Fight For Your Right

Good evening!  Sit tight, buckle in, and get ready for tonight's scathing editorial.  I've been waiting all week to write this one.  So without any further ado, here we go.

So Tuesday morning started out as it always does.  The alarm goes off at 6:30 am, I slowly rouse myself and I play with my cats for a little while.  And then I...  er... that is to say, the Editorial Board here at Raccoon Inc. gets up out of bed and starts running a nice hot bath for themself... er... selves.  Anyway, so when the bath is running I take the opportunity to dial up the news on my cell phone and start sifting through the headlines to see what blew up around the world overnight.  This morning it was Montréal.

Very pretty town.

In particular, I was reading the following headline in the Globe and Mail:

QUEBEC'S UNIVERSITY STUDENTS ARE IN FOR A SHOCK

When I read this headline I immediately thought to myself...

The editorial board hadn't shaved yet and was enjoying a breakfast cigar.

So I started reading it.  First paragraph:

"It’s a little hard for the rest of us to muster sympathy for Quebec’s downtrodden students, who pay the lowest tuition fees in all of North America. Even if the government has its way – no sure thing if the Parti Québécois gets back in power – they’ll still have the lowest tuition fees in North America. The total increase would amount to the cost of a daily grande cappuccino."

Well, this sure didn't sound like it was going to be a pro-student piece at all.  I skimmed downward as the tub filled until I got to this point:

"The truth is, the education they’re getting is overpriced at any cost. The protesters do not include accounting, science and engineering students, who have better things to do than hurl projectiles at police. They’re the sociology, anthropology, philosophy, arts, and victim-studies students, whose degrees are increasingly worthless in a world that increasingly demands hard skills. The world will not be kind to them. They’re the baristas of tomorrow and they don’t even know it, because the adults in their lives have sheltered them and encouraged their mass flight from reality."

What the hell is this?!  Who wrote this crap?!  I had to admit, I didn't actually look at the author before I started reading, so at that point I skimmed back up to the top of the article and checked it out.

Margaret Wente

...Wente...

I checked the time on the phone.  It was at 6:42 am on Tuesday morning that I knew exactly what story Raccoon Inc.'s editorial board would be working on this Saturday tonight.

The full column can be found right here, and it's a real doozer.  I swam through it and then checked out the comments below at the end.  To my shock, the comments seemed overwhelmingly in favour of Wente's position.  To sum it up: kids are spoiled and they should take what they get from us adults, because work is hard, life is hard, and one day they'll realize that once all of their dreams have been shattered and they fall back down to earth.  Nice.  Nice inspiring story.  Well, I think it's high time that I took up the contrarian position and wrote a refutation in favour of the strike.  Here goes.

The major bone of contention is this: a $1,625.00/year tuition hike.  Yikes!  Ouch!  That seems like a lot.  I'm a middle class income earner with a household income a hair down from Regina's median and I can see the sting of that number hitting my pocketbook.  Now, originally, the Charest government announced that they would be raising the tuition by that amount over the course of five years.  Then this happened:

Oh, if René Lévesque could see you now...

Not good.  Riots and marches in the streets as students protested the increases.  The protests even got violent at times.  Well, following night after night of this, the Premier relented a bit.  The increase would continue to be $1,625.00, but now they would spread the increase over seven years instead of the original five.  The students then expressed their acceptance of the new deal:

Or not...

And so Wente writes this article and I read it and now I'm mad.  Why?  Let's begin at the beginning.

"The total increase would amount to the cost of a daily grande cappuccino."

Hmm...  Time for some investigative journalism!  I put on my reporter's hat and marched downtown and in through the front doors of a reputable, upscale (overpriced) coffee merchant.  I breezed through their menu.  A-ha!  $4.00.  That makes... $1,460/year.  Hmm...  Man, cappuccinos must be really expensive in Montréal!  So, for cost of your grande cappuccino (and some biscotti to go with it), you too can afford your tuition increase!  Nice.

Steeeerahyeeeeeek one!

Huh.  Well, enough of the alleged price of coffee in Montréal.  Now, there's another line here in her article that has me steaming.  I've mentioned it once already in the blog, but I'll say it again to make sure:

"The protesters do not include accounting, science and engineering students, who have better things to do than hurl projectiles at police. They’re the sociology, anthropology, philosophy, arts, and victim-studies students, whose degrees are increasingly worthless in a world that increasingly demands hard skills."

Hm.  Let's see...  One of the protesting students interviewed for an article in the Vancouver Sun was one Judith Savoie.  What does Ms. Savoie do?  Well, she's a columnist for her student newspaper.  Hm.  Newspaper columnist.  How did that go again?

"...increasingly worthless in a world that demands hard skills."

Riiiiight.  Notice how Wente was so gleeful to trash philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and so on, but didn't mention English (or French) Literature students, or Communications students, or Journalism students, because of course the world needs them, right?

No caption necessary.

CBC News Montréal spoke to Nicolas Dagenais: another columnist with the Montréal campus.  Véronique Boulanger-Vaugeois is in the social work program - and it doesn't get more boots-on-the-ground than social workers.  Teachers, police, the military may gripe and complain but there is a very compelling case to make that social workers are the most overworked and underpaid class of workers in the entire labour force, especially in poor, underdeveloped rural areas with high addiction rates.  Fabrice Pinard is a doctoral psychology student.  How artsy-fartsy, head-in-the-clouds can you get?  Treating the mentally ill?  Bah!  Humbug!  Get a real job.  Be an accountant.  What do you think Mr. Harper keeps building these for?

Well, he's not holding Johnny Cash concerts.

Seriously, though, Wente's just wrong about who's actually doing the protesting.  Just.  Plain.  Wrong.  It makes a good story to giggle about the performance artist (say, Yannick Ross) complaining that tuition's too high.  It's easy, too.  Way easy.  But do people watch Canada's Got Talent?  The Voice?  X-Factor?  Music videos?  Glee?  Way Off Broadway?  Yes.  They do.  Lots of people.  Scads of people.  How many people?  To quote David Mamet:

Great big jolly shitloads.

Useless?  I don't think so - and neither do the millions that tune in and watch every single day.  Oh yes.  Now where was I..?  Ah!  Yes!

Steeeerahyeeeeeek two!

And here's another thing that I'd like to address.  This is the very first line in the column:

"It’s a little hard for the rest of us to muster sympathy for Quebec’s downtrodden students, who pay the lowest tuition fees in all of North America."

How condescending can you get?  Alright.  Wente, you're up to bat.  You mock arts students.  What do you hold degrees in?

BA in English, MA in English

Nice.  Look, I dunno if you come from a wealthy background or not and I don't care to speculate on it, but just stop for a minute, O.k.?  Think about it.  Yes, the students in Quebec pay the lowest tuition rate of anyone in North America.  Fact.  I don't hear her asking why, though.  Why do Quebec students pay the lowest tuition rates in North America?

Well, there's your problem.

That's why.  Wente sees whining; I see fighting.  They're fighting for their low tuition that they enjoy - and yes, they enjoy it.  What society wouldn't enjoy having low, or even free tuition?  What's so funny about allowing young people to have an education?  Is this a problem?  Does a society function better when advanced education is inaccessible?  Is a society better when only the nobility can afford a proper education?  No!  This whole column seems to be based on the idea that these students are out whining and complaining when in fact they have it easy.  They have it soft and cushy and they're spending their youth in the luxury dining car of Rob Ford's gravy train.  This is such bull!  Why is this such bull?  O.k.  Sure.  I'll bite.  Here's why:

Oh no.  No no no no no.  Raccoon Inc. is not done with you just yet, sir.

Vic Toews.  So they put forward the "To Catch a Predator" Act which was roundly seen as an invasion of everyone's privacy and instead of defending it as a useful tool for serious, effective police work, he instead opted to be a pompous ass about it.  Which is fine.  That's his prerogative.  Now, with a majority Conservative (keep that word "Conservative" close in mind now) government that bill would have sailed through Parliament like the Bluenose cutting through the water on brisk February morning.  Only thing is it didn't.  It didn't because people fought it.  People stood up to it, fought it, put their foot down, dug their heels in and got mad.  And the government relented.

You see, it's O.k. to stand up to government if they're doing something that the people don't want them to do.  That's democracy.  Wente, an American after all, ought to know that.  Especially with this current government of secretive bullies, if you don't stand up for what you really want, it will be taken away just like Vic Toews tried to do.  Ah, but you may say "Well, those are the Harper Tories.  We're not dealing with them.  We're dealing with the Charest Liberals here."  To that I ask who was the leader of the federal Progressive Conservative party from December 14, 1993 – April 2, 1998?

Yeah yeah!  Him!  That guy on the right!

But you may say the Progressive Conservatives and the Conservative Party of Canada are two entirely different political parties.  To that I say:

Okay, CCF, same difference.  Parties do change their names from time to time.

So government is controlled by rich people.  Right?  Right.  Old people, too.  Right?  Right.  More concerned about rich, old people problems than poor, young people problems.  Right?  Right.  My point is this: if young people don't stand up and fight for their right, no one will.  History has proven this.  Instead of mocking the demonstrators as a collection of beatniks that will be coming soon to a McDonald's drive-thru window near you to hand you your happy meal, why don't we give them the hearty slap on the back and commendation they deserve for having the guts to stand up for themselves and force the government to consider them when they go handing out the cash, unlike every other jurisdiction in North America.  Wente's "sit down, shut up, take what you're given, and be thankful for it" argument is total complete elitist crap and I applaud the protesting students on their mettle.  Saskatchewan students don't have the guts to do what they're doing.  Ontario students don't.  New York students don't.  None of them do.  They're not increasingly useless as some may say.  Some may laugh at them and think them fools for marching through the streets mostly naked, but I ask you this: they have the cheapest tuition in North America because of it.  What kind of fools does that make the rest of us?

Steeeerahyeeeeeek three!

And so at this time, the Editorial Board of Raccoon Inc. would like to change the subject to something near and dear to their hearts.  You may have already noticed the double-meaning in the title of this evening's article "Fight For Your Right". 

On Friday night, a musician died in New York.

Adam Yauch passed away today at the age of 47.  When I saw the news on my phone today, so shocked was I that I was actually shaken by the news.  The rest of the day I've been pretty down - partially cause of this, partially cause of other things, but it weighs heavily on my mind.  I owned every Beastie Boys CD.  I practically wore out Hello Nasty.  Had the album cover poster on my wall.  Really, there are two artists that whenever a new album comes out I jump and get it: Radiohead and Beastie Boys.  I've always been, like, "Wow...  Rappers that can play their own instruments.  Sign me up!"  Adam Yauch was no Charlie Mingus, but by cracky he tried.  I'll never forget the 25th anniversary of SNL.  They got an awesome intro from Ben Stiller and started playing Sabotage when Elvis barged in and crashed the party.  They were then backup players for Elvis' Radio Radio.  And there was a sincerity in Yauch's work and that he added to the groups work.  When there was ever an apology for previous... shall we say... deviancies, it was always MCA shouting it out.  And as someone whose hair is also quickly fading to snow white at a young age, if Yauch can make it look cool, so can I.  He was the guy in the group I liked most - the George Harrison of the group.  Thoughtful, spiritual, and real.  Who needs choreography, anyway?  Just do your thing.  Go out there and play.  This is music!  It's supposed to be fun!  Who needs bling in their music videos?  Who cares about that?  Not one but two instrumental albums.  Let's see Lil' John put out some instrumentals.  Yauch was real and he was human.  Too human, it seems.  A sad day for music.  A sad day indeed and I miss him already.  I thought it funny how, you know, for the Make Some Noise video they had every single cool guy on the planet in it and that the real Beastie Boys didn't appear until the very, very end.  Now I get it, and it is sad.

Good night.

Late Night Programming

Yawn.  Stretch.  Man!  These weekend nights can be a grind, especially when there's nothing going on the great province of...

o/`  Our home and native land...  o/`

There's a TV back here at the dispatcher's desk and I flip through once in a while.  By and large the selection is crap.  Sometimes there's the odd movie on, but it's usually not very good - hence why I opt to write at night a bunch of the time.  However, there are a few gems out there and I'd like to share them with my fellow night owls.  Well, I'm only a part-time night owl, really.  I'm in bed by 10:30 during the week, and this is all kind of a moot point because I'm dialing up Humber's perfect game and listening to that tonight instead of the tube.  Nevertheless, here we go!


JUDGE JOE BROWN

SOLD!  *WHACK!*  ...  I mean, GUILTY!  *WHACK!*  ...  Can I unwhack something after it's been whacked?

I must confess: I never had the time to watch court TV.  It always seems so...  I dunno...  It seems like something that should be private.  You get a couple of slobs up there arguing their case and how they done been wronged and my conscience says that, hey, this is really something that's none of my business.  In fact, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it if all court cases were kept firmly behind closed doors.  But if they really feel compelled to be on camera and the courts are O.k. with it then go ahead and fill your boots.
Now before I start talking about the actual show, I'd like to start with the parody of the show, and a particularly biting parody if I must say.  The best parodies are the ones that seem the closest to the truth, and this one cuts pretty close to the bone.  I speak, of course, of Just or Unjust, the fictional, satirical courtroom (or rather "courtroom" as it apparently doubles as a...

See that guy on the left?  With the wolf helmet?  Ronald Kuby.

...where they battle to the death) on WKTT, a fictional radio station in the game Grand Theft Auto IV.  The judge, the star of the show, is misogynistic, inept, black, and just a little bit right of Papa Doc on the political spectrum.  Now where have I seen this before?

I'm a judge.  What exactly did you expect?  This isn't a courtroom!  It's a studio!

Well, it's not that bad.  I can see where the satire is coming from (especially perhaps the inept part - video editing can sure help anyone look smart), but really he doesn't seem all that bad.  In fact, I find the show somewhat entertaining.  He really doesn't screw around at all and seems rather open-minded, in spite of how he's lampooned.  And, generally, the more smug the defendant, the better the show.  So, good stuff.  I didn't anticipate this being as good as it is.  Way to go, Joe!


STORAGE WARS / PAWN STARS

I could do entries for both of these shows separately, but then I thought nah, we'll just lump them together.  Yeah, they both fit into the category of shows that I like to call...

Oh please, please tell me how much this piece of crap is worth!

It's getting to be a sickness, I think.  First there was Antiques Roadshow...

Not to be confused with the crooks at Artiques Roadshow.  I've actually (or rather, artctually) spoken with the bozo on the right.

And that was fine and quaint and British and whatever.  Invariably old people would take dusty old relics down to this meeting hall where some dusty old expert would let them know that they'd either discovered Oliver Cromwell's walnut chiffonier, which could fetch upwards of £750.00 at auction, or a collection of wood scraps (a "reproduction") that would find peak resale value as campfire fuel.  And that show was fine.  It had all of us thinking that if you dug through the basement hard enough you might uncover something that was at one time owned by Harthacnut.  But then there's this nonsense.

Ooo!  What could it be?  I think I see St. Cyril's long lost Loving Spoonful albums!

Gimme a break.  That might be interesting for a show or two, but it gets real old real quick.  Granted...

This guy's pretty cool and gives me fantasies of what Dustin Hoffman does in his spare time.

...and...

I do love a good villain, and this jerk's up there with Ebeneezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve.

...but...

Presenting Phillip Seymour Hoffman and woman-who-holds-clipboard.

...and the rest of the crew are just so...  Well, I think of it like this.  Do I really want to look over everyone's shoulder as they go to work?  Loggers, truckers, fishermen - those are all fine and well and may by exciting from time to time, but this is just getting silly now.  Who cares what the hell they find in an old storage container?  It's getting to the point where I'm concerned that one day I'll walk into work and cameras will start following me around for a new A&E series, "THE PROPERTY GUYS" chronicling our *yawn* trials and tribulations as we *yawn* attempt to manage parking lots in...  *snore*


MTV LIVE

I must confess, I...  I, uh...  I don't get it.  Well, O.k.  Let me see if I can put myself back into the right frame of mind.  I was a kid once, after all, and these guys are really quite popular...

read: poo-poo-lar

...amongst the kids.  But I don't get it.  Mind you, there are a few things that I don't get that I once got that I watch late at night on MuchMusic that now just mystify me how I ever thought they were cool in the first place.

I liked this crap?!  What was I thinking..?

So with this in mind I've stuck it out and watched a few episodes.  You really have to take the little dial deep inside of you labelled "maturity" and dial it down a ways, pretty much to the low end of the scale.  There are a lot of jokes, gags, and pop culture references that kinda go over my head, but by and large I can see what they're doing, but I don't fully get it.  The show's not really all that live, either.  Especially not at 5 a.m.  Now fortunately...

I just tune the other hosts out, really...

Sheena's really cute!  I get that part!  She's cute, but unfortunately AB-SO-LUTE-LY-FROOT-LOOPS.  So I guess you can't have everything in life.  Oh well.  Keep fishing.


THE DUDESONS

Mm.  I didn't know if I should include this one or not, but I thought ah, what the hell?  Why not?

A quartet of charming rogues ready, willing, and able to injure themselves for your enjoyment.

The Dudesons are this gang of kids (well, not really kids as they're all my age now) from this town in Finland and they do the whole snowboard, dirt bike, stupid stunt crap that the good ole boys at Jackass made their living off of.  Only the Dudesons, I believe, were doing it first in the 90's, whereas Jackass only went on the air first in 2000.  The really amazing thing here to figure is that they've been doing this more or less for twenty years now and they can still actually move.  Amazing!  Oh, and you have to find that little "maturity" dial again and dial it all the way down again for this.

Anyway, for my money, far and away their best work is the Mr. Hitler sketches, especially #2.

Yeah!  That guy!

So this guy, this poor unlucky guy, just so happens to be the Dudesons' neighbour.  For all of the nasty things that they allege "Mr. Hitler" is guilty of, if I was the Dudesons' neighbour I'd probably slam the door in their face if they wanted a cup of sugar, too.  I won't go into detail about sketch #1.  Suffice to say they take a shit in mailbox.  Yeah.  Classy.  You were warned.  Watch at your own peril with that one.  #2 though is way better!  They put on these furry costumes and call themselves...

If I didn't know any better, I'd guess that this was a Beastie Boys video.

Then they wait until Mr. Hitler leaves, dig out his driveway with a backhoe (in costume!) and wait for him to drive home.  Hilarity ensues.  As mean and stupid as this is, I have to admit that it's rather inspired.  Credit where credit is due I always say.


INFOMERCIALS

They're not all bad.  Actually, they're not all bad, but they do mostly follow the same format: the pitch guy...

This ain't no ordinary tea towel!

...and the stooge...

OHMYGODREGULARTEATOWELSAREDISGUSTING!!!

I often find that the pitchman and the stooge really have to work in conjunction to make a great team.

Liquified canaries you say Billy?

I do say, Janet.

Celebrity endorsements help.

Well...  To an extent, anyway.

Of course, you need a dynamite product, too.

Introducing: THE VESSEL!  Ideal for storing olive oil, shampoo, sodium pentathol, liquified canaries, and much, much more!

And a creative design will ensure that your product gets noticed.

Hm.  A vacuum.  How novel.  Sure can't get that at Zellers.

Follow these simple rules and you too will have a product that will be impossible to keep on the shelves.
And that's all the time we have for today.  I hope you enjoyed this guide to late night programming, but please don't stay up late on my account.  Good night!

Rêver

Good evening!  Thank you all for coming.  It's Saturday night and it looks like it's going to be an awfully slow one at this rate, so time to perform some writing and some thinking and then slather it all over the internet for everyone to gawk at.  Tonight's topic, for anyone who cannot or will not read French is to dream.  Follow along with me as we take a look down memory lane and see what dreams may come.


Explorer

Now, if you take a look around the mess of my upstairs office, you'll notice that I have more than a few books on exploration and cartography, including, I might add, the only biography of Mercator written in English.  To my knowledge, anyway.  Jealous?  Maybe, maybe not, but I read it all cover to cover while I was having this done to my left foot.

Well, there's your problem!  Hard to believe that those are medicinal in any way by just looking at it.

Jealous?  Oh, and my Mom was amazing, too, while I was in the hospital that weekend!  Thanks, Mom!  Anyway, I loved the book.  It was just amazing that someone who could and did map the entire world without traveling more than, say, 500 km his entire life.  It's just mind blowing.  Such a cool guy.

Anyway, back to me and the encyclopedias.  I would sift through the encyclopedias and look at all of these countries (circa. 1979, by the way) and read about all of these far away lands and look at all these amazing maps.  Places like the splendor of Machu Pichu, the venerability of Stonehenge, the vastness of Siberia captured my imagination.  More than that, I'd look at the little maps and see that there was oil in Romania, and that people mined this stuff called bauxite, and that hey!  This book knows there's potash here!  How cool is that?!  There were these trains that you could get on and sit down and drive around in - not just freight trains, but people trains, and that they went really fast in Japan!  And Japan had their own Eiffel Tower and it was red.  And the Romans and Greeks and Chinese of old built all kinds of cool stuff that's all broken these days.  It was all truly awesome in the real sense of the world for someone that thought that...

It looked a lot bigger when I was a kid.  I mean, it had stop and go lights!

...was the biggest place in the world.  And so I read about everything in the world and was amazed.

And then something dawned on me.

Come in Pelham 123.  What do you mean the train has been taken?

Satellites.  Once I realized that Galaxy and Anik and Telstar existed and that what they could do was they could take TV in some far off place and beam it over to somewheres else and BAM! you're watching Disney Channel, the world got a lot smaller.  Then it dawned on me that those same things, those satellites, had cameras and could take pictures of the whole world, wherever they wanted to, the world didn't just get smaller, it got solved.  There would be no more Bartolomeu Dias sailing beyond where anyone had thought possible or Abel Tasman finding things off the grid and beyond belief, or Samuel Fritz charting some of the most wicked, anti-human places on earth.  There wouldn't need to be cause there were now planes and satellites and all kinds of inventions which pretty much said "Congratulations, humanity!  You win!  There earth has now been fully explored.  Take a bow."  So that kinda dashed my dreams of being an explorer.  Sure, there's underwater exploration and space exploration, but it's just not the same, you know?  Not near as romantic or as cool.

And a dream of mine was dashed, but something good did come of it.  When the 1994 Great Canadian Geography Challenge came by and I took the test, I got first place in the school.  Then I got 3rd place in the province and got a sweet ass trip to Ottawa to take part in the Nationals and shake hands with this guy.

That's Alex Trebek - with mustache, as it should be.

This wasn't the first time that I actually, you know, won at something.  For that we have to take a look at the next dream.  Oh, and I finished in the middle of the pack in Ottawa, so whatever.  But it was awesome!


Musician

Well, I couldn't be an explorer - that much was established.  So it was to be a few years later that I discovered that, hey, I'm pretty gifted musically.  I picked up a trumpet and took organ lessons.  Know what the first cassette tape I can remember owning was?

Here's a hint: it wasn't Glass Tiger.

God, I remember listening to this album on my little cassette deck with these little metal banded headphones at night in my bed with the lights out  under the covers with my eyes closed just letting my mind drift and wander.  I had no idea no idea who this guy Coltrane was, whether he was living or dead or what.  My Uncle Dale got me this for Christmas one year and I listened to it and it was like my world was changed!  I grew up in a world of AM country music, Beavis and Butthead, and church hymns, and that was about it for music.  Oh, and Mom's Culture Club cassette.  But this Coltrane was unlike anything I had ever heard before because there were no words!  No words!  It was all just instruments playing, in sync with each other, fighting with each other, raging and screaming and silky smooth.  I listened to that tape over and over again and I embraced it, and I will tell you this: after listening to Coltrane my mind would not be blown again until 1998 when I first heard...

Little known fact: they're not actually brothers.

...and all of a sudden my mind is blown again because they're making music without instruments at all!

But now I'm getting sidetracked.  So in early 1994 I was given my first trumpet solo and I will never, ever forget it.  Shorty George.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

I borrowed the cassette one of the recording of the song for a while so I could listen to it and get a feel to it and I fell in love with the pride of Redbank, NJ.  As far as I'm concerned, he was the embodiment of minimalist piano playing.  And the music just swung.  It just broke later, glided smoother, and hung out further than anything I heard before.  The best way that I can think of to describe Basie's style is like this: get up, get outta bed, have a shower, get yourself looking and smelling real nice, put on your nicest suit, take a walk downtown, sit down on a bench in an area with heavy foot traffic, lean back, relax, smile, and watch the world go by.  That's Basie.  And I loved it.  So, I did my solo, and it was great.  I was in band, jazz band, and choir and I loved music, and gee whiz if I didn't get the shock of my life.  I'm sitting at another boring assembly in the gym, minding my own business when all of a sudden my name is called.  My name was called.  I was the Jr. Musician of the Year.  I'd never won anything in my life before and all of a sudden there it was.  There were others that I thought were better than me, sure, but I won.  Wow...  It was a shock and a true,  deep joy that I still carry with me - literally, since I still have the little trophy.

So then later on we packed up and moved to Estevan and I went to band again, but it was all new people.  And they were rich!  And snooty!  And they went to band camp!  Horrors!  And they had silver trumpets!  And I had by dented $50 trumpet that Mom got for me at MacLarens in...

It really does look a lot smaller from the air...  The Parkland Mall's there somewhere and I swear it's huge!

 ...and so I didn't have a chance.  It took me three years to, you know, get over it and start re-asserting myself, and it felt good to, you know, be good at it cause I had a lot of pride in it.  It was one of my best classes and the one that I looked forward to most every day.  But then when my teacher said that I should try out for a scholarship for musical education at Minot State University, I got vetoed.  Mom said no.  That was kind of a heart-breaker, but I now appreciate her reasoning.  The ratty old trumpet, which the teacher wouldn't even let me play for my last major performance cause it was so decrepit...  Well, I abandoned that old trumpet one day.  I just left it in the band room on the last day of school and along with it the dream.

I still played some piano, though, and I bought a mandolin later.  Lost the mandolin to the flood last year, though.  The piano may be beyond my capabilities, but there's just something about playing Strange Meadow Lark...  The F# that you hit there - if you know the song, you'll know what I mean - the one most poignant note I've ever heard or played.  And if I could sum up how I feel about the dream of being a musician, really, it would be Strange Meadow Lark and that F#.  You want the lark to fly high, you want it to hit that G, but no matter how many times you play it or listen to it, it always, always comes up a half-step short.


Writer

Now here's a dream that I haven't totally given up on as evidenced by this blog!  Ha ha!  Well, let's see now.  My first time out of the nest was a disaster.  Total failure.  I got two jobs but lost them both quick, got depressed, and moved back home a wreck.  As a de-wrecked myself, I started, well, writing.  I would listen to music and sit on my bed with a mechanical pencil and these coil bound books that I picked up in town and I would write.  Write what?  Short stories.  Well, they weren't short-stories.  The first ones weren't, anyway.  The first ones were like this huge nebulous mass that was chapter after chapter after chapter of two different stories.  But they were spy stories...

Only in my iteration, it was more like a Sandra Bullock from Demolition Man crossed with James Bond.  Weird, I know.

...and fantasy stories...

I'd illustrate, but man were they God awful in hindsight.

None of those ones ever got finished, but I can't tell you how good it felt to have some sort of creative outlet again.  I still have them in a box upstairs.  After I realized, though, that massive, never-ending stories don't work, I switched to short-stories and then my output just hit overdrive.  I would write one or two a month on top of a full course load at university - which I think ended up being part of my downfall, because instead of Musical Education, I decided on Administration cause we all agreed that I'd have a knack for that.  Well, I bombed (among other things) economics and threw my hands up in the air.  But I still wrote and still do from time to time.  Not as much as I would like to, though.  I suppose working seven days a week...

This is an artist's rendition.  May not be completely accurate.

...doesn't leave a whole lot of time to pursue intellectual projects.  I find that this here blog helps, though, to keep me creatively limber, or thereabouts, in case I do get, you know, find inspiration and get to writing again.  Someday I'd like to write something wicked cool and publish in some crappy journal and have a modicum of success just to say that I did it.  Someday, but it's still just a dream right now.  An achievable one, perhaps, but just a dream.


Philosopher

So, the world was ending.  Like this:

Boom goes the dynamite.

Well, sort of.  I left home, crapped the bed, and came crawling back to my parents' place.  While recuperating, though, on top of writing, I did some reading.  I started reading the Tao Te Ching.  Up until then all I had ever known as far as any sort of religion or philosophy was concerned was Lutheranism.  I had felt useless, powerless, and abandoned.  I don't mean abandoned by my family.  No matter how bad I've ever screwed up, they've always, always been there for me.  I felt abandoned spiritually.  So, in order to save myself I had made the conscious decision to take everything I know and everything I was taught about religion and spirituality and strip it down to the foundations and start all over again.

So, I went to university in Regina and took Administration.  And bombed.  Like this:

But I did do rather well in Philosophy - so well, in fact, that the Philosophy Department sent me a letter saying "Don't be stupid, be a smartie, come and join the Philosophy Party".  I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it.  And so I thought to myself, gee...  No one else sent me a letter.  Well, fine then.  And I started studying philosophy.  Not only do I enjoy it, I really enjoy it.  And I seem to excel at it!  You know, I'll never be Spinoza, but I'm competent.

Here's the thing.  In 2003, I quit university to move to Guelph, but last fall I took my first class since then and I did fine.  I brought up the class average and I did it writing philosophical essays about...

What better illustration of medieval philosophy is there than a sandwich?

...and...


Oh, I know!  A baseball!  Genius!

...and other sundry topics.  And it worked!  I remember planning the sandwich essay over and over again in my head and I thought to myself that this will either work or get laughed out of the classroom, and it ended up getting an 84 with a class average of 70.  Being a decade older than the other kids in the class, not taking a class for the best part of a decade, and then come out smelling like a rose?  This is one dream that's alive and kicking still, and it feels good.  I suppose more than anything that this is one dream that got away and then I chased back after it, corralled in and brought it back home.  It can be done.


Procurement

Now, after looking at this list, there's not a lot that I can really add to it.  I wasn't ever going to become...

Mua ha ha ha ha...

with this...

...ha ha ha ha- ow.

...so that was never really a dream.  Beyond that, not much.  Maybe have a family, see some more of the world that I've seen, but that's about it.  So, you know, I wonder...  Can new dreams be... planted?  Seeded?  Cultivated? 

It seems a lot easier as a child.  When your world is playing, games, neat stuff to do at school it seems to me that dreams come a lot easier, move around more freely and are more easily grasped and taken hold of.  Nowadays it seems like there's work, there's home, there's bills, there's friends and family, and there's good old bed, which is gonna feel so nice in three hours, by the way.  Honestly, I don't even know where to begin. 

Or maybe I do.  You know what?  Sunday.  Sunday I'm going to go to Victoria Park.  It's nearby.  Seems like it'll be a nice, warm day that day, too.  I'm going to take a walk, think, maybe meditate a little bit.  Watch the sunset.  I haven't done this in a long time and it's something that I've been putting off.  That, I think, is what I'll do.  Yeah...  Anyway, I'll keep you posted.

Now, I think that's all I got for tonight, now, so I'll call it a night.  Have a good night and thank you for reading.