Truths and Half Truths

Lupinmania

My friend Laura, who thoughtfully and without regard to her own well-being feeds the Island Blue Heron population each winter (and we do thank you, Laura ... they come back so chubby and happy ...), asked me the other day about lupins.  I had mentioned it was lupin season on Prince Edward Island - those two or three weeks in the very early stages of summer when they burst forth in ditches and fields from one end of the Island to the other.

They are gorgeous.  I defy anybody to come upon a field of lupins and not smile and perhaps gasp at the wonder of nature.

And they fill the field behind my house.

This is one of the pathways in the maze my daughter Erin has created in the field behind my house:

For three glorious weeks in the early summer I walk Roxy through the lupins.  I mean, it's nice in mid-July, when the lupins are gone and the entire field is goldenrods.  But ... this time of year is special ...

Right Place, Right Time ...

So, there I was, in Paris (I'm sorry, but I've never started a sentence like that before, and wanted to see what it looks like.  Actually ... fairly pretentious.  Nevertheless ...) and I managed to snag a seat on the Metro (the subway).  It was about 9 PM ... we'd spent the morning at the Eiffel Tower, the afternoon at the Louvre, and now on this, the final night of our vacation, we had one more thing we wanted to do.

We had stopped back at the hotel to rest up for a bit, and I went to a few local shops to pick up some wine, some baguettes, some cheeses ... and we boarded the Metro to go back to the Eiffel Tower.  Our plan was to sit out on the plaza, listen to the buskers, and just people-watch.

Didn't have to go very far for that.  Just before the doors close, a guy jumps on the subway with a sax and a boom box, clicks on a backing track ... and serenades the entire car.

I grabbed my camera and fired off a quick shot.  It's one of my favourite photos from the trip.  I'm not much of a photographer, but ... I like this one.  Call it a happy accident.

I Am From

This is an idea from Susie, who got it (indirectly) from here.  It's a lovely idea - the thought that where we are from is far more than a dot on the map - that it is the sum total of our life's experiences, and sense memories, and family history ... where we are from is a million details, and what this does is encourage you to think about some of those details that formed the person you are today.

Like anything that is very rewarding, it's not easy to do.

I'm not into tagging.  But I'd love to see some other peoples' attempts at this.  There is an easy template to follow about three-quarters of the way down the explanatory page ... in a way, this is poetry made (somewhat) easy.  So:

I Am From

I am from battalion upon battalion of mismatched toy soldiers
arrayed in exquisite formation on a bedroom floor:
battle-weary G.I. shoulder-to-shoulder with cowboy and Minuteman and knight
in an all-out attack on the Nazi/Navaho/Confederate hordes;

I am from Velveeta
and Windex
and unwavering faith in Chrysler products.

I am from the thirty-fourth of a hundred identical military housing units,
each a distinctive shade of drab,
each unnervingly tidy within and without;
from a neighbourhood alive with scores of laughing,
tumbling,
roiling children;
from the echoed call-and-response of mothers
beckoning their kids home
as the last glimmer of light makes the towering fly ball
all but disappear.

I am from the waist-high wheat of the prairie that bordered the base,
the whizz and whirr of grasshoppers in abbreviated flight,
the whistle of the gopher sentry that sends the colony scrambling beneath
as a pack of eight-year-olds approaches with mischief in mind.

I am from stiff new flannel pyjamas on Christmas morning;
from quick, easy, genuine laughter:
From Mary and Justin,
Nils and Doris,
and the deliciously alliterative Helen and Hugh Henry Houtton.

I am from nothing in moderation
and tears bitten back.

From “You can do better”
and “If you haven’t got anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”.

I am from the generic, featureless white Protestant Church
standing fifty feet from an identical Catholic Church;
from playmates diverging at the shared parking lot
to stream into our parents’ chosen brand;

enduring the services
(hissed warnings to “Stop fidgeting!”),
bursting out,
pelting home,
shedding grey flannel and clip-on ties on the stairway
in favour of dungarees and t-shirts and scruffy Keds,
and meeting in the Big Field. 

I am from the centre of Canada.
From Sweden and England,
Scotland and Ireland.
from Barbecued Beans,
stick-to-your-ribs porridge,
and painful politeness at a crowded supper table.

I am from the eye operation on Hallowe’en,
laying bandaged and blind and confused and scared
in a ward that filled through the night
with screaming kids who hadn’t looked both ways;

I am from the jet streaking in low over the field,
waggled wings,
and breaking off the game because Dad was home;

I am from Jay leaping a fence
to teach Jimmy Wuckert a lesson
about messing with his little brother.

I am from six perfect albums, a year in the making,
my mother’s entire photo collection lovingly divided up,
labelled,
artfully arranged,
glued,
perfectly wrapped
and casually presented to us one Christmas morning.

No stiff flannel that year.
Just memories -
soft, warm, and comfortable
as last year’s pyjamas.

Five Things I Miss About Childhood

I got tagged with this by my great friend Laura  and I'm doing it as a special, one-time-only, don't-anybody-ever-tag-me-again-EVER favour.  In other words, because she's Laura and because I adaura I'm doing this faura - but hey!  No maura.

I'm not being snippy here and hope nobody thinks of me as a spoilsport, but the whole "tag" thing doesn't work for me because I have a certain amount of writing I have to do each week - deadlines to meet, subjects to stick to - and I want this blog to be about me being free to write anything I want as the muse whispers.  And honestly, every day that goes by after I've been tagged I sit there, feeling a familiar, self-imposed guilt, thinking "I should do my homework".  And I don't need one more piece of unfinished-work-related guilt.

For the same reason, I'm not tagging anybody else with this.  I think as memes go, this is more interesting and fun than most, which is, I am sure, why Laura tagged me with it.  If you want to comment or do your own list, I think that's great.  If not, just write something funny.

Five Things I Miss About Childhood

1.  Believing My Parents Were Invincible, Infallible, and All-Knowing

My Dad was an Air Force fighter pilot instructor.  He was strong, fit, quick-minded, well-read,  and knowledgeable on just about any topic.  Imagine being me on "Bring Your Parents Day" at school, when Tommy Pope's dad, the Insurance Adjuster, finished making his "What I do in a typical day" speech, and Billy Martin's dad, the Bank Manager, is getting ready to start his speech ... and my Dad strides into the room, late because he'd been flying a jet all morning and dressed in his flight suit with zippers up and down it and his flight helmet in hand and aviator sunglasses in place, and every kid in the room is going "Ohhhhhh ..."

Yeah, that was an OK feeling ...

My Mom was Chatelaine Magazine's Housewife of the Year in 1960.  For my American friends, Chatelaine Magazine is the Canadian equivalent of "Redbook" - a magazine for and about women.  And in 1960, women were mostly housewives.  So being Housewife of the Year (as comical as that sounds today) was a pretty damn big deal.

She earned it.  Six kids in nine years, and she made all our clothes, cooked, baked, had a half-acre vegetable garden, taught Sunday School ... did I mention six kids in nine years?

Because my Dad flew a lot, he was away a lot, and she'd soldier on: helping us with our homework; issuing discipline when it was needed; first aid and hugs when they were needed; doing remedial work with my brother, who was dyslexic; making sure everybody got to school and all their activities on time; and doing all this with grace and good humour and modesty.  When she was nominated for - then won - Chatelaine's Housewife of the Year, she was totally abashed, and insisted she was just one of millions of mothers doing the best they could.  She honestly and sincerely believed that.

So, you can see that growing up, I would look on my parents as gods:  they were utterly without fault, these pillars of strength that not only were the foundation of our family but of the community and the nation.  My Dad's job was to Protect The Country.  My Mom was the Best Housewife in the Country.  I was so damn proud of my Mom and Dad.

I still am.  But now, they're 83 and almost 80, respectively, and pretty much on the last few laps.  Mom - that woman who never rested until she worked herself into a case of tuberculosis and spent six months in the hospital a year after that damn award - is pretty frail now, and sometimes gets a bit confused.  Dad had a stroke a few years back that slowed him up, and two years ago they went in and fetched out a third of one of his lungs to catch the cancer in time.  (Stupid bugger went back to smoking.  Dude, a stroke and lung cancer.  It's God on the phone.)

I go and visit them now and I can see the vague imprints of the giants they once were.  I love them as they are, and never miss a chance to see them when I'm in or even flying over their part of the country. 

But I miss the giants.

2.  Having My Whole Life Ahead of Me.

I love being on the first tee at the golf course.  I stand there with a quiet confidence, knowing that this could well be the game of my life - that this might be the one where I put it all together - the tee shots all fly straight and far, the irons deadly accurate, every shot into the green landing like a lawn dart only a tap-in from a birdie, every putt rolling towards the hole as if it had eyes and a will of its own to disappear into the cup.

The thing is, I know that's possible, I know I have all the skills and all it takes is that little flicker of magic.  So I stand there on that first tee filled with hope and promise.

That's what it was like when I was 8 or 14 or 19 ... I was on that first tee.  It was all there in front of me.  The difference, of course, between "life" and "golf" is that with golf, I know (God willing) that I'll be golfing again tomorrow and the day after and the day after, so if I rip the first drive into the woods and take a triple bogey on #6 out of the water or the damn fox on #11 steals my ball ... well, I just come back the next day and start again. 

In life, you get one round, and no mulligans.

In life, I'd guess I'm on about the 12th hole.  I've put a few into the rough.  I've had a couple of great shots, but so far the putts haven't all dropped the way I'd have liked.  If I make a few adjustments, I can still salvage a decent score - and with luck and a perfect swing I can get a hole in one.  So it could still turn out to be a good day on the course.

But I miss having an empty scorecard, a clean white Titleist, and a bagful of hope.

3.  Trusting My Body

When I was a kid, I never gave a second thought to what time bombs might be ticking away in there.  I took up smoking to be cool at age 15.  I drank a lot.  I ate anything I wanted.  I didn't give a nanosecond's worth of thought to any of this, because I knew my body would handle it all, protect me, deal with the poisons I was putting into it.  And everything would be okay.

Cancer?  Not me.  Heart problems?  Nah.  Brain tumour?  Impossible.  My body and I had a deal:  I'll give you what you crave, and you just keep on keepin' on.

Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then.

There are times now, at age 51, when I am acutely aware of my heart beating away in there.  Sometimes it almost feels like that little engine:  "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can ..."  I wonder if the arteries leading to it are - relatively - clean and open.  Or whether maybe there's one that's pinched in a bit, waiting for that last little bit of plaque to form, stopper it up, and cause a little telltale tingling in my left arm ...

... and from time to time, in the middle of an otherwise normal day, I feel all those signs ... a fleeting pain in my chest, probably a muscle spasm, sure, that's all it is, just a little tightening, nothing to worry about, don't let it cross your mind ...

... but it does cross my mind.

I don't really trust my body any more.  I know I betrayed it for a lot of years, and I wonder if one of these days it's going to say "Hey, pal ... payback's a bitch."

4.  Trusting The People in Charge.

I miss the certain knowledge that your government was being run by smart people with everybody's best interests at heart - incorruptible, honest, straight shooters who would do the right thing.

Well, in fact, that was never the case.  So it would be more accurate to say "I miss that delusion." 

Once again, Bob Seger had it nailed.

5.  Knowing Who the Good Guys Were

My brother and sisters and I would gather in front of the black and white Sylvania Television in the living room every Saturday to watch the westerns:  Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, all our heroes.  I particularly liked The Rifleman, with Chuck Connors (because there was actually a character on that series named "Nils" - a prize if you can tell me his occupation).  My brother was partial to Steve MacQueen, the Bounty Hunter.  My sisters, of course, were big Dale Evans fans.

In those shows, you knew who the good guys were, and you knew who the bad guys were.  Sometimes they made it easy, and gave the good guys white hats and the bad guys wore black.  But you knew anyway, because what bad guys did was always bad, and good guys always did the right thing.

It ain't that way anymore.  I miss not knowing what team to cheer for.

                                                         *********************

So, there.  Five things I miss from when I was a kid.  I'm all depressed now.  But tonight I'm playing golf.  And this could be the game.

 

Promise You Will Use This Only For Good ...

I guess it's not fair to say that I make the world's most awesome, most mind-bogglingly delicious garlic spread and not then share it with you.  I will do so, on two conditions:

1.  You will use this new-found power only for good.  This garlic spread is so damn delicious it can slow the Earth's rotation, cause continents to drift, cure hiccups, and cause even middle-aged men to change their behaviour.  People will offer you anything - their cars, their children, nekkid pictures of themselves, a night with their spouses, anything, for the recipe ... or, alternatively, for just a bit more of this ambrosia.  Promise on your honour you will not take undue advantage of people.  Or that you will forward any nekkid pictures on to me.

2.  Credit Where Credit Is Due.  I got this recipe from my dear Aunt Marjorie Crum, who died a couple of years ago before the Nobel Prize Committee could finish the process by which she would almost certainly have been awarded the Nobel Prize For Garlic Spreads.  And now I pass it on to you.  Since she's dead, what the hell, give me all the credit. 

OK.  So, don't be fooled by the apparent simplicity, or what appear to be utterly banal ingredients.  Remember that Jennifer Aniston is put together using the same ingredients as any other woman.  It's all in the way the various parts mix.  There are only 88 keys on a piano, yet millions of songs have flowed from those 88 keys, played in the right order.

Enough hype.  The truth is, you'll like it or you won't, and I'd love to hear from you if you do.  But please, please, please, don't write saying "Oh, and if you add some cilantro ..."  No.  It's a perfect recipe, and I won't entertain any changes.  "Oh, but if you add a dollop of .."  No.  Done.  Shut it.  The recipe, she is perfect.

Make it for supper tonight.

Nils's Killer Garlic Spread

Mix:   One cup butter or margarine
         One-half cup Mayonnaise
         One-quarter cup grated Parmesan Cheese
         Crushed fresh garlic to taste - for above, let's say 4 - 5 cloves
         One tablespoon parsley

If what amounts to two cups of garlic spread seems excessive to you, reduce the amounts in ratio. The general idea for the main ingredients is a 4 - 2 - 1 ratio.  So, go with four tablespoons of butter, two of mayo, and one of the parm, and cut back a little (but not much) on the garlic and parsley.

Having said that, I like things a little cheesy (insert your own joke here), so I tend to be a bit more generous with the parmesan.  And you can add bite by substituting grated asiago or Romano for the parm. 

But let's crawl before we walk, shall we?  Get good at this, then go getting all fancy and renaming this recipe after yourself because ohohoh look, I changed one frigging ingredient.

There.  Try it tonight.

OK, Try Again - 100 Things You (Probably) Didn't Know About Me

1.  I do not hate memes.  Some people do, and I understand that.  If you're one of them, move along.  Nothing to see here.  Some of what I will say will appear egotistical, and some of it will cause good friends to say I am too hard on myself.  Both are probably true.  I do have a huge ego, and I am too hard on myself.  If some of this stuff seems braggy or immodest or coy and self-deprecating to you ... well, maybe it is.  There's a whole web out there, waiting for you to find something more to your liking.  Piss off.

2.  I am basically an honest person.

3.  I will not hesitate to lie if it makes you feel better.

4.  I have a deep-seated need to please other people.  It sometimes causes me to do things that make me unhappy.

5.  When I was in Grade One, I was reading at a Grade Eight level.  I was tested for IQ and scored well beyond the "Genius" range.

6.  I do not think I am a "Genius".  I may have gotten dumber as the years moved along.  Or maybe they were marking on a curve.  The best I will say about myself is that  I'm pretty smart, compared to some people.

7.  The "Genius" label caused a lot of well-meaning people to hold meetings about my schooling and to decide I needed to skip at least one grade.  They stopped at a single grade because I was already young for Grade One.  The decision to skip me forward caused an unforeseen ripple effect that resonates to this day.  To wit:

8.    When I reached high school, I was two years younger than any of my friends.  Girls were - understandably - entirely uninterested in me.  I became convinced that I was - and always would be - unattractive to the opposite sex.  I still, in my heart, believe that, and no reassurances to the contrary can trump that conviction.

9.  Because I was small, unattractive, and uninteresting, I developed a smart mouth and a sharp, biting sense of humour.  This has always made me popular with some people and very unpopular with others.

10.  I have learned to say the second thing I think.  Most times.

11.  I am ridiculously even-tempered.  While I frequently get peeved - most often at myself - I very rarely get really angry.  Twice in 30 years.  That's "rarely", in my book.  I believe most people who know me would describe me as consistently cheerful, happy, upbeat and positive in virtually any situation.

12.  I am a better actor in real life than I am onstage.

13.  I have a fairly impressive body of work that includes a musical, several plays, and two books.  Most people would consider me to be reasonably successful.

14.  I do not.  This, by the way, is not false modesty.  Just a fact.

15.  I have every reason to believe I have had ADD since I was very young.  It was never diagnosed by professionals.  I was just considered lazy and one of those people who never work to their potential. 

16.  I do not miss deadlines.  Ever.

17.  I do not turn work in early.  Ever.

18.  An hour before I was to walk out onstage in front of 800 people for the world premiere of my last show, I was rewriting the opening scene in my dressing room.

19.  My wife had to drive the four hours to the city where the show was premiering, so that I could sit in the passenger seat and memorize my lines.

20.  I never, for one instant, doubted I would pull it off.

21.  I did.  Barely.  But I did.

22.   I bake my own bread, and I'm good at it.

23.  I make a garlic spread that is so arrestingly delicious it literally stops conversation.  The universal response to the first bite is:  "Oh, my GOD.  THIS is INCREDIBLE ... "

24.  I can cook anything except rice.  It never turns out for me.  Ever.  Gummy, sticky, gross.

25.  Fine.  I never liked rice anyway.

26.  I prefer my lasagna to yours.  I am, however, far too polite to say so.  And anyway, how bad can lasagna be?

27.  I will not spend time around people who are impolite to me or to others.  If you are rude to a server in a restaurant, I will leave a bigger tip than I had intended, find the server, apologize to her for you, and I will never go to a restaurant with you again.

28.  If you ever ate a breakfast I cooked for you, you would want to wake up in my house every day.

29.  This is not currently feasible.  Keep checking.

30.  I am better at woodworking, home repair,  and cabinetry than most guys.

31.  I am nowhere near as good as I'd like to be.  I need more tools.

32.  You could not get me to eat sushi at gunpoint.

33.  I cannot be in the same room as someone who is eating macaroni and cheese.  The sound makes me gag.  Seriously.  Listen to it sometime.

34.  I had three older sisters, who practiced dancing with (on) me.  I am, as a result, an excellent dancer.

35.  I am far more comfortable around women than I am around men.

36.  I have only two close male friends.  Both of them are named Gord.

37.  I have seven close friends who are women.  None of them is named Gord.

38.  My wife knows four of those female friends, and likes three of them.

39.  I do not eat my pizza crusts.

40.  One time, I was out for lunch with my best friend.  We were having pizza.  My wife joined us.  I finished a piece and put my crust on the edge of the plate.  Both women reached for it at precisely the same instant.  It was a very awkward moment.

41.  I totally enjoyed it.

42.  I have lost 55 pounds in the past year.

43.  I still think of myself as "fat".  Objectively, I'm not.

44.  I play really bad drunken party guitar.  Three chords whether I need them or not.  If you want to hear "Gloria" or "Wild Thing", I'm your boy.  But get me drunk first.  And if you're drunk, I sound even better.

45.  I do a dead-perfect impersonation of Tom Waits.  It happens most often when I'm drunk.  I wake up the next day and can't talk beyond a croak.  Which - again -Tom Waits.

46.  I know my way around every major Canadian city.  Not saying I could drive a cab, but if I needed to get Point A to Point B, I'd be able to with minimal help.

47.  I do not Love Raymond.

48.  My favourite television show of all time is the BBC series "The Office".  The American version, which featured Steve Carell (whom I quite like), was an utter abomination.  Get the original on DVD and watch all twelve episodes and the finale.  It is simply perfect television.

49.  You are already bored with this;  I'm not.  See #1 re: ego.

50.  The longest I have been without a dog in my life is seven months.

51.  I prefer dogs to cats, simply because I am uncomfortable around any animal that feels more contempt for me than I for it.  Never an issue with a dog.

52.  Which is not to say I don't like cats.  Just that I know they don't think of me as "Daddy"; rather "OK, where's that creature I use to open the tins of Whiskas?"

53.  I will always reach for the check, but I will only go two rounds with you if you reach for it, too.  The second time you say "No, really, I'll take it,"  I'll give up.

54.  I'd rather cook for you than go out somewhere to dinner.  You'd prefer it, too.  I'm a very good cook.

55.  I will drink white wine, but it's not my first choice.  My first choice is rye whisky (preferably Canadian Club or Crown Royal) and Diet Coke with Lime.

56.  When I first graduated from University, I worked in marketing with Molson Breweries.  I no longer drink beer.  I do, however, still have a high lifetime average.

57.  I sometimes drink premium brand Single Malt Scotch.  I wish I liked it as much as I pretend I do.

58.  I collect out-of-print books by Danish poet Piet Hein.  I find them in used books stores.  I can usually haggle the price down to around $2.00 per book.  They are worth much more.

59.  I never sell them.  I make up six-volume sets and give them to people I love.

60.  I am a better shopper than anyone I have ever met.  I find better stuff and pay better prices.

61.  I will shop you into the ground.  I am tireless.

62.  I will not necessarily buy something when I shop.  It's all about the hunt.  I cannot remember the last time I paid full price for anything other than groceries or gas.

63.    I do not care if I win unimportant arguments.  I pick my hills to die on carefully. 

64.   I will win the more important arguments.

65.  I have never lost a game of trivia.  Ever.  My brain is packed with useless, arcane information on the broadest possible range of subjects.  I yell things at the contestants on "Jeopardy" and "Who Wants to be a Millionaire".  Mostly I yell things like "Who is Malthus, you moron!  Who is Malthus!"  And when they say "Who is ... umm ... Adam Smith?"  I make a big braaaaappp noise and insult them.  I've been told it's all very entertaining.

66.  I have a memory that most people find astonishing.  My memory of events and conversations - from years or even decades back - is complete, clear, and accurate.

67.  I sometimes cannot remember the name of the person I met two minutes earlier.  I pretend it's a hearing thing.

68.  I carry grudges.  Not many, but I carry them forever.  It's not a quality of mine that I find admirable.

69.  I care what other people think.  I admire people who say they do not.  That level of self-deception must be hard to maintain.

70.  I am intensely loyal to the people I love.  I have learned - painfully - not to assume that loyalty will be returned.  I have forgiven many trespasses.

71.  I golf more than most people you know - 100+ games a year, most years. I have been golfing since I was 13 years old - almost 40 years.  Thousands of rounds of golf.

72.  I have never scored a hole-in-one.  I expect I will, one day.  Possibly tomorrow.

73.  I am a better-than-average golfer.  My best round last year was a 76. 

74.  I get enormously peeved at slow golfers.  If you are just learning, go to a driving range.  If you must be on my golf course, move smartly along or move to the side.  And if you're a reasonably accomplished golfer and believe a good round ought to take four hours, you are dead to me.  Dead.  Now get your dead, bloated, decaying carcass off the fairway and let me through.

75.  I get up at 5:00 AM in the summers so I can be the first golfer off the tee.  Golfing with my wife, we can be done - easily, and without rushing unduly - in 2 1/2 to 3 hours.

76.  I do not enjoy gardening.  At all.  I mow the lawn - grudgingly - on a ride-on mower.  I sometimes run over plants that may or may not be weeds.  I don't mention it.

77.  I enjoy having two woodstoves in the house.  I like to split firewood, and I love the kind of heat a woodstove throws.  I would one day like to get a wood-fired oven.

78.  I have a pool table in my office.  Or a computer and desk in my poolroom.  Either way, I'm not getting better at pool.

79.  My wife fell in love with a huge oak teacher's desk, and bought it for my office.  It sucks as a computer work station.  I am not a teacher.  But I gave in on this.  See #63.

80.  My house was built in 1864.  It's a huge farm house that was once a bed and breakfast before we moved in and re-converted it for single family use.  It sits on several acres of land and has two resident ghosts, one inside and one outside.  They're friendly.  Not like Caspar-friendly.  Just not particularly mischievous or malignant spirits.

81.  I love grocery shopping.  I would go every day.  The only store that holds more appeal for me than a grocery store is a hardware store.

82.  I love doing laundry - the whole process, including smelling the freshly cleaned sheets.  I prefer to hang my sheets on the clothesline.  I love folding clothes and pairing up socks.

83.  I despise ironing and will not do it.

84.  Very few things scare me.  If I find something that does, I actively work on that fear until it is gone.

85.  Seeing a needle penetrate skin makes me feel faint.  I will cover my eyes until that part of the TV show is done.

86.  I have written a weekly humour column for radio and newspaper since 1986 and never, in all those years, have I missed a week.  Some columns, however, are better than others.

87.  I have an addictive personality.  I am aware of that, and stay away from certain things I know I will like too much.

88.  I cannot believe anybody has read this far.  I fully expect to get contemptuous "my-aren't-you-full-of-yourself" comments.  I would hate that almost as much as getting no comments at all.

89.   Once this is posted, I will find a spelling or grammar error in it, and I will go back and change it.  I cannot abide them in my own writing, although I forgive them in others'.

90.  I believe that in any conflict, the person with the strongest conviction about the issue at hand will almost always prevail.   

91.  I do not believe life is "fair".  Life just "is".  "Fair" is a human construct, and not a useful one at that.

92.  I do believe there is more good than evil in this world, and that good will triumph over evil in the long run.

93.  Of my top ten movies of all time, eight are romantic comedies.

94.  My daughters are both "Daddy's Girls".  This pleases me more than anything else in my life. 

95.  On any moral issue, I favour the side that stays the fuck out of other peoples' business.  Tend your own garden.  Period.  Full stop.  "But ... but ..."  No.  Shut it.

96.  I think most people would find me a reasonably companionable sort to spend an evening with.  I'm not sure how many could actually live with me.  I personally think I'd be pretty easy to live with, but anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise.

97.  There are days when I feel like hot shit, and days when I feel like a total waste of skin.  Only my very best friends will ever know which is which.  See #12.

98.  I still believe that at age 51, I have some greatness in me trying to wriggle out.

99.  I think it would have a better chance of wriggling out if I'd get out of the way.

100.  I thought about telling some lies and stretching the truth here, but then I figured "What's the point.  I am who I am."

So ... there.

100 Things You Didn't Know About Me

1.  I have A.D.D.
2.  Oh ... what's that over there ...?  Cool ....

My Web Anniversary

My good buddy Al got me thinking about internet memories, at a time which is my internet anniversary.  So here goes ....

I happened to pull out a file yesterday with a set of invoices ... including one from late May of 1995, saying that I was now a client of Island Services Network.  That was the month that I started my life on the Internet.

I well remember it.  Aside from looking at various websites, one of the things I was most interested in was meeting people from other places and chatting.  My buddy Davey suggested IRC, so I found a program (MIRC) and hooked up through a server at the University of Texas (there were actually two servers there, nicknamed "Minnie" and "Mickey").  They connected me to Efnet, and I was on my way.

My first stop was - and I can give no reason for this - a channel called #Buffalo.  People from or around or interested in Buffalo.  I called it up and *BLAM* ... all these conversations, coming at me, disjointed, seemingly unconnected, words scrolling down my screen.  I thought I'd never be part of this, just because I couldn't comprehend what was going on.

Just as I was about to give up, some kind soul offered some help.  He explained some acronyms that, today, seem laughably obvious.  LOL ... ROFL ... IMHO ... and others.  He offered advice - essentially to sit back, relax, let the screen unfold for a while, and it will all make sense.  He was right.  By the time the evening was done, I wasn't so intimidated.

The next night, I wandered into a channel called #Canadiana ... seemed like a good place for a Canadian boy.  Again, I was intimidated by the speed and volume of chatter, the acronyms, the inside jokes, the camaraderie which I wasn't part of ... all of it.  So I hung back (what I now would call "lurking", but the term was not yet invented), watched, and occasionally threw in a smart-ass comment.  I remember being thrilled when somebody responded to a comment with "LOL".  Wow .. I made somebody Laugh Out Loud.  Cool.  (OK, how naive was I?)

A few weeks - maybe even days - later, and I was an active participant, with a whole raft of people I knew only by their screen names:  Carla, Ed, Tea, ScarletWitch, NOFX, Mouse ... almost all were from Canada, and it was a genial place to be. 

I got into a conversation one night with ScarlettWitch, who said "There's another channel called "NOBS" you might like." 

"NOBS"?  I'm going to hang out with a bunch of people who openly admit to being Nobs?  I don't think so.

"Not NOBS," she said " "NoBS"  As in No Bullshit."  Ahh ...

So I went there, and yet again met up with a group of people who all knew one another and weren't much interested in me.  I watched, waited, threw in the occasional smart-ass comment, and eventually felt ... well, like a part of it.  A newcomer, sure, but ... provisionally accepted.

I was "Nilbo"  (a nickname I picked up in junior high and which has, for whatever reason, stuck).  In the channel were others, male and female, with nicks like "Sugggar", "EShark", "SweetLace", and "MsK".  To complicate things, they all knew one another's real names, as well as nicks from previous incarnations on AOL and other mediums. - meaning one person could have several names. One character - "Dani" - would chip in every now and again with: "Women Suck".  That was his sole contribution to the conversation:  "Women Suck".

I sat, watched, and occasionally lobbed in a smart-ass comment.  It's what I do.

The conversations were - as anyone who has done this for any length of time will know - all over the map.  Daily happenings in peoples' lives, bawdy repartee, current events, more bawdy repartee, bitchiness, pissypants behaviour, anti-social rants, flame wars, the whole IRC experience. 

It was utterly banal and utterly invigorating.  I was addicted to it.  "I'm just going to check my e-mail," I would say to my wife as I signed on at 10 PM.  At 4 AM, I'd be almost asleep at the keyboard.

Then, one night - a few days after I joined the channel - I was sitting there, watching the shit being shot, when I heard a ding.  It was a private message.  The tag on the screen flashed the nickname of one of the women in the channel.

(In the interest of fairness and accuracy, I will say there is and always has been some dispute about who messaged whom first.  I consider the question irrelevant.  But, strictly for the record, it was - take my word on it - she who messaged me first.)

She said something like "Can you believe this?"  The conversation in the channel was eye-rollingly stupid, and I was delighted to realize I wasn't the only person who thought so.

"Morons," I agreed.  We traded a few good-natured, snarky comments about the people who were dominating the discussion.  Then we began the tentative, drawn-out, overly-cautious process of getting to know one another.

It was tricky, because the net was then - and for all I know, still is - dominated by HNGs - Horny Net Geeks.  For all she knew, I could be one.  I certainly knew the lingo - my early joke was to greet her with "So whut r u werin?"  (To which, of course, the only correct answer is "Nuttin. U?")

(Let me interject here that nothing should be inferred by the fact that I became close friends with a member of the opposite sex.  I'm not much of a "guy's guy" - in fact, I don't have many male friends at all.  I much prefer the company of women.  Always have, always will.  Call me a girly man if you will, but that's me.)

But we did gradually become acquainted.  She had a couple of young daughters, aged 4 and 7, the same number of years apart as my girls, so we had that to talk about.  And lots of other things.  She was smart, could spell, could punctuate, made me laugh, and was great company through the long night.

That was ten (!) years ago.  A decade.  In that time, my girls have grown up, graduated from high school, one has finished University and become engaged.  Her girls have grown as well, into lovely young women.  We've both been through enormous change.  And through it all, we've talked - in the early days every night for weeks, less often now as our lives have changed, but still more regularly than I see most of my closest friends in "real life".

We have a shorthand now, like any old married couple.  She can finish my sentences, I hers.   If something's not right with her, I can feel it from the way she types a comma or the way she says "Hello".  She can sense when I'm bothered about something or when I'm in need of a hatpin for my inflated ego.  And she always has one handy, although I've never seen her wear a hat.  I can ask her opinion and know I will get an absolutely direct, honest answer.

She's become a close friend, one of perhaps three or four people on this planet with whom I would literally entrust my life.  Knowing her has been endlessly enriching.

She lives a long way away.  We met once, for lunch and a couple of drinks.  Nothing scandalous.  Nothing untoward.  Just two friends.

I shudder to think how much poorer my life would be if, some ten years ago, I hadn't signed onto the Net.  And ended up on IRC, and in that channel ... 

And if, of course, she hadn't messaged me.

Hey, you ... ten years, huh?  Ain't that something?

Now, I know that a lot of you have been on the net for years ... what were your first experiences ...?