2006 is over and done with

So the Iraqis have executed Saddam Hussein. I’m opposed to the death penalty, so I don’t like the idea of his having been killed. But, like so many things in Iraq, there seems to be no good answer to the problem. If he had been sentenced to life in prison in an Iraqi jail, would he have been summarily executed by one faction or another? Or would he have been liberated by another faction? Given the chaos in Iraq, I think that there always was a possibility that Saddam would return to power. And I’m sure that he had a list of people that he was planning to torture to death if given the chance.

One thing from the Globe’s article caught my attention, and showed how bad things really are in Iraq these days:

There was no sign of a feared Sunni uprising in retaliation for the execution, and the bloodshed from civil warfare on Saturday was not far off the daily average — 92 from bombings and death squads.

Not far off the daily average. Whoa.

One of today’s spam messages contained a paragraph that reads like a description of a Dali surrealist painting:

A light bulb related to the wedding dress prays, and the unstable support group reads a magazine; however, a bowling ball around a dolphin pours freezing cold water on a pork chop. A soggy bullfrog seldom throws an apartment building around the polar bear at a graduated cylinder for the ball bearing. Furthermore, the purple bowling ball self-flagellates, and a turkey feverishly is a big fan of a jersey cow inside a chestnut. Sometimes a green submarine hides, but a girl scout always sanitizes the paper napkin! Indeed, another fried judge figures out an avocado pit defined by a short order cook. A pig pen starts reminiscing about lost glory, and an obsequious crane takes a coffee break; however, the chestnut living with the tomato makes love to an ostensibly stoic customer.

I want some of whatever they’re smoking.

Okay, now I’m really worried about the weather. The forecasted highs for Toronto for the next few days are 5, 7, 3, 6 and 8C. This is winter we’re talking about here. I hope that we humans haven’t totally screwed up the planet, and there’s still time to fix things up.

So it’s the end of another year. 2006 was a weird and difficult year for me and a lot of people I know – I, for one, will be glad to see the end of it. I don’t make New Year’s resolutions – if I could change my behaviour that easily, I’d have done it already – but I hope that I can help make 2007 a better year both for me and for the people that I care about.

Me me me

I’ve always been fascinated by trivial facts about people. I mean, wouldn’t you want to know what Stephen Harper likes to eat for breakfast, or whether Jack Layton is afraid of spiders or not?

In that spirit, here’s a bunch of trivial facts about me, just to let you know who you’re dealing with here, and also because I’m self-absorbed as all hell.

• I’m a little over 6′2″ now, but I was short when I was growing up: when I started Grade 10, I was 5′4″. In public school class pictures, I was always the little kid sitting in the front with his legs crossed.
• I can’t touch my toes from a standing position without bending my knees – in fact, I can get about as far as my knees. This is because some tendon or other in my legs is shorter than average.
• Related to the above: I walk funny. I bounce a bit when I walk. It used to be worse, but I went to a physiotherapist a few years ago when I started having trouble with my right knee. I’ve always wanted to know whether there is a name for this condition, but I’ve never found one.
• And sitting cross-legged is very comfortable for me. I’m doing it right now, in fact.
• I’m older than I look. When I tell people how old I am, I sometimes have to show them my driver’s licence before they believe me. (But I’m starting to go a bit gray now, so this won’t last long.)
• My first job was selling tickets at the CNE when I was a teenager.
• My second job was working in the back room at a Consumers Distributing in Leaside. Yeah, I still remember what catalogue number 407-122 was for.
• I only sleep six hours a night. It seems to be all I need. The night before I wrote this, I went to bed at 11:30 and woke up at 5:30.
• Mind you, if I go too long without eating, and then eat a big meal, I inevitably drift out of consciousness for an hour or two.
• I’m allergic to house dust – if a shirt has been hanging in my closet for longer than a couple of months, I have to wash it again before I can wear it.
• I’m also allergic to lawn grass, cats, dogs, penicillin, and about 50% of Mother Nature.
• I can’t eat Shreddies or shredded wheat. I won’t go into details as to why not.
• I stopped drinking beer a couple of years ago, as I can’t seem to handle it too well either. Nowadays, I drink red wine. Usually cheap French red wine – the kind that comes in screw-top bottles. The French probably use this to clean out their car engines.
• Or I drink Scotch.
• I grew up in Don Mills, a suburb of Toronto: the nearest cross streets were Lawrence and the Don Valley Parkway. I spent way too much time as a kid waiting for the Lawrence East 54 bus.
• Because I grew up near an expressway, I like having the sounds of car traffic in the background. I live near an expressway now, and I love it.
• I have a relatively large nose, high cheekbones, and sunken eyes. This means that I have never found a pair of glasses that suits me. But I hate the very idea of contacts. Put things in my eyes? You have got to be kidding.
• Until I was about 27, I could eat absolutely anything I wanted and never gain weight. (When I was a frosh, I once ate something like 14 grilled cheese sandwiches in one sitting.) My metabolism isn’t quite as forgiving now. I wish I could drink more chocolate milkshakes.
• My front teeth aren’t real: I was hit by a softball when I was 12.
• Except for 2003, I have been unemployed for at least part of every year this century.
• Until a few years ago, I wore size 10 1/2 shoes, until I noticed that I was getting blisters on my feet. Then, I discovered that I needed size 11 1/2 shoes. I still don’t know whether my feet grew or got flat or what.
• I need a lot of solitude in order to function. I live alone by choice.
• I’ve voted every chance I’ve gotten.
• Politically, I’m mildly lefty – though I’m pragmatic by nature. I distrust all ideologies.
• I’m a third-generation agnostic.
• I’m legendarily bad with tools. (My university roommate once told me, “I thought people like you only existed in books.”)
• I hate the sound of whistling. Don’t do it around me, please.
• Certain women’s perfumes give me sneezing fits. I can tell instantly whether a particular perfume is going to set me off.
• My best 18-hole golf score ever on a regulation-length course is 116. But I once broke 70 on an 18-hole par 3 course. I don’t play golf any more.
• I’ve never broken a bone in my life. But I’ve had several bad sprains (left little finger, left leg, right ankle, lower back).
• I catch colds very easily.
• I’m a binge cleaner: I get my apartment nice and clean, and then wait a long time before I clean it again. (Right now, I’m at a low point.)
• My hair grows like crazy, especially on the top of my head.
• I could grow a passable beard in about a week. But I hate beards.
• Years ago, when I lived in Kitchener/Waterloo, I forgot where I parked my car, and had to call a cab to go look for it.
• I once had my car stolen and driven to Orillia.
• I last owned a car in 2003.
• I worry a lot. I mean a lot. More than you. I’m a compulsive ruminator.
• I like writing about myself.
• But I’m deathly afraid of boring people. I apologize in advance if I’ve been boring you, dear reader.

The Special Forces Elite Documentation Squad

(Note: I’m kind of cheating with today’s entry: this is a rewrite of something I wrote elsewhere. Hey, recycling is fashionable nowadays.)

Before I begin, a disclaimer: Nothing really bad has happened to me, or ever was likely to. Please read this last sentence again.

Now, let me tell you my skin cancer story.

Early this year, I developed a reddish spot on my upper right arm, just below the shoulder. At first, I thought it was a skin fungus: I was doing a lot of swimming to stay in shape, and I’d had a couple of these before. Finally, in June – ironically, after reading a story about somebody who had a nasty type of skin cancer – I went and had it checked out at the medical clinic near where I live. The diagnosis: ringworm, which is a kind of skin fungus (with a really yucky name).

The doctor gave me a small tub of cream, which I was to rub into the spot twice a day. It apparently was going to take several weeks for it to go away, as these beasties can be stubborn. I diligently applied the cream as prescribed, and enjoyed my summer.

In August, I noticed that the damned thing hadn’t changed one bit, despite repeated applications of cream. I wondered what was happening. I didn’t think it was skin cancer: it didn’t look like the pictures of skin cancer that I saw on the net, and it was on a spot on my arm that doesn’t normally see much sun. (I love being outdoors in the summer, but I don’t go around shirtless. I am old enough that I look better clothed than unclothed.) I wasn’t sure whether to do anything about it, but I developed an ear infection, and a repetitive strain injury in my elbow that just wouldn’t go away, so I had to go to the clinic again anyway.

At the clinic, I got pills for the ear infection, and physio appointments for the elbow, and figured, let’s have the doctor look at the arm while I’m here. He took a look at it, went “hmmm”, and gave me a referral to a dermatologist who was booked up one month in advance. Okay, I thought. Something’s up.

In September, I went to see the dermatologist, and got a diagnosis of basal cell carcinoma, which is the least harmful and most common form of skin cancer. It can take years to appear – apparently, this probably resulted from a sunburn I got when I was growing up. The doctor told me not to worry – this type of cancer virtually never spreads anywhere in the body. I was in no danger. I found out later, from my father, that the success rate is something like 99.999999% – I’m far more likely to be hit by a bus than be killed by this kind of cancer. In fact, some people don’t even call this cancer any more. But, still, it was kind of weird.

In the September appointment, I had a biopsy done, and another appointment was set up for October, in which the diagnosis was confirmed. A date in November was booked to have the darned thing removed. The only really unpleasant parts of the surgery were (a) waiting in the lobby and not knowing whether I was going to have to endure any pain, and (b) the local anaesthetic, which felt like a bunch of bee stings and was much less painful than the pulled leg muscle I sustained this spring. Once the local had kicked in, I felt no pain at all, modern science be praised. I exchanged small talk with the nurse while I studiously avoided looking down and to my right. I figured I didn’t need to know what was happening.

The nurse and I talked about representational versus non-representational art, of all things. I told her that non-representational art is to painting as jazz is to music: taking things such as colour, shape and line as far as they can be taken. (This is probably a lousy explanation – if you are an artist, please do not shoot me.) This achieved her assumed goal of keeping my mind off of what was happening – but, actually, since I wasn’t in pain, I was blithely unconcerned. It was much less unpleasant than having a tooth shaved down. (Long story – I have bridgework instead of front teeth, thanks to being hit by a softball when I was 12.)

When the procedure was over, the doctor slapped a rather large bandage on my upper arm, and gave me a written list of instructions as to what to do next. (“Don’t shower for 24 hours; shower with bandage on, then replace bandage; swimming is right out.”) I had to go to four drug stores before I found one that had bandages large enough to serve as replacements. They put in about six large stitches in my upper arm, which seems to be a fairly large wound, given that the original patch was significantly smaller than a dime. I guess they wanted to make sure they got it all.

When they took the stitches out, they told me that the lab report indicated that they had, indeed, gotten it all. Yay! I was left with a scar on my right arm that’s about an inch and a quarter long. Naturally, I wanted to be able to come up with a cool and totally fabricated explanation of how the scar got there.

When I went to Christmas Eve dinner with friends, they suggested that I could claim that the scar was from having a Special Forces tattoo removed. Of course, the only way I could have joined Special Forces of any kind was if they have an Elite Documentation Squad, ready and willing to use FrameMaker behind enemy lines.

Here is a page on basal cell carcinomas, if you’re curious. Mine doesn’t seem to match any of the descriptions here. I think it’s closest to the Superficial one, since it was mistakenly diagnosed at first.

The moral of this story: if you’ve got any weird blotches on your skin, get them checked out. I was lucky – all I have is a place where an Elite Documentation Squad tattoo used to be. But I could have been less lucky than I was.

My shopping cart story

I’m an agnostic. But not an atheist. Basically, I don’t have any idea whether there is a God or not, because I’m not smart enough. And I don’t believe anybody else is smart enough, either: I could never accept the authority of any priest, parson, minister, or other religious leader. (I don’t play well with others.)

There’s a specific reason why I’m an agnostic, and it is because of a shopping cart.

A while back, I went out to a grocery store, and it had a bunch of coin-operated shopping carts out front. You know the ones I mean: you put in a quarter, and you get to take the cart. When you’re done with it, you put it back and get your quarter back. This is supposed to prevent theft.

Anyway, the carts in front of this store used a slightly different mechanism than what I was used to, and I was having trouble figuring out how to put in the quarter and extract the cart. Then, it occurred to me: if I can’t figure out how to operate a shopping cart, perhaps I might not be smart enough to know whether God exists.

And, to this day, that’s where I’ve left it. I have more than my share of existential terror, but I’ve never bothered trying to read any philosophy or religious writings. They won’t help me, as nobody else has really figured out whether God exists, either. So I spend my time thinking about other stuff.

Note to any hard-core scientific materialists out there, the ones I call “aggressive atheists”: scientists haven’t figured out why the universe even exists, why the Big Bang happened, or why everything in history hasn’t already happened yet, since time is infinite. Try figuring out answers to those questions, why don’t you?

So I just went out and bought a new external hard drive. For $220, including tax, I now have 465GB of new storage. Whoa.

I’ve always had a soft spot for failed spam. Today, I got email from somebody calling himself “SYSTEMS”. The subject header was “update”. The message was blank. It’s like the spammers who send messages from “%SENDER%”.

And, in the latest news: the Globe reports that a giant ice shelf has snapped free from Canada’s Arctic. The ice shelf is the size of 11,000 football fields, and the explosion was loud enough to register on earthquake monitors 250 kilometres away. I’m starting to get a little scared of what might happen. It could get ugly.

Nothing to lose and a lot to reap

Today, according to my call display, two people called me at home while I was away at work. One of them was NAME/NO. UNKNOWN, which usually means “telemarketer”:

Hi! Sorry I missed you! Have you ever really considered the advantages of a luxury resort time-share/efficient and reliable mover/comprehensive investment plan/low-cost prepaid funeral?

But the second one was just plain weird: the caller left no number, and the caller ID was SEENTHATTINKER1. What the? Is this call display spam? A Google search for this turned up absolutely nothing.

And I got this spam in my inbox a few days ago, from somebody whose first language is obviously something other than English:

Eliminate all you owe not even sending another dollar. Stop the
embarrassing telephone calls. End the payments!

Believe it or not a good number lendors not following the banking laws
here. Implausible but valid!

Join us for in-depth details as regards our procedure at 0 charge or
obligation. You have nothing to lose and a lot to reap.

Contact us at:
xxx.xxx.xxxx
Meticulous info or to cease getting or to read our address

Zeb was greatly astonished at his defeat, and when the pretty Princess
joined her people in laughing at him he proposed a boxing-match with the
Munchkin, to which the little Ozite readily agreed. That is one force I
refer to, said the Demon

And then there’s this one, whose subject header is “Your neighbors lost their alarm-clock”:

Soft Cialis Tabs cause erection exactly when you need it.
Wanna hold a brick on your dick? Try our Soft Cialis Tabs. (Warning: don’t try it).

Well? Should I try it, or shouldn’t I? Make up your minds, people!

I probably won’t read this editorial – it’s likely to increase my stress level.

The Action Hero’s Handbook

I got a cool Christmas present from a friend of mine: The Action Hero’s Handbook. Here’s the back cover blurb for this awesome book:

For everyone who’s ever wanted to be as smooth as James Bond, as clever as Captain Kirk, or as tough as Charlie’s Angels, The Action Hero’s Handbook is the ultimate guide to the essential skills every action hero needs to survive and thrive in this dangerous but exciting world.

Well, yes. Chapter titles include (capitalization is theirs):

• How to Track a Fugitive
• How to Interrogate a Suspect
• How to Drive a Bus at High Speed
• How to Negotiate a Hostage Crisis
• How to Take a Bullet
• How to Dirty Dance
• How to Communicate with an Extraterrestrial
• How to Perform the Vulcan Nerve Pinch
• How to Take a Hit with a Chair
• How to Evade a MiG
• How to Win a High-Speed Chase on Foot

Not to mention the generic

• How to Be Ready for Anything

If you’re wondering how to be ready for anything, there are eight steps:

1. Be suspicious of everyone and everything, but don’t let on that you’re suspicious.
2. Always make a mental note of exits and entrances to any building you enter.
3. Be aware of what’s happening around you.
4. Control and utilize your fear.
5. Don’t get caught off guard.
6. If you must engage in a physical confrontation, attempt to stun your opponent with a finger gouge or throat chop and end the fight quickly.
7. Stay on the move.
8. Pick up useful items after you’ve disabled your opponents: these include weapons, equipment bags, walkie-talkies, uniforms, and key cards.

Cowabunga! This book goes perfectly with one I bought a few months ago because I couldn’t resist it: How To Survive a Robot Uprising. This useful guide includes the following:

• How to stop a modular robot
• How to spot a robot mimicking a human
• How to prepare for the coming uprising
• How to deactivate a rebel servant robot
• How to enhance yourself with cybernetic implants
• How to recruit human allies
• Last ditch methods for obliterating all robots

Okay. I am now in a state of total preparedness. Bring it on.

Retro Christmas goodies

Here’s some cool retro eye candy to help you celebrate Christmas, as provided by the Archives of Ontario web site. A lot of this material is related to Eaton’s.

• A 1953 Eaton’s Santa Claus Parade colouring book and one from 1956 (you can also find 1951, 1952, 1960, and 1961 colouring books on the same page)
• Some 1955 TV commercials
• Footage of the 1953 Eaton’s Santa Claus parade
• Collections of childhood toys
  
• A celebration of winters long ago, including a big, beautiful 1903 Eaton’s catalogue cover

I hope everybody reading this is having a good holiday!

Do it yourself

There are very few things I feel really strongly about, but one of them is this: the division between artists/performers and those who don’t do creative things is an artificial one. Or, to put it another way: anybody can be a creative person if they want to be.

I have reached A Certain Age, so I am old enough to remember the first wave of punk rockers (the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and so on). Before they arrived, music was complicated and fancy, and took years to learn how to play; think Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. But the punk rockers showed up and said, in effect, “We’re doing simple stuff – you can do it too, if you want to.” One British punk music fanzine published pictures of three chords with the message, “Now start a band.” (My friends and I actually did, though we never performed anywhere but in my parents’ basement. I was the rhythm guitarist. I wasn’t particularly good, but I was loud.)

By the way: punk, as originally conceived, wasn’t about the look, nor did it originally have anything to do with violence. That all came later. (The Sex Pistols wore safety pins in their clothes because they couldn’t afford clothes that weren’t patched together with safety pins.) At first, it was about doing your own thing.

Without punk musicians to serve as an example, it would never have occurred to me that I could do creative things myself. (To this day, sometimes I’m still not quite sure, but that’s a common fear shared by many people who write, sing or perform: what if, in reality, I’m no damn good?)

When I first started performing, I would regularly run into people who couldn’t imagine themselves on stage. I would tell them: I couldn’t either, until I started doing it. And it was the same thing with photography: I basically just went out, bought a camera, and started taking pictures. I don’t pretend to be good at it – I have very little formal training in photography – but I figure that I’m better than all of the people who aren’t taking pictures.

Picture me grabbing you by the lapel as I say this: Listen to me – if I can do it, you can do it. I don’t have discernible musical or visual talent, and I’m very shy. If I can go up on stage, or play a guitar, or take a picture of something interesting, you can do it too.

Ten random thoughts

I’m listening to WFMU over the Internet as I type this, and they’re playing a version of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” that uses the music from “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”. What? Why?

It’s raining again. Again.

The time between the last day of work and Christmas is like pushing the PAUSE button on life.

I hate the telephone. I especially hate calling people on the phone. I much prefer either email or face-to-face contact. If I’m communicating with someone by email, I can take the time to try to write something clever, or at least try to avoid saying something stupid. And I can be sure that I’m not imposing on my recipient, as he or she can read my message at a time that is convenient. Face-to-face contact is fine: when you’re talking with someone in person, there’s lots of ways to communicate besides words, and silence is sometimes okay too. A phone call, on the other hand, is an immediate demand, and I’m uncomfortable with making immediate demands on people.

2006 has been a difficult year for a lot of people that I know, including me. What the hell is going on out there?

At the rate things are going, there will be no parking lots left in downtown Toronto in 2010. They’ll all be replaced by condominiums. Eventually, I envision that developers will try to lobby for a law that forces all apartment dwellers to go out and buy a condo, already. (A few years back, one large landlord tried to convert his high-rise to condos. This was disallowed. If it hadn’t been, there would be no high-rise apartments for rent – they’d have all gone condo by now.)

I have a goal in life: as I get older, I don’t want to give up. I see so many older people on the subway who look despondent, as if life has gotten to be too much for them. I hope this doesn’t happen to me. I want to go down fighting.

I used to eat in restaurants by myself all the time. I hardly ever do this any more, as it’s too depressing. I guess I’m saving money this way.

My advice to you: if you’re feeling lonely, never go to a coffee shop on your own. Especially on a Saturday night. You’ll be surrounded by equally lonely people, and the weight of loneliness will become too much to bear.

Am I the only one who can’t go to certain places because they bring back bad memories? For me, Toronto is sprinkled with no-go zones. On bad days, I have to plan my excursions carefully. I’m grateful that downtown Toronto is laid out in a grid system – I can always find another way to get where I want to go.

(Edit: here’s an 11th: I just found a link, via Warren Kinsella’s blog, to a video of Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros doing Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”. Remember: the future is unwritten.)

Let it snow, let it… never mind

It’s raining and raining and raining in Toronto as I write this. The temperature has averaged about 6C for the last week or so. This is not winter as I remember it.

Remember when ski resorts used to do lots of business around Christmas time? You might remember skiing: it was a winter sport in which people took bits of wood or plastic, strapped them onto their feet, and then travelled at varying rates of speed down hills covered with snow. You might remember snow.

I tried downhill skiing when I was a teenager, mostly because all of my friends were doing it. (This was before I found new friends.) I never really enjoyed it, mostly because I never learned how to stop properly. Expert, or even marginally expert, skiers learn how to parallel stop, which is where the skier suddenly and gracefully turns his or her skis 90 degrees and comes to an abrupt halt, sending out a elegant spray of snow while doing so. I never figured out how to do this.

My method of stopping consisted of turning my skis inward at about a 30 degree angle and digging the inside edges into the snow. Eventually, I would come to a stop. Most of the time, that is: I still recall the two times I went hopelessly out of control.

Time number one was at Mount St. Louis. There, the hill was straight, and there was a lot of deceleration room at the bottom (with hay bales at the very back just in case), so I let myself plummet downwards and hoped that nobody as clumsy as me was in my way.

The other time I lost control could have been more serious, I guess. I was at Blue Mountain, on one of their easy hills. I think it was called Happy Valley or Cute Fluffy Bunny. All my friends were better skiers, and were on hills called Total Nuclear Death, while I was stuck on hills whose very existence branded me a nerd. Anyway: Blue Mountain is a huge mother of a hill, or was when I was last on it (this was a long time ago). When I started to lose control, I had about like half a mile still to go, including a couple of places where I would have had to turn. Going out of control all the way down would have meant certain doom, so I headed for the trees, hoping for a relatively smooth stopping place. Luckily, I found one, and didn’t end up like Sonny Bono.

I also remember sometimes falling when getting out of the chair lifts. This was not only embarrassing but dangerous, as I was at the total mercy of the group of three behind me. If any of them were as bad at skiing as me, I would have been skewered. It may very well be a miracle that I am still alive.

Actually, now that I think of it, I am lucky to be alive. In 1990, I was a passenger in a 1984 Chevette heading from Guelph to Kitchener. It was late at night. Suddenly, unexpectedly, a car came out from a side road and turned onto the highway right in the path of the car I was in. My friend who was driving had the presence of mind to take evasive action, and successfully dodged the other car. If she hadn’t done that, the Chevette would have been T-boned at highway speed.

I was wearing my seat belt, but a Chevette has no actual padding to speak of, so I likely would have been very badly hurt at best. Perhaps I should remember this more often, and be grateful to be alive and breathing and all that.