Early Morning on the Train

I’m on a train headed into the city. It’s still dark out, but we’re driving toward the slowly brightening eastern horizon.

This section of seats is all but empty, and the few people in it are all asleep or feigning sleep well enough to keep away unwanted social interaction. Everyone here looks old this morning. I’m sure that I look old this morning too.

I can just hear the stops being announced over my headphones. This morning’s music mix is Adele and Wakey!Wakey! and Asobi Seksu, all punchy enough to keep me awake but not pop-saccharine or rap-aggressive.

I don’t remember the last time that I went into the city on my own. I’m always afraid that I’ll get lost, so I plan out every turn and intersection from points A to B to C to D. Big cities make me feel like a child in that way; everything is too big and blocking my view, so I always need some kind of map. At least in the country I can drive to the top of a hill and survey the landscape, find the natural monuments of stone and dirt and water and growing things.

I have a presentation to attend at the University today. I don’t know what I hope to get from it, but neither am I willing to impose my expectations on anything today. I can’t see where I’m going, and there are too many big, gray obstacles in the way to spot my next turn.

Why Skyrim is Better Than the Golden Globes

(This is the lamest return to blogging ever.)

Last night, I took a stand.  Erin wanted to watch the Golden Globes, that marathon of celebrities celebrating themselves all over us.  I argue that watching award shows supports the concept of celebrity worship and idolatry, much as I argue that buying US Weekly keeps the Kardashians in the mainstream and out of life’s gutter, where they belong.

So, in protest, I took my Xbox downstairs and played three hours of Skyrim instead.  If I’m going to support something, it might as well be Bethesda’s ability to singlehandedly bring down the world’s productivity by 30 to 40%.

You see, Skyrim makes me think.  It makes me problem solve.  It makes me evaluate and experiment and fail and try again.  It works hard to engage me and gives me immediate feedback on my progress (like when it kills my character with a single swipe of a giant’s club).  I am part of the experience.

The Golden Globes, on the other hand, expects me to sit there and watch.

And nothing else.

I am expected to care about the acceptance speeches of pretty people being celebrated for playing make-believe.  I am told that their very expensive dresses – dresses that they will wear on this one night only – matter.  The swelling music is supposed to remind me that this is something more than a popularity contest for people that have been popular all their lives.

Sorry, Ricky Gervais.  Not even you can make me think that such a message is worth endorsing.

On the Lake

When you have a child, sometimes you forget what it feels like to just be with your spouse, alone, away, not responsible for feeding, changing, and consoling.  That doesn’t mean you don’t still love your baby to death, that you don’t treasure every moment with her, that you want things to change.  You just don’t realize how different life is without her.

With that in mind, Erin and I decided to take a night away in Niagara-on-the-Lake.  If you’ve never been, it’s one of the oldest towns in Canada, an important site in the War of 1812 (which we won, by the way), and a great place for doing wine tours and tastings.  It is a popular retreat for couples, but unlike nearby Niagara Falls, it isn’t filled with casinos, novelty stores, and hookers.

We took back quite a few memories from our short stay.  These are the best ones:

Google Maps sucks.  Our printed directions sent us into the middle of nowhere.  They weren’t even just a bit wrong, either.  They were profoundly, almost maliciously wrong, like someone had programmed them to send us to the American border against our will.

Niagara cops are very understanding.  In my rush to get us back to the highway, I blew past a cop doing about 30 km/h over the posted 60 km/h speed limit.  Whoops.  I followed the advice I always give my students, which is to be apologetic, respectful, and humble when you get in trouble for doing something stupid.  He let me off with a warning and then gave us clear and simple directions to get to our hotel.

Wine tours are wicked-cool, even in the dead of winter.  I went on a wine tour once when I was about fifteen.  It was exactly as much fun as you can imagine a wine tour would be to someone that is many years away from being legally allowed to drink alcohol.  When you actually get to taste the wine that they keep showing you and talking about, the whole thing really gels.

I like places where they give a crap about food.  One of the many things I love about Paris is the fact that all of the food there is good.  The grocery store food, the street vendor food, the café food, all of it.  Having gone to a few restaurants in Niagara-on-the-Lake and having eaten some damn fine meals, and noting the fact that they all had their own, craft-brewed beer on tap, I can safely say that this town is a heck of a lot better at being Parisian than Hamilton.

Hot springs are awesome.  They are even more awesome when they are fed into outdoor hot tubs during snow flurries.

Two-hundred-year-old towns are really creepy at night during the slow season.  Erin and I went into town for dinner, and we were the only people outside for about four blocks of the main street.  The town still had all the Christmas decoration up from the week before, the snow was falling lightly on everything, and there was an eerie silence that only exists in places far from major roadways.  It was close enough to a Stephen King-esque setting to make us worry about the undead, portals to hell, or the very real possibility of meeting ourselves from fifteen years in the future.

Little things go a long way.  For what we paid for the room, the rose was a very small thing, but it’s touches like that that you remember.

Strangers talking about sports in public annoys me.  Maybe it’s the feeling of exclusion that I remember from high school.  Maybe it’s my innate distrust of all humanity.  Either way, the World Junior Hockey Championships led to many strangers in the hotel lounge saying things like “taking it to the net,” “playing deep in the pocket,” and “heart.”

Shortcuts that take longer than the suggested route are awesome.  We picked up coffee, tea, and pastries for a walking breakfast out to Fort George.  I thought I had a bead on the Fort and took us through the cemetery at St. Mark’s Anglican Church, where we discovered hundreds of amazing tombstones going back almost two centuries.  It was a still, gray, damp day, perfect for taking pictures of moldering rock and iron.

Time away together rocks.

Twisted Paths: Part 4

Every once in a while, I like to survey some of the stranger incoming searches that have led people to Exercising Monsters.  These search terms are brief glimpses into the minds of people that ended up disappointed that they got here.

buttocks blown off:  Also “butt blown off in war.”  I guess this happens more often than I thought, and it further confirms my belief that we would be better off wearing bulletproof pants rather than bulletproof vests.

The pizza is Toronto, and Rob Ford is a monstrous eating force. It's a pretty easy metaphor, really.

rob ford bloated candidate:  Like a beached whale with too much gel in his hair.  Although I guess he is now a bloated incumbent.

pig rob ford:  Pink, aggressive, and prone to charge when he doesn’t get his way.  Yeah, I can see the connection.

rob ford pig face:  Oh, that’s just mean.  Accurate, but still mean, like calling Hazel McCallion a dried apricot.

rob ford drunk with girls:  I know, I know.  I keep hoping I’ll find some kind of damning, term-ending photographic evidence by chance as well, but as yet none of my Google image searches for “Rob Ford stomping puppies” or “Rob Ford eating homeless people” has brought up anything worthwhile.

articles on homosexuality:  I don’t think that I authored any articles on homosexuality here.  Did you mean “articles on homogenized milk?”  I didn’t author any of those either, but it somehow seems more likely.

never played sports as a child:  Yes, even the internet knows that I am hopeless at athletics.

i suck at sports:  Fine!  Yes!  I get it!  I suck at sports!  Are you happy now?

i have brownies in the oven and it looks like they are boiling:  You forgot the flour.  Or you just put a pan of water in the oven and hoped that brownies (little fairy creatures) would come and turn it into a plate of chocolaty goodness for you.  Either way, you aren’t getting any brownies tonight, my friend.

she eats monsters:  That girl’s a keeper.  Hang on to her like grim death, ‘cause you never know when a monster might jump out at you.  (And can you imagine the look of surprise on that poor monster’s face when your girlfriend starts aggressively unhinging her jaw?)

how to have a babby asexually:  I’d love to know what a “babby” is.   And if you are trying to have one asexually, it’s probably because no one wants to reproduce with someone that can’t spell “baby.”

emily rose needlework breaking news boy trapped:  How on earth are you going to cross stitch that fast enough for the news about the trapped boy to still be breaking?  And how does the exorcism fit into it?  Your homecraft is far too ambitious!  Simplify!

zachery ty bryan eye color:  No one needs to know this.  Stop using the internet, you weirdo.

wordpress.com my lovely “wedding”:  I am very worried that you used quotation marks around the word “wedding.”  Was a shotgun (figurative or literal) involved?

assignment make me die picture:  I really want to know what picture you were hoping to get from this search.  Also, you need to be less dramatic about your Geography homework.

ignorant dribble:  You’ve come to the right place, my friend.

Lestat beats Edward. Armand beats Jacob. Even Louis de Point du Lac could take out the Volturi single-handedly, and he's a wuss.

difference between lestat dracula edward:  It’s the difference between a rock star, a super-villain, and a whiny dork.

chipmunk warfare:  Amongst the chipmunks, quarter is neither asked nor given.

outside the lines fat fan:  Is this a fat fan that can’t colour well, perhaps due to severe “sausage-finger?”  Or is this a fat fan that lives on society’s margins, existing only to fight the system?

american have terrible diets:  True, but you have terrible grammar.  That makes you even.

why human beings felt need of decimals:  I like the existentialist element to this.  It gets me thinking about decimals floating through the ether, waiting for a genuine need to call them into existence.

gaiman strawberry shortcake:  As much as he does delve into reimagining old narratives in his work, I don’t think Neil Gaiman has yet mined Strawberry Shortcake for source material.

do i refer to myself as this writer:  I want to know which writer gets the dubious honour of having you refer to yourself as them.  Are you the type that gets a thrill from being Janet Evanovich or do you get your jollies by masquerading as Michael Ondaatje?

piratensex:  Not quite sure about this one.  I think that it is meant to be some kind of brand name, like “Pirate ‘n Sex Spiced Rum,” or “Pirate ‘n Sex Brothel and Fabric Store.”  I can guarantee that it will be better than my failed “Cowboys ‘n Slander Trail Mix” idea.

butt tattoos:  Really, what is the best possible outcome of this search?  No one with a good butt will have a tattoo on it.  Butt tattoos are compensation for bad butts.

50 cent is pumpkin:  In my mind, this is street-lingo for something really awesome, like, “That man be some bad pumpkin.”  (And then everyone nods knowingly, mumbling things like, “Righteous pumpkin…”)

prostitution abstract pottery:  Are the prostitutes making the abstract pottery?  Or do you have to make abstract pottery in payment for their services?

how to help an emotional mess:  If I knew how to do that, I wouldn’t feel the need to blog.

is stephen fry gay a genious?:  I don’t know.  Is preference sexual and structure sentence important meaning to the?

what to wear to be a hipster:  I don’t know.  Ask my brother what he wears.  (Sorry, Ben.  Couldn’t help myself.)

moved into apartment that seem to smell of rancid grease:  My guess is that there is some rancid grease sitting around.  But I’m not Mike Holmes, so don’t take my word for it.

typhoid cancel sign:  If only it were so easy…

good vs moldy cauliflower:  I want to know if this person is asking how to tell the difference between the two (assuming that the mold growing on the moldy cauliflower isn’t indication enough), or if they are asking about the respective uses for each.  I mean, you’d look like a knob if you tried to make Martha Stewart’s famous Rotten Cauliflower and Expired Cheese Soufflé using the fresh stuff.

nick stirling naked:  Even I find that gross to the point of nausea.

Christmas: A 2011 Retrospective

I’ve been staying away from blogging for a while, I think just to keep my priorities straight through the busy holiday season.  Time has been at a premium.  It’s been all I can do to try to keep up with Abby as she revels in her new toys and books, simultaneously making it impossible to keep any part of the house clean.

It’s probably an issue of timing; with the late start to this year’s school break, I found myself moving from a weekend of Christmas stuff to a week of wrapping things up at work to another weekend of Christmas stuff that blurred into the week after that with nary a day off.  By the time we were done with all of our family obligations, I could barely stand up straight, much less try to make something coherently “bloggish” out of it.

Now, having been out of it for a bit, I will try to pull out a few realizations from it all.

Realization # 1:  Abby likes to draw.  I knew this before, of course, but giving her an easel and watching her colour on it for hours has only confirmed that my daughter has the artistic gene.  I also plan on using the paper she goes through as wrapping paper for birthdays, etc.

Realization # 2:  Obligation ruins family time.  Christmases are more fun these days.  I think that it comes down to the fact that all of my cousins and siblings have grown up past the angsty teenage years, and have started into making the next generation.  They actually want to see each other now.  And almost all of us have realized that Christmas is much more fun when we just treat it as a chance to hang out and enjoy each other’s presence; gift giving is immaterial, as are the other formalities of Christmas gatherings.  The adults are starting to understand that the fewer obligations they heap on to a given day, the happier we all are at the end of it.

Realization # 3:  I don’t really need anything material anymore.  I don’t say that as a slight to any of the many lovely gifts that I received this year (and there were many and they were definitely amazing).  I say that instead as a reminder to myself, mantra I need to repeat through the New Year.  I have a lot of things.  I bought many items myself lately.  I need to start moving toward producing more and consuming less.  I need to start being content.

Realization # 4:  I need to read more.  Speaking of having many things, my reading pile has risen into double digits.  Time to put down the remote control and start working through that stack.  After all, I completely bailed on my reading resolution from last year.

Realization # 5:  I am getting old.  I’m 31 now, and I feel like I have been a bit of a slow starter when it comes to life.  I think I need to start making things happen this year.

Please be happy and safe this New Year’s Eve.

An Antidote to Yesterday

I’m sorry that I am such a grumpy old sod.  I come from a long line of grumps, if that excuses it at all.  (I know that it doesn’t.)

But, as is so often the case in my life, something always comes up to lift my spirits.  In this case, it was one of my grade 7 students giving me presents and a card for Abby.

As pointed out in the card, the books are her own; she offered them from her personal library for my daughter to have and enjoy.  And in a time when it seems that selfishness and apathy are the norm with kids, it was moving to have one of them step up to do something so beautifully selfless and caring.

There is yet hope for the world.

Hmmph

I’m in a foul mood today.  I don’t really know why.  I feel old and useless.  Maybe it’s the fact that I am between classes and I can’t seem to get focused on finding material for my thesis.  Maybe it’s the fact that I had a lead on a job that has since disintegrated for reasons beyond my control.  Who knows?

I tried to cheer myself up by speaking to Abby in French for an hour.  At least, I tried to do that, but I quickly remembered that I can’t actually speak very much French.  I did discover that Abby refuses to say “orange” in English but is quite happy to say it in French.  Go figure.

This would be a night where I would cheer myself up with a few hours of Xbox, but I’m stuck in my rerun through the 10^th anniversary edition of Halo: Combat Evolved.  The flood just turned up and I can’t seem to do anything other than get blown up by them over and over again.  I remember sucking at Halo when it first came out.  Nothing has changed, high definition graphics or not.

I guess this is just one of those days.

Belated

Yes I should have blogged by now.  I have had many a party, many a gathering, and many an event in the last week, and I am overdue for sharing those things in a humorous way, but I am also completely spent when it comes to energy.

Also, I am now officially 31, which is damn old.  I have less energy than I used to.  Middle age is looming over me like a mountainous shadow cast by the setting sun.  It holds me in place with its weight.

So it will be at least another day before I get anything assembled to post.  In the mean time, here is Abby reacting in a way analogous to my feelings about having stumbled a year further into my 30s.

Two Unrelated Regrets

UFC 140 went off last night, and again, I didn’t bother to get the Pay Per View.  It’s not like I’ve lost interest in MMA, or that the card wasn’t decent.  I just didn’t get on the ball to see if there was anyone else within a 30 minute drive of my house that wanted to split the cost with me (I can’t really justify $60 to watch three hours of violence all by myself, after all).

And it’s just such a crap shoot with live events; sometimes that investment ends up being an enormous series of duds, especially if the higher weight classes (read: heavyweights) are involved in any significant way.  Several rounds of heavy breathing and sluggish lunging can be found for less money on other pay per view channels.

Last night, of course, featured the following outcomes:

1.  A seven-second knockout (tied for the fastest in UFC history)
2. The best heavyweight jujitsu practitioner in the world getting his arm dislocated at the shoulder because he refused to tap out to a kimura
3. Jon Jones posting his fourth straight win in 2011, his second consecutive title defense, and his third utter domination of a former UFC champion (he choked his opponent unconscious with a standing guillotine choke)

So, yes, I should have probably bought that event.

My second regret involves a poorly planned attempt to make battered pickerel.  I looked up a batter recipe, tried to follow it to the letter, and ended up with something that looked like dog poop and tasted like a bland but aggressive pancake had caught the world’s most boring fish and smothered it to death.  Half of the fish was burnt, half of it was undercooked, there were bones everywhere, and I scalded myself no fewer than seventeen times.

So, yes, I probably should have made grilled cheese tonight instead

Toward Which I Aspire

Because I am midway through Wizard and Glass, I offer a brief example of why I consider Stephen King the most talented fiction writer of the modern era:

 

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”

Stephen King