The girlfriend and I have been spending a rather difficult morning gardening for her mother. By gardening, I mean wielding an axe, pitch fork, and shovel in order to uproot half a dozen tree stumps which have a complicated system of roots. Suffice to say, giving myself a dozen dizzy spells in half an hour is not a pleasant experience, so I am relaxing in the basement before I go back outside to complete this task.
Tomorrow, I'll be going back to the States for the weekend. I have a friend who needs me, and besides, I want to see Superman Returns again.
Well, my birthday has come and gone to some success. I did in fact receive Bone for my birthday, along with a Timothy Zahn book and a Neil Gaiman one, as well. I was kindly sung "happy birthday" by my TESL colleagues, some of whom might be reading this since I gave them my website information in an EMail not too long ago.
I also had the chance to talk with my brother, which was nice. Not that we don't talk very often, it's just that, for the first time in as long as I can remember, he told me he loved me. I suppose that might have to do with it being my birthday, but I think it was more because of a rather touching email I sent him after a friend of his died. But I dunno.
I'm looking forward to going home with Carolyn for Thanksgiving, and I might go back a few weeks later to do some Christmas shopping for friends and family.
As far as my wishlist goes, I still don't have much of one, but I think I can cobble together a few other things.
I would like the following items, however:
And:
What can I say? I'm a Cubs fan. Also, I'd really love a copy of Firefly Season 1. I loved that show. Watch it, and then see the movie: Serenity. I also wouldn't resist Angel seasons 2, 3, and 4, should anyone have the foresight to get them for me.
That's all for now. What I really need to be doing is making a list of all the incidental things Carolyn says she wants, so I can supply her family with these items for Christmas time. She can be hard to shop for.
Like many selfish people, it is around this time every year that my eye turns inward and I begin to consider one of the more introspective aspects of myself. ie: What do I want for my birthday and for Christmas?
I usually draw a blank when it actually comes time to consider this. I suppose that has to do with the fact that while there are a lot of things that I'd like to have, there are very few things that I need or even really want, when you think about it. Regardless, for the sake of family and friends, I have decided to compose my second annual What I Want post for this blog.
Here's how it looks:
Bone: One Volume Edition by Jeff Smith: available at Amazon, Indigo, and on Ebay for a considerable discount The America's Best Comics line by Alan Moore. These include Promethea volumes 1-4, Tom Strong volumes 1-2, Top Ten volumes 1-2, The 49'ers Smax mini-series, and Terra Obscura volumes 1-2 Bang! the card game (plus the expansion series), available at Grand Slam in Olean and online Batman Begins on DVD
Living in Canada, I get to miss out on most of the idiotic things going on in the States. But I couldn't miss Dubya's latest speech, the one where he claimed that our terrible enemies, Al Qaeda, are hell-bent on taking over the Middle East and Eastern Asia. Bush claimed that, were it not for our strong-standing forces in Iraq, Bin Laden's terror group would dominate the world, and now is not the time to get out of the Middle East. We have to persevere, Bush told us. The world is counting on us.
This was obviously a ploy on the Republican's part to shore up their dwindling support base. Something like a third of all Americans support the war at this point. (Sorta makes you wish that the election was this year, not last year.) I call it a ploy because, ironically, on the same day that Bush made his Doom and Gloom announcement, our intelligence intercepted a letter from a subordinate of Bin Laden claiming that Al Qaeda is running out of money and losing the war.
Read that last part again. Then, think about what Bush claimed on the same day.
Oops.
The ironic thing is that the Conservatives should have waited a few days, because they could have used that intercepted letter as evidence that hey, we are winning out there! Instead, the letter contradicts Bush's message, and if Normal America picked up on it (which they won't), it would look like Bush clearly has a thumb lodged up his bulbous ass.
So, where do we go from here? Well, the mid-terms are coming up in about a year. That's one year that Bush has to screw things up. After that, it's entirely conceivable that the Democrats will regain control of one of the three branches of government.
One can hope, right?
But man, it pisses me off when I get lied to. And Bush really pissed me off yesterday.
I haven't had as much time to post lately, because I'm currently taking an ESL course for teachers. ESL stands for English as a Second Language, and hopefully by the end of training, I'll be a certified ESL teacher which means they'll pay me $30 an hour to teach foreigners English. Or something.
Anyway, my busy schedule includes getting up at 7:30ish every morning, leaving here by 8:40ish, walking two miles to the classroom, learning, and walking back home at 3ish. I know, I'm sure I feel your tremendous pity because I have a 7:30-3:00 day. Poor me.
The people in my class are actually very cool, most of them anyway. I like them all, including the teachers. Today's teacher was a British woman who recently had the misfortune of being, well, hit by a car while biking to her apartment. She's mostly ok, if not very sore. Her bad experience led another classmate to recount a story about a friend of his who was teaching ESL in Korea. Apparently, his friend had been bumped by a cab driver, so he chased down the taxi and began pounding on the man's window. The cabbie then called all his cab-driving friends, who surrounded our hero and proceeded to slam the cab's trunk down on his arm repeatedly, breaking it in three places.
A pretty awful story, right?
Except my classmate then felt the need to add, "They broke his teaching arm." And then I started laughing. Almost uncontrollably. There was just something about this guy getting his teaching arm broken... I don't know, I just never thought of someone having a teaching arm before. Luckily, I wasn't alone - my classmate broke down laughing too, but I still felt like an asshole.
And I still smile every time I think about the teaching arm.
I was actually pretty hyper all day anyway, which was a surprise since I woke up early and felt miserable. I've got no real reason for it.
Anyway, Carolyn comes home in the next 10 or 15 minutes, so I'm going to get ready for her. Tonight is wing night, where we go to Duff's Famous Wings and I order the "death wings," which are hot enough to put some people on the floor. They leave me a sweaty pile of goo, and I always pay for it the next morning. But damn, they're good.
I'm going to use a baseball analogy on the real world here. The New York Yankees have the greatest organization in baseball, and have historically been the team to beat. In fact, even now, they are the team most other teams look forward to playing, because the Yankees just have a different atmosphere about them than the other teams in baseball. However, something has gone wrong for the Yankees in the past few years. They've gotten to heavy for their own good. What I mean is, they have more money than any other team (power), they have bigger names than any other team (recognition), but in spite of being one of the best, they aren't nearly as strong a team as they were five years ago. Their manager, Joe Torre, has to play to win every day, every game, or risk annoying his boss, George Steinbrenner. As a consequence, the Yankees can't afford to look down the road to more important games yet to be played. Instead, they use their best pitchers every night and try like hell to win every little game. For that reason, they've worn out in October, and haven't been able to win a World Series for years.
Here's how that relates into the real world. In the real world, the conservatives are the very best at playing the political game. They know how to get their supporters fired up. They know how to spin an issue to make their liberal opponents look like jerks and idiots. They've accumlated a ton of political capital. But the problems in this country aren't getting better, they're getting worse. And while the conservatives have been very, very good at winning many of the little battles (or at least, dodging them), next year is an election year and they might discover that, like the Yankees in baseball, they've used up too much too soon, and have little left for the bigger battles.
It's not just the New Orleans disaster, although a city getting totally wiped out can never be good for any political party in power, no matter who they are or how responsible they might actually be. It's also the high gas costs. It's the war of attrition going on in Iraq. Few people are satisfied, and the conservatve's political capital has to be at a low right now. It's weird, and maybe a little sad that insane gas costs are going to be the driving issue during the next election, rather than the continued deaths of troops overseas.
The gas prices depress me pretty badly (well, as depressed as I ever get). For years I've been reading scary articles about how our oil is running out, and how we could soon expect oil prices to drastically increase. Now, to see that actually happen makes me feel even greater concern for the children I've yet to have. The only hope I have to cling onto is the knowledge that this sort of crap happened in the 70's, and prices eventually dropped back.
But with an oil-affiliated guy in office, we're not going to see any alternative solutions presented any time soon. This is the last, great boon of the oil industry - a time where panic will drive profits until there's just nothing left. Sooner or later, and hopefully sooner, our country and world will have to boldly face forward and allow an industry to collapse for the benefit of progress and salvation.
The questions become not just when, but how. I don't know the answer to that. But political change is necessary. 2006 is coming, and the congress and senate may see a turnover. Hopefully. But if the conservatives are smart, they'll dodge the hard questions and keep the focus on abortion and gay marriage, as they did in the last election. Yet, regardless of that, the voters will surely drive by gas stations on the way to vote. Let's hope that what they see will be enough.
Last night, Carolyn and I went to the Casino Rama. There, we proceeded to lose $100 on slot machines (I really wanted to play roulette, but she wouldn't let me), had a great, free dinner, and got to see a free Meatloaf concert. The Meat is old. His legs are creaky. He can't sing as well as he used to. He still put on a hell of a show. He went hard for two hours. At one point he threatened to leave the stage because not enough people were standing and singing along. He told us we sucked. He threatened to kick our asses. I'm pretty sure he was wholly sober.
What I didn't know is that when Carolyn used to listen to Bat Out of Hell 2, her favorite song was MY favorite song: Objects in the Rear View Mirror. You learn something new every day about the people you love.
The musicians were pretty good. The guitar player looked a lot like Spike from Buffy. There was a grazy girl in the front who looked like another Spike - the one from Degrassi. She was dancing like a maniac 80's style for the full two hours of the show. I only wish I'd gotten to see her up close.
Our trip was entirely due to Carolyn's Uncle Leo, a man who frequents the Casino enough to have garnered tickets for us.
On the way home, we found a gas station that was selling fuel for 10 cents cheaper than most other places. I realize that's a lame thing to blog about, but that's big news in this day and age.
We didn't get in until after 1 in the morning. It was a long, looooong day, but we had fun. I'm sure I'll never see Meatloaf in concert again. It was worth it.
