Dr. Andy Tait's Uber Blog

Scotland

2011-09-08T16:10:00.001-07:00

A letter home that I'll blog instead.
I'm on the train to Ayr right now, passing through what's known as "The Roman Frontier". It's the home of Hadrian's Wall, where the Roman emperor Hadrian built a wall running the entire breadth of the country to protect his soldiers from the Scots Reivers (of whom I and consequently our children are direct ancestors). There isn't a Scot alive that doesn't know the story of the vanished Roman Legion that disappeared completely from the Borders, only to be found 1000 years later at the bottom of a loch in Scotland.
Sleeping across from me is a sight all too common on the West Coast. A young tough with a nearly shaved head is snoring away peacefully. I say sleeping but he's passed out with a half finished tall boy of skol in front of him and the smell of beer and cologne thick and sweet. He's wearing heavy workboots that have never seen a day of work. Much like me he's wearing them for insurance against confrontation rather than compensation. I come by my paranoia honestly you know. I'm going to try to snap a pic of him.
It's amazing how quickly the train cleared of English people at Carlisle. I'm surrounded by thick glasgow accents, black hair and blue eyes right now. It's a good feeling.
Earlier I passed by a Scottish school that was just letting out. It looked identical to the one I'd attended, and it's cold and wet in Scotland today. It brought back memories, but almost no positive ones. I'm going to work on building some here this time. I owe it to my dad, my kids and myself. I just get a feeling of penultimate sadness driving past all the poor and rundown areas by the tracks. I hope I can reconcile it.
The guy across from me just woke up. He slept through his stop. When he got up we had a nearly unintelligible conversation and then he asked about the accent.
"So you from America?"
"You won't believe me if I tell you where I'm from." I said and I told him Ayr and that I'd been in Canada for 25 years. And then it was all big tough guy barroom warrior handshakes and much love and smiles. Bastards like that turn on you in a second here though so I stayed wary but warm. And that's not me being paranoid. Everyone else on the train seems nice enough however.
I have to change trains at Kilmarnock. My route through Scotland has been Carlisle, gretna green, annan, dumfries, sanquhar, kirkconnel, new cumnock and auchinleck so far, with the next stop being Kilmarnock. Kilmarnock is where my friends and I used to sell the scrap metal we stole from the salvage yard in Ayr. (Just got a picture of the glasgow drunk before he woke up btw.) I've recently found out that the yard we stole it from belonged to a man my dad went to school with. Feel a bit horrible about it now.

Just changed trains at Kilmarnock. I had a few minutes between trains so I walked around a bit looking for a coke. A young guy about 20 was changing trains too, and he came up and said (in a good Glasgow/west coast accent) "Nae bar here?" I said not that I know of and he said "FUCK'S sake!"
ah home.

england

2011-09-08T15:57:00.000-07:00

I am rolling through the countryside of Northern England, headed for my hometown in Scotland. It's a beautiful day, by which I mean the sun is high and warm and bright enough that it ignites the colors of the hills and trees and homes and trains in full spectrum high res. A 1080 HD kind of day.
The train is quiet, a gentle rocking with a white noise whirring hush keeping my state meditative and near transcendent in the moments that I start to nod off. The only other sounds are those of the girl sitting across the table from me, writing in her notebook and humming a soft soprano celtic tune. A stolen glance at the pendant bouncing about a bouncing cleavage reveals a heart shaped locket wrapped in a thistle and I'm proud again to be Scottish.
Ancient walls line the tracks as we pass through the cities and towns, stained black with the centuries old coal smoke of warm hearths and orange lit cobblestone streets.
In the countryside it all opens up though. Trees and rolling hills covered in lush green grasses that seem somehow wetter, thicker, softer and warmer than ours. Faraway cows and faraway sheep are stuck like steak pegs in the hillside, and the high def sun shows 10,000 shades of green, constantly shifting in the shadows of North Atlantic clouds.
The rivers I pass are dark murky and cold, more a grey blue slate than the blue green liquer back home. Still used as highways by lumbering barges and cargo ships, lined with quays and docks older than any family tree I know of, they are dotted with elegant white swans drifting lazy noble and with an English calm on the gentle waves.
It's autumn and occassionally we'll pass freshly fleeced flocks of foolish sheep, standing thin and stupidly vulnerable like newly shorn shih-tzus waiting to go out for a pee.. The term 'sheepish' never more accurate than it is on the face of a plucked poltroon of a sheep lamenting it's lost wooliness.
I have to confess that I hated Britain before this trip. I was here before, in my teens with my parents, who were then approaching 60. I saw nothing of the country except what nostalgic 60 year olds wanted to see. It was all Coronation Street and Marks and Sparks and chippys. I'm seeing a different Britain this time around.
This is a progressive country. More concerned with the environment than the average self righteous Canadian. Walking is a preferred method of commuting here. In the clubs of Newcastle I danced all night, and never once feared for a fight. If while dancing in a drunken stupor I happened to bump into another guy, more often than not we'd wind up in wildy exuberant dance ourselves. There's a palpable enthusiasm and joie de vivre here. The workers that I'm here to train are some of the finest young people I've ever met. So different than the sleepy kids back home that sit drooling with anticipation as you contemplate sending someone home early each night.
The confidence, humor and perseverance I see in the average English kid is inspiring. I can honestly say I no longer harbor resentment towards the English.
That's all that I have for now. I'm writing this on the train and I'll publish it later.
It's time to slip back into that beautiful meditative state. It's a strange and mystic roll through the Roman Frontier for the next little while, travelling through places impossible to say without a Scots accent;
Carlisle, Gretna Green, Annan, Dumfries, Sanquhar, Kirkconnel, New Cumnock, Auchinleck and Kilmarnock.

Into the Mystic.

2011-07-27T14:41:00.000-07:00

I had a direction for this post two days ago, but I didn't have time for it. Now I have time for it, but I forget which direction I was going to take. So I'll start rambling and hopefully it comes back to me.
Jung wrote of the 'participation mystique'. Anyone that's ever watched a technicolor sunrise spill orange juice and grenadine over fast retreating darkness will understand this implicitly. In layman's terms the participation mystique refers to the sense of oneness and unity that humanity had with the environment when we were primitive active participants in it. The magic of the universe is somehow more palpable in natural places than it is in our urban islands of insanity. It's why walking to work seems so much more refreshing than biking, why a good thunderstorm is more exciting than the best hollywood blockbuster.
This week I'm disconnecting cable and my land line. I'll be using just the internet and my cell phone for all of my family's communication and entertainment needs. I'd love to say that this comes from some noble motivation like going off grid, or raising less media dependent children. I'd love to say that it's an attempt to reconnect with nature. It's not. It's cheaper, and I can get movies and tv over the net.
That being said, I'm an optimist of the highest order. The big telecom and cable companies are struggling because a lot of people are doing what I'm doing. I like to think of it as a form of evolution. The further integration of humanity and technology. Unlike most hippies, I believe that science and technology won't bring about the destruction of mankind, but that they are our best hope.
I read a fantastic article this week. Organic light is a reality already, with bio-luminous trees a very real possibility in the not too distant future. Imagine a world where instead of streetlights our roads are lined with glowing trees. Instead of lamps you'd read by the light of bio-luminous palm fronds. I see a world where all our devices become hybrid organics, giving back oxygen, taking away greenhouse gasses, and perhaps more importantly, returning our species to a partnership with nature as opposed to a battle against it. Not going to proofread this, because I'm pretty tired right now. Those are the thoughts in a nutshell anyway. Maybe not as coherent or flowing as I'd like, there they are.

One Flew East, One Flew West.

2011-07-07T23:54:00.000-07:00

I have had a difficult time over the years, due primarily to the efforts of my worst enemy. The enemy in this case being myself. I've had a delightful condition called bipolar mood disorder that I've loved with a passion despite the damage it's done me. In 40 years I've rarely held a job more than a year. I leave jobs for myriad reasons, but I've come to realize over the past year that it's all related back to my brain chemistry. There has been the odd time I found the world so bleak that getting out of bed and going to work was simply too much to ask for. Getting dressed, walking out the door, at some point having to talk to another human being...more than I could face, and another job bites the dust. There have been other times on a manic upswing, compelled by a higher calling I'd leave the menial and meaningless tasks of whatever 'job' I had, convinced that the only path to a creative life would necessitate the burning of all bridges behind me.
By far the most common reason I've left jobs however would be a combination of high anxiety and low bullshit tolerance. There's a period somewhere in between the highs and the lows where an all encompassing loathing and irritability permeates every aspect of every relationship, task, thought, feeling. At times the anxiety peaks into a near paranoia. The fear of losing a job, combined with the anxiety of trying to read everyone's motivations drives me to quit, just to ease my mind. Or the grave insult of being talked down to becomes an unforgivable slight that only a fool or a wimp would tolerate.
That's the way things were. I've since started on an anti-depressant, and I've been on and off of it for the better part of a year now. On it I'm complacent, conformist,calm, collected, conservative and practical. Well, more so than at other times anyway. I've held my job for more than 3 years, and it's a stressful and demanding job with more than it's fair share of bullshit. Twice since starting the meds I've weaned myself off of them. Both times I saw the promised exacerbation of symptoms. Once I exacerbated up, once into that horrible fucking gray area of permanent dystopian aggravation.
I realized that as a provider for my family it's pretty imperative that I stay on these pills.
Today has me a bit nostalgic for the brilliant madness again however. I've just recovered from some pretty painful throat surgery, and today was really the first day that I felt good in long time. I got a good amount of sleep last night after a 20km run on my longboard, and I woke up enervated and optimistic. At work I had a coffee and the caffeine went straight to my bloodstream, which is something I haven't felt in a long time either. I decided I would get 'jacked' on caffeine and I had a couple more pints of coffee. Soon I was rolling in a state bordering on hypomania. I had racing creative thoughts, I was meeting strangers and hitting hard and fast banter that brought huge smiles and that mixed look of bewilderment and amazement that inspired rambling tends to elicit from normies.
I miss that. I miss being able to energize a whole room. I miss having a mainline to the divine where puns and poetic turns and prosaic prolific ideas come at you warp 9 and gaining. So fast, so brilliant, so many ideas and all of them setting off a pyrotechnic cerebro magnificent firestorm in the brain that leaves me amazed I have such thought processes.
I miss it. But I know where it leads too. It leads to explosions of rage at any attempt to control or harness my energy. It leads to dangerous obsessions with ridiculous things or people, to sleepless nights and exhausted family members sick of trying to keep up with me. It leads to flirtations s(without consummations) that risk my entire family's well being and harmony.
I've just taken my little white pill again, before writing this. I'm wired and I can feel HAARP style bolts of neuro-electric blasts rising in tempo and temperament and I know that I could be taken somewhere simultaneously magnificent and horrible if I just let it ride. The temptation is there, even knowing the seriousness of the consequences. It's there because this ordinary life, when I'm not somatized into domesticity is stifling. So I'll take the soma for now. And in a few days I won't miss this anymore. I won't want it. I won't want much of anything, because I'll have a carefully metered contentment that turns me into a well behaved ordinary citizen.

Manny! Look at dat pelican fly! C'maaaan Pelican!

2011-06-28T16:39:00.000-07:00

Moments of sheer and utter bliss have been lacking this year I'm sad to say. An early spring led to a pretty crappy June and my summer rush was delayed. Followed that up with tonsil surgery and 2 weeks of unbelievable pain. It's kept me down a bit and I think today may finally have been the first day of feeling really great again. This was evidenced by a zen moment along the river again today. Gotta love that river.
A major winding section of road is currently closed down due to the threat of rising water levels. The water hasn't hit the road yet, but it has cleared all traffic off of 4 lanes of pristine asphalt on one of the most scenic parts of the riverbank.
I was boarding this stretch as part of my base building for the 100k board session I have planned 3 weeks from now. There was a beautiful stretch of downhill, into a light wind. I love long stretches of downhill. As you hit your maximum velocity you get motion without energy, and there is a sense that you are detached and free from the Earth for the duration of the bomb. It was while coasting effortlessly along that I looked up and caught sight of a pelican doing precisely the same thing. It had spread it's wings, caught an air current and was just gliding along in perfect effortlessness. In that moment I felt what the bird felt. Not a power over anything as one might think, but an independence from everything. A freedom that only pelicans, seagulls and longboarders know.

Instant Gratification.

2011-06-27T01:31:00.000-07:00

I'm all about instant gratification. I say this and people say to me "I can relate" and they generally reference a shopping purchase. I'm far beyond that. I need instant gratification on everything, even negatives.
When I was a kid if there was a big kid that wanted to beat me up I could not stand the anxiety of waiting and would seek him out. In high school if someone told me they were going to beat the shit out of me after school I'd challenge him to do it that very moment because I had stuff to do after school. Again, it was because of the horrors of waiting.
When I have a band aid that I know is going to hurt to tear off I do it at the earliest opportunity.
But by far the greatest example of my need for instant gratification is my compulsive news checking. I check the news about 30 times a day. Compulsive is perhaps the wrong word. I've never dropped out of doing something in order to check the news, I haven't a need to check the news, but I do check it a lot. What I'm looking for is a disaster, war, assassination, tragedy of such proportions that I will be able to clear my schedule for the day and just do what I want to do.
I secretly hope for a massive B.C. earthquake or the outbreak of the third world war, just so I will be able to stay home from work for the day. I don't think beyond that to the suffering that will follow, to the feelings of those who have suffered losses. I just want some time off and a clearing of responsibility for a while. It's with this hope that I check the news 30 times a day. Isn't that awful?

High Volume Resonance

2011-03-02T15:43:00.000-08:00

Maybe I should change the name of my blog to Resonance. That seems to be what it's most often about.
I'm in Vancouver today, sitting in on the ops of one of our company kitchens. It always makes me smile stepping into another kitchen. There are constants that you find in every one. A strung out chef with a thousand yard stare, a collection of miscreants and ne'er do wells with a burgeoning passion for food and the quintessential walmart stereo blasting out either heavy metal or hardcore punk or the resident DJ's latest mix of beats. Even among the inevitable iconoclasts you'll find the iconoclast's iconoclast.
The first question I got today was from 'Token'. Token's real name is Terrance but they call him Token because he is the only black guy in the kitchen...so the Chef intro'd him. The Chef assigned me some prep to do so I set up beside Token and went to work.
"What kind of music do you like?" he asked me over the blaring guitars on the blaster.
"80s soft rock like Hall and Oates or Air Supply...really gets me pumped up" I said.
He raised an eyebrow, not sure if I was kidding or not, and I wasn't. "Well it's mainly metal around here, if you didn't notice already." he informed me.
"Same everywhere." I smiled.
Later I was working with Campbell. He was the iconoclast's iconoclast of this kitchen.
"I like jazz, I play bass in a quartet and I sing a bit." he said
I grinned. "Man I'd love to get a little trio together and do some old style croonin'".
Campbell looked at me with the utmost uber-seriousness and sincerity and said "DO IT."
This is all old to me. It's a new kitchen, but it's all old to me. But good old, y'know, like your favorite old hoody or watching the Usual Suspects again. It's an old that resonates with me. I interviewed a kid not so long ago. He'd left the culinary biz for the big bucks in construction and found out that the well didn't taste so sweet. He was desperate to cook again.
"Why do you want to come back to this shit if you can make more working less there?" I asked him.
His answer? "I know who I am on the line."
Amen brother.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Sucked.

2011-02-18T10:12:00.000-08:00

My own opinion of course. I'm not going to justify myself or write a book review, just sayin'.
I mention it because there is one concept from that book that stuck with me, or more correctly, that I bastardized with my own interpretation because Pirsig's was gibberish.
Pirsig's idea was that things are imbued with 'quality', a vague term for a mystical property that...y'know I don't understand his bullshit concept.
My personal interpretation is that certain things have a mystical property that sets them apart from the majority of like things. It's something undefinable really, and usually when I reference it I'm thinking of creative works, like art or music or film or lit.
For something to have quality as it pertains to my personal lexicon (I can't begin to tell you how much I love the word 'lexicon'), it needs to fit some basic criteria. It has to be transcendent for starters. Not a work about the subject of transcendence, not hallucinatory, just...transcendent. Something that traverses boundaries of genre, image, class to strike a chord within the very spirit. It can be as a simple as a line from a song that gives you a chill or a thrill, a particular twang or vibrato in a vocal, a snippet of brilliant imagery from a poem or story (Walt Whitman for example, rambles on endlessly, almost incoherently and then you'll come across an incredible turn of a phrase that seems to define your very being), it can be as complex as the chaotic cacophanies of a tchaikovsky concerto. The thing is that it must resonate with your universe, if you can dig that. It's catalytic in that the initial sequence of neurons it sets of starts a massive synaptic reaction exploding like fireworks in the base of the brain. From there it becomes a psychic/physic harmonic, a slight buzzing that you can feel from your bone marrow to your split ends and cuticles. I don't think that quality is a homogenous property, easily quantified or measured. It's subjective, with the individual as node resonating in accordance to the frequency of their spirit or soul or chakra, resonating with the essence of their is-ness. And I think that perhaps it has a purpose, like a homing signal of sorts, a beacon towards peace maybe. It's intrinsic, looped into the underlying fabric of time/space/infinite is, a way for the symbiote souls and organisms of the universe to bind. At its utmost it binds binary stars together in a pseudo-eternal cosmic tango. It assembles galaxies and nebulae. At its smallest it's the magic that draws particles together into unbreakable bonds. On the human level it connects kindred spirits through harmonics synchronicity serendipity intuition inhibitions on exhibition neuroses firing interhuman synapses through the unified field. Beyond the illusion of human strivings it connects the the soul to the cosmos and to the infinite, lifts the curtain on the illusion for moments of enlightenment and heightened awareness. You know what's funny?
I can find quality in Stranded at the Drive In by John Travolta. True story.

twenty year old dreamin

2011-02-17T14:32:00.000-08:00

I am nearly double the age of my avg employee. It's one of the things that i love about my job. It grants me a sort of immortality. There is a beauty and a strength and a resilience to the 20 year old mindset. They still thrive on their dreams. I'd say that the percentage of my staff that have uncrushable dreams of rock, pop or hipohop stardom easily exceeds fifty.
There's a contagious energy working with young people. People are always commenting on my energy level, consistently making comments like 'You're just a big kid aren't you?'
To be completely honest I have no idea how a person my age should act. I can't relate to people my age. Don't trust anyone over 30 is my mantra still. For twenty years now I have been watching these fiery would-be rockstars coming up. It's sometimes sad to see them grudgingly let go of their dreams, get'serious' about life. Inevitably and irrevocably it"s the giving up on their dreams that does it to them. They lose their joie de vivre when they give up.
It's at about that time that I just can't maintain the friendship. Bitterness and ennui roll off of them in a toxic cloud.
I'm 40 years old. I have dreams that no one can steal. Last week I enjoyed yet another guest spot on a college talk show. This week there is talk of me fronting a Poison cover band. I've written a novel of proportions so epic it will take another century before the global mind can handle it. I've got 2 more novels on the go and aspirations to revisit mad poem writing. I haven't given up and consequently my vitality shows it.
I'm sitting at the airport right now, waiting to fly out on business trip. I'm typing on my phone so forgive any typos. I've got some time on my hands as I came here early anticipating some bullshit. I was right. They gave me a big hassle about trying to bring my skateboard on. Fuck the Man anyway. Skate death!

Ramblin'

2011-02-14T22:31:00.000-08:00

I've been all over the place tonight. Scattered and windblown, mind perched on the edge of something, but God knows what.
So, we'll go one at a time.
I've been reading a lot of Jung lately. Tonight I was reading about his early years, and how he came across the idea of a collective unconscious hearing ghost stories from the countryside. It occurred to him that where ever in the world one might find a ghost story, there were elements that were unchanging. He noted that while the afterlife tended to be the domain of the religious, there were no religious texts describing the sorts of experiences the living were having with their hauntings. A few examples were cited, and one of them was the example of clocks in the deceased's house stopping at the moment of death. This gave me chills to read because it's exactly what happened when my mother passed away. There was a clock that had been given to my parents by the Commissionaires for their years of service, and it stopped dead on the time she died. I looked it up on the net and found that this is a pretty common occurrence.
I took some comfort initially from the idea that my mother's spirit had effected a change on some real world item to send us the message that there was something more.
But tonight I looked at it from a different perspective. Perhaps it's selfish of us to view this communication from beyond the grave as some sort of reassurance or message of love from the deceased. What if instead of this, they are trying to pass on information about the fundamental functioning of the universe, of life and death?
What if the constant interference with clocks by the dead is a continuing commentary on the nature of time? Could it be that they're trying to tell us it's all non-linear, insignificant? Rather than waving a simple goodbye, isn't it more likely that the crossing of dimensional barriers might be more of an attempt at mapping the way for us? Or perhaps it's a warning, who knows? I just think that there might be value in digging a little deeper into phenomenon from beyond the grave into what it could mean in another context.
Okay, next thing. I called this post rambling because my thoughts have been jumping tracks bullet trains tonight. So much so that I've got concerns I might be about to go into an elevated state of being. (I don't like the word manic, but this kind of jumping from thought to thought and tying together coincidences is sometimes an indicator of that very thing). There are a lot of things that I don't feel comfortable discussing with just anybody, a lot of things that I would prefer the anonymity of internet forums to discuss. There are things I worry about that would worry other people in my life were I to share them. I decided tonight that I would start a second, anonymous blog to lay down the kind of crap that gets my head spinning without causing anyone any concern. It's like a secret diary that anyone on the internet can read and comment on yet never know that it's me writing it.
There was a lot of other neuro-surfing going on tonight, but that's all I have for now. Peace.

Days to Remember

2011-02-13T17:37:00.001-08:00

I really don't get much happier than I am right now. As I write this I'm parked in a busy mall parking lot waiting for the family to finish their shopping. The sun is shining ski resort bright and bouncing blinding white off of the screaming snow. It's above zero today and the chill is gone and I'm free free from your spell old winter and all I can do is wish you well.
I've parked Black Thunder paralell to the sun, taking all the photons she can give me broadside. The side door is propped open and I'm sitting in my old teak surfboard chair. Eased back, jacket off, soaking up rays while typing this out on my phone.
My T-shirt's cooking and the graphic is melting and I know my hard winter squint is being baked into new old man lines on my face but I don't care. This is where it's at. I'm getting eyeballed by all the passing drivers and they're looking at ME like I'M the crazy one. I'm savoring each solariffic moment of this with a relish and a cosmic satisfaction known only to junkies and die hard pony players. Admittedly my choice of location might be a little whacked, but I am where I am in a big absolute superseding conventional physics kind of way. You know?

Mexican Vacation.

2011-02-07T17:47:00.000-08:00

I'm looking forward to tomorrow. According to the forecast it's going to 'feel like' -37 in the morning. I prefer the feel like temperature as opposed to the actual temperature. I have a difficult time being objective at the best of time, but the weather is one area that I view with skewed perception more so than others.
So why so happy about a normally hideous weather outlook? I have the day off tomorrow, and I discovered Saskatoon's best kept secret a few weeks ago. The Lakewood Civic Center swimming pool bills itself as housing a 'spacious tropical pool'. What it keeps on the D.L. however is the fact that it has a wall of windows along it's entire Southern exposure. Poolside there are big sun loungers, all facing the pool for relaxing parents. I discovered a few weeks ago that you can turn the chairs towards the windows in the afternoon and lay back in the sun for hours in the middle of winter, eyes closed, brain basking in the hot red glow of sun on eyelids. My first time there a man about my age pulled up a seat beside me and said "Feels great doesn't it?" He then proceeded to tell me that it was possible to get a sunburn in the space of an hour if you weren't careful. It was a ritual of his to make it there once or twice a week.
So ever since booking this day off I've been praying that tomorrow will be sunny and freezing, and now it looks like I'll get my wish.
I've been joking with the guys at work that I'll sneak in half a dozen Coronas with me.
When the lifeguard comes up to harass me I'll ask what the hell a Saskatoon Leisure Services employee is doing in Puerto Vallarta? Then I will demand 'mas cervezas' and when they protest I'll snap a quick "Vamos, andale!" at them.
The plan is this: shades, Jimmy Buffet, headphones and a slurpee.

Goodbye Blue Mondays

2011-02-02T18:25:00.001-08:00

and Tuesdays and Wednesdays etc ad nauseum.
It's been a long time since I've blogged. Here's the reason. I couldn't really give 2 shits about anything.
I have this little mood disorder thing, where I lose my will to live in the winter time, and consequently I lash out at everyone and everything in my life for several months of winter. This year I took some prescribed anti-depressant type drugs so that I wouldn't jeopardize my job, marriage, house family, etc. ad nauseum.
They worked I suppose. The usual paranoia, exhaustion, irrepressible urge to move somewhere, loathing of all demands on my time as subversive attempts to infringe upon my freedoms were absent. So were all of the fun parts of being a whack job however.
The racing thoughts, the all-consuming creative obsessions, the desire to work out and stay fit, the urge to write and sex drive etc. ad nauseum all vanished.
With the onset of spring I've decided to wean off of the Soma. I think I'm out of the woods now until next winter. The days are getting longer, I'm driving home in the soothing orange glow of returning sunsets and I've heard runoff in the storm drains a few times this year already. I'm counting the days until the vernal equinox, gearing up for the first days of dry pavement, days off in the warm sun and asphalt surfing once again.
And with the decreasing amounts of neuro-toxins in my bloodstream I'm feeling human sensations again. Crazy little rushes of awe and wonder punctuated by syrupy sentimental sessions of joyful blubbery. I'm talking to myself in the car more and the work week doesn't stretch out in front of me like Mont Ventoux from the wrong end of the peloton. I'm also making obscure references to sports I don't give a rat's ass about :)
I'm looking forward to summer. And before I poison the minds of anyone considering treatment for mood disorders, I have to confess; this was the easiest winter I've ever had. But that could easily have been the long johns and the toque doing that too, haven't dressed for the weather since I was about 11.

Lost Poem.

2010-12-07T15:35:00.000-08:00

I thought this was lost but I found it today. I think it's one of the best things I ever wrote. It's from my Flatland Blues collection.

Sometimes it's so good that afterwards it's revelatory
Synapses firing at random, little sunbursting neurons flashing in the liquid darkness of the post coital mind
and there we were
and it was winter
and outside there was snow from a blizzard only the day before
and while the sky was dark the snow lit the night
casting a blue light over everything
that blue light that feels like loneliness and home and peace
that sub-arctic light that feels like an aurora passing through bone
and you lay there afterwards
lit all snow blue and smooth as a matisse
just form and light
warm with the blankets cast off,
and I just lay there
one of your legs over my cheek
one under my neck
and it was ghostly blue in the bedroom
and the neurons were firing at random
little snowbursts
bio-luminous ethereal snow flakes glinting momentarily under flashes of cosmic eternal
and your skin was blue like you were frozen,
and I looked at my own skin and I was blue like I was frozen
and we were still and warm in the snow blue glow of prairie bedroom
and the snowflakes of my mind flashed and dimmed and fell like magnesium flares
into this poem for you
laying beautiful and blue and drifting
after the blizzard.

Editor's Note.

2010-12-03T23:08:00.000-08:00

I posted a speech of Heinrich Himmler's on Remembrance Day, under the heading "Why They Fought and Died." Most of my entries are written fairly late in the evening, with the result that I often need to go back and correct. Upon revisiting the Remembrance Day post, I realized that I'd failed to provide any context to the speech other than the title. It occurred to me that one could view it as pro Nazi without given some background info first. I've gone back and re-edited it with a small introduction and a title change. For the record, I AM NOT A NAZI!

25th Street Bridge Song

2010-11-19T22:16:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the first big snowstorm of the season. 10 cm fell like a mofo. Plflplflt! and there it was.
It came fast and it came hard and the city crews couldn't keep up and it was just warm enough for the first layer to come down as sleet, which quickly froze and turned the streets to ice. I had the pleasure of finishing work at 4:30 pm, the midpoint of rush hour. My route demanded that I pass through to downtown and across the Broadway Bridge, a daunting task on good roads.
It was made all the more horrible by the fact that my roaring behemoth 1981 Chevy Van (aka Black Thunder), turns into Elizabeth Manley on ice. Needless to say it was with a sense of dread and foreboding that I fought through the howling wind and driving snow to scrape the ice and snow off the windshield before what I imagined would be a harrowing journey. So I headed off into the crawling stream of traffic, moving like a Youtube progress bar on dial-up.
Soon the heat off of the big V8 kicked in however and Black Thunder warmed up and I realized that I had an hour and a half to make it to my destination. It occurred to me then that I was in my favorite place (my van) with all of my favorite music, and for the first time in a very long time it looked like I was going to have an hour completely to myself. Suddenly the drive home was looking really good.
So the traffic eased forward in the tiniest of increments, and occasionally I'd be in the faster of the lanes, occasionally the slower, and from my perch on high I got to people-watch everybody that went by. A lot of them were really pissed off, I mean REALLY pissed off, and when I'm in a good mood, there is nothing funnier than someone in a futile rage.
There were also a lot of them like myself. Eyes wide with wonder at beauty of the havoc, relaxed and meditative and given over pleasantly to circumstance and chaos.
At the 45 minute mark I'd reached downtown. Whenever I saw someone signalling helplessly for a lane change in the 10km/hr stream of trickling road rage I'd let them in and they'd give me a wave. But as I turned on to 4th ave, headed for the Broadway Bridge, I began to panic a little. From 25th street on it was a stationary line of brake lights blinking and fading like Christmas lights into the white blur of the snowstorm. After spending 15 minutes moving across the first block I began to realize there was no way I'd make it to my son's daycare on time on this route. A quick shoulder check and an icy fishtailing u-turn sent me back to 24th, where I turned towards Spadina. I'd have 2 choices there; roll along spadina to the Renaissance, and come out at the base of the Broadway Bridge ahead of the traffic, or hang a left and hit the University Bridge. At Spadina it became clear that the University Bridge was the best option, so to the left I went.
Now here's the thing and I've taken a long time getting to it but I just came off a really hard day and I'm beat like Tina Turner in the old Ike days so I may have rambled a bit, but thanks for sticking it out.
The thing is this: There is a feature of Saskatoon that for me is the ultimate expression of what makes those of us that live here different from anyone else in the world.
At the base of the University Bridge there are 2 intersections. One from the Spadina underpass on to Spadina Crescent, and one from Spadina on to the bridge itself. Both of these intersections are uncontrolled because there is an implicit understanding in this city of nearly 1/4 million that if we just take turns it works just fine.
So imagine, in the middle of a snowstorm that crippled a modern city, with 10 minute commutes suddenly lengthened to 1 and 2 hours, traffic lined up for miles in places, imagine how well this hokey and simplistic backwater system of taking turns would work. It worked beautifully! People who were jockeying for position all through rush hour, fighting for lane changes, swearing at tailgaters, suddenly paused when they were supposed to and let their neighbour go first, because it's the polite thing to do at these particular intersections. Maybe it's just me, but there is something to be said for human potential, for good will and selflessness and for the intrinsic communal nature of the human animal at the bottom of the 25th Street Bridge. Walt Whitman once said that "Life is not so short that there isn't time to be polite." Saskatoon demonstrates it.

What They Fought and Died to Fight Against

2010-11-11T19:36:00.000-08:00

The following is an excerpt from one of Heinrich Himmler's speeches to SS officers in 1943. It captures in a nutshell the pure evil that the Nazis perpetrated, and their view that non-German lives were valueless. I've posted it on Remembrance Day in honor of my grandfather, who was killed fighting the Nazis at the Battle of El Alamein.

Heinrich Himmler's speech to Schutzstaffel (SS) officers at Poznan (4th October, 1943)

In the months that have gone by since we met in June 1942 many of our comrades were killed, giving their lives for Germany and the Fuhrer. In the first rank - and I ask you to rise in his honor and in honor of all our dead SS men, soldiers, men, and women - in the first rank our old comrade and friend from our ranks, SS Lieutenant General Eicke. [The SS Gruppenfiihrers have risen from their seats.] Please be seated.

One basic principle must be the absolute rule for the SS men - we must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and to nobody else. What happens to a Russian or to a Czech does not interest me in the slightest. What the nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only so far as we need them as slaves for our culture; otherwise, it is of no interest to me. Whether ten thousand Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an antitank ditch interests me only so far as the antitank ditch for Germany is finished. We shall never be rough and heartless when it is not necessary, that is clear. We Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude toward animals, will also assume a decent attitude toward these human animals.

I also want to talk to you, quite frankly, on a very grave matter. Among ourselves it should be mentioned quite frankly, and we will never speak of it publicly. Just as we did not hesitate on 30 June 1934 to do the duty we were bidden and stand comrades who had lapsed up against the wall and shoot them, so we have never spoken about it and will never speak of it. It was that tact which is a matter of course and which I am glad to say, inherent in us, that made us never discuss it among ourselves, nor speak of it. It appalled everyone, and yet everyone was certain that he would do it the next time if such orders are issued and if it is necessary.

I mean the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race. It's one of those things it is easy to talk about, "The Jewish race is being exterminated," says one party member, "that's quite clear, it's in our program-elimination of the Jews and we're doing it, exterminating them" And then they come to me, eighty million worthy Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. Of course the others are vermin, but this one is an A-1 Jew. Not one of all those who talk this way has watched it, not one of them has gone through it. Most of you must know what it means when one hundred corpses are lying side by side, or five hundred, or one thousand. To have stuck it out and at the same time - apart from exceptions caused by human weakness - to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be written, for we know how difficult we should have made it for ourselves, if with the bombing raids, the burdens and the deprivations of war we still had Jews today in every town as secret saboteurs, agitators, and troublemakers. We would now probably have reached the 1916-1917 stage when the Jews were still in the German national body.

I've got a Yuan for Some US cheddar.

2010-11-10T19:31:00.000-08:00

The US/China currency war explained in a catchy animated rap video, click here

A Study in Gray

2010-11-10T15:26:00.000-08:00

I went to pick up my son at daycare and the hallway was filled with boys from 4-12 all suiting up in snowpants and mittens and toques and there was a chaos and an energy that could only be described as jubilant and they were all going out to play.
"C'mon son, time to go!" I said to him and his shoulders dropped and his arms dropped and he threw his head back hopelessly and gave me a "But Daaaaaad! and I said "We have to go buddy." and he said "Can't I just play outside for a little while?"
I had been outside, first at 4:30 a.m. scraping my windshield, and now at 4pm after spending half an hour in a vehicle that just wasn't getting warm enough. It was cold outside, crisp and clear see your breath and hear things clearer cold. Outside was not on my radar, but then it occurred to me that I could get a hot coffee in a warm coffee shop and let the day seep out of me and the heat seep in to me so I said "Okay, I'll be back in half an hour." and he said "Yay!" and I zipped my jacket up all the way and crossed my arms across my chest, tucked hands in under my arms and turtled my head into my trapezoids. I hunched quick steps in a quick-stepped hunch to a new place that had just opened, just up the block.
Il Secondo is new and it's a hip urban coffee shop pizzeria and bakery all in one. I walked in and ordered 'a coffee to go but I'm going to have most of it in' and I got my coffee and loaded with a head turning amount of sugar and headed to a corner seat. I sat quiet, which is something I don't do or can't do depending on who you ask. They had slow jazz playing, old Billie Holliday or young Ella Fitzgerald and it put me in a peaceful space, a romantic space even and I sat with my wrists around the coffee cup to warm my blood and as had been my intent, let the warm seep into me.
Above me the ceiling was open-concept and black, lined with fat round heating ducts all painted black to match in that style popularized by the 'premium casual' dining industry. In the far corner, a wood fired pizza oven glowed orange and flickering and the walls were painted milky coffee colored and the chairs and tables were painted dark coffee color. It felt urban and felt metropolitan until I noticed the blue and yellow and flowery country crockery placed at intervals on high corner shelves. Imagine Grandma Lee circa 1974 stumbling drunk into a Starbucks in the West End of Vancouver circa 1994 and puking in the corners. That would about describe it.
Granny china or not I was in a drifting and dreaming state of mind and I was happier than I usually am at the onset of winter when I can't get warm and happily I soaked in my surroundings. At a counter along the window one of those 21st century hippie girls (siwash sweater, spandex pants and a tie-dyed shirt) sat studying, and her book was flat on the table and she had her head resting on her hand parallel to the pages. She had clean, free, product free hair and it fell fine and flowing and flipped over her shoulder and she wrote at the page from a position off to the side. Her neck was bent at a nearly 90 degree angle and it looked like an uncomfortable position, but it looked like it was her favorite and her most comfortable position and she was young and pretty and had a look in her eye like she was writing poetry or songs or something romantic and firelit, a look that was soft and filtered like old silent movies or 70s sunshine pics. The heating ducts put out a quiet hushing gray noise and the music kept padding and purring away like something you'd been thinking about and forgot and the pretty girl's aurora (no I didn't mean aura) had me feeling romantic and poetic too and I fell in love with the moment and I was looking around at everything with my groove on, which you either get or you don't.
Looking out the window I saw the street and cars and the brick building across the road and parking meters and power poles and power lines and leafless skeletal trees and an overcast sky that must have been open cast somewhere out of eyeshot because there was sunlight there too and in cast long shadows on the ground. I was grooving on the crazy angles all the straight lines of the man made things made against the unstraight lines of the unmade things and it was then that I noticed everything was gray. I mean EVERYTHING man! Now gray usually makes me want to fucking hang myself, honest to God. It's always been the thing I hate most about Saskatchewan winters, the whole monochrome 2 dimensionality of everything. Yet here I was managing to get lost in just how many shades of gray there were in front of me, and finding one of those rare transcendent moments where you realize that there is nothing on this planet that is not beautiful! The old mottled gray pot-holed street, a decade or so from it's last resurfacing, oil-stained almost black here, darker gray with the wet silhouette of an old puddle there, and shadows falling at crazy crisscrossing intervals contained an entire pallet of gray in the space of an empty parking space. Stretch it up, onto the clean, bright concrete of the cool crisp crumbling sidewalk and spill up into the fluid form of an old parking meter and there were a dozen more grays. The skeletal tree-a gray as white as sun bleached bone, it's furrows and fissures shaded charcoal and deep, it's immaculate imperfection humbling the perfect gray power pole beside it. Give me a pencil and a millenia and I'd struggle to sketch it for you, a little less pressure where the shadows fade, a smudge where the ice just melted. A thousand shades of gray, contrasts as deep as moon and sky and so freaking gorgeous and complex and simple at the same time and it just screams illusion at you. I knew in an instant that like the song says it's all too beautiful, and whatever it is; love, hate, birth, death, water and ice, blood and feces, war and peace- it's all exactly the way it's supposed to be and all any of it takes is just a moment of peace and the right vantage point and there's beauty in all of it.
Look. I've been up too long already. This is one of those posts that I'll regret making public because it's a little too visceral, and by that I mean that I've given you my viscera in this one, for you to do with as you please. Generally that's an open license to kill or maim, at the very least cripple, so I'm hesitant to put it out there. But at the same time, it's one of those things that only a few of us with more senses than just eyes and ears and orifices will get, and I think that if you know I'm resonating on that same wavelength, that I've got it too, well the world is a little bit bigger and better for us, isn't it?

Peace, Harmony, the Indomitable Beauty of the Human Spirit and Advertising.

2010-11-07T18:37:00.000-08:00

Struck by how well advertisers have tapped into the most wonderful traits of the human animal; joy, spontaneity, creativity and wonder. This is brilliant and moving. Wish it could be for something more than a mobile network. Or maybe I wish networks could be more.

New directions.

2010-11-07T18:31:00.000-08:00

There are days when plflflflft!, I just don't feel like writing anything. Today is one of those days. I'd rather just surf and google drift until I get tired enough to sleep. I was doing just that when it occurred to me that I could increase the appeal of my dusty old blog, if I were to post the occassional link or two that I find interesting in my travels. So while searching around for mustache pics to help me with styling my own Movember 'stache for prostate cancer awareness I came across this pic of Hitler without the mustache. He looks strangely British to me. A bit like Alec Guinness.

zen and the art of cooking.

2010-11-03T21:25:00.000-07:00

I've lost more than a few cooks to the heavily structured environment of my corporate kitchen. Most of the truly passionate ones are in the game as an outlet for their creativity. They turn every mound of mashed potatoes into a rosemary masted galleon, no protein is complete without some overthought (and usually over-reduced) reduction and if the vegetables in house somehow survived beyond baby years to childhood they're too old. Most of these guys haven't mastered the basics, and few can see beyond their aspirations to the skill level required to do what we do well on a daily basis. It took a long time for me to notice it as well, because most of it had become unconscious for me. I started noticing when I took on more of a coaching role.
It starts with the way a cook holds a knife. Invariably they all cut wrong, every slice taking them one blood gushing heartbeat closer to a severed digit. So I'll gently correct them, show them the grip that for me has become so comfortable and watch them struggle with the awkwardness of it. I'll watch them tear into a pepper or an onion like a TV chef, then pass by their waste buckets and show them that they're throwing away half the usable product. I'll show them that the best parts of most vegetables are what they're habitually discarding, show them that in some cases one quarter of an item's size can amount to three quarters of it's mass and most of our usage. It moves on to everything; cooking temps, the color of a protein as it moves through different stages, the sound it makes in a pan when it's ready to turn or finish.
Then, on the days when I'm finally able to step back from coaching, step back from the paperwork and the cooler checks and the inventory counting and the hiring and firing, on days when I'm able to cook again I get my zen on.
The back of the knife blade slips easily into the the calloused path between thumb and forefinger, you can feel the life still resonating in a pepper or a mushroom, turning it and considering how best to maximize the potential for it. Gas flames burn a soft blue, occassionally flickering orange and the heat is no different than the heat off the first fires of the first men gathered around a fire for survival and fellowship. Soon the knife is chopping, and other knives are chopping and there's a stillness and a calmness that settles over me, and it's all stuff that I've done so many times that I slide into an almost meditative state, concentrating on improving knife skills on every stroke.
There were days working in the sewer when I'd daydream wistfully about being back in the kitchen. Freezing cold, rain/sleet coming down, 12 hours into your day with another 12 to go and never seeing the horizon until the end of the day, and all I could think of was how nice it would be to have those gas fires at my back, a knife in hand, chopping away quietly and quickly, my only purpose to make each slice as perfect as the stillness. Stayed up too late again...

endless ramblings

2010-11-03T18:30:00.000-07:00

That's the visual that's been keeping me up at night. I don't have a lot of energy left to explain it right now, but here are my notes so far.

Between 1 and -1 there are infinite decimal points on each side, therefore, 0 is actually an expression of infinity as opposed to a value of nothing. Nothing doesn't exist.
Rather than counting up to infinity as on a number line, in this model, we count points away from infinity. At the standard starting point of 0, 1 is represented as 0+1. In this case infinity plus one. Conversely on the negative side, we have 0-1, or infinity -1. At the upper end of the standard positive number line, rather than some astronomically high number, what we have is Infinity -1. On the negative side instead of some astronomical negative number, we have infinity +1. It becomes painfully obvious that the sum of all numbers creates an endless, ever expanding singularity, and a perfect model of the universe.
Here are some more notes. It becomes possible to divide by 0 when it's equal to infinity. Whole numbers are simply fractions of infinity. 1/0 =1, 2/0 =2, etc.
50+infinity=infinity. -50+infinity=infinity. 50+(-50)=infinity. I can't find a problem with this concept, and this is why I can't sleep at night, because it's not supposed to be this simple.

Que Onda

2010-11-02T20:24:00.000-07:00

Can't sleep. Here's why. I read this article tonight about a new gravity wave detector. This passage in particular got me wound up.
"In general relativity, changes in mass at a location cause space and time to stretch and compress. Rather like sound waves, compressing space-time causes stretching in neighboring regions and vise versa. In this way, a moving distortion in space-time is created. We can detect these by measuring the response of a mass to the distortions in space-time."
The mention of changes in mass and location causing stretches in space time got me thinking of the wave particle duality of light.
So for those of you that have no idea what I'm talking about, here's some oversimplified layman's terms for you.
The Wave Particle Duality of Light

and here's a little primer on gravitational waves;

So you fire some electrons at the speed of light, and the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle states that you can know one of 2 things. You can know how fast they're going, or where they are, but not both.
You'll notice when they did the Wave Particle Duality of light experiments they were able to 'see' only one electron at the slits, but when they watched from afar they found the interference patterns.
I'm proposing that what's causing the wave phenomenon is a gravitational wave caused by electrons moving at near light speed. It doesn't appear in a single slit experiment because the electrons are caught in a gravitational 'slipstream' of sorts. It occurs in the dual slit experiment because the gravitational slipstream is split by the slits and collides with and upsets the time-space the electrons are passing through. This creates the interference patterns that are so recognizable as gravitational waves on a macro-cosmic scale, but so mysterious in the lab. That is all.
Watch the videos again, read everything you can on it, and you'll see it makes perfect sense. Unfortunately I don't have the math to back it up, but I guarantee you that somebody will 'discover' this in the next decade. Then you'll be able to tell them your crazy insomniac Rev. Dr. Andy knew this 10 years ago :)

Goodbye summer, hello blog.

2010-10-25T21:51:00.000-07:00

Yep.
Outside is quickly becoming inhospitable, and the computer is looking better.
I learned a new concept today. Narcotization, and while this is an umbrella term for many concepts, the context I'm using it in is the psychological context. In psychological terms, narcotization refers to a condition where due to stimuli you feel you have no chance of avoiding a particular fate, for example, if you are faced with a problem that appears too large or complex to deal with. I was introduced to the term in Chuck Palahniuk's book "Non-fiction". He cited a study on gum disease. Patients were shown pictures of gums in various stages, and the effect this had on oral hygiene throughout the various groups was then correlated accordingly. He discovered that while both groups shown the early stages of gum disease improved their hygiene, the group shown the worst case scenario resigned themselves to the inevitable and gave up altogether. It seemed insurmountable, and futile to make any effort.
It's a concept that's been floating in the back of my mind all day.
I work as a Chef, and there are facets of my operation that fill me with defeat when I consider them. Today I stepped back a bit and looked at the components of these problems, rather than at the insurmountable problem itself. It was easier to fathom. This seems like common sense, and in many ways it is, but the concept has been picking at me.
How much of the world is narcotized into inaction? When we look at racism, culture clashes, poverty, climate change, what solutions can one possibly see? Is it not reasonable that the daily onslaught of doom and gloom from the media has narcotized us into inaction? We get the news on the half hour from the radio stations, all day on some tv stations and every time we sit at the computer. We're bombarded with an overload of how big the problems of the world are more than any other culture or generation in history. We need to realize that this narcotizes us into a state of dull resignation to the 'inevitable'. Maybe this is what lies at the root of the apparent apathy epidemic in the west.
On a personal level, and at the risk of sounding like an infomercial, I'm going to take a good look at the things I consider barriers to my development as a human being, and a father and a husband and I'm going to make a point of looking at the little picture from now on. Maybe I'll find a little more power there.
And for lack of a better graphic, on the theme of dental hygiene;

Undefined my ass!

2010-10-10T20:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, this one has kept me up too many nights. Not because I can't figure it out, but because it is so unbelievably simple that it simply has to be true. I would invite you to invite all of your math friends to check this out for me.
0*0=0 right?
Infinity*infinity=infinity right?
X * infinity=infinity
X * 0 =0

Okay, that's the background. Now here's the deal. When you get into dividing numbers by zero, or dividing numbers by infinity, they say that the answer is 'undefined'.
Here's a quick (not really)explanation of why that is. (If you like you can skip the explanation and move to the next paragraph following the explanation)
THE EXPLANATION FOR WHY YOU CAN'T DIVIDE BY ZERO OR INFINITY
Because there's just no sensible way to define it.

For example, we could say that 1/0 = 5. But there's a rule in arithmetic that a(b/a) = b, and if 1/0 = 5, 0(1/0) = 0*5 = 0 doesn't work, so you could never use the rule. If you changed every rule to specifically say that it doesn't work for zero in the denominator, what's the point of making 1/0 = 5 in the first place? You can't use any rules on it.
But maybe you're thinking of saying that 1/0 = infinity. Well then, what's "infinity"? How does it work in all the other equations?
Does infinity - infinity = 0?
Does 1 + infinity = infinity?
If so, the associative rule doesn't work, since (a+b)+c = a+(b+c) will not always work:
1 + (infinity - infinity) = 1 + 0 = 1, but
(1 + infinity) - infinity = infinity - infinity = 0.
You can try to make up a good set of rules, but it always leads to nonsense, so to avoid all the trouble we just say that it doesn't make sense to divide by zero.
What happens if you add apples to oranges? It just doesn't make sense, so the easiest thing is just to say that it doesn't make sense, or, as a mathematician would say, "it is undefined."
Maybe that's the best way to look at it. When, in mathematics, you see a statement like "operation XYZ is undefined", you should translate it in your head to "operation XYZ doesn't make sense."

UNDEFINED MY ASS
This reminds me of the commercials where they try to pass off baffling legalese to children to rob them of their toys. The commercials end with "Even a child knows etc" I think even a child would realize that the above undefinition is a cop out.
I think my explanation, as follows, makes a lot more sense. My theory mathematically proves that nothing is everything, and everything is nothing. It proves that the universe is one giant singularity. Are you ready, it's not that complicated.
Imagine if you will, a number line. The negatives go off to the left to negative infinity, the numbers go off to the right to positive infinity. This is the same line we all learned in the 4th or 5th grade.
On the number line zero sits between 1 and -1. Infinity sits at either end of the number line.
What I'm going to ask you to imagine next is this: We don't count out to infinity in each direction. We count down to 0 from infinity in each direction. 0 isn't the start or beginning, it's the midpoint. It's the sum of all points. (-infinity)+(positive infinity)= 0. In this instance, because the range of points from 0 to infinity = infinity, and the range of points from 0 to -infinity is infinity, we can see that 0, being the exact halfway point could be expressed as infinity/2=0. Consequently, 0*2=infinity. These equations work IF 0=Infinity.
Do you get it? Yeah, that just happened to your head. So what can I do with this now?

I'm All Out of Love.

2010-08-31T18:59:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's the rain. Maybe it's the time of year. Maybe it's because I'm here and my wife and kids are home and school's starting and my boy is sick and I'm 1000 miles away. Whatever it is the magic isn't here this time. I passed on the urge to slip into old ghost mode and haunt the halls of my old West End memories this time. I hit the skytrain and it was a pain in the ass to be honest. The shopping downtown is just downtown shopping.
Cursing my way through the wet coast rain I didn't hear the refrains of Miles Davis drifting in the seedy alleys of my boarded up nostalgia that I used to. That slightly bad ass feeling of being down and out and cold and wet was noticeably absent. More than anything I was just cold and wet.
Somewhere there were vague memories of enjoying the rain and the cold and the dark because there was always dry and warm and neon light to be had in my favorite rainy day go-to places. But the memories were too vague...more an intangible wisp like a sensation you think you might remember from a dream.
What I found today was that I miss my home, as lacking in glamor as it is. I miss my family. I miss my friendly cat curling up with me the moment I lay down and my mean cat hissing at me with a swat the moment I walk by. I miss my ridiculous vehicles and my longboard.
There was something that did make me smile today. You can still get a giant slice of pizza for 1.50 all over the place. They're even billing it as 'Vancouver Style' now. I think that means 6 hours of old with toppings more implied than employed :)

Paradigm Slide

2010-04-11T11:54:00.000-07:00

This year I bought my wife a longboard for her birthday. Admittedly it was a bit of a chipmunk gift. I wanted a smaller board that I could do a few more tricks on, but she really wanted a longboard too, so it all worked out.
The great news is that she took right to it. I'm really happy about it, because it means that in future I'll have someone I actually enjoy spending time with to come out with me. But there's a neat byproduct of this.
We went to one of the more upscale areas to do some boarding the other day. On the way back Janet laughed to herself a bit and I asked her what it was about. She said that in the past anytime we've driven down that particular stretch of road she's always looked at houses, but this time she was looking at the trails and paths and roads for nice board runs. It's not quite enough to call a paradigm shift. But it's a start. What makes me so happy about it is that she's seeing the world a bit like I do. A fancy house is one thing, but a healthy mind, body and inner balance are a whole lot more important. Hopefully longboarding can be a door of perception for her in that light. Maybe we can both go into our 60s like Cliff Coleman.

Scrambled Egg In a Cup.

2010-04-06T22:40:00.001-07:00

This isn't about scrambled egg in a cup. It's about time, impermanence, infinity, eternity and all that jazz. But it starts out with scrambled egg in a cup. Just giving you a heads up in case you think this is going to be some heartwarming nostalgia type thing. It's not.
When I was a kid, my favorite food was scrambled egg in a cup. My mum (Scottish)would soft boil an egg, put it in a cup with some salt and butter, scramble it up and serve it to me with toast soldiers. I know I loved it, I remember loving it, but I don't remember ever eating it and loving it because at 5 years old she must have undercooked the egg a little too much and I came down with a hideous case of food poisoning. I couldn't stand the look, taste smell or texture of scrambled eggs after that.
So at 5 years old I came down with a massive case of food poisoning and I puked and puked and puked and puked until I passed out, then woke up and puked and passed out until I became completely lost as far as time and space were concerned.
Previous to this poisoning, I had a pretty established routine. I got up in the morning, and I went to bed in the evening when my parents threatened me with Wee Willie Winkie, who would take me away to some kind of labor camp for children if I wasn't in bed when he came knocking.
My routine revolved around television for the most part. The news in the morning until Dad left for work, then a few kids shows until lunch time, mum would watch her soaps in the afternoon and then we'd all watch the same shows at night: Gilligan's Island, Barnaby Jones, Ironside, etc.
This might sound bizarre, but I can pinpoint the day I learned about time, and it was this food poisoning day.
I came to after having been passed out for what seemed like forever. I thought that I had gone to bed at night, yet when I woke up it was night time again. Somehow I'd slept through the whole day. I came out of my bedroom which adjoined the living room to see Gilligan's Island on TV, and the confusion it caused me had my parents giggling away. I was horribly disoriented. Gilligan's Island was something that happened after supper. Supper was something that happened when Dad got home from work. Dad got home from work after the soaps, etc. Yet here I was, a whole day gone, and in my experience none of the event triggers leading up to Gilligan's Island had occurred. It was then that somebody told me it was 7:30.
And at 5 years old I became aware in the most acute and disturbing way that time does not stop, even when you're sleeping.
Since then I've had a few more disturbing revelations concerning time.
I've learned that when you're 16 years old, grade 7 is an era, grade 6 is an era, and the summer between grade 6 and 7 is yet another era. But when you're coming up on 40 years old, then it seems your 20s were an era, your 30s were an era. Somehow the cognizant realization of time hits warp factor 9, and 10 years seem to pass as quickly as a year in school or a summer at the lake.
I've found a way to stem this though, to slow it down so that a summer lasts almost forever again. The secret? Relax. Work less. Play more. If you work a lot, and can't change it, then you have to play a lot more.
I push myself to a state of complete and utter exhaustion every day all summer, every summer. Just because I'm stuck in a little cup of time-space doesn't mean that I can't alter it. I'm going to scramble things up a bit. This year I'm starting summer in the spring. I won't finish it until the fall. And I will play people, and I will play hard.

39 Winters Rant.

2010-04-01T00:52:00.000-07:00

The build up to this rant really began about 2 weeks ago. Nevertheless it's been an omnipresent irritation for a long time now.
Here's the deal.
Chronologically I'm pushing 40. Now whether it's arrested adolescence, Peter Pan syndrome or simply a deep seated joie de vivre, I do not behave like a 40 year old.
Most of the people that I work with are in their 20s and I relate to them quite well. In fact, I think it would be safe to say that most of them are more mature than I am. They all work with me day in and day out and I think they know me well enough to realize that I'm not going through some midlife crisis. I think they know that I genuinely have never had my enthusiasm for silliness dampened or lost. Other 40ish acquaintances of mine like to rib me about my leisure activities. They seem to think that biking and skateboarding are ridiculous notions and attempts to gain back some kind of youth. I have nothing to gain back however. I never gave up these kind of pursuits at any point. I never made the attempt to grow up and be responsible that they did.
The people that know me best know that I'm a big kid, with a big kid's enthusiasm for pretty much anything fun, and a big kid's disdain for anything not fun.
So on to the past couple of weeks. I'm in Vancouver, looking for a new MP3 player for Janet, and absolutely refusing to buy into another Apple device. In a glass case behind the counter they had an MP3 player by Sony called a Wearable Walkman. I asked the clerk if I could see 'that walkman thingy' and some jerk next to me laughed and said 'you're showing your age'. Initially I thought he was making fun of me using the term thingy, but then I realized he thought I was calling all MP3 players 'walkmans'. I showed him the package and asked for his thoughts on it and when he saw that it actually was a "Walkman" he got a little sheepish.
Fast forward to one week later (or skip to the next track I should say.) Janet and I are in the store and I see a Wii game out of the corner of my eye that I thought the kids would like, called Sega Superstars Tennis. I asked Janet to hand me the Sega game, and she laughed at me and said "It's a WII game, not a Sega game,we don't have a Sega!" and then she made a comment about me getting old and mixing up my decades. I pointed out that Sega still produces software, although they don't produce consoles anymore and asked her again to pass me the Sega game.
Now to wrap up this little rant. I don't feel old. I have more energy than I had when I was 18, I'm in better shape than I was when I was 18, I don't feel that I gave up any of my youth to become an adult. In fact trying to fit into the adult world of responsibilities and commitments is and always has been a monumental struggle for me. The only time that I do feel even close to 40, is when somebody comments on my behaviour, interests etc as being for someone younger. Screw that.

Speed Wobble

2010-02-24T19:24:00.000-08:00

There's a parable here, or at least I hope there will be a parable here by the time I'm done, so bear with me.
I've fallen in love with longboarding. As it was with poker it's the meditative, zen quality of longboarding that really does it for me. The moves required to maintain any sort of fluid and experience enhancing flow are extraordinarily simple, yet any variation from the norm and you are eating shit in a manner most painful and quick.
Speed wobble is a phenomenon that occurs in most wheeled vehicles when they hit higher speeds. It is just what it sounds like. A terrifying incongruency between the oscillation of the wheels, resulting in a destabilizing wobble, also known as 'death wobbles' at very high speeds.
This is what I find absolutely beautiful and zen and jedi about speed wobbles on a longboard. When you're flying down a hill and the board begins to shake, the first instinct you have is to somehow correct your balance to fight the wobble. Generally this is a bad idea, and the parable should become evident here pretty quick.
Like the universe, a longboard's natural state is one of balance. The design of the trucks (the things that the wheels are on) is such that they are self correcting. If you apply force to turn them in one direction, the simple removal of that force will return them to center. If, while experiencing speed wobble, you attempt to steer your way out of it, you're keeping your wheels from correcting themselves. The best action to take, is nearly impossible to explain until you experience it. The best action to take, is to just relax. When it begins to feel that the board is going to lose all contact with the road and throw you down at 40 or 50 kms per hour, your best course of action is just to go loose and have faith that everything is going to be okay. The moment you do this, your calm translates immediately to the board and the wobbles cease. I used to get speed wobbles at around 15 miles per hour, then 20...now I'm up to about 40 without a problem.
As with so many things in life; fear, stress, anger, frustration, anxiety, they all seem to vanish into a smooth state-of-grace kind of calmness when you realize that trying to control it all is sometimes 90% of the problem. And in case you missed it, that was the parable.

The Strange Alluring Opiate of Freedom and The Nature of Elephants

2010-02-01T08:34:00.000-08:00

Last night I fell asleep watching videos of longboarding in warm climes. My hope was that I would then have beautiful dreams of carving down sunlit streets with a warm breeze barely sufficient to vaporize the sweat on my skin. That didn't happen. All I remember about my dreams is that a taxi company was opening a new dispatch on Idylwyld. Hardly the escapist alternate reality I was going for.

Today I woke up to a sick boy, and girls that needed to be at school for 8:30.
I stepped outside to start the car and my breath came in crystalline incandescent blue clouds, and ice cracked like a whip cracking as I opened the door to my vehicle in the crisp quiet of cold winter morning. I spent my first hour of the day shivering, much as I have done for the last 4 months.

5 days a week, sometimes more, I go to work. As far as work goes, I've got it pretty good. Decent pay, a high degree of personal autonomy. Yet I am dissatisfied. Discontent. I have no higher ambition in life than to longboard MOST of the time. It's getting to be an obsession. I'm considering a flight to Vancouver or Vegas or Phoenix or Albuquerque maybe even Juarez just to get it out of my system.

It's a sickness right now people. I can feel it 24/7. I KNOW that living in the snow and ice and darkness is not normal. I've been to places where winter consists of 1 or 2 snowfalls a year and a little rain now and again. I've been to places where it never snows, where it rains for half an hour at night, and half an hour in the morning, and within half an hour more the tropic sun has dried the streets. I know that there are beaches, where in the words of a good friend, all you need to survive is a guitar and a sad song.

I've worked at home before. Less money, but no schedule.
I read a thing lately, a metaphor for the bondage we all find ourselves in as we're consumed by work and responsibilities and 'life' in the 'real world'. The jist of it was this:
A traveller in South East Asia noticed that the massive elephants people used for work, elephants that transported entire forests with their trunks, capable of destroying homes and bridges,were secured against any attempts at escape by a frail little rope tied around one foot. Any one of them could easily have snapped said ropes in an instant.
The traveller asked a trainer why they didn't break the ropes.
"We tie them with that size of rope when they are babies. The nature of an elephant is to roam free. Throughout their childhood they are too weak to break the ties. They try and they fail, they try and they fail until eventually they give up. When they become adults, they have come to accept that they're bound, and they don't bother trying to free themselves."
The problem with me, is that I know this whole way of life is a fabrication, and it chafes at me more than any rope ever could.

Wormholes on Broadway

2010-01-23T08:31:00.000-08:00

I finished work last night, called home for the usual "Do I need to pick anything up?" call and received instructions to get milk.
20 minutes later I pulled into the parking lot of the OK Economy on Broadway and headed inside.
There's a certain headspace that arises when you've had a long day and a quiet drive and the night is dark and snow is falling quiet and slow like it does in Christmas movies. I came out of the sparkling deep blue night into the blinding flourescents of a grocery store that hasn't changed in 25 years. A muddy trail across the tile started thick at the door where people had knocked the snow off of their shoes and melted away to gradually disappear deeper inside the store.
Something about that triggered a memory somewhere. Not a deja vu, but an actual image locked in some neuron. OK Economy, circa 1984, going to pick up powdered donuts with Ryan Townsend so that he could try to chat up the check out girl that was in her 20s. I got to thinking about places and time, and places in time and it occurred to me that somewhere in this universe there is a vantage point from which I could see 1984 me and 2009 me walking around OK Economy simultaneously. It occurred to me that just because that moment has slipped into the past doesn't mean it's not here anymore. Walking around the store I had the distinct feeling of walking through an ethereal wake of time, that all the events and moments those walls had seen were still there, rippling in tiny waves, collecting in corners in extra-dimensional eddies and swirls.
Anyway, it was one of those weird, surreal little moments I wanted to write down.

Repo Man

2010-01-17T09:42:00.001-08:00

So I'm sitting up at the bar with Dan, and Dan is ebullient and jovial and glad to be alive because it's his day off and he came into $200 he wasn't expecting or needing and was exercising his option to be frivolous with it.
It was a slow night for me so I checked out early and sat with him for a bit, swapping work woes and future hopes and what-not, in a generally jovial mood myself. Somehow we got on to the topic of career choices and the options we had if we were to wish a change.
"My buddy is a repo man." Dan said.
"I'd love to be a repo man!" I said. "It's up in the top 5 of jobs I'd like to try."
"Really?" Dan was taken aback. "I wouldn't think you'd enjoy dispensing misery to people."
"I'm pretty good at staying detached and reasoning my conscience away." I answered. "As a Repo guy, you aren't God taking things away from people with your power, you're simply the hand of God. I just think it wouldn't be dull."
Dan shrugged then raised a thoughtful eyebrow. "Well, my friend has a lot of stories about it, that's for sure."
"Like what?" I asked.
So Dan told me a story.
"One day he got this call from one of these rent to own furniture places. He had to go out to a reserve and pick up a big screen tv, a sound system, and some video game stuff. So off he goes, in the middle of winter, and he gets to the house, where this disshevelled woman in her 40s answers. Behind her, there are at LEAST ten kids, all ages, from 2 to 12, and not one of them has even a stitch of clothing on. After some initial arguing and debate the woman finally realizes that resistance is futile and lets him in, directing him through the house to a room at the back. There's nothing in the house. An old couch and chair and that's about it. Finally he gets to the room, and there's a big hole in the wall filled with snow, and snow pouring into the house. In that room is this altar of electronics from the rent to own place. Once the kids start to understand that he's there to take it all away from them and leave them with nothing but the snow for entertainment they start crying and yelling and arguing and begging him. He just dismantles it all, a component at a time, taking it out of the house piece by piece while they all cry and sob. And that was one day on the job for him."
"Wow." I said.
"Can you believe some people live like that?"
"Well if the pay is good and he likes it..." I said.

Social Networking, Neuro-linguistic Programming, Molecular Gastronomy.

2010-01-06T23:07:00.000-08:00

Quitting Facebook has been tough. So tough that as of yet I'm unsuccessful. I've been checking it daily still, just not posting. Every time I do check it I try to do a little neuro-linguistic programming with myself, build some negative associations with the site etc. But I'm still interested. It's tough for me not to post info about everything. For example.
One of my cooks at work has taken an interest in molecular gastronomy. It's debatably a new form of cuisine that relies on chemical profiles of food to blend tastes, textures etc. It uses techniques, ingredients and equipment that are more at home in a laboratory than a kitchen; liquid nitrogen, syringes, calcium chloride, sodium alginate. The results are curious, beautiful, often tasty. It's nouvelle cuisine on LSD. My cook's facebook feed shows that he's joined a Facebook group for Molecular Gastronomy. A quick perusal of their wall shows comments from young aspiring chefs, many claiming to be great and talented professing an interest in this new cuisine. Most of them look too young to have even begun to understand classical cuisine, a grounding that is crucial to success especially in this path. There were a lot of arrogant statements on their site and it was damn tempting to break my facebook vows and berate them. Fortunately I have some self discipline, so I'll just air my thoughts here.
A lot of classical chefs don't think too highly of molecular gastronomy. They feel it's pretentious, serves a chef's ego more than the cuisine, is about showboating technique over the dish. I find to my surprise, that after an initial interest in molecular gastronomy, I subscribe to this school of thought. In my opinion, food should be simple, regional and magnificent, emphasis on the simple. I think on this, even Ferran Adria would agree.
To me simplicity is the corner stone of great cuisine. Fresh ingredients complementing one another in taste, color and texture, prepared with passion. I don't have any desire to see the word 'chloride' anywhere in my food. Molecular gastronomy is a neat novelty idea, a high end cousin to deep-fried cola or cotton candy, but it's little else other than a passing fancy. Students of molecular gastronomy would do well to pay attention to Adria's words in this video Ultimately, his work is first and foremost about the cuisine of Catalan, and it came about after 10 years of studying nouvelle cuisine, followed by another 10 years specializing in Mediterranean cuisine. Before you can make a lobster gazpacho, you need to be able to make a gazpacho.

Working Class Anti-Hero Introduction.

2009-12-30T23:09:00.000-08:00

Keep Britney and Megan Fox and all your pop hotties. I'll take Order of Canada winner (and undeniable seductress) Valerie Pringle.

It's Dec 31st. As part of my New Year's Resolution I'm dropping out of the social networking set. I've found over the past year that I'm straight up junkie hooked on social networking, my drug of choice being Facebook, and I can't moderate it in the least. I check it like 20 times each day, eager to catch up on the activities of hundreds of people that I've had only the most minor interaction with over the years. I feel somehow compelled to tell all of them the micro-minutiae of my life. "Andy is cooking Spaghetti". "Andy is eating spaghetti". "Andy had too much spaghetti". Blurting out all of these insignificant little details somehow soothes that creative monster that drives me to write however, with the unexpected and unwanted result that I just plain don't write anymore.
So no more Facebook. Instead I'm going to channel that creative energy and typeractiveness back into actual writing. Paragraphs and trains of thoughts rather than status updates and the like. And today's train of thought goes like this.
I'm currently reading another one of Anthony Bourdain's books. "A Cook's Tour". I love Bourdain's writing. He started out being my favorite celebrity chef, quickly became my favorite celebrity tourist (knocking out long time top spot Valerie Pringle) to become one of my favorite all around writers. This guy has skillz peeps.
It was while reading his sometimes sentimental sometimes cynical gonzo-esque memoirs that it occurred to me that I have probably had more jobs in my life than most families have in several generations. It also occurred to me, that with few exceptions, I've loathed and despised every one of those jobs. Where there is loathing, there is passion, and where there is passion there is the potential for some good writing. Sitting in the tub, feet wiggling in the water with Bourdain in the Bay of Biscayne, I decided that I would start to chronicle my work history. I'm going to call the series "Working Class Anti-Hero", which is intended to be a nod to John Lennon's "Working Class Hero", a satirical, Sartre-erical lament for the working man, as well as a nod to Dostoevsky, Knut Hamsun, and Henry Miller, the absolute kings of anti-heroism.
And, as this is already starting to feel a little bit too much like work, I'm going to knock off for now, and think about what there is that I can tell you about working in a nightclub at 15 years old.

That's Right, DR. Andy Tait.

2009-12-09T20:20:00.000-08:00

I picked my own Christmas present this year. As many of you may know, I like writers, and my favorite writers have always been the dangerous variety. I'm talking about Kerouac, Henry Miller, Hemingway, Steinbeck at times, and of course the immortal Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.
The first time I read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas I was hooked. From there I read everthing HST I could find. Eventually I came across the circumstances of his doctorate. He was a 'Doctor of Divinity'. For some reason I'd always thought he was a Dr. of Journalism or Letters or something like that. But nope. Divinity. He'd ordered his doctorate from a mail order church in Modesto California.
So this year, my Christmas present is my own doctorate (legal and legitimate by the way) from the very same church. I join the ranks of quite a few famous ministers. HST of course. But also Milton Berle, Sammy Davis Jr, Mel Blanc, Ray Bolger (who played the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz), Richard Branson, Tony Danza, Hugh Hefner, Abby Hoffman, to name but a few. I'm in some damn fine company!

I Don't Get Loneliness.

2009-11-26T20:46:00.000-08:00

I remember it like a sickness. When I was in my teens I was terrified of loneliness. The idea of sitting alone had a horror and a sadness to it that's difficult to define.
Around the age of 22 I realized that this fear was crippling me. It made me needy, and there is little in this world more pitiful than a person that literally needs another for sanity. I chose to become comfortable with myself.
It started with reading all kinds of philosophy texts, the classics mainly, like Nietzche and Kant. From there I discovered the existentialists; Dostoevsky, Sartre, Camus. Somehow that led me to Henry Miller, who in turn led me to Eastern philosophy.
I came to embrace solitude. So much so that I actually began to prefer it over company. Still do as a matter of fact. I think that I have felt lonesome perhaps 3 times in the past 10 years, mainly when I'm away from my family for more than a week at a time. And then it's not loneliness so much as homesickness.
Being a complete neurotic as well as a hermit however makes me wonder if this preference for alone time is healthy or not. It's not that I'm anti-social. More that I'm pro-solitude if that makes any sense. Is that such a bad thing?

I Think George Carlin Would Have Loved This.

2009-10-19T00:59:00.001-07:00

This is a copy of an e-mail that someone sent to my wife. People don't send me stuff like this anymore because I have a habit of researching the veracity of anything suspect. I then e-mail them back with facts, and while some of them appreciate learning the truth behind hoaxes and rumors, I think it pisses most people off. Whatever. Stuff like this pisses me off. Here, in italics is the e-mail, and below it you'll find the facts surrounding the authorship of 'Paradox'.

"This is an awesome piece. If you have not read it, take the time to read it now. If you have read it, take time to read it again! GEORGE CARLIN (His wife recently died...and George followed her, dying July 2008)

Isn't it amazing that George Carlin - comedian of the 70's and 80's - could write something so very eloquent...and so very appropriate.

A Message by George Carlin:

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways , but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete...

Remember; spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever.

Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.

Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.

Remember, to say, ' I love you ' to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.

Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again.

Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.

AND ALWAYS REMEMBER:

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

If you don't send this to at least 8 people.....Who cares?

George Carlin

It's got some great ideas in it, but as I'm a huge George Carlin fan I thought it was odd that he would say something like "We pray too little", considering that Carlin was a vehement atheist. He once said that the only being he prayed to was Joe Pesci, because he looked like a guy who could get things done. So I did a little digging and found this.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/paradox.asp
Long story short, George Carlin didn't have anything to do with writing this. It was written more than 50 years ago by Dr. Bob Moorehead, former pastor of Seattle's Overlake Christian Church. He was later accused of sexually abusing 17 male members of his congregation, forcing his resignation.
I think this is all hilariously ironic in a couple of ways. First, it leads one to believe that the list of ills provided are a product of the modern age, when in fact the author wrote them fully half a century before our modern age. Everyone over 50 with a computer loves forwarding this stuff to their kids with a bit a mix of nostalgia and self-righteousness. I think it's awesome that Dr. Bob was talking about their world.
It's also ironic that the hoaxsters chose Carlin as the alleged author, because he would have found this really funny too, particularly the part with the perverted priest.

Bohemian Dad.

2009-10-14T19:43:00.001-07:00

I used to avoid working a lot more than I currently avoid working. I know that may be hard to believe, but it's true.
At one point in my life I had the goal of writing fiction for a living. I read a lot of Bohemian writers and took inspiration from them, most notably Henry Miller.
Miller was a tramp for the most part. Job to job, town to town, until he finally settled in a drafty old cabin in the middle of nowhere.
Like Miller I drifted from job to job, town to town, and I did my best at all times to live hand to mouth. I worked part time if at all, rented closets from likeminded peers in divey apartments. I bought all my clothing used or shared with friends.
The goal of course was always to spend the spare time writing.
I did a lot of writing. What I did not do however was any of the follow through. In 38 years I've sent off 2 pieces of work, to 2 prospective publishers for consideration. That's it. Anyway, I digress.
The point is this. When I became a father, I decided that I'd lost the right to be a Bohemian. My own parents were thrifty to say the least, and I've got to admit that they're choice to clothe me in generic outfits throughout childhood left me a bit scarred. Kids can be mean, especially when they have brand name and you don't.
So I've decided not to put my own kids through that Hell. Every fall we head out to the athletic stores and we get them top of the line running shoes. I spend the $10 or $20 extra to buy them the better labels of clothes.
But I'm conflicted. Personally, I'm averse to consumerism. I subscribe more to the principles of simplicity set forth by Thoreau. It's my own personal philosophy. I'm not going to spend more than a 2 grand on a car, because it doesn't make sense to me. I can't imagine spending more than 20 bucks on anything but task specific wardrobe items (running gear being the exception, injuries and discomfort are extremely demotivating.) I think that mainstream culture has lost touch with what's important because of rampant consumerism. Personalities seem too defined by what they have and what they don't.
That being said, personalities seem defined by what they have and what they don't, and I'm working on defining 3 little personalities every day. As much as I embrace counter-culture thoughts and philosophies, I kind of want them to be mainstream. Hippie families like this just don't cut it in the 21st Century. Do they?

Our mountains are lighter than air.

2009-10-12T12:37:00.000-07:00

Saskatchewan is flat. If you wanted a simile for extreme flatness, Saskatchewan would be very near the top of the list.
It's also pretty devoid of any significant scenery other than sky. Consequently that's where I find myself looking most of the time, up up up.
I remember when I returned after spending 10 years in the mountains of Alberta and the West Coast of B.C. that I had the sensation of being at a tremendous altitude for my first few weeks back.
The absence of mountains on the horizon somehow convinced my senses that I must be high above the mountains. It was like vertigo those first few weeks.
I was riding in a friend's car at that time, and I spotted a line of storm clouds moving in far away to the west. I'd been looking at them for a few minutes before I realized that it wasn't a mountain range, but clouds, and I laughed to myself.
Yesterday I was out riding my bike on the edge of town and I saw a distant range of clouds rising over the horizon, and I was reminded again of the mountains, and for a moment I missed them. Only for a moment though. Soon I was full of appreciation for our mountains, lighter than air, advancing and retreating across the sky. You can watch a storm cloud boil and grow, and it looks like a great volcanic lava flow growing and rising. Our mountains light up with fireworks all summer long, and they turn and drop and can be 1000 different colors at once when the sun is setting. By far the very best thing about our moving mountain ranges of cloud, is that they are never the same as they were the day before.
Scenery is entirely dependent on focus.

Confirmation Bias.

2009-10-06T22:07:00.000-07:00

When I played poker, I made a living of off the confirmation biases of others. Confirmation bias refers to a type of selective thinking whereby one tends to notice and to look for what confirms one's beliefs, and to ignore, not look for, or undervalue the relevance of what contradicts one's beliefs. For example, if you believe that during a full moon there is an increase in admissions to the emergency room where you work, you will take notice of admissions during a full moon, but be inattentive to the moon when admissions occur during other nights of the month. A tendency to do this over time unjustifiably strengthens your belief in the relationship between the full moon and accidents and other lunar effects. In poker it's the tendency to view one's wins as relevant and meaningful, but downplay or disregard one's losses. It's one of the reasons I used software to continually analyze my game. There's no kidding yourself when you have the mean win/loss rate of 250,000 hands looking you in the eye.
I think that poker may have destroyed my mind. In poker you are constantly playing a game of "What do I think he has, what does he think I have, what does he think I think he has, and what does he think I think he thinks I have. It gets pretty convoluted, but it pays off...in poker.
In real life, I'm having trouble shaking this thinking. I question every action of every one around me for what it really means, and I have a reverse confirmation bias. I tend to use selective thinking that confirms ulterior motives everywhere. I can quite easily convince myself that this is rational, and that on the contrary, the lack of an ulterior motive is irrational.
I analyze situations, find the worst case scenario for another person's thoughts or behaviour, then build up a system of associations and beliefs that make any best case scenario seem naive and optimistic.
Anyway, I'm rambling, not making much sense to myself, better go to bed as I have to be up in 5 hours to count for 3 hours.

Dine and Dash.

2009-09-25T03:41:00.000-07:00

I was talking to one of my line cooks outside and we watched the sunset and wound down from the rush and talked about how we could improve our performance next time. We talked for a while and the sun did set and dusk turned to dark and we heard sirens out in front of the building on Circle Drive. Red light bounced off the walls of the building and we poked our heads around the corner to see a fire truck blocking traffic, and a group of firemen huddled around a mass on the ground. I think I saw the thing's feet moving and the firemen were quiet and focused. Moments later there was a police car, and a cop and another fireman were laying out pylons and directing slow moving traffic around the scene and we moved up closer to see more.
"If you get close and you see something horrible, you'll never forget it." I cautioned my young cook, remembering a trip on the bus when I was a kid. An old lady had been killed crossing Broadway and they had a detour set up. As my bus turned I looked out the window and could see a long dark puddle stretching away from a people sized blotch in the center of the road and flowing down in rivulets to the gutter. It was midafternoon in the summer, and the blood glinted black and shiny and smooth in the high sun. It's a sight you don't forget.
My cook looked at me a little spooked and thought about whether he could handle human horror in his head, then moved up anyway.
There was a car stopped in front of the huddled mass, and its hood was smashed and its headlight was smashed and its windshield was smashed and there was this tall lanky teenage kid all pale and shaking standing beside the car hugging himself and biting his lips watching with complete and utter intensity as the firemen worked on the thing on the ground.
It was only another minute or two and there was an ambulance there and the EMS guys got out and started to help, one of them breaking out a stretcher. A TV cameraman showed up and started filming, visibly bothered when a car passed in front of his shot.
Some guy in his 40s came walking by, dressed in business casual, tired, toting a laptop and smoking a cigarette and he stopped to watch with us.
"Pedestrian?" he said.
"Yep" I said, although I didn't really know.
The guy looked at the damage to the car. "Must have been a big pedestrian." he surmised.
"Or a fast car." I noted.
"Maybe both. Dead?" he asked me.
"I don't know, I think I saw his feet moving."
He tilted his head, shrugged, then shook it no. "They're moving pretty slow for a not-dead guy."
And they were. And nothing moved, not feet, not hands, not head, not even my line cook and I. They put the thing on to the stretcher and put the stretcher in the ambulance and the ambulance tore away and we stood there for a couple of minutes watching the clean up.
The firemen passed around a spray bottle and sprayed off their boots and the knees of their overalls and the fronts of their jackets. One of them spread sand across a long glistening patch of dark wetness on the roadway.
I went inside and the party was still going strong, but the bar manager was keyed up anxious and there was a cop asking questions and taking notes and one of the waitresses was in the office crying. The grotesque and curious thing on the road had been a guy in our bar minutes before, a friend of the server and he had dashed across the street to buy cigarettes when the tall lanky kid slammed into him, taking away all his peopleness and life and momentum.
I was shaken. I don't like mortality, and that was a pretty uncomfortable reminder how fast that can happen.

Depends on how you look at it.

2009-09-08T20:53:00.000-07:00

I read an article recently that talked about how mental disorders involving skewed perceptions might actually be the more accurate outlook.
What interested me in particular was the concept of depressive realism. Essentially, this is the idea that depressed people have a more accurate picture of reality than the population at large.

Studies by psychologists Alloy and Abramson (1979) and Dobson and Franche (1989) showed that depressed people appear to have a more realistic perception of their importance, reputation, locus of control, and abilities than those who are not depressed.

People without depression are more likely to have inflated self-images and look at the world through "rose-colored glasses".

Just thought I would share that, before I head off to bed. Long day today, early day tomorrow.

This Old World Keeps Spinning 'Round.

2009-08-24T22:36:00.000-07:00

I like moments. At one point I lived my life in search of moments. The kinds of moments I like are the moments where I have a mainline right from my center of my being to the infinite divine. Christians would call it a state of grace. Buddhists would call it enlightenment. I call them moments.
I've just come home from one of these beautiful moments, and I managed to make it last for quite a while, which is awesome.
Here's what happened.
I was out on my longboard, trying to get the hang of a few of the more advanced techniques. After I got sick of practicing, I decided to enjoy a nice slow carve along the freshly paved road I was on. The street had a nice gentle grade to it, that allowed me to basically maintain speed for close to half a kilometer or so...no acceleration or deceleration, just a perfect cruise.
Above me the sky was absolutely clear and stars were out in all their glory. Stars get me every time. If I'm out walking at night, I have my head craned way back and my jaw dropped wide open and I stumble around staring up.
I basically assumed that same position tonight, rolling effortlessly down this gentle slope.
Boarding is a beautiful feeling. It's a mixture of near weightlessness and barely controlled momentum. An almost gyroscopic feeling of balance and motion and gravity if that makes any sense. So there I was, rolling along with this weightless sense of motion, staring up at the stars, which of course are far enough away to appear motionless. Watching their stillness, focused on stationary points in the sky I had this moment where it seemed that I was motionless as well. It wasn't my board and I cruising down the road, but more a matter of the road and the street and the city and the world rolling under us. Instant state of cosmic grace!
Driving home later I had the top down in the convertible, still enjoying the stars, still enjoying the sense that it was the world moving and I was a fixed point in space. Then I discovered a new favorite thing, and you can try this too!
My little convertible is old school, a 5 speed manual with power nothing. I came to the top of a small hill and at about 60k I popped the car into neutral, turned off the lights and the ignition and rolled quietly down for a block or so. Let me tell you people...that is fun.
Good night.

My heroes have always been cowboys.

2009-08-07T23:45:00.000-07:00

Ronnie Biggs is being released from prison today on compassionate grounds. For those of you that don't know, and I'm assuming that's most everybody, Ronnie Biggs was one of the gang responsible for the Great Train Robbery.
He was one of my Dad's heroes, which by heredity made him one of my heroes. The news that he's dying is disturbing to me. I have trouble with mortality at the best of times, but when 'immortal' legends like Ronnie Biggs come to an end, I find it particularly disturbing.
Earlier this week Britain's last WW1 veteran passed away as well.
When I was kid we had vets like this come speak to us at our school. This passing represents the passing of an era, and for me it represents the beginning of the passing of a century. WW2 was just over a decade behind the Great War, Korea less than a decade after. Our living history, our heroes and outlaws are passing away at an alarming rate. But what I find even more alarming, is the distinct absence of new heroes and outlaws to replace them.

Starlight.

2009-07-30T23:22:00.000-07:00

This has been a rough month. I don't mind so much, I'm used to rough months. But it bothers me when the more abrasive side of life brushes up against my kids, and it has done so with a vengeance this month.
Not so long ago we lost a pretty special family pet, and the kids fell apart. Last month we had one of my wife's relatives pass away. She was a woman with respiratory problems, incurable, and it was a long time coming. Janet had helped this woman bring home a rabbit that had been abandoned because it too had respiratory problems...incurable. The kids loved visiting the rabbit, and this woman's wish was for us to take the rabbit, which we did.
My oldest daughter in particular really took to the rabbit, and bonded with it.
Then at the beginning of this month, we found out that we are losing our home back to it's original owner and have to move. This means the kids will be losing all that they know in the way of community outside of the family in a few days from now.
We started packing, which raised a lot of dust, which in turn aggravated the rabbit's condition.
Long story short, the rabbit only lived about 2 more weeks and it died too.
My oldest girl was absolutely devastated.
I took the kids out to a local hillside the night after burying the rabbit and we laid on the ground and looked at the stars and talked about the rabbit.
I rambled on about starlight, about how the light we're seeing left most of the stars we see millions of years ago, and that what we're really seeing up there isn't happening anymore. I told them that light is made up of little photons, and that when we see light, it's actually these little photons that have travelled for millions of years hitting our eyes. I told them that this makes us a part of every star in the sky, and it makes every star in the sky a part of us, and following along on that train of thought, every one of us is a part of one another, whether animal, mineral, vegetable or light, living or dead.
I talked about eternity and infinity and Gods and afterlives and tried to put a positive spin on it, and the kids were buying it and feeling better. In the back of my mind though I was pissed at the universe, pissed at life, pissed at everything, and I felt the rage that every parent feels whenever their kids feel pain.
Then my daughter said something to me about light.
"Dad, did you know that moths aren't actually attracted to light? They're attracted to pitch black, and the blackest point is always right behind a light."
Every once in a while you hear something that gives you a complete paradigm shift in the blink of an eye, a little lightning bolt of enlightenment that shakes your very foundations, and for me this was one of those moments. It occurred to me that if the darkest point is right behind the light, it follows that the brightest light is right behind the darkness. Smart kid.

The Next Superpower Won't Exist.

2009-07-05T21:15:00.000-07:00

I recently read a news story that really got my imagination going. It was the story of a player in the game Eve Online. This player robbed one of the game's virtual banks, and exchanged the online game's currency for real world money. You can read up on the story here
One of the things I found most interesting about this article was the mention of the University of Indiana study that studied the real world value of online game world economies. Everquest for example, had a higher GDP than Russia, and a currency that was worth more than the Yen. The average Everquest player earns $3.42 per hour once their 'credits' are converted.
It occurred to me that given this information, and the rapid advance of technology and social networking, that the next superpower won't be an actual nation or state, but rather an online world...a hybrid combination of WoW meets Facebook meets Twitter or some such 'place'.
It just remains for someone to dream it up. I should have gone into programming instead of networking. (smacks palm against forehead!)

3K

2009-06-08T12:37:00.000-07:00

My 9 year old daughter is in a running club at school. I'm thrilled! Readers of this blog will know that I count on running as a lifeline to my own sanity, and knowing that she has discovered this lifeline for herself so early makes me ecstatic.
Today her club was running a 3k, and she invited me to come join them.
I pumped up the tires on the jogging stroller, packed it into the jeep with the boy, and off we went.
My daughter's school is ideally located for a running club. It's right on the river.
I was pretty worried that I might embarrass her. I've let my running slide a lot ever since I had my wisdom teeth out at the end of March. It's funny how one little setback like that can completely mess up your program.
It turned out I had nothing to worry about however. We ran a couple of bridges, at an easy 9 year old's pace. In 14 minutes it was all over. I did work up a sweat, but I wasn't really gasping for breath at any point. And running alongside my little girl was an amazing feeling. I was worried she'd be struggling behind her friends, athleticism has never really been her thing. But she was at the front of the pack the whole time. At one point her shoelace came undone, and she fell behind after tying it. But a few easy loping gaits had her past the stragglers and up at the front effortlessly. Not that winning or being first matters. I'm just glad she has a passion for it already.
It also gave me a reason to bust out those new shoes again. This is a good motivator for me. We plan to run together a lot more this year.

Night Terrors.

2009-05-25T00:46:00.001-07:00

These things suck terribly.
I've been living free from them for a long time, but there was a time in my life where I was having them several times per week. Science has always seemed unsure of what causes them. For me I know exactly what causes them. Disrupted sleep cycles...waking up and going to bed at random times. I've been awake from this one for about 5 minutes now, and I'm scared to go back to sleep.
I started getting them when I was younger and I had insomnia. I'd force myself to sleep, and invariably wind up having one of these conscious nightmares.
I eventually learned how to recognize that a dream was going to turn into one, and I'd wake myself up before I was caught in the feeling of being paralyzed and dying in my sleep.
I think it was on my first sales job that I realized just how damaging they had been. The regular hours of the sales job meant no more nightmares.
I also noticed I wasn't going crazy as regularly. That was about 9 years ago.
This week I worked 4 day shifts, and 1 night shift. 1 day later I'm waking up screaming in the middle of the night with my wife gently tapping on my back and telling me I'm okay like she used to do (she still remembers the old routine...get to a safe distance and poke me every few seconds, then jump back because I might come out of it swinging)
Here was tonight's freaky bullshit nightmare (which I'm going to write about, because I'm terrified to try sleeping again.)
It started with me trying to get somewhere, not sure where, and I was moving through an alleyway, in an old Saskatoon neighbourhood of old houses.
Somebody was moving out of one of the houses, and their stuff was blocking the alley. Their garage door was open, so I went in through there, and found myself in the stranger's house. I moved through a few houses this way, sometimes just leaving a room before a stranger entered. Soon the houses morphed into one big house, and my family was living in it, and had been living in it for a long time. It was a big old monstrosity, and I was walking around the top floor one day I got the creepiest feeling that other people had been there, and I could feel their presence. I'm getting goosebumps right now at just what a strange and creepy feeling this is. I then noticed that we had never unpacked most of our things from the day that we had moved in.
I was in a room that contained our exercise equipment and a bunch of boxes when I heard someone in the hallway, and in fun I ran out of the room to scare them. The person was a stranger, and I laughed after having startled them...there was nothing unusual about this stranger being in my house apparently. He was kind of angry and he stormed off, and I was laughing away to myself, when suddenly the compulsion to run screaming back into the room I'd just left grabbed hold of me. I ran in screaming, and stood in the room screaming, unable to stop, and my screams began to change. I couldn't move, but I could feel my legs starting to burn. It became clear to me that a little girl had burned to death in the house, and her spirit was still there and had possessed me. I was burning to death as well, and screaming for help, and flames were starting to blaze all over the room. I still couldn't move, and I was screaming a more high pitched scream. At about this point I realized I was in a night terror, but I couldn't get out of it, and now I was screaming so that Janet would be able to hear me and shake me awake. I was screaming so much that I could feel my back rippling (it made sense in the dream), and then that rippling turned to Janet nudging me and then I could hear her saying "you're okay, you're okay."
I fucking hate those things.

doo bee doobeedee dooo dooo...CROSSTOWN TRAFFIC!

2009-05-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

5:00 and I'm off work and I'm off work for 24 hours which is a rare and precious thing these days brethren and sistren.
I'm out the door and into my car before the door has closed behind me and I hit the ignition and the gas and the gear shift and the clutch all at the same time and I am jumping forward and ready to zoom like a MUTHA when I find myself locked into the parking lot by a seemingly endless flow of traffic.

Here's the deal.
Generally I head out the parking lot, on to the street, make a quick left and I'm on the freeway. But 5 p.m. is different because the traffic crawls, and I'm all adrenalized and my wound uppedness is all wanting to unwind and fast and I just can't do that sitting motionless in a motionless car.
So to hell with the left! I'm going straight across the road. I've got moves baby. I can run through the briars and run through the brambles and run through the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go. There was but one obstacle in front of me, a freaking imported Daihatsu Hijet of all things. He was making the left into the endless clogged pipe of Circle Drive. My hands drumming on the wheel, cursing and swearing, rolling the window up and rolling the window down I waited for him to make the turn and I hauled out wide around him and I went straight across. I saw him glare at me for a quick half second as I passed, and the driver of that little Daihatsu was a strange looking guy. He was balding, deeply tanned, like golf pro big money tanned, with hair so white the contrast almost had it glowing. Big bushy white eyebrows and an equally white fu manchu mustache to top it off completed his look.
I gave a smile in response to his glare then boom! down Ave. C, and a sharp and screeching left on to 38th Street where there isn't a single vehicle waiting at the light to cross Idylwyld. (Only madmen and lunatics cross Idylwyld at Rush Hour!)

Bam! The light goes green and I hit drive and move out of a cloud of dust express bound for glory all the way over to Quebec Ave. This is another easy left, the common misconception being that if the main vessels are closed, these arteries will be even more jammed. They're deserted, wide open like my throttle is when I fishtail out and head North bound for Circle, having bypassed the majority of commuters. Or so I thought.
There was a back up to make the right on to Circle, five or six cars, too patiently awaiting too large a gap that will never come. Screw these guys too I think and I go up over a curb (4 to da W to da D awww yeeaaa) and through 3 parking lots to beat them all onto Circle and half block ahead.

I'm jammed in good and crossing the bridge. Coming up on to the 14th st overpass I can see the traffic is at a standstill and I see it before most people do because I drive the road 2 blocks ahead not the one right in front of me. I swing over into the exit lane, hit 14th along with maybe half a dozen other drivers perceptive and impatient enough to have made an alternate choice, and then it's a wild zig zag of streets and alleyways I know like the back of my hand, bypassing everybody on the way to Preston at 8th where the traffic always thins out.
Now listen people, here's the thing. I did not stop on my commute home. For me there was traffic, but I was constantly in motion. At no point was I stopped dead for an extended period. I was always moving, always at speed.
So when I pulled on to Preston and pulled up right behind a little freakin' white Daihatsu Hijet you might have thought me perturbed. You might have thought I felt defeated to see that with all my manoueverings and machinations I was still one car length behind. I wasn't. I was ecstatic!
Here's why.
It's not about getting a car length ahead. It's not about getting home sooner. It's about not stopping. It's about not sitting still and always moving.
25 minutes later we may have found ourselves at the same point in time space again, the Daihatsu and I. But I knew that he crawled all the way there. He travelled at an average speed of about 5 km/hr. I on the other hand was consistently moving at about 80k.
According to the theory of relativity, the old man in the Daihatsu aged more than I did in that 25 minutes, because for me, less time had passed. It might be an imperceptibly small chunk of time, but it was time gained nonetheless. And that my friends, is priceless.

Horror Show.

2009-04-27T22:39:00.000-07:00

I don't deal too well with death, even if it comes in slow and waving and gentle the way it did with my cat. As someone who has decided firmly to be immortal, the obstinate and unrelenting insistence of death is highly disconcerting. I can't ever remember having a good time where death was concerned, except for pre-conception, when I was just a small void in the big void and none of this death anxiety ever concerned me.
Here's the thing. My mom died a few years back. I didn't really like my mom very much, but my dad did, and that was important. They gave her a choice before she died. 'You can hold to your present course and die soon, or let us saw off your foot and you might buy a few months, buy a few years, or still die soon.' She chose to die. At the time this song was big on the folk station that I use to put on when every one had left the bar I was managing at the time. Now it pops into my head whenever I face a loss.

Requiem for a Boney Old Cat.

2009-04-27T20:01:00.000-07:00

I buried my cat illegaly in a conservation area today. Tough noogies, the kids need a special place. Maybe I do too.
I spent some time hugging the kids today, hugging my wife, wiping a lot of tears.
When everybody was rational again, when they hysterics had finished I said to Janet "I'm going out for a bit." and she said "...okay." and I said "I'm not a hugger, I'm a go-er away-er." by way of explanation, which she finally understands after 11 years.
11 years incidentally, is the time that I've known the Boney Old Cat of the title, Itchy. I suppose it would be more correct to say that was the time that I knew him, past tense. Funny how that changes so fast.
I drove for a bit and decided I didn't want to drive. Now I'm low profile incognito in a coffee shop. Surrounding me is that cacophony of sound, that fluid, rippling babble of background conversation that I find so calming in coffee shops. Much like the soothing influence of a stream, but with the option of dropping in and out of the flow. I'm having an Iced Vietnamese Coffee. First time I've ever had one. A slurpee would have been better.
Itchy was a majestic cat. He stomped on the terra. Eyes like etched jade, reminisces of his sabertooth bloodline glinting when ever he cracked open his jaws to yawn.
There are cats in this world that people are immediately drawn too, cats that are cute and fluffy and adorable. Itchy, despite the cutesy moniker, was not such a cat.
Itchy danced to an inner rhythm of violence and bloodlust. His glance held the cold indifference of a great white shark before the strike. One instantly feared Itchy. He approached with confidence, moves like a jaguar, pronounced with a South American accent yet, yeah, he was that Jaguar-y. All of this predatory presence, this animal antagonism, betrayed his true nature, which was that of a kitten before it learns to scratch.
My girls were crying tonight over the loss of the oldest cat in the house, the cat I was fond of referring to as "old man" and "old dog". I told them to remember him, and learn from him the things that they could. Like to take hugs when they need them, rather than wait for one to come along. Itchy didn't wait for affection. He seized it, and when denied he persisted, and when rejected he was undaunted. No one entered our home without eventually succumbing to having this cat, part Maine Coon, part stuffed animal, part Egyptian icon pin them to our couch and nuzzle under their chins.
A girl just sat down with her friends across from me. On the back of her t-shirt it says "Class of O8 Forever Young". Well...not forever sister.
Janet came by Itchy's acquaintance when an acquaintance of hers was planning to get rid of him. He was a foundling, a little kitten that was still being bottle fed, and the person Janet got him from discovered there were allergies in the house. So Janet took him in.
We used to take Itchy for walks in the park. He'd sprint from one bush to the next, displaying that healthy sort of 'just in case' paranoia that endeared us to one another instantly.
Itchy was the shit people. He rotated through the house throughout the night, sleeping at the heads of each of us, children included at different points. He could bite and he could scratch when he wanted to. When he bit it would leave a bruise for days. When he scratched, by God you had been scratched by a claw that Siegfried and Roy could appreciate.
But he never bit the kids, never scratched them. He had an appreciation for the delicacy and fragility of childhood.
I remember the worst I was ever scratched. I had a great white Lincoln, 1979, 2 doors, a machine as long and as quick as a torpedo boat. We were moving to Edmonton, and I drove the Lincoln, with Itchy in a box. Getting him into the box had been a test. It was amazing how strong he was. He pushed so hard against the lid that I had to use body weight to overcome him. In the car he slept, until about half an hour outside of Edmonton. It started with meowing, although the connotations of 'meow' really don't do the throaty 'rowr' of Itchy justice. The box started to jump and move on the seat beside me. I put my hand on the lid trying to keep it down, and he kept throwing his weight against it, with increasing fury. One would have thought it to be a muscular chimp, or an enraged zombie dwarf in the box, rather than just a simple housecat. Finally he escaped, tearing the box to shreds, part of my arms in the process. Itchy did not like cars, even luxurious pinnacles of 70s engineering. After that he didn't like boxes either.
This is part of why tonight was so disheartening. Over the course of his illness Itchy's condition deteriorated. He grew skinnier and skinnier, weaker and weaker. This morning he had trouble walking. I said goodbye to him this morning, got down on the floor with him and gave him a scratch behind the ears. He managed a quiet purr, but it started his chest heaving. At the door I told Janet that it felt like I might not see him again. He felt the breeze from the door, and came stumbling up. He used to make a break for it whenever the door opened. Today we were going to let him out, but he just flopped down at the doorsill, his head hanging over the step, and he watched me leave.
And that was the last time I saw him alive. Janet called me at work, sobbing, partially unintelligible, "can you come home please?" and I asked "Is he gone?" and she said "yes."
So tonight I took Itchy to a beautiful spot and I buried him. I asked the kids if they wanted to help me, or if they wanted to come to the spot after I'd covered up his grave, and they said after. I borrowed a spade from the neighbour, and threw it in the jeep. I put Itchy in a box, and there was no fight, no drama, I just laid him softly on his favorite blanket, and I picked up the box, closed the lid, and took it to the truck. Again there was no scratching, no yowling, no great and terrible beast trying to shred it's cage and any living thing in said cage's proximity. There was just this light lifeless weight sliding around inside, like a doll sliding around in the box you're allowed to guess at on the night before xmas.
We got out to the country and I dug a hole near some trees with the sun going down, in a place where rabbits and deer and birds and sunshine and long grasses breathe life and love and beauty and peace. And when the hole was dug, I took the cat out of the box, laid the blanket in the hole, tucked him in, and covered him up with dirt, and a few heavy stones to keep the wildlife away. Then I tore the box to shreds for Itchy's sake.
Here's a tip people. Don't write about burying the dead cat you were really close to when you're sitting in a coffee shop.

Boney old cat.

2009-04-21T20:53:00.000-07:00

I've got a boney old cat. He wasn't always old. When he was a kitten they bottlefed him, with the result that he has maintained a lot of kittenesque qualities for a long time now.
But he's old. About 20 to be exact. Over the past 6 months or so he's been getting skinnier and skinnier, slower and slower, sleepier and sleepier. He used to like sitting on the edge of the tub, but the other day he slipped and fell in. Today he tried to jump up on the counter and missed. His cat-like grace is gone. Given way to geriatric creaks and wobbles and stumbles. He sleeps more than anything else.
We took him to the vet, and they told us it's kidney trouble with him. He's not in any pain. He's just hungry and thirsty a lot of the time. Nothing we can do really, except feed him some more easily digested foods, keep him well watered. At this point he's getting less and less nutrition every day, because his kidneys are starting to fail.
Janet and I both want him to make it through the summer. All of our cats are inside cats, but he loves being outside. Like me he just wants to sit in the sun all day.
We're at the point though where it is a matter of hoping he makes it. We can't imagine him surviving until next winter. He may make it until fall... Summer isn't even a sure thing even.
At home we sit with him on our laps a lot, me and Mommy and the kids. We're giving him all the time we can, and he purrs when he sits with us still. Janet bought him a pillow to sleep on, and while the days and evenings are still cool, he sleeps there. Summer should be here soon, and then he can lay in the sun again.

Symbiote Rhythm (the Jedi paradigm)

2009-04-07T09:51:00.000-07:00

I had a great conversation the other night with some friends from high school. One good friend in particular is in to yoga, and the conversation eventually turned to the metaphysical.
We talked about oneness, and from there she talked about being in the zone. That strange sensation where you're doing without thinking, when your moves seem almost guided. I told her that's one of the things that I love most about being the leader of a high volume culinary team. Our whole team can function like that at times, moving as one perfect machine in complete and perfect harmony. I also told her that when I meditate or run, I recreate that sensation by visualizing that symbiotic harmony, that symbiote rhythm, and before I know it, I'm in the zone. The more often that I do it, the easier it seems to fall into.
For me it goes beyond being in the zone. It becomes an affirmation that I'm more than just a man, or perhaps less, depending on your perspective. I'm definitely a part of something greater than myself, greater than my team, greater than my nation. Like a drop of water is a part of the Ocean, I'm part of the great cosmic 'is', an integral part of the universe. An ocean can't be an ocean without drops of water, the universe can't be the universe without lot of Andys. And I have the choice in life to live in harmony with that universe, as a symbiote, or I have the choice to rail and rally against it.
In harmony with whatever it might be that we're a part of, one has the sense of being in the zone more often than not. Some call it a state of grace. Others call it enlightenment. In one of my favorite films of all time, it's described as living in a state of constant total amazement. It's a state of mind beyond the traditional illusory views of good and evil, beyond the traditional views of happiness and success. I believe that this state of perfect harmony is really the utmost goal one can aspire to.
I also believe that railing against the universe is not only futile, but deadly. If one is in fact a part of this great magnificent thing, like a cell or a symbiote, then railing against it can have only one result really. This great thing will come to react to you the way any organism or delicate system would react. It will see you as a malignant cell and do its best to eradicate you. The same goes for acting against the greater interests of mankind, of nature, of the universe. Some people call it karma, or a belief that what goes around comes around. Others talk about attracting success. Buddha said that "With our thoughts we make the world." Whatever the case, people that recognize this seem to get more enjoyment out of life, and people that don't tend to spiral into their own bitterness and misery.
For me, I'm recognizing more and more everyday that I get out of life, out of relationships, out of work, exactly what I put into them. And I try to take a little time everyday to find a quiet spot, and just tune into that harmonious buzz of all things that's always going on. It reminds me that not only am I and my problems infinitely small in comparison to time and space and everything, but at the same time I'm a part of and therefore one with the infinity of time and space and everything.

20 years later.

2009-04-06T12:48:00.001-07:00

I went out on Saturday night with some old friends from high school that I hadn't seen in about 20 years or so. They were terrific company by the way.
I was actually crashing a get together that they were having for their elementary school class, so a lot of the people didn't really know me, which was fine. There were really only a couple of people that I wanted to see anyway.
At one point one of the strangers asked me what grade I'd met the girls I knew in, and I explained that I was in a few grades simultaneously. This elicited the usual laughter, which I'm fine with, and then someone asked what year did I graduate and I had to explain that I was expelled from school before I could graduate.
One of my friends said "It wasn't because of intelligence, it was because of attitude." to which I heartily agreed that the School Board did indeed have a terrible attitude problem back then.
Another girl that I didn't really know to well started asking about the group of friends that I hung out with in high school. A lot of my friends committed suicide or wound up dead in high school, a situation that led people outside of our circle to speculate as to whether or not the suicides were part of a pact or an agreement. While it would be a lot more romantic or sensational if they had, there was no such agreement. It was just a bunch of kids with substance abuse problems and some chemical imbalances combined with a whole lot of hopelessness that caused a higher than average rate of attrition. I thought it was kind of funny that even 20 years later, the rumors still persist. She seemed a little disappointed in my answer. People did 20 years ago today. Doesn't make for a good story that way I guess.

Reality Check

2009-04-01T19:09:00.000-07:00

I've been pretty good about my running program. For the first 3 months of this year I've only missed 1 run, thanks to the purchase of a treadmill at Christmas.
With the weather improving the way that it has been however, I've had the opportunity to get out on to the road for some real running. What I've found is that I can only push about half of what I can do on the treadmill when I'm outside. I found the toll is much harder on my body as well, as it seems that the treadmill has been completely missing my quads. The other day I pushed a modest (read: embarrassing) 4 km, and it was cause for some moments of reflection. My quads were burning afterwards, and even with controlled breathing I was struggling for oxygen.
Rather than allow this setback to get me down however, I've decided to rearrange my life so that I can get some real running in. I'm going to do what tens of thousands of other people,(though generally not chefs) do, and I'm going to start running on my breaks at work.
So far I've had 2 outside runs, and the newfound challenge of them has me fired up all anew. This year I'm pretty optimistic about the progress I'll make. In Saskatchewan winters past I've atrophied to the point that I found myself sidelined with injuries on my first few spring runs. This year the treadmill seems to have helped keep my bones and my calves strong if nothing else, and I think I should be up to half marathon distance again by Autumn.
Thanks for listening all :)

Chapter on Professionalism, from Professional Cooking by Wayne Gisslen.

2009-03-22T01:56:00.001-07:00

STANDARDS OF
PROFESSIONALISM

What does it take to be a good food service worker?
The emphasis of a food service education is on learning a set of skills.But in many
ways, attitudes are more important than skills because a good attitude will help you
not only learn skills but also persevere and overcome the many difficulties you will face. The successful food service worker follows an unwritten code of behavior and set of attitudes we call professionalism.Let’s look at some of the qualities a professional
must have.

POSITIVE ATTITUDE TOWARD THE JOB
In order to be a good professional cook,you have to like cooking and want to do it well. Being serious about your work doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it. But the enjoyment comes from the satisfaction of doing your job well and making everything run smoothly.
Every experienced chef knows the stimulation of the rush. When it’s the busiest time of the evening,the orders are coming in so fast you can hardly keep track of them, and every split second counts—then, when everyone digs in and works together and everything clicks, there’s real excitement in the air. But this excitement comes only when you work for it.
A cook with a positive attitude works quickly, efficiently, neatly, and safely. Professionals have pride in their work and want to make sure it is something to be proud of. Pride in your work and in your profession is important, but humility is important too, especially when you are starting out. Sometimes new culinary school graduates arrive on the job thinking they know everything. Remember that learning to cook and learning to manage a kitchen is a lifelong process and that you are not yet qualified to be executive chef.
The importance of a professional attitude begins even before you start your first job. The standard advice for a successful job interview applies to cooks as well as to office professionals: Dress and behave not for the group you belong to but for the group you want to join. Arrive neat,clean,appropriately dressed,and on time.Get noticed for the right reasons. Carry this attitude through every day on the job.

STAYING POWER
Food service requires physical and mental stamina, good health, and a willingness to work hard. It is hard work. The pressure can be intense and the hours long and grueling.
You may be working evenings and weekends when everyone else is playing. And the work can be monotonous. You might think it’s drudgery to hand-shape two or three dozen dinner rolls for your baking class,but wait until you get that great job in the big hotel and are told to make 3,000 canapés for a party.
Overcoming these difficulties requires a sense of responsibility and a dedication to your profession, to your coworkers, and to your customers or clients. Dedication also means staying with a job and not hopping from kitchen to kitchen every few months. Sticking with a job at least a year or two shows prospective employers you are serious about your work and can be relied on.

ABILITY TO WORK WITH PEOPLE
Few of you will work in an establishment so small that you are the only person on the staff. Food service work is teamwork,and it’s essential to be able to work well on a team and to cooperate with your fellow workers. You can’t afford to let ego problems, petty jealousy, departmental rivalries, or feelings about other people get in the way of doing the job well. In the old days,many chefs were famous for their temper tantrums.
Fortunately,self-control is more valued today.

Cheffin'

2009-03-22T01:46:00.000-07:00

I went in to work tonight to do my order, and see how things were running at the club.
I had to pass through the hotel to get there, and as I moved through the hall, I noticed three somewhat drunken hotel guests staggering towards me. They were young men, and pretty fired up and rowdy, and two of them had their shirts off. They had the look of young guys spoiling for a fight.
I tensed a bit as we drew towards each other, and then one of them piped up "Good evening Chef!" I said good evening right back, and I was a little stunned, because he said it quite respectfully. As they continued off behind me I heard one of them say "What the fuck did you call him?" with a bit of a chuckle, and the kid that had wished me a good evening replied rather angrily..."I called him Chef, didn't you notice the Chef jacket?" and then the other guy quit giggling.
Apparently Chefs are no laughing matter...well, all except this one. The Statler and Waldorf quotes at the end of this one are highly applicable as well :)

The Statler and Waldorf quotes in this one are highly applicable as well :)

Vessels

2009-03-21T23:48:00.000-07:00

I'm heading into month 4 of the rebirth of my running habit. It feels absolutely terrific. I'm back into the routine of doing my long run on weekends.
Today I went for 35 minutes, which is still nothing compared to where I once was, but it's a hell of a lot better than I was 4 months ago. Here's the thing about running in general, but about the long run in particular.
Running exercises the mind far more than it exercises the body. The mind is prone to seeking pleasure, and avoiding pain. This is obviously a good system to operate under most of the time, but there are times when it's counter-productive.
For example: Eating candy and nothing but candy is really pleasant. But in the long run it can be extremely harmful. Shooting heroin probably feels pretty good...you get the picture.
Running does not feel good. Not initially. It's the results of running, and the after effects of running that feel good. Running itself is painful. This is part of why it's such great exercise for the mind.
The mind feels the pain of running in the first few minutes after you set off. Its survival mechanisms sense that it's burning more energy than necessary, causing undue pain, and it instructs your muscles, your heart and your lungs to send you stressful warning signals. The mind begs you to stop, and it does so a thousand different ways, until it gets the response it wants. It speaks to you in your own voice.
"You can always do this tomorrow."
"5 minutes is probably good for today"
"missing one day isn't going to hurt."
And it doesn't take no for an answer. It comes back again and again because its mandate is to avoid pain, conserve energy.
The runner learns to overcome this inner voice. And in so doing the runner learns that inner voices can often be wrong. The runner exercises his willpower when he rejects his own counter-productivity and pushes forward.
Today I rejected my brain's entreaties to stop for the longest time that I have done so in ages and it felt great.
Afterwards I had something that exceeded a runner's high. I had this awesome sensation of blood rushing through my blood vessels. I could feel my blood moving in a torrent, through my arms and legs. It was the wildest feeling, like I was lined with surgical tubing and somebody had attached a jet of water to it.
I was going somewhere with this, but I'm tired now, so I'll pursue it later.

I Suppose You All Want to Know About My Shoes....sigh...Fine...

2009-03-01T16:42:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went shoe shopping for my next pair of running shoes. I was looking for a shoe that would deliver performance on the road and off. Currently I'm running on the treadmill, since I live in an inhospitable land where being outside can often be fatal. When the weather improves however, I'll be running a 33/33/33 treadmill/road/trail mix. In all reality a regular running shoe would probably be my best choice, since I'm not on the trail all that much. My concern is that most regular running shoes are white, and it would take only a minute on the trail and they'd be ruined as far as appearance is concerned.
However I took into consideration the cushioning that my treadmill offers, and figured that it's surface is more like a trail than a road, and I decided I wanted a trail shoe.
So last night I came home with the Adidas Kanadia TR, which is a gorgeous trail runner. I really wanted to love this shoe. It had a really unique look to it, black with some well placed red flashes, and a super aggressive tread that looked tailor made for ice and snow. It was also really lightweight, which is always a plus. When I got it home however, I found that it was a little too rigid, with almost no cushioning. For a runner that would be exclusively used on trails this is ideal. You want a rigid sole to protect you from sharp rocks and tree roots and the like on the trail. The tread on this shoe was also great for flinging off mud and water in wet conditions, another must have on an exclusive trail runner. For my purposes it's a little too specialized though. The lack of cushioning would have me nursing injuries in my first week, and the tread was so aggressive that I was concerned for my treadmill belt. Today I took the shoes back, and it was heartbreaking because they were beautiful.
I'm buying these things to run in though, and to run in a lot, and I need a shoe that's going to do it all.
It turns out that finding a good hybrid trail and road runner is tricky. Then I found the Mizuno Ascend 2.
This shoe won the Editor's Choice award from Runner's World magazine, as well as enjoying favorable reviews in Outside and Running Times, among others. As soon as I slid my foot into the shoe, I knew it was exactly what I was looking for. The cushioning is as good as any runner, and the heel gives great stability, which both can be tricky to find in a trail runner. Add to that the water resistant features, breathability and light weight and the shoe is a winner in every category but one...looks. I've got to admit, this is one of the ugliest shoes I've ever seen. But I'm happy with them. They're going to serve me well for a long time to come.

You know what pisses me off??

2009-02-28T19:41:00.000-08:00

Listen.
I buy running shoes for one reason, and one reason only. To run. If I didn't want to run, I would wear non-running shoes. Common sense to me.
Because of the miles that I tend to put in on my shoes, I check all the shoe reviews before I make a purchase. And this is what pisses me off.
I'll go to a shoe review site for the latest Mizuno or Adidas release for example, and see what other users have to say about it. I'm wondering about things like blistering, cushioning, how long that cushioning is going to last when the miles start adding up, whether it's going to cause shin splints on a bigger runner like myself.
But all over these sites, there are asshole reviewers, nurses usually, talking about how great these runners are for their jobs when they're on their feet all day.
Stay off the damn running review please!
By reviewing these as a work shoe you've told us 3 things about yourself. 1) You don't run. 2) You don't really do anything other than work. And 3) You're too stupid to realize that wearing a high performance running shoe for standing at work is excessive, pointless, and ill informed.
With that said, I've given up reading reviews by mall walking seniors and obese nurses of the latest marathon rated Asics number, and I'm going to bed.

Now I don't smoke that Loco-weed

2009-02-23T21:12:00.000-08:00

but here's the thing.
There was a demonstration in Vancouver this weekend demanding action against gang violence. The news reports say that 'hundreds' of people demonstrated.
By contrast, thousands of people march in support of legalizing pot.
It's estimated that the BC's marijuana industry is worth $7 billion every year. Currently all of that money is going straight to arming and solidifying organized criminals in BC and across Canada.
How much is 7 billion? It's enough to bail out the auto industry in Canada for starters. Hell, it's enough to militarize a small nation. Canada spends only 12 billion annually on defense, not much more than the marijuana revenue of a single province.
It would be interesting to see how many gangs would survive with pot taken out of their pots.

Yep, We're drifting, time to leave the house

2009-02-21T11:41:00.000-08:00

Okay, now I'm Drifting.

2009-02-21T11:37:00.000-08:00

This was under related videos.

Google Drift, and Where I Wind Up.

2009-02-21T11:24:00.000-08:00

The girls are upstairs playing together nicely for a change, the boy is watching some of the original 80s Transformers episodes that I downloaded for him, and I had the beauty of some quiet time to myself.
I set up in the office with a coffee the way I like it (rich full bodied dark roast as opposed to weak Swift Current 7-11 style that the wife likes) and I started picking my guitar. I decided to look for some tabs to a few country songs I'd like to learn (My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys) and these days I always Google up Youtube first when I'm looking for any kind of how-to. Youtube is a tremendous resource, and I think if I'm ever bored and trapped in the house again sometime I might look up some of youtube's most ridiculous how-to's for all y'all.
Today however I just wanted to post a video that I think you might like. Google Drift is a term that describes what happens when you're just mindlessly surfing the web and wind up a thousand topics away from what you were originally searching for. I'm the worst for it. I'll look up a chicken recipe, see a link for Funny Chicken and I'll say "ooh funny chickens!" and then off I go, then it's off to funky chicken, then funky town, then funk guitar, then Marvin Gaye, then the California Raisins, then before you know it I'm somehow on an explicit porn site,(funny how that seems to happen so often).
Anyway, today I didn't drift too far, and thought I'd share this with you.

And since we're talking about jelly beans...

2009-02-18T18:44:00.000-08:00

I like 'em. I like 'em a lot. I'm a High Fructose Corn Syrup junkie, and jelly beans are the crack cocaine of HFCS. The next step past jelly beans is snorting sugar straws, and I've only done that once. It's a place I don't want to go back to.
But here's the thing with jelly beans. I don't like all of them. There are some I don't like. There are some, if I may say, that actually piss me off beyond all belief.
When I buy jelly beans, I buy them because of the HFCS as stated above. That's all I want. A jelly bean is like HFCS wrapped in pure condensed HFCS. The red ones, the white ones, pink ones, they actually taste like pure unadulterated HFCS, the kind you can't get on the street, the kind you have to go to a lab to find.
But then, and this is what pisses me off, THEN they (THEY being the jelly bean cartels) have to go and f*&K it all up by putting in all those flavored ones. Black ones for instance, that taste like licorice. WTF is that?! If I wanted licorice I'd go to some granola peddling hippie's natural food store and pick it up with my ginseng and freakin' gingko. Seriously. Or green ones! Minty muthaf*&^in' green ones! I don't want mints if I'm buying jelly beans. I'm not some fisherman's friend with a halitosis problem and low blood sugar. Keep the herb out of my beans man! that's what I say.
I don't even want to discuss lemon. Holy Shit! Lemon... Yeah, thanks for that one, I'll garnish my next Red Snapper with it. F*&(tards.

Almost as good as a double prizer.

2009-02-18T18:24:00.000-08:00

I had a moment today. It bordered on spiritual. To say it was euphoric wouldn't be exagerrating. This is just between us okay. Don't let it get out to too many people.
There is a Canadian Tire Store in the city with a defective jelly bean machine.
Here's the thing. I learned back when I was about ten years old that if you put a quarter into a gumball machine, then turn the dial really slowly, you might find the mythical sweet spot, where the prized candy within just keeps on coming. I've never managed to clean out a machine this way, but I've certainly gotten more than my money's worth more times than I can count. It all started with the gumball machine at the old Pinder's Drugs on Broadway and Taylor. By turning slowly to the limit of the dial, then exercising a couple quick twists of the wrist, I was often able to get 2 or 3 gumballs for the price of one.
It seemed that the candy companies caught on to this sometime in the mid 80s. I've haven't cashed out more than I put in for decades.
Then today it happened.
In the exit door of this Canadian Tire they have a row of candy machines. I love jelly beans, and the jelly bean machine did a Svengali number on the last quarter in my pocket. I sunk it into the machine, and gave the dial a slow clicking turn, the same way that I've been doing for the better part of 30 years now. I could hear the jelly bean bay filling up, and I just knew I was getting a little extra. At the end of the turn, when the dial would turn no more, I gave it the patented Pinder's Flick back a touch, and SCORE! I heard another payload of jellybeans tumbling into the bean bay. It all came back to me, all the subtlety, all the English that I used to know so implicitly, instinctively back in the day. I kept flipping the dial, and I found the sweet spot where the tumblers never locked. I filled the bean bay twice before the Canadian Tire flunkies started to notice my surreptitious activities, and making a mental note of the machine's location, I beat a timely, low profile retreat with a FULL pocket of beans!
Life is good people. Life is good.
Almost as good as a double prizer

When Live People Turn Dead.

2009-02-17T21:27:00.000-08:00

Won't tell you how my train of thought got to this station...well okay, I will.
I've been watching clips from the show Scrubs on the net tonight. In one of the clips they lost 4 patients in one day, and they show the deaths in this sad little montage. In some cases it was flatlines, in others they reluctantly stopped trying to save the patient. One of the clips showed them pulling all the sensors off of the patient, which at that point had ceased to be a person and had instead become a corpse.
It got me thinking about that line between life and death. How in one moment a person is living and breathing, and in the next they aren't. How do you measure that moment? How fast does it happen?
It got me thinking about the infinite again. The smallness of that space between living and dead is inconceivable. It's non-existent in fact. One either is or isn't.
Anyway, the other thing it got me thinking of was my mom. She died in a hospital years back. She had sensors taped all over her. It didn't occur to me until tonight that somebody pulled those sensors off when she made that leap from was to wasn't. It must be a strange feeling to be that person.

Doubling Up On Exercise, Couch Potato Style

2009-02-16T23:11:00.000-08:00

As regular readers know, I bought a treadmill just after Christmas, and have promised myself that I will run at least 3 times per week. I have been doing so. There has been the odd time that I've only run twice on the treadmill, but on such weeks I've been getting the extra run in when I receive the order at work, running up and downstairs with heavy boxes about 30 times, twice a week.
Tonight I found that I doubled my time on the treadmill, and enjoyed it more than ever as well.
The trick? I put a TV up in front of it, and now I can watch the Food Network or a documentary while I'm running. Absolutely fantastic, and not nearly such a chore anymore.

The End of Political Correctness?

2009-02-16T23:00:00.000-08:00

When Obama became president we had an interesting discussion at work. Did his election mean the end of political correctness? Did the ability of a visible minority from a troubled Chicago community to attain the rank of President register null and void any and all arguments for affirmative action, and workplace legislations enforcing diversity? It seemed to me that the case for giving the disadvantaged of the world a government mandated edge to level the playing field has been broken.
Obama's election seems to prove that anyone, from any background, can achieve anything they desire, provided they have the will and the drive. Regardless of perceived social barriers or not.
I'd forgotten about our discussions until I read this article tonight.

Hocus Pocus.

2009-02-11T15:31:00.001-08:00

Further to the last note, it's worth noting that I don't get strep anymore. I've discovered a couple of home remedies for pretty much everything.
I think I've written about these before, so I'll just mention them briefly, for anybody that might be struggling with a similar recurring type illness.
The 2 cures that I found are Colloidal Silver, and Oil of Oregano.
You can find them affordably in any health food store. The oil of oregano tastes awful, and will actually burn in an open wound. You can learn more about it here I gave up on antibiotics after about time 15 with strep throat, and switched to colloidal silver and oregano. I use them whenever anyone in the house starts displaying symptoms, or whenever I feel the symptoms myself, and I don't come down with strep.
I was as anti-naturopathic healing as a person could be 2 years ago. But our strep battles frustrated me so much I was willing to try anything. These things work!

Bureaucratic Assholes.

2009-02-11T15:08:00.001-08:00

My family and I have been at war with an almost invisible enemy for the better part of 3 years. We had a year of uneasy peace, where we thought we had won, but the enemy was just laying low.
The enemy is strep throat.
All of us have had strep at least 20 times in the past 3 years. This is not an exaggeration. Our family doctor is only available once a week, so most of the time we've gone to a local mediclinic.
Each time we go, we get a different doctor. The doctor gets the same file every time however. We've been told close to dozen times, that there are no antibiotic resistant strains of strep throat in Canada, and that the pain we've felt when we go in is highly unlikely to be strep, as we have just been treated with a course of anti-biotics for it. We then tell them, "Look, there hasn't been a month in 3 years that our home has been strep free. We all know what it feels like, we have strep." At this point the doctor will reluctantly do the old throat swab, all the while informing us that it's most likely just a virus, and he's not going to treat it until he sees some test results.
So whoever the victim is that week will suffer for another 3 days until we get the inevitable phone call "The patient has strep, can you come down and get the prescription you asked for 3 days ago."
Then we go down, and they try to prescribe us some kind of weak shit like penicillin or amoxicillin and we tell them "Look, my wife works with the wife of an infectious diseases research specialist at the U of S. She talked to him about our family's predicament, and he asked for the swab results to be sent to him last year. He found that we have a strain that is resistant to amoxicillin and penicillin, can you prescribe something else." and they'll get indignant, because we haven't been to med school, and they'll prescribe us amoxicillin, telling us in their condescending 'I'm a doctor and you're not" way that if it doesn't work, come back next week, and we'll treat it with something else.
The jist of this is that tonight I'm going to pack up my 3 kids and head down to the doctor, because my oldest daughter has strep, and has had it for about 2 weeks now. We went to see the doctor on the first day, he told us she was faking but swabbed her anyway, then 3 days later when he said "Wow, it is strep" he prescribed amoxicillin, and now a week later I'm taking her back in because this strain is amoxicillin resistant, but they don't freakin' listen. Grr.

Running

2009-02-06T06:53:00.000-08:00

I've been damn busy at work, which means that there hasn't been a whole lot of time for blogging. I have managed to make time for running however. I've been managing to get in about 3 runs per week on the treadmill which is great.
I've had one of the side effects of being a runner kick back in again too. I had a really lousy day at work the other day. A lot of people pissed me off beyond all human comprehension. I was actually threatening to slit people's throats, and I probably would have followed through on it if anyone had challenged me. Anyway I came home still angry as Hell, and my first priority was to hit the treadmill and run it off. I pushed 30% further than I normally go trying to run off the fury and it felt great.
In other news, I managed to make it to mid January before the winter blues hit me this year. When they hit, they hit hard. Paranoia, dissatisfaction, irritability, overwhelmed by even the simplest of tasks. Even today, with exercise, vitamins, good diet, I'm still struggling. I find myself formulating tremendously complicated justifications for why I should quit my job and make some sort of drastic gypsy change to snap out of the rut. I haven't beaten it yet either. I have some fears that the irrational fears I get about losing my job are going to cost me my job, ha! How nuts is that?
On a brighter note, I've noticed that the sun is coming up earlier, the days are getting warmer and longer, and if I can just make it through the next few weeks, I'll have a major victory on my hands. I'll have made it through a summer, fall and winter at a job for the third time in my life!
For now though, I'm hitting the treadmill.

Parenting.

2009-01-14T18:38:00.000-08:00

Here is a brief example of a day in the life of a parent.
3 Year Old Boy: "Can I have a snack?"
Dad: "If you're still hungry you can have some more supper, or an apple or some broccoli or carrots, but that's all."
Boy: "Why?"
Dad: "Because you just had dessert. ."
Boy: "Yeah but that was dessert. Can I have a snack now?"
Dad: "No."
Boy: "But it's bedtime, I always have a bedtime snack."
Dad: "Yes, you had a banana for a bedtime snack."
Boy: "No that was dessert. I still need a bedtime snack."
Dad: "No."
Boy: "Dad?"
Dad: "Yes?"
Boy: "What can I have for a bedtime snack?"
Dad; "If you're still hungry you can have some more supper, or an apple or some broccoli or carrots."
Boy: "Dad, those aren't snacks."
Dad: "Son, all food outside of meal time is a snack."
Boy: (pause) "Dad, do we have any ice cream?"
Dad: "No."
Boy: "Can I have a cookie?"
Dad: "No. If you're still hungry you can have some more supper, or an apple or some broccoli or carrots, nothing else."
Boy: (voice rising with excitement and enthusiasm) "DAD! We still have Lucky Charms don't we?! I could have some Lucky Charms!"
Dad: "No. Those are for breakfast."
Boy: "I want some breakfast now."
Dad: "No. It's bedtime now, not breakfast. If you're still hungry you can have some more supper, or an apple or some broccoli or carrots, nothing else."
Boy: "Dad..."
Dad: "Son, I've told you what you can have."
Boy: "But I want a snack." (Go back to beginning, repeat 3 times, until son decides he'll have an apple.)

Between the Lines.

2009-01-11T09:15:00.000-08:00

I'll often point out to friends of mine that the news we get each day can be vastly different depending on the source. Here in Canada some of the most basic examples are the differences between the Toronto Star and the National Post. Find matching political stories on a similar subject and the difference is immediately apparent. In the US one is a little more hard pressed to find any degree of perspective. CNN, Fox, and the big 3 networks seem to dominate the information market, and are generally well in line with one another, all of it far to the right. Yet surprisingly right wing hardliners in the US frequently refer to the media's liberal bias.
I get my news off of the internet, and outside of human interest stories I'll read the same story from a few different perspectives. This one is a perfect example.
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/war_on_gaza/2009/01/2009110112723260741.html
vs this one
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/11/israel.gaza/
and this one
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28573204/

What I tend to do is look for the truth somewhere between the lines. It means boiling it down to the bare facts in any given article.
Here are some of the facts.
13 Israelis dead, 10 of them soldiers.
820 Palestinians, roughly 400 or so of them civillians...women, children, the elderly.
Their have been rocket attacks from Gaza, and Israel is attacking Gaza in a very heavy handed manner.
This is known as collective punishment. When a military force collectively punishes a civillian population for the actions of fighters, it is called collective punishment, and it's a war crime under Article 33 of the 4th Geneva Conventions. If Hamas is in fact using civillians to shield it's fighters, then it too is involved in war crimes under article 28 of the Fourth Geneva conventions.
Difficult to read between the lines when the lines keep crossing one another.

Good News!

2009-01-04T21:59:00.000-08:00

I decided on a different treadmill than the one I'd originally ordered, and I put it together yesterday. I took it for a first run today. It works great. I don't. I have really let my cardiovascular fitness deteriorate, which justifies this purchase all the more.
I struggled to get 15 minutes of running out at a measly 6mph on a 1% incline. And I didn't do the 15 minutes all at once either. This from a former half marathoner.
Oh well.
All the more reason for me to keep at it.
I really want to be running on the roads this spring. I've never felt more balanced and healthy than when I've had a running habit, and I'm going to cultivate it slowly and carefully. I'm in this for the long haul.

Sledding!

2008-12-28T21:00:00.001-08:00

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

The Oh Nine Project

2008-12-27T20:52:00.000-08:00

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

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

One Ton of Fun

2008-12-20T19:14:00.000-08:00

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

Another John Nash Moment

2008-12-20T19:13:00.000-08:00

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

What Leary Took Down With Him

2008-12-20T19:12:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and this one:

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

I Looked Great Yesterday!

2008-12-01T19:18:00.000-08:00

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

Out of the Dust

2008-11-29T22:31:00.000-08:00

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

Why having a 6 year old is so much fun.

2008-11-21T20:02:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

Mommy: "So you need new glue then."

Parker: (chuckle) "Yup."

Round and Rounder

2008-11-21T19:16:00.000-08:00

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

What A Wonderful World This Could Be

2008-11-16T20:06:00.000-08:00

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

Act of War.

2008-11-13T20:09:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

Jamie Oliver is a Filthy Little Pig

2008-11-09T16:15:00.000-08:00

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

The Future of Online Gaming Hangs in the Balance

2008-11-09T11:52:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

The New Political Landscape and the Online Gambler

2008-11-08T22:48:00.001-08:00

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

By Brian Chan on November 8, 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Nature of the Beast

2008-11-06T21:30:00.000-08:00

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

Polar Bear Dream

2008-11-05T14:58:00.000-08:00

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

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

Indenture

2008-10-29T21:56:00.000-07:00

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

The Dread and Primordial Terror of Parenthood.

2008-10-26T20:31:00.000-07:00

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

My Heart On a Platter

2008-10-25T08:29:00.000-07:00

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

Wiebo

2008-10-19T17:19:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

Adrenaline Kicks

2008-10-17T20:36:00.002-07:00

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

The North/South Divide

2008-10-17T20:36:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm Volunteering to Work Halloween Night

2008-10-08T14:40:00.000-07:00

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