because someone asked
He is 8 months now, and standing assisted. He uses his toys to help him stand, he uses mommy's arms to help him stand, he enjoys putting his hands on the floor, and plants his feet on the floorr, then lifts his knees and puts his bum up in the air and wiggles around- he doesn't what to do next. But he does put one foot in front of thr other if you hold him by his hands.
He is abt 18 lbs.Has 4 front teeth, eats grains, fruit, veggies, and meats, no milk, yet. Bear' sister is milk intolerant so MD told me to hold off until a solid nine months old.
Sleeps 3 naps daily, falls asleep about 11:00p.m. wakes between 7 and 9 am
All babies are good, but so far he is very easy going- thank God.
Will include photo soonest
Showing posts with label Barely Interesting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barely Interesting. Show all posts
16 February 2011
28 June 2010
Funeral Mass for My Father
Processional Chant
Requiem Aeternum (Bear solo)
First Reading: Acts of the Apostles 10: 34a, 37-43 ( Proclaimed by my niece)
Chiunque crede in lui riceve il perdono dei peccati mediante il suo nome.
Whover believes him him will have forgiveness of sins
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 42 (Proclaimed by Younger)
R. The Lord is my light and my salvation.
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 15: 51-57 (Proclaimed by my nephew)
O morte, dov'e` il tuo dardo? O Inferno dov'e` la tua vittoria?
O Death, where is your sting? O Hell where is your victory?
Gospel Acclamation: John 11: 25 ( Sung by Bear)
I am the resurrection and the life, says the Lord; whoever believes in me will not die forever.
I had planned this Gospel: Luke 24: 13-35
Il Signore e` veramente risorto
The Lord is risen indeed.
Father changed it to: Matthew 5: 3-12
Le Beatitudine.
The Beatitudes
Prayers of the Faithful (presented by my cousin, my dad's niece)
R. Signore della vita, ascoltaci
R. Lord of life, hear us.
Offertory Hymn
Ave Maria (Schubert) Sung by Bear
Sanctus/ Benedictus ( Missa Pro Defunctus) sung by the Choir
Agnus Dei (Missa Pro Defunctus) sung by the Choir
Communion Hymn
Adoro Te Devoto/ Godhead Here in Hiding. ( Sung by Bear)
Song of Farewell
In Paradisum: Chorus Angelorum (Sung by Bear)
Procession to the Place of Commital
Io Credo Risorgero` (sung by the Choir)
I believe I will rise again
The mass was mostly in Italian except for the Psalm and the Gospel Acclamation, which were in English and the Chants which were in Latin
Requiem Aeternum (Bear solo)
First Reading: Acts of the Apostles 10: 34a, 37-43 ( Proclaimed by my niece)
Chiunque crede in lui riceve il perdono dei peccati mediante il suo nome.
Whover believes him him will have forgiveness of sins
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 42 (Proclaimed by Younger)
R. The Lord is my light and my salvation.
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 15: 51-57 (Proclaimed by my nephew)
O morte, dov'e` il tuo dardo? O Inferno dov'e` la tua vittoria?
O Death, where is your sting? O Hell where is your victory?
Gospel Acclamation: John 11: 25 ( Sung by Bear)
I am the resurrection and the life, says the Lord; whoever believes in me will not die forever.
I had planned this Gospel: Luke 24: 13-35
Il Signore e` veramente risorto
The Lord is risen indeed.
Father changed it to: Matthew 5: 3-12
Le Beatitudine.
The Beatitudes
Prayers of the Faithful (presented by my cousin, my dad's niece)
R. Signore della vita, ascoltaci
R. Lord of life, hear us.
Offertory Hymn
Ave Maria (Schubert) Sung by Bear
Sanctus/ Benedictus ( Missa Pro Defunctus) sung by the Choir
Agnus Dei (Missa Pro Defunctus) sung by the Choir
Communion Hymn
Adoro Te Devoto/ Godhead Here in Hiding. ( Sung by Bear)
Song of Farewell
In Paradisum: Chorus Angelorum (Sung by Bear)
Procession to the Place of Commital
Io Credo Risorgero` (sung by the Choir)
I believe I will rise again
The mass was mostly in Italian except for the Psalm and the Gospel Acclamation, which were in English and the Chants which were in Latin
6 June 2010
I've been thinking about "pain management"
As the birth draws near, I have been thinking about pain associated with birthing.
With Elder, I got demerol, which I liked because it took the edge off, but I could still feel the contractions and I knew what was going on. It did make me sleepy but they managed to time the doses so that it all wore off by the time I had to push. It also allowed me to get some sleep between contractions.
When Younger was born, they stopped the demerol, and offered me an epidural early on. I told them I'd wait and see. By the time I wanted the epidural, the anesthesiologist was unavailable to give it to me. So I had no pain relief with younger, and I didn't have any way of hypnotising myself against the pain. That's not totally true - near the end they gave me nitrous gas(laughing gas) which did nothing for me.
Now, with the lad, I have the option of an epidural, morphine, nitrous gas, or nothing. They don't offer demerol anymore.
My major concern with the epidural is that I will move, and instead of the epidural space, the anesthesiologist hits the transdural, and at best I get a four day migraine headache. But there is less than a 1% chance of that.
The morphine is a narcotic, and my concern is the doses not being properly timed and the lad and I being too sleepy to push when the time comes.
And as stated earlier nitrous gas does nothing for me.
But, I find at times that when I pray I can put myself into a trance like state. Usually I can only do it for a few minutes and only with a short prayer or ejaculation, usually the Jesus Prayer:
O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
But labour and delivery lasts more than a few minutes, so although I will be praying I am not good enough to put myself into a continual or continuous trance.
Bear says that if it were him he'd go for the epidural. I love him.
With Elder, I got demerol, which I liked because it took the edge off, but I could still feel the contractions and I knew what was going on. It did make me sleepy but they managed to time the doses so that it all wore off by the time I had to push. It also allowed me to get some sleep between contractions.
When Younger was born, they stopped the demerol, and offered me an epidural early on. I told them I'd wait and see. By the time I wanted the epidural, the anesthesiologist was unavailable to give it to me. So I had no pain relief with younger, and I didn't have any way of hypnotising myself against the pain. That's not totally true - near the end they gave me nitrous gas(laughing gas) which did nothing for me.
Now, with the lad, I have the option of an epidural, morphine, nitrous gas, or nothing. They don't offer demerol anymore.
My major concern with the epidural is that I will move, and instead of the epidural space, the anesthesiologist hits the transdural, and at best I get a four day migraine headache. But there is less than a 1% chance of that.
The morphine is a narcotic, and my concern is the doses not being properly timed and the lad and I being too sleepy to push when the time comes.
And as stated earlier nitrous gas does nothing for me.
But, I find at times that when I pray I can put myself into a trance like state. Usually I can only do it for a few minutes and only with a short prayer or ejaculation, usually the Jesus Prayer:
O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
But labour and delivery lasts more than a few minutes, so although I will be praying I am not good enough to put myself into a continual or continuous trance.
Bear says that if it were him he'd go for the epidural. I love him.
12 May 2010
Jobless, non-religious teachers turn to Catholicism in attempt for employment
This story from the Globe and Mail troubles me.
Not because non-Catholics are hoodwinking the Catholic School Board into hiring them, but because we parents won't know who and who isn't Catholic.
I would rather have non-Catholics teach my children, and know they are not Catholic and be on guard that possibly non-Catholic philosophy is entering my children's education, rather than assume that my children's teachers are Catholic.
In fact, the majority of my children's teachers are CINO. They were baptised, communicated, confirmed, even married in the Church, but have absolutely no knowledge of the basic tenets of the faith.
So really which is worse?
Not because non-Catholics are hoodwinking the Catholic School Board into hiring them, but because we parents won't know who and who isn't Catholic.
I would rather have non-Catholics teach my children, and know they are not Catholic and be on guard that possibly non-Catholic philosophy is entering my children's education, rather than assume that my children's teachers are Catholic.
In fact, the majority of my children's teachers are CINO. They were baptised, communicated, confirmed, even married in the Church, but have absolutely no knowledge of the basic tenets of the faith.
So really which is worse?
7 January 2010
A day in the life
Haven't blogged for a while, and I had the idea that on Monday I would live blog from work. That plan didn't work out, but I came home with about half a page of notes, which I then converted into this. So, without further ado, I present you with Monday, January 4th.
Oh, and Happy New Year.
Warning: Not everybody shares my sense of humour. In fact, most people don't.
Lastly, all this occurred at a university bookstore.
10:00. It’s Monday, January 4th. I am back at work after the Holidays. Due to the oddities of my schedule, everyone else in my department is in an hour ahead of me. The first thing I hear is Pothead cursing. “Frack!” he’s shouting. (I’ve adopted Battlestar Galactica speak for this piece) “I don’t frackin’ believe how much frackin’ stuff has come in already! I’ve never frackin’ seen anything like this!” I nod, in case he is looking at me, but inwardly I am saying It is like this every time we come back from the holidays. As he is shouting at no one in particular, the buzzer goes again. Another truck is upstairs, waiting for him to go up and unload. He starts shouting some more. “Frack!”
10:02. There is already a lot of work here. The area is clogged with skids and boxes, and it is tough to get to my desk. From what I see, nothing has been done since I came in on Tuesday between the holidays to clean up here in preparation for the rush. However, Pothead’s profane assertions aside, this is standard for the first day back. All the shipments that couldn’t be delivered when we were closed are coming in today, just like every other time we shut down for Christmas.
10:05. By now everyone has asked me how my holiday was, and I have asked them. We all seemed to enjoy ourselves. “At least I wasn’t here,” is what everyone had to say in one form or another. Just about everyone hates this place. Pothead’s radio is blaring out the hits of the sixties and seventies. The holidays are truly over.
I hear Pothead coming down in the freight elevator. That was fast.
10:06. “I don’t frackin’ believe it!” Pothead shouted when he got down.
I have no idea what he doesn’t believe, beyond that he doesn’t believe work is coming in.
10:08 I suppose I should explain Pothead, except there’s nothing to explain. He’s been stoned since he was sixteen, and now he’s fifty two, which is a fancy way of saying he’s a sixteen year old thirty six times over. He has a lousy temper and is constantly hitting people up for money so he can buy pot, smokes, booze, other stuff. From all the junk he’s shoved down his mouth he has no taste buds left, and consequently he puts a lot of salt on everything he eats, including- and I am not making this up- his bacon.
10:10. Here’s a true story about Pothead: He’s always borrowing money off people. Then, once a month when we get paid, he pays everyone back, and almost immediately runs out of money and starts borrowing money again. He’s asked me for money just five days after payday. Incidentally, he always calls in sick the two days after payday. As soon as he has some cash in his fist he immediately goes on a bender and is hung over for the next few days. Always on the lookout for new money, he discovered one of those payroll loan companies a few years back. He acted as though he had been handed the keys to the vault, and he started going over there for cash. The idea that he would have to pay them back does not seem to have occurred to him. That idea did not occur to him when American express offered him a card some time ago, until he tried to pay for drinks in a strip club, and they cut the card up in front of him, and garnished his wages. He blamed the company. “It’s their frackin’ fault,” he explained. “If they’re stupid enough to give me money, they got no one to blame but themselves.” So, at any rate, he takes payroll advances and does not pay them back. Then one payday he goes to the bank to pull out some money and discovers the payroll loan company garnished his wages before he even saw them. He had just five hundred dollars to last the month.
I can hear him swearing again. What is it this time?
10:13 He’s yelling at the Pharaoh. No matter.
10:15 Where was I? Oh yeah, pothead. So he has five hundred for food, rent, everything, for the month. So what does the boy genius do? Does he scramble what ever resources he has to try and make it through the month? Does he try and cover his other debts, including the ten bucks he owes me? Does he do anything remotely responsible? Heck no. He takes the five hundred and goes on what I can only refer to as an emergency bender. Right in the middle of his bender he was caught by a cop smoking pot, and was arrested and fined. He blamed the cop. “I wasn’t botherin’ no one!” he said to everyone within earshot when he got back. “What did he go pickin’ on me for?”
That’s what he said. What I heard was: “I’m so stupid I took what little money I had, blew it on some pot and smoked it in front of a narc.”
10:20 One more fun fact: Pothead is not the only pothead we got down here. There’s another, Pothead Parte D’uh. He handles the receiving of our general merchandise. Or he would, if ever actually did anything. But he doesn’t, although he thinks he does. You see, the general merchandise would be a lot of work, and he treats that potential work as though it were actual work. He has a lot of work to do and therefore he should be very busy, and since he is very busy, he deserves a break, and he spends the day surfing the web and checking his e-mail, and accusing everyone else of doing nothing but surfing the web and checking their e-mail. Every now and then he does something, and then goes back to the web. If any boss comes back to ask him to do anything he waves around at the piles of work surrounding him and says “Can’t you see how much stuff I have to do?” He sincerely believes he is the hardest worker back here, and therefore he deserves to do nothing but surf the web all day long.
Pothead logic never ceases to amaze.
10:21: Here’s a true story about Pothead Parte D’uh: He downloaded and saved so many videos, photos and songs onto his computer at work that he filled the memory space and crashed his computer. As a result of this, he was actually given a new, faster, more efficient computer with far greater memory than anyone else’s back here. He now has the tools to do less work than ever before.
10:37 Pharaoh is going around giving everyone orders, again. He does this all the time, until someone shuts him down and reminds him he has no authority to tell anyone to do anything. (Actually, he does outrank me, but no one has ever informed him of that, and I have no intention of ever letting that little tidbit out.)
10:38 In many ways, the Pharaoh is a stand up guy. He brought his family over from Egypt some years ago, where he used to be a veterinarian. His wife was a doctor. They are Coptic Christians, and found life over there getting a little too dangerous for their liking. Over here their qualifications did not count for much of anything, and they took whatever jobs they could find. Pharaoh put his kids through school and paid for his wife to get her qualifications, all the while working down here in the basement. His kids graduated at the top of their classes and are now very successful. His wife is now a doctor, he is a high ranking elder in his church. They are a successful immigration story, and in many ways our country could do with more people like them.
This is the story of a dedicated, honourable man. I should like the Pharaoh, I should be proud and honoured if I could call him my friend. Intellectually I like him, or perhaps I should say I think I like him, or I think I should like him, but I spend five minutes with the guy and I just want to strangle him. He never does his job because he is always having ideas about how everyone else should do their job, and is constantly telling us how to do our work faster and better. Meanwhile, his work lies undone. It is no secret that he thinks he should be in charge down here because he believes he is the most educated of the lot of us. (He isn’t, but that’s another story.) In short, he thinks he should be in charge of shipping and receiving of the bookstore because he used to euthenize camels.
11:02. The Big Boss just came back here. He only shows up back here about four times a year, and I guess he wanted to make his unpleasant presence felt early this year. Or perhaps he is here to boost our morale in a difficult, crush period.
11:03 Yeah, right. “This place is disgusting,” he said. “You guys are slobs.”
11:04. Perhaps I should explain a little about us being a bunch of slobs. By rules and regulations we are not allowed to clean up our place. That is the job of the janitors and custodians, and we can get in trouble if try to do their job. So, it is their job to clean the place up, so why aren’t they doing it?
Here’s why, and this is a true story: Some time ago the grounds staff and cleaning crews took part in a study where they quantified the time in work hours and the costs involved in maintaining varying levels of cleanliness throughout the university. They then presented their levels to the administration and asked them what level of cleanliness they wanted: Pristine, very clean, clean, and so on down the line. The administration said that the top levels of cleanliness were too expensive, and went straight down the line until they opted for a level of cleanliness which is officially known as- and I am not making this up- “moderately dingy”. So, if the place is supposed to be only moderately dingy, why are we disgusting?
Because moderately dingy is an average over the whole store. The managers, including the one who accuses us of being slobs, have understandably opted to have the cleaning crew concentrate on keeping the sales floor clean. Whatever time they have left over is to be spent keeping the managers’ offices clean. Our place is way down the list. The garbage cans are only emptied every third day. One the first day they are full. On the second day they are overflowing. On the third day we are throwing our garbage, which is mainly packing paper and bubble wrap from the boxes, in the general direction of the mounds that have formed around the garbage cans. Our floor is swept less than once a week. So yeah, we’re slobs.
11:10 A young woman just came back here, She must be a new hire, as I have never seen her before. I would have remembered this girl, because she is gorgeous. Were I so inclined, I would say she could inspire what the Catechism refers to as a “near occasion for sin.” The university calls it “a near occasion to get fired.” Must keep my eyes down and remember the rules.
11:15. I helped her, and she is now gone. I mentioned the rules, so I should explain what I meant by that. And this is a true story.
The rules are set down regarding sexual harassment, which is a potential firing offence, and for the moment I am specifically referring to the part which outlines a woman’s right not to be made uncomfortable by having men stare or ogle at her. Fine enough, but what is the difference between a glance and a stare, and at what point does the attention become unwanted attention?
The university decided that the difference could be found in time, and that unwanted attention occurs or may be considered to have occurred when a man takes a sustained look at a woman for longer than three seconds. So if a good-looking woman catches a man’s eye, the man has three seconds to say “Holy Cow!” or any other thought before he must look away. And no, I am not making that up.
My meeting with the young woman went like this: Her: “Can you help me? I need to find a book that came in today for a customer.”
Me: One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, Three... “Sure. What book?”
11:20 I feel compelled to re-iterate that I work at a university, and these rules and regulations are made by smart people.
11:21. So-called.
11:30 Time for my morning break. I take it at my station instead of in the lunchroom to avoid the stench. I flip through the paper looking for the crossword. I pass by various articles about the beginning of the year, the start of a new decade, predictions and a bunch of blah blah blah. In the middle of the entertainment section is an article about upcoming television shows and series. I don’t get a chance to watch television, so I have a look at what I will be missing.
11:35. HBO has a series coming out called Spartacus. It will be a re imaging of the slave rebellion. The show promises to be bloody (no kidding) and also to have, and I quote: “Some of the most graphic sex scenes ever shown on television.” Oh joy.
11:36. I find I miss the old days of trench coats and brown paper bags. There was a time when porn had a stigma attached. Now it’s a sales point.
11:45. Back to work. There goes the buzzer again. Wait for it…Wait for it… “Frack! I don’t believe it! I have never seen it this bad!” Yes, Pothead, you have.
11:51. Let us take this opportunity to pause for a moment and ponder the word “Frack”. As it is currently used it is a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb, a gerund, a proposition more. It is an exclamation, a declaration, a statement, an interjection and a question. It is all this, and far, far more. It’s offensiveness aside, it is obviously one of the most useful words in the English language. In fact, I put it to you, gentle reader, that should noted linguists like Pothead continue on the current trajectory, one day in the not so distant future it will be the only word in the English language. Conversations will begin to sound like the aliens from Mars Attacks. Imagine going to the store:
Customer: Frack! Frack frack, frack frack frack frack frack. Frack frack frack? (Hi there! I have come to buy some milk. Where is it?)
Clerk: Frack frack frack frack frack frack frack. (In the dairy case in the back.)
Customer: Frack! (Thank you so very, very much, kind sir. Your manners are impeccable and I shall patronize your wonderful establishment often in the future, and tell all my friends about it as well!)
And to think, we get to watch the change take place in front of our own two eyes.
Back to work.
12:07 Sometimes I find books with unintentionally amusing titles. Like this one: Marxism for Dummies. The jokes almost write themselves.
!2:14 I am not the only one who breaks back here away from the lunchroom. The Teutonic Plague also eats at his station and uses his computer to surf the web when on break. At least I no longer notice the smell of his lunch. He eats some variety of very sour kraut.
12:16: But there are those who still do notice the smell. Some of the guys from the sales floor have just closed the door that divides receiving from their area. They say the stuff stinks and they hate it. There was talk about putting restrictions on the kinds of food people can bring to work. Now there’s a fight I’d love to see. If they try and go after the Plague over there for his food, they’d have to do something about the people in the lunchroom and theirs, and they are all members of visible minorities who wouldn’t hesitate to charge the university with racism. That would be fun.
12:17 I wonder for whom I would pull? On the one hand, it amuses me to see the university discomfited, but on the other hand, the smell of some of their lunches is incredible. It is enough to make a dung beetle puke.
12:20 I’ve been trying to think of some story to say about the Teutonic Plague, but nothing comes to mind. He’s an interesting fellow, in a way. He is intelligent, he used to be a teacher, apparently, back in Germany. Like the Pharaoh he never had his qualifications upgraded when he came here. He spends his free time surfing the net for whatever topic is of interest to him for the day. He trusts the information he finds on the internet, and after reading an article on Wikipedia feels himself sufficiently informed to speak authoritatively on the subject.
He is interested in many hobbies, but actually pursues none of them apart from downloading some information about them from the web. He doesn’t have the time to be a woodworker, he says, though he finds information about it everywhere. He even debates with me some of the better methods of woodworking, although I’ve been doing it as a hobbyist for years, and he has never sharpened a chisel. His favourite leisure time activity at home is playing video games. An odd choice for a man in his fifties, but there you are. Personally, I much prefer my own hobby. At the end of the day, I have something solid I can look upon, and say to others: I made that. At the end of the day all he has to show for his efforts are sore thumbs. Video games are a way to kill time for those who believe their time is better off dead.
He is a former Catholic, now atheist, a firm believer in Malthus who is yet still here. He has changed his opinion on many topics based on a single sentence found on the internet, and the moment he changes his mind he cannot believe that anyone would still believe what he believed not five minutes ago, and dismisses them as idiots. He is moody, with moods ranging from surly, to downright angry, to enraged, and on occasion he is almost- but never quite- friendly. In short, sour kraut is the perfect food for him. A little too perfect, actually. Watching him eat can be rather uncomfortable, and not merely because of the smell. One sometimes feels one is witnessing cannibalism.
12:50. Apparently there’s another faint smell back here, but I never notice it anymore, but sometimes the new guys complain a bit about it. It comes from the elevator shaft. Here’s how it got there, and this is a true story:
A few years back, there was a series of problems in the back here. The basin at the bottom of the freight elevator shaft was suddenly holding a fair amount of water, which it should not have been. What was worse, the water had an unpleasant odour to it. The maintenance staff was summoned, and they diagnosed the problem as being a leak coming down through the roof. They fiddled with the roof and left. The basin continued to fill, and the smell intensified. Another round of maintenance staff was summoned, and this time they said the problem was with a water pump. An electrician said he could not fix it, as this was a plumbing problem, and a plumber said he could not fix it, as the pump was electrical and we therefore needed the electrician to fix it. For those of you unfamiliar with union speak, I’ll translate the pair of them for you: “It’s Thursday, tomorrow is Friday, and I don’t want to start anything major this close to the weekend.” One more thing: While the plumber and the electrician were in disagreement about whose job it was to fix our problem, they were in total agreement that another problem we were having- the toilets in the nearby bathrooms were backing up- was completely unrelated and the fact that the two problems happened at almost exactly the same time was a mere coincidence.
On Friday we came in, and nearly threw up. The stench was now incredible, and the basin, which is about the size of an above ground swimming pool, was now three to four feet deep in sewage. The toilet problem was not a coincidence. The faulty pump had left the waste nowhere to go but here. At our behest the health and safety nazis were summoned, and I prepared to leave work early. Obviously working less than ten feet from an open-air sewer was a health hazard, right?
Wrong. They told us it was not a hazard as such, and the smell, while offensive, presented no real danger. “Besides,” one actually told me. “The smell isn’t that bad.”
Maintenance workers were summoned. A plumber in hip waders waded into the basin, took a deep breath through his nose and said: “I live for this!” He turned to us and asked: “You know what that smell is?”
“A whole lot of crap mixed with urine?” I answered, suppressing my gag reflex.
“No,” he answered. “It’s money.”
A week later the cleanup was nearly finished as they power washed the basin. A lingering odor, a faint stain in the air, persisted for days after that. Some say it lingers still.
1:30 It is actually no surprise there would be problems with the freight elevator. There have been many problems with the elevator. It begins like this, and this is a true story:
The receiving area is in the basement of our store. Originally there were no plans for a basement because there were no plans for a receiving area at all. Shortly after construction on the building began, someone pointed out that a large university bookstore needs a place to process the arrival of all its books and merchandise, so a basement was hastily added. Some other genius working for the university later pointed out that there needed to be a way to move the goods from the loading dock down to the basement, so a freight elevator was hastily added to the hastily added plans for the basement.
Now, a freight elevator has a very specific set of requirements in its construction code. Most importantly, the shaft is to be made out of reinforced poured concrete. Our shaft was originally made out of hollow stacked cinder blocks- not ever remotely up to code. After some of the blocks began to crumble and fall out of the wall, maintenance responded by trying to pour concrete into the hollows of the cinder blocks. Still not up to code.
I can hear Pothead shouting again.
1:31. Incidentally, the shaft isn’t the only thing down here not up to code. One of the more noticeable elements is the lack of a drain in the basement floor. By code all basements in Toronto must have a floor drain, but here there is none. We have had several floods down here, and the water had nowhere to go whatsoever.
We in the back sometimes play a game: we call it “Name That Bribe”. The object of the game is to speculate what the building inspector was paid off to pass this place. I don’t know how much for sure, but I imagine he and his family had a very nice vacation.
Pothead’s shouting is getting closer.
1:32 The loading dock ramp just broke. Fantastic.
Did I say ‘vacation’? I meant ‘around the world cruise’.
2:03 Pharaoh just came over to me and asked me if I could handle a large skid of stuff that just came in and is a rush job.. I pointed out that I am working on two larger skids of books that are also a rush job, and I will likely be doing so for some time. He, on the other hand, has done nothing but try and get other people to do his job all day long. He starts going on about how this is a really important rush job. Everything is a really important rush job this time of year, I say to myself. “We need to make some space around here. It really needs to be done,” he says to me.
“Then you had better get to work on it,” I reply.
2:05. He has a point. This place is absolutely full and there’s no space. I’ll go talk to the text people to see if we can get some help.
2:10 Just had to speak with the guys over in the text division. Conversation dealt with two things. First, we discussed the health of one of the better workers for text. Apparently he is doing well. He is off because he had a benign tumour removed from the area near his rectum. Apparently the tumour was believed to be about four pounds in size. We teased him about his problem, dubbing him ‘the Tumorous B.I.G.’, but we all wished him well. Before we took time off for the surgery I shook his hand and said to him sincerely “I hope everything comes out all right in the end.” In retrospect, I should have chosen some other cliché.
Second, The receiving area is swamped with received merchandise with more stuff coming in, and we are out of room. I asked if we could move some skids onto the sales floor, or at least get some of their shelvers working to move some of the stuff out of our area and onto the shelves.
Nothing doing on both counts. The Big Boss, the one who thinks the receivers are a bunch of slobs, has 1. declared the sales floor is too crowded with customers for people to be shelving right now, plus all available text staff are to be helping customers, not shelving books anyway, and 2.cancelled the night crew for this week so we can’t shelve the stuff that came in during the day at night when the store is empty either. In the mean time, he has been yelling at the text staff because the books that have been received are stuck in the back and not on the shelves. And no, I am not making this up either.
2:30. Lunch. I go out for some peace.
3:30 I call the guy who works beside me “The Forty Two Year Old Virgin.” I used to call him the Forty One Year Old Virgin, but he had a birthday. They say that, generally speaking, a man doesn’t decide to be a virgin, women make that decision for him. In Virgin’s case, I’d say they show good judgement. I get along well with the guy, but there’s some darn thing about him, and I imagine the women can sense it, too, something that just isn’t right. I can never put my finger on it, but there it is. If we ever had a contest, I’d vote for him to be named “Guy most likely to be seen on the news.” And not for a good reason, either.
3:34 I wonder what it is. He looks like the most normal guy in the world. Average height, decent build. Nothing unusual about his hair. His clothing comes off the rack, any rack. His face is neither handsome nor ugly, just average. A witness would be hard pressed to remember any features that would distinguish him in a line up. Watches the same television as everyone else. No unusual hobbies or interests. He is noticeable neither for his vices nor his virtues. Absolutely nothing to mark him our as anything other than a normal guy. If ordinary can be taken to an extreme, this man has done it. Perhaps I should rename him “The Most Ordinary Man in the World.” And yet there always remains this something, this slight sense of unease when he is around, like the air is a degree colder, like someone is watching you, as though his undifference constitutes some strange, unknowable difference in itself.
3:50 I need to find one of the sub managers to sign some paperwork of mine. The one for whom I am looking is made of better stuff than the Big Boss, but is hamstrung by his foolish directives. I haven’t seen her yet today, though I’ve been around the store a few times seeking her out.
She is fairly hard to miss. For the most part she is on the short, rather pudgy side, but she is always impeccably and stylishly dressed. She works to play up her two most noticeable features: her breasts and her hair. She emphasizes the first by almost always dressing to show off the acre or two of cleavage she possesses, in a stylish way. She emphasizes the second by the effort she puts into putting her brilliant red hair into a perfect coif. Her usual style has her hair meticulously architectured into a copper ziggurat. I wonder how longs she spends getting ready for the day.
3:57 Finally met her in her office, behind her desk. Her two good feature )or should I say three, are out for maximuim attention today. I fixed my eyes on her hair. The job security is better up there. I handed her the paper I needed her to sign. She signed it and asked me how my vacation had been. I told her it was fine and asked her how hers had been. “It was probably my best Christmas ever,” she replied, positively glowing.
“Really?” I asked. “You spent it with your new boyfriend?” Personally, I find something odd in referring to a forty plus year old man as a ‘boyfriend’, but that’s modern life for you.
“Oh yes,” she said very brightly. “It was wonderful.”
Uh-huh, I think. “How did you get along with his son?” I ask out loud.
“He wasn’t there,” she said. “He was with his mother for Christmas, and we just had a great time to ourselves.” She let out a small, very uncharacteristic giggle, and stretched rather languidly.
Uh-huh, I think again.
“It was better that way,” she added. “Just the two of us to ourselves. He even said so.”
Would you listen to yourself? Your 'boyfriend’ doesn’t miss his own son on Christmas Day. Outwardly, I nod. There really isn’t anything else I can say. My own kids drive me nuts, make no mistake, but I miss them when they are not around. If I were to be separated from them, I would never feel quite whole. I've never met her 'boyfriend', but already he seems less of a man to me.
4:04 Odd, isn’t it, what divorce has done to our culture? Some people claim that divorce allows one to seek one’s own happiness, to remove oneself from misfires and to seek one’s true soulmate.
Perhaps. But these days, as often as not, and perhaps even more often, one woman’s soulmate is another woman’s castoff.
Kind of puts it in a different perspective, doesn’t it?
4:37. The radio keeps blaring out an ad for a show on the history channel this week, which combines Nostradamus with Mayan prophecies about the coming of the end of the world. I have but one tiny question: Nostradamus aside, why would anyone pay any attention to the celestial calculations of a people who thought the sun would only rise if they appeased it with enough human hearts and a couple of virgins to boot?
4:38. Truth be told, I wouldn’t mind if the world ended in 2012. It would save me the trouble of planning for retirement. What am I talking about? Death is my retirement plan.
Some people are terrified of death. I don’t make an issue of it. Death is only an issue for people who aren’t already in hell.
4:45. Pothead has swore his last for the day. “I’ve done enough for one frackin’ day,” he said. “I’m out of here.”
4:46 Pothead leaving early is not unusual for him. He does in on heavy days. But what about slow days, you ask? I can answer that, and this is a true story. On slow days Pothead will announce around 4:45 that there is nothing going on, and therefore he will leave early.
The logic is beautiful, isn’t it? On slow days there is nothing to do and therefore he leaves early, and on busy days when there is something to do he has already done enough and therefore he leaves early.
Pothead logic never ceases to amaze.
4:59: Come to think of it, looking back on the logic for so many of the decisions down here, I wonder how many potheads we got down here?
5:00. The others in receiving have left, and I have the space to myself for an hour. I put on some of my own music for the background while I work. This is my favourite part of the workday.
5:59. Shutting down for the day. We did a lot of work, still have a lot to do for tomorrow. By tomorrow the break will be nothing but a distant memory, as vague as though it never happened. That's just the way it is.
Most of the people down here don’t hesitate to say how much they hate this place. I don’t hate this place, exactly. It allows me to fulfill my role as a father, and keep a roof over my family’s head, clothes on their backs and food in their bellies. They don’t have everything they want, mind you, but they do have what they need, and for that I am grateful for this job.
Oh, and Happy New Year.
Warning: Not everybody shares my sense of humour. In fact, most people don't.
Lastly, all this occurred at a university bookstore.
10:00. It’s Monday, January 4th. I am back at work after the Holidays. Due to the oddities of my schedule, everyone else in my department is in an hour ahead of me. The first thing I hear is Pothead cursing. “Frack!” he’s shouting. (I’ve adopted Battlestar Galactica speak for this piece) “I don’t frackin’ believe how much frackin’ stuff has come in already! I’ve never frackin’ seen anything like this!” I nod, in case he is looking at me, but inwardly I am saying It is like this every time we come back from the holidays. As he is shouting at no one in particular, the buzzer goes again. Another truck is upstairs, waiting for him to go up and unload. He starts shouting some more. “Frack!”
10:02. There is already a lot of work here. The area is clogged with skids and boxes, and it is tough to get to my desk. From what I see, nothing has been done since I came in on Tuesday between the holidays to clean up here in preparation for the rush. However, Pothead’s profane assertions aside, this is standard for the first day back. All the shipments that couldn’t be delivered when we were closed are coming in today, just like every other time we shut down for Christmas.
10:05. By now everyone has asked me how my holiday was, and I have asked them. We all seemed to enjoy ourselves. “At least I wasn’t here,” is what everyone had to say in one form or another. Just about everyone hates this place. Pothead’s radio is blaring out the hits of the sixties and seventies. The holidays are truly over.
I hear Pothead coming down in the freight elevator. That was fast.
10:06. “I don’t frackin’ believe it!” Pothead shouted when he got down.
I have no idea what he doesn’t believe, beyond that he doesn’t believe work is coming in.
10:08 I suppose I should explain Pothead, except there’s nothing to explain. He’s been stoned since he was sixteen, and now he’s fifty two, which is a fancy way of saying he’s a sixteen year old thirty six times over. He has a lousy temper and is constantly hitting people up for money so he can buy pot, smokes, booze, other stuff. From all the junk he’s shoved down his mouth he has no taste buds left, and consequently he puts a lot of salt on everything he eats, including- and I am not making this up- his bacon.
10:10. Here’s a true story about Pothead: He’s always borrowing money off people. Then, once a month when we get paid, he pays everyone back, and almost immediately runs out of money and starts borrowing money again. He’s asked me for money just five days after payday. Incidentally, he always calls in sick the two days after payday. As soon as he has some cash in his fist he immediately goes on a bender and is hung over for the next few days. Always on the lookout for new money, he discovered one of those payroll loan companies a few years back. He acted as though he had been handed the keys to the vault, and he started going over there for cash. The idea that he would have to pay them back does not seem to have occurred to him. That idea did not occur to him when American express offered him a card some time ago, until he tried to pay for drinks in a strip club, and they cut the card up in front of him, and garnished his wages. He blamed the company. “It’s their frackin’ fault,” he explained. “If they’re stupid enough to give me money, they got no one to blame but themselves.” So, at any rate, he takes payroll advances and does not pay them back. Then one payday he goes to the bank to pull out some money and discovers the payroll loan company garnished his wages before he even saw them. He had just five hundred dollars to last the month.
I can hear him swearing again. What is it this time?
10:13 He’s yelling at the Pharaoh. No matter.
10:15 Where was I? Oh yeah, pothead. So he has five hundred for food, rent, everything, for the month. So what does the boy genius do? Does he scramble what ever resources he has to try and make it through the month? Does he try and cover his other debts, including the ten bucks he owes me? Does he do anything remotely responsible? Heck no. He takes the five hundred and goes on what I can only refer to as an emergency bender. Right in the middle of his bender he was caught by a cop smoking pot, and was arrested and fined. He blamed the cop. “I wasn’t botherin’ no one!” he said to everyone within earshot when he got back. “What did he go pickin’ on me for?”
That’s what he said. What I heard was: “I’m so stupid I took what little money I had, blew it on some pot and smoked it in front of a narc.”
10:20 One more fun fact: Pothead is not the only pothead we got down here. There’s another, Pothead Parte D’uh. He handles the receiving of our general merchandise. Or he would, if ever actually did anything. But he doesn’t, although he thinks he does. You see, the general merchandise would be a lot of work, and he treats that potential work as though it were actual work. He has a lot of work to do and therefore he should be very busy, and since he is very busy, he deserves a break, and he spends the day surfing the web and checking his e-mail, and accusing everyone else of doing nothing but surfing the web and checking their e-mail. Every now and then he does something, and then goes back to the web. If any boss comes back to ask him to do anything he waves around at the piles of work surrounding him and says “Can’t you see how much stuff I have to do?” He sincerely believes he is the hardest worker back here, and therefore he deserves to do nothing but surf the web all day long.
Pothead logic never ceases to amaze.
10:21: Here’s a true story about Pothead Parte D’uh: He downloaded and saved so many videos, photos and songs onto his computer at work that he filled the memory space and crashed his computer. As a result of this, he was actually given a new, faster, more efficient computer with far greater memory than anyone else’s back here. He now has the tools to do less work than ever before.
10:37 Pharaoh is going around giving everyone orders, again. He does this all the time, until someone shuts him down and reminds him he has no authority to tell anyone to do anything. (Actually, he does outrank me, but no one has ever informed him of that, and I have no intention of ever letting that little tidbit out.)
10:38 In many ways, the Pharaoh is a stand up guy. He brought his family over from Egypt some years ago, where he used to be a veterinarian. His wife was a doctor. They are Coptic Christians, and found life over there getting a little too dangerous for their liking. Over here their qualifications did not count for much of anything, and they took whatever jobs they could find. Pharaoh put his kids through school and paid for his wife to get her qualifications, all the while working down here in the basement. His kids graduated at the top of their classes and are now very successful. His wife is now a doctor, he is a high ranking elder in his church. They are a successful immigration story, and in many ways our country could do with more people like them.
This is the story of a dedicated, honourable man. I should like the Pharaoh, I should be proud and honoured if I could call him my friend. Intellectually I like him, or perhaps I should say I think I like him, or I think I should like him, but I spend five minutes with the guy and I just want to strangle him. He never does his job because he is always having ideas about how everyone else should do their job, and is constantly telling us how to do our work faster and better. Meanwhile, his work lies undone. It is no secret that he thinks he should be in charge down here because he believes he is the most educated of the lot of us. (He isn’t, but that’s another story.) In short, he thinks he should be in charge of shipping and receiving of the bookstore because he used to euthenize camels.
11:02. The Big Boss just came back here. He only shows up back here about four times a year, and I guess he wanted to make his unpleasant presence felt early this year. Or perhaps he is here to boost our morale in a difficult, crush period.
11:03 Yeah, right. “This place is disgusting,” he said. “You guys are slobs.”
11:04. Perhaps I should explain a little about us being a bunch of slobs. By rules and regulations we are not allowed to clean up our place. That is the job of the janitors and custodians, and we can get in trouble if try to do their job. So, it is their job to clean the place up, so why aren’t they doing it?
Here’s why, and this is a true story: Some time ago the grounds staff and cleaning crews took part in a study where they quantified the time in work hours and the costs involved in maintaining varying levels of cleanliness throughout the university. They then presented their levels to the administration and asked them what level of cleanliness they wanted: Pristine, very clean, clean, and so on down the line. The administration said that the top levels of cleanliness were too expensive, and went straight down the line until they opted for a level of cleanliness which is officially known as- and I am not making this up- “moderately dingy”. So, if the place is supposed to be only moderately dingy, why are we disgusting?
Because moderately dingy is an average over the whole store. The managers, including the one who accuses us of being slobs, have understandably opted to have the cleaning crew concentrate on keeping the sales floor clean. Whatever time they have left over is to be spent keeping the managers’ offices clean. Our place is way down the list. The garbage cans are only emptied every third day. One the first day they are full. On the second day they are overflowing. On the third day we are throwing our garbage, which is mainly packing paper and bubble wrap from the boxes, in the general direction of the mounds that have formed around the garbage cans. Our floor is swept less than once a week. So yeah, we’re slobs.
11:10 A young woman just came back here, She must be a new hire, as I have never seen her before. I would have remembered this girl, because she is gorgeous. Were I so inclined, I would say she could inspire what the Catechism refers to as a “near occasion for sin.” The university calls it “a near occasion to get fired.” Must keep my eyes down and remember the rules.
11:15. I helped her, and she is now gone. I mentioned the rules, so I should explain what I meant by that. And this is a true story.
The rules are set down regarding sexual harassment, which is a potential firing offence, and for the moment I am specifically referring to the part which outlines a woman’s right not to be made uncomfortable by having men stare or ogle at her. Fine enough, but what is the difference between a glance and a stare, and at what point does the attention become unwanted attention?
The university decided that the difference could be found in time, and that unwanted attention occurs or may be considered to have occurred when a man takes a sustained look at a woman for longer than three seconds. So if a good-looking woman catches a man’s eye, the man has three seconds to say “Holy Cow!” or any other thought before he must look away. And no, I am not making that up.
My meeting with the young woman went like this: Her: “Can you help me? I need to find a book that came in today for a customer.”
Me: One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, Three... “Sure. What book?”
11:20 I feel compelled to re-iterate that I work at a university, and these rules and regulations are made by smart people.
11:21. So-called.
11:30 Time for my morning break. I take it at my station instead of in the lunchroom to avoid the stench. I flip through the paper looking for the crossword. I pass by various articles about the beginning of the year, the start of a new decade, predictions and a bunch of blah blah blah. In the middle of the entertainment section is an article about upcoming television shows and series. I don’t get a chance to watch television, so I have a look at what I will be missing.
11:35. HBO has a series coming out called Spartacus. It will be a re imaging of the slave rebellion. The show promises to be bloody (no kidding) and also to have, and I quote: “Some of the most graphic sex scenes ever shown on television.” Oh joy.
11:36. I find I miss the old days of trench coats and brown paper bags. There was a time when porn had a stigma attached. Now it’s a sales point.
11:45. Back to work. There goes the buzzer again. Wait for it…Wait for it… “Frack! I don’t believe it! I have never seen it this bad!” Yes, Pothead, you have.
11:51. Let us take this opportunity to pause for a moment and ponder the word “Frack”. As it is currently used it is a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb, a gerund, a proposition more. It is an exclamation, a declaration, a statement, an interjection and a question. It is all this, and far, far more. It’s offensiveness aside, it is obviously one of the most useful words in the English language. In fact, I put it to you, gentle reader, that should noted linguists like Pothead continue on the current trajectory, one day in the not so distant future it will be the only word in the English language. Conversations will begin to sound like the aliens from Mars Attacks. Imagine going to the store:
Customer: Frack! Frack frack, frack frack frack frack frack. Frack frack frack? (Hi there! I have come to buy some milk. Where is it?)
Clerk: Frack frack frack frack frack frack frack. (In the dairy case in the back.)
Customer: Frack! (Thank you so very, very much, kind sir. Your manners are impeccable and I shall patronize your wonderful establishment often in the future, and tell all my friends about it as well!)
And to think, we get to watch the change take place in front of our own two eyes.
Back to work.
12:07 Sometimes I find books with unintentionally amusing titles. Like this one: Marxism for Dummies. The jokes almost write themselves.
!2:14 I am not the only one who breaks back here away from the lunchroom. The Teutonic Plague also eats at his station and uses his computer to surf the web when on break. At least I no longer notice the smell of his lunch. He eats some variety of very sour kraut.
12:16: But there are those who still do notice the smell. Some of the guys from the sales floor have just closed the door that divides receiving from their area. They say the stuff stinks and they hate it. There was talk about putting restrictions on the kinds of food people can bring to work. Now there’s a fight I’d love to see. If they try and go after the Plague over there for his food, they’d have to do something about the people in the lunchroom and theirs, and they are all members of visible minorities who wouldn’t hesitate to charge the university with racism. That would be fun.
12:17 I wonder for whom I would pull? On the one hand, it amuses me to see the university discomfited, but on the other hand, the smell of some of their lunches is incredible. It is enough to make a dung beetle puke.
12:20 I’ve been trying to think of some story to say about the Teutonic Plague, but nothing comes to mind. He’s an interesting fellow, in a way. He is intelligent, he used to be a teacher, apparently, back in Germany. Like the Pharaoh he never had his qualifications upgraded when he came here. He spends his free time surfing the net for whatever topic is of interest to him for the day. He trusts the information he finds on the internet, and after reading an article on Wikipedia feels himself sufficiently informed to speak authoritatively on the subject.
He is interested in many hobbies, but actually pursues none of them apart from downloading some information about them from the web. He doesn’t have the time to be a woodworker, he says, though he finds information about it everywhere. He even debates with me some of the better methods of woodworking, although I’ve been doing it as a hobbyist for years, and he has never sharpened a chisel. His favourite leisure time activity at home is playing video games. An odd choice for a man in his fifties, but there you are. Personally, I much prefer my own hobby. At the end of the day, I have something solid I can look upon, and say to others: I made that. At the end of the day all he has to show for his efforts are sore thumbs. Video games are a way to kill time for those who believe their time is better off dead.
He is a former Catholic, now atheist, a firm believer in Malthus who is yet still here. He has changed his opinion on many topics based on a single sentence found on the internet, and the moment he changes his mind he cannot believe that anyone would still believe what he believed not five minutes ago, and dismisses them as idiots. He is moody, with moods ranging from surly, to downright angry, to enraged, and on occasion he is almost- but never quite- friendly. In short, sour kraut is the perfect food for him. A little too perfect, actually. Watching him eat can be rather uncomfortable, and not merely because of the smell. One sometimes feels one is witnessing cannibalism.
12:50. Apparently there’s another faint smell back here, but I never notice it anymore, but sometimes the new guys complain a bit about it. It comes from the elevator shaft. Here’s how it got there, and this is a true story:
A few years back, there was a series of problems in the back here. The basin at the bottom of the freight elevator shaft was suddenly holding a fair amount of water, which it should not have been. What was worse, the water had an unpleasant odour to it. The maintenance staff was summoned, and they diagnosed the problem as being a leak coming down through the roof. They fiddled with the roof and left. The basin continued to fill, and the smell intensified. Another round of maintenance staff was summoned, and this time they said the problem was with a water pump. An electrician said he could not fix it, as this was a plumbing problem, and a plumber said he could not fix it, as the pump was electrical and we therefore needed the electrician to fix it. For those of you unfamiliar with union speak, I’ll translate the pair of them for you: “It’s Thursday, tomorrow is Friday, and I don’t want to start anything major this close to the weekend.” One more thing: While the plumber and the electrician were in disagreement about whose job it was to fix our problem, they were in total agreement that another problem we were having- the toilets in the nearby bathrooms were backing up- was completely unrelated and the fact that the two problems happened at almost exactly the same time was a mere coincidence.
On Friday we came in, and nearly threw up. The stench was now incredible, and the basin, which is about the size of an above ground swimming pool, was now three to four feet deep in sewage. The toilet problem was not a coincidence. The faulty pump had left the waste nowhere to go but here. At our behest the health and safety nazis were summoned, and I prepared to leave work early. Obviously working less than ten feet from an open-air sewer was a health hazard, right?
Wrong. They told us it was not a hazard as such, and the smell, while offensive, presented no real danger. “Besides,” one actually told me. “The smell isn’t that bad.”
Maintenance workers were summoned. A plumber in hip waders waded into the basin, took a deep breath through his nose and said: “I live for this!” He turned to us and asked: “You know what that smell is?”
“A whole lot of crap mixed with urine?” I answered, suppressing my gag reflex.
“No,” he answered. “It’s money.”
A week later the cleanup was nearly finished as they power washed the basin. A lingering odor, a faint stain in the air, persisted for days after that. Some say it lingers still.
1:30 It is actually no surprise there would be problems with the freight elevator. There have been many problems with the elevator. It begins like this, and this is a true story:
The receiving area is in the basement of our store. Originally there were no plans for a basement because there were no plans for a receiving area at all. Shortly after construction on the building began, someone pointed out that a large university bookstore needs a place to process the arrival of all its books and merchandise, so a basement was hastily added. Some other genius working for the university later pointed out that there needed to be a way to move the goods from the loading dock down to the basement, so a freight elevator was hastily added to the hastily added plans for the basement.
Now, a freight elevator has a very specific set of requirements in its construction code. Most importantly, the shaft is to be made out of reinforced poured concrete. Our shaft was originally made out of hollow stacked cinder blocks- not ever remotely up to code. After some of the blocks began to crumble and fall out of the wall, maintenance responded by trying to pour concrete into the hollows of the cinder blocks. Still not up to code.
I can hear Pothead shouting again.
1:31. Incidentally, the shaft isn’t the only thing down here not up to code. One of the more noticeable elements is the lack of a drain in the basement floor. By code all basements in Toronto must have a floor drain, but here there is none. We have had several floods down here, and the water had nowhere to go whatsoever.
We in the back sometimes play a game: we call it “Name That Bribe”. The object of the game is to speculate what the building inspector was paid off to pass this place. I don’t know how much for sure, but I imagine he and his family had a very nice vacation.
Pothead’s shouting is getting closer.
1:32 The loading dock ramp just broke. Fantastic.
Did I say ‘vacation’? I meant ‘around the world cruise’.
2:03 Pharaoh just came over to me and asked me if I could handle a large skid of stuff that just came in and is a rush job.. I pointed out that I am working on two larger skids of books that are also a rush job, and I will likely be doing so for some time. He, on the other hand, has done nothing but try and get other people to do his job all day long. He starts going on about how this is a really important rush job. Everything is a really important rush job this time of year, I say to myself. “We need to make some space around here. It really needs to be done,” he says to me.
“Then you had better get to work on it,” I reply.
2:05. He has a point. This place is absolutely full and there’s no space. I’ll go talk to the text people to see if we can get some help.
2:10 Just had to speak with the guys over in the text division. Conversation dealt with two things. First, we discussed the health of one of the better workers for text. Apparently he is doing well. He is off because he had a benign tumour removed from the area near his rectum. Apparently the tumour was believed to be about four pounds in size. We teased him about his problem, dubbing him ‘the Tumorous B.I.G.’, but we all wished him well. Before we took time off for the surgery I shook his hand and said to him sincerely “I hope everything comes out all right in the end.” In retrospect, I should have chosen some other cliché.
Second, The receiving area is swamped with received merchandise with more stuff coming in, and we are out of room. I asked if we could move some skids onto the sales floor, or at least get some of their shelvers working to move some of the stuff out of our area and onto the shelves.
Nothing doing on both counts. The Big Boss, the one who thinks the receivers are a bunch of slobs, has 1. declared the sales floor is too crowded with customers for people to be shelving right now, plus all available text staff are to be helping customers, not shelving books anyway, and 2.cancelled the night crew for this week so we can’t shelve the stuff that came in during the day at night when the store is empty either. In the mean time, he has been yelling at the text staff because the books that have been received are stuck in the back and not on the shelves. And no, I am not making this up either.
2:30. Lunch. I go out for some peace.
3:30 I call the guy who works beside me “The Forty Two Year Old Virgin.” I used to call him the Forty One Year Old Virgin, but he had a birthday. They say that, generally speaking, a man doesn’t decide to be a virgin, women make that decision for him. In Virgin’s case, I’d say they show good judgement. I get along well with the guy, but there’s some darn thing about him, and I imagine the women can sense it, too, something that just isn’t right. I can never put my finger on it, but there it is. If we ever had a contest, I’d vote for him to be named “Guy most likely to be seen on the news.” And not for a good reason, either.
3:34 I wonder what it is. He looks like the most normal guy in the world. Average height, decent build. Nothing unusual about his hair. His clothing comes off the rack, any rack. His face is neither handsome nor ugly, just average. A witness would be hard pressed to remember any features that would distinguish him in a line up. Watches the same television as everyone else. No unusual hobbies or interests. He is noticeable neither for his vices nor his virtues. Absolutely nothing to mark him our as anything other than a normal guy. If ordinary can be taken to an extreme, this man has done it. Perhaps I should rename him “The Most Ordinary Man in the World.” And yet there always remains this something, this slight sense of unease when he is around, like the air is a degree colder, like someone is watching you, as though his undifference constitutes some strange, unknowable difference in itself.
3:50 I need to find one of the sub managers to sign some paperwork of mine. The one for whom I am looking is made of better stuff than the Big Boss, but is hamstrung by his foolish directives. I haven’t seen her yet today, though I’ve been around the store a few times seeking her out.
She is fairly hard to miss. For the most part she is on the short, rather pudgy side, but she is always impeccably and stylishly dressed. She works to play up her two most noticeable features: her breasts and her hair. She emphasizes the first by almost always dressing to show off the acre or two of cleavage she possesses, in a stylish way. She emphasizes the second by the effort she puts into putting her brilliant red hair into a perfect coif. Her usual style has her hair meticulously architectured into a copper ziggurat. I wonder how longs she spends getting ready for the day.
3:57 Finally met her in her office, behind her desk. Her two good feature )or should I say three, are out for maximuim attention today. I fixed my eyes on her hair. The job security is better up there. I handed her the paper I needed her to sign. She signed it and asked me how my vacation had been. I told her it was fine and asked her how hers had been. “It was probably my best Christmas ever,” she replied, positively glowing.
“Really?” I asked. “You spent it with your new boyfriend?” Personally, I find something odd in referring to a forty plus year old man as a ‘boyfriend’, but that’s modern life for you.
“Oh yes,” she said very brightly. “It was wonderful.”
Uh-huh, I think. “How did you get along with his son?” I ask out loud.
“He wasn’t there,” she said. “He was with his mother for Christmas, and we just had a great time to ourselves.” She let out a small, very uncharacteristic giggle, and stretched rather languidly.
Uh-huh, I think again.
“It was better that way,” she added. “Just the two of us to ourselves. He even said so.”
Would you listen to yourself? Your 'boyfriend’ doesn’t miss his own son on Christmas Day. Outwardly, I nod. There really isn’t anything else I can say. My own kids drive me nuts, make no mistake, but I miss them when they are not around. If I were to be separated from them, I would never feel quite whole. I've never met her 'boyfriend', but already he seems less of a man to me.
4:04 Odd, isn’t it, what divorce has done to our culture? Some people claim that divorce allows one to seek one’s own happiness, to remove oneself from misfires and to seek one’s true soulmate.
Perhaps. But these days, as often as not, and perhaps even more often, one woman’s soulmate is another woman’s castoff.
Kind of puts it in a different perspective, doesn’t it?
4:37. The radio keeps blaring out an ad for a show on the history channel this week, which combines Nostradamus with Mayan prophecies about the coming of the end of the world. I have but one tiny question: Nostradamus aside, why would anyone pay any attention to the celestial calculations of a people who thought the sun would only rise if they appeased it with enough human hearts and a couple of virgins to boot?
4:38. Truth be told, I wouldn’t mind if the world ended in 2012. It would save me the trouble of planning for retirement. What am I talking about? Death is my retirement plan.
Some people are terrified of death. I don’t make an issue of it. Death is only an issue for people who aren’t already in hell.
4:45. Pothead has swore his last for the day. “I’ve done enough for one frackin’ day,” he said. “I’m out of here.”
4:46 Pothead leaving early is not unusual for him. He does in on heavy days. But what about slow days, you ask? I can answer that, and this is a true story. On slow days Pothead will announce around 4:45 that there is nothing going on, and therefore he will leave early.
The logic is beautiful, isn’t it? On slow days there is nothing to do and therefore he leaves early, and on busy days when there is something to do he has already done enough and therefore he leaves early.
Pothead logic never ceases to amaze.
4:59: Come to think of it, looking back on the logic for so many of the decisions down here, I wonder how many potheads we got down here?
5:00. The others in receiving have left, and I have the space to myself for an hour. I put on some of my own music for the background while I work. This is my favourite part of the workday.
5:59. Shutting down for the day. We did a lot of work, still have a lot to do for tomorrow. By tomorrow the break will be nothing but a distant memory, as vague as though it never happened. That's just the way it is.
Most of the people down here don’t hesitate to say how much they hate this place. I don’t hate this place, exactly. It allows me to fulfill my role as a father, and keep a roof over my family’s head, clothes on their backs and food in their bellies. They don’t have everything they want, mind you, but they do have what they need, and for that I am grateful for this job.
4 December 2009
Cold Shower
Is what bear is taking right now.
The gas company came and cleaned the furnace yesterday- replacing the filters etc etc. Today, we have no hot water, coincidence- I think not.
The gas company came and cleaned the furnace yesterday- replacing the filters etc etc. Today, we have no hot water, coincidence- I think not.
30 March 2009
Been busy, again
I've been too busy with other considerations to go about blogging lately. Right now I'm tied down on a couple of writing projects that I've been meaning to get done, plus a cousin of mine has asked me to write a piece for some periodical detailing the Battle of Beaver Dams. All pro bono, of course.
I'll get back to blogging at some point. I had planned to write a few posts that ought to give you people your daily dose of tedium, as you've come to expect.
I'll get back to blogging at some point. I had planned to write a few posts that ought to give you people your daily dose of tedium, as you've come to expect.
15 November 2008
Will... to live...fading...
Why, oh why, did my wife and I resolve to try and be responsible parents? If I could be one of those irresponsible lumps that is the norm for modern North American Parenthood, I would never get myself into these messes.
What mess? you ask. Why the mess that comes when Puff and I decided to start vetting the books our eldest daughter reads. The one my wife posted about a while back comes with a series. I got stuck with number two.
I got stuck vetting another series back in the late '90's or early 2000's. My wife, who at the time worked at a daycare centre came home with a book. She explained that the day care centre was considering putting this title into their library, but were concerned because a number of places, mostly in the States, were banning it. They asked her to read it because she had an English degree. She asked me to read it because I had almost three English degrees.
It was a dark period in my life. I had come to the realization that I was not going to get my Ph.D, that I was more or less stuck where I was. After being forced during the course of my degrees to read books about books about books, or books that tried to structure a hypothetical/theoretical position from which one may begin to have a discussion about how to approach a work of literary art, I had pretty much given up on reading. So my reaction was bleak. "It has come to this," I said to myself. "I, Bear, B.A. M.A., all but dissertation on my Ph.D, am now a reader of children's books for day care centres. Lord, end my suffering, please."
The Lord did not end my suffering, and I sighed and sat down and began reading the first of the Harry Potter novels. I expected a long slow drag, but instead I found that time flew, and before I knew it, I was at the end, and wondering what happened next. The book wasn't great, but it was good, and it had a lot of quirky humour in it. I went out and got my own copy of the book, and then began to get the rest of the series.
I feel I owe Rowling a debt of gratitude, for it was through her that I remembered my long suppressed love of good stories. It rekindled my fondness for children's writing. All too often the so-called adult writing relies on the visceral thrills of sex and violence to cover over the lack of style and story. Children's writing, without these crutches, has to resort to good storytelling. I began reading again, and although I did find a few clunkers, I remembered Pliny Major's dictum: "I never saw a book so bad I did not get some good from it."
Well that's out the window. Pliny never read the Twilight series, or he would have qualified that statement. The books are terrible. The writing is horrible. The 'story', so-called, is told from the point of view of a late teen girl, who is in love with vampire. They love as no two have ever loved before, nor ever shall again, blah blah blah. Every word this girl puts on the page is a reiteration and restatement of two facts:
1. My life sucks; and
2. That pale guy is cute.
I used to observe the teen girls around me when I was a teenager. There was a certain coterie of them that I believed were the most vapid, shallow and stupid creatures put upon the earth. They were the ones who thought they were the most mature and sophisticated people there ever were.
Now, I know most of you ladies out there probably believe that girls mature faster than boys. In all honesty, I never saw it. It really came down to the individuals. I thought, and still do, that if you were to take one hundred boys and one hundred girls, pair them off at random, and administer some kind of objective maturity test, maybe 51 girls would be more mature than the boys, and only 48 of the boys more so than the girls, with one tie. Now, I know boys have their signature immaturities- usually gross, involving bodily fluids and/or sex jokes, and potentially fatal habits. Girls, however, have their own signature immaturity, and believing they are more mature than they are is it. This is Bella, the main character of the novel.
She is seventeen going on eighteen. Her boyfriend, Edward, is forever seventeen. She wants to be with him forever. He is also slightly the bad boy, but also polite and self controlled, not like those other boys. He is also more mature than the other boys, as he should be since he is really over one hundred years old. (Question: aren't there laws against this sort of thing?) He's also a hunk. a hunk like no other, yadda yadda yadda. Really, take away the vampire stuff and you got the same drivel I heard from a dozen girls who fell in love with the quarterback/rebel/drug addict who just needed someone to understand him. The girls then got pregnant, dumped, and now flip burgers at McD's, while going home to look after their grandchildren.
Somehow this stuff plays for the teen girls. For me, I find myself debating whether to turn the page, or gouge out my eyeballs.
It all takes place in a small town, naturally- dark forces always swirl about the small towns. Nothing bad ever happens in the big city. The characters are dumb. I can't even relate to the male characters. Take her father, the town Sheriff. Edward breaks Bella's heart. For four months Bella mopes around the house in the throes of the deepest (yawn) depression. I have long since decided that if any boy causes either of my daughters to shed a single tear of sorrow I will hunt them to the ends of the earth and rend them to pieces with my bare hands. I will carry their bloody head back to my home and mount it on a stake outside as a warning to all others who would dare harm my daughters. If anyone should consider this action to be 'criminal' and charge me with something or other, I will simply stack the jury with fathers who have daughters, and I will walk away a free man. And possibly father of the year.
So what does Bella's father do? He decides to send her to her mother to see if the mother can make her feel better. This is a modern man? The guy's the town Sheriff, for cryin' out loud. Not only is he packing heat, he would investigate the boy's disappearance. Think of the possibilities:
Deputy to Sheriff: "The boy who dated your daughter has been found dead in a shallow grave outside of town with five bullets in his head."
Sheriff: "Sounds like natural causes to me."
Deputy, writing on his pad: "Natural causes it is. By the way, my daughter's going out on a date this Friday...."
Sheriff, nodding: "Natural causes?"
Deputy: "I was thinking more along the lines of 'Act of God'...."
Sheriff: "Deal."
Moving on. In this stupid book, as far as I've gotten, the vampires have left, and now some werewolves have shown up. How utterly unpredictable. Things sure do get bad in these small towns. How many shark's chewed their way through Amity? And if you change the name slightly to Amityville, then you got Satan showing up. Who ever could have predicted that Werewolves would show up in a vampire novel? This is unheard of.
Second, why werewolves? Why can't we have some other kind of creature, just to shake things up a bit? A werebear, or a weresnake, or even better, a werecockroach! Imagine the possibilities of a such a virtually indestructible creature:
Werecockroach: "Your nuclear weapons don't scare me, you puny insignificant humans. Now hand over all your manure before things get really ugly."
Something, anything, to shake things up a bit. Any good author will write within the confines of a genre, but they will play with the rules, bend them here and there to make the story their own. This book, I see nothing. It's all: "My life sucks, Edward come back to me, my life has no meaning without you.... " And teenage girls identify with this?
I have theory as to why. It feeds into the lies and self-deception girls that age perform upon themselves. It is a story in which the lies so many girls believe to their sorrow are actually true. Their parent's don't understand them (Bella's father is completely out to lunch). They are more mature for their age. They should have relations with older men, even if the man is infinitely older. Her maturity will make them equals. The bad boy really is a good guy, if only he met the right girl. Someone like... me. This story turns on all these points, and shows them to be true in Bella's case. If there is something dangerous within this book, this is it.
I may let Elder continue reading, but I have given her a condition. She is to treat the book like a scarecrow. Before she starts trying to read this novel, she must first intone the following: "Bella is an idiot. Bella is a moron. I am not like Bella. By the Grace of God, I pray I may never be like Bella.
"Amen"
Now I just got find a away to skip out of vetting novels 3, 4 and any other number that comes along, before Egyptian Mummies start showing up. I only wish these novels were written on soft absorbent 3-ply paper. Then I could get some use out of it. I remember a Russian author's response to a bad review of one of his books (not exactly Catholic alert):
"Dear sir.
I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. Your article is in front of me. Soon it will be behind me.
Sincerely,
x."
Exactly.
What mess? you ask. Why the mess that comes when Puff and I decided to start vetting the books our eldest daughter reads. The one my wife posted about a while back comes with a series. I got stuck with number two.
I got stuck vetting another series back in the late '90's or early 2000's. My wife, who at the time worked at a daycare centre came home with a book. She explained that the day care centre was considering putting this title into their library, but were concerned because a number of places, mostly in the States, were banning it. They asked her to read it because she had an English degree. She asked me to read it because I had almost three English degrees.
It was a dark period in my life. I had come to the realization that I was not going to get my Ph.D, that I was more or less stuck where I was. After being forced during the course of my degrees to read books about books about books, or books that tried to structure a hypothetical/theoretical position from which one may begin to have a discussion about how to approach a work of literary art, I had pretty much given up on reading. So my reaction was bleak. "It has come to this," I said to myself. "I, Bear, B.A. M.A., all but dissertation on my Ph.D, am now a reader of children's books for day care centres. Lord, end my suffering, please."
The Lord did not end my suffering, and I sighed and sat down and began reading the first of the Harry Potter novels. I expected a long slow drag, but instead I found that time flew, and before I knew it, I was at the end, and wondering what happened next. The book wasn't great, but it was good, and it had a lot of quirky humour in it. I went out and got my own copy of the book, and then began to get the rest of the series.
I feel I owe Rowling a debt of gratitude, for it was through her that I remembered my long suppressed love of good stories. It rekindled my fondness for children's writing. All too often the so-called adult writing relies on the visceral thrills of sex and violence to cover over the lack of style and story. Children's writing, without these crutches, has to resort to good storytelling. I began reading again, and although I did find a few clunkers, I remembered Pliny Major's dictum: "I never saw a book so bad I did not get some good from it."
Well that's out the window. Pliny never read the Twilight series, or he would have qualified that statement. The books are terrible. The writing is horrible. The 'story', so-called, is told from the point of view of a late teen girl, who is in love with vampire. They love as no two have ever loved before, nor ever shall again, blah blah blah. Every word this girl puts on the page is a reiteration and restatement of two facts:
1. My life sucks; and
2. That pale guy is cute.
I used to observe the teen girls around me when I was a teenager. There was a certain coterie of them that I believed were the most vapid, shallow and stupid creatures put upon the earth. They were the ones who thought they were the most mature and sophisticated people there ever were.
Now, I know most of you ladies out there probably believe that girls mature faster than boys. In all honesty, I never saw it. It really came down to the individuals. I thought, and still do, that if you were to take one hundred boys and one hundred girls, pair them off at random, and administer some kind of objective maturity test, maybe 51 girls would be more mature than the boys, and only 48 of the boys more so than the girls, with one tie. Now, I know boys have their signature immaturities- usually gross, involving bodily fluids and/or sex jokes, and potentially fatal habits. Girls, however, have their own signature immaturity, and believing they are more mature than they are is it. This is Bella, the main character of the novel.
She is seventeen going on eighteen. Her boyfriend, Edward, is forever seventeen. She wants to be with him forever. He is also slightly the bad boy, but also polite and self controlled, not like those other boys. He is also more mature than the other boys, as he should be since he is really over one hundred years old. (Question: aren't there laws against this sort of thing?) He's also a hunk. a hunk like no other, yadda yadda yadda. Really, take away the vampire stuff and you got the same drivel I heard from a dozen girls who fell in love with the quarterback/rebel/drug addict who just needed someone to understand him. The girls then got pregnant, dumped, and now flip burgers at McD's, while going home to look after their grandchildren.
Somehow this stuff plays for the teen girls. For me, I find myself debating whether to turn the page, or gouge out my eyeballs.
It all takes place in a small town, naturally- dark forces always swirl about the small towns. Nothing bad ever happens in the big city. The characters are dumb. I can't even relate to the male characters. Take her father, the town Sheriff. Edward breaks Bella's heart. For four months Bella mopes around the house in the throes of the deepest (yawn) depression. I have long since decided that if any boy causes either of my daughters to shed a single tear of sorrow I will hunt them to the ends of the earth and rend them to pieces with my bare hands. I will carry their bloody head back to my home and mount it on a stake outside as a warning to all others who would dare harm my daughters. If anyone should consider this action to be 'criminal' and charge me with something or other, I will simply stack the jury with fathers who have daughters, and I will walk away a free man. And possibly father of the year.
So what does Bella's father do? He decides to send her to her mother to see if the mother can make her feel better. This is a modern man? The guy's the town Sheriff, for cryin' out loud. Not only is he packing heat, he would investigate the boy's disappearance. Think of the possibilities:
Deputy to Sheriff: "The boy who dated your daughter has been found dead in a shallow grave outside of town with five bullets in his head."
Sheriff: "Sounds like natural causes to me."
Deputy, writing on his pad: "Natural causes it is. By the way, my daughter's going out on a date this Friday...."
Sheriff, nodding: "Natural causes?"
Deputy: "I was thinking more along the lines of 'Act of God'...."
Sheriff: "Deal."
Moving on. In this stupid book, as far as I've gotten, the vampires have left, and now some werewolves have shown up. How utterly unpredictable. Things sure do get bad in these small towns. How many shark's chewed their way through Amity? And if you change the name slightly to Amityville, then you got Satan showing up. Who ever could have predicted that Werewolves would show up in a vampire novel? This is unheard of.
Second, why werewolves? Why can't we have some other kind of creature, just to shake things up a bit? A werebear, or a weresnake, or even better, a werecockroach! Imagine the possibilities of a such a virtually indestructible creature:
Werecockroach: "Your nuclear weapons don't scare me, you puny insignificant humans. Now hand over all your manure before things get really ugly."
Something, anything, to shake things up a bit. Any good author will write within the confines of a genre, but they will play with the rules, bend them here and there to make the story their own. This book, I see nothing. It's all: "My life sucks, Edward come back to me, my life has no meaning without you.... " And teenage girls identify with this?
I have theory as to why. It feeds into the lies and self-deception girls that age perform upon themselves. It is a story in which the lies so many girls believe to their sorrow are actually true. Their parent's don't understand them (Bella's father is completely out to lunch). They are more mature for their age. They should have relations with older men, even if the man is infinitely older. Her maturity will make them equals. The bad boy really is a good guy, if only he met the right girl. Someone like... me. This story turns on all these points, and shows them to be true in Bella's case. If there is something dangerous within this book, this is it.
I may let Elder continue reading, but I have given her a condition. She is to treat the book like a scarecrow. Before she starts trying to read this novel, she must first intone the following: "Bella is an idiot. Bella is a moron. I am not like Bella. By the Grace of God, I pray I may never be like Bella.
"Amen"
Now I just got find a away to skip out of vetting novels 3, 4 and any other number that comes along, before Egyptian Mummies start showing up. I only wish these novels were written on soft absorbent 3-ply paper. Then I could get some use out of it. I remember a Russian author's response to a bad review of one of his books (not exactly Catholic alert):
"Dear sir.
I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. Your article is in front of me. Soon it will be behind me.
Sincerely,
x."
Exactly.
1 November 2008
What I am up too - Mother stuff
Elder has been bothering Bear and me to be able to read a book called, wait for it... "Twilight" Bear and I told her she could, though neither of us had read it, but her friends were. In any case she read almost half of it in 1 day (500 pages +- 10) I asked her what it was about and she said, that it's about a girl who is in love with a vampire and he can't resist wanting her blood.
Now I love vampire novels ( I read many of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles: I stopped after Body Snatcher, but that is another post.) Anywhoo, back to this. My main concern is that Vampires are very .. you know.... sensually if not outright sexually charged creatures of dark myth. And since Elder is 13 and the heroine of the story is 17 and the dark hero/villain is well old enough to be her great great great grandfather, I told her to hold off continuing finishing the novel, until it was vetted by me.
I started reading it and in less than the first chapter, I was bored. The author's style is slow. But anyway, I digress. I am still reading and I won't make any final decisions about letting Elder finish the novel (she wants to read all four novels in the series)- but honestly, it reads alot like Wuthering Heights. Meyers alludes to WH in the novel, and that is when I put the basic premise together- also kind of explained the boredom- I digress. So far my judgement is that IF I let her continue to finish the novel, she has to read Wuthering Heights- She has agreed. There seems to be great debate in which I cannot partake, until I am finished, regarding Edward vs Jacob [Basically it amounts to Vampire vs Werewolf] It might be interesting debate to have with Elder, I just think she may be to young to appreciate and evaluate such a debate and therefore may be too young for the novel.---- But the jury is still out.
Side note: At school, they have scheduled guidance periods, and in guidance Elder mentioned that sometimes she prefers to read and get INTO a novel she is reading instead of playing with other kids. Elder can be a loner at times. The leader asked what she was reading, to which Elder responded that she had been reading Twilight until her 'rents told her they needed to check it out. The Leader told her to tell me that it's ok to let her read it because Scholastic sells it, which Elder proceeded to tell me, and I answered: Tell this person (read "twit") 'Just because Scholastic sells it doesn't mean it's proper reading material: after all it sold an albeit watered down version of The Golden Compass, but that still lead many parents to letting their children read the unabridged version of a novel written by an atheist who has publicly stated that his intention is to destroy faith and belief in GOD.
This leads to to another beef: I being given advice via my kid. Whatever happened to supporting and backing up the 'rents? Has the Leader even read the series: It's a love triangle between a girl, a vampire and a werewolf with the latter two fighting over the first. What kind of 'rent doesn't take that kind of subject matter seriously- The whole Vampire/ werewolf not withstanding - It's two guys in "love" with 1 girl - that alone may make it inappropriate for 13 year olds to evaluate.
In the Public Library it is listed as Young Adult : for 9 year olds and older. 9 year olds are in no way adults - young or otherwise. Public classifications may help parents make up their minds, but it doesn't absolve us from doing our jobs.
I am rambling - 4 hours of reading has done this to me. Apologies one and all, back to the main gist of this post- if it ever had one: Where I am in deciding whether a 13 year old is old enough for this book and so far, my interim conclusin is:
the only harm this book may do is bore the reader to tears. I may end up NOT prohibiting it for elder, but I may not recommend it either.
Now I love vampire novels ( I read many of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles: I stopped after Body Snatcher, but that is another post.) Anywhoo, back to this. My main concern is that Vampires are very .. you know.... sensually if not outright sexually charged creatures of dark myth. And since Elder is 13 and the heroine of the story is 17 and the dark hero/villain is well old enough to be her great great great grandfather, I told her to hold off continuing finishing the novel, until it was vetted by me.
I started reading it and in less than the first chapter, I was bored. The author's style is slow. But anyway, I digress. I am still reading and I won't make any final decisions about letting Elder finish the novel (she wants to read all four novels in the series)- but honestly, it reads alot like Wuthering Heights. Meyers alludes to WH in the novel, and that is when I put the basic premise together- also kind of explained the boredom- I digress. So far my judgement is that IF I let her continue to finish the novel, she has to read Wuthering Heights- She has agreed. There seems to be great debate in which I cannot partake, until I am finished, regarding Edward vs Jacob [Basically it amounts to Vampire vs Werewolf] It might be interesting debate to have with Elder, I just think she may be to young to appreciate and evaluate such a debate and therefore may be too young for the novel.---- But the jury is still out.
Side note: At school, they have scheduled guidance periods, and in guidance Elder mentioned that sometimes she prefers to read and get INTO a novel she is reading instead of playing with other kids. Elder can be a loner at times. The leader asked what she was reading, to which Elder responded that she had been reading Twilight until her 'rents told her they needed to check it out. The Leader told her to tell me that it's ok to let her read it because Scholastic sells it, which Elder proceeded to tell me, and I answered: Tell this person (read "twit") 'Just because Scholastic sells it doesn't mean it's proper reading material: after all it sold an albeit watered down version of The Golden Compass, but that still lead many parents to letting their children read the unabridged version of a novel written by an atheist who has publicly stated that his intention is to destroy faith and belief in GOD.
This leads to to another beef: I being given advice via my kid. Whatever happened to supporting and backing up the 'rents? Has the Leader even read the series: It's a love triangle between a girl, a vampire and a werewolf with the latter two fighting over the first. What kind of 'rent doesn't take that kind of subject matter seriously- The whole Vampire/ werewolf not withstanding - It's two guys in "love" with 1 girl - that alone may make it inappropriate for 13 year olds to evaluate.
In the Public Library it is listed as Young Adult : for 9 year olds and older. 9 year olds are in no way adults - young or otherwise. Public classifications may help parents make up their minds, but it doesn't absolve us from doing our jobs.
I am rambling - 4 hours of reading has done this to me. Apologies one and all, back to the main gist of this post- if it ever had one: Where I am in deciding whether a 13 year old is old enough for this book and so far, my interim conclusin is:
the only harm this book may do is bore the reader to tears. I may end up NOT prohibiting it for elder, but I may not recommend it either.
12 September 2008
Missed Milestone
Checking the stats this morning I found that we have passed the 20,000 hit mark, which makes this a very low traffic site. Some of the heavy hitters get more hits in an hour. Still, a milestone is a milestone, and the hits are still a-comin'.
Sometimes I think It would be nice to have a little more traffic, but on the other hand high traffic brings with it a large number of whack jobs, and I'd just as soon not have that. I'm happy with the nice group of people who drop by and leave comments.
So thanks to you all for coming by. Keep coming by, Puff and I will still be putting up some posts for your edification.
Incidentally, hit number 20,000 was... me, checking in from work. So thanks, me, for putting us over the top.
Sometimes I think It would be nice to have a little more traffic, but on the other hand high traffic brings with it a large number of whack jobs, and I'd just as soon not have that. I'm happy with the nice group of people who drop by and leave comments.
So thanks to you all for coming by. Keep coming by, Puff and I will still be putting up some posts for your edification.
Incidentally, hit number 20,000 was... me, checking in from work. So thanks, me, for putting us over the top.
12 July 2008
I'm back
So, did I miss anything?
Didn't get the work done I intended to, so I'll have to find another way to deal with that.
I can't think of much to say, beyond that I will now resume sporadic blogging complete with rants; the fun of being Catholic; the joy of the Catholic father; why, oh why, are there so many dumb people?; things that amuse me or because I feel like it; and the occasional war story. As for the joy of being Catholic, I'd like to give a shout out to Louise at Purcell who is currently enjoying WYD. Louise, if you read this- I must now confess the sin of envy.
Under the because I feel like it heading I have this: My singing teacher made some remark to me that lead me to troll the net in a search for every version of Nessun Dorma I could find- and there are plenty, as it seems every tenor out there takes a shot at this one sooner or later. Here are a few of my favourites:
(By the way, my teacher's remark about this piece was not due to me singing this piece. Heck, he won't even let me sing scales yet.)
Though different, each one of these performances shows exquisite artistry and the God given talents of each man. Each also has a legion of critics commenting on their performances. The Best comment I saw was one person who observed: 'In all the world there are only a few people who can sing like this, but millions who can tell them how they are doing it wrong.' If you feel so inclined, say which one is your favourite in comments. As for my favourite... well, while not the technically most proficient, this performance always warms my heart.
Didn't get the work done I intended to, so I'll have to find another way to deal with that.
I can't think of much to say, beyond that I will now resume sporadic blogging complete with rants; the fun of being Catholic; the joy of the Catholic father; why, oh why, are there so many dumb people?; things that amuse me or because I feel like it; and the occasional war story. As for the joy of being Catholic, I'd like to give a shout out to Louise at Purcell who is currently enjoying WYD. Louise, if you read this- I must now confess the sin of envy.
Under the because I feel like it heading I have this: My singing teacher made some remark to me that lead me to troll the net in a search for every version of Nessun Dorma I could find- and there are plenty, as it seems every tenor out there takes a shot at this one sooner or later. Here are a few of my favourites:
(By the way, my teacher's remark about this piece was not due to me singing this piece. Heck, he won't even let me sing scales yet.)
Though different, each one of these performances shows exquisite artistry and the God given talents of each man. Each also has a legion of critics commenting on their performances. The Best comment I saw was one person who observed: 'In all the world there are only a few people who can sing like this, but millions who can tell them how they are doing it wrong.' If you feel so inclined, say which one is your favourite in comments. As for my favourite... well, while not the technically most proficient, this performance always warms my heart.
8 February 2008
Profanity unknown as profanity
'zounds = "God's Wounds" - profaning (swearing) the 5 wounds of Christ.
'sblood = "God's Blood" - profaning (swearing) the Precious Blood of Christ
Gadszooks = God's Hooks - Also refers to the crucifixion
Gorblimey = God Blind Me - taken to swear to the veracity of something
BLimey )
BLoody ) > all offend because they reference the BLood of Christ
BLinkin )
-- Source : "Evolution of Profanity" [ Language Alert- one can't have a discourse on profanity without the words.]
'sblood = "God's Blood" - profaning (swearing) the Precious Blood of Christ
Gadszooks = God's Hooks - Also refers to the crucifixion
Gorblimey = God Blind Me - taken to swear to the veracity of something
BLimey )
BLoody ) > all offend because they reference the BLood of Christ
BLinkin )
-- Source : "Evolution of Profanity" [ Language Alert- one can't have a discourse on profanity without the words.]
2 March 2007
The Tomb of Someone named Yesua
Ok, so dem bones, dem bones are being trotted out again.
Someone, 2000 years ago was named Yesua, and had a wife named Mariamene, and a mother named Mary and a son, name I forget, and a brother. Where's Papa? I mean if you are going to cancel Easter, cancel Christmas too. Really, what's the point of one without the other?
Reminds me of a joke in the early 70's, my sister told me when I was 5 years old
"Puff, Puff they cancelled Easter, they found the body."
"No," I begin to cry
"That's not all, they cancelled Christmas, they found his father too."
Then I cried, even more.
So they can prove it is The Lord's remains, through DNA testing.
Read the rest here
Ok DNA specialists out there, correct me if I am wrong: In order for a body to be confirmed as belonging to a specific person, isn't a comparison to be run, using the DNA from the corpse and a reference sample of DNA of the person one wishes to prove it is or isn't. My question is where did they get the reference sample of Our Lord's DNA in order to run a comparison. Or were they just able to prove that everyone in the tomb are related to each other. We already knew that. I fully believe that that the tombs are labelled correctly, I just don't think that the Yeshua buried there is "My Lord, and My God"
So I can't be bothered to get angry at Cameron. He is barely a Director, and now people are going to trust his theories in archeology and theology. Come on, everyone take a deep breath and let it go. Cameron isn't worth the energy to get outraged.
If you stick with me long enough, you will find a I love quoting Thomas More (Man for All Seasons)
And as he said to Roper, I would like to say to Cameron, " I only hope that when your head stops spinning it is to the front again."
Thomas More pray for him.
Someone, 2000 years ago was named Yesua, and had a wife named Mariamene, and a mother named Mary and a son, name I forget, and a brother. Where's Papa? I mean if you are going to cancel Easter, cancel Christmas too. Really, what's the point of one without the other?
Reminds me of a joke in the early 70's, my sister told me when I was 5 years old
"Puff, Puff they cancelled Easter, they found the body."
"No," I begin to cry
"That's not all, they cancelled Christmas, they found his father too."
Then I cried, even more.
So they can prove it is The Lord's remains, through DNA testing.
Oscar-winning Titanic director said statistical tests and DNA analysis backed
this view. ....."Mariamene is Mary Magdalene - that's the
Ringo, that's what sets this whole film in motion," he
said. ....Israeli archaeologist Amos Kloner, who was among the first to
examine the tomb when it was first discovered, said the names marked on the
coffins were very common at the time. "I don't accept the news that it was used
by Jesus or his family," he told the BBC News website.
Read the rest here
Ok DNA specialists out there, correct me if I am wrong: In order for a body to be confirmed as belonging to a specific person, isn't a comparison to be run, using the DNA from the corpse and a reference sample of DNA of the person one wishes to prove it is or isn't. My question is where did they get the reference sample of Our Lord's DNA in order to run a comparison. Or were they just able to prove that everyone in the tomb are related to each other. We already knew that. I fully believe that that the tombs are labelled correctly, I just don't think that the Yeshua buried there is "My Lord, and My God"
So I can't be bothered to get angry at Cameron. He is barely a Director, and now people are going to trust his theories in archeology and theology. Come on, everyone take a deep breath and let it go. Cameron isn't worth the energy to get outraged.
If you stick with me long enough, you will find a I love quoting Thomas More (Man for All Seasons)
And as he said to Roper, I would like to say to Cameron, " I only hope that when your head stops spinning it is to the front again."
Thomas More pray for him.
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