Recipe

How to make a Korean laugh.

Start with one Korean.

Take one aging whiteguy already renowned for bad memory and absentmindedness.

Have old white guy pour a bowl of organic multi-, whole-grains cereal and adorn with organic, no-sugar added rasins. Have white guy smugly lecture Korean on the importance of nutrition while preparing cereal with raisins. White guy should continue the lecture while he reaches into the fridge for soymilk to pour on cereal. Have white guy mistakenly pour orange juice on the cereal and raisins instead of the soy milk.

Watch Korean pee his pants with laughter. Watch laughter continue longer than one might reasonably expect. Watch laughter continue beyond that.

[Note: draining the orange juice off the cereal and replacing with soy milk produces a strangely tastey citrus-ey cereal treat.]

This just in...

Okay, okay, I haven't blogged in a few days.

Too lazy to write the ideas or memories that have come into my head.

However, the following made me bark laugh tres loudly, so thought I'd share it as a weak attempt to mimic a blog entry.

___________

From the breaking news wire:

In an attempt to thwart the spread of bird flu, President George W. Bush has bombed the Canary Islands.

Look! It's a bird... no, it's a plane... NO! It's one huge cock!

This story has been appearing on various news services:
__________

Superman 'too big'

London - The new Superman is giving movie bosses a headache - because of the size of his bulge.

They fear Brandon Routh's profile in the superhero's skintight costume could be distracting, reports the Sun.

Hollywood executives have ordered the makers of Superman Returns to cover it up with digital effects.

The Sun's source said: "It's a major issue for the studio. Brandon is extremely well-endowed and they don't want it up on the big screen.

"We may be forced to erase his package with digital effects."

Brandon, 26, has taken over the superhero's cape from the late Christopher Reeve.

Wardrobe artists have had to fit him with a special codpiece for the new film out next year.

Take this job and...

The first time I ever called in sick at work when I was, in fact, quite healthy was in my first corporate job. I made the call from the side of the highway and left a message with the receptionist (pre-widespread voicemail days), the sound of big trucks whizzing by in the background... I was on my way to ski in the middle of the week.

A guy in the States today retired at the age of 100. He worked for the same transit authority for 72 years and (and this boggles) he took ONE sick day. In 72 years, one sick day. Now THAT's sick!

More proof I'm in the wrong career.

Fourty-seven is the new "almost 50"

Yup, another birthday.

Here's a poem I wrote about age, ages ago:


POLKA

His mother grew
old today
seasoned perhaps
without his notice
gone
the soccer playing, polka-fiend
she'd always been

Damn that woman
could polka
whipping him (embraced)
around a dance flor
2 beats aside (step, kick)
German accordians cheering
his feet swinging out
a joy
of centrifugal force
until with time
his strength grown
it was her feet
refusing
gravity with each squeal, each
frenetic twist and direction change

He felt
his mother old today
felt winter, an embrace that recalled
(in its absence)
the strong back
of their dancing days

homo, homo on the range

Just listened to the new Willie Nelson sung song about faggoty cowboys ("Cowboys are Frequently, Secretly, (Fond of Each Other)".

There are a couple good lines of lyrics:

"Inside every cowboy there's a lady who'd love to slip out" and

"You can't fuck with the lady that's sleeping in each cowboy's head"

[Okay, I really love those lyrics only 'cause they'll make Hame squirm.]

Like the movie Brokeback Mountain the song is just a considerable disappointment. I mean, what could be better than a movie about cowboys loving each other or a country and western (heavy on the western) song about cowboys who is fags?

The song's words are really not lyrics as they are incredibly clumsy (even in coming out of a seasoned talking-can-be-singing artist like Nelson) and lack any rhythmic qualities whatsoever--which is especially critical given the song is meant to rely on its message and lyrics, as it has no real melody either. No toe tapping here, no catchy-enough-to-repeat-in-yer-head-all-day lyrics (compare: "Momma don't let yer babies grow up to be cowboys")

Willie didn't write the song. And even his particular (and delightful) twangy-blues style can't save it. Still it'll surely become a cult hit given its subject matter and the fact it has the word fuck in it.

Here's a link, go listen yer own dang self: http://www.secretcowboys.com/

Damn, now I'm just feelin' empty, in need ah some good profoundly sad (steel guitars wailin') country music... Where's No Show Jones when ya need him?

Reflections

I was stopped in my tracks today, while at the gym, by a memory. Stopped, quite literally. In a flash, a smell and a faint sound took me to roughly 1967 or so: Sunday morning, newspaper spread out by the side door (the door we used; the front door off limits--given you'd have to track through the living room and it's carpet--and thus a signal that strangers were knocking if a knocking came there). There on the paper were the Sunday-best shoes of four boys, and one father, lined up in a neat row, either polished to a shine or waiting for their turn with the black or brown polish; and one pair of mother's shoes waiting for the white polish.

It would have been the days when even my father went to church and the entire household would be in a hurry for we were always rushing to get to church.

Shoe polishing was done by my father wearing his tighty whities and a Stanfield's wife-beater (although we never called them that) revealing my fathers shoulders. I think now it didn't matter if the polish stained his hands as they were almost permanently stained by oil and grease, in any event.

Using one hand as a shoe last and the other (two fingers jammed to a point in an old pair of underwear usually) to apply the polish, my father sat on a kitchen chair and leaned into the floor to accomplish his task. This exposed his shoulders, engaged/tensed by the polishing, to his youngest son who nearly weekly would poke the two large dimples (one at each shoulder) and ask a question; the answer to which I already knew. Seems my father had been shot in the war. The bullet entered one side of him and exited the other -- the dimples were the bullet's entry and exit holes, healed over. "Missed everything important." I'm unsure if I ever believed the story but surely doubt was impossible at the young age, and know I desperately wanted to believe.

Back at the gym today, sitting in a corner was a heavy man, black, wearing a robe, fully opened at the front, closer to 60 than 50 years old. His genitals were hanging over the edge of the bench as he was scooted to it's edge so he could fold to the floor where he was polishing a pair of rich-brown wingtip dress shoes. The smell that hit me was the polish, of course. It was the old kind in the round tin with the small butterfly widget thingy which one uses to pry the top off the tin. The sound was the movement of an actual shoe shine brush moving quite lovingly over the leather of one of the shoes.

When he paused I told him his shine had just taken me back a few decades to Sunday morning, my father getting our shoes ready for church. His smile set his eyes on fire with kindness and his own memory. He used to have to take turns with his brothers to shine the shoes for church, but never on Sunday. His father was a pastor and the job had to be done on Saturday night, to help keep the Sabbath as free of labour as possible. We agreed nobody shines their own shoes anymore, not the real way anyway.

I thanked him for prompting the memory and he said the shine was doubly good then -- he had polished shoes and I had the shine from a warm memory.

Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh Nineteen, Nuh-nuh Nineteen

Donald Rumsfeld has been harping about the news media's exaggeration of deaths in Iraq and the severity of sectarian violence in that country. Regardless of who is accurate in this instance (and Clinton's former Pentagon spokesperson summed up the spat best by saying Rumsfeld's complaints are a colossal waste of energy) a whole lot of people are dying.

Given that arguments like Rumsfeld"s tend to generalize (and thus dilute) or make abstract (and thus numb) the violence of war I was drawn to CNN's list of deaths in Iraq among coalition forces: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/index.html There you will find photos and age and hometown and military job and how each died. Despite the vastness of the list (2500 plus dead) and the scarcity of details, it is profoundly effective (for me, at least) in turning argument or statistics into people.

By their very absence on a similar list, the names and photos and details of the seemingly countless Iraqi (civilian) deaths looms large, as well.

The headline of this blog comes, as you music literates will no doubt know, from an '80s tune in which a deep voiced announcer is inserted into the music and lyrics to explain the average age of Vietnam soldiers was 19. That began playing in my head as I scrolled down the age column of the list of coaliton war dead.

Rumsfeld needs to go fuck himself and then use his "airtime" for more meaningful discourse.

Time Travel

It's cliche to say, but ever so lovely that it exists -- that phenomenon where you are separated from a friend either in time or geography (or both), with little contact, if any, for great periods of time, yet when reunited it is as if there has been no separation at all.

I took a call on Saturday from a friend whom I haven't seen in years (perhaps as long as 6 or 7, maybe more) and had only rare email contact and maybe a call or two in that time. He, a radio programmer, was in town for some music week convention.

We were once incredibly intimate pals, and drinking (of the profoundly heavy nature) buddies. He and his wife named their first child after me (because, to paraphrase his wife, they weren't quite stupid enough to name me Godfather!).

We spent a couple of hours chatting in his Royal York hotel room and were thick as theives with stories (both the catching up and recollection varieties)within a very short time. The general consensus was that we remain surprised we survived those days on the southern prairies and in the foothills, those days when stupid amounts of alcohol were consumed as a given and doing so while driving was not yet evil.

I probably started this blog to recount some of those drinking tales, but I fear (with certainty) that they would only serve to produce great boredom -- even though a colleague of my friend sat slack mouthed and wide-eyed as he listened to several of the tales before reteating with my old pal as they left for dinner.

The boy who is also Steven is destined for doctoring school in a year, and my friend looks not a bit different than when I last saw him. Strange how some things can make you feel both old and young again simultaneously.

Light

I have a pair of wooden (late 19th C.) Chinese Buddhist Lohan (assistants to the Buddha -- this particular pair are sometimes called the 2 patrons and were among Buddha's first disciples -- to use relate it to Christianity). I've forgotten their Chinese names (have never known their Sanskrit names) and their particular strengths. Buddha had 18 Lohans in the end.

Anyway, I noted a shaft of light falling across the toes of one of the Lohan today so I moved him so the light would fall across this face and grabbed my camera.

Namaste!

Gone With the Wind

In turn, two of my brothers and I worked for the same grocery store as teenagers (the other brother worked for the other grocery store in town). Originally an old wooden floored, two aisled grocery store, the place was run by sons of fathers, and the checkout clerk was the same woman for decades -- my oldest brother worked there when the son of the original owner was still around, working with his own son. I worked for the grandson of the founding owner, Bob. The original store grew up, taking over a very large space with shiny new services and the addition of Bob's own son -- who expanded the store into the ground. The building stands vacant still today in my dying small town.

Bob was famous for his exclamations: "Lord love a duck!" was among his favourite, all purpose (although usually in frustrated anger) barks. He also had a remarkable talent for stringing out the word Jesus such that it would last 15 or 20 seconds. A pipe smoker Bob was always striking matches, and tossing them on the store floor, to try to keep the damn thing lit. Ironically, it was not uncommon for Bob to stuff the pipe in a pocket when he needed both hands free and couldn't leave the pipe dangling from his mouth. Ironic, because every once in a while the pipe would still be lit and one would be treated to a frenetic dance by Bob, accompanied by Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzaaaaaaawwwwsssss and Bob yanking the pipe from his pocket and slapping his leg to snuff the smouldering fire fuelled by his leg and pants fabric.

Anyway, in the years my older brother worked for Bob and his dad, occasional boxes of Sunkist oranges came with paper, diamond shaped kites, including a couple of pieces of dowelling to frame the kite. They were meant to be display items to sell oranges, but my brother would bring them home and I and my friends would try to fly them. They didn't work worth hell and any wind would shred them.

We eventually graduated to plastic kites, years after the paper kites were nothing more than a shimmer in some Florida orange grower's marketing executive's mind. Those warrior-shield shaped kites with their plastic frames and decals of fierce eyes and lightning rods or licks of flames were remarkably efficient. You could launch one of those kites until they were but a speck in the sky -- even though most of the distance was horizontal, the vertical height was enough that we would feign real fear that passing airplanes (the noise of which would always get our old Scottish collie dog, Laddie, howling) would snag our kite lines.

My brother had a paper route and thus was rich at the time. He bought three spools of kite string (most certainly from the Co-op's hardware section and strung them all together on one of the spools.

On a kite flying day when the wind was such a fellow didn't even need to have a little brother run like hell with the kite in one direction while the fellow ran in the opposite direction before the little brother tossed the kite into the air, my brother planned to send his kite to the moon. As was our usual practice my brother had a stick through the spool and once the kite was airborne it was free to consume its string as it got dragged powerfully skyward by the wind; the spool spinning wildly around its stick axle.

Four or five boys (and likely the girl next door, Wendy) squealed with excitement and yard after yard after yard after yard of string was spun off the spool. We literally lost sight of the kite, but the string continued its exodus -- until it neared its full length, when, untied at the end to the spool, we watched with some initial delight and then horror as the string made a grand exit and my brother was left with an empty cardboard spool. We watched the end of the line begin to disappear in the direction of the yards that had gone before it.

We chased madly trying to capture the end of the string, so it could be tamed and reeled back in, the kite reclaimed. It was a fruitless exercise as the end was almost immediately pulled well above our height and soon was lost to our sight.

My memory fades here, but I know we did not find the string that day. We wandered a lot of pasture expecting, assuming, the kite had finally fallen when the line tangled on a fence or in a tree. Either the kite or a bunch of the line was eventually come across (a very, very long way from where we had stood flying the kite--as measured by a 7 year old), but months later, if I recall correctly.

What does stand out in my mind was the look on my brother's face as he was left with that empty spool, the kite liberated. In the here and now, I interpret it as the expression of someone who has set someone or something free. The kite was gone, gone with the wind. Where it was meant to be.

I was thinking all this as I viewed this picture of a kite in Tibet, which appeared in at globeandmail.com today.