Don't Go Diego, Don't Go

Diego Marquez, an eight-year-old, rough-and-tumble action-adventure hero with an intense love of nature and the animals around him is in critical condition today in Sao Paolo after being mauled by a jaguar. Diego, the animated star of Go, Diego, Go! takes viewers on exciting animal rescue missions while encouraging them to jump, clap, cheer and speak in English and Spanish each step of the way. He has nearly always been accompanied by a lovable baby jaguar.
The jaguar has been growing much more rapidly than Diego of course, and earlier today Diego was playfully taunting the animal with a length of string when it tore off his arm with one mighty swipe.
Authorities caution people that wild animals, particularly big cats, never make safe pets.
Fellow child star Dora the Explorer had only this to say. "I told him, stick with the kincajou, but after seeing Scarface he had to have a tiger or a jaguar."

Locally Grown

I'm a chef again. I spent a good 10 years of my life working with food, and then left the business for about 5 years to experiment with other jobs.
This time around I've got a far greater appreciation for the culinary arts, and I'm constantly learning about new trends.
It seems these days that there is a strong movement towards returning to the fundamentals. Those that know me well will often here me talking about Auguste Escoffier, the father of modern cuisine. He revolutionized cooking in his day, and to this day we follow almost all of the techniques and systems that he put down at the turn of the last century. One of the basics of his philosophy was the use of locally grown product for maximum freshness.
In Saskatchewan this is difficult, and what I perceived to be a difficulty too great to be overcome has always kept me from even attempting to shop for local foods.
Researching them today however, I've discovered that not only is it possible to source great local product in all seasons in Saskatchewan, but there is a strong and vibrant community devoted to just that! I've posted a link on my links list to "Home for Dinner", another Saskatoon based blog with a focus on great cuisine with locally produced ingredients.
I just discovered it today, and suffice it to say I'll be visiting this site a lot more.
One of the sources that the author mentions is of course the Saskatoon Farmer's Market, which I've always taken great pleasure in visiting. I can always find something new and exciting to bring home and mess around with from the Farmer's Market. The last interesting thing that I brought home from the market was a pile of sunchokes, that I roasted with thyme, olive oil and garlic.

Take Your Facts With a Grain of Salt...

We're taught that we live in a free country where the media is allowed to express whatever they want to express, as long as it's true. This in turn implies to many people, that the media doesn't lie, and they put all of their trust into their newspapers and their televisions to get the facts on everything from food safety, to electoral decisions, to global politics.
We are essentially a free country, and we're certainly free to express our opinions. But our media aren't quite as free and unbiased as one would think.
Take a look for instance at the difference in reporting styles between Conrad Black's National Post and the CBC.
You'll find that the Post frequently attacks socialist ideals and boosts conservative ideals shamelessly. They tend to cheerlead for things like war, corporate tax cuts, private health care to name just a few. They report facts that find in favor of these things, and tend not to present a balanced argument, ignoring the detriments of such ideas.
The CBC goes the other way. It's war reports will often focus on the civillian cost of our military actions abroad, the corporate motivations behind aggression. They'll report on the growing number of people affected by poverty, the downside of private health care, and the importance of support for the arts. This probably best exemplifies the 2 poles of reporting in Canada.
It's important to realize that if you only rely on one source for your information, you're only going to get a fraction of the facts in any given situation. In Canada, the majority of newspapers are owned by Conrad Black, who is openly conservative elitist. If you wish to debate with your conservative friends to convince them to put humanity ahead of profit, it's crucial that you source facts outside most Canadian and American newspapers. This article details the extent to which the media in Canada is controlled by political agendas.
I recently read a National Post article about Jack Layton's plan to divert funds from Tory corporate tax cuts to benefit Canadian families with child care payments of up to $400 per month. The article was blatantly fear mongering, suggesting that cutting corporate taxes would spiral us into the same economic collapse that the US is undergoing. This logic is of course flawed. It implies that the way for us to avoid a US style collapse is to engage in exactly the same kind of conservative/republican economic strategies that led to the collapse in the first place. But there is little mention of that.
In the US the media bias is even worse. Rupert Murdoch runs over 200 major US dailies as well as Fox broadcasting. He sat on the council of PNAC with Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, John Ashcroft, to name but a few. GE, a major arms manufacturer and US defense contractor owns NBC and MSNBC. CNN and ABC are owned by Time Warner, which also owns Disney and Sid R. Bass which holds major shares in big oil. CBS is owned by Westinghouse, another major corporation. #1 on the board of directors is Frank Carlucci, also of the Carlyle Group. You may have heard of the Carlyle Group, it's an investment firm with a big interest in defense companies, featuring George Bush Senior as one of it's biggest advisors. Recently they've refocussed on media acquisitions.
Anyway, it's election time people. Make sure you are getting facts paid for through research and integrity, rather than facts paid for by corporate and political sponsors with a vested interest.
Simply reading the newspaper and calling yourself informed is to take all of your facts from Conrad Black, a man currently rotting away in a US prison for defrauding the people that trusted him with millions of dollars. Would you trust this man with your country, the country that your children will one day inherit? Inform yourself properly, get the full story.

Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out.

Saskatoon is a blues town people. We spawned Wide Mouth Mason and Jordan Cook to drop some names. Big Dave Mclean recorded his album "Muddy Waters for President" at Bud's on Broadway, out of all the blues clubs he could have chosen in Canada. The blues are ingrained as heavily in our streets as the callouses in Buddy Guy's fingertips.
And when I have wandered I have taken the blues with me, and in so doing have always carried a little piece of home with me.
Naturally when I play guitar, I work on blues tunes. One of my all time favorites has always been Eric Clapton, in particular his work from the Unplugged album.
Today I was checking out some online lessons for the song "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" when I discovered the talent of Bessie Smith. Bessie Smith was known as the Empress of the Blues, and was the original artist of Nobody Knows You. She was a hugely popular blues and jazz singer in the 20s and 30s.
On Sep 26 1937 the Empress of the Blues, Bessie Smith, sustained grave injuries in a traffic accident on US Highway 61. She was taken to a colored hospital in Clarksdale, Mississippi and her arm amputated. Smith died later that day from blood loss. According to legend, Bessie had been refused treatment by a closer, whites-only hospital.
Now folks, for your listening pleasure, I present both versions of Nobody Knows You...

Requiem for a Cool Hand

Paul Newman just passed away at the age of 83. Nearly every headline announcing the death of the great man makes references to his legendary role in Cool Hand Luke. The death of Paul Newman hits me particularly hard mainly because of this role. There are few characters in fiction, film or history for that matter that I've been able to relate to more than that of Cool Hand Luke. Cool Hand Luke is authority averse, and impulse driven. He's polite, friendly, generally optimistic, and has a tremendous will power...when he wants to. In the film he's sent to prison on a very minor charge...for messing with parking meters in a drunken stupor one night. The rest of the movie is the story of an impulsive free spirit struggling for his literal survival against the ever tightening noose of a structured world. Here's the thing. I struggle at times with the notion of whether or not I'm crazy. I do a lot of things that don't make sense. I leave what many consider to be the security of good jobs on a whim, I move around a lot, I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve at most times and I frequently duck responsibilities in favor of fun. I cast aside concerns over the future for pleasure in the moment without a second thought usually, and also without regret in most circumstances. Fortunately I have a spouse that understands this. She knows that I do in fact wrestle with this demon of impulsiveness. She's seen me go to doctors to get medication, hit the gym religiously, pray for help to stay with something, read book after book on gaining control of my moods and impulses, anything that I can do to make my relationship to 'the system' run a little smoother. We've come to the conclusion that I'm a feral human. My parents were old when they had me, and for the most part I was left without any sort of rule or structure in my life other than that I received in school. As I continued to grow older my wilder nature became more difficult to control, and I wound up being kicked out of one high school after another for the most ridiculous of transgressions...attendance at one, being a disruptive influence at another. And here's my first very own personal Cool Hand Luke moment. By about the second or third high school I attended, the various administrations would only accept me under the terms of 'a contract'. Any teen that ever went to war with the administration knows all about contracts. Essentially they demand that the student exemplify absolute perfection or they'll be expelled. Well some of these administrators could really bust your balls if you were under contract. There was a vice principal named Beebe that refused to let up on me. If I was late for class I was called to the office. If I missed a class I was called to the office. If I had incomplete homework I was called to the office. I began to feel that he was feeding off of my apologies and my dignity. Students often say a teacher picked on them, well this one truly did. It was personal for him. I think he'd probably been picked on by guys like me when he was in school, probably still picked on by guys like me in his social life. He took it out on me. I was and continue to be a pretty perceptive guy, and despite the fact that I was popular with my teachers and receiving high marks, this guy kept the screws to me. It started to piss me off. He was deriving personal satisfaction from using his power and authority to make my life a living hell. One night I met his 14 year old son at a party. I had a 26 oz bottle of Southern Comfort with me. I fed it to the kid happily, repeating over and over again that all he had to do for me was tell his Dad where he got it. The war was ON, and it confirmed for me everything that I'd always believed. I was in the office without reason, just to check up on my progress, and every session was an interrogation. It always wound up with me having to ask him for some kind of permission...permission to continue attending school, permission to sit with my friends at break. He picked on my friends to pick on me. It got so that I would meet my friends at the Vice Principal's office after school every day, because it was 95% likely that if I wasn't being grilled one of them was. Finally I couldn't take it anymore. It had been going on for 7 months, daily visits to the office to ask for mercy and absolution from whatever crime he chose for the day. He brought me in over something like being late for a class, and he essentially wanted me to beg to stay in school. He said something like, "All you have to do is say you want to stay in school, and you won't be expelled." I told him I want to be in school. "It doesn't sound like you do." he said. "Well I do." I said. "Say it like you mean it." he said. My stomach turned to lead. I started shaking. There was no way in Hell I was going to give him the satisfaction. "I already did say it. I'm not saying it again." I said. He repeated how he didn't think I'd meant it, and I repeated that I did, and I was done talking about it and he could do whatever the hell he wanted, but I wasn't going to say it again. And he expelled me. I went home that night and he'd called my parents. They told me that he had called, and said he'd asked if I wanted to stay in school and I didn't seem to care so he'd expelled me. He'd said if I came back and really demonstrated that I wanted to be there he'd let me back in. I told my parents he could go fuck himself, and they told me if I didn't go back to leave the house because I couldn't live there if I wasn't going to school. So I went back the next morning, went in to his office, and told him very emotionally that I wanted to be there, but I also told him that I thought that I felt he was feeding his own ego by making me do it, and that he had no goal other than to take away my pride. I think I shocked him because he very quietly agreed to let me back in. So every day after that I would pass him in the halls and he'd have this infuriating benevolent fucking grin on his face, as though he felt bad that he'd had to go that far, and yet the benevolence was completely false. It was a look of sarcastic pity, a smug arrogant grin of victory. I hated him, and to this day there is no single human being in existence that has ever aroused in me the hatred that this man did. I hated myself for having submitted to it. I couldn't sleep, I decided that living without dignity was too much to bear. I started stealing the light switches from the hallways. Then I started stealing the covers off of the plug ins. I dismantled the hinges on doorways, took apart exit signs, liberated light bulbs. And I kept all of it in my locker. There were some other small incidents not worth mentioning. I don't think I could have stopped myself. Nor would I. After 3 days I was hauled into the office again. Beebe had a policeman there, and in front of them the pile of hardware from my locker. The first thing they asked about was the bomb threat earlier that week, to which I avowed complete ignorance. "Why did you do this?" Beebe asked, gesturing at the pile on the table. "For fun." I smiled. I didn't stop smiling. In fact the angrier he got, the more I smiled. I couldn't help it. I could actually feel my dignity and self worth returning with every rise in octave and impotent rage. Having the opportunity to sit in front of this asshole and let him know that "This time I did it solely to aggravate you, and it worked, and I'm me again, and you are less you now, and your brilliant plan to break me failed." And to this day people, I am proud to say that I am still unbroken. And the cop sat and smiled too, and we both knew that I wasn't getting charged with anything, and that I wouldn't be going back to school. So it's with great sadness that I think of Paul Newman's passing, and of the consolation I found watching Cool Hand Luke, knowing that somewhere out there, there was director, a writer, a cast of actors that know exactly where I was coming from when I stole all of those light switches. He spoke to us, the lost, the feral, the wild, the doomed. He let us know that there were others like us, and that while definitely rare, we are certainly not alone. He taught me that this part of me that I fight and struggle with so much is often a curse, but it's also a blessing. He showed me the beauty in me. He showed me that you can break, but you can redeem yourself as well. So, to Paul Newman's spirit, wherever it may be tonight. Don't rest in peace, Rebel with enthusiasm.

Off-leash on the Rio Del Fuego

The in-laws were in town today. I don't actually mind my in-laws all that much. All in all they're good people. But I don't like visiting with people...period. I spend an awful lot of time with people, and for me socializing is tremendously enervating. I get wound right up; increased heart rate, excitability, all of that stuff. I'm good at socializing, and I get along with just about everyone I meet, but I find the energy that it brings out of me draining. It's for that reason that on my day off I preferred to avoid the in-laws.
So Janet took the kids and went off for the day with her mom. That left me off the leash for the day. Woo-hooooo
Where better to go, I decided, than the Off-Leash Area for dogs at Sutherland Beach. I've written about this area before. It's one of my favorite places to get away from it all in the city. There are about 10 km of trails down there. They wind up and down along the river bank and even head down to the occassional beach.

Oddly enough I've never been there on a Sunday before. On a Sunday it seems that every dog owner in the city heads to the off-leash area.
It became pretty clear pretty quick that if I were to take the trails on my bike at the usual speed I'd either chew up a few lap dogs with my tires, or have my tires chewed up by a larger beast.
That was fine by me however, as I've really been wanting to get out and do some trail running anyway.
So I found a rickety old fence to lock the bike to and I hit the ground running. Every time I came across a dog or group of dogs I had to slow down of course. If you run around near a dog you tend to ignite the dormant fires of the old predator-prey relationship, and you'll find yourself skipping high kneed away from nipping poms and pugs. The best approach is to slow down and get to know the dog before you run anywhere near him.
So one after another I met up with Poodles, Pitbulls, Pomeranians, Pugs, Rotweillers and Wolfhounds, Boxers and Schnauzers, Terriers and Retrievers, and all of them were enjoying the day with the same boundless sense of enthusiasm and freedom that I was.
I'd slow down to meet them, and the dog(s) would trot up a little warily, but generally happy. I'd reach out my hand, somewhat warily, but generally happy and let my four-legged brothers and sisters get an idea who I was. When I had an idea who they were I'd give them a scratch behind the ears and say something to them like "Beautiful day for a run isn't it?" or "I love being off-leash too!" and they'd wiggle and shake and pant and lick and jump around and then run off, and I'd run off until the next dog came around the trail.
Sometimes they chased me when I started to run and their owners scolded them the way I talk to Anderson when he pushes a stranger's kid on to the ground. "AN-DER-SON!" I'll say and these owners would be calling out "MUF-FIN!" and "SPAR-KY!" and similar doggie type names, and I'd give the dog a look like "Oh you're gonna get it."and run off down the trail smiling.

A little further in along the trails however and the dog owners disappeared and it was all leaves of yellow and red and orange and thick green undergrowth and hills and ravines.

I'm learning to love autumn. I used to hate it, because it signified for me the death of another year. But I'm learning that death really is just subjective, nothing more than a notion. Essentially nothing dies. Energy is infinite. It's never destroyed. Science and faith both demonstrate this in their own way. When a plant dies it does the circle of life thing, sinking into the ground, feeding the bugs, enriching the soil, becoming new life.

In essence, what I used to perceive as the slow death of all things every autumn, I'm now
starting to see as the first moments of next spring's birth.

It allows me to really see the beauty of the season. I hit a high point on the trail and I had to stop and soak it all in. There are few cities in this world that light up like Saskatoon does in the fall.
All along the river bank leaves were changing, all the colors of fire. The bank opposite me was a living botanical sunset. It was a raging foliacious tribute to fire, and on the water of the river it reflected and flickered like real flame dancing on quicksilver. Hence the Rio Del Fuego in the title.
Anyway, this old dog is tuckered out now. I ran until I had to stop and lay down for a bit, and then, like all the other dogs, I had to come home too. The family is back now, and I'm glad they are. I let the kids ride on my back for a bit, and had Janet scratch me behind the ears. Off leash is good once in a while. But sometimes it's the leash that gives freedome it's value.
All in all it was a damn fine day.

My Father's Gun

I have a zest for life people. I take as much pleasure as I can out of absolutely everything. There are a number of reasons for this.

One of the reasons is that I'm prone to drastic shifts in my perception of the world around me. The same job, the same town, the same people that I may have once loved, I will suddenly find myself loathing and despising. I'll go through periods where I can't see anything positive no matter how much effort I make.

So when I'm able to, I really push hard to enjoy things to the utmost, and save that sensation for the times when the blackness comes down.

I think however that the majority of my enthusiasm for life comes from my father. My Dad is an extraordinarily carefree person. I've only seen him ruffled once in my life, and that was at the end of a $14,000 losing streak playing the ponies back in the old country.
Here's the thing.
My dad was in a horrible and hideous train wreck shortly after he'd served in the Korean War. In a very short time span, he saw an awful lot of death and inhumanity.

He doesn't talk about the train wreck much. Someone in the family once told me that all they knew about his experience was that he'd been in the wreck, and had held on to a little 3 year old boy who's father had been killed beside him until rescuers arrived. Then he stayed around to help with recovery and first aid for another 3 days.

All he's ever said to me about it was once while discussing the topic of worrying. "I stopped worrying about anything after that train crash."

My father values every day, and every moment in every day. It's an attitude that except for the occassional (and increasingly rare) bio-chemical swing, I tend to share. Unfortunately, I think I take it too far.

I treasure each moment to the point that I feel cheated whenever circumstances such as employment or familial obligations force me to surrender my freedom. Any relinquishing of personal autonomy leaves me feeling as if my very life is being taken from me, moment by moment and I'm tremendously resentful. I begin to feel seconds slipping away from me, and start to become concerned that on my deathbed I'll be tremendously remorseful about not having gone for more walks in the park, etc.

Which brings me to my final point, and the inspiration for me to write tonight. I run and bike a lot. In my latest copy of Runner's World magazine, it lists 10 Motivators, and draws from a variety of people for their best motivational tips. One of them says that she has posted in her home, "Run today, because one day you won't be able to."
That same thinking, taken to utter extremes, is at the root of a lot of my craziness.
My fear that tomorrow I'll regret having wasted today makes me want to do nothing more than spend each and every day doing nothing but fun things.
Immature and silly, yes, I know. But what's a guy to do?

Prospector's Dream.

Janet and the kids picked me up from work tonight to take me home. On the way we dropped off one of the girls for a sleepover at her friends, and by the time we made it back the boy was asleep. That left Janet and Parker and I, and we were all hungry. Fortunately I'd just purchased a big container of Tin Lizzie ice cream the night before.
I grabbed the box out of the freezer, and I dished out a bowl for Parker, then started scooping away at my bowl. Janet was waiting patiently with her bowl.

I said "I think that's good enough for me...", and I was about to hand her the scoop, when I saw this beautiful golden vein of caramel glinting in the trench that I'd taken my last scoop from.

"Doops! Just a sec'" I said and I reached in to dig out the caramel vein.

Janet clenched her teeth and put her hands on her hips and said "Let me guess, you found a big vein of caramel in there that you didn't want me to get."

"It's not that I didn't want you to get it, I just wanted it really bad." and handed her the scoop.

"You're sooooo predictable." she said.

So now I'm going to put on my Darth Vader voice changer helmet and my spandex running tights and ask her who she was calling predictable.

Down to New Amsterdam

but there were no yellow haired girls. Crackheads, junkies and schizos aplenty mind you, but no yellow-haired girls.
I'm in Langley B.C. at the moment, and last night I had the pleasure of getting down to Vancouver.
I lived in the West End for quite a few years, and next to Saskatoon it's the one place in the world that I feel most at home.
My hope was to ditch some of my co-workers so that I could run around without having to consult anyone or adapt to anyone else's pace, but the guys were all new to Vancouver, and pretty content to let me do what I wanted, as fast as I wanted. It was great being with restaurant people. We all walk about 3 times faster than most people, and talk a lot more than most people too.

All I wanted to do was walk around the old neighbourhood a bit, see some of the old haunts and once I got that out of my system, we started to embrace whatever experience might present itself.
We came across a shisha bar on West Georgia, and on FOH Dan's reccomendation we stopped in and hit up the Hookah pipes for a little break.

Later we went down to Gastown to meet some friends at a pub, and Dan C was getting itchy for smoke of a different kind. I don't partake of that sort of thing anymore, but I know where to go to find it so I took him for a walk up to the New Amsterdam Cafe on Hastings and in moments he was lit up and daydreaming in the high stratosphere of his cerebral cortex. Back in the day, one used to be able to walk any of the streets just off of gastown and be approached by willing purveyors of virtually any narcotic known to man. Maybe it was a bad night, maybe I just look like too much of a cop these days, or maybe it really has changed, but we only encountered one dealer. Talking with some of the heads in the New Amsterdam, they confirmed that traffic really has gone underground, and that these days you have to look a little harder.

I took the guys to see Chinatown, and we stumbled upon a midnight market, all lit up with handpainted paper lanterns and the smell of roasting chicken and pork and garlic and ginger, and we bought a few knickknacks.
The most talked about part of our walkabout was the East Hastings venture.
E. Hastings is frequently referred to as Canada's poorest neighbourhood. Hard drugs are an epidemic, and the addicts are literally laying everywhere down there. One of our companions remarked that it's good for a pick me up to walk down East Hastings, because no matter how bad you feel about yourself, you'll feel better once you see the crowd down there.
The changes to downtown were amazing to me. All the streets are the same, the buildings are for the most part the same, but the names and facades of all the businesses seem to have changed.
William S. Gibson is a Vancouver author, often credited with the invention of cyberpunk. One of his stories involves nanotechnology...microscopic robots that gather and construct themselves into buildings. The technology is almost organic, with the effect that the buildings are essentially living and evolving things. I almost felt that this whole Vancouver downtown was the same sort of living and evolving organism. It was almost as though you could see the facades morphing and changing before your eyes, (and that had nothing to do with the Shisha or the New Amsterdam) btw.
That's all.
Today I'm off golfing. I have 8 hours of complete structure and no stimuli laid out before me today. To me golf is the opposite of fun. I'd rather spend the next 8 hours walking around downtown again. I could walk the same streets, but I guarantee you it would be a completely different experience again.

Flat-terranean Homesick Blues.

I was just searching for the video of Forrest Gump running to add to my last blog entry, which I thought would be kind of fun and whimsical, but instead I found myself getting a little bit melancholy.
I was living in BC when I first saw Forrest Gump. I saw it in the theater, and let me tell you people, Vancouver in Autumn is very far from Saskatoon.
I was feeling lonesome and homesick the way that prairie people often do when they're surrounded and shut in by trees and mountains and clouds. The Pacific Coast can wrap you in, and if you're averse to being wrapped it's not necessarily a good thing.

I'll admit that I'm pretty susceptible to outside influences, particularly when it comes to emotions and such. There's a running scene in Forrest Gump in which he runs across America a few times. One of the shots in this scene is a long sweeping panorama of prairie skyline, as Forrest runs along a flatland highway through shimmering wheat fields.

I was sitting in this dark theater, and that big beautiful blue sky in the scene was even more real to me at that time than any sky I could recall. I felt such an incredible wave of homesickness at that point, of complete and utter displacement that it hit me in the stomach like a lost love.

Here's a confession of some teenage silliness for you, that is somewhat related while we're at it.
When I was a teenager I thought I'd seen Saskatchewan for the last time. It turned out that I hadn't, and the day that I came back from living in Britain was one of the best days of my life. The day that I came back I went to the outskirts of the city where the fields start and they don't stop, and I actually ran out into a wheatfield with my walkman blaring John Cougar and I rocked out until I was exhausted (I'd held on to this image of the video for Pink Houses while I'd been in Britain) and after I rocked out and relived the video I just laid there in the freezing November cold, ecstatic and delirious. Here's another little confession, I was actually trying to grow my hair out to look like the album cover of American Fool back then. I so identified with this video that it determined my entire personality. You'll see at the end...Aviators, long hair, white T-shirt, boots. When I was overseas this video defined home for me, and I think that somehow, by emulating him I was holding on to home.

John Mellencamp - Pink Houses
Uploaded by John-Mellencamp

Week 63 of My 8 Week Running Program.

Look. Some goals take longer than others okay?
Here's the thing. I used to run a lot. Obsessively one might say. It started with one of my good customers at the Sawmill in Edmonton, a guy named Aaron that was a real inspiration to me. I then began to befriend a few other runners, and before I knew it was rollin' with some uber-l33t athl33ts.
I didn't compete at all, at least not against others. I set targets for myself and crushed them weekly.
My longest run was a 26k here in Saskatoon.

Shortly after that run I started in sales, which involved a lot of sitting on my butt in meetings and in the car, and a lot of overnight trips and poor nutrition. I tried to maintain my running habit, but I found myself missing a run here and a run there. Sundays (my long run days) were still open to me however, and determined not to lose my earlier gains, I pushed myself hard on those long runs. A little too hard actually. Without maintaining a proper base, long runs like that can lead to injury. Which is what happened.

I've tried off and on to get back into running, but it seems that every time the same injury flares up again. I went to get a bone scan a few years back to see if perhaps it was some sort of stress fracture.
The bone scanner person (technician, specialist, doctor, nurse?)was looking at my scan and called over his shoulder. "So are you some kind of pro athlete?" and I said "No, I just run a lot", and he said "Ah, your scan shows a lot of build on your bones like athletes get." and I felt damn proud of that let me tell you. Anyone that has known me from years previous could tell you that there would generally have been no way in Hell I would have been confused with an athlete when I was younger.

So I've tried a few times again and again to get back into running, but the old pain in the leg keeps coming back a few weeks in and I have to stop again. Which is why I've taken up biking so enthusiastically this year. But here's the thing. I think I've figured out a little bit of why I kept getting injured. I've generally been living a pretty sedentary lifestyle, and I had put on some weight. I've been about 20 pounds heavier than I was when I did my long run, and even with awesome cushioning in my shoes, that's a little too heavy for distance running. I've also been off of my feet a lot, which allowed my legs to get a lot weaker.

Lately however I've been on my feet for 10 hours a day again, and I've been biking to work a lot. I think the time might be right for me to jump back on to running again. And I think I'm going to start tonight.

My 8 Year Old Has a Better Work Ethic Than Me

That's really not that hard to accomplish either. Nonetheless it's quite impressive. I'm really hoping that some of her enthusiasm for getting the job done and being grateful for the compensation that she receives rubs off on me.
Here's what brings this to mind.
I asked her today how her day went, and if she'd joined any new teams or clubs or organizations at school.
"I joined the Green Team." she beamed with pride
"What's that?" I asked
"Well, they only picked 2 kids from each class between grades 3 and 5, one boy and one girl, and I'm the girl for my class. Once a week I go around and separate all the recycling from the garbages. I get a special t-shirt too!" and she showed me her hand painted Green Team T-shirt.
I shook her hand. "Congratulations kiddo, you're making a difference in the world, did you know that?" I smiled and she nodded with tremendous enthusiasm and then I told her I was very proud of her and gave her a big hug.
Then she hit me with the coup de grace. "And at the end of the month I get a popsicle or a chocolate bar...just for working!" and she couldn't believe her good fortune...not only was she able to work, but they would give her a popsicle once a month for her time.
I need a little bit of that kind of gratitude.

November 07 Notes

Watt's Up with Seasonal Affective Disorder?: A Light Bulb Moment
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Saturday, December 1, 2007 at 4:45pm | Edit Note | Delete
Yeah so I gave it all away in the title I think. I have been freakin' dying with the cold and the short days and the being trapped in the house. My metabolism has slowed to a crawl, my overall will to do anything is gone. So today I had a little idea. For a while now I've had this full spectrum light deal beside my PC (which might be why I'm strangely drawn to my PC all the time). Today it occurred to me that I could use that same strategy throughout the rest of the house. So in all of the rooms that I tend to be most active in, I've upped the wattage in my bulbs. I actually have 100 watt bulbs going in certain areas of the home now. Results? Well tonight there is certainly a placebo effect. I have a hell of a lot more energy than I've had after just half an hour or so under the increased lumens. Let's hope it keeps up. I managed to get a bunch of clothes together to go to the Salvation Army, cleaned all the light fixtures, essentially had the urge to do some spring cleaning. As Janet can tell you, that is an urge that doesn't hit me...ever...not even in spring. So I think something must be happening at the circadian level. I'll keep all y'all posted, I know a few of you are having the same struggle.
been chasing the kids around the house in some of my winter running gear!
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Updated about 9 months ago
I think I'm pregnant
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Saturday, December 1, 2007 at 10:03am | Edit Note | Delete
I've been gaining 2 pounds per week since I stopped working, despite going to the gym quite regularly and making an effort to watch what I eat. This sucks. I apparently need to step up my exercise program. For me to see that kind of gain I need to be eating about 1000 calories per day more than I've been using. Time to start counting them again. That means that for me to lose that much again and get back down, I have to cut out the extra 1000 calories, and cut out another 2000 for a total of 2k. I have no idea what I can do to lose that. I've already cut out sugar, soda pops, sugary snacks, deep fried foods. Anyway, just sharing :)
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New Caribbean Province?
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Friday, November 30, 2007 at 3:07pm | Edit Note | Delete
Canada's Caribbean ambition
CBC News Online | April 16, 2004


Quebec City too cold in February? Fredericton frosty in December? Nunavut November not for you? Fear not, there may be help: at least one member of Parliament and a handful of interest groups are asking the Canadian government to annex a little slice of sun-splashed heaven: the Turks and Caicos, a Caribbean gem with an average wintertime temperature hovering between 28 and 29 C.

Canadian Alliance MP Peter Goldring (Edmonton Centre-East) thinks it's a wonderful idea. He's drafted a motion to ask the government to look into the issue, and plans to introduce it in the fall. "I think around 100 per cent of people (in Canada, and Turks and Caicos) like the idea," he told CBC News Online in July 2003.

Currently a British overseas territory, the Turks and Caicos (actually a grouping of 40 islands located 250 kilometres east of Cuba) have a history of being on the wish lists of Canadian politicians.

In 1974, NDP MP Max Saltsman tried to use a private member's bill to persuade the government to consider annexing the islands. He reasoned that there should be a warm-weather destination for Canadians to spend money on Canadian soil.

Unfortunately for sun-loving Snowbirds, the proposal was rejected.

In 1988, members of the Turks and Caicos government resolved to approach the Canadian government about establishing a special relationship. But alas, the idea of annexing a warm-weather island took back seat to the debate over free trade with the United States (something some Canadians consider annexation of a different variety).

Peter Goldring hopes this time around it will be different. "I have been talking with a number of members of the (Turks and Caicos) government," he told CBC News Online. "And I have indications from a couple of them that this is an issue they want to pursue."

Goldring says annexation could be mutually beneficial: Canada can provide good health care, economic ties, defence, and a steady flow of winter-weary Snowbirds; Turks and Caicos would give Canada a warm, friendly 11th province - a southern destination where the Loonie could land without breaking a wing.

Plus, says Goldring, tongue planted firmly in cheek, "Paul Martin would have a place to park his fleet."

PROS:

* Agreeable weather: 350 days per year of sunshine; average temperature: June-October 29-32 C; November-May 27-29 C
* Same time zone as many Canadians (Eastern Standard)
* Air Canada offers direct flights
* English is the official language
* Could be first island home to an NHL team

CONS:

* Hurricane-prone
* Currency is the U.S. dollar
* Would make plum hideout for wayward senators

DEPENDS ON YOUR PERSPECTIVE

* Controlled drugs and pornography not allowed through customs
* Public nudity is illegal
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Devil's Advocate
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Friday, November 30, 2007 at 12:50pm | Edit Note | Delete
Okay, so I'm a little wacky. I sometimes like to argue both sides of an argument just for fun. It doesn't neccessarily mean that I support one side of an argument or the other, but I think that open mindedness is key to a funtioning society. With that being said, just for fun I'm going to address this letter that's making the rounds on funwalls and e-mails these days, allegedly written by a nameless construction worker in Fort Mac. Here's the note;

THIS GUY MAKES A GOOD POINT
This was written by a construction worker in Fort MacMurray...he sure
makes a lot of sense to me!
Read on...

I work, they pay me. I pay my taxes and the government distributes my
taxes as it sees fit.
In order to earn that pay cheque, I work on a rig site for a Fort Mac
construction project, I am required to pass a random urine test, with
which I have no problem.
What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my
taxes to people who don't have to pass a urine test.
Shouldn't one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare cheque because I
have to pass one to earn it for them ... ?
Please understand - I have no problem with helping people get back on
their feet.

I do on the other hand have a problem with helping someone sit on their
arse drinking beer and smoking dope.
Could you imagine how much money the provinces would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance cheque ... ?

Please pass this along if you agree or simply delete if you don't.
Hope you will pass it along though, because something has to change in
this country, and soon!

So that was the note. First a note on my response. I spent 8 months working this summer, and in that time I worked more hours than most of you will work this year. Now I'm unemployed and sucking on the gov't teat. (Quite happily too, always nice to get paid for nothing) That being said I am actively seeking work, but I'm seeking desirable work , not some shit job freezing my arse off in the cold 1000 miles away when I could be home drinking beer and watching TV at night.
Now in all fairness, if it weren't for all the damn drug testing, a lot of these dope smoking beer drinkers could get jobs. How is it fair that one's leisure activities should have any bearing on whether or not they can stand in the cold for long hours on end? Just because one is inclined to partake of nature's bounty now and again does not necessarily make them unable to keep the steps on a rig ice-free.
Not to mention that chronic alcoholism and drug addiction are actually diseases. They are verifiable and quantifiable medical conditions. In many cases there are people that have never known what it is to be sober from the moment they were born. I worked a job back in the day that took me into a lot of homes in some of the most poverty stricken areas of our city. There are preschoolers passing joints around with their parents and families out there. And a lot more of them than you would think. Perhaps rather than stripping away lifelines to these people (like the social assistance programs which have helped countless people get out of the gutter), we should invest in more education and prevention strategies. Perhaps we could even go as far as reaching out to people in our communities and trying to help them out. The cycle of dependence on social programs starts young. People need hope not policing and further ostracization. They need opportunities, education, in some cases rehabilitation and training. I'd be interested to know how many rig workers got their tickets to work in the oilpatch through a government sponsored program. I think the numbers would be pretty high. I know a lot of them have also emigrated from areas where moving to the oilpatch was the only option to make a living other than welfare. A lot of the people they left in their communities don't have the option to move across the country. I've also worked construction, and I know that crews run off the people that they don't want. In some cases it's because of an accent, or the color of the skin, or some other minor personality trait, or maybe just because they're dressed badly.
Maybe a little more tolerance in the workplace and a willingness to train would help get a few more people off of welfare.
Consider this as well. There are men and women with addictions, mental illnesses etc, that have children. Our government doesn't like to take on these children. Welfare provides food and shelter to these kids. Drug test the parents and take welfare away if they fail. Think that will make them quit? God only knows where the children would be then. Now Again, for the sake of argument, there are a lot of factors that need to be considered here before we start giving momentum to a movement like 'drug test the poor'.

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The Picture Personality App...
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Wednesday, November 28, 2007 at 10:01pm | Edit Note | Delete
is no good. Not even close.
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What the Heck Was I Thinking???!
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Tuesday, November 27, 2007 at 10:13pm | Edit Note | Delete
I just got home from an interview for a restaurant manager job. On my way there I was actually excited about it. I've managed a few, and with the exception of one freaking nightmare it was always a lot of fun. I guess that's probably what I was thinking about on the way to the interview, was all the fun. But I got there and reality quickly set in. Even though I've stipulated in 2 screening interviews leading up to this that we're wasting our time unless they can insure a work/life balance, they started throwing the usual shit out there...'we try to keep it at 50 hours a week or less, but if it's busy you have to stay, we have meetings now and then...etc". They also informed me that they're looking for a chef, and they really started to push me towards it. I was actually getting a little excited about it too, remembering the good ol' days, how chicks used to dig it, how good I look in a set of whites, how much fun it can be when you're surfing the waves of a chaotic rush and coordinating the actions of your entire team as though you were the conductor of a symphony orchestra. We started talking about the food network and how every time I'm watching these cooking shows and restaurant makeover type shows I'm armchair quarterbacking it all. Well doggone it wouldn't you know it, I got PASSIONATE about the culinary arts right then and there.
I even told them when I was leaving that I might be interested in the chef position after all.
But then driving home, I remembered the other shit...pms-ey waitresses, cooks coming in drunk or on acid, that chaotic rush that lasted not 1, not 2, but 4 or 5 hours of living hell. I remembered that every once in a while you have some psychotic asshole that you have to fire and he decides to stalk you (or a whole team of psychotic assholes decide to stalk you!). I remembered coming home smelling like garlic or onions or barbecue sauce, I remembered that most of the guys working back there are half my age (although that's evened out by all the girls working there being half my age too). And I remembered the hours...no weekends with the kids, not after school with the kids, no supper with the kids, high blood pressure, no sunlight, physical mental exhaustion, ulcers, 'work-mares' (where you dream you're 20 minutes behind all night long), cleaning deep fryers, scraping grills, doing the hoods, cuts burns, being on your feet on a hard tile floor 16 hours sometimes. All of this for 15k less than the other jobs I'm interviewing for.
I think I"m going to have to call these guys back tomorrow and thank them for their time.
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Chain Letters and Self Preservation.
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Tuesday, November 27, 2007 at 8:53am | Edit Note | Delete
I might have made a note about this before, but there's another chain letter going around that I've received from about a dozen friends so far. Here's the thing about chain letters. If you don't forward them to at least 10 people, something horrible will happen to you. And those of you that are forwarding them to people are essentially saying that you would rather throw your friends into the line of fire than take one for the team. What we need to do is create a list of 11 people that we can all send these chain letters too, and then those people can then send it to each other, thus defusing the curse of the letter. This would be the socially responsible thing to do. If someone can think up a name for it and start the group, I'll join up. Something like the Hazardous Chain Letters Disposal Squad. It's the least we can do for mankind.
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Forecast.
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Tuesday, November 27, 2007 at 8:32am | Edit Note | Delete
So I have 'Weathereye', my weather network application for Saskatoon, and I have it open and it says it's -20 degrees right now. Then in really fine print right underneath that it says "feels like -31 degrees." What the f*&^ is that?! I was just outside, and to me it 'feels like a frozen freakin' purgatory". I hate winter.
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w00t
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Monday, November 26, 2007 at 4:40pm | Edit Note | Delete
I was talking to my wife about taking a job that I might hate but that would pay really well, and she said "Well I don't want you to take something you'll hate and then wind up resenting me for it." and I told her she didn't have to worry about that, the only thing that I would ever resent her for is living in freaking Saskatchewan instead of Vancouver. (She's scared of earthquakes, and because of this has never entertained the idea of living in the most beautiful place in the entire freaking world). I told her that I would be cursing her on my deathbed for every moment I spent choking on dust or scraping freaking ice off of a frozen car, but other than that I was completely happy. Lo and behold, today she agreed to move to Vancouver if I could land a good job and work out the logistics of getting there. I've fired off half a dozen freaking resumes this afternoon and have been doing some house hunting already. To think that I may one day wake again to a beatiful fog over False Creek, watch the freighters in the bay, enjoy a world that shuts down when it snows (like the world should be). Mark my words...6 months my friends, I will be in Vancouver again in 6 months.
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New endeavour
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Friday, November 23, 2007 at 11:31pm | Delete
The literary website that I've been talking about building is up. (I think I might even have finished it ahead of schedule, whaddaya think of that?) You can check it out here http://www.freewebs.com/redlightlit/index.htm

winter 07

Heart Attacks and Pessimism
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Thursday, December 6, 2007 at 11:45pm | Edit Note | Delete
I just read an article that says pessimists are more likely to suffer heart problems. Great, so now I'm going to have a heart attack.
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Flatland Grinder: The Purpose of Posting.
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Thursday, December 6, 2007 at 6:27pm | Delete
For me the purpose of posting is pretty simple. I like to improve my play. Posting my results regularly gives me a point of reference when things are going wrong and helps to identify losing patterns. However it's only helpful when I'm actually posting losing results and analyzing those losses. Currently I'm running pretty bad. I'm on a 6k hand losing streak out of 20k hands. That sounds a lot worse than it is. Essentially I'm down $100 bucks in cash games for the month. With the run I had upon first returning to the game this was expected. Expecting it doesn't make it a whole lot easier though. I try to make a habit of checking my play for mistakes regularly, but it's more of a scan and conscience check when things are going well. It takes an extended run like this for me to really take a close look at things. I found that about 90% of my biggest losses were losses incurred while chasing flushes and straights. There are profitable chases and there are unprofitable chases. Generally when chasing a flush or straight I want to see odds of 2-1 on the flop or 4-1 on the turn to continue. In almost all of the cases, accounting for about 80% of my losses, I had the odds I needed to continue. Unfortunately they were expensive chases, and I've had a long stream of them missing, but that's irrelevant. Poker is a game of numbers. In the long term, playing my draws the way that I have been, I can expect to show a profit. One can even use the old salesman's adage of every miss takes you one step closer to a success. It's purely mathematical and only a matter of time before the numbers shake out. That being said, there is another 20% or so of my recent losses that can't be accounted for by mathematical anomalies. My largest loss was suffered when I chased a flush even after a pair had appeared on the turn. This is a terrible situation to be in with a flush, and unfortunately I hit mine, only to lose to the obvious full house. There are little rules of thumb in no limit hold 'em, and one of the first you learn is to drop your draws when there is a pair on board. That was a clear cut mistake. My other losses were lousy beats. Set vs set, full house vs bigger full house, sets vs straight or flush draw and the opponent sucks out. I felt I needed to take a look at my losses though. J2 have a belief that long losing streaks are pretty common, but when they creep up to the 8k hands streak, it's time so see where you're going wrong. I also tried moving up limits as I've said, and the losses I took up there were higher as a percentage of my bankroll than the wins I've made playing lower limits to claw my way back up. But to put things in perspective, I'm still showing a beautiful 8bb/100 win rate at my $25 pl game. I'm negative EV at the higher limits, but I've only logged about 2k hands there, and I'm only about -3bb/100. I'm going to wait until I have my bankroll rebuilt to move back up though. Some good news to report. I beat out 200 others to take second in a freeroll and win $240 today. I was busted out with the better hand against my opponent too, so I'm very happy with my play. Basically the tourney win brings me positive ev for the month, but I don't like to count those wins as part of my play. Freeroll Tourneys I view more like a lottery win.
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Dammit I've gone too far!
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Wednesday, December 5, 2007 at 1:05pm | Edit Note | Delete
In an effort to combat the effects of reduced sunshine in my life I made a few changes around the house. I installed 100 watt light bulbs all over the place. It worked great! I've had increased energy levels, a more positive outlook on life, control over my appetite and I've found the will to stick with my fitness program without much struggle. HOWEVER, there is a problem. Last night I was up until about 3am, and when I finally went to bed I couldn't sleep. What was I doing until 3am? The stuff everybody does in the middle of the night; moving furniture around, reorganizing my CDs and DVDs, writing poetry, starting on my new novel. (This is going to be the one that makes me by God!) I overdosed on wattage and now my body clock is a mess.
Anyway, today I'm crashing. I went to the gym today, but I didn't run yet, and it is a running day. I need a nap though! So I'm going to go and have a SHORT nap, then get up and go for a good snowy run.
As for my new novel, I'm going to work on 2 pages a day, and more if I'm having fun. This one is about my hellacious summer in the sewers. More accurately it's about the group dynamics of blue collar crews, with subplots covering the plight of the artist, our conscious choices versus our subconscious strivings, substance abuse and the place of the classic work ethic in the modern age. My main effort at this stage is in character development, and I'm really raising the bar for myself in this area. My goal is to sketch the characters as quickly and as thoroughly as Henry Miller, the man I consider to be the penultimate master of literature. I might be asking for a kick in the teeth here, but if any of my writing friends feel like doing a character sketch of me I'd love the chance to gain some objectivity on myself. That being said, I'm going the hell to bed for an hour.
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Updated about 9 months ago

Celtic Advance.
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Tuesday, December 4, 2007 at 7:51pm | Edit Note | Delete
Oscar Cardozo scored two goals Tuesday to lead Benfica over Shakhtar 2-1 in the Champions League and send Celtic to the second round.
Celtic, which lost to AC Milan 1-0 in the other Group D match, finished second behind the Italian team with nine points, one less than Milan. Shakhtar, which could have advanced with a win, is now eliminated from European play because Benfica took third place with seven points and will drop into the UEFA Cup.
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A Special Type of Pretentious Asshole
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Monday, December 3, 2007 at 11:30pm | Edit Note | Delete
I'm talking about the James Joyce fan, and while I'm at it, James Joyce too.
I read a lot. And I can read just about anything. I'm downright voracious. I particularly enjoy literary fiction. I've made a point of reading the 'great books'. Some I've enjoyed, and others I haven't. I can usually plow through a book or 2 a month. 1000 pages a month is a walk in the park if I'm enjoying the book. But James f@#$% Joyce is killing me. Ulyssess, pfff! His novel Ulysses is close to 1000 pages about a day in the life of the dullest mofo you could ever imagine wandering around Dublin. There is a chapter written in the style of Mallory's works or the Welsh Mabinogi. Another chapter is written in Elizabethan english. Some are written in Irish slang. The chapter I'm currently reading is more than 100 pages of complete nonsense written in the form of a play. I'll read a passage about Bloom (the main character) talking to a whore, and they'll perhaps swap 2 lines. Then I'll flip over to the guidebook to see if I missed some pearl in the exchange, and there will be 10 freaking paragraphs about those 2 lines! The whore shares a name that's derived from Bloom's grandmother's name, and of course his grandmother represents Ireland, and so Bloom flirting with the idea of violating a whore with a vaguely similar name to a character mentioned 500 pages earlier is symbolic of Joyce's own feelings towards Ireland. I have seriously been reading this book (and a guide book to it, and The Odyssey on which it's based) for 9 years now. 9 YEARS! But the thing is, I'm not going to let it beat me. There are all of these pretentious Ulyssess fans around that love to prattle on about what a great piece of work it is, and if you look at them and say "Ulysses sucks" they get all pedantic and condescending and generally accuse you of not having read enough of it. Well screw them. I hate Joyce, and in order to earn the right to publicly hate Joyce I'm going to read AND understand Ulysses, and then tear it to pieces. I have 150 pages left and then I can say with authority that Ulysses blowz and

James Joyce is a l0xer.
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Updated about 9 months ago
A Reason to Get Out of Bed in the Morning.
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Monday, December 3, 2007 at 3:41pm | Edit Note | Delete
I have a 2 and a half year old son. I've written about him before, and of his penchant for crawling into bed with Mommy and I in the middle of the night. Apparently he's been learning Pilates or something, because he does it all night long in his sleep. It starts with a big stretch, one foot in the air, the other pressing into my solar plexus. This is quickly followed by a full rotation on one knee, generally a knee that he's somehow managed to jam into my trachea. Anyway, he crawled into our bed again the other night, and I managed to sleep through it. I felt someone tickling my chin and in my sleep thought it might be Janet perhaps trying to get fresh. When I opened my eyes it was his stinky little foot going for my throat again, but thankfully my windpipe was just out of his reach. There was only about 2 and a half hours of sleep time left, and rather than spend that time trying to force him back into his bed, I figured I could tough it out. I was wrong. This kid has footwork that makes DeLaHoya look slow. I was pummeled all night. Soon it was morning and time to get up, and I was miserable, I mean MIZZZZERRRRRABLE. I got up, threw on a pair of ugly orange sleep pants and matching ugly orange t-shirt, got the kids their breakfast, and had a bowl of raisin bran myself. It was the last of the box, full of crumbs, and I could feel a bunch of the tiny bran flake crumbs sticking to my teeth, but I didn't care. I was TIRED. Instead of getting dressed or cleaning myself up I laid down on the couch in my pjs to get some more sleep. I was so tired that I didn't even bother going back upstairs to get a blanket, I just grabbed my parka and put it on and went to sleep. (Incidentally sleeping in a parka is very comfy!) It was about an hour later...I was in the middle of a pleasant dream of some sort and all cuddly warm when something woke me up. I raised my head, wiping the sleep drool off of my cheek. Someone was knocking at the door. I got up and rushed to the door to answer it. Standing in front of me was this really hot blonde lady, professional looking, classy, nice bright smile. Standing before her was a disheveled man in pajamas and a parka, raisin bran in his teeth and residual drool on his cheek andfrizzy sleep hair matted down on one side and poking out everywhere on the other.
"Hi, I'm your new neighbour!" she smiled. "I was out starting my car and noticed that you left a set of keys hanging out of the lock on your minivan. Just thought I should let you know before someone drives away with it."
I just stood there blinking for a minute, incredulous that I would allow myself to make this sort of first impression on a new neighbor. She then told me her name, and I told her mine and I tried to explain about the boy keeping me up all night, but I think I just looked crazier.
When Janet came home I told her about it and told her that she'd have to go over and explain that I'm usually a pretty clean cut, respectable looking guy. She was laughing until her belly hurt. She kept saying it was even funnier because I'd been so hateful and miserable that morning. I told her that I'd look really stupid if I went over there looking good trying to explain that I usually brush my teeth and my hair and shave and don't wear parkas in the house...she'd think I was hitting on her or something. Anyway, it's given me a reason to get out of bed and get cleaned up first thing even though I don't have to.
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Updated about 9 months ago

Flatland Grinder: Haven't Been Playing.
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Sunday, December 2, 2007 at 11:15pm | Delete
That about says it all. The last entry mentioned moving up limits, and that didn't go so well. I lost about 6 buy ins which is never fun when you're trying to move up. I've logged about 7 losing sessions in a row now, which was bound to happen as I ran about 2 weeks with nothing but wins. I would love to think that I'm above this, and I would love to be above this but I'm not. When I start losing I lose all desire to play. I'm not a gambling man. I find parting with money very difficult, and I tend to step back when I'm losing and take a few days off. Taking a few days off turned into taking a week off this time though. My kids were off school on Friday, so I didn't play at all then, and throughout the earlier part of last week I might have put in about 1000 hands. In all I finished November about 5000 hands short of my goal, or at 75% of my target. Part of the problem is also that I'm finding poker to be a lot more boring than I remembered it. I'm actually looking for a job, and pursuing poker more as a past time than a career for now I think.
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Walkin' (and Drivin' Doin' 360s) In a Winter Wonderland
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Sunday, December 2, 2007 at 10:52pm | Edit Note | Delete
I watched the news tonight and had 2 really terrific memories come back to me. The Lower Mainland is apparently being pummelled by a nasty winter storm. Lots of snow. We here on the prairies have a tendency to chuckle when we see life come to a stop over a little snow in these places. But in Vancouver they don't have a budget for snow removal. They don't have a fleet of trucks that can plow and sand every major thoroughfare within an hour of la neige. A lot of people don't even have all season radials on their cars. They don't know how to drive in snow because they have never had to drive in snow. So naturally it shuts things down. But here's the thing. When everything shuts down in the Lower Mainland, it's a BLAST!
Memory 1:
I was living in Langley and it was snowing like all Hell. They closed the schools that morning, and gradually throughout the day most businesses decided to close as well. I went for a walk and there were no vehicles on the road with the exception of joyriding teenagers and 4X4 heroes trying to justify their SUVs. Later that night I was cocooning with Debra when Mike called us up to go for a drive. He was giggling like a schoolgirl when he picked us up in this huge late 70s Monte Carlo (or something like that) that he had. We went sliding around on the streets, doing 180s here and 360s there, until we got to the Willowbrook Mall parking lot, where I witnessed what I still consider to be one of the most beautiful spontaneous examples of the human spirit that I've ever seen. At the top of the parking lot, the fire lane close to the actual mall building, there were perhaps a dozen cars lined up. The car at the front of the line would wait it's turn, and when the parking lot was clear, they would floor it into the middle of the parking lot where they would try to get in as many spins as stylistically as they could. Then the next car would go, and so on. Just for fun I'd brought along a Tchaikovsky tape with the Nutcracker Suite and Swan Lake and a bunch of other stuff on it. We plugged in Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies and went pirouetting out over the ice at about 60 km/hr spinning around and around on the ice. Cars continued flocking into the parking lot, and it was as much fun watching people trying out different moves as it was to go careening across half the parking lot to the music of a Russian Ballet.
At the other side of the mall, a few rougher looking cars were accelerating towards shopping carts, where they would then go into a power slide and bat the cart with the rear quarter panels of their vehicles. There was one "I Can't Believe It's Not Wood" panelled station wagon that really managed to pull some serious g's.
The other great memory, was when I was living in the West End of Van. I was in the bath when Debra burst in with mittens and a scarf on practically jumping up and down and asked if I wanted to go out and play. There's a real enthusiasm to snowfall when you don't get it all the time. So off we went, down near False Creek somewhere, and we made snowmen. Debra made a nice traditional snowman if I remember right. I made more of a sculpture on the human condition: a snowmother laying on ground with her legs spread, giving birth to a snow baby. She had her back propped up against her own tombstone. And I remember being really enthralled by the fact that the medium for this piece on the transitory nature of existence was so transitory itself. Debra rolled her eyes a lot. But we stayed out for a long time. And we played in the snow.
Funny how my best memories of snow took place in the winters that I had the least of it.
In this note: Mike Dohm (notes), Debra Williams (notes)
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For the Lady in Your Life
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Sunday, December 2, 2007 at 8:47am | Edit Note | Delete
Taser is now making designer models aimed at women. I don't mean that they are actually aiming tasers at women and are going to tase them, I mean they are targeting women...well that's no better is it? MARKETED to women: tasers MARKETED to female consumers. Available in colors to match your iPod. Just don't get the 2 confused. http://www.taser.com/products/consumers/Pages/C2.aspx
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Updated about 9 months ago

A Step Towards Flakiness. (or Flakierness In My Case)
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Sunday, December 2, 2007 at 8:24am | Edit Note | Delete
Janet studied Nutrition at the U of S, which involved a lot of science naturally. Consequently she's highly skeptical about anything that hasn't been thoroughly tested and proven, most notably naturopathic stuff. What bothers her is that a lot of people with illnesses that can blow into something fatal or crippling if not treated forego medical treatment and instead eat a bulb of garlic or snort Mercury or get their ears candled or something like that. She will often cite study after study on how such and such an herb doesn't do a freakin' thing. However a week and a half ago she got what must have been her 19th case of strep throat in the past 2 years. It turns out that one of the women she works with is married to the head of infectious disease control at the U of S. This woman told her husband about our family's strep situation, and asked Janet to go to a clinic, get a strep test and have it sent to him so he could run all kinds of CDC tests on it. The results showed that the strep we've been getting is resistant to a few different antibiotics.
Yesterday she mentioned that she thought she might be getting it again, and I felt it coming on too. So I took the advice of a friend and bought some colloidal silver, and some Oil of Oregano, both purported to fight everything from the common cold to cancer. I've been taking both of them, and Janet has only been taking the silver. Here's an interesting fact about colloidal silver. Results of one recent study showed that when applied to an entire spectrum of common bacteria and viruses in the lab it didn't do jack shit. The other interesting fact; hospitals use the colloidal silver mixture in the eyes of newborns to prevent infection, and it works. Until 1938 when antibiotics really took off, colloidal silver was actually prescribed for most infections. It's absolutely harmless. Well, okay, I guess I can't say that it's completely harmless. If you take too much (and nobody knows how much is too much) it can cause an irreversible condition called argyria, which turns you bluish grey forever. Apparently silver particles in the skin react like film to sunlight and you essentially 'develop' into a negative. Except for the discoloration, the condition is otherwise harmless. For me the jury is still out on this one. You can find people all over the net that say it was the only thing that helped them after years of frustration with doctors. You can also find sites like Quackwatch http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/PhonyAds/silverad.html which offer a different story. In my case, I'm going to give it shot. But only for a week or 2. I don't need to get shiny.

Early December 07

w00t!
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Tuesday, December 11, 2007 at 5:41pm | Edit Note | Delete
Expect cheers among hardcore online game enthusiasts when they learn Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year. Or, more accurately, expect them to "w00t."

"W00t," a hybrid of letters and numbers used by gamers as an exclamation of happiness, topped all other terms in the Springfield dictionary publisher's online poll for the word that best sums up 2007.

Merriam-Webster's president, John Morse, said "w00t" was an ideal choice because it blends whimsy and new technology.

"It shows a really interesting thing that's going on in language. It's a term that's arrived only because we're now communicating electronically with each other," Morse said.

Gamers commonly substitute numbers and symbols for the letters they resemble, Morse says, creating what they call "l33t speak" - that's "leet" when spoken, short for "elite" to the rest of the world.

For technophobes, the word also is familiar from the 1990 movie "Pretty Woman," in which Julia Roberts startles her date's upper-crust friends with a hearty "Woot, woot, woot!" at a polo match.

The 2006 pick, "truthiness," also has its roots in pop culture. It was popularized by Comedy Central satirical political commentator Stephen Colbert.

Some also-rans in the 2007 list: the use of "facebook" as a verb to signify using the website by that name; nuanced terms such as "quixotic" and "hypocrite"; and "blamestorm," a meeting in which mistakes are aired, fingers are pointed and much discomfort is had by all.
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People, You Are on the Internet, Look It Up.
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Tuesday, December 11, 2007 at 5:29pm | Edit Note | Delete
Just about every heinous warning, horror story and tragic tale making the rounds as a forward on the net is a hoax. It takes about 1 minute to type the subject into a search engine and find this out. From missing kids to the latest Progesterex hoax, the truth is just a click away. Heard about Progesterex ladies? It's the date rape drug that doesn't exist. From Wikipedia:

Progesterex is a fictitious date rape drug. It is part of a hoax that began to circulate in 1999 via e-mail on the internet. No actual drug by this name or even with these properties exists, and no such incident has ever been documented or confirmed.

Typical contents of the e-mail hoax are as follows, although different versions tend to turn up over time:

"A woman at a nightclub called _______ on Saturday night was taken by 5 men, who according to hospital and police reports, gang raped her before dumping her. Unable to remember the events of the evening, tests later confirmed the repeat rapes along with traces of Rohypnol in her blood and Progesterex, essentially a small sterilization pill. The drug is now being used by rapists at parties to rape AND sterilize their victims. Progesterex is available to vets to sterilize large animals. Progesterex is being used together with Rohypnol, the date rape drug. As with Rohypnol, all they have to do is drop it into the girl's drink. The girl can't remember a thing the next morning, of all that had taken place the night before. Progesterex, which dissolves in drinks just as easily, is such that the victim doesn't conceive from the rape and the rapist needn't worry about having a paternity test identifying him months later. The drug's effects ARE NOT TEMPORARY - Progesterex was designed to sterilize horses. Any female who takes it WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO CONCEIVE.. The weasels can get this drug from anyone who is in the vet school or any university. It's that easy, and Progesterex is about to break out big on campuses everywhere. Believe it or not, there are even sites on the Internet telling people how to use it. Please forward this to everyone you know, especially girls. Be careful when you're out and don't leave your drink unattended. Please make the effort to forward this on to all you know... Guys, please inform all your female friends and relatives."

A version of this hoax has also recently made the rounds via bulletins on MySpace.com (July 2006). It made it to Bebo in September-October 2006.

A version of this hoax has been seen on Facebook, in the form of a group named "Heads Up Ladies", and sports the same story as listed above.

According to the Spanish language website VSAntirus.com at least two versions in Spanish have made the rounds since 2001 as well.

Furthermore, no sterilization pill for horses exists. Sterilization is done via gelding of stallions. Mares are usually left unaltered.

In addition to this vet students do not have access to drugs. Drugs can only be prescribed by a qualified, registered veterinarian (Member of the Royal Collage of Veterinary Surgeons - MRCVS - in UK).

On 18 April 2006 UK Member of Parliament Lynne Featherstone submitted a Written Question to the Home Secretary on whether the Home Office had calculated the number of date rape incidences that had been connected with Progesterex. Home Office Minister Paul Goggins replied that the drug did not exist.
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Flatland Grinder: Not All Sunshine and Smiles
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Tuesday, December 11, 2007 at 4:23pm | Delete
"We Germans aren't all sunshine and smiles you know." -German guy on the Simpsons.
Well neither are poker players. Particularly when we're losing our shirts. I have said it before that these posts are valueless if all I ever do is report my wins. I've been on a terrible losing streak. I've seen my 20k hand win rate chopped in half by my last 3000 hands. It's been brutal. My flushes don't seem to be holding up, my sets always run into trouble and I don't even want to talk about my pairs. This is why they call it gambling. Had this bad streak hit me in my first weeks back I would have lost my entire deposit. I've dropped about 10-15 buy ins, which is pretty damn extreme. I'm still plus ev, but instead of winning 10bb/100 I'm down to just over 4bb/100. That's a good win rate at any limit, and my losses are just the reckoning of the hot run I had initially. And that's me rationalizing. Where are the rest of the losses coming from? The site I've been playing at has a pretty limited pool of players. I play 6 tables or more at a time, and often I'll have 5 or 6 of the same people at every table. My HUD tells me in a lot of cases that I have a 3k hand history on these players. Consequently, any of them that might be using HUD will have a similar history on me. They know that I'm only raising hands like Broadway pairs AK and AQ most of the time. They know that I"m only calling raises with pairs and AK or better. So when I'm showing strength, they know to get the hell out of the way. This has meant that it's getting more and more difficult to get paid off, and that my opposition is playing a higher quality hand when coming into a pot with me. In a live game I'd be mixing up my play, but that's just not feasible online. Online your best bet is to play it straight. So today I took another beating at the tables and decided that I needed to change sites. Checking over my play, I'm not making a lot of mistakes. But I'm failing to get paid off when I get a hand. I switched over to pokerstars (no bonus though so it's a $2/hr pay cut) and instantly I started making money. It was great because it illustrated that my theory was right. I have been playing well, just having a tough time finding action. Now that I'm new to the tables, I'm cleaning up again. I think I'm going to stick with Stars now. No bonus is better than no action, plus there is a lot more room to move up through the limits as my bankroll grows. Thanks for listening.
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Lies, All Lies!
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Tuesday, December 11, 2007 at 1:05pm | Edit Note | Delete
I have recently discovered what is perhaps the greatest snow job of all time. I'm talking about the myth of bears hibernating. That's right I said 'myth'. They don't hibernate, they 'estivate'. While similar to hibernation it has a few differences. For instance, the bear remains somewhat active during this long period of estivation. Estivation is a hypometabolic state characterized by decreased metabolism, increased dormancy and a general malaise. Not a whole lot different than Seasonal Affective Disorder if you ask me. I was unable to find any research on the similarities between the 2, but I'm pretty sure SAD is nothing more than human estivation. It tends to occur only in northern climates and is easily remedied by increased exposure to light. To heck with popular opinion. I don't have SAD, I'm estivating.
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You know there's a problem when...
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Monday, December 10, 2007 at 9:21pm | Edit Note | Delete
whether or not to torture people is a divisive political issue. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video_log/2007/12/prominent_republicans_support.html
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Judy and David's Boombox
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Monday, December 10, 2007 at 8:36am | Edit Note | Delete
Parents, you know who I'm talking about. Somebody needs to talk to Judy and David. Somebody needs to tell them that they're autumns. Failing that someone at least needs to suggest that they have their colors done. That's all I have to say about Judy and David.
The red and yellow thing is just not working.
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I'm not a big sports fan...
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Sunday, December 9, 2007 at 9:02pm | Edit Note | Delete
couldn't care less about the Riders or hockey or anything like that. But I'll tell you what does get me worked up with a fanatical fervor. Politics. I like to speculate. And right now there is a lot going on in the Excited States of America as both parties attempt to choose new presidential candidates. I'm particularly interested in the race for leader of the Democrats. Mainly because I put 5 bucks on it! I put 5 bucks on Obama being the next president of the USA, even though current polling indicates that he is far behind Hillary. I had to make my bet now or I wouldn't get any action when he tears into the lead. Here's my logic. The USA might as well change it's name to the USTV because they seem to put a lot of faith in their media personalities down there. Recently the most incorruptible human being in all their land has come out swinging for Obama, and she just might be able to mobilize millions of voters. I'm talkin' about the Big O, Oprah Winfrey. She's drawing tens of thousands of people to Obama rallies, and they're signing up everyone they meet. I see this Obama thing snowballing; Oprah makes people cry and love. Now, my bet wasn't that Obama would just win the democrat nomination, but that he would be the next president. Here's my thinking on that one. And it gets conspiracy theory-ish.
I don't think the Republicans want to win the next election. I think they want to lose. The next government will have to start paying for the Bush wars, and that won't be pretty. The health care crisis will escalate, retaliations for Bush's aggression will become more frequent. It's going to be an ugly time to be president, and even though it's all due to the neocons, whoever is in power will take the blame. Hence the Reps. wanting out, and giving the election to the Dems. That's my early take on 08.
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Updated about 9 months ago

Case in Point
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Sunday, December 9, 2007 at 10:49am | Edit Note | Delete
Grocery Store Goofs With Hanukkah Ham Ad

NEW YORK (AP) — This was REALLY not kosher.

A grocery store in Manhattan made a food faux pas, advertising hams as "Delicious for Chanukah."

Chanukah — an alternate spelling for Hanukkah — is the eight-day Jewish holiday that began Tuesday evening, and hams — as well as pork and other products from pigs — can't be eaten under Jewish dietary laws.

A woman who saw the mistake over the weekend at the Balducci's store on 14th Street took pictures of the signs and posted them on her blog.

Jennifer Barton, director of marketing, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the signs were changed as soon as the error was noted.

She issued an apology on the company Web site, saying the company would be reviewing its employee training.
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Irked.
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Sunday, December 9, 2007 at 10:42am | Edit Note | Delete
There was a documentary on CBC Newsworld yesterday about Jesus (Christ) called The Pagan Christ. The CBC website describes it thusly:
"So, what if it could be proven that Jesus never existed? What if there was evidence that every word of the New Testament – the cornerstone of Christianity – is based on myth and metaphor?
Based on Tom Harpur’s national bestseller, The Pagan Christ examines these very questions. During his research, Harpur discovered that the New Testament is wholly based on Egyptian mythology, that Jesus Christ never lived, and that – indeed – the text was always meant to be read allegorically. It was the founders of the Church who duped the world into taking a literal approach to the scriptures. And, according to Harpur, this was their fatal error – and the very reason Christianity is struggling today."
My problem isn't that the CBC is turning a critical eye to Christianity. I think it's important for religion to be scrutinized. I do question their timing however. A few weeks before what is the most significant Christian holiday. That in itself isn't quite what bothers me either. I think what bothers me first and foremost is that there is a strong double standard in the media.
For instance, I highly doubt that they would air a documentary claiming that Mohammed was a fictitious character during Ramadan (or at any other time for that matter!). Would they run a special report on muslim fanatics murdering absent minded cartoonists that doodle pictures of the Prophet, or calls for the execution of school teachers who allow their children to name their teddy bear after him during an Islamic holiday ? Probably not. Would they feature a documentary about the abscence of God in Israeli politics during Hanukkah? Again I doubt it. Just irks me, that's all.
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A Rose by Any Other Name.
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Sunday, December 9, 2007 at 1:33am | Edit Note | Delete
See this is what happens when your toddler owns the night. Yeah, I've been kicked awake again. But that's okay. It gives me an opportunity to address an issue that I think is important.
It's come to my attention that a lot of people (and I'm not singling any one out here, cuz EVERYBODY does it) like to send funwall material that consists of a drawing of a rose and then the caption "This is a friendship rose.." etc.
First of all, if it were in fact a rose (and it's not, it's a cheap tawdry .bmp), but if it were a rose it's the wrong color for friendship. The roses that I've been getting as alleged friendship roses are generally red, which is an "I want in your pants" rose.
I know it probably doesn't bother anyone else that this rose isn't the right color (or even an organism for that matter), but it bothers me. I imagine a 15 year old little computer geek in his school's computer lab with his equally geeky 14 year old girlfriend writing up the original of this piece, then giggling over how many people they can sucker into sending the wrong colored rose. I like to think it was a joke to make monkeys of us all, and not that it was an oversight on the part of the creator and the 82million facebook users that have since forwarded it. Sigh. There. Now I can probably get back to sleep.

Dec 07

Blood Money.

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Sunday, December 16, 2007 at 12:49pm | Edit Note | Delete
I worked in Alberta doing construction this summer. There was a labor crisis there due to the incredible demand for oil created by the various western backed wars around the world, most notably Iraq. This in turn created a lot of opportunity for high paying construction work, and I made out like a bandit. But I don't kid myself. I don't look at the economy and kid myself into believing that our wealth comes without consequence. I don't for a second believe that it was smart fiscal management by our politicians that created the surge in demand for our resources. I know that it's been war. And I know that in addition to death and destruction, war also breeds dollars. So perhaps I shouldn't have protested this Iraq war back when Canada was yet to decide whether or not to join. How was I supposed to know that I'd have the best Christmas ever in the economic boom that followed? Why I'm even thinking of buying not one but TWO LCD monitors for my PC, even though the one I have works just fine. That or another laptop, I haven't decided yet. The point is that maybe I've been looking at this whole issue of American Imperialism all wrong. Okay fine, so a few civil wars in distant countries start because of western meddling and kill hundreds of thousands of civillians including children like mine. Wouldn't that sort of thing 'probably' happen anyway? Besides, my kid is getting the Mega Rig Shark Ship for Christmas this year! How cool is that?
THE MEGA RIG SHARK SHIP
With this toy my boy can explore for deep sea oil deposits off the coast of countries where we have recently installed western friendly democracies, or he can pretend to lurk offshore using the latest in surveillance technology for gathering false intelligence to justify an invasion.
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More of the Stuff That Keeps Me Up At Night.
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Saturday, December 15, 2007 at 1:09am | Edit Note | Delete
It started with a craving for Rice Krispies, and then an attempt to express that craving in French to a friend. Like most Canadians my French is limited to mispronunciations of breakfast foods and condiments; flocons de mais, moutarde, riz croustillant. Immediately I found myself wondering what Snap! Crackle! Pop! were called in French. I remembered having seen it at some time in my life, and thinking that it wasn't very onomatopoeic, and I commented to my friend that they must not use a lot of onomatopoeia in France. She said that she was sure they did, and was sure that Snap! Crackle! and Pop! in French sounded just like riz croustillant croustillanting. So I have since looked it up, and once again I'm bringing you information that you will find nowhere else. You'll be able to share with all and sundry, and basically be the life of the next party you go to. Not only did I find the French translation, I found the Swedish, German, Dutch, Zulu and others, and I'm going to list them here for your reading pleasure.
* English: "Snap! Crackle! Pop!"
* Canadian French: "Cric! Crac! Croc!"
* Spanish: "Pim! Pum! Pam!"
* German: "Knisper! Knasper! Knusper!"
* Swedish: "Piff! Paff! Puff!"
* Finnish: “Riks! Raks! Poks!”
* Dutch: Pif! Paf! Pof!
* Afrikaans: Knap! Knaetter! Knak!
* Zulu: “Click! Click! Nagunga!”(Postalveolar clicking)
My favorite is the German. "Knisper! Knasper! Knusper!" Like everything in German it sounds like an Officer of the SS with a frothing dog snapping and crackling at the end of a chain link leash and pointing a sub-machine gun and ordering a family into a railcar. (Oh will we never forgive the Germans??! What about all the good stuff Hitler did?)
The Zulu translation is also fun and I imagine it's not entirely dissimilar to what the Klingon translation would be. In fact the zulu version was so intriguing that I had to look up 'postalveolar clicking" to see what the heck it meant, and I'm sure you're wondering too. Well wonder no more!
Clicks occur in all three Khoisan language families of southern Africa, where they may be the most numerous consonants. To a lesser extent they are found in several neighbouring Bantu languages which borrowed them from Khoisan. The most famous of these are the languages of the Nguni cluster (Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi, Phuthi, Ndebele, and the Zulu-based pidgin Fanagalo); the other Bantu click languages are Sesotho, Yeyi of Botswana, and the Mbukushu, Kwangali, and Gciriku languages of the Caprivi Strip.
Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, placing them a bit further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate (the place of articulation for palatal consonants).
Now there you go! You learned something didn't you!

In Australia, the characters keep their names, but the cereal is known as Rice Bubbles.
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Updated about 9 months ago


Barack Obama
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Saturday, December 15, 2007 at 12:12am | Edit Note | Delete
is moving into the lead for the Democratic Party nomination, not so much under the steam of his own charisma and platforms, but more from the smoke of Hillary Clinton's crash and burns as she tries to get ugly. On Dec. 2nd she announced "Well, now the fun part starts," she said. "We're going to start drawing a contrast, because I want every Iowan to have accurate information when they make their decisions." The question became whether Obama was tough enough to stand up to it. His demolition of her at the Des Moines Register debate suggests he is. The "fun part" for the rest of us will be watching the bitter infighting among the Clintonistas as the wheels come off Hillary's campaign.
Since then her negative campaign has at times been ridiculous. Only one day after firing an advisor for the Clinton campaign over 'accidentally' bringing Obama's well documented drug use into the campaign, Hillary is boasting of her own drug free past. Obama, as a role model that has spoken and speaks to tens of thousands of children regularly about the power of positive change has proven above reproach on this issue.
Then there's the kindergarten issue. Obama mentions not having had a lifelong desire to be president. The Clinton campaign travels to Indonesia, where they speak to his kindergarten teacher and unearth a note expressing the 5 year old Obama's ambition to one day be president of the United States. This too they try to turn against Obama.
So now Clinton is stumbling, her campaign crashing in pieces all around her. Obama is officially leading in 2 out of the 3 crucial key primaries, although Hillary still leads nationally. That's a lead that will disappear even faster than her Iowa advantage. She's only leading nationally because the rest of the country hasn't had the exposure to the 2 campaigns that Iowa and New Hampshire have had. Once people begin to see what the voters in the primaries have seen, Obama will be a shoe in, and I am half way to winning 5 bucks.
There is one thing that concerns me however...well, 2 things. The first thing that concerns me is that John Edwards is being too quiet. It's as though he knows something we don't. He reminds me of Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France, reaching one of the dreaded mountain routes. Lance dropped back at this crucial point in the race, appearing to slow and tire. This fired up the team behind him (I believe it was the French, although I don't recall). They gave it all they had, poured on the juice and went rocketing past Armstrong on the brutal uphill. Their morale was sky high, their victory all but assured, their hopes so optimistic that the mere thought of losing was laughable. It was then that Armstrong decided to pass. As he left them spent, exhausted and demoralized at the top of the hill he went on to victory with unparalleled style and finesse.
I worry that this is what Edwards has up his sleeve, an 11th hour dash that will be insurmountable for his opponents.
The other thing that concerns me is that William Kristol and the Weekly Standard seem to be pulling hard for Obama. And Kristol does not traditionally pull for Democrats; period. We're talking about one of the prime architects of the neo-conservative movement in America. This man is as much behind America going to war as Bush or Cheney. He's one of the founding members and leading thinkers of the Project for The New American Century (PNAC), a group devoted to American military imperialism. If he's rooting for Obama, it's either because he likes him, or because he can destroy him more efficiently. Either case is a terrifying thought, and if either of them are true, I'd be willing to lose my 5 bucks if it would change anything. Thanks for letting me ramble.
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Updated about 9 months ago


Misty Watercolored Memories.
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Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 10:12pm | Edit Note | Delete
First, a celebratory note. I just finished one of the most brutally unreadable and unintelligible chapters of Joyce's Ulysses, and I'm now into a chapter that's pleasantly lucid, coherent and fully comprehensible. I fucking hate Joyce, but I've heard this novel rated as the greatest novel of all time, and I set myself the task of reading as many of the 'great' books as I possibly can. This one has taken me close to 9 years so far, and every page has been a torment and a trial. Enough Joyce bashing.
The chapter I'm currently reading concerns 2 of the main characters venturing into one of Dublin's seedier waterfront areas. It reminded me of my hometown, and that got me reminiscing in a melancholy manner about my hometown in Scotland, and the strangely surreal other life I lived there. From the time I was 14 until 15 I lived in Ayr, Scotland, a 'resort' satellite of Glasgow. Residents of Ayr say that they are from Glasgow, much as residents of Richmond say they are from Vancouver, or people in St. Albert say they're from Edmonton. For all intents and purposes Ayr is Glasgow.
Anyway Joyce was talking about the waterfront, and I spent a lot of time at the waterfront. My friends and I used to wander the streets at night in search of Catholics to terrorize and in fear of Catholics in greater numbers. I lived in a somewhat deeper state of fear, the fear that my Protestant friends would find out that I was technically a Catholic (although I'd hardly spent a day in church except for weddings and funerals).
Anyway generally we'd wander a similar route each night, one that was safe enough that we were never in any real danger from any real enemies, yet edgy enough that we still felt mean and bold.
We weren't good kids, and to be honest, in my experience, Glasgow doesn't produce many of what you would traditionally call good kids. It's an industrial city (or was when I was there), torn by sectarian violence and poverty, essentially a factory for juvenile delinquents. Yet the same factors that roughen the edges of a person's character also tend to bring out a certain poetic appreciation of life's brighter moments.
Anyway, my memories of the waterfront, which have me lost in an ebbing tide of cold north atlantic reverie are as follows.
I remember a small chip shop located in a narrow street, nestled between a bookies and a snooker parlor, and we'd mosh (when it was still called slam dancing) around the store making the girl at the counter laugh, while a few of our friends looted beer out of the back. Then down the street we'd go.
Some nights we'd hop the wall of the scrap metal yard if we saw a particularly lucrative piece of scrap and toss it over the side. The next day we'd run it down to another scrap yard in Kilmarnock and make a little cash to finance our misadventures. We'd go down to the harbor, down by the wharf and try to bum cigarettes off of the Portugese and Spanish truck drivers that were there buying and selling fish; holding up our coins and asking "Fumare?" while making a smoking motion. And I remember one cold November night in particular. Guy Fox Day, when all over Britain they have bonfires to mark the anniversary of failed bomber Guy Fox's attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament. They had the big bonfire down on the beach, but it was a bitterly cold night with a ferocious wind coming in over the sea. I had a bottle of hard liquor of some kind, and couldn't handle my liquor very well. Somehow I got separated from my friends, and I stood drunk and freezing on the beach, staring out across the ocean wishing I could swim home to Canada.
Anyway, it's bizarre for me because it's like a different life. I have no connection with that other life, no friend to call up and say 'remember when', no familiar street to walk down and reminisce. It's as if I dreamt it all.

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Novosibirsk: There Are Worse Places.
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Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 8:15pm | Edit Note | Delete
Novosibirsk is one of the biggest cities in Russia and considered the third largest city after Moscow and St.Petersburg and the biggest one behind the Ural. It's situated right in the middle of Russia. The City lies on both banks of the Ob river.The day when construction of the new bridge across the Ob river was started is considered to be the day when Novosibirsk was founded.
In 1993 Novosibirsk celebrated it's 100th anniversary and it's growing rate is so high,that we can call the city the Russian Chicago.
Travelers coming from the countries with mild climate may find Novosibirsk’s winter tough but it will not be extraordinary for those from northern countries. Sometimes, bitter cold may hold for some days, but these temperatures of -40 C and lower do not occur every year. In contrast, springtime is not the best season for visiting Novosibirsk. Streets and roads become dirty because of mud and melting snow, and weather is still cold.
"Hello guys! My name is Victor Tolokonsky. I'm a governor around these parts. I'm gonna give you some brief information on what Novosibirsk is all about." (That's an actual picture and quote from the Novosibirsk website) http://www.allsiberia.com/novosibirsk/Geninfo.htm
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Updated about 9 months ago


How Cold Is It?
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Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 8:20am | Edit Note | Delete
First off, I love Saskatchewan and Saskatoon in particular, but I HATE the weather here. I belong in the tropics. I've been working on convincing my wife that the whole family belongs in the tropics. My latest piece of propaganda is this. I've always said that Saskatchewan has the worst weather on Earth. And I've mentioned that when people talk about cold and misery, they always use the analogy of Siberia. In all fairness there are parts of Siberia that get a little bit colder. There is a town in the extreme northern part of Siberia that once recorded a low of -71. But again in all fairness, most of the population of Siberial lives closer to the trans Siberian railroad. So if we are to compare the populated areas of Siberia with the populated areas of Saskatchewan we get an interesting result. Here's the wiki on Siberia's climate:

The climate of Siberia varies dramatically. On the north coast, north of the Arctic Circle, there is just a very short (about one-month-long) summer.
Almost all the population lives in the south, along the Trans-Siberian railroad. The climate here is continental subarctic, with the annual average temperature about 0 °C (32 °F) and roughly −15 °C (5 °F) average in January and +20 °C (68 °F) in July.

Ha! You, know, I'm considering wintering in Siberia to get away from the cold. I love that climate descriptor too, 'continental subarctic'. That's where most of us live people. In the freakin' continental subarctic. We don't have to live this way! There are sub-tropical climates in Canada. I'd love to write more, but I have to go back outside. My minivan should be warmed up by now, and I need to scrape the windows (yes, I have a tool specifically designed to chip ice and remove frozen debris off of my vehicle daily). If this isn't insanity, I don't know what is.
All of the purple areas have frostbite.
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27 Years Ago.
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Wednesday, December 12, 2007 at 5:01pm | Edit Note | Delete
A whacko took out John Lennon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEOkxRLzBf0
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Scanning the News So You Don't Have To
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Wednesday, December 12, 2007 at 1:33pm | Edit Note | Delete
What would you people do without me? You'd have to spend HOURS searching the net for the kind of stories that I deliver.
For instance, the IKEA well-endowed dog story.
There is a bit of controversy surrounding the first photo (a 2 page foldout!) in the 2007 IKEA catalog. The pic shows a happy family enjoying some quality time lounging in bed. Also on their bed is the family dog, a greyhound or whippet lying with his massive schlong out for all the world to see. On a side note, if Calvin Klein was using dog's as models, I think that he would probably use a similar dog. These breeds have that lean, hungry look with the detailed musculature. Anyway, even more interesting, is that this dog's unit looks incredibly human. Whippets and greyhounds do not have human like penises, as ANYONE who's ever spent anyt time around a racing dog's wang can tell you. The pic has led some to theorize that somewhere along the chain of production, a mischievous employee (and genius if you ask me!) altered the pic.
IKEA Canada swears that this dog is all natural, and that there has been no photo-shopping of any kind applied. They state that what appears to be a human-like penis in the picture is really an optical illusion created by the positioning of the dog's leg. I'll leave you to judge for yourselves. Please...take a moment from your busy day and look closely at this dog's genitals.
I'm glad this dog wasn't in my gym class. Not only could he have easily outrun me...
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Updated about 9 months ago


Honour Killings.
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Wednesday, December 12, 2007 at 9:46am | Edit Note | Delete
A popular 16 year old girl in Ontario was killed by her father this week for refusing to wear the traditional muslim Habib headscarf. The young girl would frequently change into clothes of a more western style upon arriving at school. Her brothers and sisters would often follow her and report back to her father. She joins a growing list in Canada of young girls being murdered in a perverted conception of family 'honour'.

The United Nations estimates at least 5,000 women a year are killed for committing adultery, defying tradition, or for simply talking to the wrong man and thereby bringing shame upon relatives.

Exact numbers are impossible to know because the majority of such murders -- women are the main victims -- go unreported and the guilty unpunished.

United Muslim Women of Canada's Anisa Ali said the public shouldn't assume that honour killings only happen in the Muslim community.

"It's not an Islamic practice," Ali told CTV's Canada AM on Wednesday. "There's nowhere in the Quran where it talks about honour killings. It's more of a cultural phenomenon."

She said honour killings are not limited to Islamic countries like Pakistan, Jordan, Syria and Afghanistan.

"There's Latin American countries, it has taken place in Germany, in Britain," she said. "A lot of it is under the guise of family honour or religious values."
Aqsa Parvez, from Mississauga, Ont., is seen on the left without a hijab and on the right with a hijab.
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Updated about 9 months ago


This is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.
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Tuesday, December 11, 2007 at 11:56pm | Edit Note | Delete
I was just about to go to bed when I look at the TV and see that my wife is watching "Boston Legal". Candace Bergen was in a scene with some scarf thing wrapped around her neck. It occurred to me that Candace Bergen always has something wrapped around her throat. I'm wondering what the Hell is so hideous about Bergen's neck that she has to hide it. It can't be any worse than James Spader's chin(s). My guess is that during a filming of the Murphy Brown show she tripped on approach to the news desk and took one of those long thin MatchGame '76 type microphones in the trachea. They managed to get the mike out, but not without leaving a huge open gash there. Without the scarf her throat starts sucking air with a hideous noise. OMG! I just figured it out! I'm not making this up. Candace Bergen is the daughter of Edgar Bergen, the famed ventriloquist that was the voice and the life of Charlie McCarthy, the monocled dummy you might recall from back in the day. Candace Bergen has ALWAYS covered her throat, and the answer now is obvious. She's a highly complex ventriloquist's dummy. Without the scarf you'd see her only flaw: the line where her head screws onto her neck. There, now I can sleep.