Thursday, March 29, 2007

Caught In A Web The Spider Left Behind


I gave her my heart, take it she (w)could not.
Wondering if I hadn’t, what fate may have brought.
Circumstance cut us down.
Thoughts of her I try to drown
Out my mind as has often been the case,
My own reflection I avoid to try and save face.
The world I would have given,
Cruel reality, my world has taken.
Reminded each day of what once was,
Fond memories mask some of our hidden flaws.
Move on I try yet still she remains,
I hated and hardened with contempt and disdain.
For why had I fallen with nothing to hold?
My hands searched deep finding only fool’s gold.
The anger, a façade lasting but a few days,
Set forth on a new path to find a better way.
So let go of her I did with nary another sight,
Looking from afar as her wings took flight.
It stops me dead to know I may not have mattered
Dwell on it I won’t, lest my mind get tattered.
I am a better man through my time with her,
That feeling I’ll know again in the future.
Though further away with each new smile I meet,
Every time I see her name my heart still skips a beat.

Monday, March 26, 2007

Off My Chest

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

There are a precious few things bugging me these days. I've recently admitted to myself that I've made a few mistakes in the last year and have started about resolving those things. So in that regard, my head is starting to get into a good place. I've been working hard and so have most of the other guys and girl on my shift. There is one person though that has to do their best to ruin that flow and this is my gripe about him.

I'll save the name so identifiers are not put out there. Last night we were pretty busy on the job. There was a lot going on and not all of us were available to help out when it got really busy. This individual and one of the rookies were free as an special project unit. The understanding is that if you're on that detail and it gets busy, you're obliged to help out and take a call. Well in his world that doesn't apply to him.

Problem is when he first got on the job he knew a lot of people in our station already so he became very comfortable too quickly. He doesn't pull too much stuff with guys that have been on for a while and have more experience than he does. Problem is of late that he's been partnered up with someone with less experience than he does. Mind you he's barely over probation himself but he's acting like he's got way more experience than he does.

What he did last night was completely un-professional and set a bad example for the new guy. While he was no good at doing any work what so ever, the only thing he was successful in accomplishing last night was pissing off everyone else he works with. There were literally emergency situations happening with only one person going to deal with it yet he sat idly by not jumping on the situation and offering to help. The new guys were even commenting that it seemed odd that he wasn't offering lend a hand and it was more than noticed by the rest of us...

Now we have to find a way to deal with him... Grumble Grumble Grumble...

Friday, March 23, 2007

A 5 Point Post


The good: As much as I was happy to have the snow a few 5 pts ago, I'm happy that spring is starting to poke its head out of the clouds. My baby, or as I like to refer to her, the only lady over the last few years to stick by me, has been pent up inside for the winter and she wants out. It'll be nice to take her out and pamper her again with road trips with scenic lake front stops and visits to our favourite coffee and dessert cafe. After all it's not all the time that both of you go through something where one or both could, and quite possibly should have died and made it through even more devoted to one another. : )

The bad: What's going on with teachers sleeping with their students these days? In recent weeks I have heard of at least 3 or 4 teachers getting caught for their trysts and having the law step in to sort them out. At first I thought this was an American phenomenon starting off with Mary Kay Letourneau and her student husband but it has transcended boarders with a teacher here in Toronto 7 months pregnant with her student's baby. The second part of this is that of the teachers that have made the news lately, they have been all female teachers. And with some of the photos, they appear to be educated, good looking women as well. I don't know if their looks have anything to do with it, but it is a peculiar point of interest. Secondly, I am not naive enough to believe that it's only female teachers sleeping with their students. I know male teachers have done the same with their female students but for whatever reason, and feel free to opine on the matter, they don't find their names in the news.

The funny and in this case, wise: I was sitting down with my grandfather yesterday afternoon watching a little television and enjoying a meal when we got to talking about the lottery. Yesterday night's lottery was worth 20 million dollars and the dreams and hallucinations quickly started on my end. After all, there is pretty much nothing you can not do when you've got 20 mil at your disposal. As he filled out his ticket slip, Grampa or Kung Kung as we call him in Chinese, asked me if I'd bought my tickets yet. He did so while handing me my own lotto slip to fill out. As I started to fill out my slip, he said to me, "wait, we share our tickets and go 50 / 50. 20 million is too much money for a young guy like you and 20 million is too much for an old guy like me". I guess he figured that I might waste it and he wouldn't be able to spend it all. I guess you would have had to have been there to get the full feel of it, but the wisdom runs deep within him I tells ya.

The sad: The war in the Middle East has hit a new low, at least in my opinion. The Americans need to leave there as soon as possible. The war is one that should have never happened and its conclusion now seems even farther away than ever with the commitment of even more troops to the region, especially in Iraq. On the flip side, these "insurgents" that have been labeled as the enemy are reaching new despicable lows in their own rights. It is now practice to use (sacrifice) innocent children as decoys to get past security checks into guarded areas. Once in, the adults park the car close to their intended targets and then run from it, leaving the children inside the car as the explosives are detonated. This insanity has got to end some time.

The down right odd: Officials have tried poison, gassing and euthanasia to control a breeding frenzy among squirrels in a city park in Santa Monica. Now, they plan to give birth control a shot. Under a new program to start this summer, squirrels in Palisades Park will be injected with an immuno-contraceptive vaccine to stunt their sexual development. The intention is not to kill them if needs not be, but parks staff also have to be receptive to the county's concerns. Health officials say the squirrels, which number about 1,000 in the park, pose a public health risk. They warn that the rodents are aggressive and may carry rabies or host fleas that can spread disease, such as bubonic plague. Since 1998, Santa Monica has been cited five times by Los Angeles County for squirrel overpopulation. But the suppression methods it has used, including euthanasia, have angered animal-loving activists.

City officials say the infertility shots offer a diplomatic solution. The vaccine, developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, stops ovulation and lactation in female squirrels, and testicular development in males. The shots, running $2 to $10, have no side effects such as swelling, cited a USDA wildlife biologist.

A local animal activist supports the vaccine program but believes any health risk posed by the squirrels is overblown. "There is not a pressing threat of squirrels attacking people, so I don't know why the county is getting their panties in a bunch."

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Stuck In The Middle Am I


I write this amidst 2 MSN conversations taking place with two people in very different parts of the world, each of them with very different stories to tell. On one hand, I had my friend Sandy who was catching me up with the news from Indonesia. On the other was Lucy-Sarah, a Briton on loan to us, situated out in BC.

Sandy and I hadn't caught up with each other in a few months and he was happy to tell me that he'd been accepted into an MBA program and was busy with work and study but was very excited about his successes. I was very happy to share the news with him while chatting about our friends that we'd made from our trip to China in 2001.

In the other chat window, L-S responded to my, "how was your night" question with something less than a cheery St. Patty's message. She said that she was feeling really shitty. I just assumed that she'd had too much to drink and was just feeling a touch off kilter so I asked her why that was. I expected a drunken-dramatic tale, but was rather floored when she replied, "I just had one of my friends hit by a car and then run over by a truck and die. I also have another friend who thinks that it's somehow her fault".

It all of a sudden became very easy to temper the great news Sandy had shared with the devastation that had just been brought upon L-S's life. Yet here I was, a split persona trying to focus my whole self to each person . I was literally torn and ever so mindful not to get my message boxes mixed up... That's been done before, but the circumstances would have made that a massive faux pas.

I felt joyed and useless at the same time. Worlds so far apart yet brought together in an instant over the net and then with a signed off connection, gone. Almost like they both never happened. Each not knowing what the other had just shared with me and me feeling quite bewildered. So instead of dwelling, I started to write a letter that was almost a decade in waiting.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Has Anyone Tried To Pick You Up Lately?


This post was inspired by Princess Pointful. In her last post she mentioned pick up attempts and the failures that came along with them. She invited stories of our own experiences in failure which made me remember one such incident many years ago in Atlanta.

Tom (S'Mat) and I were down in Peachland USA visiting with his dad and step mother. One of the first nights that we were down there, Tom's dad and Uncle Mike (the coolest 18 year old living in a mid 50's body) took us out to a local bar. Keep in mind now that we were only about 16 or 17 at the time and therefore too young to even drink legally in Canada... Yet somehow we were permitted entry into a somewhat decent bar in Atlanta. After trying to not giggle ourselves silly on how we'd managed to pass for at least 5 years older, we settled in.

Now for the ladies out there who have always wondered. Yes, Tom has always been good with women and especially those of the stunning variety. So it was no surprise to me then that he started up with one of the waitresses in the bar. I believe her name was Sarah and she was I think 24, placing her at least 7 or 8 years older than us. After the night was through he had her number and a date was arranged. Skipping the details of that, I found myself out for another night in Atlanta a few days later.

Having to dress the part of an older college man or something of that sort, I found myself wingmanning outside of an establishment while Tom and Sarah put the wraps on their date. As I waited, trying to figure out how I'd ended up in my situation, a ratty little compact pulled up beside me on the roadway. Inside the car was what appeared to be a woman. To this day, I'm not that sure of that. It wasn't her that I noticed first though... The car was a clunker to put it mildly and to add to it's charm, there was no front seat and what appeared to be some sort of throw rug in the back. The spectacle of that alone is worthy of a post, but even in typed form, this description does it no justice.

Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, this lady was not. I was taken aback by who or what this person was stopping to talk to me on the side of the road but one look at the shag rug in the back tipped me off that she may have been in fact a hooker. When she managed to blow a bubble while still speaking to me, I figured she was all business. Being barely old enough to have watched and appreciated Pretty Woman, what was happening to me completely went against how I thought John and hooker interactions were supposed to go. Either that or she thought I was an imported gigolo and had some sort of yellow fever going on.

After being visually stunned by the car itself and the oddity behind the wheel, I gathered myself to listen to what she was saying to me. So while she was blowing (ha ha ha... perverts) a bubble mid speech, she asked me if I wanted to go for a ride and have some fun. I found the whole situation completely ridiculous and did my best to not laugh outright infront of her. I politely declined and I think walked and then ran away.

A short while later, Tom and I were on our way back home to his dad's. I was driving with my trusty learner's permit which fooled the Americans and Tom and I were detailing the events of the date and my near sexual abduction. As the details were bantered back and forth we made our way back into the sub-division when all of a sudden Tom's eyes went golf ball in size and he points out the front of the car and shouts, "RED LIGHT!!!". I don't think I've ever hit the brakes that hard in my life. The Tercel or whatever we were driving at the time didn't exactly have carbon fibre braking power of your typical Formula 1 or Nascar racer and we proceeded to skid right through the intersection from pretty much one stop line to the next.

I am happy to say though, that those were the only skid marks left behind from that night's collective near mis-adventures.

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Dear Ann Coulter...



I haven't really read much of what Ann Coulter has written, but I have heard enough out of her mouth to know that she is a very odd and dare I say, troubled woman. I feel bad that she is actually regarded by some out there as a champion of some sort of cause. In the world of common sense where a lot of my friends and family live, we can't seem to understand that cause so I will not waste any grey matter attempting to do so. Henry Rollins, if it can be believed, is far more eloquent in his face slapping and gives Ann a pretty good one here in the video above. Enjoy.

Oh and if someone wants to bet her any amount of money that Canada did not send any troops to Vietnam, she'll take it because she thinks we did. Wow.

If Everything Were Easy...


Have you ever sat down and tried to write something meaningful and have it come out a broken toilet's load of crap? Ok, that in and of itself was rather er... shitty, but I digress. So many things to think about... Should I worry about the person I'm writing about reading this? Should I worry about what people reading it will think about me or the person I'm writing about?

*Wow, I just saw a maxi pad commercial where the tag line was "Have a happy period". *
REALLY!!!???!!!???

The rawness of it all goes down a few layers despite my best attempts to outwardly portray it as a superficial knick. Everytime I start up on it, I run away from it like a coward facing the truth. So here's to hoping I get it right the next time I try, lest I end up pulling a Homer.

: )

Sunday, March 4, 2007

A 5 Point Post

The good: Family, specifically the one I have the honour to call my own. Yes, we fight, we yell and we scream but someone has to pass the beans at the dinner table... :) This weekend, we rallied around one of our members after a sad event in their life. Nothing like being relied upon to be the shoulder or leg to cry on. We may all be different in our own little ways but when it matters most we're the first in line to back one another up. Un-conditional commitment like that makes all the bickering and silliness worth it and the closeness is indeed priceless.

The bad: Microsoft Corporation and in particular their XBox 360 support and technical team. Our console has not been working since before Christmas and all Microsoft had to do was sent a Purolator box to us so we could send it back to them to fix. Well that only took 5 calls to their customer service centre and almost 2 and a half months before it happened. I was promised a lot by some of the managers I spoke to and those turned out to be lies. Boooooo to lies. I think they taped some of my calls so hopefully those get used for training purposes and I was very polite with my daggers, enough so that they at least promised to send me a free game for my trouble.

The funny, in this case kinda cute: I went to visit my old grade 4 teacher the other day. I was last in her class about 17 years ago and she was one of my favourite teachers. I took some time out of my lunch and borrowed a half hour from the city's budget to go see her. It'd been ages since I was last at the school and I think the last time I saw her was before high school. When she came in with the kids from recess, she saw me in full uniform and she recognized me right away. She gave me a big hug and we caught up. I ended up joining her in the classroom and had an impromptu Q&A session. One kid couldn't quite grasp the Q part of that and told me stories about the time he went to the fire hall and the firefighters had to run out because of a call and their trucks. Mrs. Henderson cut him off there and told him to tell the stories to the class later, but to stick to questions for me. When it was his turn next, he proceeded to tell us all about his uncle who was a police officer for another service and the cool car he had to drive. Mrs. H. was again gracious in reminding him that it was question time. By the third time she'd clearly run out of patience and cut him off with, "Do you actually have a question this time or another story?". He had a funny look on his face that I almost laughed at but had to remind myself he was only in grade 3.


The sad: I actually don't have anything really sad. I could talk about the ex or the girl I was dating recently who I just found out via facebook was already in a relationship but I won't. Instead I'll comment on how sad it was that I wasn't able to include all of the pictures from my afternoon with my grandma. It's really too bad that I am making you work to see the rest of the hilarity that took place. It was a riot. She's 86 and she can still school me and here's the proof.

The down right odd: Shabu Shabu Shomuni is a Japanese hot-pot restaurant, but it serves more than just beef and vegetables. Named after a manga comic book and a short-lived '90s TV show about six Japanese "office ladies," Shomuni features an all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink menu served by 15 costumed waitresses who start off dressed like receptionists and end up handcuffing patrons to their tables in sexy police uniforms. Shomuni is the latest addition to a growing number of fetish restaurants sprouting up around Tokyo where geeks are finally able to live out their fantasies of being gawked at and served by pretty, submissive girls for a small fee. At Shomuni you can find servers that give raw strip teases to dining customers. With hand mirrors and binoculars at their disposal, the customers can ask the waitresses to mix them a cocktail, feed them beef from their hands, or strip down to their underwear and change into a cosplay outfit of their choice.

At 5,000 yen (about $40) an hour, the cost of eating here is not that different from any other all-you-can-eat restaurant in the bustling Shibuya district. But the mouth-watering effect it has on geeks is incomparable.