Spirit in the Morning

I have an unusually effective morning routine that deposits me at the bus stop with a temporal accuracy that staggers the imagination -- especially if you're familiar with my antics.

I wake to the piercing trill of a $9 travel alarm and a stream of expletive that would shame a group of merchant seamen. The swearing is not all from me. It seems my continual abuse of the sleep button on my travel alarm makes it the most annoying device in our house: while it manages to interrupt my sleep, it fails to penetrate the thick layer of cotton my brain so comfortably nestles into during the night. I slowly come to my senses during the next half hour, as I attempt to continue my sleep while waking to hit the snooze button at five-minute intervals.

At some point I gain enough consciousness to realize that I should be getting out of bed. I turn off my alarm and stumble drunkenly down the stairs in my underwear. By the time I get in the shower I'm usually awake enough to sing whatever tune I have stuck in my head, and depending on the length of it, I'm left with just enough time to dry off, brush my teeth, get dressed, and grab some granola before racing out the door. If the bus is late I spend my time petting the Crazy Cat Lady's dog.

Now all this, with the possible exception of the swearing, is probably similar to your own morning routine. But I mention it today as a preamble to something more. You see, I live in the 'hood, yo, and sometimes interesting things happen while you're waiting for the bus. Sometimes a strange man shows you his genitals. Sometimes you get approached by a prostitute. And sometimes a newer-model black sedan will pull over to the curb and a nicely dressed older lady will approach you and attempt to give you a copy of The Watchtower.

This happened to me a week ago. No shit. Seriously, I shit you not.

The conditions were exactly right for a Jehovah's Witness to appear: the bus was late, the Crazy Cat Lady's dog was inside, and I was alone at the bus stop. When I saw the car drive by, I thought it was either some well-to-do business person racing at a break-neck pace through the 'hood in hopes that those bad kids wouldn't be able to steal his hubcaps, or it was some pimp or drug dealer making his early morning rounds ("Any drugs for you today, ma'am?" "No thank you." "How about a ho for your husband?" "Well, we're between paydays right now -- maybe next week."). When it stopped by the back alley, I thought maybe they had business with the Crazy Cat Lady -- it's not inconceivable. Finally, when the woman walked right up to me, I hoped she was only asking for directions, but I suspected she wanted to save one of the poor, unfortunate souls living in North Central.

JW: Hello there.
Me: Hi.
JW: Would you be interested in this magazine?
Me [looking down at The Watchtower]: Absolutely not!
JW [unfazed]: All right. Have a good morning.

I immediately wondered if I handled things properly. I wanted to be polite, but totally dismissive, the way I would act if she'd handed me a copy of Cat Fancier or Ebony. As she walked away, I felt like yelling venomous, hateful things after her, letting her know how vehemently opposed I am to her religious evangelism. I wanted her to realize how wrong it was to target me -- regardless of how badly it looked like I needed "salvation" -- just because I was by myself at a bus stop. The Campus Crusade for Christ used that same tactic on me when I was at the U of S; it did nothing to increase my interest in Christ, but it did continually interrupt my lunch. And really, the God I believe in wants me to eat in peace.

So instead of putting her on the business end of an angry tirade until she fled in mortal fear, she returned to her vehicle verbally unmolested and drove off. No need to save me a seat out of your 144,000 heavenly passengers, ma'am: if I do go, I'll probably be flying standby, anyway.

Max2!

We -- and I speak quite broadly as a society, not just as part of a household -- have been assaulted by the horrendously awful Max5 commercial. Those of you in the U.S. of A. may recognize this despicable chocolate bar as the Take5, but its new alias has done nothing to endear itself to your neighbours in the Great White North. First of all, the bar is so Frankensteinian, if that's even a word, that you expect it was created by some slob who swept under his sofa, assembled the results into a bar-like shape, hit it with lightning a few times, and then sent it upstairs for management's approval. Secondly, the jingle has the most vapid lyrics ever conceived in all of jingledom, with gems like "Peanuts are just nutty" and "'Cuz more is more". In fact, you expect that the jingle writer just swept under his sofa, combined the results onto a single sheet of paper, and sent it upstairs for management's approval. Worst of all, the jingle grabs you around the neck like a professional wrestler, and you often find yourself involuntarily humming it and singing the "One more than four" verse.

Our dog loves chocolate. This is not to say that he sits enrapt in front of the TV every time a Max5 commercial comes on -- which, by my estimates, would be about 14 hours a day -- but he enjoys the occasional bar the way a high school drop-out enjoys the odd hoot. We found this out the hard way soon after we got him, when we returned to the car and discovered he'd eaten the four chocolate bars we'd foolishly left on the console wrappers and all. The only evidence that suggested we had had chocolatey confections in the car were a small brown smudge on the passenger seat and a grinning dog with refreshingly minty Aero breath. Needless to say, we didn't want this to happen again. Not only because chocolate can kill dogs, but because we bought those for ourselves, dammit! What are we going to do with two packages of Beggin' Strips?

But we have found two foods Nicky doesn't like: shrimp and pretzels. The shrimp I can at least understand. Nicky is a dog of the people. He's working class, having grown up in an abusive family. He even spent a few months in the slammer before we came along to bail him out -- though in those days he and the other dogs called it the Joint. He simply doesn't have the refined tastes for hoity-toity foods. Give him a bowl of kibble and a bowl of water -- maybe the odd pair of underwear -- and he's good for another day of sleeping on the sofa, pooping in the basement, and barking menacingly at passersby.

It's the pretzels I don't understand. Pretzels are a working man's food. You're done after a hard day at the mill and you head down to old Doc Johnson's for a beer and a bowl of pretzels, which you scarf down in huge handfuls while watching highlights from last night's game and bitching about your coworkers. But Nicky won't even touch them, and I've tried all the tricks: eating them in front of him while making "mmmmmm, these are so good" noises, burying them in his kibble, covering them in various sauces, even chucking them at him so he'll catch them in his mouth. Nada. He might have seen too many reports of G.W. Bush choking on one; he's pretty smart, for a dog. So's Nicky, come to think of it.

Enter Max5. While the website goes out of its way to not tell you the ingredients of Max5 -- which is extremely handy for those people with peanut allergies -- I assure you that pretzels are one of the five ingredients. Unfortunately, there's probably enough other stuff there that Nicky would actually devour these bars pretzels and all. So, in the hopes of saving our dog from an early death at the hands of chocolate, and to provide a semblance of a chocolatey treat for me and the missus, I submit to Hershey's the Max2 -- a bar made of shrimp and pretzels, covered in a layer of rich Hershey's chocolate. I even adapted the Max5 theme for the Max2, so all the hard work is done! I leave the marketing to Hershey's, and let's be honest: if they can sell that oddball conglomeration, the Max2 should be 60% easier.

Shrimp are really fishy
Pretzels go crunch!
Put them both together
You're sure to lose your lunch!
Max2! Three less than five!
Max2! Two-fifths of the taste, it's
Max2! 'Cuz five is jive!
Max2!

My Life, in Summary

I live my life as a novel, but I write it as a collection of short stories. There is a certain ebb and flow to the stories that make me, and a sequence that does not lend itself to these discrete slices. Such contradictions must inevitably collide, like a steamship with an iceberg. This time my poor blog was the vessel sunk, and it's taken months for the remains to buoy back to the surface. But as you pick through the flotsam, enough of the story comes out to tell you what took place. Here is the wreckage of my life.

I ran the RPS Half Marathon in April and beat last year's Queen City time by about 20 minutes, breaking the two hour mark. My goal for QCM this year is another 10 minutes off, to 1:50. But training has been slow going: I haven't been running regularly since RPS. It's going to be a hard run if I don't motivate myself in the next two months.

I found a new job working at the Saskatchewan Arts Board, and am very happy for the change. It's little more than pushing papers from one side of my desk to the other, but it's somewhat more interesting than it sounds. What's important is that the Arts Board is a 4000% improvement over the hateful, hateful coffee shop. The position is only until the end of August, so I'll probably be returning to the coffee shop circuit after that. But a different coffee shop.

In other hateful coffee shop news, Ferdie, the incompetent, self-centered bastard that was promoted over me while I was away at debate nationals, has been fired. The reason? Well, it turns out he's an idiot. And there was unanimous consensus on this, not just my say-so. Even though it took three long months, justice was finally served.

I've been reading stories about the late Hunter S. Thompson in Rolling Stone and trying hard to channel his spirit. I only seem to succeed when I'm wearing a T-shirt, underwear, and my fake Tilly hat. I've managed to summon a lot of Hunter's fiery invective, but only against my clownish MP, Andrew Scheer -- which isn't necessarily such a bad thing. In other political news, Lorne Nystrom has won the NDP nomination in my riding, and I'm not entirely sure that I'm happy with this decision. It looks like I'll have to continue my bashing of Scheer while holding Nystrom's feet to the same fire.

I've collected enough Big Gulp points for a $50 gift certificate at Home Depot. God help me.

My purchase of a crappy 2.0 megapixel digital camera has, by necessity, given birth to a Flickr photostream. I've been giving my camera to people I know and asking them to take pictures of me. Finally, should I get kidnapped or mysteriously vanish, there'll be at least a few photos of me to put on the milk cartons.

I've gone to an optometrist for the first time in three years, and will shortly be the recipient of an updated eyewear prescription and new, and much less desirable, frames. This was prompted not by my poor eyesight, but because I took a volleyball in the face at a 24-Hour Relay fundraiser. I considered my black eye to be a badge of honour, and missed it when it went away. I also found out that a "10" is legally blind; my prescription is a "9". Looks like I'll have to stop driving without my glasses.

While at the eye doctor, I came very close to passing out as she explained how close I am to having my retinas detach. The same thing happened when I read this story about a guy who wanted to be trepanned, and when I read this book about the ebola virus. Apparently some things bother me more than others.

I joined with my family to celebrate my grandfather's 80th birthday. In true Zany Grandpa John style, he also crammed in his wife's 75th birthday, and their 15th wedding anniversary. Also in true style, I wrote a ridiculous rhyme with fish and enchiladas in honour of AnniversaDay. My mother thought it was brilliant and not at all odd, and tried unsuccessfully to have me recite it at the reception. I was unable to convince her that there was a fine line between subtle mockery and overt ridiculousness.

Fish and enchiladas!
Enchiladas and fish!
Put them both together
And receive your fondest wish!
What else can a person say?
Happy AnniversaDay!

I read Stephen King's On Writing in the hopes that it would help my blogging. There was a lot to take out of the book, and it probably deserves a re-read after I've put some work in. King says you need to read a lot and write a lot -- there are no shortcuts. He also prescribed the equation 1st edit = rough draft - 10%. The unspoken equation I learned from Thompson was rough draft = 75% truth and 25% fiction. It's funny how these seem to fit each other hand-in-glove.

I'm going to be the karaoke host at the Canada Summer Games! Not that I feel I can sing a lick, but because others do; and as long as I can fool the people in charge, I'll continue to do ridiculous things.

Million Dollar Baby is a hauntingly brilliant movie and easily one of the best films I've seen. The movie is driven entirely by the characters, who are likeable and true to themselves. It stands in direct contrast to Revenge of the Sith, which was a bold experiment in seeing how much you can core out from the centre of a franchise and still have people pay to see it. People said that Episode III was the best of the prequels, but who are we kidding? Episode I was all Trade Federation and space politics; Episode II showcased a terrible, stilted teen love story through the double barrels of poor writing and wooden acting. In contrast, Sith started with a space battle, a lightsaber duel, and a decapitation. But there was still lots to dislike about it, headless jedis notwithstanding, and I'm ready to trade notes with anyone at a moment's notice.

Regardless, I did manage to collect the full set of Star Wars toys from Burger King, thanks in large part to the devious and underhanded efforts of Tamara, the best girlfriend in the world. But I did manage to get Darth Vader myself, so I still deserve some of the credit. I took them all out of their protective plastic bags so I could play with them. Our dog loves to carry the Millennium Falcon around in his mouth, and I'm constantly warning him away from the vehicle races on the kitchen floor. The toys are great overall, but I'm disappointed at the conspicuous absence of Lando Calrissian: doesn't anyone remember that he blew up the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi? I'd take him over Watto any day.

My continued efforts to win money at the casino has been hampered by the continued loss of my money. No big surprise there, I know.

Tamara, Brett, Jacqueline, and I went to the show lounge to see the Amazing Kreskin a few weeks ago. Tamara remained unconvinced, saying that he was far more Kreskin than Amazing. I had a good time. He was exactly as I remembered from the Tonight Show and various other programs, but his show was a little short for the time allotted. In a show half the length, he would definitely be amazing. But as the show went on he became just the Kreskin, and then toward the end, the Tedious Kreskin.

And somewhere in this mix of events, I had a birthday. I'm becoming less enamoured with them as they continue piling up. But I suppose it beats the alternative.