Truths and Half Truths

Ohhh, Baby ...

I was at the farmer’s market the other day, just standing around, talking to a friend of mine when a woman came by pushing a stroller that held a tiny baby.  I moved out of the way and turned back to my friend ... when from out of nowhere whoomph!  I got shoved violently against my buddy so he had to juggle his coffee to keep it from spilling.

Was there a fire?  Some sort of medical emergency?  Was this a Secret Service agent, throwing himself over me, shielding my body from that ubiquitous lone, crazed gunman?  The latter seemed unlikely on about ten different counts, but there had to be some reason why I had to be moved and moved now. 

I turned to face the danger...

Well, there was no danger, at least not to me.  The baby in the stroller, on the other hand, was in real jeopardy of being smothered by a rapidly expanding crowd of breathless women.  They chucked him under the chin, they giggled, they made baby noises, they gushed:  “Oh, you’re a handsome little man.  Oh yes you are.  Oh, yes you are!”   And pedestrian traffic ground to a halt.  Baby gridlock.

See, now ...  men don’t do that.

I know this is a careless generalization, and as always when I make such a broad sweeping statement, keep in mind that (a)  it’s completely true except for that one person who has time on their hands to write an angry comment or e-mail; and (2)  I honestly don't give a rat's ass if you're offended.   So, here it is: I have never seen a man bowl over a crowd of people, leap across a table, and hurl himself at parents he doesn’t even know just for the opportunity to gush over a baby belonging to someone else.  I have seen women do this, on many occasions.

Now, I’m not anti-gushing, where babies are concerned.  Years ago, I gushed over my own kids so much it would make you barf.  Well, it made them barf.  Something made them barf, I know that.  Continually. 

But the point is, they were my own kids.  Not a total stranger’s.  Mine.

   And I remember when I’d be out with my daughter in her stroller and women would descend on us and just be up one side of my kid and down the other with the “Oh-she’s-so-adorable.  Oh yes you are.  Oh yes you are!”.  I assumed they were dead on the mark until years later, when a male friend said that he was glad our daughter didn’t stay as "homely" as she was when she was a baby. 

My wife was totally outraged by this.  I, on the other hand,  kinda saw his point. 

Men have different standards for judging cuteness than women do.  My wife sees a baby, and she’s caught up in the tinyness, the dimples, the bright eyes, the sense of wonder. 

Meanwhile I’m thinking “Oh, look … Yoda from Star Wars.”  And afterwards she gets all mad at me:  “He did not look like Truman Capote.  He was beautiful.”

Men think babies are cute in the abstract.  We look at a baby, and we register the degree of cuteness, and then our minds move on.  Not always to more important things.  Most times, our minds just … move on.  But we don’t get caught up in cute and lose what passes for our judgement.

We certainly don’t elbow people aside and stop traffic in the farmer’s market to drool all over a baby that has nothing to do with us. 

But in a way, I was grateful.  Because once the traffic backed up, I was able to easily get through to the organic vegetable stand. And when I got there, I saw a turnip that I swear looked exactly like every newborn baby I’ve ever seen. 

It was so cute. Oh, yes it was.  Oh, yes it was.

Dear Internet: I'm Good, Thanks.

Dear Internet,

I deeply appreciate your concern for my well-being. 

I am humbled that somewhere out there, a lonely widow of a former Nigerian Head of State has settled upon me as the caretaker of her late husband's fortune, based on the good reputation I have unwittingly established.  It's nice to know that a general lack of interest in hard work, irresponsibility with my own modest (no, way more modest than that) fortune, and highly questionable moral character have not weighed heavily against me, reputation-wise.  I'm beginning to wonder who I would have to actually kill to get a bad reputation. 

But in the meantime, I'm going to profusely thank all those people from Chad, Nigeria, Lesotho, Botswana, and Republic of Congo who are so keen to have me invest their fortunes for them and decline their offers.  The truth is, I'd just make bad use of the money, anyway.

Likewise, I'm going to decline the offers of free herbal V1*agra and Cia1is and other remedies that will help me remain erect for "hours upon hours".  The truth is, I don't know any women interested in spending hours and hours with me, erect or otherwise.  Hell, even I get bored with an erect me after an hour, hour and a half tops.  And that's even if I buy me a drink and talk dirty to myself.  So, not so much interested, but thanks for the offer.

I'm also grateful for the offers to increase my penis size, although frankly that doesn't feel like a gift you're giving to me, exactly.  But thanks, I'm going to say I'm okay for now.  I mean, I'm a guy, so I can't pretend it's never crossed my mind, but honestly, at this point in my life, it's like giving me a new set of golf clubs.  Everybody's impressed, but I won't play any better. 

Hey, if you want, a new set of golf clubs actually would be nice, come to think of it.

In closing, may I say to the Internet that I love you, but will you please stop filling up my fucking Inbox with this crap?  There's a dear.

Blove,
Nils

In The City of Love

My friend Kelly (whose blog has become one of those "must-read" blogs around our house for its Diet-Coke-spitting wit and sparkling writing style) ran afoul of some solid male logic this week.

Read about it here.  (Seriously.  Go read.  It's hilarious.  I'll wait.)

Back?  Good.  So ...

(Memo to Kelly's husband, Rob:  You seem like the kind of guy I'd like as a friend, and I absolutely agree with your reasoning.  Except, you know, for the whole being tragically, irretrievably wrong thing.  But it's OK.  This, too, shall pass.  Other, lesser men have made mistakes like this, and within four or five generations, it will have almost faded from family lore.  By then, it will be this adorable story about an ancestor who one time suggested to his wife they take a room with what were back then called "twin beds" in this place called "Paris", and how that one teeny suggestion dogged him for the rest of his days, until he died.  And even then, she had it engraved on his tombstone as a warning to husbands everywhere.  "Look," they'll say,  "It says:  "Here lies Rob, who one time - can you frigging believe this? - actually suggested we take a room with twin beds in PARIS, for God's sake!  May he rest in a peace that he never got in his lifetime."  Poor bastard.")

But I'm sure, now that he has been shown the error of his ways (Memo to Rob:  if you're not used to being shown the error of your ways by now, you're still "a newlywed" by definition.), that Kelly and Rob will have a lovely time in Paris.  It's really hard not to.  Although their experience will have to go a long way to top the one I had this past May.

It actually started as a tour in England with my shows. I had three weeks of touring booked, my wife took time off work, and we decided that the timing was right with school and everything else to take the girls with us.  Erin is 24, Allison 21, so how many more opportunities were we going to have for a family vacation?

Not many, for sure.  I mean, as it was, this was the first family vacation we’d had in about eight years, and truth be told, it was a working vacation.  But still, it was time away from home, we were all together, and it promised to be a lot of fun.  You know, if you adjust your definition of “fun” to include “five people tooling around England in a van screaming at one another.”

And there were five of us.  Me, my wife, our two daughters ... and Erin's boyfriend, Matthew.  He’s been around for six years, and at some point it became clear that he just wasn’t going to go away.

Which is fine.  He’s a nice enough young fellow, a chef in a fine restaurant, and my daughter loves him, and I figured if he could stand almost a month in close quarters with the rest of us, that’s pretty much what you’d call a baptism under fire.

And he did survive, although I suspect he’s been somewhat scarred by the first three weeks.  You know, the ones spent on tour in the van.

My wife and I tend to split the front seat jobs evenly when we’re on the road.  She navigates, and I drive.  Well, to be perfectly accurate: she navigates, I question her navigation, she gets deeply and horribly offended and tells me exactly into which bodily orifice I can deposit the map ... and then I drive.  And get lost, because she was right and I never should have questioned her, and she gets the opportunity once again to explain to me the error of my ways.  (See "Memo to Rob", above.)

This makes for the occasional tense moment in the car.  And in our family, we do not handle tension in the traditional Canadian fashion, which is to quietly seethe and hope for the rotation of the Earth to make things better.

No, in my family, we argue.  Loudly. 

(No, louder than that.  We’re talking "stick-your-head-inside-the-cowling-of-a-jet-engine" loud.)

And, truth be told, the yelling isn't always G-rated.  Or PG.  Or R.  In one instance, we were travelling from Nottingham to the tiny village of Bishop Norton (how can you not love British place names?).  The trip included a complicated series of switches from giant motorways to what are called "A" roads, to "B" roads.  I asked my wife whether we needed to get off at the next exit.

"Umm."

"No, really.  It's coming up in half a mile, and we're going 70MPH.  Do I take this exit?"

"Umm."

"Seriously.  If you're wrong, it's okay.  But I need to know if I turn RIGHT NOW."

"Don't yell at me."

"I'm not yelling, I'm just - oh, shit.  Okay, we're past it.  So, is it the next exit?"

"I think that was it."

What I said next is unimportant.  Allison, who was sitting quietly in the back seat making entries in her Journal, wrote down the exchange as follows (verbatim, from her Journal):

DAD:   "Blahblahblah jerk-jerk-jerk blahblahblah"

MOM:  "Shut up.  Fuck off.  Eat shit.  And die."

DAD:  (pause)  "There's really no possible response to that, is there?"

So I’m sure the boyfriend was relieved when our time in England - and our time in the van - was done, and all that was left was a four-day excursion to Paris at the end of the trip.  We were all looking forward to it.

Paris was indescribably lovely.  The weather was spectacular, the city itself is gorgeous, people seemed nice enough and not at all what stereotypes had led us to believe.  It’s everything you always dreamed Paris could be - no wonder it’s called “the most romantic city in the world”.

All of which had me thinking: "This guy’s been dating Erin for six years.  The conversations have gone from “ ... if we get married ...” to “... when we get married ...”.   And here we are, in Paris.  The City of Lights.  The City of Love.  Romance Central.  I mean ... if you were ever going to ... Nahhhh." 

"But then again ... if he’s not smart enough to propose here ... do I really want him muddying up my family’s gene pool?"

I broached the topic with Allison.  She simply said "Dad, if he goes up the Eiffel Tower without a ring, he's coming down the fast way."

The last night in Paris, we went to see the Eiffel Tower after dark.  We took along some baguettes, some cheese, wine, and made a little picnic on one of the huge lawns. 

The tower is incredibly gorgeous at night ... subtly lit for fifty minutes out of every hour, then all of a sudden going black ... and then a dazzling display of thousands upon thousands of sparkling lights for ten minutes.

During one of those displays, the young man turned to my little girl and said “Let’s take a walk.”  They wandered away.

“This is it,” said Allison.

“Oh, my God, how romantic,” said my wife, dreamily.

“I wonder if there’s a bathroom around here somewhere?” I asked, because romance is romance but, you know, the world doesn’t stop turning.

I went off in search of a bathroom in Paris at night, and let me tell you, it may be the City of Lights but it sure ain’t the City of Plentiful After-Hours Rest Rooms.  When I got back after a half hour or so, Erin was standing beside her sister, waiting, her left hand stuck deep in her pocket. 

I think it’s safe to say nobody was fooled by this clever ruse, but I appreciated the gesture.  She wanted everybody there.

And when we were, they announced they were engaged.  There, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, he’d asked my daughter to marry him.  (She made him go down on one knee to do it.  That’s my girl.)

And he did.  I mean, Paris kind of forced his hand.  How could he not?  But still.  They got engaged at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.


  Walking back to the hotel that night, she looked deliriously happy.  He had a big grin on his face.  I was that kind of bittersweet, happy/sad/wistful I always knew I would be when this day came.

    I thought of her as a little girl.  I thought of all we’d gone through to get to that day.

But mostly, as I walked the streets of the most romantic city in the world, arm in arm with my wife, I thought, “I wonder if there’s a bathroom around here somewhere?”

Hey - the world doesn’t stop turning.

Do Psychics Get Deja Vu?

Note:  I'm ankle deep in a huge project right now that I can't share with the Internet as a Hole.  But I have a conundrum:  I'd also like to post, and skip merrily around commenting (occasionally excessively) on other blogs.  And there's only so much abuse this keyboard can take.  So, to solve this, from time to time I'll post something from my past - a "best of" from my syndicated weekly column or a story from my book or some musings from a previous life.  And sometimes I'll just suck it up and write something new.  And most of you reading this won't know which is which.  So we're all happy.

This is a true story.

A friend of mine had an appointment recently to visit a psychic. She wanted to get her future foretold. But just as my friend was packing up to go and see this psychic, she got a call. The psychic had to cancel. Something unexpected had come up.

Excuse me - how does anything “unexpected” come up when you're a psychic?

I’ll tell you what should have happened: When my friend originally phoned for an appointment, the psychic should have said, "Let's see ... Monday night ... hmmm ... no, Monday's no good. My husband's going to double over at the dinner table. We'll rush him to the hospital - it'll be his appendix. But they'll operate and everything will be okay. By mid-week my life will be back to normal. How's Wednesday at nine...?"

In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, a real psychic shouldn't have any need for an appointment book. You should just be able to show up, out of the blue, confident that you’ve been expected for some time.

In fact, let's go even further - if you're dealing with the real thing, you should be sitting at home one evening when the phone rings: "Hi, you don't know me, but my name is Bob, and I'm a psychic. Your friend Dave is going to tell you about me, and you're going to be intrigued, and you're going to show up at my place on Monday. Well, I'm just calling to tell you that's a bad night for me."

Now, there's a psychic.

I don't mean to scoff. I know there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamed of in my philosophies. But I can't help seeing the logical gap that opens up when a psychic get surprised.

Speaking of logical gaps, I have another friend who paid good money to have someone lead her through a "past-life regression". She got hypnotized and taken back through all these past lives she supposedly lived. For example, she had been a serving girl for Cleopatra in one life. In another she was one of Al Capone's henchmen.

It didn't seem to strike her as one bit curious that no matter at what point in history she surfaced, she was always right at the heart of the action. So she stood side by side with Al Capone in Chicago in the thirties rather than, say, spending that decade building a fire out of goat dung in a village in Tibet. Granted, that’s nowhere near as romantic - but come on, let’s face it, Capone only had so many henchmen.

If you ask me, people spend too much time with the past and the future. What we really need is someone who can tell us the present.

People should be willing to plunk down fifty bucks to have someone sit across the table and say: "Here's the way it is for you right now, here, in the present. You're in a decent job, but you're not putting enough money away for your retirement. You don't do enough to help out around the house, and you could ease up on your kids a bit - hey, weren't you young once? You want a new car, but get real - you can't afford the models you've been looking at. And look at you - get a haircut and lose thirty pounds. And by the way, that's not the best colour on you. That'll be fifty bucks. Next!"

I think we all could use someone like that from time to time. I'm just not sure we'd all be willing to pay for it. I'm one of the lucky ones - every day, my wife tells me my present, and doesn't charge a thing. And you know, most times, she's dead on. It's uncanny.

In fact, she's so good she's been thinking about telling other people their present for a small fee. You'll have to call ahead, make sure she's not busy.

Unless, of course, you're a psychic. Then you'll just know when to show up, won't you?

Bill Gates Is Protecting Us

When I signed on this morning, I got a WARNING message from McAfee.com that my Virus protection definitions were expired and that I had to buy a whole new Virus Protection Suite from them if I wanted to continue with their servies.

Now, first off:  nice scam, boys.  Make me buy a whole new (and who's kidding who? IDENTICAL, in every important respect) program, rather than charge me less for simple updates to a perfectly good virus protection program.  Lovely to know that essential services like virus protection have cottoned on to the whole idea of building in obsolescence to further gouge the consumer.

But that's not the worst of it.

I grumblingly decide to bite the bullet, sign on to buy a whole "new" product, then get told I have to be using Internet Explorer for it to work.

Excuse me ...?

I don't use Internet Explorer.  As a browser, it sucks llamas.  Its developers are either too lazy, too indifferent to consumer desires, or too incompetent to incorporate the simple, common sense features that are making Mozilla's Firefox the browser of choice for just about anybody who knows anything about internet browsing.  I would not - nay, could not - go back to a browser that didn't have a feature like multiple tabs.

So I contacted McAfee Tech Support through a chat feature on their website to see if there was a work-around that would let me use Firefox and not have to have IE infecting my computer.  I was connected to a person who seemed very nice and identified himself as Ben Dickinson.  Here's the conversation, cut and pasted (with typos discreetly edited and additional commentary identified with [square parens]):

. 

You have been connected to Ben Dickinson. 

Ben Dickinson: Nils, thank you for contacting McAfee Online Support Center. How can I assist you with your McAfee software today?

Nils Ling: Hi ... I use Firefox as a browser ... and I'm told now I have to download IE?  What gives with that? Am I to assume McAfee won't protect me if I'm using Firefox?

Ben Dickinson: Nils, McAfee recommends Internet explorer should be the default browser for McAfee to work smoothly and avoid any issues. 

Nils Ling: Why is MacAfee associated with an inferior browser - it's not a secret that IE sucks compared to just about any other (not blaming you, by the way)

[My irritation got the better of me by times through this conversation.  This poor fellow does not dictate company policy, and I should have stuck to questions he was better able to address] 

But will MacAfee work with Firefox, or should I change to Norton?

Ben Dickinson: Currently, McAfee products are more compatible with Internet Explorer. I apologize for the inconvenience this might have caused to you. 

Nils Ling: I guess my question is .. will I be protected if - like MILLIONS of other internet users, I decide to stick with Firefox?

Ben Dickinson: Sure, you can. You have to download the McAfee updates manually. You need to regularly make the Internet Explorer as default browser and then download the update and again you may revert back the settings of Internet Explorer. 

Nils Ling: So (and sorry if I'm being dense here, but I want to be clear) in order to get DAT updates and whatever, I have to have garbage like IE on my computer?    Or can I do a one time install of IE ... get the security suite - then delete IE? 

Ben Dickinson: Yes, Nils. McAfee connects through Internet Explorer browser while updating the Dat files. It is not recommended that you uninstall Internet Explorer. Else you will experience issue on regular basis while downloading the updates. 

Nils Ling: Sweet deal for Bill Gates. Probably sweet for MacAfee .. not so good for customers, but who cares about them, right? Now, last question - are you guys so wrapped up in Bill Gates tentacles that your product won't protect me when I'm browsing with Firefox?

[Again, inflicting my irritation on this guy, which was not fair.  It's a valid point, but out of his purview]

Ben Dickinson: Nils, Internet Explorer is very common browser and hence the product has been designed accordingly. 

Nils Ling: Ben, we know why IE is so common. And I'd argue that MILLIONS of Firefox users make that a common browser, too. But I think you're saying what you have to say, and thank you for your help ... I'll pursue other options. I hope you didn't feel I was attacking you ... again, thanks. 

{Never an excuse for being impolite to tech support people who are being polite and doing what they're trained to do.  I really do hope he didn't think I was being rude.]

So, I'm going to have to switch Virus protection, evidently.  Any suggestions?  Norton?  Trend? 

What works with Firefox and won't make me use IE?

Alright, Already ...

There are times when I hate my blog.

See, here's the thing, and I'm not looking for sympathy here: I write for a living.

It's pretty much what I do.  I mean, I go out on tour and perform what I've written, and for that I get paid, but really ... there are lots better performers around.  I think I'm reasonably engaging in an "aw shucks" kind of neighbour-next-door way, and that's always been enough to carry the shows.  But there are times - lots of times - when I figure my words would be better off in the hands (mouth?) of someone with a strong theatrical background and a dynamic stage presence.  I have neither.

So, really, my shows are all about the words.  And they've done well both in North America and in the U.K., so I have to believe I'm fairly adept at the whole wordsmithing thing, except that I'm not so sure "wordsmithing" is even a word, any more than "parenting" is, and don't even get me started on that.

But for good or ill, talented or hack, I write for a living.

So, let's say you - I don't know - re-upholster furniture for a living.  You go in and spend the day putting new fabric on worn ottomans  (ottomen?).  And at the end of the day, you come home, and have a nice drink before dinner, and then a lovely meal, and afterwards you go into your shop and there are notes from a bunch of your friends who enjoy re-upholstering furniture in their spare time and like what you do with sofas and fainting couches and urge you to get at it, come on, tack some chintz to a loveseat, wouldja?  And it's flattering, because these are all talented people, and they're urging you to do what you like to believe you do best.

It's kinda like that, in a way.  But then again, it's not.

Because I do love to write - it's a passion for me. 

I'm like anybody else, in that I never know if what I've written is good or indifferent or brilliant or funny or trite and hackneyed and not worth the electricity it takes to generate the pixels it forms into on your screen. 

But I keep doing it, not because I have to, but because I can't imagine not doing it.  I feel like I would suffocate if I stopped writing, like those sharks who have to keep moving or they'll literally drown.

So every day I write.  And I can't say I love it any more than I love breathing or having my heart beat.  It's just something I do to live, and if I didn't get paid for it I'd still do it, but let's keep that to ourselves, shall we?

Which is why I sometimes hate my blog, because to sign on to the Typepad site is to commit to putting something up on the screen.  And while I seldom suffer from writer's block - although some people could be excused for wishing I did - there are times (lately) when I've called up the template, stared at it for friggin ever a few minutes, then quietly closed it down and said to myself, "I just don't have anything worth saying or that I can say well enough to measure up to what I expect of myself.".

Which doesn't always stop me, but lately it has.

So, to those people who keep after me to post, thank you.  Were it not for you, I probably would close this baby down.  I'll try to do better, starting Tuesday morning.

In the meantime, there's an ottoman I need to refinish ...

Traffic Jam

Just yesterday I posted that one day I want to catch a picture of the traffic jam that occurs about a mile from my house, on the way into town.  I live on a major (for my Island) highway, and most mornings around 8 AM, this is the scene:

It often provokes a long line-up of cars, although the farmer and his field hands try to time it so no cars are coming - which makes for better traffic flow but a significantly less comical photo.  My timing was right, I had the camera, so I took the picture.  But oh, how I would have loved to catch a tourist gaping open-mouthed at the towering quaintness that is a cattle drive on a major suburban artery.