And the winner is…..

OK, I admit it. Sometimes I dream of being rich. It’s not that I’m unhappy with my life; heaven knows I’ve got more than a lot of people do. Sometimes, though, I wonder what it would be like to be fricking loaded. Not just well off, but blue-blood, spit in your face, bring-the-rolls-around-front-please-Jeeves rich. I wonder if the money would change me, or even if I would know what to do with it all. I wonder about the pitfalls and benefits that would come with having a bank account large enough to finance a small country for a year.
Sometimes, I wonder about it enough that I buy a lottery ticket. I don’t buy them very often; usually only when I get frustrated with too many bills and not enough paycheques, or when the jackpots get ridiculously huge. Ten million dollars could make pretty quick work of those nasty student loans of mine.
I don’t generally agree with gambling, and I’m sure that whatever I could say to try and justify the purchase would only be hollow rationalization, but sometimes I just don’t care. It’s not like I’m going to win or anything. For all intents and purposes, I might as well just flush a toonie down the toilet and be done with it. The average odds of winning a 6/49 jackpot are 13,000,000 to 1. I have read that your odds of winning the lottery only increase by one one hundred-thousandth of a percentile point if you actually buy a ticket. Yikes. For comparison’s sake, the odds of being struck by lightning are only 576,000 to 1. From a theoretical standpoint, we can then say that you have a better chance of being struck by lightning 22 times than you do of winning the lottery once. In looking up that statistic, I discovered a lot of other things that are much more likely to happen to you than a lottery windfall. Some of my favourites are:

Odds of fatally slipping in the bath or shower: 2,232 to 1
Odds of injury from fireworks: 19,556 to 1
Odds of being murdered: 18,000 to 1
Odds of getting away with murder: 2 to 1
Odds of dating a supermodel: 88,000 to 1
Odds of spotting a UFO today: 3,000,000 to 1
Chance of dying in a car accident: 1 in 18,585
Chance of dying in a plane crash: 1 in 354,319
Change of being killed by parts falling off a plane: 1 in 10,000,000

In fact, it seems far more likely that you will perish in any number of ways than that you will ever reap the winnings of a lottery jackpot. I was amazed at how low the odds of being killed are. I guess my only consolation is that I am relatively safe from having a meteorite fall on my house. The odds of that are 182,138,880,000,000 to 1. If you like to play the odds, the full list is available here.
I guess I prefer to look at the lottery ticket in another way. Basically, it is a two dollar license to dream. You buy the ticket, and for the next three days you are allowed to create elaborate scenarios in your head about what you would do if you won. Would you quit your job? Move? Travel? Where would you build your home? What kind of car would you buy? Would you give it away? How much of it, and to who? My wife and I have spent three hour-long car trips talking about all the things we would do if we won. I have imagined time and time again how nice it would be to be able to pay off all of our parents’ obligations and to give each of our brothers and sisters the down payment for their first home. We have discussed how we would set up trust funds for some of the people in our ward to help them out of difficult situations, and how we could actually donate to a lot of organizations that we would like to sponsor if we had the money. I have imagined buying my truck; a beautiful black-on-black 2006 Ford F-150 FX4, and surprising my wife one morning with a Jaguar XK with a big red bow on the hood.
Invariably, the day of the draw comes and I am forced to deal with the reality that I am still a poor working class stiff and that the only truck I will ever realistically own will be something that is ten years old and has a funny noise in the rear differential that I will never be able to figure out or fix. Sometimes, I don’t even bother checking the ticket because I don’t want the dream to end.
I guess if I’m honest with myself, I should just stop buying them altogether. It’s nothing more than a waste of time and money. The again, what does it really hurt? Is two dollars every few months too much to pay for a little harmless escapism? I suppose that for some people it could become a real problem. I remember my father telling me about some people in his office that would take half of their paycheque every month and put it towards lottery tickets. I worked with a guy named Sean who played every week, every draw, of both the 6/49 and the Super 7. He was religious about the numbers he played too, and spent almost an hour one day explaining to my uninterested ears how he had a plan to beat the odds and maximize his chances of winning. I always looked at it from a different angle. I never choose my numbers; I just get one quick-pick entry and always avoid the money-sucking bonus numbers that they try and throw on there like “the Plus” and “the Extra”. I figure that in a game that has chances as remote as the lottery, you’re only going to win if you’re really meant to win, and nothing you can do is going to influence the outcome one way or another. Who is to say which approach is the right one? To date, neither Sean or I have won.
I guess at the end of the day it comes down to a personal choice, and we all have to decide whether we are going to take the high road and just not play the game at all, or if maybe the dream is worth a silver coin after all. Maybe there are easier ways of getting rich. After all, your odds of becoming a professional athlete are 22,000 to 1, and the odds of dating a millionaire are a mere 215 to 1. Whatever your methods, I wish you luck in the pursuit….and remind you to remember where you got the advice from.

A curious balance

It’s strange living on the flip side of society. We grow accustomed to morning commutes and the traffic that usually defines them, morning rituals of self-preparation, and the seemingly mandatory early morning quest for caffeine. We get up with the sun, work through the day, and retire to our homes to enjoy our evenings before the darkness carries us back to sleep. Except for me.
Working nights has a way of turning everything upside-down. You wake up at noon, eat your breakfast when everyone else is having lunch, go to work as the sun goes down, and enjoy your bologna sandwich for lunch- at 3 am. You become attuned to the darkness. In fact, in the winter you rarely even see the sun. When I wake up at 2 pm, the day is already waning. By the time I shower and eat, the sun is going down. By the time I get to work at 5:30 pm, it is already dark. It is still dark when I return home at 7 am the next morning. After a few weeks I start to feel like a vampire. (without, hopefully, the insatiable urge to run around in a vinyl cape biting people’s necks) Nights can really mess with your system. As long as I stay on a rotation, I’m fine. When I have to work night continuously, I run into problems. When I first moved to Calgary, I worked for an alarm company doing emergency dispatch. I was hired on for rotating shift work that was supposed to be two weeks of mornings, two weeks of afternoons, and two weeks of night, with every second weekend off. In the seven months I worked there, I never worked a morning or an afternoon, and I never had a weekend off. Not one. At the end of it I was so screwed up that I actually passed out and fell right out of my chair while at the office. Besides the embarrassment of walking around for the next month with rug burn all over my face, I was fine. My doctor, however, recommended that I find a new job.
Seven years later, the 24/7 nature of railroad operations has brought me full circle. This time, however, it’s not so bad. I do get every second weekend off, and I almost never work more than two weeks in a row of nights.
Night shift gives you a new perspective. You begin to appreciate different parts of the night almost like you would appreciate certain times of the day. Granted, there are no power lunches or marathon meetings, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The Tim Hortons runs happen at 2 am instead of 9 am, but the donuts still taste just as good. The city itself is a completely different animal. Sometimes as I watch the last rays of the sun fade from the plate glass walls of Bankers Hall, I can almost feel it changing. The suits leave the core and hurry back to their $800,000 Elbow Valley homes, and the city’s gritty underbelly begins to show itself. The homeless people reclaim the streets and stake out their territory as they scavenge for food or a place to sleep. Women in “work clothes” that don’t exactly fit the office dress code fade in and out of the shadows. Kids in cars that are too fast for them to be driving peel out down 9th avenue, hoping to impress anyone who might possibly be watching.
As the night wears on, it becomes apparent that cities really do never sleep. They do slow down, but it never ceases to amaze me that even in the middle of the night, there is a surprising number of people out and about, doing whatever it is they feel like doing at 3 am. The rules are a lot more relaxed at night, and people do things they most likely wouldn’t dream of attempting during the day. I’ve seen some kid who figured he was a DJ crank his car stereo and start a rave on the sixth floor of a parkade. It went on for almost two hours and he must have had over two hundred people dancing in there by the time the police showed up in riot gear and broke things up. I’ve seen people climbing buildings, trees, and lightposts, and witnessed a man walking precariously along the handrail of a bridge, balanced as though he was on a tightrope, seemingly oblivious to the fact that one slip would send him tumbling thirty feet into the river below. I’ve seen drug deals happen right in front of me and stumbled across a couple having sex on a completely exposed bench in the middle of Stephen Avenue. When darkness falls, it seems, the fabric of society endures a quantum shift.
There is an upside to the situation. I have always loved the dark, and find a sense a calm in the still of a summer night. When I lived in the mountains, I would often sneak out in the early hours of the morning just to feel the peacefulness of the darkness and the stillness of the air. It seemed to me as thought the world was resting along with its inhabitants, trying to recover a little bit before the onslaught of activity that would inevitably resume with the coming day. The city, although not peaceful in the same way, is still much calmer at night. I often make my way up to the higher floors of my building and look out on the city. After the bars close and the traffic dwindles, the world seems to slow down a little. Rainy nights are my favourite. The rain seems to have a muting effect on everything it touches, and the tops of the towers are hidden in the mist. From up on the twentieth floor, the streets seem faraway and empty. What little sounds remain outside are blocked out by two inch-thick windows, and clouds curl down over the buildings and give everything a surreal, hazy feeling. The city seems softer, and at times it feels almost as though it is exhaling; at last able to stop and relax for a few minutes while nobody is watching.
Morning starts out as a funny grey hue in the eastern sky that gradually lifts the blanket of darkness from the streets and alleys. Bit by bit it grows stronger, until the light begins to reflect itself between the towers. The canyons between the buildings cling vainly to the night, as though they are not yet ready to give up their sleep. From my desk, facing east, I can see the new day rising like an unstoppable storm. All across the city, people are preparing to return to the daily grind, groaning like gears in a tired machine as their alarm clocks call them back to a work of pressure and responsibility. Soon the streets will be alive with activity as they hurry to the office, minds already laden with the expectation of the day’s work that lies ahead of them. Cell phones will ring, the marble floors of the office buildings’ lobbies will echo with the footfalls of high heels and leather-soled dress shoes, and the lineup at Tim Hortons will reach epic proportions.
For me, I get to watch it begin. As the sky grows ever lighter, I get to see the first of them make their way into the core, park their cars in the ridiculously overpriced parkades, and resign themselves to another ten hours of servitude to their mortgage and car payments. I get to see their faces, sour and bleary-eyed, as they step mechanically from the c-train into the downtown core that will own them for the next twenty years of their lives. Really, it’s not any different from what I’m doing except for the fact that they are doing it under the watchful eye of the sun. For some reason, sometimes that makes all the difference.
There is a sort of beauty to being able to watch the process without having to take part in it. It is interesting to see how the cycle works. There is a strange satisfaction that comes from being the one car on the other side of the road, heading home as everyone else goes to work. I have come to appreciate the morning more than I ever did before.
With every morning comes a sunrise. Some are unbelievable dramatic, and some are barely even noticeable; you just turn around and suddenly it’s light. All of them have a beauty of their own made even more appreciable by the knowledge that you are witnessing a birth. You are watching the beginnings of a day that will shatter hopes and realize dreams. Lives will be created, and other lives will pass from this world. You are a part of a process that is much, much larger than yourself; a process that has repeated itself since the beginning of time and will continue long after you are gone. On this day, you have the privilege of observing that process as it unfolds. Have a good day.

-And there’s a light in the eastern sky … sunrise!
And there’s no place a man can hide, the sunrise
Well, it buries the night, a brave new sunrise
With a sweep of the sword, a blood red sunrise!

-Icehouse, “Sunrise”

Elemental

I love electrical storms. Some people find them frightening or intimidating, but I crave them. Nothing demonstrates the clear power of nature like watching the sky being assaulted with jagged bolts of lightning and feeling the ground shake under the impossible depth of a heavy roll of thunder.

Even as a child, I was fascinated rather than scared by electrical storms. The more severe the storm, the more I enjoyed it. I can remember coming upstairs from my room in the basement in the middle of the night to sit behind the plate glass dining room window and watch the spidery bolts of electricity dance across the sky. As I grew older, my affinity for the storms grew. I looked forward to them in the forecast and began to welcome the foreboding feeling of a darkening sky on a summer afternoon.

I’m not really sure what it is about them that appeals to me so much. I guess I feel like I can connect somehow with them. There is something very basic and primitive about feeling the rush of wind as the storm approaches, as though the sunshine and blue sky that were there previously are rushing to get the hell away from the coming monster. I can feel the excitement build as the tension gathers on the air and the clouds boil in anticipation. I can almost feel the electricity on my skin. When the sudden calm before the release settles over the city, I can feel a sense of relief, almost like an old friend has come home again.

I have done some pretty stupid things in my lifetime in the name of electrical storms. I have stood on the top of mountains in awe of the approaching thunderheads, unable to leave even as I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up in response to the charge in the atmosphere. I have stood outside a tent on the side of an exposed mountain in the middle of the night, watching transfixed as the storm swept violently across the nearby ridges, ravaging the peaks with its white hot fingers and proclaiming its power in deep, concussive thunderclaps that I could feel right through to the centre of my bones. I had even gone out to meet the monster, getting on my bike in the middle of the night and riding up onto the highest hill in the city on order to get closer to the storm. In retrospect, I can’t believe how foolish it was; riding around the very exposed top of the highest ground for miles on a large metal object. I might as well have been wearing a T-shirt that said “Lightning, strike me please” on the back. Although I shake my head now, at the time I had no feelings of hesitation whatsoever. It was almost like I knew that the storm wouldn’t hurt me.

Early civilizations worshipped nature, and at times it is easy for me to understand why. It does not ask for your respect; it demands it. It is not a stretch at all for me to comprehend why people once believed that the elements were Gods. Although I do not subscribe to their pagan beliefs, I am nonetheless in awe of the power that is manifested by a storm. I can feel a strange sense of renewal when the sky releases a deluge of rain, almost like the world will be clean again when it is over. I love the tension in the atmosphere. Storms make me feel alive.

I remember one of my girlfriends once telling me a story that embarrassed her at the time, but to me captured the attraction of the elements in a primitive but poignant sense. She was from a small town on the prairies, where summer storms are often dramatic and severe. One afternoon she was home with two of her sisters, when the clouds began to gather in the west. She said that she could feel the air change through the kitchen window, as the sun fled helplessly before the tempest and the sky began to darken menacingly. Her parents were away, and in typical teenage fashion she had the stereo cranked. She was listening to Enigma, and as the storm began to build and the wind picked up, the song “Rivers of Belief“ came on. Her sisters had come to watch the clouds as they boiled and churned into an inky black cauldron, and they migrated to the back yard to get a better view. She wasn’t sure who the first one was to begin dancing, but before she knew it the three of them were lost in the moment, dancing as though entranced as the lightning flashed around them and the music seemed to meld itself seamlessly with the voices of the storm. The longer they danced, the more intense the approaching storm became. As if on queue, as the song ended a perfect calm descended over the town. The wind stopped, the air was still and deathly quiet, and even the distant rolls of thunder seemed to have vanished. Breathless, they stood there almost afraid to move as the clouds grew even darker and the stillness became almost oppressive. It was almost as though someone had somehow frozen the earth in place for a moment, and nobody dared to disturb the perfect calm.

With one drop of rain, the spell was broken. The wind returned with a gust that nearly sent her reeling, and the earth shook as the thunder seemed to rip open the sky. By the time she felt the second drop she was already running for the house, and by the time she reached the doorway she was drenched by the downpour that had swept like a wall across the yard, oblivious of anything in its path. She told me how she sat shivering behind that door for over an hour, watching the storm creep across the prairies until the sky began to lighten once more and a thin azure band appeared on the western horizon to indicate that the sun was in fact still there.

This summer has been thin on storms. Some years are better than others, and I guess it just hasn’t been hot or dry enough to drum up any really good ones. Tonight on the way into work, the wind began to blow and the sky became heavy and threatening. I was hoping for a storm, but to my disappointment it never really materialized. We got about twenty minutes of rain and a few flashes, but nothing really dramatic. I hope we get another one soon. I’ll be waiting.

The ghosts of 911

Every generation has its touchstone event. World wars starting and ending, Presidents being assassinated, and Men landing on the moon. In my relatively short lifetime, there have been four events that stand out from the rest as being truly important. The first was in November 1989 when the Berlin wall fell. I remember seeing the news inundated with footage of ecstatic Berliners climbing over to one another and dancing precariously on top of the 12 foot-high barrier. I remember the touching but opportunistic “Peace on Earth” commercial produced days later for Coca-Cola featuring an East German and a West German passing roses to each other over the top of the wall. For a kid who had grown up with the suspicion and brinkmanship of the cold war, it was a shocking turn of events.
I would only have to wait another two years before the next big one. In August 1991, I saw the first of the only three emergency news broadcasts I have ever seen on television. They interrupted my programming to tell me that the leader of the feared Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, had been placed under house arrest and that the USSR was in a state of coup d’etat. It was the beginning of the end for communism, an ideology that I had always been taught to fear and eschew. I remember the strange look on my parents’ faces when I rushed upstairs to tell them. It did not occur to me at the time that it was as unsettling for them as it was for me. None of us had ever known a world without the east vs. west political tension that had defined the global mindset for over 50 years.
The third major event was also responsible for the second and third emergency broadcasts. It was summer 1998, and I was languishing in the basement waiting for my girlfriend to call when the TV announced the breaking news that Princess Diana had been involved in a serious car accident and was in critical condition. Although it did not carry nearly the same impact as the other two events, I was nonetheless saddened when the second broadcast, about twenty minutes later, informed me that the Princess of Wales had perished.
Although these events all left an impression on me, none of them impacted me the way September 11, 2001 did. My wife and I had just moved from Montreal back to Calgary three weeks before, and I had only been back at work for about ten days. Just like any other normal morning, we woke up to the sound of Cjay 92’s Forbes & Friends morning show. I had just gotten out of the shower when they started joking on the radio about how some idiot had just flown a plane into the side of the world trade center in New York City. They were reporting that it was a small plane, like a Cessna, and were poking fun at the pilot for what was unquestionably a gross navigational error. I remember shaking my head in disgust as I walked to the bathroom to brush my teeth while my wife went to the living room to check the weather channel. I heard her horrified gasp over the sound of the water, and walked quickly to the living room to see what the problem was. I came around the corner just in time to see the second plane, a Boeing 767, slam into the south tower of the world trade center. The north tower, hit 18 minutes earlier, was spewing thick black smoke from a gaping hole in one side. It immediately became horrifically clear that the plane in question had not been a tiny Cessna. We were watching something major.
The rest of the morning became something of a blur. The drive to work, usually the domain of lighthearted chatter, was punctuated instead by CBC radio’s live news feed of the events in New York City. I don’t remember a single word passing between my wife and I until I arrived at work. As we were pulling into the parking lot, the radio informed us that the south tower had collapsed. I felt as though my stomach had fallen with it, and wandered into the building in a somber state, wondering how on earth I was going to concentrate on anything else.
As it turned out, everyone else in the office was having the same problem. All of the websites for the major news outlets were inaccessible, having crashed under the crush of traffic as people tried to find out what was going on. One of the girls in the department had brought in a radio and began giving us updates as they were announced. Management comandeered the conference room, set up a TV, and spent the day rooted to CNN’s live coverage. The rest of us took turns going in to watch, unable to focus on anything else.
What had started out as shock began to escalate into panic and confusion when we learned of the other planes. Suddenly the radio was announcing that another hijacked airliner had crashed into the Pentagon, and dozens more planes were unaccounted for. The United States government had called for every plane in North American airspace to be grounded immediately or risk being shot down. Information became unreliable, with several incidents being reported and then recanted afterwards. When the fourth plane went down over Pennsylvania, it seemed like the world was coming apart at the seams. The office was buzzing with rumours, concern, and agitation. Two employees in one of the other departments demanded to be excused for the day because they didn’t feel safe. Suddenly Calgary was a potential target because of the predominance of the oil industry, and the local news proclaimed that a voluntary evacuation was in effect for the downtown core. My head began to spin. I felt sick when I witnessed the collapse of the north tower on live television.
For weeks afterwards, we were bombarded with images of destruction and suffering on a scale that North America had never seen. I saw the footage of that plane crashing into the side of the tower so many times I began to see it in my sleep. Osama Bin Laden became a household name, and words like Al Quaeda, terrorism, and war were on everyone’s lips. Troops were on their way to Afghanistan to find and punish those responsible. North America was no longer a safe haven.
It was the only event I have lived through that truly changed the world as I knew it. When we opened our eyes on September 12, 2001, the world was a very different place from the one it had been 24 hours before.
I didn’t realize how much it had stayed with me until recently. Years go by and memories fade, no matter how vivid and horrific they once were. 911 was no exception. Having seen it all rehashed and rediscussed ad nauseum on TV, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if I had subconsciously begun to distance myself from it psychologically. It had become something to be remembered once a year, a reminder of the ugly side of a world full of uncertainty. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that eventually, I allowed it to become an afterthought; a footnote of history to be passed on to my children as a story of “I remember where I was when…”.
Three weeks ago, I took my wife to see ‘The Devil wears Prada”. (obviously, she got to choose that time) One of the previews that night was for the upcoming Nicholas Cage movie “World Trade Center”. In 90 seconds of celluloid, it all came flooding back. The shock. The anger. The crying, the emotion, and the devastation. When the trailer ended I looked at my wife and said “I don’t think I’m ready for that yet”. Obviously, stirring up emotion is what the filmmakers are aiming for, but I don’t believe that what I felt was a result of clever editing and a stirring soundtrack. Nearly five years later, the events of that day are still a little too close to home for me to be able to enjoy a reproduction of them as entertainment.
Maybe I will never get to that point, and a part of me hopes that I never do. While I was watching that trailer, all I could do was look at the faces of the actors and think of how many families were torn apart that day, and how many lives came crashing down with those towers. How many spouses collapsed that night into a sleep that used to be shared by a loving husband or wife, and how many children cried for bedtime stories that their mother or father would never read again? How many people waited for days beside phones that would not ring, or sat vainly in front of their computers hoping for an email that would not come? How many people will never really know what happened to their loved one? To this day, there is still a margin of close to one thousand people between those confirmed dead and those suspected missing. For those people, it will never be OK.
I hope that I am able to teach my children a respect for the events that define the world they will grow up in and the lives that have been lost in those events. I want them to appreciate holidays like Remembrance Day and to celebrate them with reverence and gratitude. I want them to know that their freedom has been bitterly won on so many accounts, and that it is never, ever to be taken lightly. Although my heart tells me otherwise, I sincerely hope that they never have to live through a day like September 11, 2001, just as I’m sure my grandparents hoped that my parents would never have to live through another world war. Above all, I hope that they will grow to become good, responsible people who will do a better job of running this place than we have. History is full of examples of what not to do, and those examples are written in the blood of countless innocent people. I hope that I, and my children, never forget them.

The rocket’s red glare

Imagine, if you will, that you are nine years old and you know a kid named Lenny. Lenny is an average kid just like everyone else in your class, except for one thing. He has a younger brother who also goes to your school, and that younger brother is the most annoying kid on earth. He steals people’s lunches, spits at girls in the hallway, wipes boogers on the other kids in the lunch room, and goes out of his way to disrupt everyone’s games at recess. He’s always trying to to stir things up and get a reaction out of people, and nobody else can stand him. One of the bigger kids in your class, Billy, hates Lenny’s little brother. He is always threatening Lenny to keep his brother under control or suffer the consequences. The problem is that Lenny’s little brother is not an easy kid to keep under control. One day he takes things a little too far and Billy comes to Lenny’s house after school looking for him. Lenny answers the door and tries to explain to Billy that he is doing all he can to control his brother, but Billy isn’t buying it. He has heard the excuses before. He insists that Lenny give his brother up to face the music for his actions. When Lenny can’t or won’t deliver his little brother to Billy, Billy loses his patience and beats the hell out of Lenny.

Like the schoolyard analogy or not, this is essentially what is happening in Lebanon as we speak. Israel has grown tired of hearing about how impossible it is to control the Hizbollah movement, which more or less rules the southern half of Lebanon. They want the terrorists contained, they want the rocket attacks to stop, and they want the soldiers that Hizbollah abducted returned immediately. Reasonable demands? In a reasonable world, yes. In the world we live in, they might as well be asking for the moon to be dropped into their laps. Since these demands aren’t being met, they are shelling the crap out of Lebanon.

I have mixed feelings about this. As an admitted right-winger, I respect and understand Israel’s right to defend its national security by striking against the organization they percieve to be the biggest threat against their country. I am, however, a little taken aback at the force with which they have responded. If they were actually legitimate strikes against military targets or known Hizbollah stronghods, I don’t think I would have as much of a problem with it, but this is where the waters get a little murky. Hizbollah, like any good terrorist organization, knows that guerilla tactics are key in the war against an infinitely more powerful opponent. They also know that they are much more difficult to flush out when they are carefully concealed within a civilian environment. In what I believe to be a blatant disregard for their own countrymen, they have thus positioned themselves smack-dab in the middle of normal neighborhoods; places where people like you or I might live if we were Lebanese. Israel knows this, and has shown few qualms about launching massive airstrikes on these areas, putting large numbers of innocent civilians directly in harm’s way. In Israel’s defense, the innocence of many of these people might be called into question. For a terrorist organization to take such firm root over an area, there has to be a lot of support for their cause in that area. In other words, some of these “innocent’ civilians may very well be responsible for helping the terrorists to disappear and aiding (either directly or indirectly) their initiatives. This is where it gets downright muddy.

So what do you do? Do you allow things to remain in stasis, doing nothing as your markets get hammered weekly by suicide bombers and guerrillas sneak across your borders to kidnap members of your armed forces? (who are, remember, more than likely only there because Israeli law makes it compulsory that every able man and woman serve between 24 and 36 months of military duty) Or do you fly off the handle and start bombing anything that moves, knowing full well that the vast majority of the casualties will be people who have nothing to do with the conflict? Obviously, Israel has chosen the latter approach.

Surprising nobody, the United States has sided firmly with Israel and even went so far as to use a UN security council veto to kill a proposal to enforce a ceasefire. Even Canada, a generally more moderate nation, has stepped up to voice support for the Israeli government, even though public sentiment may not be in agreement. Yesterday, we learned that Israel is now sending troops across the border into southern Lebanon to establish a “buffer zone”. To me, this is where things start to stink to high heaven. The last time a country in the middle east invaded another country in the middle east, it was Iraq muscling its way into Kuwait. That time, the United States was on the way to the rescue within a matter of hours, chomping at the bit to put those dastardly Iraqis back where they belonged. This time, nothing. No troops, no helicopters, no patroit missiles; not even the threat of sanctions. Just a cordial “you guys solve your problem however you see fit, and we’ll just sit back and watch the fun.” Hmmm. No oil involved this time, I guess. Still, it seems strange to me that a country who loves to play the global policeman would just wash its hands of this one. It makes me wonder what they know that we don’t.

In the meantime, my heart goes out to the people in Lebanon who are caught in the middle of this mess. In any war there will always be innocent casualties, but for some reason this one seems to hit home a little more. Maybe I’ve shaken off the video game-fuelled numbness for killing long enough to realize that just because “that’s what happens in a war” doesn’t justify the fact that there is a war in the first place. I understand that terrorism cannot be tolerated and especially not allowed to thrive. I can even try to reach for an understanding of how Israel feels justified in essentially razing a country in order to solve the problem. I just feel so badly for all those normal people who are having their lives torn apart by the fallout of a few really bad decisions made by a few really misguided people.

I wish that Hizbollah would just return the soldiers and stop launching their damn rockets. As George W. Bush so eloquently said to Tony Blair at the recent G8 summit: “We just need to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s all over.” That said, the soldiers are more than likely already dead, and even if the rockets stop then next week it will just be something new. As much as I feel for the Lebanese citizens living in fear of the bombing raids, I also feel for my great aunt, who lives near Haifa and has to stop and wonder every time she goes out in public if she will really be home in an hour with her groceries or if this will be the day some suicide bomber decides to take out the bus she is riding on. I cannot generate an ounce of sympathy for an organization that tries to further its cause by killing innocent bystanders, and it makes me angry when they try to justify it by writing those people off as “martyrs to the cause”. News flash: nobody gives a damn about your cause, and if they do then they hate it so much they will bomb the living daylights out of everything within two hundred miles of you in order to stop it.

I wish that there were some way to stop these morons without hurting anyone. I know, I know; that has to be one of the most naive and full-on pathetic statements I’ve ever made, but it is true. This has got to be one of the most difficult and unfortunate events I’ve ever seen. I usually have an opinion about everything, and more often than not it’s a strong one. This time, however, I’m on the fence. While I can get my head around the reasons for this happening, something about it just doesn’t feel right. This from a guy who stood up and waved the flag with everyone else during the two gulf wars, who cheered Canadian involvement in Afghanistan, and who bought the weapons of mass destruction idea hook, line, and sinker and was upset that Canada didn’t send troops to Iraq as well. Yes, hindsight is 20/20 and I haven’t always been correct. I have always had something to say, however, and this time it pains me to say that this time I just don’t know what to think. My western upbringing and resultant set of values and beliefs would lead me to side with Israel were it not for what looks to me like an all-out indiscriminate assault on ordinary people. It may not even be that much of a stretch to say that it seems like they are trying to fight terror with terror. When I see the images of destruction flood across my television, I feel uneasy. When I see photos of children, no more than ten years old, lying dead and dismembered at the side of the road after their car suffered an indirect hit by an Israeli missile, I feel sick. When I see Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora come on TV and beg -not ask- for the rest of the world to help stop the madness, I wonder what this world is coming to.

Shameless

I don’t usually plug websites, but this one is worth mentioning.

*Queue throaty info-mercial voice*

How many times have you been sitting in your car listening to the radio, thinking: “man, this stinks. They never play what I want to hear!”
What if you could hear the music you want to hear all the time? What if there was a way for the radio to analyze your music tastes and play only music that you like?

Enter Pandora. I’m not sure how it works, but it’s pretty stinkin’ cool. I’ve added it to my links in case you want to check it out. You just enter in the name of a song or an artist that you like, and it generates a playlist of music that shares similar elements with the song or artist you picked. The nice thing is that there is enough flexibility in the generator to provide some variation, so you’re not stuck with all slow songs or all thrash metal. It’s also a great way to discover some great new music in places you didn’t expect.
A word to the wise-don’t write something off until you give it a listen. Sometimes the generator will throw bands at you that you’ve never heard of, but the songs are actually really good. Sometimes it will throw you a bit of a curveball- I entered in Sarah McLachlan and it brought up Sevendust- but again, give it a listen before you hit the advance button. You might be surprised.

Happy listening.

Old Friends

I am generally pretty picky about what I listen to. Music is a big deal to me, so I don’t like to waste my time listening to crap. Not surprisingly, I have some pretty strong opinions on what does and does not merit my attention. In keeping with this theme, I am not generally a record store impulse shopper. Usually when I go to buy a CD, I know exactly which one I want and I purchase it and get the hell out. I am also not one to buy a $15.00 CD for one song. I research my possibilities beforehand and my typical rule of thumb is that if the CD has at least three songs I like, it’s a keeper. If not, I don’t waste my time with it.

Twice in my life, I have broken this rule. The first time was when I was attending University in the United States in early 1994. Having blown my entire student loan in the first semester mountain biking all over Utah and Colorado, I was forced to take a part time job as a night-shift custodian to cover the cost of my tuition. Since the job required me to be at work at 3 am, I would usually stay up late watching MTV then go to work. Late night MTV could be interesting. Sometimes it seemed as though they had wandered through the wasteland of forgotten music videos and started grabbing things randomly, then had assembled a play list from the jumbled fruits of the excursion. One night, however, changed my listening habits forever. It was about 2:30 and I was about to turn off the TV and leave for work when a video came on for a song called “Possession” by someone named Sarah McLachlan. The previous hour or so of programming had been rather uninspiring, and I have to admit that the only thing that stopped me from turning the TV off was that I thought that this Sarah chick, whoever she was, was drop-dead gorgeous. The video was half over before I realized that the song was pretty darn good too. When it ended I turned the TV off and went to work, leaving the video and the song to fade back into what I thought would be late-night MTV obscurity. It didn’t. Two hours later, I was scrubbing windows with the chorus to “Possession” hopelessly stuck in my head. When I finished the windows and started in on the vacuuming, the song was still there. By then I was getting frustrated at trying to sing a song I only knew about ten words to, but when work ended at 7:30 that morning I was still singing it. I headed home to sleep, unable to push the song from my head. By 10 am I was still wide awake with the song coursing relentlessly through my brain and I decided that enough was enough. I went to the closest music store I knew of and tracked down Sarah McLachlan’s CD, entitled “Fumbling towards Ecstasy“.

When I got home and put it into my stereo, I listened to “Possession” about a dozen times before letting the disc play through. I was thoroughly disappointed with the rest of the CD and disgusted with myself for blowing fifteen bucks on one song. Oddly, though, I didn’t take it out of my stereo. Over the next few days I found myself in one of those moods where you don’t want to listen to any of your old CDs simply because you’ve heard them all before, and I wound up listening to “Fumbling towards Ecstasy” more and more just because it was new. Besides “Possession“, the first song to catch on with me was “Circle“. After that, it was “Wait“, then “Plenty“. It was like the floodgates had opened. Three weeks later, I realized that the CD had not left my stereo since the day I bought it. I was officially hooked.

When I returned home that spring, I tracked down Sarah’s previous albums. I fell in love with both of them. She had become my favourite artist, and for the next year I lived and died for her music. Her songs seemed to be written especially for me, and it seemed that whatever I was feeling at the time, the music could relate to it. It was the first time in my life that I had discovered a music that truly connected with me. Leaving on my mission, I had to leave all of my CDs behind. It was like leaving family behind. For the better part of a year, I lived without Sarah McLachlan, although it felt like my head had become an extensive back-catalogue and I sang her songs to myself constantly. Finally, halfway through my mission, I cracked after a particularly difficult week and decided that I needed Sarah. It wasn’t easy to find in southern France, but a dedicated search turned up a ridiculously expensive imported copy of “Fumbling towards Ecstasy“. I bought it without hesitation.

Sarah’s music had become very personal to me. I knew each of the songs like old friends and knew exactly which album to listen to depending on my state of mind at the time. Some of the lyrics became almost like mantras to me, giving me strength when I needed it. As strange as it sounds, her songs became almost like a soundtrack to my experiences. The copy of FTE that started it all remains to this day my most valued CD. Whenever I feel uncertain or unsettled, I can throw it into the CD player and it sounds golden. It has become like an old part of blue jeans; it is always comfortable and the songs just feel like they fit me.

When I moved to Calgary in 1998, I moved away from Sarah’s music a little bit. I was in full swing with my own music and my own bands, which all favoured a harder style. Although FTE remained in heavy rotation in my stereo, it lost some of its prominence as my tastes evolved. By that time, Sarah was topping the charts with her new album, “Surfacing“; a fantastic album in its own right. Although it too would ultimately gain a place among my favourites, it never struck the same emotional chord with me that FTE had, and slowly I drifted away from Sarah’s music.

When “Afterglow” came out in 2003, I rushed down to the record store to buy it but came away slightly disappointed. It is an excellent album but to me it seemed to be missing something. I began to wonder if maybe, after six years between albums, Sarah had lost her edge. In the end I couldn’t decide if it was the music that had changed, or me. Although still beautifully written and inherently listenable, the music had lost its connnection with me. With no small amount of sadness, I relegated “Afterglow” to the M section of my CD collection and moved on.

Tonight I stumbled across a link in Wikipedia to Sarah’s “World on Fire” video. When I listened to it, it was like I was hearing it for the first time. Memories of her previous albums came rushing back and suddenly I couldn’t wait to get home and listen to some of them again. I missed the comfort that only a cold winter night, a good book, and “Fumbling towards Ecstasy” on repeat can bring. For the first time in my life, I signed up for someone’s fan club. I am now a proud member of Sarah’s “Murmurs” website. I’m not even sure what lead me to do it, but it felt a lot like the excitement you feel when you know you are going to see someone important again after you haven’t seen them for a very long time. Maybe your lives don’t fit together as closely as they once did, and maybe you have both continued to change and go your separate ways during your time apart, but you would be crazy to love them any less because of that. It’s been a long time since that fateful February night when a crappy job and some late-night MTV brought Sarah to me. I’m glad she’s back.

The second time I broke my rule was for Ginger’s album, “Far out“. Remembering my luck with the Sarah McLachlan CD and hoping that lightning would strike the same place twice, I purchased it the day after hearing the song “The earth revolves around you” on the radio. Although it still gathers dust in my CD collection, I think I have listened to it a grand total of three times in the 12 years I have owned it.

It’s a Staaaaampede!

Ah, Stampede week. That wonderful time of the year when the gutters of the city flow with spilled beer and the afternoon commute to work is fraught with the perils of avoiding the staggering drunks wobbling their way awkwardly down 9th avenue. The only week of the year when everyone in the city loses their mind, cowboy hats and wranglers come out of the woodwork, and restraint and sensibility are nothing more than distant memories. If it weren’t so amusing watching people drool all over themselves as they vainly attempt to keep themselves from falling off the sidewalk, I would be completely disgusted.

I used to really enjoy the Stampede. I used to try and catch at least one concert at the Coca-Cola stage and spend at least one night on the midway (preferably with a girl or two) doing the ironman on all the scary rides. Nothing says “Stampede” like the taste of warm mini-donuts in your mouth, the sweaty-cool feeling of a July midnight on your skin, and the smell of puke and beer on your shoes. Yee-frickin’-haw.

Maybe I’m growing older, maybe I’ve calmed down, maybe I’m just a boring old married guy now, because none of it really appeals to me anymore. I haven’t been to the Stampede in three years now; not even to see a concert. This is a remarkable turnaround from a guy who used to spend hours in the mosh pit and weathered a Bif Naked Stampede concert with grass in his teeth, mud on his clothes, and a separated shoulder from being dropped while crowd surfing.

Tonight we ventured out down 9th avenue in search of sidewalk hotdog vendors. The one thing that can be said about Stampede is that along with the the pristine stetsons and once-a-year western wear, it brings out an army of hotdog carts. Some are good, some are bad, some are really, really ugly, and others are mind-blowingly fabulous. The “diesel dogs”, named for the fumes from the adjacent roadway that permeate the meat as it cooks, are a Stampede staple. The buns are doughy and always too small, the sausage itself is never fully cooked despite the astounding number of cuts and slashes it sustains to speed up the process, and the aforementioned mutilations inevitable lead to part of it falling off onto your clothing, leaving a nasty grease stain. It’s not truly a diesel dog unless it is loaded up with onions, sauerkraut, peppers, ketchup, mustard, and relish, and you haven’t really enjoyed it unless your fingers are covered with grease when you’re done and you know that the heatburn is about to end when you feel the urgent and pressing need to take a dump. Eating more than one at a time is something reserved for a dare, and there had better be money riding on the outcome.

As I stood there feeling the diesel dog assaulting my digestive system, I looked around at the people coming out of the bar and trying to summon some sort of semi-coherent enough demand of the English language to hail a cab, I had to shake my head. Many of them were having a hard time staying erect enough to avoid being run over by the taxi they were trying to hail, and others were milling around looking for someone to take home with them, someone to fight, or someone to get them another bottle. I wondered briefly what the wreckage would look like in the morning, as they struggled through that last working day of the week trying to clear the alcohol-induced haze of the night before in time to go out and do it all again this weekend. At times it looked almost like a nightmare. Girls in too-tight clothing and cowboy hats wearing makeup that looked like it had been applied with a putty knife. Bleary-eyes guys wandering around trying to impress those girls by acting tough and casting menacing stares at anyone who ventured too close until the strain of keeping their vision in focus became too great. Cops standing in the street, arms folded, waiting for the next fight or the next accident. People dancing, people yelling, people swearing at each other, people crying, people fighting. For something that is lauded as the biggest party on earth, it sure didn’t look like much fun to me.

People truly are a curious study. Many of the activities that society portrays as entertainment are destructive, demeaning, and potentially emotionally and physically dangerous. Stampede, the last glorious party, looked for all the world like a train wreck. I hope that the people out there know what they’re doing. I think they’re idiots, but I hope they get home safely. I hope that they know their limits, and if not then I hope that they will learn some restaint. I used to look forward to Stampede week; now I want nothing to do with it. My Stampede now consists of running the gauntlet of diesel dog vendors until my intestines can take no more. Maybe one day I’ll take in another concert or take my wife to see the chuckwagons or something. Maybe for you, the Stampede means something different. Maybe for you, this is still the one week of the year you can’t live without. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the red-faced sucks I saw staggering around in the street tonight. Whatever your take on the whole mess, happy trails, kids.

Sleep, in all it’s variations

It is amazing how one simple act can represent so many different ideas. Sleep as a basic necessity is unremarkable, yet without it we suffer and are unable to function to the best of our abilities. Perhaps the regular need to perform such a trivial process has driven us to romanticize the idea of the act itself. Sleep is not just a means to recharge a physical plant; it is a fountain of creativity and a gateway to another world in which our dreams allow us to live an alternate reality. It is a source of energy and refreshment that cannot be found through any other means. It is perhaps the most intimate was of sharing oneself with a partner. Besides the obvious, more congniscent means of expression, what truly expresses trust as much as allowing another person access to ourselves when we are the most vulnerable? Sleep is the centre of so many things.

I can remember when I was younger what a thrill it was to have a girl fall asleep with me. More than the kiss or the first stages of physical exploration, to sleep in the company of someone I cared deeply about was to feel a deep sense of comfort and belonging. So many ideas, so much emotion, so many feelings. My favourite poem is a short one by Margaret Atwood, called “Variation on the word Sleep”. For a woman who was so out in left field on so many things, she really nailed this one.

Variation on the word “Sleep”, by Margaret Atwood

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun and three moons
towards the cave where you must descend
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center

I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again and become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
and that necessary.

Hiatus and random thoughts

I read back through these posts and everything is all doom and gloom and “Oh how tired am i?” Well even though the answer to that question is pretty damn tired, I’m sick of talking about it. I am finishing a month of holidays on Wednesday, and I dare say I am more exhausted now than i was at the onset. With that in mind, I refuse to allow it to sink me and so I will pull myself together once again and prepare for the return to the grind.

Tonight we discovered a new restaurant. Recommended by some of my wife’s clients, Da Guido sounded to me like a nasty diner-type joint that was three months behind on its mob protection payments and served a bowl of spaghetti that you could rappel with. Instead, it was excellent. The bruschetta was the best I’ve eaten on this side of the Atlantic and the pasta was fresh and very good. Not cheap…dinner for two cost about 90 bucks and that’s without a drop of alcohol. Still worth checking out if you’re in the Calgary area though. The food is great and the service friendly.

Is rock really dead? I’ve been fighting the idea for over two years now and am beginning to have a sinking feeling that denial ain’t just a river in Egypt. I realized with a shock the other day that I haven’t listened to Cjay 92 for over a year, then I tuned in and in ten minutes remembered exactly why. Everything sounds the same. The last CD that truly excited me was last year’s brilliant New Order release “Waiting for the Sirens Call’. Even bands that I generally like, such as Live, seem to be mailing it in. Their new CD “Songs from Black Mountain” is thoroughly listenable but equally mediocre. There aren’t any horrible songs that beg to be skipped over, but nothing is really all that great either. The radio is an endless cycle of soundalike songs from a band called Sum Nickelbacked theory of a Staind Deadman. What’s worse is that the only kind of music that seems to be generating any kind of attention at all is that god-awful regurgitated pseudo-soul R&B crap that dominates MTV and MuchMusic. My wife told me she liked the new song from some chick named Rihanna. When I heard it, I was disgusted to hear that it’s nothing more than “new” lyrics over a ripped-off, semi-warmed-over version of Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love’. Is nothing sacred anymore?

I hate the fact that I haven’t posted here in over a month and yet it’s still difficult to find new and interesting things to write about. Has my life really become that boring?

Don’t answer that.