Sledding!

I took the kids to a local hill today for some good ol' tobogganing. It was fun as always.
Today was the first nice day in a long time, and a Sunday as well, so the hill was quite busy. Lots of parents laughing and taking pics. I brought a cam as well and got a video of the boy's first solo downhill. He almost collided with another speeding toddler in another uncontrollable unstoppable snow rocket, a 'near miss' as we used to call it in the trades.
On the way home the kids wanted to stop at a park, and there was a young lady there with her own toddlers. (I assume they were own, I could be mistaken.)
She seemed happy, but cold, and was trying to get her kids to leave the park.
"C'mon, we'll head over to the next park. We're park-hopping! It's like a park crawl! Come on!" she pleaded, and she caught me laughing at her and smiled.
Ah, kids.

The Oh Nine Project

A fellow blogger has encouraged me to join him and other bloggers in his network, in announcing my New Year's Resolutions for the coming year. The idea will then be to follow up on the progress (or lack of progress) that we make towards our goals.
Sounds like fun to me, and I've found in the past that publicly stating one's goals can be a real motivating factor to achieving them.
Here is my primary goal for 2009:

I want to be running significant distances again by September. Prior to moving back to Saskatchewan, I was logging some serious miles running every week. Since then I have lost all interest, passion, ability and stamina for running, and I want to get it back. Just saying this and wishing for it won't help me however. I'm a firm believer in having a plan when it comes to achieving goals. The first stage of planning for me involves setting the goal, the second involves recognizing the obstacles.
Obstacle 1: The mystery pain that surfaces along the inside of my leg after my first 2 or 3 weeks back running every time I try to get in to it again.
Obstacle 2: Finding the time to run, as a father and a chef.
Obstacle 3: -50 degrees, come on!
Here is how I plan to tackle the above problems. I believe the mystery pain is caused by a combination of factors. I'm heavier than I used to be, which puts more stress on my muscles and bones. This in turn wears out the cushioning on my shoes quicker. I also tend to push too far too fast in the early stages, mainly because I don't have the time to build a proper base. Although from a cardiovascular perspective I'm ready to go for a few miles at a time, my legs aren't.
The Plan: Today I bought a treadmill, with emphasis on cushioning. I'll be receiving it in about the second week of January. Cold will no longer matter. Impact of my heavier frame on the running surface won't be such a big issue. Restrictions on spare time to run won't be an issue because I can do it in the home. It's my hope that by the time spring arrives I'll have dropped enough pounds, and built up enough strength in my legs to start running the bridges again, which I haven't done in at least 2 years, possibly 3.
So there you have it. My goal for 2009. I'll keep you updated as I go.

One Ton of Fun

Anthony Bourdain is fond of saying that inside of every cook there is a Chinese guy screaming to get out. I have to agree. There are precious few foods in the world that are as fun to cook for me as Asian dishes.
I'm trying to impart this same sense of fun and excitement about food on to my kids. We make an effort to buy some sort of produce we've never tried before whenever we go grocery shopping. I like to involve them whenever I'm doing any kind of scratch cooking so that they understand that food doesn't have to come out of a box, it can be made at home.
So the other day we went to the Eastern Market on Idylwyly, one of our favorite places to go, and I got a bunch of ingredients to make our own wonton soup.
Unfortunately, the kids are sick tonight, so while they alternated between vomitting and moaning, I escaped to the kitchen.
Here's the thing about cooking with a passion for it.
I've made wontons before, and I heartily believe in keeping dishes as simple as possible.
My wonton filling usually consists of nothing but pork sausage meat and green onions.
But I recently learned of a common addition and I've been agonizing all night about whether or not to add it. Water chestnuts, right in the filling.
I'd planned to add them into to the soup itself, but I wrestled with the idea a long time before finally deciding to go with it in the filling.
I said I agonized over it, and believe me I agonized. I'll probably be making a few hundred wontons tonight, and it will be heart-wrenching and tragic if this winds up messing up my end result.
So far however it seems alright however.
I just found it interesting that I would find myself faced with such monumental concern over a slight recipe variation. Anyone else this touchy about this stuff?

Another John Nash Moment

Another John Nash Moment.
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Sunday, December 14, 2008 at 10:00pm | Edit Note | Delete
You might have seen my remarks earlier about having trouble with all of the doors on my jeep because of the cold. This is where it starts.
The doors being frozen on the damn vehicle was certainly the central event of my day today. If anyone were to ask me how my day went, it would start with that story. The theme is thus set.
Jump forward a bit.
I made pancakes and sausages later in the day. When I tried to close the cupboard I'd gotten the pancake mix from, it wouldn't close.
The same thing then happened moments later with the utensils drawer.
Tonight, I was putting away a few groceries, and found that the fridge door wouldn't close properly. I wound up cleaning out the whole fridge in order to get it closed.
By this time it's of course occurring to me that doors are playing a significant role in my life today, and always easily influenced by suggestion, I idly thought maybe there was some message in it all for me. But again, not in any serious way, after all, it could all be coincidence.
Flash to right now. I'm done feeding and bathing the kids, cleaning the kitchen, all of that, and I'm hating winter. So I decided I would search out a nice profile pic full of sunshine in protest.
If you do a google image search for sunshine you get this
http://images.google.ca/images?hl=en&q=sunshine&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2
The ninth picture has a quote attached to it, and I like quotes, so this was the first image I clicked on it. It takes you here. http://milosjanusoutlook.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html
The site header talks about the Roman God of Doors and Gates, Janus, who is always seen as looking to the future and the past simultaneously. He symbolizes beginnings and endings as well as change and transition. His name is also the origin of the word January.
Anyway, now I'm convinced that all these door metaphors are trying to tell me something. I just don't know what.

What Leary Took Down With Him

I was talking about the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas earlier this week, and I find that I take a different meaning from this book than other people do. Most people see it as the glorification of the
'freak' lifestyle.
I see it as satire. I see it as mocking the very things that so many people seem to buy straight into at face value in Thompson's writing. For me the book is a complete and utter descent into ever increasing, self-destructive madness. It claims to be a savage journey to the Heart of the American Dream, and it's a monologue on self destruction, dejection and tragic comedy. For me, the heart and meat of Fear and Loathing can be summed up in these excerpts.

"Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seemed like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era - the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run… but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant…

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of ‘history’ it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time - and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights - or very early mornings - when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L.L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder’s jacket… booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got through the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change)… but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that…

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda… You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning…

And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave…

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

and this one:

“That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary’s trip. He crashed around America selling ‘consicousness expansion’ without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him too seriously . . . All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours, too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped to create . . . a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody—or at least some force—is tending the Light at the end of the tunnel.”
—Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1971

I Looked Great Yesterday!

According to my 3 year old son that is.
My son's life revolves around action-adventure. His favorite tv shows, favorite movies, favorite books, favorite toys all have themes of extreme action-adventure. His fixations cycle through Transformers, Power Rangers, Lightning McQueen, Heavy Equipment and Star Wars.
So the other day I got up to head to the gym. I put on a pair of camouglage military style cargo pants and a Transformers T-shirt that I bought mainly to amuse the boy.
I came up out of my room wearing this outfit, and Anderson stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes widened with awe and amazement and he said "Wow Dad! You look GREAT!"
I have since downloaded over 20 gigs of Transformers TV episodes and movies for him.

Out of the Dust

The family and I headed down to the Western Development Museum today to check out the Festival of Trees. It's been a few months since I've been to the museum, and they've finally completed their work on the Depression Era exhibit.
The scope of the Depression in the 30s is almost unfathomable.
They have statistics posted, and anecdotes from the era that help to illustrate just how bad it really was.
One display mentions that out of one community of 895 families, 890 were on a government relief program. Another mentions a rural area that consisted of 300 farms. In the space of one year the federal government seized the crops of 285 of these farms for back taxes, leaving families to survive on as little as $100 per year.
People were starving...literally. Tommy Douglas tells of visiting farmers, and the shame his hosts felt, serving up 3 fried eggs to a family of four, or pancakes with sugar and water for syrup.
In a mock up of a typical depression era house, an old man turned to me and said "Do you remember any of that?" with a bright grin. He looked to me to be in his late 80s, early 90s.
I laughed and said "No, do you?"
He said yeah, and we talked for a bit. I find the depression era in the dustbowl fascinating, and he was great to talk to. He talked of families leaving everything and heading north. Modern farms where they would leave brand new houses, brand new equipment, laying around for the taking. He talked of waking up in the morning to find the fences buried in dust.
After a while I said to him "I'm a little worried that it looks like it might happen again here pretty soon."
He touched me on the shoulder and said "If it does it'll be worse than it was then. You've got water and power and heat to pay for now. Back then we all got heat burning wood and coal and we pumped our own water and didn't have electrical to worry about it. It would be a lot worse if it happened today."
Later I asked my wife if she'd heard what he'd said.
"Yes," she said, "and I saw the look on your face too. That's terrifying."
It is.

Why having a 6 year old is so much fun.

"Did you hear Parker had a nosebleed at school?" my wife asked.

"No, I didn't. Parker what happened?"

"Well..." deep 6 year old breath fills 6 year old lungs. "I was just walking and I just fell. I was gluing and my glue bottle didn't work very well so I was using a popsicle stick to glue the noodles on my noodle tree but my fingers got all gluey so I got up to go to Madame's desk and then I just tripped and I fell down on my nose."

Mommy: "So you need new glue then."

Parker: (chuckle) "Yup."

Round and Rounder

I've had a rough couple of weeks.
I've been a bit under the weather for a few weeks, getting a few hours less sleep every night, and it's affecting my thought processes a bit. My anxiety is running a little high, my frustration tolerance is a little low, and work is making me nervous. It's probably a bad time for me to be watching Rounders.
Rounders is the movie that got me interested in no limit hold 'em back in the day. Tonight I'm lost in bittersweet memories of my brief career as an online poker player. I remember spending time with my kids. Taking them to school, picking them up. Making them lunches and supper. I remember paying my bills on time and driving a hawt Cadillac. I remember the feeling of complete and utter freedom that I enjoyed. Mostly I remember the deep satisfaction that came from knowing that I lived exclusively on my wits.
It had to end. I always thought it would end with me getting too caught up, moving up to stakes that were too high, getting hooked on the thrill and forgetting the rules. But that didn't happen. It ended when the US Government tacked a few anti-gaming laws on to the Safe Ports Act in 2006, and 82% of players disappeared from the net overnight. 2 months later I'd sold the Cadillac, was back to punching clocks, and living paycheck to paycheck. I've bounced around a few things since then, and nothing else seems to fit.
So tonight I'm at the end of a rough couple of weeks and Rounders is on t.v. and I'm remembering that I started playing online with the intent to learn the fundamentals to beat the brick and mortar game. And it's occurred to me that all the online players these days had to go somewhere. Maybe they're out at the poker tables on highway 219...playin' too many hands, overplaying middle pairs, sticking with big slick too long. Maybe the games are as easy as all the 2+2ers always said they were, as soft and loose as feathers falling from a torn pillow where a dream once broke. Maybe they are. And maybe they aren't.
Maybe the best thing for me to do is go in tomorrow on my day off again, take my kids with me because there is no sitter again, and have my daughter miss her basketball game again, just like my other daughter had to miss her dance class, because I had to work.
Or maybe I should roll up a stack of bills and see what I can turn it into.
Like Mikey says though, "You can't lose what you don't put in the middle."

What A Wonderful World This Could Be

I just had a movie night with the family. We watched the movie Wall-E. This movie is set on a planet Earth that has been abandoned by humanity because pollution and waste have made life unsustainable.
The kids loved the movie. One disturbing aspect of the film however is that after being abandoned by humanity, it took 700 years for the first plants to reappear.
At bedtime, as I was tucking my 6 year old into bed, she asked me if I thought the Earth could ever end up like that.
I had to answer her honestly. I told her that if we didn't change our ways it sure could, and that there were places that were already like that. But then I also told her how there are a lot of people that are working very hard to make sure that it doesn't.
I told her how the world has already changed in my lifetime. That we didn't do any recycling when I was a kid, and had never even thought about it. I told her that it looks like cars probably won't be running on gasoline anymore when it comes time for her to start driving, and that will mean a lot less pollution. I also told her that we do what we can to make the world a better place, by voting for leaders that care more about the planet than making the companies in our country richer. I told her that as the problem gets worse, our leaders will work harder to solve it, and that I think the world will be okay.
But I honestly don't know if it will. And I fear for the future my children will inherit. It's a feeling of terrible powerlessness.

Act of War.

It was my daughter's 9th birthday recently, and we're throwing a party for her tomorrow.
A lot of the activities and crafts that she wants to do hinged on certain conditions that her mother laid out.
One of these activities was to make a bunch of pillowcases tonight to give to her friends as gifts tomorrow.
Mommy told my daughter that she had to finish her cleaning first, because the pillowcases would take an hour to do, and she had to be in bed by 9.
My daughter claimed to have misunderstood, and thought it meant she had to be done cleaning by 9. Her mom then said tough luck, no pillowcases, and my daughter was devastated.
I heard her crying "But I worked so hard..." and it was a tone from her that I don't hear too often. She does her fair share of complaining and crying for things, but this one seemed particularly painful to her. It reminded me of when she was potty training, and she wanted a dollhouse that we had set up for her as a reward for the first day she stayed completely dry. At the end of the night as she got sleepier, she had an accident and burst into these deep, pained sobs, so disappointed that you could feel it coming off of her.

I stepped in on her behalf with my wife (out of earshot of the little girl, because I didn't want any friction) and asked if we could rethink it. She accused me of undermining her, which I can understand, and which is why I approached her privately. To our daughter I had backed her up completely, emphasizing the importance of listening to Mommy.

I left it alone after my wife got really mad at me. She did eventually go and get my daughter to do the craft. Now she's really pissed off at me however, and I know that it's the kind of pissed off that is never going to get better. It won't be forgotten. It will be locked away somewhere to fester and grow and explode in the middle of another confrontation somewhere down the road. I'm fine with that.
Here's the thing.
I hate my own birthdays. Birthdays to me are fraught with disappointment. They're like an annual perfomance review conducted by that hypercritical little voice in my head that always tries to convince me I'm no good. Birthdays are reminders of my failings. They're an unmistakable and unavoidable yardstick of my mortality. I get so tremendously down that I just want to hide from the whole world, including my family. I think a lot of that is centered on experiencing huge disappointments on virtually every birthday I've ever had. I don't recall any birthday parties other than my 9th, which was my first birthday at a new school. I do recall a lot of birthdays that were celebrated with apologies rather than gifts and parties.
I recall a lot of very lonely birthdays. The best birthday present that I ever received as a kid was a trip to the arcade with my brother-in-law to blow 10 bucks.
What I'm getting at is that when I heard my daughter's aching disappointment tonight, I felt all over againt the pain and disappointment that I've felt over 38 birthdays, and I don't want her to feel that way.
I think that if we can limit the disappointments and the hurt while she's young, she might somehow grow up to be an okay kid, despite having her father's genes.

Jamie Oliver is a Filthy Little Pig

So I was watching Jamie Oliver making one of his rustic recipes on one of his shows. At one point he dipped his finger into the stock, then licked his finger to check the flavor. Deciding it needed more salt he used the same finger he'd just sucked on to pinch a little salt and toss it into the stock. He then poured the stock over his soup ingredients, and used all the fingers of both hands to push the ingredients down into the stock, essentially dipping all of his finger tips into the soup. Filthy little pig I tell ya.

The Future of Online Gaming Hangs in the Balance

The rumors and speculation on the future of Online Poker continue to swirl. While the dying embers of the Bush Administration continue to pursue their moral agendas at the expense of an entire industry, even with mere weeks left to govern, there are hopes that Obama will reverse any and all decisions concerning UIGEA. The following article hints at some light at the end of the tunnel for gamers, but it also paints a dark picture as well. There's mention that Microgaming sites will no longer accept US players. This means the entire Prima network, home of of some of the last great playa bonuses on the net now joins the list of once mighty greats like Party Poker Poker Room, leaving only the HUDbot infested sites of Pokerstars and Full Tilt as choices for the majority of players. Here's the story.
President-elect Obama and his advisers have established a website at change.gov listing their plans for governing after his inauguration. Among the programs and ideas expressed on the site is a pledge to protect the Internet from censorship and government interference, a promise which brightens the prospects for the online gambling industry.

According to the site, among Obama's thoughts for dealing with technology are strong opinions about the Internet. The very first line in a detailed explanation of plans for the administration's approach to scientific matters says that Obama expects to "ensure the full and free exchange of ideas through an open Internet and diverse media outlets."

Listing goals, the site says, "Protect the Openness of the Internet: A key reason the Internet has been such a success is because it is the most open network in history. It needs to stay that way. Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet."

This is a piece of good news for online casinos and their players after several unhappy items have been detailed in recent days. First it was revealed that Microgaming sites will no longer accept new patrons from the United States. Then came the stunning news that the Treasury has finalized regulations to implement the UIGEA, only weeks before a new Congress may seek to repeal the horrific law.

The language of the transition website leaves no room for spin. Obama has declared himself fully behind an open and free Internet. With a Democratic Congress enjoying a healthy majority in both Houses, Obama should be able to team with Barney Frank, Jim McDermott, Pete Sessions, Shelly Berkley, Robert Wexler, and other Congressional leaders to swiftly undo any actions forced through by the Bush administration in its closing days.

Anything less would be the breaking of a written campaign promise.

The New Political Landscape and the Online Gambler

I have no love for G.W. G.W ruined my very happy life when he tacked on some anti-online gaming legislation to the Safe Ports Act. I'd been playing online poker for a living for nearly 2 years at the time, and at no time before or since have I ever been so financially secure. The day after the legislation passed online poker was dead for me.
My payment processor announced it was going out of business, and traffic at my particular site went from about 40 tables to 4. It was estimated at the time that 82%of all online poker players disappeared from the game overnight.
With the latest election, there had been some faint hope that some of the laws might be repealed. However G.W. and his team have seen fit to put the final nail in the coffin of the online poker player.

By Brian Chan on November 8, 2008

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Observers are wondering what has caused the sudden finalization of regulations to enforce the UIGEA by the Treasury Department. Both online casinos and banking industry leaders are surprised and appalled by the announcement that official implementation of the law against payment transactions involving Internet gambling will move forward, despite lack of adequate legislative definition.

Steve Cohen, a Democratic Representative from Tennessee, has asked the White House to explain what role may have been played in the Treasury's decision to act by William Wichterman. Wichterman is White House Deputy Director of Public Liaison, but his previous job was as a lobbyist against online gambling for the National Football League.

Cohen requests in a letter to Fred Fielding, White House Counsel, to explain the story from Treasury officials that Wichterman "has been a source of considerable political pressure to speed this regulation through.''

Neither Wichterman nor spokesmen for the Treasury nor the Federal Reserve would respond for comment.

Internet casino industry leaders were surprised by the Treasury action, coming as it does during the transition from the Bush administration to the Obama Presidency. Testimony before the Treasury by banking and government officials had panned the UIGEA, calling it unworkable and suggesting that implementation would put the American banking system at a competitive disadvantage.

Cohen said in his letter, "I am surprised that your administration would seek to rush through a rule that would saddle an already ailing financial services sector with a burdensome rule in the current economic environment."

The Nature of the Beast

This is the kind of thing we do at work. We julienne foods, we brunoise, we blacken, we emulsify, we saute and braise and season and grill and plate. We create beautiful little masterpieces for our guests to eat, and we go beyond taking pride in our work. We're a little elitist about it.
Across the hall from us there is a Denny's restaurant, and I know a few of the people working there, including one of their managers. He came into my kitchen the other day to tell me about a restaurant supply company he'd just discovered that could get me great deals on grill bricks to clean my flat top with.
I told him I didn't have a flat top in my kitchen and he looked shocked and surprised and said 'Really?" and I said "Really. We don't fry stuff, we saute" to which I had hoped all of my cooks would have given me some propz on, but they didn't. Oh well. I thought it was good.
I mention all of this, because despite our respect for the culinary arts, our maniacal obsession with speed and accuracy and precision, we're a pretty coarse bunch.
Case in point.
One of our guys recently took in a concert, and he mentioned how there had been more of a fire and light show at it than at any other show he'd seen before.
I asked him "Did you drop for it? Are you still warping?" and everybody in my kitchen laughed and knew exactly what I was talking about. The culinary arts are one of the few remaining that are still almost exclusively the domain of the true Bohemian. Sub-culture r us.

Polar Bear Dream

My sleep cycle has been pretty wacky lately because of work, and that generally results in my mind going a little wacky, which it has.
The other night I have vivid dreams. I mean VIVID, like they really stuck with me.
I dreamt that I was driving home alone from Edmonton, and I pulled into one of those half abandoned little towns that line the Yellowhead. I decided to go for a walk up and down the Main Street, and I noticed a little alley way that seemed to lead into a courtyard of sorts.
The courtyard turned out to be the ruins of some buildings long since abandoned, and the walls were all pink and red, and covered in Pagan writings. I was scavenging around because there was a lot of cool old stuff laying around, when I found myself entering a long dark cave. There was nothing in the cave, and when I turned to leave, there was a young polar bear growling at me like a vicious dog would.
It kept lunging at me, and I found a sharpened wooden stake to keep the bear at bay. The bear kept changing in size, from cub to full grown, and circling me, making the occassional hungry lunge. The cave also kept cycling from light to dark to pitch black, from warm to cold. This seemed to go on for hours, until a forest ranger came into the cave and picked up what had turned into a little bear cub and took it away, leaving me feeling pretty foolish.
So this dream really confused me, and I told my wife about it when I woke up, and I told my coworker about it at work, and then I told one of the waitresses and she got all freaked out because she had also had a dream about being trapped in her house by a polar bear that kept circling her. This also freaked me out a bit as well, and after the initial creepiness of it, I was kind of tickled by it.
But I'm still confused as to what the dream means.
I don't believe that dreams are any sort of prognostication or mystic communique. I'm more inclined to see them as the primal mind opening a window on to the subconscious through metaphor and simile.
To interpret my dream, I then need to think about what polar bears could possibly be a metaphor for with me, and to do this, I need to brainstorm everything I know about polar bears.
-they live in the snow
-they have hair that keeps water away from their skin and preserves heat
-if you eat their liver you can die of a Vitamin A overdose
-they are one of the only predators that will actually track and hunt down a man.
-in Churchill MB people take the corners wide when walking the streets for fear they may run into a polar bear.
-they are white and have black noses
-they have the cutest babies of anything. Period.
-they are mean
-I fear them
-they eat fish and seals and people
-they weigh a lot
-they are strong

My first inclination is to view the bear as a harbinger of winter, and the dream itself as a reminder to me that I have a fight against winter ahead of, that might result in my death if I'm not careful. I'm talking about how I lose my will to live in the winter, and I think this bear might symbolize that I'm actually quite scared of how bad I'll get over the dark months.
Anyway, that's all for today. Comments and feedback welcome.

Indenture

I was talking with one of the FOH (faux) managers today about the sorry state of our existence, and surprisingly, it was the other person that brought it up. The jist of the conversation was that we had made more money, enjoyed greater freedom, experienced less stress and basked in far greater happiness when we were simple peons. Having reached management we frequently find ourselves working for substantially less than our underlings when factored out to an hourly basis.
I referenced a passage from Bourdain's book 'Kitchen Confidential", where he suggests that anyone looking to make a career in the restaurant biz had best be prepared to endure the suffering of countless indignities, such as the non-English speaking bus boy taking home more at the end of the day than you do.
The faux manager suggested that there is some illogical but deepseated drive deep within us that is willing to endure these pains for the sake of 'being something' more.
In my case it's the personal autonomy of management that I most enjoy. I struggle to acquiesce to authority at the best of times, so having a reduced number of overlords suits me fine.
I referenced Miller and Thoreau a lot in the conversation too, reminisced about how happy I'd been when I was living the Bohemian lifestyle; working just enough to get food and the most basic shelter and spending the rest of my days whilin' away the hours conferrin' with the flowers.
Of course I'm a father now. Part of what has me pursuing the Chef thing with more zeal than ever is that I want my kids to speak proudly of me, I do in fact want to be 'something'. I also have a responsibility to them to provide the essentials and more, so that they don't grow up with esteems damaged by what they didn't have as kids.
I am trading a significant part of my time with them away however, and as always, this is painful, but neccessary.
I think of the new guys that I just hired from India. One of them is a father, with a family similar to mine. He showed me pictures. They're all back home in India. Unreachable for the most part, except by mail. Recently this father has been working in London, Germany, and on cruise ships. He hasn't seen his family in years, and the reason is that he's trying to save to bring them to the West.
So I guess just barely making home in time for good night kisses isn't so bad.
However, with the dollar dropping the way it has been, online poker is starting to look damn good again. Being home with them all the time, with NO bosses at all was pretty good for the 2 years it lasted too.
Bah. I'm actually having fun being a chef this time around though. Just feeling a little overworked these days.

The Dread and Primordial Terror of Parenthood.

There was and is a pestilence upon my house this weekend. A stomach flu has been making the rounds with savage and terrible speed through all of us. Day 1 it hit my 3 year old boy, and the sickness came and went uneventfully. He puked once or twice, was listless for a few hours, and then all his uncontainable energy and enthusiasm for living came back.
Just in time for the bug to knock my 6 year old daughter and I down. Again it hit unbelievably fast. We were on our way to my oldest daughter's basketball game. All of us felt fine. Upon arrival however Parker threw up and took to moaning and holding her stomach. We arranged a ride for my oldest with one of the other parents, and Janet took Parker home while I went in to work to help out over the lunch rush.
I felt great, but just as the lunch rush finished I started to feel nauseous, with horrible stomach pains.
I just managed to make it home to start enjoying my days off when it hit. Inside of an hour I went from healthy and happy to doubled over and puking.
It got bad people. Fever, fatigue, a lot of pain, for both my daughter and I. Today she was still feeling rough. She hadn't eaten since yesterday morning at 10am. The blood vessels in her eyes had popped, leaving the whites of her eyes all red and pink. She was puking up all the water that I gave her. We have a rule around here that we follow with the little ones and stomach bugs. After 24 hours, if there's no improvement, we go to the doctor.
When your kids are this sick you start to fear for the worst. Most of the time a stomach bug is just a stomach bug, but occassionally these are the sort of viruses and bacteria that kill. Liver damage, kidney damage, brain damage, death.
For most of last night I slept on the floor beside Parker, and held her hair out of her face when she had to throw up, rubbed her back when she was crying and moaning. In between I'd run to the washroom and throw up myself.
I have a confession of sorts to make here. At about 4am I was dead tired, sick and in incredible pain, drifting in and out of consciousness. Parker woke up beside me, crying "Dad, I'm going to be sick again." and at that moment, I was feeling too sick myself to sit up.
"Parker, just put the bucket on the floor and hold your head back." I said, and I said it testily, although I did rub her back while she puked.
But it got me to thinking, that throughout history there have been plagues and epidemics that have levelled whole families, ebola, cholera, malaria, the bubonic plague. It got me to thinking about situations similar to mine, but where death is involved, where Moms and Dads are dying next to their dying children and too sick to help. It reminded me that I take too much for granted each day. Life is generally a beautiful thing, but there are moments where it's an absolute horror show.
Drew was the only one that hadn't been sick yet, and she just started throwing up. I've brought my blankets and pillows upstairs, and I'm going to help her through the night tonight. I know that the rest of us have made it through, and I'm pretty sure that she's going to make it through as well, so mind is a little more at ease than it was last night.
Let me tell you there is no fear like the fear of having a sick little girl that isn't getting better.

My Heart On a Platter

It's a feeling I get several times daily, and I haven't spoken much of it because I thought it was just me. But yesterday I saw it on the face of one of my line cooks, and now I know I'm not alone.
Here's the thing.
In the course of a day the average guy on the line puts out dozens of steaks, taking care and pride that each one is prepared to perfection. What we're looking for is perfect doneness, beautiful diamond char-marks, just the right amount of seasoning and even cooking. As your portfolio of steaks prepared goes from dozens to hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands, your attention to detail becomes ever greater.
Yesterday was the dreaded Friday lunch rush, and I scheduled the dream team for it, gave what I thought was a rousing speech and BOOM! off we went.
The charbroiler got hit hard, and Nick, the culinary school kid was keeping up well. The steaks came in non stop, and he was putting them on as fast as he could take them off. At one point he had 17 steaks of varying doneness on the broiler, with as many in the window. They all looked good, but there was one in particular that Nick took great pride in.
He set in on the foccaccia with a pained, somewhat wistful look in his eye and said "God that's a beautiful steak." and he was genuinely sad to let it go.
I plated it and put it up in the window to die, where the plates were stacked 2 high and all dying as well waiting for the panicking and overwhelmed FOH people (I call them faux-people) to catch up.
Culinary people are a combination of craftsmen and artists, but the product of our work has a tremendously short lifespan. Perfection is tough to achieve, and there's a desire that you could show your achievement to everyone you know, but the fact of the matter is that in about ten minutes it will be gone. As such a little piece of your heart goes out with every perfect plate you send out.
As an expression of the transitory nature of beauty, of life, of death, of existence, of pain and joy, there's no greater medium than food.

Wiebo

There have been some recent bombings of a sour gas pipeline near Dawson Creek B.C. The government is calling this an act of terrorism, and are seeking the terrorists. As a result Wiebo Ludwig, eco-terrorist or hero and everything between, depending on your politics is back in the news.
Wiebo Ludwig (born December 19, 1941) is the leader of a religious commune in Alberta, Canada, who is best known for his legal problems arising from his conflict with the oil and gas industry. Ludwig has been accused of being an eco-terrorist for sabotaging oil and gas wells. Ludwig accuses the industry of poisoning his family and farm, and being responsible for his daughter's miscarriages, through its attempts to extract toxic sour gas from the Peace River region of Alberta.

In April 2001, Ludwig was convicted on five charges related to bombings and other forms of vandalism against oil and gas installations causing millions of dollars of damage. He was sentenced to 28 months in prison, and was paroled after serving two-thirds of his sentence.

A recent news story interviewed Ludwig on the Dawson Creek bombings. I got shivers when I read the final quote of the story. It had a Johnny Cash fatalism to it, a Tom Joad sort of 'rising up' ring that really stopped me in my tracks and caused me to write this short post in tribute.

In response to the frustration and fear the people of Dawson Creek are feeling, Ludwig had this to say.

"That drives people to the point where they have to take the law in their own hands and they don't even take the law in their own hands, they take something more than the law in their own hands," he said. "Something to do with justice that is beyond the law because our laws don't embrace it."

Adrenaline Kicks

It's happening.
I'm a chef in a high volume restaurant and bar. In our industry they're fond of saying that what we do is second in stress only to air traffic controllers in busy airports. I've seen air traffic controllers on TV. They have time to sip at their coffee.
Anyway, when the orders start coming in, 3 per minute, and the food starts cooking and you're yelling and shouting at people and they start to yell back and the next thing you know orders are going out 3 per minute and coming in at 4 per minute...well sir your heart starts to pumping, and so does the adrenaline. 2 hours fly by in what seems like minutes. You do some things you're proud of, you do some things you're not so proud of. But you do it.
Afterwards there's a crash, but it's short lived, because you have to get ready for round 2, the next service, and before you know it, it's upon you, and another 3 hours fly by, with the heart and mind racing like jacked up teenagers in jacked up cars when the light turns green. By the time it's all over, you're drained, relieved, just glad it's all over. At home you kick back with the kids, indulge in a hobby or two waiting for your energy to come back.
But here's the thing. Once your energy level comes back you get the itch. Suddenly home is a little too quiet. So you surf the net, and find yourself surfing faster and faster, but there's no input that's nearly as all consuming as that 4 bills coming in and 4 bills going out every minute. You start to bounce, to pace, play guitar. And before you know it, you've convinced yourself you need to go back to work, just to see how things are going. No matter how bad it seems when you're in the juice, it's worse when you're out.

The North/South Divide

It was Scotland/Wales Rugby International weekend in Edinburgh and, as the crowds made their way down Princess Street towards Murrayfield, a rottweiler suddenly lunged towards an 8-year-old Scottish lass, with its jaws wide open ready to attack.

The crowd nearby gasped in horror but, quick as a flash, a man jumped out of the crowd, grabbed the dog by the throat and throttled it.

As the dead dog lay there, and the crowd cheered in admiration, a journalist from the Glasgow Herald, who had witnessed the heroic deed, went up to the man and said, “That was brilliant, I can see the headline now. ‘Heroic Scottish Rugby Fan Saves Fellow Scot From Mauling.’

The man replied, “I’m sorry, but I am not Scottish”

The reporter said, “That’s OK. The headline will be, ‘Welsh Rugby Fan Saves Young Girl From Certain Death.’“

The man replied, “No you’ve got it wrong. I’m not here for the rugby!”

“Don’t worry” said the journalist, “I can see the headline now.” “Welshman Saves Girl From Jaws Of Rottweiler”

The man replied, “No you’re wrong again. I’m not Welsh. I’m from London.”

The journalist said, “Don’t worry, I can see the headline now” “English Bastard Strangles Family Pet”

I'm Volunteering to Work Halloween Night

These are going to be the waitress uniforms for our Heaven and Hell Night on Halloween.

California Dreamin'

Those Long Black Clouds are Coming Down...

I've been pretty damn miserable for most of the day.
Here's the thing. My boy is sick, so the sitter won't take him. Now she's just called to say she can't take him tomorrow either. I've missed quite a few hours of work over a lack of childcare in the past few days, and so has Janet.
Today we made the decision that since I'm the Big Kahuna at my work, and she's just the number 2 Kahuna at her work, she should be the one missing shifts. So tomorrow she's calling in and I can get a full day in before my kitchen goes out of business.

Today I was venting to Janet, about what I perceived to be a deteriorating quality of life across the board, and she kind of peshaw'd all my complaints. I was actually getting a little bothered that she wasn't validating any of my negativity. After bitching about work and childcare and fuel prices and food prices for a while with no concurrence I moved on to the impending winter.

I was talking about how bleak and bare and dark all the trees were starting to look today and she laughed at me. She said "I can't believe this happens to you every year and you can't see it. Yesterday was sunny and you were talking about how beautiful the leaves were."

I argued with her a bit. "Yesterday there were a hell of a lot more leaves on the trees. It's like 90% of them fell off since then. Look, the trees all look morbid and skeletal."

She laughed again. "Morbid and skeletal? Yesterday they were 'twinkling like crystal-y wood chips and all snake-y and gorgeous."

"They weren't twinkling..." I said, "they were 'tinkling', it was a sound thing not a twinkle-y light thing."

"Whatever, they weren't morbid and skeletal. Snap out of it."

Unacclaimed fiction from the Unacclaimed Master.

If you've read my novel you've read this excerpt. If you haven't, kick back and enjoy. Warning: Mature Content, Language, Adult Situations.

BOTTLE OF SMOKE
or
Hungry Will Gamble with Cowboys and Outlaw Bikers For Food.

I'd met Chris while working as a pizza cook a few years earlier. Back then we'd jokingly called him the 'Bank of Pankiw'. Chris was a pizza delivery driver, and he was paid in cash every day. When we'd worked together I'd routinely borrow myself into owing him my entire paycheck every two weeks. Now that we no longer worked together we saw each other less and less, but when we did Chris was usually good for a free pizza. I was of course starving, going on to day 3 without food.

Everywhere that we went Chris seemed to know everybody. He wasn't an outgoing guy by any means. If anything he was very nearly paralyzed by shyness. He wore his hair in a style ten years out of date, with a mustache to match. His wardrobe was restricted to a handful of clothes, bargain brand jeans ventilated with numerous holes, old dress shirts with collars worn thin, ratty old cowboy boots, (with the heel on the boots he stood 5'6" instead of 5'4"), and finally the ever present black leather motorcycle jacket. Whether it was thirty degrees below zero, or thirty degrees above, he would not take off his jacket. He refused to go anywhere that forced him to check in his coat. In spite of this total lack of concern over his image, or maybe because of it, Chris was greeted by friendly smiles everywhere we went.

I called him up and asked him if he wanted some company on deliveries for the night, my ulterior motive being of course that I was starving to death, and Chris was guaranteed to drop a pizza on me. He said sure, and drove over to pick me up.

Chris lived in his car. In all the years I'd known him, I'd never once seen his home. When I first met him, I’d never see him anywhere but in his old red 76 Firebird. He didn't drive the car, he wore the car. He felt most comfortable in the car. After four years of delivering pizzas the whole car smelled like a pie. Usually after riding shotgun with him all night, I'd smell like one too. When he eventually ran the Firebird into the ground he bought a newer 86 Camaro, which he treasured and refused to use for deliveries. Instead he bought an endless series of junkers; late 70s and early 80s compacts like Chevettes, Vegas, Bobcats, Datsun 510s, and Toyota Tercels. As long as the car was running and had a price tag under $200, Chris was happy with it.
Depending on Chris' financial situation, he’d sometimes let me run the pizzas to the customers' doors and keep whatever tips I earned. They weren't always great tips, in fact sometimes they were downright insulting, but cash was cash, and I usually needed it bad.

When he finally arrived to pick me up he was driving a battered Datsun 510 2 door that sounded like a lawnmower with indigestion. I opened the door to hop in and he had me wait a moment while he tossed the empty cigarette packs, fast food wrappers and Styrofoam coffee cups to the back. There the garbage joined a pile of trash so high it was spilling on to the back seat.
"Smoke?" Chris offered, holding out his pack
I took one and motioned to the back seat. "It's just about time to clean it out back there, don't ya think?" I smiled.
"Why?" Chris asked, casting me a concerned, quizzical look as though I weren't making any sense. Then he burst into a high pitched giggle, rocking back and forth with his laughter and slapping the steering wheel. When he finally stopped giggling he told me he had a plan. "This is the idea," he began. "I figure every one of these little shitbox cars I keep buying lasts me about three months before it dies. So, I've decided I'm not gonna clean this one until it goes kaput. When it does I'll count all the smoke packs, and coffee cups and shit, and I'll be able to figure out what I'm spending on crap from day to day."
"You're serious?" I asked.
He nodded enthusiastically and started giggling again. "Then I'll be able to come up with a budget."
"Why don't you just write down what you spend every day?" I asked.
"Are you fuckin kidding me? Write it down! On what, a piece of paper, a book? It'd be lost the second I put it down in this mess."

We headed straight back to the pizza place as he had a couple of deliveries waiting for him. Along the way I told him I'd been thinking a lot about thirst and hunger, the parallels to uncontainable desire, and its connection to color, and the quenching and satiating of this color-lust being the essential condition of man. I told him about all of the different ways it could manifest itself.

He told me being unemployed was getting to me and that I should try to get out a little more.

I also got around to the question of food, and he said he was way ahead of me, that the girl at the shop had a pizza in the oven for us.
When we arrived at the store I noticed a bunch of Harleys parked out in front. "Aw no, it's not what I think it is, is it?" I asked, I was hoping I wouldn't hear what I knew I was going to.
Chris started giggling again. "I knew you forgot!" he laughed punching me in the shoulder.
"It's Sunday night isn't it?" I realized.
"Yup! And you're not goin’ home. You're in now, whether you like it or not."
"I don't have any money to..." I started to protest.
"Tough shit, I'll spot you some." Chris interrupted.
"I've got no way to pay you back..." I argued.
"Then you better fuckin’ win." Chris grinned.
"What if I don't?"
"Look I'll give you ten bucks, but ya gotta play." he said as we hopped out of the car and headed in. "I'll let ya run the rest of the pies tonight too, maybe you'll make some extra cash...there's still a couple hours of steady orders before it slows down. Now quit fuckin’ complainin’. Jesus, it's not like you've got anything better to do."
"Just as long as it isn't until 5 in the fuckin’ morning again." I agreed reluctantly.
"Why, ya gotta get up for work?" he said, and he nearly fell over he thought that was so funny.

Mama's Pizza wasn't like the other pizza delivery places out there. Whereas most of the more reputable establishments hired nice, clean cut high school kids to work for them, Mama's Pizza seemed to employ the worst that society had to offer. The driver job paid cash everyday and there was absolutely no paper trail to record that a particular person was or was not employed with the company. Consequently, personality types averse to having their whereabouts become federal knowledge flocked to the job. Almost all of the drivers were ex-cons, cowboy drifters and outlaw biker types. And every Sunday night, from four locations throughout the city, about twenty of these personality types and their associated riff-raff would gather in the back room of Chris's location and play cards for cash. I’d sat in on more than my share of these games while working for Mama's, enough to know that a sharp-eyed gambler I was not. I'd lost several paycheques hoping that eventually I’d catch on to the mathematical, physical and psychological subtleties necessary to win. I never did, and having at first not succeeded, then failing when I try, tried again, I quit. Or I tried to anyway...Chris wouldn't let me. Back when I too had been 'gainfully' employed by Mama's I’d counted on Chris to give me a ride home every night. Most of the time he forced me to go for coffee with him at an all night greasy spoon for a few hours before dropping me off. I wound up not getting home until 3 or 4 in the morning most nights, but Sunday nights were the worst. On Sunday nights the back room games turned Mama's into a wretched hive of scum and villainy, and unless I wanted to walk home in temperatures that have killed more than their fair share of long haired Saskatonian teens, I had to sit in.
At first I enjoyed the games. The back room was more of a small warehouse than a room, where all the dry goods like boxes, soda cups, napkins, and assorted sundry were kept for all of the stores. It was just like in the movies. It was easy to picture an Edward G. Robinson or a Marlon Brando sitting in on a game. The room was completely unfinished, gray concrete walls and floor, exposed iron beams lining the ceiling. The lighting was provided by a series of bare 120 watt bulbs hanging at intervals like convicted Texans from the iron beams. In the middle of the room, there were a bunch of 4x8 folding plywood tables shoved together to fold pizza boxes on, and that's where we played cards.
These weren't friendly card games with the guys from work by any means. Most of the players were strangers to one another, brought in initially by friends of friends of employees, growing further and further removed until any company association was too far gone to recall. There was an air of tension and danger in the room that you didn't find anywhere else. On one occasion, Lorne, a myopic, acne scarred, beanpole of a pizza cook had bet hard on a losing hand (they used to make fun of Lorne for betting on the basis of pretty colors.). It turned out that Lorne had believed implicitly that he was going to win, and didn't actually have the money to cover his bet. They were preparing to kill him.
"What the fuck were you thinking?" one of the bikers growled, rising up from his seat. "I've been to games where they hang guys for pulling that shit!"
A big cowboy with a frightfully low tooth-to-tattoo ratio stood as well. "We'll take the difference in 'body collateral'." he snarled, rolling up his sleeves.
The man Lorne had lost to stared at him with eyes of ice from across the table. "You wanna fuckin' tease me kid you are going to fucking put out. If you don't have money I want your fuckin car, if you don't have a car I want your fuckin TV and stereo, if you don't have that I want your mother's fuckin car and TV and if she don't have it I want your fuckin mother, am I making myself clear? I think most of these guys will be happy to help me collect, am I right boys?" and twenty mean motherfuckers grumbled meat-hungry agreement.
"I'll cover the moron..." Chris spoke up through an exhale of translucent blue cigarette smoke, and he slid fifty bucks across the table to the winner.
"NO FUCKIN WAY MAN!" somebody roared. "If junior there wants to fuck around junior can pay the fuckin price!" and a number of other voices shouted agreement.
Luckily for Lorne there were more voices urging "Forget it." and "Toss the kid out!" and "Play some more cards!", and that's what happened. Somebody started dealing (they skipped Lorne), and Lorne eased red faced and cautious away from the table. For the rest of the night the hardcore badasses swapped blood curdling stories of what they'd seen happen to guys that had tried to pull the same stunt. When Lorne tried to ease discreetly in on the following Sunday, it was decided by popular vote that he would have to ante up 10 dollars instead of the usual 2 for every game as punishment.
Needless to say it made me a little uncomfortable being around these people and I told Chris so.
"Just don't do anything stupid and you'll be alright." Chris advised.
I let out a loud laugh. "That's supposed to reassure me? Jesus I've never done anything smart! Doing stupid things is my primary personality trait, it's intrinsic to my nature..."
"I wouldn't say shit like intrinsic to my nature either, if I were you." Chris interrupted. "They'll think you're a fag."
"Aw c'mon man, can't you just drop me off first?" I pleaded.
"Too bad, you're in. I already told some of the guys you'd be here, and they're looking forward to seeing you again."
"I'd be looking forward to seeing someone again too- if every time I saw them they lost all of their money to me." I grumbled.
"Look, ya get free pizza, free beer, free smokes, and I'm giving you ten bucks that you could conceivably turn into a fortune if you're smart-"
"Which we've already established I'm not..." I pointed out. However the free pizza, beer and cigarettes, as well as the possibility of making some cash had a strong appeal and I agreed to sit in and play the ten bucks. "As long as it's not until 5 in the fucking morning again." I insisted.
"No problem." Chris smiled…

At roughly 4:30 a.m. the game was getting interesting. Poker and Blackjack had been putting everybody to sleep, so to change things up and keep it simple enough for myself and the other non-professionals like me to understand we started playing a game called 'In-between'. The rules are basic. Everybody antes up, two bucks a person, and they throw it into a pot in the middle of the table; so, for instance, with twenty people, the pot starts out at forty dollars. Then every player is dealt two cards, face up. The player bets any amount, from two dollars up to the value of the pot, on whether the next card he's dealt will be higher, lower, or in between the value of his first two cards. If he wins, he collects the amount of his bet from the pot. If he loses, he pays into the pot, and the pot grows. If, however, he gets dealt a card that he already has in his hand, then he has to pay double the amount of his bet into the pot, which is where the game has the potential to get really big.
Vern was the district manager for all of the Mama's Pizza stores in the city. On weekends, when the owner was out of town, it was his job to go from store to store on Sunday nights and collect all of the money that had accumulated over the weekend.
Here's how things got interesting;
We were playing In-between. The pot was getting pretty big, roughly three hundred bucks or so. Vern got dealt an ace and a king for his first two cards. He called the ace low, which gave it and any aces to follow a value of one, and with the king then having the highest possible value, he almost guaranteed that there could be no card dealt to him higher or lower than his own. With the very unlikely occurrence that he could be dealt another king or ace, he couldn't lose. The next card had to be in between. "I'll pot the fucker-between." he grinned, betting the entire value of the pot. The money was practically in his hands.
The dealer, an old pirate of a biker by the name of Swervin' Mervin pulled a card up off of the deck and gave it a little peek before flicking it over to Vern. "Sorry buddy..." he said, but he was smiling from ear to ear. The card he’d flicked over was another king. Empathetic moans and groans of sheer anguish went up around the table, and Vern's face went white, while Swervin Mervin counted the total value of the pot.
"Three hundred and sixty four dollars," he concluded, then did some quick math in his head, "which means you owe $728.00."
"Jesus there's over a grand in the pot now!" Chris whispered to me.
Across the table Vern was counting his money, and it looked like he was coming up short, very short.
"You're not coming up light are ya friend?" one of the cowboys asked, and his tone had an undercurrent of kneecap-shatter/threat to it.
"I, uh, I-" Vern was stammering and sweating. "I sorta forgot about the double the pot thing, y'know, if you hit a card you already have..."
"But you're not comin up light, are you?" the cowboy said again, and this time it was definitely not a question, but a warning.
Unlike the Lorne situation several years ago, Vern was not a moron. He knew the rules, and he knew them as well as anybody there. And unlike the Lorne situation, there was more than fifty bucks at stake, and Vern had a reputation for not paying people back. Nobody was willing to bail Vern out.
He had counted his money twice, and divided it into little piles on the table in front of him. He didn't have much more than three hundred dollars by my estimate. His face was turning from white to red, and he was shaking. Nobody was speaking.
"How are we gonna fix this without anybody getting hurt, Vern?" another biker asked and he asked it quiet and low, with what sounded like genuine concern but nonetheless implied pure bonecrush threat.
Vern looked up with terrified realization as it hit him just how deep in the shit he truly was, and his eyes, more moist and fishlike than usual, darted around the table looking for help, but there was none coming. He'd fucked himself.
On the floor between his legs was a black briefcase, and he brought it up on to the table and opened it, blocking the contents with the case lid. He didn't need to block the contents from any of us. We all knew it was the weekend money from the stores. He counted out the amount he needed, closed the case, and put it back down on the floor.
"There." he said firmly, and threw $728 into the pot.
"Watch out boys, looks like the company is backing Vern's bets now!" one of the drivers laughed. "I say we call it a night, how about you fellas?" he said with a conspiratorial wink.
"FUCK THAT!" Vern snapped, then realizing the driver was only joking, he tried to pass it off as his own attempt at a joke. "I gotta win that money back, and nobody's leaving until I do." he laughed, trying to lick the dryness off of his lips.
"Then let's play some fuckin’ cards." Mervin announced. He smacked the table and started dealing to the next player. Around the table the game went, some of us losing a little, some of us taking little chunks out of the pot for ourselves. But the real action was Vern. The game got back around to him, and Swervin Mervin dealt the cards, a three and a four.
"Higher! And I'll pot the bitch!" Vern hissed, and lit a cigarette.
Mervin had an audience and he knew it so he milked it. "Hold up there Vern, you don't have any money to bet with." Vern patted the briefcase and smiled back at Mervin. "Well does the company have enough money to be betting the whole pot? What if ya get a deuce or another three or a four?" Mervin continued.
"The company's got it covered, just deal the cards" Vern pressed. He was drumming his hands on the table like a spastic on speed.
"Awright..." Mervin shrugged, and he pulled a card off of the deck and shook his head sadly. "It's the cards buddy, it's not me." he said as he tossed the two of spades over to Vern.
"Better open up that briefcase again boy!" the cowboy laughed.
They counted out the pot, which was at 1240, and with Vern's loss it jumped to 2480.
Some appreciative whistles of amazement went up from around the table. It was getting to be a high stakes game
The tension was enervating. Everybody played a little quicker so that the hand could get back to Vern, who was sweating and shaking worse than ever. We watched with morbid fascination as he began to fall apart. The badasses were all giving him a hard time.
"Don't worry buddy, jail ain't as bad as they say." one would taunt.
"Who knows, you may even fall in love in there" another joined in.
"It would be better if you fell in love..." someone suggested, "then getting buttfucked ain’t so bad."
At the table there was one biker in particular whose size and strength were unquestionably the greatest of any present. Pete was his name, and with his bear like presence he commanded absolute respect from even the meanest of the players, primarily because he was widely accepted to be the meanest. None of us had ever had the misfortune to witness Pete's aggressive side, not that I knew of anyway. He was always exceedingly kind and jovial with me, and with everyone I knew. But the meanness was there, it was palpable, and danced like a smoldering sleeping flame waiting on a backdraft deep in the back of his pupils. Once again the hand came back to Vern. The laughter subsided and the table went quiet as his first two cards were laid down in front of him. Again it was a hand too good to be true, two aces. Vern called one of the aces high, and one low. They were using a couple of decks, and nobody knew for certain how many aces still remained to be dealt. A quiet buzz of discussion rose up as some of the players tried to remember what had been played, with Vern listening intently to all of them. Then Pete started to speak, a low but voluminous sound that we listeners could feel reverberating in the pits of our stomachs, a great ursine sound, and everybody listened.
"Gentlemen you'll take note that our esteemed brother Vern does not share in our jocular opines of his dark situation." Pete began, extracting a cigarette from his pack. Lighters flared on either side of him, and he chose the one on the left. He spoke without emotion, without sympathy, with an indifference as cold as Siberia. "In fact, if you'll take even a passing glance at Vern's deeply furrowed brow you'll observe that he's perspiring quite vociferously. One would assume, from the facts that rise first and foremost to the surface, that the underlying condition of his nervous demeanor is the financial jeopardy he now finds himself in." With this Pete paused to take a long pull off of his vodka, and to let us consider his words. "That is of course on the surface of the situation, and merely an illusion." Pete stopped again, noticing Vern's increasing fidgetiness. "Pardon me Vern, play your cards..." he urged with a waving of his giant bearpaw.
"I'm betting the pot...in between." Vern said quietly, and the words came out of the dry vacuum of his dehydrated throat covered in dust.
Swervin' Mervin lifted the card and winced as he looked at it, handing it over, this time without apologies. The Ace of Spades. Vern was stunned, and seemed for a moment to lose his balance as a wave of apparent nausea swept over him. Swervin Mervin started to count the pot again, and Vern re-opened the briefcase. He guessed that it would be in the neighborhood of five thousand dollars that he'd be paying in.
While they counted, Pete continued. "What you're seeing before you gentlemen is a man being destroyed from the inside out. Like a lobster devouring its own flesh to survive starvation, so too our friend Vern. And what's brought him to this sorriest of states, this great moral abyss that he know finds himself in? Is it an evil within that has cast him into this maelstrom?" He paused a moment to consider any opinions.
Sitting quietly, and speaking only when spoken too as he had been doing for years now was Lorne, covered from head to toe in a fine dusting of white baker's flour. "It's greed that's brought him to this." Lorne said with absolute surety.
Pete looked at Lorne, examined him for a moment. "What the fuck happened to you?" he asked.
"Whaddaya mean?" Lorne asked, squinting through the dusting of flour on his thick glasses.
"What's with the fucking flour?" Pete asked.
Lorne cleared his throat. He was blushing and turning a deep shade of red, but through the flour he looked bright pink. "I was making pizza dough for tomorrow, and I put the fuckin’ flour in the fuckin’ mixer and turned it on, only somebody left the fuckin’ mixer on the highest fuckin’ speed, and it shot fuckin’ flour everywhere." he explained. The room exploded with laughter. Half of us were on the floor. When we quieted down, Pete continued.
"Before your stand up routine just now Lorne, you suggested that perhaps it was greed that had brought our friend to this clifftop precipice with a panoramic view of his own ruin. I would disagree, and rather I put it to you like this; it was not Vern's greed, or anything else vile or base in his character, (as I believe that these qualities are absent from the hearts of men, at least as primary motivators to action anyway). No, if anything gentlemen, I would venture to say that what has driven Poor Vern to this extremely rapid deterioration of self is nothing more than his own goodness. Does that confuse you? Do I have a few minutes still Mervin?" Pete asked
Mervin nodded without looking up from his counting.
"Then I shall elucidate." Pete smiled, pouring another shot from the bottle of vodka he'd brought with him. "Vern's greed, as is the case with most of us here, arises only out of his will to do good. In the simple pursuit of some superfluous liquidity Vern took a gamble, albeit an absent-minded gamble. I'm willing to grant him the excuse that, blinded by the prospect of easy money, he forgot about the double-the-pot rule. Mistakes happen. That mistake however was the catalyst for Vern's goodness to precipitate his downfall. Vern had only two choices at that moment. Pay up out of the company money, or endure a swift and savage beating at the hands of our here-assembled rogues' gallery. You'll recall that Vern hesitated for a few minutes, apparently to ponder his quandary before concluding that it was best to borrow from Mama's. What we witnessed during that hesitation was not a burdened man weighing the pros and cons of a lose-lose situation as you'd suspect, but rather, the ongoing battle between the forces of good and evil that is being waged every moment within the hearts and minds of men. And what we saw was the triumph of good! Vern chose the most hazardous option as his route to salvation. He chose to risk his own personal freedom by stealing from his own master, who I’m sure we can all agree is if not corrupt, at the very least exploiting us all. Rather than dishonoring himself by welching on a bet to us, his communal peers, he chose instead to rob from the wicked. With the theft there was, and still is the chance of winning all the money back, of making right what he had done wrong, there is the chance of redemption. Welching on all of us here, there would be no such chance. So it was this desire to do the utmost good, a desire intrinsic to all our natures," here I kicked Chris under the table and mouthed the words 'intrinsic-to-our-natures', "a desire to do the highest right at whatever cost to himself, that has fucked Vern so heinously."
Swervin Mervin finished counting. "There's $2700 in the pot Vern, so you and Mama's owe $5400."
Vern dug another $400 out of the briefcase and tossed it into the pot with the 5k he'd already separated. "I can't stop any of you fuckers that don't work for us from betting." he said as he tossed the money into the pot. "But if any fucking employee takes any more of that fucking money, I'll see to it that they go down with me!" and he crossed his arms and stared at the pile of cash in the center of the table.
Pete stood up. "Gentlemen, it's well past five o'clock in the morning. Outside a new day has dawned, and at our current pace we'll still be here at this day's demise. I'm sure that you're all as interested as I am in how this bullshit is going to end, so I’d like to move that we all forfeit our turns, until Vern either recovers the money and saves his earthly freedom, or loses it all to see freedom again only in death. Agreed?"
Naturally everyone agreed. Vern got up from his chair and walked a lap around the room, throwing punches at the air and stretching away the tension like a boxer before a title fight. Those that needed to empty their bladders did, and a few stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. The pot heads passed a joint around. Swervin Mervin gave Vern the option of shuffling the deck, and Vern shuffled, then passed the deck back.
"Awright people, it's time!" Mervin shouted, and we all settled in. He dealt the first two cards, and a wave of nervous laughter swept the table. Two aces.
Vern let a fury of punches fly into his open palm. "One high, one low!" he shouted, jumping up out of his chair, and he started to pace frantically. "In between!" he called, and continued to pace.
Swervin Mervin waited a few minutes while Vern paced before asking "How much are you betting?"
"FUCK!!" Vern screamed, kicking a pile of boxes.
The cowboy spoke, and gently for once. "Your gettin' too worked up boy. What's on your mind? Sometimes talkin helps..."
Vern stopped pacing, and stared at the cash again. "Here's the problem guys. See, I wanna bet the fuckin’ pot, but neither me or Mama's has got that kind of cash. It's at what, like 8 fuckin’ grand right now? That means I could wind up having to put in 16 grand if I get another fuckin’ ace!"
"So you can't pot it then, bet what you can." Mervin said.
"I WANNA POT THE FUCKER!" Vern screamed, jumping at Mervin so violently that a couple of bikers stood up to grab him if need be. His face was red with frustrated rage. "Look I'm going to fuckin’ prison if I don't win that fuckin’ pot back! Let me bet my truck! It's worth $20,000. I'll put up my $20,000 fucking truck, plus there's still about 2 grand left in the briefcase here, that's $22,000 against 8 grand, and if I lose it I walk away and you guys can play the rest of the night for my fucking truck, but just let me bet my fucking truck because it's that or I go to prison over an hour in a fucking card game!!" he stood with his arms out from his sides, his feet shoulder width apart ready for a fight.
"Any objections?" Mervin asked. Nobody objected. The more bloodthirsty and heartless of the rogues rubbed their hands gleefully at the prospect of winning a truck and $12,000. "Fine then let's play this out..." he said, and Vern sat down again. "Where were we?" Mervin said to himself as he reached over to the deck. "Two aces, one high, one low, and you have called in between...." he picked the top card off of the deck, gave it a look, winced and gave a heartfelt apology as he laid it down. "I'm awful sorry Vern, but you shuffled it, so you basically dealt yourself this-" and here Mervin's tone changed to a yell of celebration,"-this 5 of hearts! You're not going to prison!"
Vern looked at the card in disbelief, then at Mervin, then at the card. A smile began to tug at the corner of his mouth, and his entire being became a quiet hissing tension relief valve. He slumped forward onto the table, and held his head in his hands. Laughter started to shake through him and the color came back to his face. A round of applause went up around the table.
"How do you feel Vern? Did I have you goin'?" Mervin asked with a grin.
"I was positive I was going to jail you fucker!" There was considerable moisture welling in Vern’s eyes. He looked like he’d run a marathon.
Mervin rocked back in his chair laughing.
"I'm never fucking gambling again." Vern said, counting the money back into the briefcase.
Chris smacked me on the back. "See if I woulda dropped you off, you woulda missed that." he said.
I smiled. It was after 6 a.m. “I just wanna go home.” I said.
“Right after breakfast.” Chris winked, collecting his own winnings from the table. “I’m buying.”

Sarah Palin Crumbles

Give My Regards to Broadway.

I went in to work tonight to give a show of support to my night shift team and help them shut things down. But I've been up since about 5 a.m., which meant that I needed a little bit of caffeine and some beats to keep me rolling. I had a huge coffee, cranked up Wired 96 on my radio and headed to the restaurant.
But when I got there the boys had her all rolling beautifully, and were already well ahead of the game. I helped them with the little bit that was left, and went up to the bar to have an iced tea and visit for a bit.

A couple of the waitresses invited me out but I declined. Again, I like people, but I generally find extended socializing pretty draining. I decided I was a little too wired on caffeine and beats to go home however, and so I left the bar and headed to Broadway.

I've wanted to write this for a while, and I'm in a headspace right now where I'm not sure if I have written this already or whether I only thought about writing it, but I'm too lazy to check, so here it is regardless...or with regards I suppose.

One of my all time favorite places in all of the world to go is Bud's on Broadway. I love Blues, especially live blues, and Bud's has this beautiful layout that really appeals to paranoiacs like me. There are walls you can lean against so that no one can sneak up on you, and there are dark corners, and there are lots of other lone wolves that just want to groove on some sweet riffs without having to worry about looking like they have no friends (which my friends know is not the case with me).

Tonight however Bud's had some cheesy AC/DC tribute band playing, and that wasn't my scene, so I opted instead to walk up and down Broadway a bit.

Broadway is awesome at any time of year, but it's particularly appealing in the fall. It's a great sensory overload, especially if you're like me and really lose yourself in sensory overload.

On Broadway in the fall it's the smells that get you.

Walking past the 7-11 you're hit with the smell of greasy hot dogs and cylindrical hot-dog-esque delicacies like taquitos and cheeseburger big bites and the like. Away from the 7-11 there is this moment when the sweetness of the autumn leaves comes through, almost like a cross between fresh basil and oranges, and then as you approach the entrance to Bud's it's one mind altering substance after another announcing itself. Depending on the crowd it's either the harsh woody smoke of a few dozen cigarettes burning, or it's the sweet burning Earl Grey smell of dope, curling thick and syrupy through the cool night air.
Passing the doors it's all beer and rye and sometimes smoke machine fog, and then moments later you're passing Nino's getting nosefuls of pizza; fresh pizza dough and bubbling tomato sauce and oregano and garlic and cheese and it's all pouring out as bright and strong as the yellow light through the open kitchen window where the radio is blaring and the cooks are shouting and laughing.

Awww shoot. I'm getting tired now.
I was going to tell you all about the fresh baked bread smell coming off of Subway, the high priced bad coffee aroma from Starbuck's, the popcorn smell oozing like melted butter from the Broadway theater and yellowing the old marquee and the strong bitter burning aroma of good low priced (not cheap coffee, low priced...you cut your own hair, that's cheap) coffee roasting at the Roastery.
I was going to tell you how after you pass the Roastery and you're away from the exhaust of the traffic and the smells of the bars and the pizza places and cafes you can smell the season changing along the river trails; the sweet rot and the mud and the wet, and you can smell the riverbank with its icthy-ravinous earth-fish smell and you can feel the cool coming off of it and the lights seem somehow brighter now that the nights are getting darker and sounds are sharper now that the nights are cooler and you exhale in a deep whispering 'Haaaaah" checking whether or not you can see your breath yet because it's that time of year just about and it feels like you should be breathing out fog because your fingers are a little cold and your nose is starting to run. But I'm getting too tired to tell you about that stuff, so I think I'll just go to bed instead.
Maybe another time.

Rush Hour.

It was about 26 degrees outside, which would have made it a beautiful day, but I was stuck in my car. The traffic was so heavy that it fought for every step forward and the exhaust was thick and burning in the dead heat. I was sitting on a whole pile of stress and energy, having just left a hot busy kitchen with tempers running higher than temperatures and I was all wound up in all the wrong ways.

I've written a lot about how my temper skyrockets when my patience is tested, and nothing seems to test my patience like heavy city traffic. My gas gauge was low, and getting lower when I hit the 25th Street Bridge. 10 minutes into the crossing I was starting to panic thinking that I might not have the fuel to get across. But I made it across, swearing and sweating, and I made it home and the energy of my kids and the mountain of housework still to be done was almost the last straw for me and I felt myself close to snapping. I was more wound up walking in the door to my house than I had been when I'd left work half an hour earlier.

That was about a month ago, and it was the day that I decided, "F$#@ this shizzle, I'm not driving to work anymore unless I absolutely f%^$#n' have to!"
Since then I've been rolling on the old Norco Charger. It's been a blast. It takes me about 15 minutes longer in the morning, but I get to work with more energy, calmer and with a clearer head.

One of the uber hottie girls at work saw me on my way out of work the other day, carrying my bike seat and she asked, "Do you ride your bike here every day?" and I said "Whenever I can." and she said "Wow that's impressive!" and I was feeling pretty damn cool on my way to unlock the Charger.
Then it occurred to me that maybe it's only impressive because I'm so damn old. A lot of the young guys bike, and it's not really all that impressive. But then I thought, "I work 12 hour days and it's pretty physical and high energy draining work, so f*&^%n' ay it's impressive!"

So today it was 4:30 Friday afternoon and the traffic was already backing up when I saddled up ol' Trigger and blasted off through the parking lot.
My first moment of triumph and glee hit before I even left the parking lot. A line of cars was backed up in the lot, waiting for a break in the traffic flow to get on to Circle Drive. I bunny-hopped up on to the sidewalk and blew past them, the sun shining and my own slipstream keeping me cool in the heat.
I crossed the street illegally, cutting between bumper to bumper cars filled with sweating suffering commuters and I cut off of Avenue C to the quiet stillness of Avenue B.
The trees grow old and tall in Mayfair and the leaves fall in rivers of sweet smelling gold that snake along the sidewalks and along the curb and when the wind blows they make a sound like rippling water, if water were made of wood chips and crystal.
I purposely sliced through the dry crackling leaves just to hear the crunch, a sound like paper ripping and I ripped them, a big tear exposing pavement where my tires had cut through in 16th gear and climbing.
I alternated between sidewalk and road, depending on what kind of jumps the driveway or road offered, and maybe it's a sign of the pounds that I drop every time I drop gears to take a bridge or a hill, but I seemed to getting a lot more air today than I've been able to catch in a long time. The soft suspension of the Mazarocchi forks makes it tough to get a good jump with the Charger, not like I would have been able to on the old Bush Pilot in GP, but today was good.

I cut over to Idylwyld a few blocks before 33rd, tearing through the gas pump islands at the 7-11. There was a line of cars fueling up, and I had a little vision of the gas pump dollar total rolling backwards, putting money in my pocket with every mile I pedalled instead of sucking it out.
I looked at the traffic jam and thought of all the fuel being burned, and all of the negatives that go with exhaust, and then I thought of all the fuel and calories that I was burning by biking, and I thought of all the positives, increased oxygen, decreased stress, improved longevity, better circulation. The old trees lining Idylwyld lean over the sidewalk low and heavy, and I got the sense that they were pretty happy with me pumping out CO2 instead of exhaust, and I was pretty happy with them pumping out oxygen and when I passed the lower branches I'd give their leaves a friendly high five and they'd wiggle back happily.

Meanwhile, blood pressure was rising in the cars that I left grumbling at idle with their discontentment. Biking in rush hour is more fun when you can gloat, so I always make a point of doing a flyby past the worst of the traffic.

The intersection of Idylwyld and 33rd was sheer hopelessness for anyone in a motor vehicle. The vantage point offered by it's altitude showed an endless line of clogged traffic in every direction.
It worked perfectly to my advantage. I weaved in and out of idling cars, crossed with enthusiastic disregard for the traffic lights, and hit the long 33rd St. downhill towards city center.
(Note: Sometimes I elect to cut across Idylwyld at 38th, and head for the cemetery. Nothing inspires a guy to better health than acres of prematurely dead. And nothing feels quite as alive as being alone with the sound of your breathing and humming tires on a sunny day while other people are losing their mind stuck in rush hour.)

I cut quickly across 2nd Avenue, into the Technicolor canopy of City Park in Autumn, and I rolled down the streets that I taught my oldest daughter to ride her bike on, past Kinsmen Park, where we were one of the last families to play on the old playground and one of the first families to play on the new playground, down past the sewer smell that everybody knows comes out of the dry storm drains towards the University Bridge

Now listen...not everything about traffic is bad. In fact, there is one thing about rush hour in Saskatoon that completely restores my faith in humanity and goodness.

When you're coming on to the 25th Street Bridge in Saskatoon, off of Spadina, people take turns. There is no other city in the world that I can think of that takes one of the busiest central intersections in the urban core, and leaves it completely uncontrolled, relying on public goodness to maintain order. And it works. It's the ultimate example of anarchy at work.
I didn't wait to take turns. I bounced across Spadina without stopping and hit the bridge.

Here's the thing about going uphill against the wind on a bridge. It's a bit of a challenge, and in me it brings out the same thoughts that running does.
I realize that one day I will be unable to bike up a bridge, whether because of weather or age or illness or whateva, and I remind myself that I should be grateful for the moment that I have. The next thing that I think of when tackling a big hill, is that it might be hard today, but if I push myself to the limit and just get through it, my body, my stamina, my will, all of it will be strengthened, and tomorrow that hill will be just a little bit easier because of that.
Then I view it on more of a macrocosmic scale, realizing that I will have other battles in my life that will be uphill, and against the wind. When that day comes I can go into that battle with a mind and spirit trained to submit, or I can go in with a mind and spirit, trained, experienced and adept at tackling a challenge.

In the interest of brevity let's skip ahead. 10 minutes later, and I'm home, having outpaced most of the traffic. I come into my house breathless and thirsty, but enervated, energized, refreshed and happy. My kids and my wife have smiles for me and I have smiles for them. If one were to take an analysis of me, they would find an increased oxygen level, stronger muscles, lower blood pressure, and a higher degree of general well being, not to mention several hundred dollars more in my bank account at the end of the month.

Rush hour is a different kind of rush for me.

The pic is just some random guy, found it on the wurlwhyweb.