Not at all Like Riding a Bicycle

There's an obnoxious little phrase: "It's like riding a bicycle ..."
Usually the bit about "... you never forget how" remains an exercise for the listener.

So after some years of listening to it without thought I realized that in fact the open end of the aphorism made for some interesting rejoinders:

"... you can get your trouser leg all greasy?"
"... you can ring a little bell and people will get out of your way?"
"... it's easiest when you're going downhill?"

It is this obnoxious phrase, O Avid Fan, upon which I wish you to reflect today, as I share with you:

Metro's First Bike Ride


So technically it wasn't my first. I don't recall how old I was when I first rode a "two-wheeler." I know there was a kid in our apartment block in Hamilton who owned a small one--It was painted sparkly gold, as most things were at the time so it seemed. It may or may not have had training wheels.

I remember vaguely, in that dreamlike haze all childhood memories have (For me--Yours may be perfectly clear, in which case you may freely assume your memory is lying to you) riding this bike about. I could frickin' fly on that thing. It was too small for me, even at five-ish. It had no gears. And I had to stand on the pedals because the seat was set so low my knees would have been pistoning into my forehead. Ah, how flexible we are as kids!--But I digress.

When we moved east, a schoolmate of mine took me home one day. She wished to go for a bike ride. I'm guessing I was about six, maybe just turned seven. The trouble was that while she had a bike, it wasn't suited for "doubling" (Young people ask your parents--Doubling was an astoundingly dangerous practice in which boys and girls risked life, limb, and testicle in an attempt to prove that all bicycles were in fact built for two).

There were two bikes, her mum's and her dad's. But as I recall with my lying memory, we knew the ones with dropped crossbars were for girls. And it would be wrong for a boy to ride a girl's bike. It made perfect sense at the time.

So we decided I should try her father's bike. On the surface, to any observer over the age of about ten, this would seem absurd. Her dad (whom I cannot recall now--Hell, I don't think either of her parents were around, but then what was she doing home alone?) obviously had an inseam about the same as my height.

Still, we pushed his big blue bike to the back steps of her house. It was a typical, probably CCM, sit-up-and-beg bike, painted sparkle blue, as most things were at the time, so it seemed. It definitely did not have training wheels. And with serious trepidation, I mounted. I balanced wobbly-ly atop the seat. My toes could touch the pedals until a little way short of their lowest point. After some discussion possibly involving the questioning of the wisdom of our actions (but I doubt it), I pushed off with a toe, and set off down the back alley behind the rows of tiny fenced yards.

The bike spun readily away, picking up speed from the slight downhill, and from my full weight against the pedals. I was probably going about fifteen kilometres per hour, approaching the point where the alley I was in T-ed to a stop at an intersecting alley, a garage door across the alley providing an emphatic full stop. I would need to slow down to make the curve, so my instincts told me.

At what I figure was about eighteen kilometres per hour I stepped backwards to slow the bike--the common practice on the coaster-brake-equipped units I was used to. The pedals rotated freely. I tried again, harder. The pedals flew counterclockwise, the left one turning upward and striking my shin while my right foot lost contact and flailed at empty air. At the same time, because I had been standing up to pedal, I slipped down, with the result all young men have experienced. Young ladies, I cannot explain, but if you hold a pair of baseball bats with the end of the handle against the point of your abdomen containing your ovaries and run at a brick wall you may get a similar sensation. The discombobulation led me to look down, attempting to untangle myself and regain control whilst trying not to retch too loudly and relieve the hideous pressure of my probably-about-fifty-pounds from my crotch.

At this point the die was cast. I looked up and saw the phone pole, swerved late, ang glanced off of it, then careened, brakeless, across the end of the alley and fetched up with a "CRUMP" and a rattle of ironmongery, in a heap against the garage door, curled around my private pain and experiencing a series of novel sensations, including my first real case of road rash, as well as some old ones--the scraped knees and elbows, the sensation that I wanted to "$#!7 myself and blow lunch simultaneously" as Stephen King put it so gracefully in "Christine" ...

My friend seemed to feel responsible for my injuries. That's probably why she waited until I had gotten up and brushed myself off and more-or-less stopped crying before she checked to make sure her dad's bike was okay. Then she led me off to her mother, who did whatever magic other people's mothers do when a boy's knees, elbows, and testicles are bruised. I don't really recall much beyond that. The girl and I stayed friends awhile. She may or may not have attended my next school.

Oh ... And the reason the brakes didn't work was that I hadn't noticed the odd little levers protruding from the handlebars. I'd never ridden a bike with hand brakes.

And that's really all I recall. But it's the incident that springs to mind when someone says "Hey, it's like riding a bicycle ..."

And I finish for him or her: "... if you fall off it's really going to hurt."

Refurbishing the Blog

Having decided to try blogging again, the first step was to look hard at the ol' metrotemplate. Not looking too spiffy. Needs a coat o' paint, for starters.

But there are more important issues: For starters, the gaping holes in the blogroll. Frontier Editor appears to have disappeared, Canadian Cynic got tired of the endless inflatable-bozo-boxing that is critiquing conservativism in the modern North American political landscape, etc, etc, ad nauseam.

So I need to rebuild. And if you're reading this, I'd like to hear from you: What are your indispensible must-reads online? Not just blogs, though I'm happy to learn about them, but any sites at all. What's the first site you hit in the morning while the coffee's brewing? The last one you have to see before you can sleep at night?

In other news, I'm also noticing that I don't write the way I used to. I don't feel as clever, the words don't turn in my hands and mind and line themselves up as easily.

Rust is a bitch.

But if the corrosion doesn't run too deep, I think I should be able to loosen up in a while. Maybe a year will do it.

Blowing the Dust Off

Phew. Who the hell left this sandwich lying on the console?

Okay, so I was away for a while. I want to thank the staff and those husky damn interns at the Sunnyvale Home for the Particularly Stressed for the length of my stay, and a certain pathological psycologist (you know who you are, sweetie) for its abrupt end, and I'm sure the insurance will cover everything.

Lots going on in Canada right now. In particular there's the Olympics. Yet somehow they seem smaller and meaner than the 2000 gala. My country's neuroses seem to be on full display. Perhaps because everything feels like a little too little of most things (snow, actual tickets rather than fake ticket shops, the hopeless bloody Canada Pavillion pictured below) and far too much of others ("own the podium," Prime Ministerial photo-ops, those stupid-ass mascots and also the Canada Pavillion).



Parliament still isn't sitting. The Harpercons are relying on the Olympic spectacle to distract the masses, so it seems. Well hey, if you can't give them bread, give 'em circuses, I guess. O'course bread could be had had we not spent our bread money on tax cuts and Olympic circuses.

But still, whatever gets you through, eh?

Of the Olympics, I think the best thing is that due to the neurotic rah-rah "own the podium" propaganda push, we have at least learned the names of some of our athletes.

Me? Well I've been busy elsewhere. That is all ye know and all ye need know. I haven't forgotten my promise to address the silliness of global warming denialism, and I plan on making that my next effort.

Hope you've all been behaving while I was away.

A Few Tweaks

I've been away a lot lately. Scrabbling for work, mostly.

Let's see, what's been happening. Well I've been spending a lot of time reading about the so-called "Climate-gate" scandal, and I've concluded that a handful of emails, even if they contained a plot that would make Dan Brown wet his shorts, don't in fact change thirty or fifty years of science, backed by the actual data.

There's a lot more. But for some good reading on the subjects, I'd try Deltoid and DeSmogBlog. This is a debate where style has heretofore trumped science, and those two are trying hard to counter that.

What else ... Oh yes, I've been sort of outed. I left a rude comment over at Canadian Cynic and one of the subjects took the two minutes it took to Google me. He says my name is Ted, and I'm willing to take his word on that. But I knew, and was warned by no less an intertubes big gun than Raincoaster, that no-one's really anonymous on the 'net. So it isn't as though I hadn't expected this to happen at some point.

It'll be interesting to see whether the idea of having a name linked to this blog is likely to change the way I express myself. I hope not. Metro's the little bit of me that I keep locked away when someone's saying something that makes me want to grab their lapels, haul them up to my nose and scream "Are you ₤µ©λing NUTS!?"

Such as when a pleasant, white-haired old lady tells me that Barack Obama is the devil, and means it ... So instead I smile and nod, and when I get home I write it down and try to dissect it.

Anyway ... As you can see, I've updated the blogroll a bit to more accurately reflect where I've been spending my time. If the links look a little left-ish, well I'm hoping to find some reasonable writing from the other side of the spectrum. But it's often a matter of luck. For example, there's today's smart, sensible piece:

At Dr. Dawg's Blawg, I stumbled across a link to this. I linked to Little Green Footballs once, and only once, way back in the prehistory of the ol' Metroblog. I didn't hang about because teh crazy seemed infectious. I forget how I got there, but the Nazi site Stormfront was involved. And no I'm not linking there.

But now I find this post "Why I Parted Ways With the Right, and it so well traces my own retreat from Conservatism that I had to clip a few choice bits off and post them here:

...
4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.)

5. Support for homophobic bigotry (see: Sarah Palin, Dobson, the entire religious right, etc.)

6. Support for anti-government lunacy (see: tea parties, militias, Fox News, Glenn Beck, etc.)

7. Support for conspiracy theories and hate speech (see: Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.)
...

There's more. I reccomend reading that piece.

Partly as a result of hanging around at places that define the extremes of the argument, I'd been very dispirited and bitter lately about the quality of ideas out there. So it's nice to see that sometimes reason does, in fact, prevail.

Meantime, I'm pleased to meet you.
Now you know my name.

Play me off, Mick and Keith!

On the Great Infestation

Sigh. My house is not my own anymore. In a more enlightened society, Mme might be accused of harbouring a nuisance.

Some beasts are useful: The sturdy shetland pony, the sheepdog, the goat. Mankind has built a relationship of mutual trust and reliance with these.

Then, there's the sort that lounges about on your couch for hours on end before slouching off for a hurried six-hour nap, whilst scratching your furniture to splinters and doing abominable things in various dark corners, all the while gleefully consuming food in quantities to make Roman orgy-goers cry "Oi--steady on, mate!"

Such beasts shed hair like an over-forty rock band, and leave unspeakable trails of spittle trailing across the floor, to say nothing of the partially-digested items trailing in its wake. When not regurgitating your food, said creature is rubbing up against you demanding more of it, not to mention more of your valuable gin and beer.

Yes, having the damn thing in the house is something of a trial. But Mme Metro and I are happy to do it as respite care. This allows her regular attendants the chance they need to recover following the repeated hydrophobia shots, deworming, and delousing they must be put through from extended contact.

The cats are fine, and looking pretty healthy, by comparison.

I had a recent picture, but was reluctant to post it, for the health of the Avid Fans' brains. Let's just say I know just how this little dog feels:


see more dog and puppy pictures

With Apologies

Sometime in the way-back-whenago my longtime friend Hobbes stopped in for a visit. We haven't seen each other for about many-many years, and we've clearly wandered a long way from our Catholic school days in La Belle Province.

Hobbes most recently wrote me to say that he'd written a story with me in mind. I found it fascinating, and said I'd post a link to it. Here, after rather too long a delay, is that link.

But don't confine yourself to that single story. Hobbes has mad story skillz and is a delight to listen to. Check out his blog and listen to a few for yourself.

The fascinating thing about the story, for me, is the marvelous mix of fact, fiction, and perspective I find in it. The tale is so compelling that I could think it was true, or that my actual memories of that time in my life were somehow wrong, FSM knows they're foggy enough. I might even believe that "Ted" was the name I was Christened with--and it isn't, lest the Avid Fans (all five of them) wonder.

I've put a couple of new links in the sidebar. It's all I've got time for at the moment. I can't believe I ever got anything done when I was employed.

Who Loves Baby Dolls?

No, not that sort. Don't you lot ever think of anything else? A comment to this post at Celebrating the Absurd got me thinking.

In the dim, distant Metropast I lived in a small town, more a teeny tiny suburb, only not quite, where we actually had a village toy shop. The local paper was interviewing the owner at the height of both the popularity of Cabbage Patch Kids and that of teen pregnancy in our area.

The owner of the toy shop was explaining that his primary clientelle was grandparents. Silver-haired ladies and gentlemen thronged the shop on their way to visit various grandkids. A popular gift for girls was a dolly.

But he was quite specific: They wanted cute little-girl dollies, the ones that look like they're about five. Pink dresses were popular, as were blonde curls, smiles, and bright white teeth.

The article mentioned that at the end of the line was something called, if memory serves "Your Real Baby".

The "Your Real Baby," like the Cabbage Patch Kids, came with a birth certificate, and like the CPKs, you had a choice of ethnicity rarely seen in the adorable-little-girly doll market. But there the similarities ended. While the CPKs all looked like the hydrocephalic, button-eyed little morons they still resemble today, YRB looked 100% real. It was wrinkled. It was either bald or covered in that fluff real babies sometimes arrive wearing. It had a freshly-cut umbilicus with band-aid, and a diaper with the (then-new) half-moon cut from it to accomodate said umbilicus.

It had on its face the expression babies usually have: The purse-lipped, scrunch-eyed malevolent glare of someone who's figured out that YOU are responsible for tipping it out of its comfortable liquid home and introducing it to the cold, cruel, world and is going to make you PAY once it gets the lungs and vocal chords in synch.

The article quoted the toy shop owner as lamenting that while pink-dressed little-girl dolls flew from the shelves, no grandparents seemed eager to offer their offsprings' offspringers the experience of holding a genuine, real-looking baby.

Although I'm sure they chuckled and cooed enough when the respective grandkids were also pinkish/yellowish/brownish and squidgy.

I've always remembered that article, and what it suggested about the reaction of humans to the real world.

On Birth

Which seems to happen to everybody sooner or later.

Amanda of A Bit Part in Your Life is having a baby. Real soon, apparently. And she's a touch nervous:

I get it, everyone that has a child had to get that child out of them--but it's only now that I'm really starting to get what that means. I'm going to have to do this. And soon. I can't put it off for three years like my wisdom-teeth extractions.

As a male, I feel that to venture comment on this it to risk defenestration. So let me instead write about a person who was a significant figure in the years of my young adulthood. I have taken the rare step of using the true names of the principles involved, as I have lost touch with them and wouldn't mind knowing where they're at these days, if indeed they're still alive.


Her name was Mama Morel, or as near as dammit. She was married to an Air Force sargeant who I believe was a refrigeration tech. She had a young son, Kenny, and a middle daughter whose name presently escapes me.

Her eldest daughter was "Bernie". Bernie joined the Forces a year or two after I did, which was how I came to meet her mother.

(I inject here a note of satisfying self-flattery when I say that my then-best-buddy Dave cornered me that night in the mess and asked me point-blank to leave her alone because he was mad for her. Already I was cultivating a reputation that would mystify the hell out of me for decades.)

Mama's family originated from some hick hill town in Appalachian Ontario so far back in the holler that "the hoot owls trod the hens." And the uncles trod the nieces and nephews, the daddies trod the daughters and sons, and ... well you get the grisly picture.

From such humble origins Mama naturally turned up pregnant at 15. Her mother waved the Bible at her and told her she'd suffer the torments of Hell for her sins, or summat like that.

So at 15, scared and alone, Mama found herself in hospital having her first labour pains. She was, I think, determined that her baby should at least be born in a hospital.

As the pains laid on, Mama shrieked and caterwauled, fearing that she herself might part and rip in two, disgorging an untidy heap of intestines and offal onto the tile floors. Having no information other than her mother's curses and gloating, she was sure, she felt, to die in agony for her "crime."

Just then the woman in the bed next to her pulled back the curtain between the beds and glared at her.

"Do you mind trying to keep it down?" she said fiercely.
"But, ... I'm having a baby!" the terrified girl shrieked.
"Yeah. So am I!" replied the intruder "Quit advertising or the rest of them will be wanting one too!"

"And the pain went away," Mama, now roughly three hundred pounds and in her mid-forties, told me around the smoke-hazed, coffee-ringed table in her trailer, "And I never had any trouble giving birth since."

This is just one little story. It utterly fails to encompass what Mama meant to me. I have taken liberties with the specific quotes--What did you expect? The story was told to me some twenty years ago. But Mama was a queen and her life and experience are worth passing on, I feel.

I hope she's still out there. But I doubt it. She was a big woman who smoked a lot and had a rough history. But part of her is in me. I owe her a lot. And I hope I do her memory justice.

One way I try to do that is by passing this story on to nervous mothers-to-be. I don't know if it does them any good, but a person is alive as long as their name is spoken.

Well At Some Point I Had to Tell It, I Suppose

Comments on this blog have resulted in philipa coming to some interesting conclusions about typical marriage ceremonies in Canada.

I hastened to point out that slapping the groom is not usually a prominent feature. However, I felt that this begged more questions, and so here it is: The tale of the Metro/Mme wedding, which has never heretofore been publicly disclosed. It was taken from the secret files and until now has not been missed.

The reason Mme slapped me at our wedding had to do with the nature of weddings, and the nature of Mme, and plain ol' nature.

The first two came into serious conflict in the early stages--possibly even before I guardedly suggested, hedging my bets carefully and presenting a second, no, third-hand ring, that perhaps, in the immortal words of Rocky Balboa: "Yuh wouldn' min' marryin' me too much."

Mme is by her very nature not cut out to be the bride at every wedding or the corpse at every funeral. She is either observational, audience, or she's the eminence grise, the puppeteer, making it all dance. The spotlight is not where she feels most comfortable, and ironically she who of the pair of us most loves photography and is better at it, cannot stand to have her picture taken. I account this as false modesty. I am sure that Angelina Jolie also says "Another one of me? Don't be ridiculous!"

But the net effect is that no goldurn way in hell was she going to process down no aisle to no Pachabel, no siree.

Not to mention that since she utterly refused to get married in a church, it was likely that aisles might be in short supply.

Of course, as a one-time Catholic who was still somewhat in the uncertain phase, I still saw the Holy Mother Church as the institution I should turn to for all my being born, dying, and everything-in-between needs. I'd sort of assumed that marriage in a church was what I'd wind up doing, possibly just to keep my mother off my back.

I love her--she's my mother, for FSM's sake, but she can be very persistent, not to say "wearing". At my sister's wedding she asked whether Sis might, perhaps, just reconsider leaving "obey" off of of the promissory phrase "love, honour, and ..." She's also very devout, I feel.

But Mme was having none of it. She wasn't going to get married by a celibate wearing, for all intents and purposes, a dress, much less listen to a batch of 2,000-year-old advice on navigating the complex channels of marriage given by a man who himself had sworn off the whole business. She wasn't getting married in a building whose founding philosophy has grown to consider our cohabitation prior to marriage as a sinful thing. And after some thought, I realized: neither was I.

So we hashed out a few basic details:

1) Date:
My parents were out of the country in November, our "anniversary" month. Her mum was in Africa or somewhere for December. January all our friends were likely to be holed up paying off credit cards. And in February, Mum and Dad were off to Oz.

So March was the earliest we could manage. We narrowed it down to two weekends, and by purest coincidence managed to pick the one that my sister could actually make.

2) Location:
After some discussion of buildings, and the relative merits and prices of each, we came to the conclusion that outdoors was probably cheaper. Sure it was a bit early in the spring to be getting married outside, but hey, this was BC. We hardly have winters at all.

And that ended my part in things. When one of you is sort of terminally organized all the time, you leave the planning in their capable hands. I offered input as asked. I remember being consulted on things like the colour of the napklins, and the dinner menu.

The caterer was a friend, and family. And was willing to serve lamb, a dish I'm fond of. Mme's sister, herself a catering professional opined that "nobody eats lamb these days".

And when Mme asked me to drive her down to a houseboat on a local river to meet a slightly loopy lady who did some form of dog dressage on weekends, I agreed that she was an admirable choice of officiant.
And she was. She, a marriage commissioner and if memory serves, former ordained minister of some sect or other, understood and respected our desire for a secular wedding.

And so it was that two days before the outdoor wedding I found myself driving around the Greater Vancouver area cursing the unseasonably late snow.

Snow. Like the stuff we (coastal dwellers as we was) just don't get.

The day of our wedding I tried to avoid seeing the bride, but was hampered by logistics--we had to share a taxi. I wore my pea-green suit, and Mme had found a dress in the matching shade (which somehow looked better on her) for a price I believe cannot be mentioned her for fear of violating some sort of blog obscenity law.

The snow had melted, aside from dirty blue patches in the shade of some of the conifers. It was clear and sunny that day in the rose garden (or, given the season, stick garden), but cold. Cold enough that small children in the audience developed blue lips, and adults were seen tipping back dread quantities of medicinal alcohol from the open bar, once it opened. We stood in the rose garden and hoped we'd make it through the vows before either Mme or the ... bridesmaid, I suppose is the word ... froze solid.

But it was not quite cold enough. Against all reason and expectation, a few mozzies had hatched, and one particularly black and hairy one was buzzing about my ears. I took scant notice, being in that tunnel-vision, fight-or-flight moment when a long-term bachelor realizes that This Is It.

The officiant had brought along a "raku" glass heart. This she passed about and asked the gathering to pray or wish over, or just think nice thoughts about us onto.

Then it was "I-do" time. I yearned to take the natural, expected course, but my best man had my keys. So I found myself mumbling along in what Raincoaster claims is an Anglo-Aussie accent to some words, and then saying "I do."

It was while I was saying this that the previously mentioned black and hairy mosquito decided it was feeding time. I could hear its shrill nyyeee in my ear as I wound down and Mme began to speak her part, but we were holding hands, and it seemed to me that suddenly shaking my hands out of her grasp and dancing about smacking at the air might not be wedding-worthy.

But now the beast settled on my temple. In my ears there was an ominous silence. My neck flexed with the strain of supporting its weight. I tried to ignore it and concentrate on listening to Mme:

"... so long as you both shall live?"
"I do."

SMACK!

As she ended her vows, Mme disengaged her left hand and slapped me across the temple, causing a gasp to ripple through the assembled throng (it may not have been a complete throng--it was a fairly small gathering) and permanently messing up friend Anopheles.

I feel that many of our friends came to erroneous conclusions as to the nature of our relationship at that point.

"There was this big black mosquito!" protested Mme, holding thumb and forefinger apart to illustrate the enormity of said insect to the crowd, who naturally had been unable to see it but for the pregnant women in the front row..

Once things had settled down, we were pronounced man and wife. The party was grand, if short--Mme's favourtie local band had been persuaded to perform for a ridiculous fraction of their normal fee (Mme introduced them to a whole new audience once, so they owed her), and despite Mme's sister's fears the lamb was the first thing to utterly disappear.

As I write this, the raku heart sits on the cookbook shelf in our kitchen, the heart of our home. I hardly ever think of it, but I catch a glimpse of it almost every day. I am not some sloppy sentimental jerk, but that heart, which in other circumstances would be a rather fey knick-knack, has come to have meaning beyond "someone spent too much at the dollar store."

And what did I take away from getting my face slapped at my own wedding? (I say "my own" because it may actually have happened before at someone else's ... or so I understand).

Firstly, I realized at that moment that I was marrying the right person: A woman who would not simply stand by for appearances' sake, but who would take necessary action as and when she saw fit; a streak of pragmatism that I value greatly. This is just the sort of person I would want to, in the hopefully long fullness of time, be found cold and dead next to.

Secondly, I realized that the dowry was totally insufficient.

Archie's Nautical Tale Reminded Me

Of the story of the ship's captain who found he was having difficulty with his sattelite navigation array. It seems the guano from seabirds was clogging up the sensitive antennae.

So the captain, resourceful fellow that he was, hired a young Filipino lad to sit atop the wheelhouse and chuck rocks to frighten away the birds. And all was well for a while.

But gradually the boy grew tired of the monotony of his job, his stone-throwing became listless. Until one day he noticed that one particular bird, an arctic tern, seemed to display more interest in him than the usual crowd.

The boy began sneaking the crusts of his lunchtime sandwiches to his post and feeding them to the bird, which he named "Charlie." He discovered a new vigour in his work, and the captain was well pleased.

Things worked out well for Charlie too, he had his choice of preferred perches, and the best part of the young crewman's lunchtime sangies.

Alas, it could not last. Eventually, Charlie's own guano began fouling the navigation antennae, and the Filipino was told that he must be more dutiful in the performance of his job.

"From now on, you chuck rocks at every feathered creature that alights anywhere near the navigation array," rumbled the captain, "No exceptions--you get that?"

"But sir ..." protested the younger man "... even Charlie?"

"Even Charlie, lad," replied his boss gently, "For the safety of the ship, we must leave no tern unstoned."


Update: Sorry, Archie, I neglected to close the tag. Fixed now

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am Reminded ...

Former Frontier Editor, in a casual comment on my post below, has reminded me of a man I knew (and still know to this day, thanks to the miracle of social networking).

"Mack" was a truck driver in the Canadian Armed Forces back before they changed its name to simply the Canadian Forces ... dunno why, I mean it's not like they're unarmed or anything ... although they're definitely underequipped. In 1996, he was on his third military trade.

We met back during our militia days (for the benefit of US-based Avid Fans I should point out that in Canada the Militia is one branch of our equivalent to the National Guard and not, as I have observed to my horror, a bunch of people who would wear camouflage to their Neighborhood Watch meetings if their wives permitted it, and feel that there just aren't enough guns in the public school system).

I have to say that it seems odd to me that they ever allowed Mack to enlist as a safety systems tech. Like me, he'd never finished high school, and he was exactly the sort of big, bearish, friendly kind of dope you need to lug the mortar base plate (the 100-lb slab of steel that holds the base of a short-barrelled artillery piece) in an infantry section.

But recruitment depends on a remarkable number of factors--What unit and trade the recruiting officer or NCO comes from, whether they like you, what the actual recruiting targets are, whether the moon is in Pisces, how big your boobs are ... In any case, he wound up servicing Tutor jets on the tarmac in Moose Jaw, which was where I met him for the second time.

His early months weren't happy ones. Nine months after arriving he managed to set fire to two aircraft and part of a hangar in a mishap involving aircraft brake fluid and oxygen--two substances that spontaneously and happily combust in one anothers' presences.

Three months after that he was apparently servicing an aircraft which had undergone some sort of retrofit. He had had familiarization training on the new system, but hadn't worked on it for a year or more since. He had finished servicing the line of aircraft and was turning his mule (a little tow truck used to move the service cart around) toward home when there was a godawful WHHHHEEEOOOOSHHHHHH followed by a loud BANG.

In servicing the ejection system, one was apparently supposed to label one handle, move another to a position labelled "disarm", service the unit, re-set the switches and check the physical safeties (release pins and suchlike), then re-set the system by reversing the procedure. He'd done something wrong. The seat landed on a taxiway almost a kilometre distant.

No-one got hurt, but it was a damn near thing. In thirty minutes there might have been a pilot in that machine.

The effect of launching the ejection seat damaged the airframe. The Tutor was probably worth about $200,000 at that time. This one had to be extensively re-skinned and rebuilt.

Now I have only his word for what happened. But I did see the aircraft in the repair shop with most of the skin off of its nose. And it is an observed fact that he was off-duty for three weeks, and then quickly reassigned to the loadmaster trade.

Loadmasters, as the name implies, are responsible for the loading and balancing of aircraft. Yeah ... Your eyes just got a little wider, didn't they? I'll tell you about what happened next in another post.

Short Summer Post #793

Word of the day:

Zenvy

To be jealous of someone who has acheived greater enlightenment than you.

Thought for the day:
"Hey, God ... 'With great power comes great responsibility', right? So what comes with ultimate power? Jus' sayin', is all."

Hair metal song of the day

Intro: This is deeply cheesy '80s goodness. If this video was an antique print it'd be tinted orange instead of sepia.

Is it sad that I look at this video and think "That was such an innocent time"?

It's on my mind, as it usually is in August. When I was fifteen or sixteen, I met a guy named Chris--but he should have been named "Vance". He looked a bit like a washed-out Travolta-as-Barbarino. We met on a small island where our parents were camping. Being both desperately horny teen boys, we tended to hang around the same three girls--Kelcey, Elise, ... and I forget the third one's name. Kelcey and Elise were older than we were, and I think they regarded us the way you might look at a yappy terrier humping your shoe, and for much the same reasons.

The term "wingman" hadn't come into common usage, and wasn't really appropriate. "Wingman" implies flight, and our flight feathers weren't really in yet. It was more that we supported each other in actually getting out and talking to girls (which is of course the important first step on a journey that will hopefully end in someone's bed, ideally a rather crowded single or queen-size). So perhaps the proper term is "prop".

When we got home, I hung out with Chris a couple of times. He introduced me to Ratt, and to a number of other players. So how we wound up going to my first concert, which was Dire Straits, is something of a mystery to me.

We were friends for a summer, the way it is when one of you's cooler than the other but there's no-one else around.

And that's it. After the concert I don't think I ever saw him again. Sometimes I wonder where he got to.

But I owe him thanks for helping me realize that one didn't have to be a mackinaw-wearing, chain-smoking, boot-stomping metalhead to enjoy metal. And also for helping me, a painfully awkward, generally unhappy Catholic kid, realize that listening to metal would not actually cause horns to sprout from your forehead.

So Chris, wherever you are, this one's for us:

An Empty Gesture in the Name of a Dead Woman

I was saddened to read in the National Post that Madonna House will be returning Catherine Doherty's Order of Canada.

For those of you who tuned in late, this is a late-breaking Catholic protest against the Order having been awarded to Dr. Henry Morgentaler, an abortion provider and tireless crusader for a woman's right to choose.

The argument from the secular standpoint is mealy-mouthed and expressed by Stephen Harper thus: "[M]y preference, to be frank, would be to see the Order of Canada be something that really unifies, that brings Canadians together."

Which it does, actually--60% or more of Canadians support Morgentaler's inclusion.

Three Orders have been returned in protest, from Catholics almost exclusively. And at least one of those who returned his OOC has a controversial history of his own. I wonder whether Harper thinks the Catholic Church is a unifying force? Especially since he himself is a member of what I consider an evangelical cult.

The Madonna House protest saddens me for several reasons. I love Combermere. My family spent many happy summer vacations there in an atmosphere of simplicity and service.

My adult atheism in no way devalues founding principles of Madonna house. But I feel very much that this gesture does.

I met Catherine Doherty a couple of times, though I don't recall her clearly. Some Catholics call for her beatification. She was devout and devoted. And she based her life and work on her "Little Mandate".

Arise — go! Sell all you possess. Give it directly, personally to the poor. Take up My cross (their cross) and follow Me, going to the poor, being poor, being one with them, one with Me.

Little — be always little! Be simple, poor, childlike.

Preach the Gospel with your life — without compromise! Listen to the Spirit. He will lead you.

Do little things exceedingly well for love of Me.

Love... love... love, never counting the cost.

Go into the marketplace and stay with Me. Pray, fast. Pray always, fast.

Be hidden. Be a light to your neighbour's feet. Go without fear into the depth of men's hearts. I shall be with you.

Pray always. I will be your rest.

I do not feel that this is the personal creed of a woman who would make grandiose and empty gestures simply to satisfy a need to make a political statement.

Catherine Doherty deserves to be better memorialized than this.

Avid Fans and Others, I am Reminded

By a post over at the online residence of the sodden madonna of the internets, of an incident that happened shortly prior to the end of my military career.

I was working with a summer staffer from the Canadian Forces Reserves. They are often employed to shore up mnumbers during the summer on training bases, where the active season co-incides with the student schedules of major institutes of learning.

My job, as driver for the Company Sargeant Major or CSM, involved fetching forth food and drink thrice daily for staff. Additionally, I shipped the sick, lame, and lazy to their doctor's appointments, stopped at the on-the-way store and bought smokes for any as needed, and generally did whatever damn dogsbody thing was believed necessary by my boss. Because, in case you don't realize it, the CSM is god.

So Pte Slouch, a skinny, slightly pretty, rather hard-of-thinking girl from an area near my hometown, came aboard that summer. Being of the male type, and having as my goal the maximization of contact with female types of people with the minimization of clothing, I made sure to try and endear myself to her. Said attempts were greatly hampered by the presence of a buffoon from her home battalion, with whom I shared a mutual loathing, and my general state of sobriety when off duty (none to speak of).

She was a provincial little thing, but oh she had big problems. Her parents were separating. Her brother was an uncontrollable danger to himself, into drugs and drink, and inclined to lose control. She herself seemed to suffer repreat cases of the galloping heebie-jeebies or possibly the crawling crud or some such affliction on a basis that became repetitive. Some said she was just lazy. Given my motivation, I didn't care what she was. She was a target, and I was, in the finest military tradition, determined to acquire her with all due speed.

As the CSm's driver it was my prerogrative to choose whatever victim was currently un-tasked to help me load up the 5/4 ton truck with haybox rations and assorted other junk.So on this day, Pte Slouch was beside me for the smoke-n-choke run to the kitchen, and as was customary we stopped in at Base Transport for the mail.

I have no idea why mail-call is supposed to be such a big morale booster. Surely the field cannot be such a misery that the arrival of another overdue notice from Zellers is a happy event? Still it was, as I said, customary.

Pte. Slouch went inside for a while. When she returned, she looked very stressed. Her eyes were red, and water was leaking from them.

"My brother was in a car accident," she said "He's in a coma in hospital and they don't think he's going to live."

Naturally I was shocked.

"You better talk to Chimp (our section commander) and get some compassionate leave right away." I replied.

"Oh, no." she said "Mom says there's probably nothing to be done. I'll stick it out here"

Still I persisted, and by the time we were back at camp she seemed to be persuaded to at least take some time off to visit her family.

So she returned with me for the breakfast run the following day, and I was informed that she was staying on base until transportation home could be arranged for her.

At lunchtime I was required to take my boss, Chimp (he was husky of build, with a low brow and heavy jaw), somewhere. A hundred yards from Transport, I asked him how Pte. Slouch's brother was making out.

"Huh?" he said.
"Well," I answered, not yet picking up on the cognitive dissonance, "It sounded like he was pretty badly off."
"Huh?" he said, again.
I repeated myself.
"Waitaminit," he said, furrowing his honest brow, "She's going home because her parents are divorcing or something ..."

There was some brief confusion, which resulted in me turning the truck around and heading for home. Chimp went into his office and made a phone call. Immediately thereafter there there was a short, intense meeting between Pte. Slouch and Mcpl Chimp.

Pte. Slouch was confined to quarters. As she was a reservist she wasn't charged, just shipped home with the equivalent of "Not wanted on voyage" marked in her personnel file and an injuction, essentially, against her coming within a mile of the base for whatever length of time her military career would endure. She was still in the reserves two years later.

On the day she left, I was given the task of driving her to her departure point. I had met with her once since the big blowup, and she had asked me in all angry sincerity why I'd felt it was my business to enlighten the army to the fact that she was pretty much trying to rip them off.

I answered that if she'd been a half-decent liar she would have stuck to one simple story.

But I really kind of sympathized. I had once (albeit with slightly more honesty) parleyed my dad's hiatus hernia into a week's vacation at home. Perhaps I'll tell you that one sometime.

For the kiddies who may be reading this post (for I think a blog post should always have some moral lesson to impart to the tiny tots) the moral lesson of this post is:

"Keep your lies simple. It makes it far less likely you'll be caught out."

Words to live by, from your best friend and mine, Metro.