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.

My Father's Moosicorns

My Dad has been an avid moose hunter his entire life. But, much to the amusement of his family, he not only never shot a moose, he never even saw one. He endured, and still does, all sorts of merriment over either his lousy moose-hunting skills or his abysmal bad luck. To him, moose were mythical creatures that existed only in imagination, like unicorns. But you have to hand it to him. He never gave up trying until he was compelled by age to give up traipsing through the forest in search of what might as well have been minotaurs.

My sympathies, frankly, always lay with the poor moose. I recall vividly the time, when I was only five years old, that he took me with him on an expedition to moose country. It was just a day trip, driving gravel roads in the forest country north of Sudbury in search of partridge, but he brought his high-calibre rifle with him just in case. We were flagged down by hunters who excitedly told him a moose was in the bush nearby. Leaving me in the locked car for a while, he eagerly joined them to stalk the elusive creature. (Anyone was welcome to join in the search - moose are enormous, so in the event that any of the impromptu hunting party shot one, there would be plenty of meat for everyone.)

After a while, out from the bush to the right of the road where the hunters had gone trotted a cow (a female moose) and her calf, right in front of the car. My little heart thudded with the thrill of seeing these magnificent wild animals mere feet away from me. I felt privileged to have been granted a glimpse of such majestic creatures in their habitat, a sight which had been denied the grown-ups.

I was inclined to honk the horn to summon the hunters, but then thought better of it. I wanted to give the moose time to get away.

Later, when my dad returned, disappointed, to the car, his quarry having eluded him, I waited until we'd driven some distance then told him what I'd seen. At first he wasn't sure if I was being truthful, but then, when he could see that I was, he grew quiet and thoughtful. Unsurprisingly, he never took me moose hunting again. It must have driven him crazy that, after a lifetime hunting moose, his son, only in kindergarten, on his first hunting trip, saw two of them. I have never forgotten the intensity of the experience, and I have never let him forget it, either.

Once, he ordered a record album called How To Hunt Moose, figuring that surely it must contain tips as to what he'd been doing wrong. It didn't come for ages. When finally it did, we sat down to listen to it. At one point, the narrator suggested that the listener procure 'a half-quart pickle jar' and pour water into the water at the edge of a lake 'from a height of three feet' so as to fool the moose into thinking they were hearing another moose urinating. I remember wondering why moose would pee in lakes instead of in the forest, and why this sound would bring other moose running. Seemed a tad disturbing to me. My father was disgusted.

"Oh, for #$*@!'s sake!" he exclaimed, turning the stereo off. "If I use a three-quarter-quart mason jar and pour from a height of two-and-a-half feet, the moose are going to know it's a hunter and stay in the woods snickering?"

He had a point, and I learned a valuable lesson about receiving so-called expert counsel with an appropriately skeptical ear. If he'd been after goose instead of moose, I wonder if he'd have been advised to drop Aylmer's paste out of a shot glass from a height of a thousand feet as a craptrap.

Naturally, over the decades, he received what, in retrospect, must have been an annoying deluge of moose paraphernalia on every gift-giving occasion. Moose sweaters, moose hats, ceramic moose, moose glass-holders, moose art, moose cards, and once, just for fun, mousse....all vastly entertained his snide kin while he received each with the equanimity of a good sport and a bad sportsman.

I sort of regret tormenting him now. Just not very much.

Our Thieving Pals

Everybody's friends are thieves.  Every last one of them.  It's sad but it's true.   Stealers, the lot.  It's enough to make you ashamed to know them, isn't it?

They don't think of it as stealing, of course. But if you take someone's stuff and you never bring it back, that's pretty much the essence of what a thief does.  There's no such thing as permanent borrowing, nor is kidnapping an involuntary visit. You stole it.  And stealing is against the law.  Ergo, our friends are crooks.  We don't hang out with our buddies, we consort with criminals.

I cheerfully lend books knowing I'm not going to get them back, but that's okay.  I mind more with CD's but I can live with it. But I hate lending DVD's.  To me, the entire collection has a gaping abyss in it when even one DVD is absent.  Perhaps I'm all weirdo obsessive-compulsive psycho Rainman about it, but it's the way I feel.  I mourn the missing member.  (Insert own tasteless Lorena Bobbitt joke here.)

And the worst is when, in the borrowers' minds, the thing was theirs in the first place and they act like they've always owned it. So you have to act like you're borrowing it from them and then keep it, finally reclaiming it as your own, vexed at the knowledge that they now think you're the big thieving klepto and not them.  And thus friendships deteriorate in a vicious cycle of resentment and bitterness and hatred and murder.

Some people would give you the shirt off their back and never worry about seeing it again.  Now, there's an odd saying. 'The shirt off their back."  I wonder why it singles out the back?   Why do we neglect the front?  How come no-one is said to give you the shirt off their pecs?  Sounds weird, I guess.  

And how come it's always the giving of a shirt that denotes generosity?  Isn't it just as nice to hand over other garments? "Oh, that Tim.  Heart of gold.  He'd give you the pants off his ass."  

I guess what goes around comes around, and it's all among friends, and other cliches.  And what's a cliche, after all, (like my point today), but an observation that we all steal?  

But it still troubles me that my friends and yours are rascals of such ill character, plunderers that they are.

Bless 'em, they do have a way of stealing your heart, too, though, don't they?

I'll give them that.

Attack Of The Turkey Elbows

As I saunter through middle age, I have no fear of growing old. Aches and pains won't bother me.  I can handle day-long dental work and the heartbreak of liver spots.  My brittle hair can fall in blue cascades.

I just hope I don't get turkey elbows.

Because that's when you know your days are numbered. You look in the mirror one morning and even the skin beneath your elbows hangs down like a turkey's neck.  And then you get a bird feeder and a heating pad and crochet the last rites on all your pillowcases.

So I check my elbows daily with great dread.  The day I see turkey, I'll dodder right out and buy a lifetime supply of prunes (a remaining lifetime supply - probably three or four jars).

Many go to absurd lengths to hide their condition.  Sales of crude mechanical bicep clothespins and sundry other quack slack reducers are up as the turkey-elbow desperate gobble up the can't-fly-by-night hucksters' lotions and potions, scant last-ditch hope for the afflicted. 

Some, like Queen Elizabeth, wear absurdly long gloves up to their armpits and nobody has the heart to tell them, in their majesty, that they look ridiculous.  Or they do have the heart, but would also like to keep the head. 

(Mind you, turkey elbows are not the death sentence they once were. Many continue to lead active, productive lives well into their Butterball years.  Mick Jagger has turkey elbows and look at him!  I mean, eww, sure, but still.)

But nothing works. You can't fool Mother Nature, and you just can't hide your turkey elbows.

Clearly the time has come to lay to rest, as it were, the prejudices about turkey elbows that abound in our soon-to-be geriatric society.  Turkey elbows aren't quite as gag-reflex-inducingly revolting and horrifying and hideous as they were once universally thought, by all right-thinking people, to be.

Yet, one old lady I know, who has turkey elbows so bad that, when she swims, she looks like a manta ray, had to quit doing aquatics at the home because people were stampeding in panic to the deep end and drowning, including the staff and the emergency personnel.

Now, is this fair?  No.  Funny?  More study is required.  And after all, who among us is qualified to judge others just for being sick and disgusting and wrong?

Now, in no way do I wish to come across as insensitive or disrespectful, so before I receive dozens of angry letters from ancient readers, the ink smudged from taking naps between sentences, still cool where their elbows lay spread across the page, let me say that it is precisely this heartless flippancy and ignorance about an important health issue, parlaying a feigned concern for the victims' plight into cheap, heartless laughs, that has got to stop.

So cut it out, okay?

Promise?

Swear on the Queen.

Wanted: A Few Good Imbeciles

You know who doesn't get enough respect?

Imbeciles.  

I got ruminating today about imbeciles.  Not any particular imbeciles - my friends, for example - just imbeciles in general. And I've come to a few imbecilic conclusions of the sort that one always feels compelled to share.

In the comic books, if someone is calling you an imbecile, he's always the villain. The good guy never uses that term.  You never hear Superman say to Lex Luther, "Your evil plan for world domination will never succeed, you imbecile."  You must be villainous to use that word or you just sound rude.

But he isn't talking to the good guy. Because neither will you hear Doc Octopus say to Spiderman, "Victory is mine, you imbecile."  He'd call him Webbed Will-O'-The-Wisp or something. Standard name-calling doesn't cut it with an arch-nemesis; you have to make that extra creative effort.

No, if the villain is calling anyone an imbecile, it's his henchmen.

"How could you let him get away, you imbeciles?" is the sort of thing you'll hear a villain say. 

A villain's staff is comprised primarily of imbeciles.  The 'Henchmen Wanted' ad says 'Only Imbeciles Need Apply'. 

So it's not like they don't already know they're imbeciles.  It's just that, being imbeciles, they need reminding.

But it's hard to get good imbeciles anymore.

You would think it would be easy, because they're everywhere.  

Every time I'm in line at the supermarket, there's some imbecile ahead of me who wants to pay by cheque, and waited until her purchases were rung up before commencing the lengthy search for the chequebook, and then, as a brilliant afterthought,  for a pen, rather than rooting around for them earlier when she was still in line.  

And if you drive, you know that virtually everyone else on the road is in your way or a hazard.  Everywhere you look, it's tortoises and maniacs.  The only one operating a motor vehicle correctly is you. 

The reason?  They're all imbeciles.

But nowadays, any villain will tell you they don't make imbeciles like they used to.  All you can get now is screw-ups.  And that's just not the same. 

Besides, "After him, you screw-ups!" doesn't sound nearly as good as "After him, you imbeciles!"

Mind you, not all imbeciles are out in the open.  Sometimes it's not so obvious right away. Many women fall for men who seem utterly charming and later turn out to be imbeciles. 

And there are few things in life as disappointing as the surprise imbecile.

Now, at this point, I can hear my many disappointed readers clamouring pleadingly, "Wrap it up, you imbecile!"  

Very well.  It would be evil of me to torment you further. Villainous, even.

But if you come across any good imbeciles, send them my way, will you?  

I grow short of henchmen.

Trace Got (No) Back

(I'm sorry I was away for so long.  Contemplation temporarily took the place of creativity.  But I'm back and I intend to post much more frequently.  I know I've said this before, but I was lying back then.  Get off my back.)

My girlfriend Diane and I played host a while back to our friends Paul and Jessica who revealed, in the course of the evening, a startling secret:

There's no back.

I know.  You're shocked.  Amazed.  You can't believe it. 

You don't get it.

They were waxing nostalgic about their days in various retail outlets, serving customers, and how everybody always asked:

"Are there any in the back?"

We all make this inquiry.   We're convinced that, just out of sight in the rear, there's an endless cornucopia of merchandise that we want but that they won't put out.  The store employees are trained not to show it to us unless we're smart enough to ask to see it.  We pride ourselves on our canny shopping talents when we ask if it's in the back. 

It's back there.  We just know it is.  

But what we know is so often wrong, and Paul and Jess broke the news:

There's no back. 

I was taken aback to learn this. 

Apparently there's just this vast, barren wilderness back there, with a howling wind chasing the tumbleweeds around, like the Australian Outback.

No, the clerks patiently explain when you demand green slippers and all they have is grey.  There aren't any green slippers in the back.  We tend to place product on the sales floor so as to facilitate its sale.  If there were a backlog of stuff in the back, that would constitute some pretty shoddy ordering practises, now, wouldn't it? 

They don't say this last part, of course.  They just grit their back teeth till sparks fly, hoping one will land in your hair and ignite you in a blazing backdraft of fury.

But consumers live on hope.  If there just might, possibly, conceivably be some green slippers in the back, it can't hurt to ask, can it?

Yes, it can.  By the end of their shifts, the sales help are prepared to seize the next nimrod who asks by the back of the neck, slay him, and bury him out back. 

Particularly if you ask the Dreaded Dork Follow-Up Question: "Well, could you check?" 

Check?  Okay, check, I gotcha.  Check out my finger pointing to the check-out.

(Note it's not the index one.)

I could quit asking if it's in the back.  But I'd be haunted eternally, always wondering, in the back of my mind:

"What if it WAS in the back, if only I'd asked? Maybe they had it on back order.  I wish I could go back in time." 

So we're left with a horrible choice: 

Talk back and be a dork or back off and be a loser.  

I pick dork.

What do you say, loser?

Exam Bloopers

Marking Alpine piles of exams is not my favourite thing to do. But now and then, amongst all the drivel, one comes across a classic unintentional bit of comedy that lends a moment of joy to the tedium. Following are actual, unretouched bloopers from either a personal essay, a book review or a short story written by actual students on their exams this year. Teenagers are so cute when they think they're being profound. Names have been omitted to protect the innocent ignorant.

"James Frey is the character in the book who plays him in real life."
Wow. That's quite an honour. What more poignant evidence could there be that you have a drug problem than having a character in a book play you in real life? Viewed, of course, through the looking glass.

"He cured Paul from a severe urinal infection and cured Melinda, a good wife of the prison chief, from a brains tumour."
It's tough to be a good wife, especially with a brains tumour, an affliction that clearly has crippled the author of this line. But God. Can you imagine coming down with a urinal infection? I'm never lurking in public washrooms again. Let alone a bus depot, where I might contract a terminal illness.

"She experienced baby-sitting, drugs and racism."
The poor thing. Having to contend with the scourge of narcotics and the evils of racism is bad enough, but baby-sitting? Surely that's too much torment for anyone.

"Carrie White is a shy, ugly, fat, self-confident teenage girl."
Yes, sir. Nothing will boost your self-esteem higher than being shy, fat and ugly. If only she were smelly, too, she'd be on top of the world!

"The three main groups are the brainy acts or the nerds."
Somehow I suspect that the true brainy acts can count a bit better than this.

"Living a life without any boarders is whatever individual truly desires."
I wonder if this author is bedevilled by roomers or by skate-boarders? Whatever.

"She found out that Philip The Driver was killed; Chloe came out with fractional legs. They were charged with felony vehicular manslaughter and found out that they were intoxicated."
I'll bet they were shocked. 'What?!! We were intoxicated?! Do you think it had anything to do with all that drinking we did?' Poor Phil The Driver. He'll have to get a new job now. I wonder what fraction of her legs Chloe is left with? She could sue, perhaps. But she wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

"Rebel or follow society and the rules it sets. I can identify many examples to this thesis statement for those that rebelled and got boned."
Hmmm. I'm still not entirely clear what this 'thesis statement' is. I think it's 'Follow society if you don't want to get boned.' No contest, then. It's a rebel's life for me.

"The cross symbolism refers to the crucifixion of Christ, which occurred, of course, in two thousand BC."
What really makes this one a classic, is, of course, 'of course'. Like it goes without saying that Christ was crucified three thousand years before his birth. And 4008 years later, a descendant of Christ was crucified by his exam mark.

"I started getting the worst headaches ever. I would have to take the maximum amount of Tylenol a day. My mom was getting worried about me, so she took me to the doctor. The doctor told me that I just might be a person that gets headaches."
I went to the doctor once complaining of a broken leg. He theorized that I just might be a person with a broken leg. I thanked him, paid him five hundred dollars for his professional hypothesis and went home to take the maximum amount of Tylenol.

This is my favourite. It's pretty profound:
"Life comes from birth."
Yes, it certainly does. This author evidently received the same training in the obvious that doctors receive. Life, my friends, does indeed come from birth.

Kill me now.

Insomnia And Canadian Politics

Having attended more staff meetings than I care to count over the last couple of decades, I am no stranger to boredom. I am, I would say, an expert on the subject, believe me. But nothing is as boring to me as Canadian politics. The very thought of Canadian politics makes staff meetings seem like bungee jumping by comparison. Staff meetings bore me to tears, sure, and quite literally. But Canadian politics bores me very nearly to death.

I know there are people who find Canadian politics fascinating. They are themselves the most boring people on Earth. Nothing about politics in this country comes within a million billion miles of being interesting, so anyone who thinks otherwise should go live on an island somewhere and lead vapid lives of unrelenting tedium until they die and have dull speeches intoned at their dreary funerals.

American politics can be downright fascinating. The USA is the most powerful nation in the world, for heaven's sake. How could the presidency not be of interest to all? Men of tremendous charisma have occupied the oval office, from Lincoln to Kennedy to Clinton, and if Obama gets in, he'll bring a vitality and excitement to the White House that good ol' Bonehead Bush could only dream of. But name me a charismatic Canadian politician other than, arguably, Trudeau, and even he wasn't interesting anymore once he quit saying fuddle-duddle. Chretien had a moment of charisma when he tried to strangle a protestor with his bare hands, and sometimes he'd root around in his pants in public, which I always found tremendously entertaining in a mortifying sort of way, but other than that, are you kidding me? Our prime ministers are so drab they make highschool administrators look like rock stars.

We were forced, in school, to read Canadian history. And I was a dedicated and attentive straight-A student. But one paragraph into any chapter on Canadian history and my head would hit the desk with a THUNK they could hear in other neighbourhoods. I took numerous history courses that featured Canadian politics heavily in the curriculum and this is what I remember now: Nothing. Zilch. Nada. Not a single fact has stayed with me. I am not the least bit embarrassed to say this. I don't WANT that tripe cluttering up my mind.

Oh, they say, but if you actually went to Ottawa to sit in the visitor's gallery in Parliament, then you'd see some really lively stuff. Nonsense. I did once. I went there. I was asleep in nano-moments. The chaperones thought I had narcolepsy. Before the Speaker Of The House, or whatever he's called, had even begun speaking, I was out like the proverbial light. It's a pure self-defense mechanism. There's only so much boredom the human brain can take.

I met the Prime Minister a couple of years ago. Paul Martin (I had to really concentrate just now even to remember his name) came to Burlington to visit a campaign office at the plaza across from the high school where I work. Cool, I thought. I'll go see if I can catch a glimpse of him. This'll be pretty exciting, I figured. So I walked over there, and lo and behold, sure enough, there he was. He strode off the bus and worked his way down a line of people shaking hands. It was winter and I had my hands in the pockets of my jacket. I didn't take them out to shake his hand until he was right in front of me. I saw no RCMP security. Nobody asked me in advance to please take my hands out of my pockets. If that had been the president and my hands had been in my pockets as he approached, the Secret Service would've been on me like Bill on Monica and I would've been picked up and hustled out of there faster than you could've said Ken Starr. But our national security personnel know that Canadian politicians' monotony is their chief protection. They're so boring nobody has ever gotten worked up enough about them to shoot one. If an American gets to shake hands with the president, it's a story he'll tell for the rest of his life to his envious friends and family. I tried telling my story to some friends of mine and they were snoring and drooling in an instant. Some of them fell down and hit their heads. I'm lucky they didn't sue me.

If I ever can't sleep, I just get up and put on the Parliament channel and boom, I'm sawing logs before I can put the remote down. I've nodded off three times just trying to write this blog. Canadian politics are boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, moreso even than a sentence that has the word 'boring' in it six times.

I'm never writing about this again. If I do, please send Chretien over to strangle me.

The Universal Parent

Most of us become parents someday, and we're happy about that. What we don't expect is to turn into our parents. But we do, because all parents are essentially the same. The quirks of parenthood are universal. Despite the many variations, we all had basically the same upbringing. Nothing will ever break the horrifying cycle.

All mothers are obsessed with the state of your room when you're a kid. It's all she thinks about all day. I'm sure Charles Manson's mom thought he was as good as gold as long as his bed was made. And she'll always say the same thing when she comes in. "This room is a pigsty!" Mothers are fixated on pigsties. I'm not even sure what a 'sty' is, exactly. I know it's something that isn't good in your eye. Mom sure kept her eye on my room. "How can you live like this?" she'd say. "In my room, you can eat off my floors." I'd say, "Well, you can eat off mine, too, Mom. There's a sandwich over there...some pizza over here..." Needless to say, she was not amused.

Parents are also obsessed with the roof. Every aspect of your behaviour is ultimately about the roof. "As long as you are living under my roof, you will abide by my rules," they will intone like a mantra until the nano-second you leave home. I always wondered whether, if I slept on the roof, they'd be okay with my drinking whiskey and smoking cigars and having hookers up there.

You aren't allowed to touch the thermostat. That's the big sacred taboo device in your life. Even when you grow up, you can't go near it. You might be old enough to drink and drive and vote and get drafted into the Air Force to fly stealth bombers, but your parents feel you are not qualified to operate the thermostat. I used to wait till they went out and touch it with a long stick and a trembling hand. But somehow they always knew. A parent's sixth sense is spooky, that's what it is.

And they can never agree on a setting for the thermostat. Your mother likes the comfort of the Antarctic and your father prefers the surface of the sun. With all that hot air going back and forth, it's no wonder your room "looks like a tornado went through it".

Also strictly off-limits is your mother's 'good scissors'. You never hear her calling for the crappy scissors. She always has a job that requires the good scissors, presumably cutting the ribbon for newly-built city halls or something, and you'll never, as long as you live, be allowed to use them. And your dad has his special sharp knife that's only for neurosurgery, apparently. Which you use for cutting cardboard boxes when he isn't around. In my neighbourhood, there were children who mysteriously disappeared one day for doing that. Never saw them again. Their folks claimed they ran away and joined the circus, but there were mysterious fresh mounds of earth in the flowerbed that they could never quite explain.

If you hold the fridge door open long enough for the light rays to reach your eyes so you can see what's in there, they lose it completely and shriek at you like horrified banshees. That's a capital offense to most parents. This is why Superboy was forced to develop x-ray vision.

Taking a slice of bread from the middle of the loaf is another heinous crime. To a kid, the slice that's on the end is deadly poison. You want a nice, fresh, soft piece from the forbidden middle. But try taking one and they'll feel perfectly justified lopping off your fingers with the good scissors.

What sick compulsion is it that drives your dad to come pounding on the door of the bathroom demanding to know what you're doing in there? Sky-diving, he figures, perhaps? Bull-fighting? It's weird, and it's really creepy. Mind you, I never knew what he did in there, either, other than that, whatever it was, it rendered the place uninhabitable by human beings for at least a full day afterward.

And what mental disease convinces your mother that your friends, and even worse, your dates, want to see your baby pictures? Is this just some cruel retribution for the pain of childbirth or does she feel abject mortification builds character somehow? The French Foreign Legion is full of children who signed up to flee the embarrassment.

One day we'll come to the stunned realization, all of us, that we do every one of these things. And then we'll face the sickening reality that we have somehow morphed into the one entity we vowed most vehemently we'd never be - our parents. I'd kill myself now, before that day comes, but I have more important things to do. I have to go check on my sons' rooms.

It looks like a bomb went off in there.

Warning: This Comedy May Be Funny (Use Eyes To Read)

Warnings are standard on all sorts of products. Surely we could thin the human herd by getting rid of the ninnies for whom some are intended. Here are some real ones I saw on a list of ludicrous warning labels and directions, along with some I encountered myself. What's scary is that these warnings wouldn't be on there if somebody hadn't sued and the legal department deemed it prudent to put these caveats right on the package. Each one must have such a bone-headed story behind it.

This was on a jar of peanuts:
PEANUTS
WARNING: CONTAINS NUTS
Remember, when buying a jar of nuts, always make sure to check that there aren't any nuts in it.

And this was a packet of airline peanuts' opening instructions:
1. OPEN PACKET
2. EAT NUTS
I felt so dumb. I'd been eating the nuts and then trying to open the packet with my esophagus.

Lots of salad dressings say SHAKE BEFORE OPENING. I sure wish I'd read the fine print before I spent all those years wiping dressing off the ceiling.

On an iron:
WARNING: DO NOT IRON CLOTHES ON BODY
You'd have to be in a very big hurry indeed to put your clothes on in the morning and then iron them. Talk about being pressed for time. (I'm going to buy a drum just so I can do my own rimshots.)

On Christmas lights:
FOR INDOOR AND OUTDOOR USE ONLY
What, only those two places? Nowhere else? Seems unduly proscriptive to me.

Are you one of those people who require the shampoo instructions that say WET HAIR? What would you do if, like, your boss missed those directions and showed up every day at work with a blob of shampoo in his dry hair? Would you mention it? Or be more discreet? Maybe lure him out in the rain a lot.

I can't recall what the product was for this warning, but it said NOT TO BE USED FOR THE OTHER USE. Kind of makes the other use superfluous, doesn't it? One wonders what the point is of having another use if it can't be used for it.

Do we need the caution on sideview mirrors that OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR? Were drivers getting in accidents while watching smugly for tiny transports on the horizon?

I saw this on a TV dinner foil tray: PRODUCT WILL BE HOT WHEN HEATED. I'm sure glad they told me. How could I possibly have anticipated that something will be hot when heated? I'm suing the city for putting up that metal lamppost I licked this winter. It didn't have a sign alerting me that it would be cold when frozen.

A chainsaw actually had a warning saying DO NOT ATTEMPT TO STOP CHAINSAW WITH YOUR HANDS. As I say, the frightening thing is that somebody must've tried to do this or the lawyers wouldn't have advised that such a warning be added. I'm sure somebody has sued when he tried to stop one with his feet, too. But he wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

On a bottle of children's cough syrup it said DO NOT INGEST AND DRIVE OR OPERATE HEAVY MACHINERY. This is for the protection of the public against crazed tykes all hopped up on syrup, roaring maniacally down the highway in combine harvesters.

Here's my favourite, on a bottle of sleep medication: MAY CAUSE DROWSINESS. Are you serious? Sleep medication may cause drowsiness? I'm shocked. I only take it when I'm out of amphetamines and I want to stay up for a few days.

I should wrap this up, lest this blog require the warning CAUTION: FURTHER CHEESE AHEAD. But this is the end.

STOP READING NOW.

Life's A Beach And Then You Fry

Yesterday was a momentous day, and one I look forward to with such keen anticipation every year that I am compelled to vent my eagerness by running around, for hours in advance of the great event, in little tight circles of glee until I get dizzy and smack my face into a wall and rupture a sinus. It's the first day I get to the beach.

The beach is by far my favourite place on earth. When I die, I don't want to go to heaven. I just want to go to the beach.

Settle down, the multitudes implore me. It's only the Burlington beach, they chant. Sure, but you have to understand that I'm from Sudbury. The beach up there is made of rock, without any water. Comparatively speaking, this is paradise. (Mind you, compared to my hometown, so is a sucking bog.)

I love everything about the beach strip here in Burlington. The promenade by Spencer Smith Park is beautiful and growing nicer every year as new playgrounds and lookout places, etc., spring up. (I'm enchanted by the tornado machine in the Discovery Landing pavillion next to Spencer's restaurant. I like sticking my hand in it like a seven-year-old because that's about where my maturity levelled off early in life.) People walk slow and smile at each other like they have all the time in the world. When I stroll along that lakefront every day in summer, I'm not a teacher. I'm just a guy with no earthly responsibilities. It's all I can do not to break into frolic every few steps, like a springtime lamb of joy on valium.

I've been walking the beach here for twenty-one years. I like to saunter all the way to the 'lighthouse' and try to time it so a ship is passing through the canal as I get there. It's an awesome and almost eerie experience to watch a big ship go by a few feet away. I always wave at the people onboard. Sometimes they don't wave back and I'm depressed for days.

They're working on an amazing new pedestrian pier that looks futuristic and breath-taking in the drawings they've posted on the big walls that keep the pedestrians out. The sign says it's scheduled for completion in Spring of 2008, which, in that it has already passed, seems unlikely now. But then, nobody believed that deadline anyway. Everyone knows that all construction projects' completion predictions are a big, fat, odious tissue of lies. But it had better jolly well be finished soon, or I'm going to grow very bitter and go down there daily and hurl abuse at the workmen until they cement me into one of the support pillars like my will stipulates anyway.

The water's polluted. That truly sucks. It's surreal, that's what it is. Idiots. Did you know they used to pour raw sewage merrily into the lake? To this day, mystery beach mucous collects at the edge of the water sometimes, in vast, vile quantities, and then is gone mysteriously the next day. I don't want to know what it is and I don't want to know where it goes. There's a whole separate level of hell for the numbskulls who allowed the lake to become so polluted it was forever bespoiled, along with the savages who insist on playing rap 'music' from big ghetto blasters on the beach when I'm trying to lie on it.

But still. That beach, somehow, regardless, sure is nice. Again, compared to Sudbury. At least the water isn't orange like in the 'stream' that ran around the park by the highschool I attended up there.

I have far too much work to do at the moment to go beach-walking as often as I'd like, but if you see me in a few weeks, ambling blissfully along at the water's edge, iPod playing cheery tunes, soaking up the rays, take note. You are seeing that rare thing, a completely present-moment-centered, entirely happy man. I'll be grooving to the waves, and I'll wave back if you do as I nurture a tan that never did seem to dry my skin to sandpaper consistency and cause giant tumours to sprout from my pores like the 'experts' said it would. You'll see a human being for whom all is well in his world. And that's something you can tell your grandchildren you glimpsed with your very own eyes.

Yes, life's a beach and then you fry. That's my motto of life. It works for me and it can work for you. But don't tell anybody else, okay? It's just between you & me and the sand.

And that ampersand.

The Canadian Art Of Never Being Satisfied

I'm loving these soaring temperatures. Two of the cheeriest words I can see in a sentence are 'heat' and 'wave'. The sun could come down to within twelve feet of my head and roast me alive and I would be a very happy man. We had the most brutal, vicious, unrelenting winter ever on record. Now sky-high temperatures in the thirties are here. And yet I hear nothing but complaints from people.

I don't mean to put these people down or disrespect them in any way, but they are dumb and they should die. Have you forgotten the bone-chilling misery of this past winter, you chronic grousers? Has the fact that, for six months, your chief activity was shivering escaped your recall somehow? Short of an act of Parliament, what will it take to make you finally content? Get out of my country. Go live in Guam. You're getting on my nerves.

I realize it's the Canadian Way, a sacred Canuck tradition, to grumble about the weather no matter what. But come on. Get real. Half a year of Antarctica, followed by the wettest, chilliest non-Spring ever, FINally yields to some genuinely glorious weather and it's too hot? Give me a break. Or, better, let me give you one, in your femur. These are people who, if they were starving to death, and you came along and gave them a five-course meal, would whine that it was too salty.

But it's not the heat, they say, it's the humidity. No, it's the stupidity. Nobody's wild about humidity, I'll grant you. But everything is relative. That's why they call it the relative humidity. Compared to freezing, humidity is a gracious gift from God. Every day of the Winter Of My Dire Discontent, I prayed aloud for humidity. Please, Lord, I beseeched the ice-encrusted heavens, let it get stuffy. Let my clothes cling damply to my reeking armpits. Send, dear God, some humidity to save me. But no. I suffered frigidly on.

Those days are gone now, though, believe me, they will remain forevermore a traumatic memory. I welcome the humidity that has taken their place like occupied countries rolled out the carpet for the Soviets that liberated them from the Nazis. Neither is optimal, but one is WAY better than the other.

So put up, my country kin. And shut up. Breathe the moistened air deep into your soggy lungs, nurse your joyful sunburns and count your balmy blessings. Take your rightful place in the world of global warming. Run out into the streets and spray aerosol cans festively into the air.

Like the song says,

"I can't get no satisfaction. I must be Canadian."

A LIttle Pizza Heaven

When I think of the greatest invention in the history of the world, it isn't the wheel or fire or fibre optics. Clearly it's pizza. What, I ask you, could possibly be more wonderful? If a genie appeared and gave me three wishes, only one of them would be for world peace. The other two would be for pizza.

I remember the first time I had pizza. I was five. My parents opened the box and I was revolted. No way was I going to have any. I couldn't believe how disgusting it looked. But I was hungry, so finally I was persuaded to try a piece. When I had my first bite, my life changed. An eternal love affair sprang to life. I begged for more. I haven't stopped craving it to this day.

In my kitchen closet that I use for storage, there's always a pile of pizza boxes that I've been procrastinating throwing out. I hate to part with them. If you've had gold, you don't like to discard the jewellery box.

I'm not much of a glutton. I try to stay as slim as I can. I eat moderate quantities, generally. But I can down a large pizza in fifteen minutes flat. I turn into some sort of insatiable beast when you put a pizza in front of me. Do I feel like a pig? Nope. In fact, I'm bursting with pride.

Nobody can ever agree on toppings. People's taste in pizza toppings is as variable as fingerprints. Pizza, therefore, is a symbol of the sacred Canadian talent for compromise. Anchovies seem to be the least popular topping. I realize they're basically centipedes. But mmmm. I don't care.
You could put cockroaches on pizza and I'd gobble them up with gusto.

Pizza is like sex. Even when it's bad, it's still pretty good. I have very rarely had pizza I didn't like. I admit, though, that I'm not real wild about Pizza Pizza pizza, which sucks sucks sucks. But I have been known to order super ultra jumbo-size pizza from places that aren't my favourite pizza joints, strictly on the ground that I got a deal on it. Bad pizza is still a good deal if you get a whole bunch of it for a great price. But everyone seems to agree that Pizza Hut pizza is the best. It's gourmet pizza. They have an all-you-can-eat buffet at a Pizza Hut near me. I pleaded with them to allow me to move in and actually live on the premises. They refused. It was the most heartbreaking letdown of my life.

I love that you can pick up a phone and have steaming hot pizza whisked to your door. I can't think of anything I'd rather open my door and see. The Swedish bikini team, perhaps. But if they were holding pizza, I have to admit I'd admit them a lot faster.

I'd like to go on about the many wondrous delights of pizza, but I'm getting a bit lightheaded. I ordered some a few minutes ago, and I'm holding my breath until it gets here. If I pass out, good. It'll make the wait more bearable. So bye for now.

It's been a slice.

Laugh At This, At Least

You know what has always really freaked me out and made me profoundly uncomfortable? Humourless people. People who absolutely never laugh, who appear not to LIKE to laugh. There's something about that that's way spookier than, oh, I don't know, say, poltergeists. It's wrong. That's what it is. It's just plain wrong.

I encounter humourless students fairly often. They're a small minority, but you see them all the time. The class will be roaring over something hilarious somebody said and you look over and there's one or two kids that can be counted on to sit grim-faced no matter what. And you just want to smack them. Until they laugh.

I'm not talking about dumb people who don't GET jokes. That's excusable, I guess, though sad. I mean folks who have intellect but appear not to enjoy jokes. Who find laughing a chore. That's outright scary to me.

I don't know what I'd do if I were the parent of a humourless child. Two words come to mind, however. Ice floe.

I feel guilty sometimes for disdaining humourless people. It's a possibility that they were traumatized in childhood or something and all the mirth went out of them. But I don't know. Sometimes you just get the impression that they almost look down on humour. Like you must when something is beneath you.

You just want to scream, "LIGHTEN UP!" and light them on funny fire.

I don't think we should sit idly by and let the humourless be a drag on everybody else's fun. I think we should round 'em up. Stick 'em on planes. Send them to a really unfunny place. Russia comes to mind. Where everybody looks like somebody just dropped an iron curtain on their foot. Where citizens are required by law to be grim-faced. Which would explain why the most popular comedian there is Paulie Shore.

I just realized the irony of this little piece on humourlessness. It's by far my least funny one yet. Dear God. I'm spooking myself.

Am I horrified?

Da.

My iPod And i

This is a horrible secret to confess, but if there were a fire and it came down to rescuing my loved ones or my iPod, I'd probably have to flip hot coins.

Most things in lifeI could live without in a pinch if I had to, except air and water and Start Me Up by the Stones. But if I had to give up oxygen or my iPod, I'd need some time to think.

Because what a wondrous device. Wow. I used to make a ton of mixed cassette tapes, and I remember getting all excited when 120-minute tapes came out, in the Bronze Age, because you could fit so many songs on them. Making playlists now is so mind-bogglingly easy and enjoyable in comparison that I honestly don't believe human beings should be allowed to have so much fun. If you had told me then that in a few years there would be a thin little gadget that fit in my palm that would hold my entire music collection plus thousands of tunes more, I would've thought you were a liar and punched you repeatedly. It's a marvel, that's what the iPod is. A triumph of mankind. Like pizza, but even better, and, believe me, that's saying more than you can ever know.

So when I say I really like my iPod, I don't mean I've grown immensely fond of it or anything that pedestrian. I now actively worship it, prostrating myself spontaneously before it in tribute at odd moments and praying to it loudly at night to solve my many horrifying problems. I carry it near my heart wherever I go, in the breast pocket of my shirts and jackets. I like it better than things that others die for, like freedom. In the spirit of openness and candor, I'll bet I like it a billion times more than, oh, say, you. No offense, I hope. I'm just saying.

An iPod puts a soundtrack on your day. You walk around with mood music playing that accentuates each 'scene' in the movie of your life. The problem is that you can get to the point where you neglect the script by avoiding dialogue. I'm ambling down the hall of my building on Shuffle. No Rain by Blind Melon comes on. Instantly I am transported to a rapturous place! My very molecules frolic, galvanized by the happy surprise! But wait! There, at the elevator! It's that really nice old couple that always want to chat so pleasantly! Damn! Now I'll have to hit Pause, and I would much rather fling them down the shaft. My God. What kind of a monster am I becoming? You worry about yourself sometimes, with an iPod.

Actually, when you think about it, iPods bring the generations together. The elderly like iPods. They don't own any, but they like them. Because now young and old alike can relate to walking around going, "WHAAAT?" Pointing apologetically at their ears. "I CAN'T HEAR YOU." It's a bonding thing.

If I ever lost my iPod, I would begin systematically pillaging houses door to door, slaughtering the occupants, until I found it. This also, sadly, is not hyperbole.

You might be surprised to know that I actually am not terribly fond of the name "iPod". I think it sounds too much like some kind of plant that eats you in a science fiction movie or something. I think it should be called simply The Wonderful Thing.

That's my motto. "Life Is A Wonderful Thing."

Now, when I say it, you'll know what I mean.

My Secret Sin

It's probably not entirely commendable to admit I'm a fan of the show COPS. It's become the same sort of guilty, unadmitted pleasure known to readers of the Enquirer. But I am, and I just bought the new 20th anniversary dvd set, and I often record the show. I don't go around admitting it to the world, that's all. Only to my loyal blog readers. It's a secret, just between us, okay? Swear?

There was a Canadian version of COPS. It sucked like an imploding star. Its title was the worst in the entire history of television - B.A.C. It stood for Battle Against Crime. That was the best they could come up with. I think they should've just gone ahead and called it WGN for We Got Nothin'. It would've been more honest and a lot less lame.

And it was DULL. First of all, the Canadian cops, in the tried and true Canadian way, were always chiefly concerned with being ultra-polite to the crooks. They were like, "Look, I'm awfully sorry, and I don't mean to be rude, but put your hands behind your back, okay, please, sir? You're under arrest, eh? But we deeply regret it." In the American show, they're civil to the suspects, but you just sense that, if there weren't a camera crew there, 'suspect' would mean 'suspected skull fracture' for the poor purple perp.

And the BAC episodes focussed, as they tend to now with To Serve And Protect, which is only marginally better than BAC, but with a way better title, on the most mundane crimes. Every episode of COPS has high-speed chases and shootouts and robberies and brawls and bloodshed. On the Canadian cops shows, it's usually speeders and college kids partying too loudly and serial litterers. Once, I swear this is true, the little blurb in the TV Guide for COPS said "Domestic violence call; tanker trailer chase; drugstore hold-up" and the ad for BAC said "Cops battle mosquitoes". I nearly emigrated on the spot.

It's an educational show. I've learned a lot watching COPS. I did not know that the vast majority of crimes in America are committed in trailer parks by men without shirts. I didn't realize that all hookers are so rotund and hideous (and, as it turns out in the end, so to speak, male). I didn't know that the standard police question of bystanders is, "Where's he at?" I had no idea that the first command a policeman generally gives an arrestee is, "Put down your beer." (Actually, I guess that last one would probably apply equally to Canadians, except that up here the suspect would've already voluntarily put his down for fear of spilling some.)

A buddy of mine eschews COPS, saying he can't stand to watch, as alleged entertainment, people being busted. (I think his true attitude is probably, "There but for the grace of God go I.") Yet he watches those shows in which camera crews turn up where cheaters are trying to have affairs. And I've never seen anybody more busted than those poor losers.

So yes, I admit it, shoot me with a standard-issue thirty-eight, but I enjoy COPS, okay?

I know, I know. Bad boy, bad boy.

But whatcha gonna do?