Christmas on Crack

What possesses people to charitably donate 1/4 of their disposable holiday income to Ontario Hydro?



The pictures you see here are not some sort of Christmas Festival, it’s a regular (albeit somewhat disturbed) residential neighbourhood.


I post these pics for two reasons..

1) Lets face it, we all know the occupants of these 7 kajigawatt homes must be nuts, so they at least deserve a shout-out


2) They sure do look pretty

Picture this though – you live in the house BETWEEN two of these morons. Do you even try to compete? Do you hang your sad icicle lights (that were oh-so-cool back in 1998) or do you simply give up, and head down south every year to avoid it all?

Heres the house in between the power-draining mayhem....

...but hold on just a baby-jesus second here!

Are those star of david christmas lights? Where the hell do you buy those!??

Role Model

In the early 1980’s I was a teenager growing up in Rothwell Heights, an idyllic suburb of Ottawa. My best friend David had a summer job cutting the Lawrence’s lawn. On one fine summer day, David was lured from his lawn-care duties by what would typically lure most teenage boys – a girl.

Enterprising fellow that I was, I approached Bert Lawrence to ask if he required my services. As fate would have it, my friend’s tardiness landed me the job. That simple act of being in the right place at the right time would eventually allow me to graduate from gardener to groundskeeper, to house-sitter, to general handyman. I even dabbled in some auto-body repair for the Lawrence’s. To this very day, David harbors a bit of resentment…and for good reason.

Over the next few years I would spend many a summer (and winter) tending to all manner of odd jobs on the Lawrence’s Estate. No rock was too big to move, no snow drift too deep to clear away. On Friday nights I would make my way up the path, past the big cedars, the manicured lawn, to the wide front door of the 1950’s style bungalow of Burt and Lois Lawrence. The inviting sound of Jazz music could be heard from the interior, and it always took Burt a little while to get to the door, as he was usually engaged in a story of some sort, entertaining some guests in the living room as he would make his way to the front of the house.

Swinging the door wide with a warm smile and a hearty greeting, I never felt like the kid down the street collecting his wages. I felt like a friend, sort of like family, and I’ll never forget how that felt. Bert would reach for his wallet, ask how much he owed, count out the requisite total, then cast a quick sideways glance back through the open doorway…to check that his lovely wife wouldn’t notice his extreme generosity…and quickly peeled off an extra bill or two. Something told me she knew all too well, and simply didn’t mind.

I would eventually grow up some, move away to the big city, start a career and a family, but would often come home to visit my family, who still live in that wonderful neighborhood. The Lawrence’s have moved away, and I lost touch. It’s sad how what meant so much then, is only visible through the smudged lens of hindsight.

Their lovely rambling bungalow with the huge picture windows perched high above the best view in the city, was eventually torn down. In its place, a grotesque monstrosity of a palace was erected. I fondly remember their property – a home comfortably reigning over an odd mix of manicured structure, and wild abandon. Most of all however, I remember sipping Lois’s lemonade, in the backyard of a kind gentleman’s kingdom.


I sit in my kitchen today, having stumbled across an old obituary clipping I kept, stunned by the feelings that have flooded back to me. As I gaze at the picture of a man (who really should have represented no more than just the memories of a few summer jobs) I am struck by how much he actually meant to me.

Bert taught me the value of hard work. He taught me the value of going the extra mile. He taught me the value of integrity, and keeping your promises. And he taught me all those things by treating me fairly and with generosity. But most of all, he taught me how it felt (as an employee) to feel appreciated.

As fate would have it, I myself have had employees who looked to me for guidance. I am convinced (though it only recently became clear to me) that my relationship with the Lawrence’s were formative years indeed.

If I have ever taken the time to recognize my employee’s efforts, or paused to smile at someone who had exceeded expectation, I have Bert to thank. And as both Lois and Bert are intrinsically linked, have them both to thank.

You are sorely missed Mr. Lawrence.

Bobby Pin

We have some odd traditions. Some are way out there, but others are actually sort of nice. This is a short story that recounts the intersection of one of those nice traditions, with my brother.

Every Saturday, whether we liked it or not (and we did not like it) my mom did the best she could to get us to synagogue on time. ‘On time’ is a pretty subjective thing, because if you really wanted to, you could head to synagogue for about 7:00 AM, and catch an old fart or three actually praying…or perhaps napping, as when you are that old, its tough to differentiate between the two activities.

Our scheduled entry-point was approx 9:45 AM, which was about an hour behind the 7:00 AM Super-Jew set, an hour before the ‘Making an Appearance’ Jew, and almost two hours before the “Just Here for the Feedbag’ Jews arrive

Every Saturday morning would pretty much start the same way, with the sound of the old Dual turntable wafting up to the second floor. And while my dad had plenty of Big-Band LP’s to choose from, it was always the “It’s a Jewish Folk Music Party!” that got the play-time. And man, I don’t care how big a fan you happen to be of the genre, at 7:30 AM on one of only two sleep-in days in the week, being roused by the sound of Shlomo ‘Good-Time’ Shilenski’s fiddle was cruel and unusual punishment.

After about the third LP track, and about as many rousing choruses of yaba-biba-biba-bums anyone could stand, my brother Edge, and my sister Mim would each drag their asses about for as long as possible, and eventually get into our Saturday Suits. My little brother, who was only 6, needed a bit more help with his outfit, but he never really protested much at that age. He was saving up his disdain for his teenage years.


Dad’s role in all this was to basically make sure we had enough to eat so we could endure the pray-o-thon. I’d be happy to eat a whole dang bowl of the cereal, but there was a lock-down on the good stuff. The much coveted Harvest Crunch was sparingly spooned out over top of some dry dust-like concoction. I would often dream of eating an entire bowl of those honey-clusters of oats and nuts. My dad was a dentist, and Harvest Crunch was fine, but in moderation…real moderation. He also gave out toothbrushes and Trident gum on Halloween. Yes, we got free eggs delivered to our door each year.

Now that I think about it, Harvest Crunch is now probably considered health food, because now the kids want Honey-Soaked Bunches ‘O Chocolate Donut cereal. Man, my five year old probably will be fantasizing about mainlining Jolt Cola soon.

So with DJ-Dad spinning the sweet sounds of Jewish folk music, mom flying around the house in her heels and various forms of undress (really, a story for a different time) and with the not-so-sweet breakfast cereal being forced down the family gullets, the clock was-a-ticking closer to doomsday with every unsatisfying crunch.

We could drag our feet all we wanted, or complain all we liked, but somehow my mom would find a way to get us into that cavernous Travel-All truck by 8:25 AM sharp (that’s the huge version of the International Harvester truck I would inherit five years later.

I’m sure if the truck had come with another option besides AM radio, we’d be listening to the All-Jew-Jamboree station, but instead we endured the CBC, which droned on and on about where best to plant your friggin’ petunias, or how to rid your whatever-bush of brown scab-like blemishes. Hey, it could be worse, we could be standing in our suits, listening to some old dude in a huge hat and ZZ-Top beard drone on-and-on about who knows what, in Hebrew. But of course that’s exactly what we had in store for us, and the Saturday drive up Rideau Street was indeed a joyless romp.

Upon arrival, we had to time our entry, because you could only get in at specific intervals. If we missed that sweet-spot between 8:45 and 8:50, we’d have to wait till perhaps after 9 AM to get to our seats. My mom made sure we never missed it.

The synagogue seats were actually pretty comfy, but the problem is you really never had a chance to keep your ass in it for longer than 5 or ten minutes at time. This, in and of itself, was some wacky form of torture, in that as soon as ya got comfy, ZZ-Top would signal for everyone to get up and stand up and pray. In retrospect, I’d have preferred spine-buster McDonald’s seating that I could at least park my ass in for a bit. And no, before you dismiss this as the misguided rant of a spoiled brat, we’re talking about almost FOUR HOURS of up-and-down Jack-in-the-box pious calisthenics.

Sermons? Sure, I recall them happening, but I have no idea what the hell he was talking about. There was no singing choir, no instruments, save the occasional musical interlude of elderly congregation passing wind in various high-pitched squeals.

So what does an 11 year old boy live for on a Saturday of synagogue servitude? The little brother’s inevitable pee-break.


I could take him out for a pee, if I promised to come back straight away.

And off we would go, back up the isle, past the disapproving frowns of the congregation, all secretly wishing they too could leave, but bound by some odd ritual. I would often shoot a glance over at my sister, trapped in the girls section with my mom – unable to use her siblings bladder size as an escape hatch. I swear you could hear the angels singing on the other side of those 20 foot high stained glass windows…calling our names, beckoning us to the land of the free.

Naturally we didn’t come straight back, or straight away. We made a bit of detour to see if they had put out any food in the back hallways in preparation for the after-praying feedbag. Sometimes it was a great big spread, as someone in the community was either honoring an event, or honoring someone dead. (I’ll bet the dead folk never got a spread like that when they were alive to eat it.)


At any rate, as I mentioned earlier, there was a tradition I really liked, and it involved having the dead peoples names up on fancy regal looking small brass plates, that hung on the marble walls inside the atrium of the synagogue. I used to try and do the backwards math to figure out how old the people were when they died, and imagine stories. There was no commentary a la “our beloved mother Carol, teacher, friend 1923-1956’. It was just the name, and the dates they were on the earth. I suppose that given the dusty farts just waiting to expire just beyond those doors, they had to conserve space for the future plaques.

The plaques stretched probably 150 feet down the hallway, and each small brass plaque had a tiny light bulb next to each name. When it was the anniversary of the dead person’s death, someone would screw in the light bulb so that your eyes would be drawn to the name, and you would remember that person. As you can probably tell, I don’t have much need for sentimentality, or trite tradition that bears no purpose, but this one I sort of liked. The wall always had a sort of ominous haphazard glow about it, like a holiday light-string with too many burnt out bulbs.

Now the funny thing about this memorial wall is that it was some sort of sin to screw in the bulb if it wasn’t actually the anniversary of the person’s death. Now perhaps it wasn’t really a sin, but more perhaps just plain disrespectful, but it still struck me as odd. What’s the thought process there?


“Oooh Ethel, look, Deborah Weinberg’s light is lit…wait…she didn’t die this month, did she? She couldn’t have, remember? She died the same month as Mitzie.”


Confused old biddies would race home, check whatever Calendar of the Dead they had going at the time, and fret away the afternoon.


Anyway, one previous sunny Saturday me and my brother screwed in as many bulbs as we could reach, and then in reaction to this, some wise-ass decided to remove all the bulbs that didn’t need to be lit. Problem solved, except that now it was some poor idiots job to add the proper bulbs – then remove them later – lest the hooligan Klein kids run amok again.


So I’m way down the hall, looking at the plaques, noting the obvious lack of lit ones, and wondering why this one dude has a birthday the same year as his doomsday, when I hear a real sickening sort of SHHHHHWATHK!!.


The lights flicker, and then go out. This was quickly followed by a hushed ‘ooooh’ from inside the synagogue.

My sister would later tell me that when the flash of light occurred, my mother slumped down in her chair. While everyone else craned their necks to see what the brief flash just beyond the stained glass doors was…my mother knew.

She couldn’t have known the what, but she knew the who. Actually, she was half right. While it was usually a solid bet to assume her eldest son had done something awful, this time it was little Edgie, all of six, who brought most of the congregation to their feet – although they had sadly just sat their asses down for only a second or two.

Little Edgie’s yarmulke (the head-gear we all wear in synagogue) was prone to slipping off his dome, so mom would pin it with a small bobby-pin. I suppose had they not removed all the damn bulbs he wouldn’t have thought to give this little experiment a go, but hell,


empty light socket,


6 year old kid,


bobby pin…


I suppose this was inevitable.

When both the spry and curious of the congregation exited the prayer-hall, they found a bewildered little boy, sitting on his butt, up against the wall across from a secluded section of the memorial wall. In his outstretched hand was the remnants of his bobby pin, and across from him on the opposite wall was a small scorch mark that circled the hole where the light bulb should have been.

Now to this day, I’m not sure who the jack-ass was who wired that wall, but how the hell could a kid with a bobby pin not only shut down the sacred-memorial -wall, but the overhead lights as well? Could all those little light sockets all really have been wired in parallel? We do a friggin’ awesome smoked fish, but apparently picking an electrical contractor isn’t our forte.

So Edgie was in the end none too worse for the adventure. He lost most of the hair on the front of his head, and his unnaturally long eyelashes were singed, but good. My mom quickly made her way through the small crowd, picked up her youngest son, dusted off his butt, took a good long stare into his eyeballs, and marched him (and myself) by the scruff of our necks, out the huge glass doors to the street.

Somehow, like Bonnie pulling up just in time for Clyde’s exit form the bank, there was the International Harvester, rumbling at the curb, ready to whisk us all away from the fracas.

It was a quiet ride home, as I wondered how they would bobby-pin proof the wall in time for next weeks fun.

Foolscap

There is always an easier way of doing things, a shortcut to be found. When I was younger I was always looking for that angle…that overlooked secret that would give me an edge. It was this steadfast dedication to taking the easy road that led me to the discovery of Foolscap.

Foolscap, (for the uninitiated) was a special type of paper that in the early eighties, was used only in schools. Specifically it was reserved as the paper upon which the final exams were printed. Foolscap is about the same length as legal paper, but a bit wider and had a somewhat stiffer composition. What made foolscap so special however, was its absence outside the classroom or beyond the walls of my local high school. It seemed to thrive only in the florescent-hell of the final-examination torture chamber.
I, however, stumbled across its actual birthplace; a small out of the way shop devoted solely to providing teachers with educational tools and supplies. As a student, just walking through those doors felt like you were committing a crime. At any moment you expected a teacher crouching behind the eraser display to jump up and point an accusing finger. “You! Student! You can’t be in here! Get him out of here!!”

There certainly was nothing in this kind of a shop that would normally appeal to a 16-year-old kid sporting a plaid lumber jacket, ripped jeans with the faded Van-Halen patch on his ass. I must have looked as out of place as my teachers did in the venues they didn’t belong – like shopping malls and movie theatres.

I tossed down the $6.95 for 500 sheets, my breath caught in the back of my throat, palms sweating. Oddly, neither my presence nor my choice of product seemed to faze the bookish young girl at the cash, as she absent-mindedly rang up my precious purchase.

And what a purchase it would prove to be! Those inexpensive, odd-sized sheets of paper would represent the key that would unlock the shackles of my textbook-induced slavery.

The problem with conventional cheat sheets is that you have to go to extreme lengths to transcribe a lot of detail onto very small pieces of paper. After all your work, you are saddled with the difficult task of then trying to refer to your tiny notes without getting caught. The process was inefficient and altogether risky business, for if you weren’t careful, you could end up with a lovingly created list of mind-numbing formulas, stuck somewhere on the inside of your sweaty forearm.

While I made a good sum of pocket money creating and selling these small cheat notes to my classmates, as I say, it was system fraught with danger, and prone to mishaps. The only method of writing small enough was to use the 5H Drafting Pencil, specifically the Staedtler Mars Lumograph 100, which was my pencil of choice in drafting class, and for cheat notes. Known for its ability to produce extremely fine detail, once sharpened to a razor point, the 5H wouldn’t produce much lead dust which was essential to producing a crisp legible cheat note. Having the steady hands of surgeon helped too.

But… what if you didn’t have to ever hide your cheat-sheets? What if you could have them right there in front of you during the exam? What if you could refer to them easily without squinting because the answers were in large print? What if the cheat sheet actually looked like the exam you were writing? If one could do all this, the unimaginable would become reality: No more studying for exams – ever.

My thought processes hinged on a clear understanding of the “Three Universal Exam-Constants”;

Rule Number One: It was common knowledge that the teacher presiding over the exam room was never, ever your teacher. Mr. Thissen from history would watch over the kids writing their algebra exams, and Ms. Wallace from English would scrutinize the kids writing French. It was almost as if the powers-that-be felt there was some sort of wacky bias at play. Perhaps there was some law that stipulated that in order to effectively watch these students, they mustn’t be your students. Either way, this odd system would prove to be an invaluable advantage.

Rule Number Two: The teachers presiding over the students during an exam, never actually wrote the exams being distributed. (see Rule Number One).

Finally, (and most importantly) Rule Number Three: The print format of any and all exams always included the typed question, then a good chunk of space below for your hand-written responses.

And naturally, all exam questions were typed on foolscap paper.

Quietly, up in my bedroom, using my moms old typewriter I would hen-peck out possibly the single greatest shortcut of my high school career: Full Sized Cheat Sheets.

I would first type dummy questions upon my foolscap, leaving the appropriate blank space below it for the answer. In that space I would insert my hand written notations, and those notations would in actuality, be my cheat notes. My foolscap would look just like a sheet from any exam. To a teacher wandering the aisles, or even glancing at my desk, nothing would appear amiss.

After the first two successful attempts with this method of exam preparation, I decided to try some enhancements. Full Sized Cheat Sheets, Version Two, if you will.

Instead or typing gibberish as the dummy questions, I began actually typing in the cheat note content, as the fake questions. The space for my additional hand-written notes below would simply allow me the opportunity to maximize the amount of information I could have on one sheet of foolscap. This enhancement was quite helpful, as there was really quite a bit to memorize in classes like Chemistry and Biology. English and social studies and the like, were all about being able to churn out reams of intelligent sounding drivel, but the sciences really needed solid cheat sheets.

Now naturally one would have to be an idiot to whip out a sheet of foolscap at the beginning of an exam. Having a full page of answers moments after the bell sounded would be rather suspect. The key was to work on the questions you actually knew how to answer first (there were usually a few). Then, after a sufficient amount of time had elapsed, slip out the sheet of foolscap. Hell, by the time I hit grade 11, I had as many as half a dozen stapled sheets on my desk at any one time.

But how exactly do you get those painstakingly crafted sheets onto your desk? Most people don’t get this part. In fact, you’ve been probably sneering as you read this, assuming this all to be quite preposterous. To the uninitiated this often seems like the hardest part of the endeavor. Actually, it is without question the easiest part of the process. A jean jacket can conceal the notes if you tuck them under your arm so that the pages gently curve around the side of your body. Just don’t fold those sheets! Make sure to sit straight, don’t sweat too much, and then ease them out when the teacher is looking down, or passes you in the isle. It takes less than a second to pull it off. Once they are out, they can sit in full view until its time to hand in your masterpiece. Remember rule number one: the teacher presiding over the exam didn’t actually write the exam. This guarantees that they’d never spot the difference between the real exam and your fabricated version. I used to have to leave questions unanswered, mess up responses, just so my score wouldn’t nudge into the high eighties. Trust me - that would really have tipped somebody off.

Parent teacher interview, after parent teacher interview, my beleaguered parents would hear the same somber comments from my teachers: “He’s a lazy student..he doesn’t pay attention…he doesn’t apply himself…but gosh he’s smart, he sure is! How else can you describe a boy that can barely pass a test or quiz all year to save his life, but when exam time comes around, always manages to pull it off and save his average?? It’s such a tragedy that he can’t apply himself like that all year long – imagine what he could accomplish?!”

Imagine indeed.

The part I loved most about the process? On my way out of the exam room, I would crunch up, or casually rip in half my “rough notes” and just drop it in the trash right before the watchful eyes of the room monitor. I would leave the evidence right there in the garbage can, to be thrown out with the rest of the classroom trash - pencil shavings, banana peels and all.

Looking back, I recognize with wistful gratitude that I probably owe much of my high school freedom to that bundle of irregular sized paper.

I never did find out why they call it foolscap.

Bye Bye Bluey

All things must die. It is an inevitability.

We have many pets, all of which will eventually expire.

We have a cat that is about 14 years old. He coughs, sputters, pukes, but mostly sleeps on hot air registers. He makes me sneeze.

And we have a bunny, 12 years old, who shits (a lot) who stinks, and does pretty well nothing. He was adopted from the daycare because Zach insisted he was 'being ignored'.

And then there is Bluey, or rather there ‘was’ Bluey.

Bluey was our Tropical Fighting Fish, who will not live to fight another day. He was approx 2 and half years old. If Bluey was a human, he would be the equivalent of the 112 year old nursing home resident that the Channel 6 News camera crew visit every year. They simply cant believe he is still pounding back the Geritol.

Yes, Bluey had some serious staying power.

Our good friend Glain could never figure out how our dang fish has lasted so long. Glain is on a first name basis w the disheveled dude at Pet-Smart who works the tropical fish isle. He as been instructed to have a fighting fish on standby, to replace the hapless inhabitants of her daughters fishbowl. All ‘descendants’ of the original fish, having unsuccessfully run the porcelain luge event.

So Bluey was looking pretty grim last week. Maddy was sure he was dead, as he lay motionless on the bottom of the big glass bowl. If ya got up real close though, you could see one fin wiggling, the other dormant. He also had some weird spinal curvature issue that had him bent like the letter S. If there ever was a solid case for fish euthanasia, this was it.

I braced little Zachary for the inevitable this morning, pointing out Bluey’s grim prognosis. He seemed to take it pretty well. Shockingly pragmatic actually.

“well, we’ll just bury him next to Mousey!”

Mousey was the unfortunate rodent that got beat-on by the neighbors cat. (our cat was likely too busy puking, to chase mice). Mousy was unceremoniously dumped like a mob-hit, in the grass on the side of our house. Zach wanted a proper send-off, so he was buried in our garden... “Mousey – RIP” scrawled in black magic marker on a scrap piece of cedar, carved into the familiar shape of a tombstone.

I am stating for the record that this began as a mission of mercy, that went horribly wrong.

We often head out for a weekend, and ask friends or neighbours to check in on the pets. I really didn’t want a panic call on my cellphone, telling me the 95 cent pet had expired. Better that this all go down in a controlled environment.

As soon as Zach was off to school, I went back home to take a conference call and get busy.

While I had the speaker phone on high, I scooped out the fish – who protested not one bit – and placed him in a small container, which I then put in the freezer. My plan was to tell Zach that Bluey had stopped twitching his little fin, so I froze him after he went to sleep. so we could bury him in the spring, right next to the decomposed mouse, just as he suggested.

The conference-call came and went, and one e-mail (with an astonishing 47 cc-addresses attached) led to another useless spreadsheet, and soon it was well after lunch.

As I tried to prepare a quick bite before the next scheduled call, I was suddenly struck by the realization that I had willfully flash-frozen our sons pet.

I opened up the freezer, and pulled out the container. Bluey was precisely as I left him, but he was now entombed in a solid block of ice. I was initially struck by the efficiency of our freezer.

And then I started to feel, well, very very awful.

A flood of unfamiliar, and quite frankly unsettling emotions started crowding into my head…did he suffer? Did he thrash? The light was out when I closed the door – was that unnerving?

Then I started to laugh at the ridiculous predicament I had boxed my psyche into. Nonsense. The cerebral cortex of a fish is the size of a grain of sand, surely he didn’t feel a thing, it was probably like going to sleep, and surely he was better off than the S-shaped spina bifida pet that waved one sad little fin in the bowl on our kitchen counter… day in, day out.

Right?

RIGHT?!!?

Holy fuck, I started to feel real bad. The irrational nature of my thought processes was making think I might be losing my mind.

And then the phone rang, and like a an A-D-D ridden fool, I was again swept back into a sea of mindless work-related minutia.

Zachary came home after school, and Maddy was first to spot that our family numbers had dropped by one.

“Mudd, where’s Bluey?”

Which on any other day would have been a funnier question, for the last time she asked that question, about a year or so ago, Bluey had in fact attempted to kill himself. He joined the ranks of Suicide Chumps though, for we eventually rescued him from the Formica, and threw him back into his bowl.

So I explained to everyone that Bluey had performed his last S-shaped side-stroke, and that - as per Zachary’s wishes (sorta) – Bluey was now frozen, waiting for spring to join Mousey. I am sure Zach saw my eye twitching, as I told him the pet-equivalent of the ‘granny went to sleep forever’ speech. Except that I put the pillow on granny’s face as she snoozed.

Zach held up ‘Frosty-Bluey’ for a close inspection, and he seemed entirely OK with the whole concept. I gave myself a pat on the back for the imaginative way in which I has introduced my son to the inevitability of death, and even started feeling better about the dubious methods I deployed.

We ate dinner, laughed about our day, and all was well. Then, about forty minutes after the original Popsicle-fish viewing, Zach announced he wanted to go to his bedroom for a while. This is highly unusual, for if I ever left a room Zach was occupying, if I turned around to return, I’d trip over the boy.

He never leaves my side voluntarily.

He got halfway up the stairs and collapsed in a puddle of tears and angst, sobbing about how much he was going to miss Bluey. Maddy and I spent a predictable half hour or so explaining that he didn’t suffer (likely bullshit) that he’s in a better place (more bullshit, he’s dead now so its over for him) and that he was a good pet and lived way longer than was expected (that part was true).

Zach is in the basement with me now, assembling an enormo-Lego toy Maddy bought him when they went out to get his friend a birthday present. Fair enough, I killed his pet, he gets a new toy.

Maddy is going to find out about how Bluey passed, and my conflicted feelings regarding fish-euthanasia, by reading this post. We simply never got a chance to discuss all this either before Bluey was flash-frozen, or after. I am anticipating that she will be mad.

Zachary and I and are listening to Ozzy Osbourne’s second album, Diary of a Madman, and as I get ready to post this weird little story, the words for ‘Tonight” drift across the basement and I cant help but shudder a little at the lyrics….

=========================

I hear the questions

surface in my mind

Of my mistakes that I have made….

Don't want your pity or your sympathy

It isn't going prove a thing to me

Good intentions pave the way to hell…..

==========================

And I just know – as irrational and nutty as it seems – that I will be tormented by aquarium-themed nightmares tonight.

Maybe even tomorrow night too.

And I’m pretty sure I deserve it.

Really People, Really?

I get that 'Tiz the Season' and all, but this is an actual photo of a LINEUP to get into the diamond merchant at the Yorkdale Mall. Savvy shoppers sat like cattle at the trough, because the burly security guards won’t let the anxious shopping crowds in all at once.

Just like the shitty convenience store that won’t let more than two grade-school kids in at any one time (for fear of losing either porno mags or hubba-bubba) you too can place your pride upon the shelf, be treated like a crook, so you can drop more money on ring-bling than more people make in a year.

Hop to it lemmings! Hop friggin to it!


Speaking of things that hippity-hop…check this out....

A loving grandmother, after lingering at the Calendar Kiosk for fifteen minutes, has chosen ‘Suicide Bunnies’ to adorn her fridge in the coming year.

Somebody really ought to be paying more attention when they visit granny this season, and perhaps check her into Shady-Care Manor so she can get some supervision.

Assuming she get this far into the new year, here is a snapshot of what awaits her in 'March' 2011...

 

Oh, and one last thing.

The kid's school has a 'Wall of Fame" and I stuck my own sticky-note on the wall. It took the administration almost 8 school days to notice it.

 

Burnt

So the familia was over at ‘Casa Nicole’ the other night, (a stylin’ restaurant in Whitby) and we were served a Potato-Salad that was to die for. My wife Maddy pulled some serious strings to get the recipe from the proprietor, and while I was preoccupied making plans to print off the recipe at the computer, my lunch burned.


I had big plans for a Turkey Soup w Salsa & Mint, and I was boiling up the leftover turkey wings and such for the broth. I had at least an inch of broth in the pot w the Turkey bits & bones, but I suppose I let it sit too long, or had the heat too high, or simply shouldn’t be allowed near the kitchen.Either way, the results were pretty awful.

My smoke detector is clearly a piece of shit, for even when I pulled off the lid, and the Metallica-concert-like Pyrotechnic flash-pot went off with a big ‘Poof!’ the cat was making plaintive sounds while the damn alarm sat mute. My house smells like someone was rottisserie-ing sneakers over a bag of flaming poo.

K-D it is then today, w fancy Dijon Ketchups.

There's a Fire-Sale Going on Here

If you were eight years old, and found yourself short of cash, what do you do??

Simple.

Monetize your room.

Yesterday evening on my way to bed, I noticed some items strewn on the carpet at the entrance of his room. What I figured was dirty clothes, perhaps an errant toy or sock, was in fact trinkets tagged for quick sale. The items were as follows:

7 Crayola crayons – 2 cents

‘The Story of Chanukah’ - $1.00

A framed picture of our misguided entrepreneur, piloting his grandfather’s boat - $6.00

And oddly, a sign that read ‘Closed’

From all this I deduce the following:

1) Crayons are still one of life’s little bargains

2) The Story of Chanukah, while commanding more money than used crayon’s, doesn’t really hold its resale value well

3) While clearly ‘everything has its price’ the photo of he and grandpa at least commanded a reasonable price, which was reassuring.

The boy had this odd fire-sale running upstairs while his parents watched TV. Weary and disappointed with the lack of foot-traffic, he likely shut the store down, placed the ‘Closed’ sign and went to sleep, muttering ‘damn-you recession, damn you to hell’.

By the time I dragged my ass out of bed this morning, the store had been packed up and I had all but forgotten about Ritchie-Rich’s scheme.

On my way up to bed tonight though – same drill, but with some added wares at The Store. I also note he has left an ‘OPEN’ sign up instead. I suppose Zach figured The Store could run itself ‘on the honour system’, much like the country roadside zucchini-stands that have the quaint money tin, yet no attendant. He even left a pencil crayon bag as some sort of quasi cash-register, with instructions to ‘leave money here’.

This evening’s selection is as follows:

1) The Crayons are still available, but he upped the ante to 8 for 2 cents – BARGAIN!

2) A bunch of green stickers for a penny – that seems priced just about right.

3) A bag of marbles for $3.00 – He should have sold the satin bag separately

4) The picture of he & grandpa remains at $6.00 - hold firm buddy, it’ll move.

5) The Chanukah book is (somehow) still available, for just a buck.

I head back downstairs, scoop $1.25 out of the change drawer, and snag the Chanukah book and the Crayola’s (keep the change buddy).

If he tries to sell his stereo, I’m gonna charge him $478 a square foot for the retail space, and shut this sad little scheme down.

McShitty

An excerpt of the message I sent to McDonalds Corporate Headquarters…I ain’t holding my breath on the response….

This was the worst experience I have ever had in a McDonalds. (Located at 1899 Brock Road in Pickering Ontario.) If I hadn’t already had to forgo the trip to the outlet near my home (being renovated) and didn’t have two 8 year olds looking forward to the trip, I would have walked out as soon as I walked in.

FILTHY.

I witnessed customers leaving, demanding their $ back after seeing the state of the cubicles. I have photographs – it is simply unbelievable. Employees chatting w friends in the lobby instead of working on cleaning up the incredible mess…debris IN THE NEW light-fixtures, poured drinks on the floor swept up instead of being mopped, French fries EVERYWHERE including in the kitchen area and on the floors, employees slipping in the grease behind the cash, employees fingering and TOUCHING the fries going into the fry-holders, newspapers scattered everywhere.

Line-ups in the restaurant that stretch out to the street! Staff that care not a whit about the wait times, w a drive- through with EVEN WORSE throughput than the restaurant.

WHERE is management?

WHERE is the pride that would normally accompany a newly renovated place of employ?

I recognize that this isn’t haute cuisine, its fast food. But when you remove ‘fast’ from the equation, the customers at least deserve ‘clean & friendly’. I have shared the photos of your disgraceful mockery with everyone I know who has kids. We’ll all vote with our wallets, while you try and figure out how to get the wheels back on the Hamburgler Mobile.

You need to visit this outlet, it’s a disgrace, and you should be ashamed you let it get this bad.

Beloved One

“Beloved One”

Originally Recounted by PB

Retold by Mudd

I have since been asked on numerous occasions to explain what the night of the fire must have been like. I think everyone’s curiosity might have been attributed to my apparent lack of emotional scars. After all, when one loses your family home, the natural assumption is that the trauma would (or perhaps should?) be etched on the face forever. Forever is a long time to be sure.

Cold. Above everything else I remember that numbing cold. Having grown up in Timmins, cold is really a relative term, one that truly isn’t appreciated by those sun-baked folks south of the 49th parallel. In those idyllic places folks can let the car idle for a minute and are quickly on their way. The kind of cold I was used to was in a place where your biggest challenge would be simply getting the door handle unfrozen. If you were foolish enough to remove your gloves to gain entry, you had better not touch any exposed metal, lest your flesh be fused to it.

I was just 10 years old the winter of the fire. The fire that consumed my childhood home, and all of my most cherished possessions. I don’t think you ever really get over that kind of a loss, but I am sure that the younger you are, the easier it is to move-on. Me, I wish I had been a bit younger. Six would have been a good age to go through that kind of crap. I don’t remember anything before I was six years old. I do remember everything about that night in Timmins though. Oddly enough, it isn’t the fire in all its red fury that keeps coming back to me. It’s that yapping mutt Charlie.

Well, you’re probably thinking oh Christ, while I was prepared for the life-changing house-fire-saga, I really don’t want to read about the crispy remains of the beloved family dog. No, this isn’t a story about the beloved family dog, but my Uncle Bub’s yapping Chihuahua. And as strange as it would turn out, that fire would draw us both dog and ten year old together in a bonding exercise that I would never forget.

Oh man, uncle Bub loved that emaciated little dog. I suppose it’s unfair to pass judgment on the poor animal’s physical attributes, as I do not recall ever seeing any Chihuahua look robust. The breed is a sad one indeed, one that was likely selectively bred to produce a pathetic specimen of canine. (I am certain a short-haired rat, figured predominately in the original breeding plan). Likely this deliberate conspiracy to breed a sub-standard pet was so as to create an animal that might appeal to the Mother Teresa’s of the pet-owner world. And my Uncle Bub fit that bill.

Nope, no cute fluffy cocker spaniels for Bub. Give us your ratty, your impoverished, and Bub would be your savior. And while his mutt Charlie and I were on an inevitable collision-course of disaster, it was Bub’s willingness to help the less fortunate that would ultimately draw us together. When a soot-covered runt of a ten-year-old kid showed up on his doorstep, he simply had found another runt to add to his collection.

My mom and I didn’t follow the time-honored tradition (kept alive by all fire victims), of watching our home consumed by the flames. Every time you tune into the news, and the highlights feature a residential fire…(you know what I’m taking about)…you always see the distraught owners huddled on the street corner, watching as their possessions dissolve away with the thick smoke.

Not my mom and I.

Without fanfare, or any undue emotional outpouring, we got into the TFD van (that’s the 6-man Timmins Fire Department) leaving the two-bedroom bungalow to burn away into the night. Mom and I slept in the local high school gym, under the glaring florescent lights that nobody seemed to know how to turn off. The good folks of the TFD rustled up a couple cots for us to sleep on, and we were given a few moving blankets to keep warm. I still remember how warm those musty smelling moving blankets were – much more so than the threadbare covers we had just surrendered to the flames.

My mom snored away like we had just spent a long day snow-shoeing or something, but I never once closed my eyes. Mickey Ferguson tipped his big red fire-hat on his way out, and when he pulled those huge steel gym doors shut, I remember hearing the reverberation echo for what seemed like an hour. I stared at the little sparrows nests way up in the steel girders till dawn, all the time wondering “well, what now?”

We showed up at Uncle Bub & Auntie Faye’s house at about 8:30 the next morning, and they were expecting us. Without any other kin in town we had little choice really. Besides, there was a big basketball game in the gym that very afternoon, so we had to roll our cots into the ball-room just as the cheerleaders were starting their practice. As we walked out they all looked at us like they were examining a dead deer on the side of the road. Kind of a strange mixture of both pity and wonder.

As my mom & I stood there on Uncle Bub’s front porch, Charlie barked. Actually Charlie didn’t ever bark, he yapped. And man that yap would drive you fucking nuts. The only thing more nerve-racking than that incessant yap was everyone’s attempts to quiet him down. It was not like he ever did shut up when you told him to, so I could never figure out why Bub would always try. The yapping would simply run its course until Charlie would become exhausted, jump up onto his smelly little pillow and collapse. His little rat-like belly heaving up and down. Their cat fluffy, would usually dart out the door, just as it was closing behind the visitors that prompted the dog’s outburst in the first place.

I don’t recall just what was said that day, or how it was all decided that we would live in the sewing room. I don’t remember feeling relieved or thankful, just confused and acutely aware I was inconveniencing everyone.

Bub was trying his damnedest to integrate us into his family’s routines as quickly as possible. This would naturally include suiting up and heading to the local hockey rink for practice. Every Timmins kid played hockey, and I was no exception. Not less than one week after the blaze, Bub and his eleven-year-old son Chris and I piled into the beat-up Ford Fairlane station wagon to catch our 6:10 AM ice-time. As I squirmed in Chris’s constrictive hand-me down uniform.

After the game we went straight back home for hot chocolate. We all marched through the mud-room to take off our gear, as Charlie yapped and yapped. I was exhausted, and could barely summon the energy to drag my borrowed equipment bag up onto the bench in the hallway. While I waited for Chris to remove his uniform, I took a pee in the bathroom just off of the family room. Auntie Faye had already started a big roaring fire in the hearth, and I couldn’t wait to get my hot chocolate and curl up in Bub’s big Lazy-Boy.

I finished my pee, and noticed that Chris was still struggling with his pants. Still wearing all my hockey duds, I shuffled over to the Lazy Boy to get a head start on my hot chocolate, which was now waiting on the coffee table in front of the fireplace. I put the steaming mug on the end table. I swung my arms down and pumped them quickly back up again to gain the momentum I would need to jump back onto the recliner. On that fateful morning at exactly 7:55 AM on February 12^th, my ass was the last thing that mutt Charlie ever saw.

A sickening muted yelp, and a tiny snap, (hardly audible really), drew Uncle Bub out of the kitchen in a flash. He stared at me, then quickly over at Charlie’s smelly pillow, then back at me again, and then dropped the spatula. Little platters of egg flying all over the shiny linoleum.

The funeral of loved ones previously deceased, did not elicit the tears and cries of emotion that this dog’s passing brought to our neighborhood. Every hour on the hour someone dropped by to express their condolences. Food was dropped-off, tissues were passed around the living room.

But Charlie’s life was not snuffed-out as soon as he had ‘become one’ with my ass. No, that would have been more humane. When I speak of humane, I am referring to my humane treatment, not the damn Chihuahua. If Charlie had died immediately under the crushing weight of my posterior, then Bub would have been spared the worst of it…and come to think of it, ditto for the dog. Unfortunately, as luck would have it that diminutive dog was tougher than he looked. After I extricated him from my hockey pants, he was lovingly swaddled in a tablecloth, loaded in the Fairlane, and driven at breakneck speed to Doctor Hooper’s house, the local vet.

Dr. Hooper tried his best to explain the seriousness of the injuries, tried to explain the hopelessness of the prognosis, but Bub would have none of it. Liver damage, six broken ribs (I couldn’t believe he even had six ribs) and complete renal shutdown. “Any and all measures possible to save him” was Bub’s directive to the vet, even as Faye begged him to reconsider.

Hell, is the only way I can describe the last days of Charlie life. And once again, I am referring to my agony, not the damn dog’s. And as I sat in silence in the family room, waiting for everyone to return from the doggie cremation ceremony, I wondered how it could get any worse.

I mean, it was bad enough I had lost everything, my hockey-card collection, my bike, and that my mom hadn’t uttered a word since the fire. It was bad enough that I felt a constricting sense of guilt having put my relatives out like this. But to have killed precious Charlie, and to do it in such an unceremoniously inept fashion, was almost too much to bear.

I wanted to leave everyone behind, and start somewhere else. But where to go? I packed up all my things (which didn’t amount to much) into the smelly borrowed hockey bag. I actually went so far as to open the side door to leave. The icy February wind sliced at my face, just as Fluffy ran through my legs into the night. I collapsed into a heap on the floor, and sobbed.

After the funeral, Bub, Auntie Faye & their son went to some friend’s homes to commiserate and leaf through the scrapbook his loyal owner had assembled over the years. “Man’s Best Friend” was embroidered on the cover, and until this evening it always sat at atop the fireplace mantel.

After my little boo-hoo session at the front door, I unpacked my pathetic little escape-bag, got into my pajamas and waited with dread under the covers till they got home. I lay there for what seemed like an eternity, and finally sleep took me away.

I awoke to the sound of a blood-curdling scream.

At first I thought I was just having another nightmare. Since the fire, I would often hear screams in my sleep, but this one was different. It was far more mournful, more of a disbelieving cry of outrage. I ran out of the sewing room to find Bub, Chris and Faye huddled at the side-door. At first I couldn’t see what they were looking at, and Faye’s howling was taking on Charlie-esque proportions. Then in all its horror, it became clear.

Stuck up against the brass kick plate of the side door was Fluffy. She was frozen cock-stiff, but thawing out fast. When Auntie Faye swung open the door, Fluffy swung with the door as she was actually affixed to it. Her little feet dragged four little sweeping arcs of snow across the doormat. Her face curled into a snarl that vividly seemed to beg the question “why?” That same sneer was also slowly making its way across my face.

And then I remembered. I remembered the warnings from everyone not to let Fluffy out after dark. The warnings about how quickly her little body would freeze-through. The warnings that I clearly forgot all about, when I was sobbing at the front door, feeling sorry for myself for killing the family pet. The first family pet, that is.

As everyone turned around and glared at me, I remember thinking that whatever should become of my life from that moment forward, would be a huge improvement over the current shit I was in.

I also was rather thankful that only two animals lived at my aunt and uncle’s house.