.  I will watch it again.  Could help take my mind off of the what the craziness in North Korea could launch globally.  Time will tell if Son #3 is as zany as his father.

What I did not know was that Kim Il Sung, father of Kim Jong Il, had led his country to a position of greater, or seemingly greater, prosperity than their brothers in South Korea in his years in power (from 1950, or so, to 1994.  Mind you, South Korea grew wealthier like crazy once they went to democratic rule from the military rule.  The liberty helped unleash a manufacturing tiger in the 1980s.  Kim Jong Il took a tiring totalitarian state, that was falling behind its brother state to the south, and led the decline to the bottom.  They are a mere shell of a working society but they do have nuclear material, muclear bomb making capabilities and missile design and manufacturing capabilities.  All of these, they are willing to sell to any state that will pay.  They are an annoyance and indirectly very dangerous. 

Fun bit of reality, now I will watch my movie and escape those thoughts.  What will be, will be.

Ciao!

I had another thought, sick fucker that I am.

I am back.  It has been too long since my last post and that is life.  Strange and sad goingson in my life.  I was just at the funeral of an old friend's mother.  I had not really seen this friend in a while and we live in the same neighbourhood.  I used to run into her all the time but no longer.  No real worries there.

Anyway, I was shocked about her mother.  Then again, I thought her mother was much older than she was.  I had not seen her mother in about 25 years, either.  Well, it turns out that her mother was having breakfast and started choking on some toast.  She had the presence of mind to seek out a neighbour for some help and then had a massive heart attack.  This woman was a Holocaust survivor.  The Nazis could not kill but a piece of toast did.  I still like toast, though.  It is warm and a great place to hold my jam.

This got me to thinking about old girlfriends.  In particular there was the one I had mentioned here previously.  I saw her recently and noticed she has not aged particularly well and she had thick hands and small fingers like my grandmother.

Now, I have to say this.  My dick looked huge in her hands, so that was cool.  Then again, my mind would run and it would be as if my grandmother's hands were giving me a handjob.  Again, this would not have been so bad if she could have given me a handjob as good as my grandmother's (as long as she had taken off her rings).  Alas, she could not and we broke up.

Chew on that one for a while.  Ciao!

It has certainly been a while

I am back. It has certainly been a while since my last post. Almost 2 months. I apologize, things got busy and I had little to say that was funny. Lot's to say that was depressing. Just look at the markets today (and yesterday). Things are buggering up rather quickly. The Powers That Be may not be for much longer. They have screwed the pooch. When you fuck up this big, there is no turning back. The sleeping dog was not allowed to lay, it has been awoken. This will not end well. In fact, it seems to me that it will end by way of WAR. I am pretty sure I know where. All the signs point to it. The sands may turn to glass, yet. Enough of that.

I guess that will upset some, but get used to it. The Dirty Thirties are upon us and the ruling class neither rules nor has class, go figure.

I took the Lad to a concert on Saturday (Two Door Cinema Club at Kool Haus). I had not been to Kool Haus as that venue before. I was trying to impress upon the Lad the history of the venue. I remember going there in 1984 when it was Fresh. That was just a small upstairs portion with bar and small dance floor. By March 1985, they had expanded into the warehouse portion below. That gave it a large state, huge bar area and large dance floor. We had a frat party there in late May 1985. Then there were money problems and ownership changed and the name changed to RPM. They had their Psychedelic Thursdays that morphed into Psychedelic Mondays. I would go down for those in the summer of 1986. At some point, it became the Guvernment and now Kool Haus. I, last remember being there, in 1986 or 1987.

Anyway, the Lad was excited to see the buying of tickets from a scalper. I had told him in advance the price I was willing to pay for the general admission seating ($30/ticket, $9 over face value). After a burrito on Bloor we headed for the venue. The first guy is willing to sell me tickets for $60 each. I laughed and laughed harder when he said "it is sold out". My only weakness was that I did not want the Lad to push things. I ended up paying $40/ticket. I figured for an extra ten a ticket, the Lad would be appreciative (he was).

We get our tickets and then get in line. At the back of the line, this rummy comes up to us begging for change or something. There is the distinct smell of alcohol in the air. Rummy then asks to see our tickets and hold our tickets. I look at him and say, "No, thanks." I am nothing if not polite. Then our pre-show really begins.

In front of us is a guy with a single ticket coming to see one of the opening bands (Bombay Bicycle Club and some band from WA with Forest in its name--both were pretty good, though). In front of this guy was a young dude (Alonzo) and chick (Rachel). Alonzo and Rachel befriend the single guy (Eric), so they are now standing together in front of us. I can hear their conversation about the bands and stuff. Alonzo goes to take a leak at the Loblaws across the street and Eric and Rachel continue talking.

Alonzo returns and the line starts moving. It is at this point that Rachel starts to get rather loud. She is not sure if she should go pee before getting in or wait until she is in the venue. Then she seems worried about not coming out and expects both of the guys to wait by the washroom for her. It is getting worse. It is at that point I realize what is happening. They, at least she and Alonzo, had been drinking and it is now hitting her. I had felt this way myself before but it is the first time in a long time that I got to witness, stone sober, in somebody else.

She is now getting really loud and slurring her words. It is the idiot drunk. Alonzo says something to me by of apologizing for her behaviour. No apology necessary, who among us has not been trashed like that? I just tell him that this is only the beginning and it will get much worse before it gets better. Then I laugh.

Rachel turns to us and asks our names. We tell her. Now, she proceeds to try and remember our names by saying them to us. First, she keeps getting the Lad's name wrong. Okay, then it was my turn. I, finally tell that she is close enough and there are no worries. Then she staggers and stumbles.

They ask who we are here to see and we tell them. They are not familiar with Two Door Cinema Club. I explain to Alonzo that the lead singer sounds a lot like Ben Gibbard (Mr. Zooey Deschannel) of Death Cab for Cutie. He says, "I love Death Cab." I say that the music is a lot like Vampire Weekend. He says, "I love Vampire Weekend". He is now getting excited. Not so fast, I thought.

We get to the first line of security. They can hear Rachel is loud and see her staggering. The fact that she is fucking drunk is soooooooooooooo obvious. They pull them aside and that was the last we saw of them. I do not know if they ditched her. I do not know if Eric ditched his new friends. I do not know if they both threw her drunken ass down and each fucked her silly. That would have been an easy thing to do. Then again, I do not when, or if, but most likely when she ended up puking--or where.

All I know is that the Lad got to experience his very first drunk chick with me. I was so proud. He was also amazed at how quickly it happened. One minute, she seems fine and the next she is blithering, uncoordinated drunken idiot--just raring to go for some lucky guy.

That is how I teach the Lad about life. The next lesson could be what to do with the drunk chick. Of course, I would not know about that. I mean if there was a drunk chick around me, I would also have been drinking and been the drunk dude--no whiskey dick, though, thankfully.

That is all for now. Ciao!

Thoughts for the nearing end of July

I am back. It has been a rather strange weekend, I think. You have a Norwegian massacre (I am enthralled with his dual plea of responsibility for the Oslo bombing and the camp shooting--like shooting fish in a barrel--but he is not criminally responsible, as he did it for some sort of greater cause), Amy Winehouse's "unexpected"??? death and the Lad's return from camp. Not sure what means the most to me in my little, insular world, oh yeah, the Lad.

I keep reading about how "ironic" it is that the home of the Nobel Peace Prize, Oslo, Norway, had this kind of human massacre. Not sure how ironic it is, though. They did give a Peace prize to the murderous, kleptocrat, Yassir Arafat. They did give a Peace Prize to a man who was presiding over 2 wars, Barack Obama. They awarded a Peace Prize to an organization that presided over a good number of genocides in Rwanda, Burundi and Darfur AND sits back and allows it's member to spew anti-Semitic rhetoric and invites such Human Rights stalwart nations, such as Iran, China and North Korea, to sit and lead its council on Human Rights, the UN (man, I do have a lot of venom to spew against the UN, that sort of things has built up over 40 years for me). They awarded their coveted prize to a fat, blowhard who is amassing a fortune over climate change, while increasing his ACTUAL carbon footprint (do as I say, not as I do) in Al Gore. The irony is that they can give out this award and keep a straight face, not that their was a politically motivated massacre that occurred in their country.

That was one sad event. Amy Winehouse had the musical chops but it has been 5 years since her awesome album. She could not get it together enough to record another one, let alone try to live a life. She was one pained woman. Sad and talented but the writing was on the wall here. It was always a matter of when, not if, with Amy Winehouse. At least, her type of music did open the door for similar sounding British women (Duffy and Adele) who do not seem to be suffering the same psychic pain as Amy Winehouse.

The Lad is back. That means a lanky presence has returned to the Madman house. That also means 3 sharing one shower. At least it is summer and the shower schedule is not as compact or rushed. It also means higher grocery bills. That boy needs to be fed, apparently. I am just not to sure where he puts it. He does not grow out, just straight up.

He had a good time, though, and that is all that counts. Just thought I would open up about that. Nothing funny, just things that needed a comment or two. Ciao!

This just in

I am back. Happy Fourth of July to my American friends and a belated Happy Canada Day to my Canadian friends. To all the rest, happy summer, now fuck off!

I just read some disturbing news. The Iranians have test launced, with success, four rockets/missiles capable of a 2000km radius. That means US bases in Afghanistan and Israel are in range. They want to be able to hit Western Europe and North America. Vladimir Putin and the Russians seem to be quite pleased about this. They have provided the nuclear know-how and have profitted from this. Of course, in the long run, those missles will be targetted at Russia (do you think that extremist Islam is not going to avenge Chechnya? Short-sighted, ex-KGBers).

That is depressing. On a happier note, Iran intends to send a monkey into space. I guess that President Ahmedenijad is set to be the first Iranian astronaut. See something good can come with the threat of nuclear armageddon.

Ciao!

An Open Message

I am back. Today will be a short and sweet post. Oh yeah, an early happy b-day to somebody who knows to whom I am referring.

This message goes out to the dude, older one at that, sitting at the window, facing the street, at the Starbucks Coffee at Eglinton and Hilltop Road, having his coffee and using his mobile phone. Dude, just because you are behind a large pane of glass does not mean you are invisible. Stop picking your fucking nose! It is gross, though sometimes necessary. People, such as myself, do not feel the need to have to see that action in high fucking definition 3-D. Take you coffee, go into the bathroom, lock the door and get yourself buried in your nose to your elbow for all anybody cares. Do not make it a spectator display.

And another piece of advice....again, just because you are alone in your car does not make you invisible, either. Do not pick your nose at traffic lights. People can see through the windows. Do you think your ability to see through windows is some sort of superpower, you dumb fuck? It is not, by the way. Stop picking your nose in public!

There, that was public service announcement for June of 2011. Ciao!

Iranian funnies

I am back. It was a glorious Victoria Day long weekend in these northern parts. I do not have any new rodent stories to tell, which, from my perspective is a good thing. I was going to talk about psychotic women, and I do mean PSYCHOTIC, not your run of the mill neurotic/crazy, but actual women with diagnosed psychoses. But that will have to wait.

There was this headline that I caught "Iran slams Cannes for Von Trier ban". Good to know the Iranians, officially, are going after Cannes for banning Danish director, Lars von Trier, for his remark about sympathizing with Adolf Hitler. Well, if the Iranians have a say, then it must be so. They are trustworthy people. They would not lie and hold human life in the highest of respect, don't they?

Fuck! It makes me want to laugh until I puke. Then again, it was not as funny as the dead body of Ayatollah Khomeini falling out of his casket while these sheep-like motherfuckers carried him along the funeral procession. There was the "FUN" in funeral, I will say.

It is good to know that the talking ape, Ahmedenijad, has a sense of humor. Fuck! I do not know what is funnier, this or China's claim to be the one's to choose the next Dalai Lama. Bahh bahhh!

Ciao!

Happy Mother's Day--how about a bag of rats for mom

I am back. Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there reading this.....all of zero is my guess. In that case, I will extend the HMD greeting to all those mother fuckers out there. That may reach more of you.


I could go on about the capture and kill of Osama bin Laden. That would be obvious and timely. Not me, though. I had a story to tell last month that I never got around to telling. That is more important. In fact, in the end, you will see that it really is one and the same, so, I am going with my experience over OBL's death, for now.


I do recall telling y'all about our various critter issues. Again, I am postponing the talk of psychotic women, but that story seems to continue and go on, so I can come back to it later. Anyway, back in 2006, we had those rat troubles and then the mice in 2007, 2009 and 2010. I do not like it, but what else can I do, except bait and set out traps and then clean the traps?

Well, it was before Passover, in fact, a week before, or so. It was Sunday April 10th to be exact. We were going to my mother's for dinner and the Lad had some friends over. They were in the basement and saw something, smallish, run into the enclosed area under our basement stairs that we have come to refer to as the rat room. Oh fuck, not this again.

Fortunately (?), I had some extra mouse traps, so I baited and set a trap. I check each morning and come down at 6 on Tuesday morning to find that I have to clean the trap. Actually, at $1.50/trap, I throw them out with the critter. I place the things in a plastic bag and into the garbage it goes. I set another trap that morning.

I come home to find the Wife and Lad on the driveway playing basketball. The Lad asks if I caught anything and I go to the garbage and show him the bag. With the sun from behind me, the Wife sees the tail and kind of freaks out. I go into the house, go downstairs and see that I have caught another. Outside I go with it, to place it in the same bag. I now have a dedicated dead rodent bag. Sweet! I am also out of traps, so the Wife has to pick up some more on Wednesday.

I set another trap on the Wednesday and notice the next morning that the bait is gone, but the trap has not snapped. I rebait and wait. Thursday, it the same story. This time I did not rebait. Friday morning, the Wife is in the kitchen and hears a noise in the basement and freaks. I go down to find the unbaited trap had done the job. I start a new bag and set another trap. The Wife is now in full freak mode. We call a recommended exterminator to come have a look and he is to arrive that afternoon.

I go out to do some work and happen to be passing by our street when the Wife calls to me that the guy is there. I figure I will show up and chat with him. What a nice guy. I see him coming out with my trap and another dead critter. I tell him not to show the Wife. He also tells me that he is not sure that these are mice. They are a little too big and more to the brown than the grey but they do have some fur on their tails, which is un-rat like. He is now thinking it is some sort of mad hybrid.

Long story short of this day, he cleans the rat room and we get rid of a lot of shit that was in there. All of a sudden, the basement does not smell as bad. He sets a number of mice and rat traps and puts them into the rat room. He figures that they feel safe in there, so the traps can go anywhere in the rat room. He tells me that he sees some wood that has been gnawed through, so he needs to get his "skinny guy" in there to seal it off with steel. Besides, this skinny guy has a poor sense of smell, so he will not mind being in the rat room. Meanwhile, I have paid $350 to have the rat room cleaned out (money well spent) with the use of the traps for free. He is coming on Saturday.

Saturday comes and I get a call from the dude. He figures that if the rats, that is what we are now talking about, are there, we should try to catch, kill them all so that they do not try to gnaw their way out. I agree. Then he says, "I need you to check on the traps for me, clean them and reset them if necessary." Fuck! I did not sign up for that. I check and see three dead little rats in the mouse traps. I look again and find a fourth. There I am, in a driving rain, opening traps to dump little rat bodies into the bag I started yesterday. I now have a bag of 6 dead, but small rats--ratlings?.

I reset the traps and realize that I cannot wait for Sunday morning. The anticipation is killing me. Well, Sunday comes and I got me a big one in one of the rat traps. Oooweee! I am hoping that is the end of it. As I check each morning, there has been no activity. The dude is supposed to come on Good Friday but cancels. Later, perhaps on the Saturday, during Passover, I am cleaning another small one--a new bag of rats is started. I then catch another 2 big ones, especially after the Lad hears some banging of the bathtub in the basement bathroom. Lovely.

Well, it seems to be contained. Anyway, the dude and skinny guy arrive last Sunday and do their thing. Apparently, the basement and bathtub are not on a concrete floor but wood planks on dirt. These fucking rats have tunnelled through the dirt and gnawed on the wood and made their way in. That is that for now. Skinny guy was not skinny enough to get past the six inch opening, so he did his best with just his arm.

Now, there are some traps set and I have to wash down the walls with bleach to get rid of some of that smell. I also have collected far too many rats for my liking (one is too many). I do now have the gift for the mother who has everything.....a bag of rats. Mom will love it!

Ciao!

As Passover approaches....

I am back. I intended to go on about women, or at least a woman, with psychosis, but then some other things have taken the front burner. I could go on about rodent fun and I will but I will leave that for another day (tomorrow? perhaps). No, today, a thought occurred to me. Tonight marks the start of Passover. This holiday marks the events that led my people from slavery in Egypt, setting them on a course of a long wander through the Sinai Desert before being allowed into the Holy Land. All good in many ways. So we mark this passage by foregoing leavened food (bread) and by tradition, near as I can tell, by not eating anything that could be made into flour (no legumes, like peas, peanuts, chickpeas; rice; corn; barley; rye, but quinoa is acceptable and Sephardim, those from the south eat rice). This symbolizes the Jews, while fleeing Egypt, not having time for dough to rise to make bread, so the "bread" came out unrisen, flat and dense. In fact, it is not bread at all but some sort of cracker made of paste....a paste that binds anything that it touches in the stomach or intestines. It is with that in mind my thought occurred. We celebrate my people's emancipation from bondage by ingesting, for 8 days no less, something, matza, that "binds" us (leading to the greatest cause of constipation since opiate use--heroin addicts cannot take a crap, nor do they care). Now, that is some contradictory way of celebrating. The more that I think about it, the more it makes more sense for the celebration to lead to diarrhea (consume A LOT of fruit, perhaps) than constipation. Then again, either can be just as uncomfortable (though in different ways), I get it now. We are using Passover to celebrate bodily functions. How profound a tradition do I come from? Ciao!

Who knew, Beetlejuice as the King of Style

I am back. I had a number of things occur since my last post (and your last visit). Remind me to talk about psychotic women later, and I am being quite literal with the term psychotic. The major thrust of this post makes me wonder if I am getting old (and thinking old) or if there is something a bit "off" in this world. I am driving in my city's west end. Now, I am heading to the northwest corner of Etobicoke (now city of Toronto). I am getting close to a high school, so there a lot of high schoolers around the side of the road. I notice a dude (no mention of ethnicity here) wearing a baseball cap (stylized Yankees cap). This cap looked to be about 3 sizes to large. My question is this.....when did microencephaly become the height of fashion? It would make Beetlejuice (after the dead witch doctor dude shrunk his head) proud. Ciao!

Why are the outlets covered?

I am back. Only two days between postings, you say? I suddenly, well not so suddenly, remembered what I wanted to post on Saturday. Not that Japanese earthquakes and nuclear meltdowns were not interesting, they were and still are. That is some real shit going down, half a world away, mind you, but it is going down.

I did want to remind y'all, that the UN saw fit to give Libya a seat on its Human Rights Committee. They have since "taken" it away, but still. Giving Crazy Uncle Mo and Libya a seat on anything to do with human rights? Do they think that the "hug" of the UN will change the despot? I may be a bit cynical, but how fucking naive. Then again, it is okay as they are not risking their own lives or the lives of their own family and friends. It is all good to "experiment" like that when you do not have any skin in the game. Fucking bunch of UN lowlifes!

Sorry for the rant there, but then again, it is what I do.

My real reason for posting was this. The Lad is now 14. If I did not wish him a happy 14th in January (when his birthday is, by the way), then consider it now done, though belatedly. I went to plug my computer into an outlet on our main floor. I had to take the outlet cap, that we inserted in our outlets around 14 years earlier, out so I could plug in. I guess the question is how long do we have to leave those things in before we stop worrying that the Lad will stick something (finger, fork, paperclip, whatever) into a live electrical outlet? Why do we still do that? It is not like we regularily have young (and curious/stupid) kids coming into the house. Most importantly, why, after this long, has it dawned on me to ask this question?

I await your response. Ciao!

I have been to a post, a post with no name

I am back. When was I last back here? Slew of shit going on around the world now. I think my last post mentioned Crazy Uncle Mo in Libya....now we got a battle going on there. The biggest news lately is not in North Africa and the Middle East, but in the far east, Japan to be exact. They had one mother of an earthquake, followed by a tsunami with the icing on the cake, trouble (a rather large understatement, there) at a 40 year old nuclear reactor---with explosions, core meltdowns a possibility and radiation leaks. This is some "fun" stuff.

Oh yeah, and then it snowed, in Japan. The only upside is that the Japanese know they live in an active geoseismic area and have planned accordingly. Their building standards factor all those potential earthquakes, tsunamis and volcano eruptions into the equation. It may not be perfect, what is, but it is better than concrete slab housing in China, Iran, Pakistan, Haiti...need I go on?

The nuke issue is the outlier. It took the fifth strongest earthquake on record (not so sure how far back those records go, but I am pretty sure that the Shogunate was not measuring them. Maybe, it was a matter of the earth shaking and then tossing a virgin into a volcano to appease Mother Earth--apparently, she was viewed as a lesbian who loved fresh meat, who knew? That was going on in the land of the Mayans--fuckers and their doomsday calender, bringing this shit on) and a tsunami to fuck up this 40 year old reactor's cooling system to get us there. I think that is pretty good. Now, somebody has to find a way to prevent this Three Mile Island from turning into a Chernobyl (thank the Soviets and their high safety standards for that one, then again, what did they care if they killed off some more Ukrainians, Stalin starved millions of them and nobody seemed to care, what does that say?).

At least, there is hope. Spring training is winding up and baseball season will begin soon. Isn't that hopeful?

I was almost going to end on that happy thought. Obviously, I did not. I was thinking, even with better technology, does it make sense for Iran to go nuclear. I mean they could not care less about their own people, let alone other travelers on this blue marble--the Shi'ites are not too concerned with apocalypse scenarios--bring it on, they say. So, we have a Soviet/Russian designed reactor, with Russian trainers in another seismic area of the world. The outcome looks just rosy from these parts. Now, that is a happy thought.

Thanks for stopping by, but I am going to run. Ciao!

Libyans, Tunisians and Bahrainis, oh my!

I am back. You did not think that I would let the situation in North Africa/Middle East (NAME) pass without comment, did you? Have any of you been watching the crumbled empires fall? Very interesting, and uncertain, stuff. The genie is indeed out of the bottle. Fear no longer controls the masses. What does it mean and why now?

I do not know what it means or how this thing ultimately plays out. Of course, there is historic precedence for these events. So, we will have to deal with the uncertainty as this plays out from NAME to Iran and Pakistan (as it will).

The funniest part is this. After Eqypt and Mubarak's resignation, crazy Unlce Mo (Mohammar Khaddafi) opened his freak mouth in Libya. He suggested that this kind of protest would work by the Palestinians against Israel. He suggested, non-violence of course, that the Palestinians in the Gaza should march on the Israeli border. They should do it peacefully and that Israel would capitulate.

Classic misdirection ploy? Ignore his own people and his 41 years of repression and try to rally the Palestinians. What does he get for his brilliance? Big time riotting and blood shed in his country. Did you see his short press talk to state that he had not fled Libya for Venezuela (Mr. Chavez, you may be next)? What the fuck was with that umbrella? Does he think he is Rhianna? Mary Poppins? He is a fucking nutbar!

So, his UN delegation has defected. 2 of his fighter pilots also defected to Malta, taking their aircraft with them. He is firing on his own and people and states that he will become a martyr rather than flee. Came to power in a coup and going to go out like his buddy Saddam (bloody and cowering). It looks good on him.

"Martyr", there is term that is thrown out a bit too religiously, I would say. Not sure, how he can claim the 72 virgins in heaven as a martyr. It seems just retribution for all the Libyan blood he has spilled. Good luck to he and his sons, that family business seems to have gone bankrupt.

Next!

Ciao!

Just a strange thought or two

I am back. I find that it being cold and winter in these parts, I am wearing my long, heavy, wool coat. No problem there.


I am looking at the back of my coat and there are a lot of feathers "stuck" to it. Now, the coat hangs near my down jacket, so maybe it is picking up stray feathers there. But to look at it, as I am now, I have to wonder, has my coat ate a fucking chicken, feathers and all? Do I own a carnivorous coat?

I just do not understand it. We have received some more lightish snow over the past few days. It is lovely, though at this rate, I may never find my car key.

There is a story there. It was about three or so weeks ago, we (the Wife, the Lad and myself) were going to my mother's home for dinner. I went to clean the Wife's car of snow and had the key to my car in my jacket pocket. I went to pull out my glove to clean her car and recalled thinking that my key could fall out of the pocket. Lo and behold, when I went to move my car, I had no key in my pocket or otherwise.

As it was already dark (damn shortened winter days), I could not see the key anywhere (I would search with a flashlight later). The thing must have fallen out somewhere between our front door and the driveway. In my hope (timing would have been everything) for a winter thaw, we got snow. The upside is that with the snow, the key remains buried and I am not so worried about some unsavory character finding my car key on my driveway before I can get to it, making my car an easy object to steel. Then again, my car insurer has raised our rates quite considerably, so I would have no trouble putting in a full claim for a stolen vehicle....fuck 'em!

Anyway, I await a thaw to see if I can find my key. Then, perhaps, I will have to feed my wool coat again. Ciao!

Groundhog Day...Groundhog Day, a day later.

I am back. I have returned for no apparent reason. In my absence, I failed to note the Lad's 14th birthday (mid to late January) and Groundhog Day. That was yesterday.

Well, we were supposed to have the Blizzard of the Century around these parts yesterday. What a disappointment. There was snow but I have seen worse even three years ago. We were supposed to get 30-38cm of the white stuff by the end yesterday and I do not think we broke 20cm. It was supposed to be so bad that they actually closed the schools. It was a fucking Snow Day.

I do not recall those when I was in school. I do recall some heavy snowstorms while in grade school. I do not recall school being closed. Not that it mattered to me, I lived a short, very short, walk away from grade school, so no amount of snow would prevent me from getting to school. I can recall an April snowstorm, when I was in grade 5. That was pretty heavy and I had to help push my brother's JK teacher's navy blue VW Beetle out of the snow covered parking lot. But there was no declaration of Snow Day.

I am sure that there were others and I do not recall there ever being a Snow Day. I do recall them closing the schools at lunch because of weather but never before that time. This time, a Snow Day was declared early, so the Lad had a day off. It was not a bad thing, better safe than sorry, but it was not necessary. I could have got the Lad to school yesterday morning.

I do recall a wicked snowstorm when I was in my first year of university. It was February 27/28th, 1984, and I remember coming home late that Monday night from a frat meeting and jockeying three cars so that I could put my car in the garage. My parents were going to work and I had only one class on that Tuesday morning, biology and that was a study prep day class to cover our midterm exam being written on the 29th. I was not planning on going, so I figured I would leave my car in the garage over night. In fact, I did stay home, study and my family were off to work and school. I did dig out and take my car to watch the Grammy's at a friend's house that night, though (I figured that if I did not know my work by that time, more studying would not have helped).

Well, during this big snow of yesterday, it was Groundhog Day. As there was still snow falling and the sky was grey, there was no sun to be seen in Weirton, ON (home of Weirton Willy) or Punxatawny, PA (home of Punxatawny Phil). Was it any wonder that neither groundhog saw its shadow? That means an early spring is forecast.

Now, I do have to wonder about the wisdom of using a fucking rodent to predict the weather and coming of spring. Are we that unenlightened that this is a mode of prediction? I get the tradition (and it is not to be taken too seriously), I just do not understand the genesis of the day and how or who thought that the fucking groundhog had seasonal/weather predictive powers. Why not Wolverine Day? Why not Mangy Coyote Day? Why the fucking groundhog, of all animals? Somebody help me with that one, please.

Ciao!

Not sure where to begin, let alone end

I am back. It took a while to come back, yet again, but back I am. As I read that, I am thinking that Dr. Suess wrote that. That is fitting, as the good doctor's birthday is coming up (January 18th, which is the same day as the Lad's 14th birthday....the other 13 were, oddly enough, on different dates, but who is counting).

The Leafs are winning. They have 4 in a row and are playing in Phoenix, er Glendale, AZ, tonight. If they can win their 5th in a row, I am thinking that we have to plan the Stanley Cup Championship parade route. Oh yeah, that and Santa Claus exist, yet somehow Willie does not (damn, I wish I could remember how I proved that 25+ years ago. What logic did I use, it all seemed so plausible---apparently, I had not learned that alcohol and sleep deprivation were the enemies of logic and rational thought).

We have some weird weather. Well, not here in the Great White North. We have typical January-type temperatures, cold but not too cold and some, not a lot, snow on the ground. Apparently, we are to get more snow (how fucking boring am I that I am commenting on the fucking weather, as if anybody cares) on Saturday (that thought, apparently, has not stopped my from continuing the thought). Anybody that was on the Caribbean/Gulf of Mexico side of Mexico or the Dominican Republic would know from odd/bad weather. They had a lot of cloud and rain. Then again, any warm rain, is better than cold and snow, though we did have rain around the new year.

Speaking of new year, we are heading into the Chinese new year. It is the year of the rabbit. The metal rabbit to be exact. I am not sure what came first the actual rabbit or the rabbit vibrator. That metal rabbit must some mean feat of industrial design and engineering. We do, indeed, live in interesting times. Now, if we can do something about crazy climate extremes, North Korea, Iran, and extremism.

That brings me to last Saturday's shooting in Tucson. It is funny how both sides (Republicans and Democrats) seem to want to blame the shooting on the other side. I am not sure if it was politically motivated, at all. This Jared Loughner seems (great work in hindsight) to be rather unbalanced. I am not sure he is on any "side". He really appears, from what I have read, which is not much, to be on the crazy edge. It is kind of reminding me of the 1980-82 period, with the shootings of John Lennon, Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II. Only JPII had political connections (a Turk working for the Bulgarians as part of the KGB's/USSR's sphere of influence).

I do not know what it all, or any of it, means. In the grand scheme of things, I can see it, the shooting of a congresswoman, being used as a pretext to further separate politicians from the people they are supposed to serve. In that sense, it merely speeds the separation of a ruling elite from their constituents. Bring on the king, the public should have NO access to those who are supposed to represent them. This will make it so much more difficult to follow the money and really be assured as to who "owns" the politicians and whose bidding they will do. In any event, it ain't good.

Then again, an asteroid, or even Mother Earth and the Sun can hit that reset button and we will be like the dinosaurs...a forgotten relic. Of course, if you take your Bible literally, then dinosaurs never existed and in that vein, neither did we. All this begs the question as put first by Pink Floyd, "Is there anybody out there?"

Ciao!

My New Years Resolutions

I am back. I neglected to mention my new year's resolutions for 2011. I have decided to forgo the usual things. I am tired of trying to be a better me. Where the fuck has that gotten me? Nowhere.

I always backslide and then boom, the same old me, no new and improved version. This year will be different.

I resolve to be more cantankerous, caustic and ascerbic. As far as I am concerned, there will be no such thing as too sarcastic or too bitter. Those are resolutions I think that I can keep. I expect you all to hold me to them.

Happy New Year, once again. Ciao!

Back to the Future? Back from the Future? Funny how it turned out.

I am back. It is the first post of the new year and new decade. For what that is worth. Happy new year to one and all, I wish you all the best of health and prosperity in 2011. Now if we could only get the leadership of a number of countries to fall off the planet we may be safer, or at least safer for another bunch of whack jobs.



Funny, but Dr. Strangelove seems to be more pertinent to me today than it was 30 years ago. Of course, then, as I had said, we had mutually assured destruction. It is rather humourous how comforting that notion is right now.



Enough about that, though. You did not come here to read me wax poetic about death and mortality. In fact, I have a family who can hear all about it, if I felt the need to drop the melancholy blanket over them. I do not. I do not know when the "time" is up, so might as well have a good time, make it a good time, while I/we have it. Let's party like it was 1999.



Which brings me to the real humour. AMC just ran the Back to the Future trilogy. I was struck by many things. I recall the original being released in 1985 and going back to 1955 was funny. The whole scene when 1955 Dr. Brown questions Marty McFly about some events in the "present" (to Marty) and the joke about Ronald Reagan as president worked. The third movie also went back deeper into the past, so I really have nothing to laugh about there. It was the second movie that interested me. Marty goes 30 years into the future, which would take us to 2015, which is not so far off.

It was another way to see how the future was viewed back in 1985 and what would be. I noticed a lot of things that made me laugh. I cannot go into how I had suspend my disbelief about the future of Hill Valley. A cookie cutter suburb/development of 1985, somehow things in town did not drastically change, just cosmetic changes, in 2015,

I was into the product placement. The best one was Texaco. Who? Where are they now? By the later '80s, they had lost a HUGE breach of contract type of lawsuit in Texas against Pennzoil. The settlement they had to pay was exorbitant and bankrupted the company. Up here in Canada, Texaco's operation were bought, cheaply, by Imperial Oil (Esso, an Exxon subsidiary). I think, I guess I could have done the research (this where you realize that you get what you pay for), in the US, Texaco or its assets were bought by Chevron. In any event, not sure how the company exists in 2015 when it is nowhere in 2011.

There was a Pepsi placement. Not sure how big it was thought they would be in 2015. Think about it but they have grown and in ways I do not think were contemplated in 1985. Pepsi owns Tropicana, Frito-Lay and Quaker Oats, including Gatorade. That is big. I am also not sure if they still own their stake in Yum Brands (Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut), which was used to sell fountain drinks (Pepsi products to counter Coca Cola's McDonald's connection).

The strangest thing that struck me was this. If you recall, at the end of the first movie, Doc Brown comes back from the future to tell Marty in the present that there is a problem with his child. Now, the time machine does not need plutonium to create the 1.21 Gigajoules the flux capacitor needed. The vehicles ran on waste or garbage, which looked organic. If the hover cars ran on organic waste, then why was a large, integrated oil company advertising? We would need the Texacos of the world to create garbage for us? What the fuck?

I do not want to go into the fashion styles or the fact that these hover vehicles and hoverboards will not be existing, especially in commercial production in the "real" 2015. Let alone the automated, Max Headroom, like waitstaff at the 50s themed restaurant in Hill Valley.

I then got annoyed with the whole thing and turned away. Damn, ADD, and I did not think I could sit and critique the thing just for the sake of doing it.

Like most of my posts that could go on and on, I am ending it here. I just want to move on to something else for the day. Enjoy the Sunday post. Ciao!