Famous Historical Leisure Figures: HUCK FINN

As December starts to middle there's a noticeable change in people's demeanor: traffic is worse, shoes get dirty and slushy, daylight is overwhelmingly truant, and everywhere a mad rush. This isn't meant to be anti-consumption- consuming is one of the most pleasurable activities in the leisurists itinerary. But right now, going to a mall, or a store, or even anywhere trade is practiced is bad for the humours. At the mall today I became furious at an old couple seeking seniors discounts (extra 15% off at the Bay- I'm totally hitting that up when I'm old) for requesting to try on so many pairs of shoes! I stewed and steamed and snorted- but isn't it Christmas, I can hear you say... Isn't it the holiday for photogenic deprived kids to finally get the toys they want... for goodwill and hearty feelings? The black and white cover of Christmas on 34th Street flashed through my mind and chastised me.

Chastised. My soul is too evil and shrinks like Gollum from such manipulative sentimental tropes. Then I decided that because I try to live as far outside the law and social conventional as I can -while also staying comfortably close enough to arrange my benefit through freeloading- that I needn't 'buy' into the purchasing fever. And because it's becoming super popular to cleverly combine proper nouns with normal nouns I'm adopting a total "HUCK-FINNSMAS" attitude this year. When I realized this, I was flooded with zen.

Huck Finn, also flooded with zen. Surveying the world he has conquered by escaping the rigorous routine and confines of Missouri convention. SOLID COMFORT. Rafting down the Mississippi in a raft big enough to float a tent, a fire, and a whole pile of supplies- check. Corncob pipe- check. Picaresque adventures- check. Intoxicating smirk of satisfaction- check. Lose a fortune, nevermind, Huck knows he'll be fine as long as there's floating down the river, fishing line tied to his big toe.

This Christmas is going to be -and here is another trendy grammar foul- very Huckleberry for me. At the first sign of holiday panic I'm heading out the window to the river banks (out the backdoor to the hot tub). I might get a corncob pipe. If you manage to get that gleam in your eye I guarantee no shopping mall hustle will harsh your Huckleberry vibes. Huck Finn, born a natural leader of leisure, is a perfect example of someone who toed the line between convention and corncob smoking professional child raftsman. A reminder to us all. 

MOTORHOME SEARCH Pt. 1

When we finally found the house nestled between concrete silos and the gravel pit in the middle of the industrial park we didn't think anyone was home. The yard was a parking lot- old motorhomes, a teal Ford Pinto, rusted out flatbeds everywhere. Conspicuous on the hood of the pinto was a half-bottle of whisky. We entered the yard. An overweight pitbull wheezed up to us. We stopped, it stopped. The dog lunged and we jumped the fence.
I called the seller. It didn't seem right away like he knew he was talking on a phone-a after some false starts I said we were outside his house. He came out, between swigs of the whisky he picked up as though he had just set it down there seconds before he warned us not to enter his yard or his dog would surely attack.
The motorhome was on blocks- it was a class A, with ample room to sleep about 8 people. There was a rotting hole in the middle of the floor. Does it run? He said, with a conspicuous leer: no, it's more, like for partying. Get a couple crates of beer and some girls. There's girls in here all the time.
He offered to tow it to my backyard for free- 200 bucks for everything! I declined. The atmosphere grew tense. We left on bad terms.
I got a few calls from him over the next couple weeks. Each time it was like a pocket dial, but right next to his face. I would pick up the phone and listen to the the end of whatever he way saying to someone beside him, then he would say "hello? hello? is there someone there?" The first time he invited us to a party. The next time I cut him off and told him to stop calling me. He was so bloated and addled on alcohol I don't think he had picked up on our social cues, or even society's in general.

Vomiting Again Pt. 2

I was once a camp counselor- to my regret I was, perhaps not surprisingly, occasionally laid back about the whole affair. One might even say a little too leisurely- though perhaps uneven is a better word. I counseled at what could be nominally called a bible camp, but I think this might be putting too generic a tag on one of the best and most unique places I've been.

One night, when I was a lowly counselor-in-training, I was tasked with delivering the evening devotional. I began with the usual talk-about-our-day, prayer-requests, does-anyone-have-any-questions, and then I asked if someone wanted me to read from the bible. One kid said yeah, he'd like me to read Revelations. Relieved that the whole spiel was finally out of my hands, I gladly turned to Revelations and began to read aloud. I read without thinking at first, then when I realized what passage I'd serendipitously turned to, I read with horror. Gnashing of teeth! The unsaved being tortured! Many fires burning eternally! And all in the pitch black of a cabin in the woods, a setting that to any mind, especially an 8-year olds, anything said is immediately imagined, and immediately imagined right outside the door. The King James bible is where the gravity of doom was perfected in our language -phrasing, tone, rhetoric, graphic violence- I defy anyone to disbelieve anything the King James version tells them in a setting like that. I stopped at one point, sure that there were six wet beds in the room. Does anyone mind if I stop? One little kid, I can't even remember his name, said in a quavering voice that he'd like to become a Christian. I was silent- there was sobbing- where was the counselor? He was absent. I cursed under my breath. Surely this was the epitome of scare tactics. And all inadvertently done. Again I cursed. Yes of course, I said. And that is the only time, for better or worse, I've ever guided anyone spiritually. I felt bad about if for weeks- my one conversion, under such morbid conditions.

That was just a super long non sequitur. We had weekly talent shows, where people sang songs, performed skits, played piano etc. A couple of my chums- there were probably 7 or 8 of us- decided that we were going to pee our pants for the talent show. I guess this was supposed to be funny- but the irony was lost on us that this probably shows a dearth of all talent, imagination, and general self-awareness more than anything else. Anyway, we all got together and began drinking water in huge quantities. We drank and drank water until it hurt. You can become intoxicated if you drink enough water in a short enough time. That could account for why the notion that it was a good idea managed to be sustained. At my fourth or fifth 2-litre jug, I began to throw up. I probably threw up ten litres of water. A staggering fire hydrant. The kids cheered. Only one of us managed to pee his pants. It happened before the talent show had even begun. He couldn't make it to the bathroom. Lesson: these sorts of things are impossible to time.

Famous Leisure Figures: Hobbits

I remember reading the Lord of The Rings (L+) and imagining myself as Aragorn or Legolas or another hero-type; never a dwarf or a wizard. Dwarves dig and live underground- they're greedy. Wizards are curmudgeonly. As I've grown older, and now have fewer people telling me my leisure principles are in fact symptoms of sloth, I've come to realize that my disposition is fundamentally hobbit-like. Hobbits wish they were elves, or of the line of Elendil- from the comfort of the Green Dragon (L++), or a hammock (L++), or over the main course of second breakfast (L++). This is all to say I'm looking forward to The Hobbit more than any other Harry Potter movie I've seen. I re-read it not so long ago. The dialogue (typing dialogue makes me squirm- too many literary theory classes (U++)) between Smaug and Bilbo is priceless, as are the narrative asides on burglaring and dwarvish idiosyncrasies. Anyway, I'm of two minds about the hobbit lifestyle. One part of me wishes to live in Gondor, living and eating Spartan-style*, sleeping on cold stone and having high-minded thoughts about duty, death and country. This is also the part of me that thinks it would be a noble thing to learn to work with my hands in a iron smelting plant or something. Another part of me, the part that spends four hours a day reading, shooting local fauna with BB guns at night, and forming hot tub clubs, knows that it would be a sin against my nature to take up the Gondorian symbol of the White Tree and fight for Aragorn son of Arathorn. This part favours the life of the Shire.

*there's a good bit in Patrick Leigh Fermor's book "Words of Mercury" about gluttony and the Renaissance. Essentially, his tongue-in-cheek thesis is that Raphael, or da Vinci, couldn't possible have painted what they did on a diet such as we have today. It's all olives and scarcity; lean physical comfort.

Famous Leisure Figures: OMAR KHAYYAM

This is an illustration and a quatrain from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a medieval Persian philosopher and poet. He was exceptionally prolific in terms of scientific and philosophic output, but it's his Rubaiyat he's best known for now. It's not hard to see why. You could draw a straight line from Diogenes to these leisure savvy chaps, 2000 years between them notwithstanding. In fact I can almost imagine this is Diogenes sulking when he wasn't invited to their "wine and Houri" picnic under the olive trees:

"But Diogenes, you sleep in a barrel, he lives in the sultan's palace..."

Being a stoic doesn't mean you don't have feelings.

Viscount Gort Hotel

In the Winnipeg winter of 06/07 I spent most of my leisure time in the swimming pool and sauna of a place called the Viscount Gort Hotel. The fact that I and several of my compadres were able to regularly break into the pool and also break all the rules of the pool for a period of about five months is evidence of a) the total lack of ambition on the part of the hotel staff and b) our blissful shamelessness.

The Viscount Gort was across the frigid Assiniboine River, from our house maybe a ten minute walk. The bridge we had to cross rose considerably- exposure to the wind was terrible, and the city didn't clear the sidewalk of snow. It was a bit of an ordeal getting to and from, despite the proximity. It probably never got warmer than -30 that winter. That sauna and pool was an oasis. Our house was badly insulated (ice formed on the interior of outside walls), our hot water supply limited, and we relied on our bikes to go everywhere all winter long. There were weeks when I went to the Viscount Gort five or six days out of seven to sit in the sauna. Towards the end of our happy time there we began to go in the morning on Saturdays and Sundays, as the south facing side of the pool complex was a floor to ceiling window and the sun lit up the entire place every morning. We would bring thermoses of coffee and my pal rode down the waterslide while pretending to read the newspaper. We threw the soggy Free Press at each other.

Underneath a bench in the sauna there was a little opening big enough to scoot an empty bottle into. After a few months you could drop a can in and hear it clatter off enough other discards to bring a smile to even the most severe anti-leisure types.

Encounters with the hotel security were recounted gleefully to those not present. I was there for a few of them. You might not know this, but a lot of drinking gets done in hotel pools- usually near the deckchairs, but of course this seems an arbitrary confinement after a few Lucky Lager's consumed in the shadow of a waterslide. The first time I encountered security I thought for sure the game was up. We were sitting on the side drinking some beers when they strolled in. Our innocent Shangrila, about to be taken from us by some red-faced pot-bellied minimum wage security stooges! They pointed to the bottles, and told us we couldn't drink them in here... because of the glass. Cans are okay, we were assured. And then they walked out.

Another time we stayed long after the lights were turned out. The only thing better than sneaking into a pool with some economy brews is riding the waterslide after the lights are outtrying to keep your economy brew balanced while you tumble into the water. Eventually someone came and asked us to leave. He went as far as to escort us to the elevator, probably because we were carrying armfuls of winter wear in addition to our normal clothes. We took it up a few floors, changed in the stairwell and left out a back emergency exit.

Famous Leisure Figures from History: DIOGENES

This is the start of a new series on famous leisure figures from history.

When asked by Alexander the Great (U++) what favor he would have from him, the incomparable Diogenes (L++) allegedly looked up, annoyed at the figure casting a shadow over his contemplation, and said "Yes, stand out of my sunlight!" Look at this picture. It's not a painting of the scene I just referred to but a painting of the barrel Diogenes apparently lived in. Notice the hunched shoulders, the pained squint, and the care he has taken to keep in the shade. That has to be the posture and expression of a man who has forgotten his mantra of moderation and indulged in a few too many Palm Breezies (L++) the night before. Notice the belle Athenians (L++) lining the stairs to call on him, and the parchment crumpled into his hands. A true paragon of leisure.

I'm creating a system for denoting the leisurely from the un-leisurely. It applies to nouns and verbs. For example, a capital "L" is the stamp of leisure- while a capital "U" represents the opposite. Plus signs can indicate degrees. Hot-tubbing is obvious: L++. Someone like Satan, that dastardly tempter of humans into action, is a clear U++.

Milton (L+) again: leisure virtue lies in resisting actiontemptation. I should explain why I think Milton, despite his seeming indefatigable industry, fully qualifies as a man of leisure. Sure he's famous for a few things, namely "Paradise Lost", but he can't hide his true nature behind a few thousand lines of poetry. Get this: after he graduated from Cambridge (L+) he spent 6 years of total unemployment reading (L++) at his father's house in London (U), and then embarked on a 2 year tour of the European continent (L++). He dashed of a few poems here and there during this time, I assume to appease his benefactors, but mainly lay about pondering the imponderables (L). I bet if he had had a hot tub (L++) he would never have written Paradise Lost. A sobering thought.

Idyllic Days of Leisure

Idyllic Days of Leisure:

They come unexpectedly and don't last. I suppose the Lord giveth and society taketh away. Eden represents the pinnacle of the leisure myth, and I think, the highest aspiration of human imagination. Little to no clothing, stable temperatures, soft bowers, God-given love-companion, many beasts to genuflect before your slovenly ways, freedom from the psyche-bruising necessities of labor. God, according to Milton: "For so I created them free and free they must remain."

Anyway I spent a day last week that surpasses in quality all my other leisure endeavors and makes the drudgery of low level-employment more bearable.

11:30-12:00 drowsily awoke of my own accord absent the hellish caw of an alarm clock (waking on your own accord is one of the few pleasures that habit can't diminish- I've been doing it for years.) Lay in bed for half an hour reading leisure mentor Patrick Leigh Fermor. Daydreamed about being Patrick Leigh Fermor.

12:00 Surprise! One of my friends stayed the night and is sleeping on the couch. I wake him up and we go out for breakfast.

12:30-2:30 Breakfast. Metro Crossword completed. We leave the diner swelled with an enormous sense of accomplishment and a dozen cups of coffee. The feeling is no less satisfying than how I imagine I would feel after successfully negotiating peace terms between outdoor cats and dogs accidently let off the leash (top that Picard)- plus having a coffee chugging competition with night shift truckers.

2:30-3:30 Fair's Fair book store then drive home.

3:45-3:50 Load BB's into Red Ryder Daisy Classic BB gun, find towel.

3:50-5:30 Take the air from the comfort of a steaming hot tub, with the added comfort of a loaded BB gun at hand. Read Julian Barnes and take pot shots at the unwitting squirrels gathering their winter stores. Crack wise with my friend who shoots wildly at flocks of migrating birds. Stay in the hot tub until trigger fingers are pruned out to the max.

5:30 A&W milkshakes

7:00 Work, which I won't bother describing.


I have bastardized a genuinely beautiful lament over leisure lost in order to immortalize the afternoon in verse.


They are not long, the shooting and the tubbing,
Books and coonskin caps:
I think they have no portion in the shlubbing
Of leisure hardy chaps.
They are not long, the days of guns and hot tubs:
Seen through the billowing steam,
Naive, a squirrel emerges from a shrub
To the BBs gleam.

continuation and fin

I tumbled out of the car onto the gravel like a freshly severed head rolling off a guillotine rack and threw up some more. And that's it- there's not much else to tell. The bike ride was at an obscene altitude and I became horribly sunburnt between the end of my sleeve and the beginning of my gloves. The highlands were beautiful. We rode through a few tiny villages and the kids came out to point and jeer "gringooo" at us. I became ashamed of my heritage. We went into one of their small dwellings to see the guinea pigs they kept for culinary purposes. I became reconciled to my heritage. I began to feel better. We left for Bolivia soon after.

One other thing about Cusco: we were walking on the sidewalk to the bus station to buy tickets for the overnight trip to La Paz. The street was sloped with a cement wall at the lowpoint- at the bottom of the hill we turned to walk along the wall. Uphill from us a semi truck somehow disengaged from the park brake, rolled backwards gathering speed for a few meters and hit the wall. Sound-wise it was pretty startling, and we were jut a few feet from being crushed. Neither of us were overly concerned, though this seems strange to me now. We swaggered away, Rambo-like after an explosion. Just the sort of sangfroid I've always coveted, but never been able to convincingly pull off.

When I was traveling in South America I got thoroughly, debilitatingly sick twice. The first time we had just arrived in Cusco, jumping-off point for Macchu Picchu and locus of altitude sickness for hapless tourists.


Altitude sickness. Pshaw. It culls from the herd, like a hunting wolf, the old and the sickly. Not so! I myself was struck down by the altitude sickness. My traveling companion Rob was not. I was very displeased to be alone in my suffering, and though assured by Lonely Planet that altitude sickness affects individuals differently -indiscriminate of health and physical condition- I grew resentful of my body, that it should prove so susceptible, so fallible.


We took an early flight from Lima- shortening, for an additional 50$ hit to our budget, a trip that by bus was something like 18 hours to a 2 hour flight. That meant going from sea level to whatever ungodly heights Cusco is sprawled upon in a very short time, too short for the body to easily adjust. We got out of a taxi near a hostel and were confronted by a steep set of stone stairs, and I think got an early taste of the deterioration of muscle and energy old age brings on. I don't think either of us have ever ascended stairs so slowly or with such grisly effort.


As I said I was laid down by the altitude. The most troubling aspect of it is that along with the fevery headaches, shortness of breath and nausea comes insomnia- so while you can't leave your bed you also can't start sleeping. This can be a huge problem in hostel dorms full of drunk Australians- I think if there's one place you really want to be without any sensory data coming in it's a hostel dorm room on a Friday night.


The next morning we left and got a a private room down the street. Rob was very accommodating but I knew that I was becoming a sickly nuisance, unable to go anywhere or do anything. So on the second night, energized by guilt and sick like a rotten foundation, we went to get dinner at a little hole in the wall nearby and after started drinking with some local middle aged droopy mustachioed types. I don't know what they thought of us. Probably, though I don't recall the particulars, we bought a lot of the rounds. I made a friend in much the same way soon after, while on my first bartending shift in Holland I, ignorant of volumes and languages and ounces, was pouring whoppingly heavy drinks for a Dutchman while he sat at the bar and extolled my skill and virtue to his friends, before the head bartender returned and my whole operation was frowningly shut down. The buds I made on those two nights I never saw again. This is why I almost never buy anyone drinks, lest they abandon me in a similar fashion.


I didn't drink more than one or two beers the whole night, and even those were choked down to keep from violating the very tangible social norms that bind young tourists to old locals during drinking sessions. Everyone was so drunk that during roaring, incoherent Spanish and Quechua toasts, the fact that my glass wasn't thrust forward for more went unnoticed. Even so I could tell they were suspicious of how withdrawn I was, struggling to keep from throwing up my arms and hiding my head in my sweater, so feverish was I feeling. And all the while I could see what a great time it could be to the sound of body.


In a fit of activity the day before we had signed up to go mountain biking in the hills around Cusco. We were to meet our guide at 6 AM outside the hostel doors. We might have gotten 2 hours of sleep that night. Dutifully, and only because Rob was, did I arise and get in the Taxi with the bikes strapped to the roof. Rob! Always astounding me with his resilience. The taxi left the town on windy, potholed roads such as are not seen in what is commonly called the Global North. And it got worse! Bile rose in my throat, accompanying the dread in my soul of the consequences following spewing my guts up in a foreign taxi. Talk about violating social norms! Not the first time I've sacrificed my good sense to avoid a sticky situation only for it to subsequently blossom into a higher dimension of eventual stickiness as a result.


I opened my mouth to try and say something about pulling over, a move that brought down the levy and unleashed my unholy torrent. I futilely, but I hoped assuagingly, positioned my raincoat as a catch all. But it was all vomit-dripping, yelling, and screeching tires.

to be continued.

Views

The bathroom with the second best view I've ever been pleased to relieve myself in was on Isla Amantani in Lake Titicaca. It was one of those stone plaster affairs you only see in desert climates and the developing world- with an open air window overlooking first the flowering garden and then the limitless horizon of that enormous inland lake. Rob and I took a trip there, after stopping overnight in uninviting Puno- a place akin to Red Deer in overall appeal. I think we drank some boxed wine in the hostel and didn't even consider looking for anything else to do. I always remember that bathroom. Best view goes unequivocally to piss plunging into a dark void off the unfinished heli-pad on the shoulder of Lady Macdonald, watching headlights snake down the highway a thousand feet below, full of whisky, low on supplies, high in spirits.

I'm also going to post a few things about local dentists. It'll tie into my series on vomiting. Spoiler: I throw up.

The Leisure Alberta Good Times Easy Riding Calgary Ledges Tour actually happened! So that's surprising. More, or less, surprising, depending on your perspective, and if you are my friend or my enemy, is that it was pretty fun. And unsurprisingly, at least one person lost a ton blood and may have ruined one excellent pair of trousers or tights or something. Brian L. (shorten. for anonym.) had so much fun he neglected his responsibilities the following day. I myself was showing some flu-like symptoms from out of nowhere the next morning. There's another one in the works. Coming up near the end of August. So if you belong to the enormous group of people who missed the ride, and also one of the tiny group of people who might stumble upon this, lucky! If anyone wants to do it at a certain time, comment. We gave out paper bags of leisure supplies last time.

CYCLEPALOOOOOOOZA

Leisure Alberta has been offered a large bounty to host and organize a bike ride for Cycle-pa-looza in Calgary. Because I don't do anything that I can't do either in ten minutes right now or just re-schedule for next year, it's a go. It's hard, in life, to know what you want. Sometimes it can be easy- I'll take a six lucky lagers and six Palm Bay coolers please. Or, I'll have the lawn chair with the reclining back. Or, no, I don't consider these pants too ragged for polite company. Sometimes there's uncertainty. Like, I'm not sure if I have enough gas to get to Radium Hot Springs... ought I stop? Or, is this one of those fireworks you need to plant in the ground? Or, which is the most downhill bikeride possible in this city anyway? Hard any decision must be made! The ride will start at 16th AVE and 10th St NW, and will finish and 5th AVE and 10th St NW. Beverages and snacks to follow.

"The cradle rocks hammock gently sways above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence life of sweet innocent leisure is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness shitty jobs." Nabokov, Speak Memory moi, suck it, jobs

HISTORY PART TWO

This is going to be a mini-series of posts about all the notable times I've vomited and spewed and puked within the history of my life.

This is number three in a 7-part series.

This isn't going to be a thing where I talk about how much we drank or how we're super ballers with balls to the wall. This one isn't that remarkable except for the spiritual element.

After our last exam my friend Rob and I went to the beer store and stocked up for the few year end parties we were planning to go to. In Winnipeg you used to be able to get this beer called TWO RIVERS - 650 ml and I think it cost 1.75. We each bought four, totally emptying our bank accounts at a little shack called the "Charlie's" Beer Vendor. A few months later there was a big police showdown in the parking lot having to do with WW2 era machine guns being discharged late at night, and I think someone got stabbed, and the whole place got shut down.

On our way back to the residence we stopped at the river to watch the ice chunks flow under the bridge and popped a beer each. Then it was like 3 hours later and we had killed all the Two Rivers, totaling eight rivers each (just a couple of voyageurs, hangin out). Rob stood up to go with alarming poise, and inspired, I tripped over my bike with what I recall as a disgruntled sort of dignity, and riding home, we sang songs, and vowed eternal friendship.

I woke up early, with first of dawn grey type rays in my window. I'm sick. I should mention that I was sick before the Two 8 Rivers, but now I'm sick on a higher plane. Hangover heartsick, stomach sick, headsick and existential sick. I knew I was going to throw up all over and I didn't want anyone to hear so I slipped on my shoes and headed out the doors. The res backed onto fields and a forest called the back forty- I headed for the woods. I had to pace the forest path, because at 6 am with no pants and no jacket I was freezing. I've puked in some truly aesthetically pleasing locales, but none will match that morning. It was misty and grey in a poplar forest and the sun was rising. I'd probably been outside for close to half an hour, which is bad because my other sickness was a coldish type fever.

Then I finally blew all my business in the grass on the path, of course I fell onto my knees, threw up some more, and was overwhelmed with sympathy for my situation. When I looked up there was this doe standing in the mist looking at me with ears perked maybe thirty feet away. I think our eyes may have locked. There's no gap so wide as between the sick and the healthy. The deer skipped carelessly away, lightfooted with a graceful sangfroid, and I skulked back to my dorm, heavy with the knowledge of good and evil.

In my room there was a note from my girlfriend at the time wishing me good health and a speedy recovery. I hadn't told her I was somewhat healthier than bedridden because I wanted to get beers with Rob that evening. And that's when I first understood the weight of sin.

HISTORY PART ONE

I have tracked the source of self-doubt straight to its origins. Two incidents in Ms. Kruger's Grade2/3 split science class opened cracks in my gleaming wall of elementary school self-assurance that haven't closed since.

Incident One: Determining Whether the Jaw Swings down or the Head Swings Up

Background- when I was in early elementary I was at the peak of my game. I read at higher grade levels, spelled like a fucking spelling monster, and added/subtracted no prisoners taken. I was pretty confident about volunteering information in class. So when Ms Kruger asked us to put our hands under our jaws and on top of our heads while opening and shouting our mouths, I knew I had the answer.
Ms Kruger: "put your hands up for 'jaw swinging down'." Everyone puts their hands up. I peer down from high atop my ivory tower, not a thought for reconsideration in my head, confident in my status amongst all the mouth-breathers. We shared a field during lunch and recess, but in science class we didn't play in the same playground.
Ms Kruger: "put your hands up for head swinging upward". I raise my hand.

Incident Two: Whether a Balloon is Heavier Inflated or Un-inflated

As I said, peak of my game. I had a friend named Jon Zeeb who was pretty smart too. I always paired up with in science projects because otherwise he could possibly get a better mark than me. For whatever teaching strategy Ms Kruger was using, Jon Zeeb and I were standing in front of the class. This didn't make me uncomfortable, or self-conscious. I subscribed to Owl magazine (not Chickadee, which is for kids) and was also a junior zookeeper.
Ms Kruger: "Weigh each of these balloons in your hands and tell me which one is heavier." Both of us adopt pensive expressions- as 8 year olds I assume we just looked like we had to go to the bathroom. I make a show of bouncing the inflated balloon in my hand, and weighing the un-inflated one. And then back. I pronounce- being an initiate in the mysteries of science- that the uninflated balloon is clearly heavier. Jon Zeeb disagrees. Jon Zeeb is vindicated. I am shattered.

Likely I sulk for days. Jon Zeeb wins the science award for grade 3 students at the year end assembly. I turn to a life of fruitless self-doubt and reflection. Jon Zeeb becomes a police officer. With my back to science class, I start reading McGurk mystery books non stop.

Here's a picture I took with my cell phone last summer. These 70s motorhomes are the pinnacle of human achievement.

For some reason I spent most of my life hating on material things and wealth accumulation. I think it's something they teach you in the grade six social studies curriculum here in Canada, or in Sunday School. Anyway, all my material lust has zeroed in on one thing.

Geoff Dyer's collection of essays "Working the Room" is mostly boring; dull essays about photographers and long winded expositions on long dead jazz musicians. Near the end of the book, where he starts to write autobiographically, is where it really picks up. I won't quote anything, but he has some salient points to make on the subject of leisure as a chosen lifestyle- he lived on the dole in England for many years writing, drinking and trying to get laid. Anyway, I read these sections one morning and then watched some episodes of Star Trek (NB: I have acquired every next generation episode on VHS) A lot of people see life as a struggle between their 'virtuous' sides and their 'indulgent' sides. I now see every decision as DYER vs. PICARD decision. I will rarely detail my PICARD decisions on this blog. Take it for granted that I am following the prime directive.

Back to School

After a long sojourn in the working world, I'm back in my natural milieu... HOT TUB!!! No just kidding- school. I want to talk about my art history prof. The reason I decided to take art history is that it's nearly perfectly designed for my lifestyle. Going to class late is hardly noticed (the lights are off so people can see the slide projection). The 'instructor' is a museum curator, with-by her own admission- no interest in marking assignments, but a cheerful interest in answering questions about the eccentric Glenbow founders collections that aren't shown to the public, and also an enthusiasm for JEH MacDonald. I could tell I liked her when I first got to class, but I didn't know why until after: me: "Yeah, sorry about walking in late" her: "ha! don't even think about it" bingo.

NEW YEARS AT THE HOPNBREW

WAS GREAT. TOP FAVORITE PLACE TO PLAY A SHOW.