Recently, Spouse and I attended the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto. A friend of ours was competing in the Talent Class show jumping competition at the Royal. Her first round of competition – in Friday night’s class – didn’t go so well, and we both felt terrible for our friend because we knew she would be disappointed if the second round of the competition on Saturday night didn’t go well. I just had a feeling that something good was going to happen for her, so Saturday night I brought along the video camera and got some footage of her riding “Pablo” – to a second place finish!
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Spouse and I were on the way home from work last night. It was a Bad Day At The Office for both of us, and we were verging on homicidal as we made our way home in sullen silence. We were stopped at a traffic light, awash in our misanthropy, when we both became aware (as if you could ignore it) of a green minivan pulling up next to us. Although the day was a mite chilly (Canada in mid November – what do you expect?), the asshat operating said minivan had the windows all the way down. Why, you ask? Well, because the teenage driver was treating us all to a sampling of his music at a reasonable volume – if by “reasonable volume” you mean “John Bonham playing Moby Dick while falling downstairs – with six screaming jet engines stuffed in his pockets” (he didn’t have the Zep on the radio – it was some boom-chicky disco shite that was completely unrecognizable, so profound was the harmonic distortion involved in this particular reproduction of the recording). Spouse and I just kind of looked at each other and smiled knowingly; not like we haven’t each been guilty of similar offences somewhere in our distant pasts. As the van drove away, I spied the license plate on the vehicle: “MRS RNEE”. We both just busted out laughing – so fervent and misplaced is the desire to be cool of the last of the rock and roll outlaws that he is prepared to pump the tunes in his Mama’s minivan. Gather near to you all those that you hold dear, for the plundering Viking hordes are descending upon us, and they have their Mom’s Plymouth Voyagers with vanity plates. All that was missing was the hydraulics and glowing neon underbelly. Message to dude: you are not cool. I’m not claiming that I am either, but I accept my inner minivan rather than loudly denying its existence. I’ve been reading Catch-22 as part of NaNoReMo. One of my virtual book club companions has complained, over at defective yeti, that the discussion to date has been a little shallow. Quoth Anneke:
I agree, and I want to learn about the literary merit of this book too. Click here to continue reading Where’s an essay-eating dog when you need one? Okay, so there has been a slight hitch in my plan to blog along with Matthew about my progress through this year’s selection for National Novel Reading Month (NaNoReMo) – Catch 22. When the winning book was announced, I reflected rather smugly to myself about how easy this was going to be to follow along. After all, I’ve read the book at least twice before, and I know that I already have a copy. Bring on the challenge! Then November 1st arrived and I celebrated the beginning of NaNoReMo by trying to find my copy of the book. I believe my copy of the book is somewhere in the basement, packed away with all my other treasures – backissues of Sports Illustrated, a Sega Genesis game system, two steering wheel/pedal assemblies, neither of which work with my current video game system, approximately 8 tons of fishing tackle, and a large quantity of very stylish (no doubt) clothing that has become, over time, slightly smaller than it used to be when it fit me, shall we say, more generously. Several hours were expended sliding boxes of priceless mementos over just so in order to permit access to further caches of mind-numblingly valuable heirlooms. I am not so much “pleased” as “able” to report that Spouse and I returned from an excursion to Chapters last night, with a brand spankin’ new copy of Catch-22 in the bag. Progress report: Chapters read: Two. Percentage Complete: I don’t really know what page I got to. Can I just say “insignificant”? Words looked up: None. I was armed with prior knowledge of “damask” and “infundibuliform” by reading Matthew’s blog and the comments. Favourite moment from the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair Horse Show, this past Friday afternoon: A demonstration of fox hunting was being given in the Ricoh Coliseum before an audience of perhaps seven thousand somewhat bemused spectators in attendance to watch show jumping competitions. The fox hunting demonstration involved several horses ridden by the various guys all decked out in the their fancy fox hunting regalia, and a pack of about thirty to forty hounds who were trained to do what hounds do during a fox hunt. The demonstrators showed us how the hounds forge ahead, looking for a fox in response to certain horn blasts, and how the hounds quickly return to the hunters in response to another set of horn blasts. Actually, that’s not quite how it worked. As it happened, the horn guy, seated on horseback at the south end of the Coliseum, played blast number one and the pack of hounds went yelping and whorlping in a flash down to the north end of the building. Horn guy then did blast number two and most of the hounds yelped and whorlped and wagged their tails back to the south end. There were two dogs, however, who stopped – right in the middle of the ring, approximately where the red line would be when the Marlies take to the ice, mind you – hunched over, and defecated. The end result was that there were seven thousand people gathered around, at least for a few minutes, watching two dogs take a crap. These are the precious memories. November 1st has arrived, and with the coming of November is the Royal Winter Fair. Spouse and I are in the Big Smoke to take in the agricultural and equine fesitivites. This is my first time staying in the City as a guest for any protracted length of time since I left in 1998. It feels a little odd. Tonight, Spouse and I met up with some old friends of mine – co-workers and colleagues when I first began my working life, with my first “real” job. The evening was filled with reminiscences of all the many things that happened lo those many years ago. My friend Rhonda perhaps put it best when she said “we thought we were so groovy, but we really weren’t.” True. We weren’t “groovy”. At least not me; I was a square peg in a round hole. Some of the others may have been – they at least have become very successful in their field. The truth is that we were all struggling to find our way in the working world and trying not to let our various insecurities completely overcome our ability to continue pressing ahead. I am gratified by the strength of the bonds we built together in those hectic few years. The place we worked was a kind of a crucible in many ways, testing the supposed “fortitude” of each of its denizens in a twisted and ultimately unproductive way, and the natual outcome in so many such social situations is one of intense competition and backstabbing. I am happy to report that none of that happened amongst our little group and we emerged, each of us, with our integrity and friendships intact. People often ask me whether I miss living in Toronto. I always tell them that I do not, but that I miss the people I knew in this city. Tonight’s get together makes me all the more aware of that fact; I had some most excellent friends in this city that I do not, as a result of geography, get to see as often as I should anymore. One of the things I’ve been struggling with recently (yes, that was me that you saw wrasslin’ on the floor with the toaster, an artichoke and some precast concrete yesterday) is Blender. Blender is As mentioned on the sidebar, one of the sites I occasionally visit – okay, “haunt daily” is defective yeti. Your amiable host at dy is Matthew Baldwin, whose great sense of humour permeates the entire site. He occasionally shares a little bit of his own satirical writing. If you check out the site, be sure to search the archives for the White House Text (Mis)Adventure – a funny bit that combines reference to the old Infocom text adventure games and the current inhabitant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. with hilarious results. Recently, Matthew posted reviews of some DVDs he’d been watching, one of which was Deadwood, a show that I haven’t got around to watching yet – though my brother gave me the box set of the first season last year for Christmas. No, it is not that I did not like the gift, I’ve just been a little busy, okay ? Spouse and I just recently finished watching The Sopranos, – I’d never watched even a single episode until this summer, so you can see that we’re playing a little catch-up here. Anyway, my point is that Deadwood has been on the list, but has remained in the “on deck” pile nonetheless, as a result of some quality material preceding it in priority. Matthew’s review has piqued my interest, though (he promised gunfights and robots, or at least half of those things – which sounds like a can’t miss recipe for entertainment to me) so I will be moving Deadwood to the front of the queue. I left a comment at his site to tell him about one of the other series that has gotten in the way of my Deadwood viewing. Here’s what I wrote:
While I can, I need to get at it and start talking some smack about one of my Rotisserie hockey teams. This year marks the return of a family-based hockey pool in our clan. The draft was Thursday night, and my charges were quick off the mark when league play officially began last evening. As of this morning, my team is perched atop the standings with a whopping 99.5 points out of a possible 121. Now it is well known that my fantasy hockey squads long ago cornered the market on mediocrity – rarely have I appeared in the standings at any time above fourth place, and I generally run about middle of the pack when all is said and done. Needless to say, the front office is jubilant and everyone is wandering around with fingers crossed – which would explain all the coffee spills in the meeting rooms here at Junior’s Jokers HQ. It’s tough to hold a coffee mug with your fingers crossed.
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