Snippets

* I am not anonymous because I am not afraid.

* The only difference between good and evil is perspective.

* The downside of "perfect customer service" is that we are training everyone that they can have what they want, when they want it, and how they want it. This can't be good for people's ability to adapt and make do.


* Gummy brains

* The older I get, the more I like fish. What's next, pussy?

* This is what I'm talking about. A simple idea worth millions.

* When I find out a famous person has a blog, I think, "Hey, no fair, you've already got an audience, give us obscure voices a chance."

* Everywhere I look these days, I'm smacked in the face with ELECTRIC GREEN. I adore spring.


* Mobius staircase

* I saw the sun once this week, for a couple of hours last Sunday. Otherwise, rain.

Maybe I should go back to doing HNT

A big reason that I can't really work for the man anymore is that I'm unable to filter information. And by filter information, I mean lie and be fake about things. (If you approach me and ask me if I can keep a secret, I will tell you, "No.") Well, can't isn't really the right word, because I can, that has been proven, but it so deeply bruises my soul (for lack of a better word) that I refuse to play that game any longer.

Being a contract worker where I decide which classes to teach, I'm pretty well insulated from the politics of the corporate milieux and exempt from the hellishness of sales and marketing.

Still, the sticky fingers of the white collar environment somtimes catch me, why just last week, I was reprimanded for having spoken about confidential information. What was that information? That a student dropped my class. Why was that confidential? Because it was the HR Director who had dropped the class. (wouldn't want my bad example to be known by the other employees, better try to muzzle the teacher.)

People I'm super wary of: Salesmen of any kind, Human Resources (anyone in the department), Politicians, lawyers, and even closeted people living double lives.

These kinds of jobs/situations require the candidate to lie about things depending on the audience.

I don't do that. And it's nothing about loyalty or integrity, it's just too stressful. So I won't ever make "the big bucks" because I can't "grow up" and reconcile with the man.

And that's just fine with me.

Just wrong

Okay, so you write about your life for a year, you pontificate, you try to be funny, clever, sentimental, and whacky. And you practice your writing, noting the things that work, and the things that don't. You dig on the whole "cadre of readers" you seem to have attracted. You are perhaps a little too fervently tending to the blog. No matter, the rewards seem to outweigh the teetering on the brink of obsession part.

And then you realize that much of your traffic results from Google searches. These three searches have come up more than once just in the past week:

How to make yourself faint. (This is the most common search that leads here.)

How to make perfect french fries.

Why do I have brown specks in my urine?

(Can I get an ewwww?)

The reveal

*If you haven't read yesterday's post, do so now so the following will make sense.

1. True. When I was young, my friends and I were playing, and one day we got the idea to tie a rope to a bicycle and then tow someone on a skateboard behind it. When it was my turn, my skateboard hit a small pebble and stopped. Unfortunately, I didn't immediately release the rope and I went flying, slid about 20 feet and then my chest kind of stuck to the asphalt but my legs still had momentum so my body flipped up and slammed my face down into the street. Result, a third of both front teeth broke. They made some kind of mold and "remade" them, but if you look closely, you can still see the slightly different color of the fake part.

2. True. For one long summer I worked graveyard at a company that archived paper documents onto microfiche. My job was to remove the staples from the files before they were sent to the microfiching station. Getting laid off from that job was one of the happier moments of my youth.

3. True. I went with my family on a 7 week tour of Europe in 1983. When we drove to Spain from France; we stopped in Andorra, a place I didn't even know existed before then.

4. True. Once at Prentice Park Zoo in Santa Ana, California, there was a kind of workshop about milking. That day was the goat demonstration and I had a chance to try my hand at the udders. It was very difficult to squeeze it just right.

5. Lie. C'mon, do you know anybody who has seen them? I didn't think so.

Congratulations to t, scotty, em, dirk and bob for spotting the lie!

Spot the lie

1. I once broke both front teeth in a skateboarding accident.

2. I once had a job as a staple remover.

3. I've been to the country of Andorra.

4. I've milked a goat.

5. I've seen live siamese twins. (I mean conjoined, siamese is pejorative apparently)


* Answers coming up tomorrow, leave your guess in the comments. There are four truths and one falsehood.

Patronized instead of pampered

So after I posted about being brainwashed the other day, I tried to verify if I had remembered the Ritz Carlton credo correctly. (I did, verbatim) In doing this, I stumbled upon the handbook that is given out during orientation at the hotel when you are hired. It includes the 3 steps of service, motto, credo and the Ritz Carlton Basics, all of which are to be memorized. You can see a copy of it here if you like. (I still have my copy from years ago, but it has changed a little since) Some of the elements of the dogma were the source of much sarcasm once you were a seasoned employee. "Smile, we are on stage," comes to mind.

I was a model employee at first, a real gung ho Reese Witherspoon. I was so proud to be Ritz material. (gag) One of the things we were supposed to do was escort guests instead of giving directions to things in the hotel. I always did this, losing my time on more important things, and annoying many a guest in the process. Do people really want to be escorted to the bathroom? No, no they don't. I think people felt patronized instead of pampered.

The "basics" are really a great tool to give management firing power over the employees. You can be written up for practically anything since you sign a document stating that you will uphold the standards and basics of employment there. So. If we look at the list of "basics", we find things like "No negative comments" (which I see has since been removed from number 9). This is (was) one of the basics. If you complain, that's bad. But you must point out any hazards, and ask for equipment and help when necessary. That's good. So, you can't say, "Why has it been three weeks that the cappucino machine is broken?" However, the moment it breaks, you must inform your supervisor. No complaining after that though, boy, because that's negative.

Oh and I just remembered, we were never allowed to use the word "problem", instead, we had to use the word "opportunity". Seriously. In the restaurant, "the lady on table 15 has an opportunity with her swordfish" was exactly how you were expected to inform your supervisor.

Anyway, maybe this gives more insight to # 37 : I can hate you viciously while smiling.

The upside of lanky

* Those who do not want "too much information" might want to skip this post, sexual in nature as it is.

"Dad?" I asked one afternoon in the car on the way home from sixth grade, "What does masturbation mean?" A new kid at school had made a joke using this word. I had laughed even though I didn't get the joke. My parents had always encouraged open communication and so my father said without batting an eye, "Well, it's when you give yourself sexual pleasure."

Now sex was something I knew of. I didn't see the attraction to it yet because I hadn't reached the proper nut-ripened age.

"But how?" I asked, understanding the general idea, but clueless of the mechanics.

Dad made some kind of gesture with his hand that I didn't immediately grasp. I looked at him quizzically and he made the same gesture again. I guess I knew what he meant then but I was still a bit confused. (My penis still wasn't really big enough to work with the hand thing like he was demonstrating.)

Somehow, the subject got changed and we talked about other things until arriving home.

What do you think the first thing that I did was upon arriving home? Right, I went directly to the bathroom to try out dad's tutorial. About twenty minutes later, dad pounded on the door and said, "Ricky, I know what you're doing in there, now come on out." I had met with little success anyway, but from his tone of voice, I stung with a bit of shame thinking that talking about it must be okay, but doing it must not be. I came out and practiced later in the safety of my bedroom at night.

Still, it would be another year before I would truly be able to pleasure myself. By the beginning of 7th grade, I had already given up on dad's method which had lost its allure months before (since it didn't seem to work.) At this point, I was back to doing crazy boy shit; sticking paper clips into my urethra to see how far they would go, blowing air through a straw and into my bladder via my peehole and then "penis farting" the air back out, and finally trying to bend over and reach my penis with my tongue.

The last item there proved quite challenging. For weeks, I practiced touching the head of my penis with my tongue and then pushing farther and farther until I was able to get the whole kit and kaboodle in my mouth and even trigger my own gag reflex with my penis. It's hard to explain why I was doing this, the best answer I can give is boredom.

It was during one of these "exercises" that a crazy, scary feeling invaded my genitals and squirted something into my mouth. I was totally taken off guard and didn't really enjoy it because I thought something bad had happened. But after the initial shock, I put two and two together and realized I'd had my first orgasm.

Guess what I did everyday after school in the 7th grade? Guess what I became an expert at by 8th grade?

I'm easy to brainwash

Gee Wye Bee Are Eff Vee. GYBRFV. Get your bedroom ready for vacuuming. Instilled at a young age when dad called this acronym out in advance of his weekly chore. I still think of it now as I pick everything up off the floor getting ready to vacuum. (one of my chores)

The Ritz Carlton Hotel is a place where the genuine care and comfort of our guests is our highest mission, we pledge to provide the finest personal service and facilities for our guests who will always enjoy a warm, relaxed, yet refined ambiance. The Ritz Carlton experience enlivens the senses, instills well-being and fulfulls even the unexpressed wishes and needs of the guest. (This is the credo - from memory, I swear I did no googling. Every employee must memorize it. I ceased working there in 1994.)

Why choose unhappiness? This also came from my father who would say this after I had, oh I don't know, smashed my toe in the car door or something. It used to infuriate me. Then it just poisoned my mind and so now whenever I'm unhappy, I'm forced to look at how much of that I'm choosing. And let me tell you, it's a lot of choosing. I've also learned since that other people do not really want to hear this either, especially after traumatic events. (You don't want to know.)

Once I read that milk was for babies and that nowhere else on the planet do we have adult mammals drinking the milk, (I'm smiling about using "the" right there, but I don't know why) I immediately gave it up. The only milk I'll have now is if em's chocolate cake is in the glass at the same time.

No Pink Chicken, Ever. After the food handling course and certification in California, I'm a chicken preparation nazi and rarely if ever order it out. Rarely have it in for that matter. And anyway I hate the whole bone thing. I have to be ravenous to chomp on a drumstick or eat spareribs. Bones are ucky. Precooked, pressed, frozen chicken fingers are okay. (I know, so white-trashy, what can I tell ya?)

Sometimes writing is like fixing oatmeal and then realizing you're out of sugar

Whenever I feel like I have nothing to write about (like every time I open my journal), I remember that a true writer can transform the mundane into magic. The late Canadian author, Carole Shields, was a master at that and her "Stone Diaries" is still one of my favorite reads. Yet, if someone pesters me to know what it's about, I'm stuck saying, "It's about an ordinary person leading an ordinary life, but somehow she makes it extraordinary."

I think the change from ordinary to extraordinary comes when the author can truly see the situation through the scrim of the characters' emotions.

But I also think that this is the key to seeing your own life as extraordinary.

After nearly a year at it, I can safely say that the more I blog and the more I probe how I think and feel about things, the more I see my ordinary life as magical.

Water Pavillion

On Monday, I stopped at the IGA market on Nun's Island again, where everything is shiny and glittering. Being human, I am attracted to shiny things. The lighting in the produce department is stunning there and I usually find something good or hard to get at my local market. Monday, it was killer-ripe avocados. Anyway, not only does this market have the whole station thing going on (ie deli, butcher, cakery, fromagerie, etc, each with own staff) but also has something I've never seen before. It's in a circled out corner near the checkout where one might expect the flower department (which is oddly after the checkout). It's the Pavillon d'Eau. The Water Pavillion. (I wish you could hear how sarcastically I'm saying the word "water".) But again, being human, I was enchanted by the bottom-of-the-pool design flooring and the white backlit shelves transforming the whole "pavillion" into one giant soft-white light bulb. Drawn, I was, like a child to a gumball machine. Look at the pretty bottles, check out the funky norwegian names. Ooooooh, preeeety. But then something started niggling at me, down there in my gut, just left of center. A little tug saying, wait, wait, waiiiiit. And then I started to think about the imbalance in the world. How millions of people don't have access to clean water and here I am staring at the most gluttonous example of consumerism. Water as commodity, as status symbol, as money maker. Then I made this little video.



I'm wondering when we'll have to pay for the air we breathe. Or when the real marketing genius will convince us that a tank with oxygen dragged around with us at all times is not only healthy, but fashionable. Imagine! The funky tank designs, the rolling apparati, the back pack versions. Oh and the mask that goes with, they could even be mask masks, and you could be your favorite celebrity for a day. And the possible air varieties, "Ah, yes I'm doing arctic this week, I like it, but it's a little stale, I don't think I'll do this one again. Post desert storm is my favorite." Geez, the accessories alone could be a billion dollar market.

It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside thinking about what our descendants have to look forward to.

Tulips for Tuesday

In Downtown Montreal, there is a cathedral that stands in sharp contrast to the steel and glass skyscrapers surrounding it. There is a huge mall underneath the cathedral as well. Each year, the place explodes with tulips. I took all of these shots yesterday at around two in the afternoon.

This was my favorite shot, with the guy feeding the pigeons, and the kids looking on behind him.

It took about five minutes before I could get this shot free of passersby.

My damn shoe is in this picture.

Then again, maybe I like this shot best. (you can click all the pictures for screen filling versions)

Happy spring!

Did I really write jerked off?

The patio set. Home Depot, Key Biscayne ensemble. Two swivel chairs not shown.

When I went to take back the earth killing machine yesterday, I had to fill it with gas before dropping it off at the car rental place. Gas here is 1.09 a litre Canadian. (Let's see, 1 US gallon = 3.7854 liters, so 1.09 X 3.7854 is about $4.13 a gallon Canadian. But if we convert to US currency, it's about $3.71) The highest it's gotten is $1.39 after Katrina. Anyway, for our little shopping excursions and then a ride out for brunch with the MIL, we totaled 120 kilometers. (75 miles) I had used a quarter of the Jeep Liberty's tank. It didn't seem possible when the pump continued after the twenty dollar mark and I was aghast when it finally jerked off at $29.75. I'll spare you the math here since I've already done it in my head, but it comes out to a quarter a kilometer for gas. When I got back to the rental car office, I remarked to the agent that I was suffering from shock after gassing it up, and she said, "Yeah, that's why we are doing the big SUV promotion. Nobody wants to rent them anymore because they use so much gas and it's so expensive, so we just have them all sitting there in the garage day after day."

When I left, I walked two blocks to the metro station, slid my $62 monthly pass through the slot in the turnstyle, and was whisked home with nary a stoplight. Feeling smug, I was.

Being good little capitalist consumers

When shopping goes right, a splendid experience it is. Saturday will probably go down as one of the most successful excursions to date. There was practically no squabbling AND no crowds due to the inclement weather. It's like everyone said, "Eh, we can go tomorrow or next weekend, there's no rush." So every place we went was empty, the cashiers calling out "Hey, I'm open over here" when we went with our intended purchases to look for the shortest checkout line. On a Saturday in spring, this is unusual. But pouring down rain it was, ha ha. We got wet shopping in the nursery, selecting the tree and bushes for the back yard. We decided on a Hydrangea for the "tree" selection, I don't know why, I've always known somehow that I would own one. And though there were many other trees at half the price, when spouse declared his desire for it, I quickly agreed.

A hydrangea, (what a chewy word, I like saying it over and over - high-drain-jah.) I'm going to try to make mine make blue flowers. Maybe not right away, but one day.

Then the patio set we got at Home Depot. We both saw and wanted it because it came with six chairs, two of which were swivel chairs, mmmmmm, swivel chairs, next stop convalescent home.

And I got my air conditioner. I saw a portable 12000 btu for $750 and jumped on it. I will not suffer this summer like I did last.

We stuffed the SUV full twice and dumped nearly two grand for the day. It's looking more and more like we're setting this place up to stay. Maybe we should skip the whole moving out idea and just enjoy a small place decked out in everything our hearts desire. Today, we're off to brunch with the mother in law and hopefully we can get things planted later this afternoon.

Here's a little video of the dog. Why? Because the new patio set video is lame.

Offroading at Home Depot

I've rented an earth killing machine this weekend. When I got in it, I stared blankly at the 4-wheel drive apparatus. Having scant contact with such a thing, I didn't really understand how it worked. "What if I need to use it to get out of a situation?" a small panicky voice inside asked. "Yeah, right, you're going to be off roading this weekend are you? Think there'll be a freak May snowstorm and you'll get stuck?" and then I snickered at myself.

It's a Jeep Liberty. And as I was driving away admiring the smell of new leather seats (can I get an essential oil of that please) I thought about the usefulness of the four wheel drive. But all I can come up with is ego, vanity and perhaps masculinity building as the possible uses. I mean when do you need to shift into the four wheel drive mode? Shouldn't we be avoiding places where four wheel drive is necessary? Wouldn't these places tend to be wild and untouched? It's wasteful already to have a big old SUV (I usually see one person in an SUV), the 4WD seems like a superfluous addition. Like a bra for a Hummer.

Still, I'm thrilled to have rented it, the size will come in handy this weekend as I have succumbed to the wheedling, and we will be getting a patio set. Thank god we have to get a small one (due to the size of the deck) so we won't have to spend too, too much. Also, a tree! I predict squabbling over the selection of the tree. Apparently we both have an idea of what we want the back yard to look like, but we formulated these ideas independently so they do not resemble one another. Hopefully, neither of us will be intractable.

Snippets

* This is what I do Fridays. I list morcels from the journal that did not make it as a blog post.

* How do competing technologies benefit us? It seems like a big waste of time. Beta/VHS, Cassette/8track, Plasma/LCD, IBM/Apple. Maybe technology would progress that much faster if we didn't have to wait for the competition to play out. And we wouldn't have to fill up the landfills with the losing technology.

* I have been cigarette free for 50 days. I have been nicotine free for 5 days.

* A wart used to grow on my finger. I bit it off 3 times before it didn't grow back. (My aversion to doctors and medicine began long ago)

* My mother catches fish that weigh twice as much as her.

* You know people who have a part of their eye that's a different color? That's a glitch in the software, as, I believe, is homosexuality. The question is, "How important are the glitches?"

* I was once highly skilled (expert!) in auto-fellatio.

* Most adults will be dead and gone by 2070. Why people get so narded up about some issues is beyond me. (immigration for example)

* A sign of maturity is the ability to feel genuine pleasure for the good fortune of others.

* My parents used to frequently answer my whine with, "because Life's not fair, that's why." And it's true, they just forgot the part that it's possible to live on the good side of "unfair".

* Spring has sprung and I made a corny video snippet of myself in public.

Way back half nekkid good night's sleep

Most people know that I don't like taking any kind of medication. I loathe going to the doctor and usually trust that time and rest will work most things out. There are times, however, when I will take pills, like aspirin for headaches. Yesterday, I received several sleeping pills in the mail from one of the (now favoritest) bloggers who visits this site. The gratitude I felt when those were in my mailbox was immeasurable. Sleep was on the way. I haven't figured out how to properly thank this person, but thanks are coming in addition to this one. Long story short, I slept for nine hours last night. And despite a slight grogginess this morning, I feel like weeping with joy.

I don't have anything planned for the blog today. And since it's Thursday and yesterday was Wednesday, here's a way-back-half-nekkid picture that represents the time I consider to have been my "top shape" year. It hasn't been exactly all downhill since then, but hairiness and wrinkliness are on the rise, as are the proliferation of freckles. (You do know that a tan is evidence of skin damage, right? I tanned a lot back then.)

Age 33, 1998. 180lbs

Is this wrong?

So I had been thinking about the surreptitious filming opportunities with the camera phone. What if I could use the phone as though I were talking to someone and just point my ear at what I wanted to be filming. The filmed wouldn't know right?

Then hot hunky guy got on the bus and I tried it.



Am I in trouble now?

* Update: Youtube removed the video for "inappropriate content" I guess you're not allowed to say that you secretly filmed someone.

In which I expose the extreme profundity of my bleeding heartedness

1. What would the US look like if we gave all the illegal immigrants amnesty?

2. In what way would things change if the US national anthem were sung in more than one language?

Frankly, I'm shocked that even my gay brethren are "offended" by the translation of the anthem. Honestly, it's the same argument people are giving to prevent gay marriage - that adding a new version to the existing one somehow sullies the original. I don't get it. How does the translation of the song, and the subsequent singing of it affect you? Why are people choosing to be outraged? Utterly pointless, in my opinion.

And my heart was with every one of those protesters on Monday. Having lived my own illegal immigration story, I can definitely put myself in their shoes. And what a specious argument that the fact that they entered "illegally" renders them undeserving of any special consideration. Come on now, there really was no other legal avenue for them to enter. Do you think the US is just handing out immigration papers to people who are simply qualified for basic manual labor? If you do, you better go do some homework. The only hope for the poor and unskilled is the immigration lottery. Sorry, but the immigration lottery doesn't have enough spots to satisfy the labor demands in the US. Specious. (We need them here but we're not going to acknowledge that, we're going to vilify them for being here)

Those of us who were lucky enough to be born on US soil should be thanking these people, not threatening to fire them for not showing up to work on Monday. We've had it way easier than these people, and it only takes the weest bit of open mindedness/compassion to realize it.

Compassion people, say it with me.

(Just to make you love me more: English is one of many languages that have been spoken within US borders since the country's birth. What would the US look like if English and Spanish were the two official languages? Wouldn't that be an enriching experience for everybody? I just don't get the knee-jerk hostile and negative reactions. It must be fear based.)

Insomnisaga

Here's the deal: I don't want to use this space to whine about my ailments. Sure, here and there like a normal person, but this last week and a half has been unlike anything I've ever experienced. Actually it's similar to staying up for days on methamphetamine (not that I would know a thing about that, shhh), and then suffering the come-down with the added bonus of continuing inability to sleep. I think I'm starting to know what it's like those first few months (years?) after the birth of a child. Anyway, Saturday was 100% sleepless, and Sunday I slept three hours and then took a sleeping pill, which, goddamnmotherfucker, didn't work. Monday I felt so tired. This morning, I've been awake since 3. Oh and there's a difference between tired and sleepy, this I can say with certainty. I'm very, very tired.

Don't look at me like that, I took your advice!!!! (and also felt great love for all the suggestions)

Worked out in the evening - nope

Took Gravol - no dice

Drank extra alcohol - bad idea

Drank no alcohol - worse idea

Smoked pot - negative, dude

Took Benedryl - made me buzzed and angsty, and my scalp tingled

Took three spins on my own little slot machine - fun, but no help in the sleeping arena

Can't get Melatonin here but the Valerian Root didn't work either.

So anyway, as I said, I don't want this to spiral into some kind of poor me blog. Therefore, if I'm sick or insomniated, I'm not going to post. If you don't see a post for a day, now you know why.

Oh and by the way, I discovered that Benedryl and Unisom are both peddling the same exact drug in the same exact size/milligrammed capsules. It's just that the Benedryl box is promising allergy relief and the Unisom box is promising slumber. Oh, and you get fewer pills for the same price when you buy the Benedryl.

Fun near the bottom rung

There is some kind of law here that the merchant has to display the product price (either on the package or on the shelf), and the price, if scanned, must match the displayed price. If this doesn't scan correctly, the customer is entitled to the product for free up to ten bucks.

So when I do my grocery shopping I pay attention to the prices of things (especially if they are on special, you'd be surprised how often the "specials" somehow don't get entered into the system) and try to watch as the cashier scans everything. Sometimes it's impossible to watch and unload the basket at the same time. Saturday, I couldn't do both and when I got home, I noticed that the swiss cheese fondue had rung up at $5.99 instead of $5.79. So I went back again on Sunday, bought the cheese again, pointed out the error, and got it for free. Tee hee.

Free cheese, you gotta love it.