Top Ten Modernized Beatles Songs

10. Lucy In The Sky With Bling

9. She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, But You Should Still Get An AIDS Test

8. Can't Buy Me Gas

7. Happiness Is A Warm Globe

6. Hey Jude Law

5. When I Was Sixty-Four

4. I Wanna Hold Your Hand Unless You Have Swine Flu

3. Old Lady Madonna

2. With A Little Help From My Facebook Friends

1. OB-LA-DI, OB-A-MA

Why I Am A Huge Loser

Why I would publicly share the story I am about to relate is beyond me.

Perhaps I have some deep-seated need to confirm the suspicions of all who know me that I am indeed a giant loser from hell. Maybe I feel I deserve punishment for an ordinary act gone horribly, horribly awry.

It was about two weeks ago, on a perfectly pleasant morning that gave no hint that it was about to rocket off the rails. My sons were here and I left them in the apartment while I went down to get the mail.

On the way back, I was shuffling through the envelopes in my hand, not paying much attention to anything else.

When I went to open the door, it was locked, although I had not locked it. I tried again, rattling the knob loudly. No response.

Kids love to lock you out sometimes. My students, particularly the Grade Nines, in the pitiful infancy of their maturity, find it endlessly entertaining to lock the door when I have to step out for a moment, so that I frequently find myself in the hall, stripped of all dignity, trying in vain to gain entrance to my own classroom, issuing grave threats whilst gales of muffled giggles assail me from the other side. (I assume this happens to other teachers. It does, right?) It can be a tad tough to explain when administrators happen along, frowning. They never seem to believe that it's lock-down practise.

So I wasn't terribly surprised that my own kids would find this hilarious. I pounded authoritatively on the door to no avail, once, twice, three times, louder each time. Still no answer.

Finally I shouted, "OPEN UP, YOU LOSERS!" And thumped on the wood again with hinge-straining force.

Nothing. Dead silence from within.

There are two standard warnings I generally issue to my offspring when they for any reason find themselves on thin ice. My favourite is, "No food for you," or, "No shelter for you," both of which might raise the eyebrows of the child welfare authorities but possess, I think, a certain panache, especially if you don't find the thought of jail all that daunting. But this time I went for a lesser-used but equally dramatic third admonition, to wit:

"OPEN THIS DOOR RIGHT NOW OR I WILL POUNCE UPON YOU AND TICKLE YOU UNTIL YOU PEE YOUR PANTS!"

Normally, by this time, I would have expected to hear gleeful snickering, but again there was not a sound. The game was going on vexatiously long, so I figured I would extend the retributive tickle attack accordingly once I finally gained access.

"THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE!" I hollered.

Then, to my horror, I heard, quakingly, from inside, a frightened elderly voice call out,

"Who is it?"

Mortified, I realized that I had somehow gotten off the elevator on the wrong floor and was trying to beat down the door of a stranger's apartment, shouting bizarre threats at some terrified old lady.

The etiquette books are mysteriously silent on the subject of what to do in such a situation. Naturally, as a mature individual, an alleged role model in the community, I should have stammered out an abject apology and an explanation.

But what did I, a grown man, decide was best?

I am ashamed to admit that I sprinted, white-tailed-deer-like, to the stairs and beat a very hasty and red-faced retreat, leaving behind me an undoubtedly traumatized senior citizen whom I hope was able to stave off cardiac arrest at the notion that some crazed home invader was intent, for some perversely unimaginable reason, on making her wet herself.

When I got back to my own home, my children could see that something was wrong so they asked and, in my shaken state, I foolishly told them.

When they recovered from their asthmatic, whooping laughter, admidst much gasping and slapping of knees and merriment, I tried to swear them to secrecy, an oath they predictably refused to take, making it their business to inform everyone they knew and the town in general what an incredibly large loser their father is.

Kids these days. You love them and raise them and try to demonstrate good behaviour and upright values and what do they do? They stab you in the back.

So no shelter for them. They sleep in the bus shelter now. But look. This is just between you and me, okay? No squealing, all right? Or I'll pounce upon you until...

Well, now you know the rest.

Wal-Mart And The Space-Time Continuum

When I get tired of my earthly surroundings, bound by the laws of space and time, I go to Wal-Mart. It's a whole other dimension, an other-worldly Twilight Zone from which, paradoxically, eventually all my worldly possessions will come.

They built one near me not long ago and I was as happy as if they'd constructed a heaven in my neighbourhood. I flocked there immediately just to gambol about, ignoring the No Spring Lambs signs. I don't know what it is about that place that brings such joy to human beings. It's just a store, after all, one would think. But no. A thousand times no, marked down to fifty.

First of all, it's way bigger than other stores. If you ask where something is, they tell you in longitude and latitude. You've got your electronics in one hemisphere, household items in another, and a whole separate solar system for clothes. Intrepid pioneering explorers set off for unbraved Wal-Martian frontiers, armed with only a cart and a cartographer, braving monsters and perils unknown in far-flung uncharted aisles. Magellan would've loved Wal-Mart.

And you lose all sense of time once those doors whoosh closed behind you. You think you're going to dash in and out with a couple of vital items but before long you're wandering about in a dazed Dawn Of The Dead shop-till-you-drop trance, towing a heaping train of items, and when you finally emerge, blinking bewilderedly, into daylight, you're no longer dressed for the season. It's like a casino in there, only the odds are better that you'll come out with something.

Because they have everything. All imaginable products are available under the vast horizon of their roof. That's why you can't go to Wal-Mart without spending at least a hundred bucks. It's an immutable law of nature. It's impossible drop double-digit dollars. To save time, I've taken to just running up and flinging a hundred bucks in the front door. You always see something you never thought of buying, at such a good price that you can't afford not to. (Things that are ten dollars everywhere else are a nickel a dozen at Wal-Mart. We all know the secret of their astonishingly low costs, but we won't get into that here for fear of upsetting the child labour sweatshop bleeding hearts.)

Last time I was there, I purchased, although I am a man, a device that sprays lovely odours into the room. I had hitherto been unable to imagine a scent more delightful than, say, old pizza boxes, but somehow this odour-spritzing machine caught my eye and I just had to have it. It was only twenty ducats, and it dispenses a whiff of perfume with a hilarious sneezing sound that reduces my children and I to helpless gales of laughter every time we hear it, because my kids are immature and I follow their lead. It provides 2400 sprays before you have to replace the aerosol can and we've already had 24 million laughs over it, and my divorced-bachelor pad no longer reeks of Eau De Je Ne Sais Pas. I am as pleased with this new acquisition as if a Britney Spears-making machine had been installed in my livingroom, and it's the kind of thing I would only buy at Wal-Mart.

And it's the same with food. I now shop for my groceries there, too, and I never fail to bring home delicacies that I have never in my life picked up at any grocery store. Last time I came home with a big bag of presliced Thai chicken strips for salad and some feta cheese bites on toothpicks and pickled trout morsels in a jar and all manner of succulence that they didn't have at So Frills. AND a gen-u-ine sheepfleece feather duster to boot! Plus a can of, get this, Spider 'Blaster'. They know how to name things enticingly at Wal-Mart. I might have passed up spider 'spray' but who could miss a chance to BLAST the creepy freaks? Now when I see anything that has more than four legs, I shout, "Fetch me my blaster, boys!" and soon I am contentedly blasting away, subjugating all of Nature to my chemical will. No wonder shopping at Wal-Mart is such a blast.

So if you're having trouble finding me, it's because I used to be of this world but now I am at Wal-Mart. Try searching at forty degrees east by eighty degrees north. In the blisswares section.

On Horsewhipping

My topic today is horsewhipping.

I think it's time, as a society, that we gave horsewhipping a serious second look. I think it's ready for a comeback and that it would have the full support of the people. If I were running for office, I would campaign on a pro-horsewhipping ticket and I would win by a landslide. It's what we need in these uniquely troubled times.

Even if it were ineffective, it would at least give the appearance of justice. The Enron executives, Bernie Madoff and all the silk-suited fat-cats whose monstrous greed has the economic system teetering on the brink of collapse should be horsewhipped at once on CNN. Nobody disagrees with that. OJ Simpson should be horsewhipped twice daily for 11-hour periods. Rod Blagojovich should be forced to horsewhip himself with a crooked whip. The very heinousness of their offenses cries out for it.

But some people should be horsewhipped just on general principles. Donald Trump should be horsewhipped, and that thing on his head horsewhipped separately, just for being so Trumpish all the time. The Red Hot Freakin' Chili Peppers should be horsewhipped until they don't feel like touring. The fiends who designed the impenetrable plastic on dvd cases are desperately in need of horsewhipping, people who stand in line in front of me at the bank for twenty minutes and only start rooting around in their purses for their chequebooks when they're at the teller should be horsewhipped, lightly if they're elderly but insistently, until they get a clue, and horsewhipping for all who like rap needs to be made immediately mandatory. The Jonas Brothers would benefit tremendously from being horsewhipped directly on their purity rings.

The Bush Doctrine of the pre-emptive strike might've made the world a more dangerous place to live but it makes good sense in the case of horsewhipping. It should be legal to horsehip members of Congress and Parliament and roughly thirty percent of teenagers just in case they do something. There are certain people in everyone's workplace who are such tedious conversationalists that it would be useful as a deterrent to be able to horsewhip them as soon as they launch into a story. How many lives would be saved if we could horsewhip bad drivers before they got into their cars?

As you can see, I basically just like saying the word horsewhip. It's funnier to me than most things. Not that there's anything funny about whipping horses, mind you. (I wish particularly to emphasize this to my friend Kim who will horsewhip me for writing this.) I just have some peculiar sort of comedic weakness for the word. It cracks me up every time I type it. Horsewhip, horsewhip, horsewhip.

I don't know. Something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. If I had any dignity, I would probably suggest that I be horsewhipped, but I lack the courage.

I do hope, though, that you enjoyed today's dissertation on horsewhipping.

If you didn't, you shouldn't be horsewhipped. It wouldn't do to horsewhip a reader.

You should be prodded with sharp spurs, however.

And your stall only rarely changed.

The Eternal Winter Of My Discontent

To say that I am not a fan of winter is vast understatement, like saying I'm not a thumbscrews afficionado. It is Nature's cruelest torment. And this one has been never-ending. We had snow on the ground at the beginning of November and the temperatures and I have been bitter ever since. As we head into March there is no respite in sight. I have reached the end of my frozen rope. If it doesn't warm up immediately, my own nuclear meltdown will hasten spring.

Everything in our world has a purpose. So what is the point of winter? Why would the great, wondrous design of things include a prolonged period of time in which everything dies and icy blankets of frost cover the land and the animals have no recourse but to hibernate? Man was not meant to shiver and cringe against his environment. It's like Mother Nature's menopause or something. But without the hot flashes, which would be more than welcome right about now.

So people who go around saying they like winter mystify me. I have no respect for them. In fact, I think they should be killed, or at the very least forcibly deported to Antarctica, where they could live happily among their penguin brethren out of muffed earshot of the rest of us saner folk.

But the winter activities are fun, the winter freaks allege. Snowmobiling, skiing, skating and ice-fishing are delightful pastimes, they claim. They are lying. I fail to grasp the appeal of roaring through the crystalline, pristine wilderness on an ear-splittingly loud machine that leaves wide, spoiling tracks wherever it goes, ruining a scene that I concede looks a lot lovelier than it feels, as long as I can view it from inside with the heat cranked up to supersolar whilst sipping a steaming cup of lava-hot chocolate. Skiing, a deranged sport in which normally sentient beings strap boards to their feet and hurtle death-defyingly down a slope violates my most fundamental life's motto, 'Never plummet anywhere'. Skating is silly because if we were meant to stand on blades, we would've been born with knives for feet, and ice-fishing is the most ridiculous endeavour ever invented, since invariably it melts in the car before I can get it home.

No, there is nothing good about winter. Clearing the walk keeps you fit, you say? Tell that to the thousands of people who drop dead of coronaries in their driveways each year, still clutching their chests and their shovels, fit to be fitted for coffins. Being Canadian makes you hearty, you proudly contend? Not if it's no longer beating.

The doom-sayers are always getting our hopes up. Where is this global warming they gravely promise? Bring it on, I say! Why should the polar ice caps get to melt while the snow here is still up to my hollyhocks? I read to my horror that the hole in the ozone layer is closing over as the atmosphere treacherously heals itself. I run through the streets daily, determinedly spraying aerosol cans over my head. Al Gore is just one more lying politician. I'm glad he didn't get to be president even though everybody voted for him.

Spring literally can't get here soon enough for me. I hunker down grimly and count the frigid days. Soon, please God, I will spy that first blessed blade of new green grass.

In the meantime, the winter wind can blow me.