Helping you understand the siblings you never had.

I get flashes of wisdom, or thought-flashes, from time to time. Today I tried to explain what it was like having sisters, and I summed it up like this:

It's not really a deeper experience in understanding women. Due to the nature and nurture being the same, they are basically unstable, emotionally immature copies of one's mother.

I LOVE my sisters. They are amazing women (read that: amazING, not amazON). They are both better educated than I am and not afraid to correct my punctuation or ignorance of crop rotation. That said, I think I've stumbled onto something, and for once a neighbour's dog didn't leave it in my yard.

It does raise the issue that I am a more unstable, emotionally immature copy of my father, but he keeps telling me the police brought me (and consequently would be imminent to return on my misbehaviour), so that would make me my hometown's version of Ralph Wiggum.

I should just quit while I'm ahead, but I'm sure I'm quite a behind now.

So there you have it, if you want to imagine what siblings would have been like, get your parent of that gender inebriated with alcohol, power, anger, or whathaveyou, and then go camping. Oh, and have someone removed from the situation take pictures and make vague threats whenever you fight. Enjoy!

Clothing so loud you can't hear yourself think.

Today was Hawaiian shirt day for me. It made sense because it's the first day of spring and because I had a videoconference. I like to dress up for those. I've worn a suit, Halloween costumes, and this shirt.

I bought this shirt from a second hand store for $5. It is now in my regular rotation after 2 years. That is because it has the power to divide opinions. It is blue, with pink flowers and yellow thatched huts on it. It's loud enough to be an air-raid siren. I'm a combination lighthouse and foghorn with it on. Foghorn effects depending on diet.

There are 2 general reactions to my shirt:

1. I LOVE your shirt!
2. You are so brave to wear that outside. You are hideous. Hellen Keller would feel the heat of that shirt and be sick. That should be a controlled substance.

So to make matters worse, I'm wearing make-up now.

It's ok, 13 other guys were wearing make-up tonight as well. It was part of a Church drama, so there were 13 grown men, wearing period costume, with make-up on, with their props, misbehaving. Yeah, I could try to recreate the scene, but I'm at a loss for words. And I'd hate people to find out that Church can be fun.

When we were on stage it was all business. It was a powerful, moving, visual feast. An antithesis for my shirt, which is a visual feast moving powerfully.

So this is what I do on my long weekends. Anyone have a topper to that?

I hate all music but the stuff I like

There was a great music service, Pandora, which allowed you to sample music based on the components of other music you liked. It only helped me find one song I actually liked, but it is a really neat idea. Then they turned it off for international use because of the Recording Industry.

So I will use that method to describe music I hate, and the exceptions thereof.

1. There are no good uses for harp, except as a projectile that has a really cool Doppler effect.

2. I don't care who you are, no one can make the steel guitar sound good. Unless you're playing it with the business end of a shotgun.

3. Banjo is heaven. An all harp and steel guitar ensemble can be redeemed by one banjo.

4. The recorder is 2 degrees away from being declared illegal by the Geneva humanitarian council on torture prevention. "Burn them!" I have been tempted with lining them with Asbestos to prevent children from playing them.

5. If it needs to be played slow, it should stop. Slow tempo is fast on the road to total trash.

6. Folk music should be played for other folks.

7. The time between 1949 and 1969 is known as the black hole of music.

8. Indie == crapie.

9. Pop == poop.

10. Rap is just missing a C.

11. Anything I like that contradicts any of the above rules weighs in my favour.

So there you go. I'm the Archie Bunker of music, but at least I know what I like. And generally it's not what you like, so suck it up.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Happy Birthday Dad! Love you!

Weird Musical Tastes

I hinted the other day at my odd musical tastes. I will try to obscufate them further today.

I have eclectic taste in music. By eclectic I mean tantricly eccentric. It's a fine case of reality being weirder than fiction. Here is a menu of Ken's musical tastes:

Rammstein
Mix 'Metallica' with 'the Prodigy and fold in '2 live crew''s lyrics in German. All with the fun of minor key music and a bass lyricist that frightens anything with a high eye to head size ratio.

David Crowder Band*
Progressive rock with poetic Christian lyrics from Texas. Lead singer has a goatee, an affro, and is white. Did someone say "Banjo"?

Bach's Brandenburg Concerto's
Genius melodic work with an ensemble. Totally acoustic, with a nutty flavour. The world's favourite ecclesiastical composer in his secular contract masterpiece.

The Prodigy
Electronic Industrial music with thick guitar. A must for any workout or fragfest. If you're not killing to this, you better be running.

Gordon Lightfoot
Folk music with a beautiful baritone. Simplicity is bliss. I'd cry to his music if I weren't afraid of interrupting it.

ABBA
Fun Fun Fun, two Swedish couples make 70's pop transcendent between generations. More fun than running through Ikea with only an Allen key on.

Hillsong United
No they're not a soccer team. Teenage rock band from Australia's favourite church group, Hillsong. Powerful chords, powerful lyrics, full sound.

Alma Cogan
The voice with a smile. If you're depressed, take 2 cd's and sing until morning. Pop from the 60's with an elegantly fun flair. Like a happy Stepford wife singing.

Dream Theater
Advanced progressive industrial rock. Bleeding edge to the intensive care level. If you make it through the 14 minute songs, you'll have entered a higher consciousness whether or not you lived.

Five Iron Frenzy
Ska music from a rebel band. Play your guitar backwards, toot some horns, yell about Church injustice, and have some laughs while you're at it!

Matrix Soundracks
Electronica, Industrial, Dance, Trance, Ants in your pants. It makes you want to jack in in the worst possible way.

Eric Satie
Idiosyncratic French musician who wrote simple melodies with sublime skill, and then gave them names like "Songs for an automatic dog" and "Dances for Naked Boys". Post-impressionist's Ozzy!

Delirious?
England's Christian 'Beatles'. Hoppin lyrics and music. It'll rock you, move you, and then return you with some peace and a hint of conviction.

So there you go, my musical influences. Maybe that explains more about me than I'd care to admit. Begin your psychoanalysis, but prepare to be afraid. VERY afraid. Tomorrow for your pleasure, and further confusion, I'll list and explain all the music I can't stand. It will be a longer list for sure.

And yes, I'm listening to Rammstein right now. The song is called "Alter Mann". Look it up on www.herzeleid.com, if you dare...

Dinner and music. Ahhhhhhhhhh

Yesterday my beautiful wife and I went out for dinner (as opposed to the ugly wives I keep at home for obvious reasons). I was negative about the prospects of eating out in town. The options to me were:

Fast food
Glorified fast food
Overly priced food
Stay at home.

I didn't want to go out until I remembered my last visit to Naxos. It's a little restaurant that serves Greek food. Nice enough to dress up for, not too uppity to wear jeans to, reasonable price, and the food is transcendent.

My last visit to Naxos was a break in restaurant etiquette. I ordered the wings, "Naxos style", after the server gave the honest advice that the hot wings were not debiltating. If it won't render me speachless due to 3rd degree burns, it's not worth it. So Naxos style it was.
A salt/pepper/Greek spices & lemon juice combination that was so good we finished off the wings, then used the bread to mop up the extra, then used our fingers to lap up anything left. I wasn't above licking the plate, but it was unnessesary. Oh, and this was a business meeting too.

In other news, I learned a bit about music yesterday . I hate cover songs. As a rule they are worse than the original, and worse still because they are unoriginal. It gives credence to the line "you know she's a great singer because she's wearing so few clothes."
Shopping at the liquor store (an exercise in stereotypes, everyone there looked like a binge drinker. There were more cabs there than at the airport),
there was a remake of "walking on sunshine." It was like Enya had lost the will to sing, but was forced to at gunpoint. It took Jedi style mind power not to down a bottle of whatever was in reach to kill the pain of that song.

And that wasn't the worst.

Earlier in the day I was forced to listen to the local "hits of the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and today". On it was "If you could read my mind" by Gordon Lightfoot. Gordon Lightfoot can NEVER be covered. NEVER! Again, much will required not to crush a co-worker's radio into atoms.
It sounded like Madonna's trashy little sister and her disco band tried a remake.

So there you go, you know my kryptonite. A mixed tape of Lightfoot covers will have me dislocating my shoulders to plug my ears with my elbows, because we all know you're not allowed to stick anything smaller than your elbow in your ear.

Blogging, it's all about me.

I've noticed that everyone can't communicate properly. They always think when I'm talking about them. This is rarely true, because I have a sad 2:1 ratio of caring. For every thing you say, I care about it half as much as I care about what I have to say. I'm obsessed with myself, this entry evidence thereof.

Hey, I'm a jerk, but to me I'm a criminally captivating one.

As I blog, that being, writing my own comic journal; I consider my audience. And it's funny, my audience consists of people who are either blood relatives or are my closest personal friends.

Why I don't call these people to make them laugh is, again, a selfish endeavor. I blog for me to be liked by you, envied by you, and then at the end, to pretend I don't care what you think.

And I think I'm the typical blogger.

So is there something wrong with me?

That was a rhetorical question. I'll wait for the yelling and laughing to subside.

Waiting.

Comeon.

Ok. So is this narccistic publishing a problem, or just a more open journal? I can't say for anyone else, but for me it's a way to entertain others in a way where there is little censorship and even less reason to write. It's the blank slate, and because I have loved ones, by default I have a captive audience too.

If this is karma, then you've been very naughty to have to read this.

To quote some unfortunately said words at my wedding: “If it weren't for you being here, this would just be a bunch of us drinking and laughing at each other. That would make it a family reunion.”

I'm still amazed no one laughed. But in a sad way it's true, without you reading this, it would be me talking to myself on the computer. That would make it my social life.

Thank you.

You can go home again, but don't ever move back.

This weekend we went to visit my parents. It's a short drive, too long for an afternoon visit, so we end up going the few weekends a year they are actually there and I am actually not at Church and my kids don't have birthday parties and my wife doesn't have pampered chef parties.

This averages out to about 4 weekends out of the year.

I love spending time at my parent's house. More so when they are there at the same time. A fair amount of the reason is spending time with my Dad.

The kids plug into Treehouse on tv like it's drugs for the eyes, which would make "Toopy and Binoo" the visual equivalent to crystal meth. Think "Ren & Stimpy" without the butt jokes. SpongeBob == Shakespeare in comparison.

Kim likes to read, watch TLC programs on bitchy women and gay men fixing unfortunately dressed or tragically housed people, and drinking wine with Mom.

To be honest, Kim worries me more than the kids.

But I do a few things:
1. Work on computers.
2. Watch aircraft documentaries with Dad.
3. Play with the kids so Kim can read.
4. Apprentice under my Father.

When you think of apprenticing, you would normally think carpentry, plumbing, electrical work, car repair. Now my Dad can do all of these well, inso none of those projects has killed him or anyone else yet (we JUST retired his grade 9 woodworking project, so he has skill).

No, I apprentice on how to cook. My Dad is a kitchen snob, and I'm not afraid to admit it. He won't cook on anything other than Paderno, he only uses fresh ground pepper and Kosher salt. He GROWS his own spices.

Dad took over cooking around the same time he retired. I noticed he had too much time on his hands when I started receiving lunches that were the envy of my classmates. They had PB & J and Passion Flakies, I had ham and dijon pita sandwiches with a side of carrots in rose-petal cut. And because I wasn't receiving enough negative attention during my adolescence, my father included in his only son's, his 16 year old son's lunch, pictures of cookies and Junior Juices.

May I make a side note that it makes it remarkably more difficult getting dates when you pull out a dwarfed drink container that has the characters from "Wind in the Willows" on it.

Over the years Dad moved from cooking style to cooking style, progressing in skill, complexity, and flavour. He now is the person I call when I have doubts on any matter of cooking. No one else's opinion counts like his does. I am proud to learn a few of his secrets, which are only secrets because we don't listen closely enough to him.

I love my Dad, and I am proud of his ability to cook. I am happy to learn from him, observing his style and unlearning my plebeian culinary ways.

So I raise a scotch to my Father, master chef of the house. After all, he left the scotch here on his last visit, it only seems right. Thanks Dad.

No respect for Oscar

My job involves answering the phone. That should say enough, but let me explain. No one makes happy business calls (try one sometime, call someone in your organization to talk about how happy you are, see where that goes). The phone is an instrument used to deal with a problem. By the time you touch the touchpad, you are already upset because something is wrong enough for you to interrupt your day interrupting someone else's.

And then my phone rings. I've been cried to. I've been sworn at. I've been flirted with. I wonder how I missed taking social work classes getting into this job.

And yes, I know I'm a jerk. I really don't care enough for the opinions and feelings of others, or at least that is what THEY claim. But I do TRY to empathize with all and sundry who call my phone, trying desperately to understand what stupor they were in to manage to confuse a keyboard as a place mat or to think that ignoring my suggestions/recommendations/orders would be MY fault.

But I will not suffer people who are grouchy.

In Sesame street all the other muppets (puppets with the strings of marionettes and the cold, cold hands of puppeteers. Think of Pinocchio having a permanent prostate exam) try to cheer Oscar the Grouch up. These poor misguided codependent mutant marionettes spend so much energy doing for Oscar what he is too lazy to do for himself. In fact, most children's programs have someone grouchy who just needs "enough love" to win over. This is generally done by the useless runt of the group with the high pitched voice.

Bull.

IMHO they just need a HappyByFour tm to the cranial lobe until they cheer up. Or exile.

Grouchy people are in a state of self perpetuating misery. They are emotional entropy. So I ask myself "What does a doctor do?", and then apply the same level of beside manner to them.

Them: "My computer doesn't work. Again. Can't you people fix these things right?"

Me: "Yes. The problem is you are allowing your belly to rest on your keyboard."

Them: "This is so stupid. I don't know why we are having to use these stupid things anyway."

Me: "Not sure. Bye."

So there you go. The secret to happiness in a job with a phone: Use of the release button. I'd suggest having one made up to rival the "Easy" button by Staples, but an "Easy Release" button gives the wrong message. No matter how happy that would make people.

War and Peace

It seems I like to read literature classics. I do it enough. I am trying to read through some of the great books that were not pushed on me during English class.

The problem is I am a slow reader with them. So slow I think the library will name a new wing in honour of me for my accumulated fines. And during the 3 to 6 months it takes to read these books I go through several phases.

1. This blows.

2. Gah! I can't understand who is who when the names are French/Greek/German/Irish/Russian.

3. Ooooo, I can't put this down!

4. Best book ever.

There have been two exceptions to this list: "The Illiad" and "Catcher in the Rye" both stayed at step 2.

I'm now over half way through War and Peace. This has been since I started in November. I am now somewhere between step 3 and 4, and I have a secret:

It's a soap opera, and I love it.

I know it's a challenge to my masculinity. Kim reminds me of this when she "listens" to me with glassy eyes when I explain how Natasha has kissed Antone and since broken up with Prince Andrew and is shamed except that Pierre is falling in love with her because his *itch wife Helene is messing around with Boris who married Julie for her money. But I hoped Pierre would fall in love with Prince Andrew's sister Mary. GAH!

What is weirder is that I need to disclaim that I am reading the book so when I start cursing the characters I don't like Kim doesn't think I'm mad at her, or am hallucinating about burning leprechauns.

So read this book. It's worth the half year and $20.