Welcome to the Carnivale

So I am currently watching Carnivale on DVD.  It is part of my catching up on those series that I missed the first time round.  As you know I watch as I ride the GO train to work each day.

As an aside, I always wanted to take a course where I read all the books I am supposed to have read in my life.  I have never read the so-called classics such as "To Kill a Mockingbird".  I am a lawyer and was at a conference where a lawyer talked for 1 hour about how all lawyers should base themselves on the lawyer in the book.  She started with the words... "I do not have to tell you the plot because I am sure everyone in here has read it and if you haven't you should leave now."  I wanted to just get up and leave... but thought that probably was a bad idea for my professional career.  The thing is, I could probably carry on a conversation about the book (as I know the details and the meaning in the Jeopardic  sense).

Double aside... "In a Jeopardic sense" is a term I have just now invented to describe the fact that I can answer questions about a subject without knowing anything real about it.  The list of things that this covers ranges from books to spirituality.  I know enough about a lot of things that I can seemingly converse about them without actually knowing anything about them in any meaningful way.  Interestingly, is a learned skill.  A lot of people would say that is bad.  I think that it is a sign of the times.  Our current lives elevate the trivial over the wise.  I embrace this fully. 

I'll take "They said it on TMZ" for two hundred, Alex.

It seems to me that in many ways television series are what books used to be.  We all converse about them.  Did you see the new Game of Thrones? What do you think about the season finale for Walking Dead?  I can't believe Snooki is pregnant! Very few people want to converse about the Art of Fielding.  Unless it is being turned into a movie.  Or it involves a vampire/love triangle/Steve Jobs.  Any of those things and all bets are off. 

I am trying to become a Rhodes Scholar of the cablebox. 

Which leads me back to Carnivle.  It is a very interesting little series.  It is slow as molasses in one sense, but playing with very large themes with huge implications.  It is all about a carnival during the depression, where two individuals have been chosen to be the avatars of evil and good.  I do not know where it is going but it has been interesting so far.  It reminds me of a weird mix of Lost, Heroes and Twin Peaks. 

I am just at the beginning and the show is making me think there is some larger story to tell.

But that larger story is not going to be told.  I know the show gets cancelled after the second season on a cliff hanger.  So I am watching a series I know will ultimately have no pay-off.  That said I am watching a series that I know will not end with disappointment.  I kind of wish that had happened with Heroes. If there were no second season it would have just ceased to exist and I could remember it fondly for what it was going to be rather than the utter mess it turned into.

As they say - "it is better to be silent and let people assume you are stupid, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt".  If the show never ends - then there can be no argument that there was no ending to the show.  That seems pretty profound to me.  Maybe I am wise after all.  
I am on a Go train trip to nowhere and I am enjoying the ride. 

For my loyal (non-familial) reader...

So yeah I realise its been a while...

It has been a crazy couple of weeks of work-filled wonder.   Actually strike that.  I am not a Disney Imagineer and as such my job does not involve much wonder.  It involves work.  Lots of it lately.  Because of this my posting has suffered.  I apologise.

I was brought out of my non-posting ways by a reader of this blog who is not my direct family.  He reads loyally and even seems to be watching the TV shows I have recommended (American Horror Story for the win - which by the way is back with a twist.  Jessica Lange will be the main character this time with Zachery Q as her nemesis but they are not playing the same characters they played in the first season.  Is this the first time there has been a season two with the same actors now playing different characters.  Is that going to mess people up? Debate amongst yourselves.  I think the answer is clear - they will both be evil twins of their first season characters to add to the soap operay goodness that is American Horror Story).

Anyways...in honour of this reader I want to say I am back and will be posting more regularly.  

Today's topic:  Kids = plague rats. 

Now I love my son.  He is just starting to walk and talk.  He is awfully cute.  But he is without a doubt patient zero for the plague.  Before he was born I would never get sick.  I was a super-human.  I looked down at those who got sick and prided myself on my amazing tolerance to what felled the 'weaker' ones.  Little did I know that these 'weaker' people were simply parents. 

You see since my son has been born I have been taken down twice with what I can only describe as the plague.  This may be aided by the fact that he thinks everything is a popsicle to be licked. 

This weekend I was minding my own business and shopping with my wife at Winners when suddenly I felt that I shouldn't be at Winners anymore.  I was shaking and nauseous.  We left soon after that.  The rest of the day was not very good.  All of this I am sure is from my little son who the day before had had a little bit of a stomach virus. 

I think the better weapon of mass destruction is a squadron of two year olds holding out their jammy hands and advancing on an unsuspecting population to hug and kiss them while silently dispatching opposition with their adorable viruses.

All this got me to thinking that Dalton McGuinty is really an ass.  Recently, he has been calling on teachers to take a pay freeze and give up other entitlements in order to do their part to achieve fiscal responsibility and keep full-day kindergarten.  I think this is a bad idea for all sorts of reasons.  However, it occurred to me that it is also not recognizing the full danger we put our teachers in.

You see, one of the things that he is saying should be taken away is the amount of sick days that teachers get.  After experiencing what my singular son gave me I can't imagine what it is that teachers get from an army of 24 kids (or I guess now 26 kids since we are also raising class sizes). 

It is a wonder that they do not get hazard pay. 

Honestly, teachers may be important in that they teach the next generation (and all that good stuff), but we can't forget what kindergarten really is.  It is the front line in an ongoing battle of biological warfare.  Taking away sick days is equivalent to taking away a bullet proof vest from a soldier and sending him off into war.  

After having experienced it for myself, I for one am not begrudging teachers their sick days.  

For those that do, I think my son wants to give you a big kiss!

Why Canada is now the United States

Our conservative government has tabled legislation that is aimed at stopping child pornography.  Part of this law would require ISPs to cache information that could later be called upon by police (in some cases without a warrant) to track online activity with the intent of stopping child pornography.

This raised some issues with privacy.  In defending the bill Vic Toews (Safety Minister) told a liberal MP that you are either with the government or with child pornographers. 

My friends we have officially become the United States.   One may remember after 9/11 that any attempt to question whether the new regime was a good thing was met with the refrain - "your either with us or with the terrorists". Now I think that child pornographers are probably more reviled than terrorists by most people so maybe Canada is in fact now worse than the United States. 

I want to take a moment to think about what is going on here for a minute.  We are going to ask Internet Service Providers to cache all of our online activity (including financial information, bill payments, private communications) so that if necessary the police can view it.  Am I the only one who sees a big glaring problem with that?  Rogers can't get my cable bill right two months in a row - but they are going to keep my information secure?  What about hackers?  Seems like a little problem to me.

Also, what about just respecting my privacy.  All I hear from people defending this is that child pornography is bad and if I don;t have anything to fear why would I object to the information being kept.  This is the stupidest argument I have ever heard.  Guess who else makes that argument - police states.  The point is not that I have to justify why I deserve privacy.  The norm is privacy.  In order to get a warrant there is a requirement on the police to justify why they need to disrupt this norm.  To put it another way - why have any requirements for warrants, or due process or even curtains.  You have nothing to hide right?

Have we forgotten the G20? 

By making it a binary choice between giving up right to privacy and "siding with the child pornographers" the conservative government has made it so that law abiding citizens have to take sides in a fictional debate.

Itis exactly what George Bush did during his term. 

The real consequences of global warming.

I was watching the Superbowl on Sunday and one of the highlights for me besides the game and the food is the commercials.  Even in Canada we get new commercials. 

Although I don't get to see the one where Clint Eastwood's tells America that the current economic crisis is halftime and they need to rally in the second half.  If the current economic crisis is halftime, isn't it likely that by the end of the game (which I can only assume is the Rapture) the other team (who I can only assume are the terrorists/bankers) have ended any doubt and have turned a large halftime lead into a bone-crushing victory.  God may want you on that floor, but real life miracle comebacks are few and far between.

That said we did get a new commercial for a car.  The commercial features a polar bear walking through the streets until it comes upon a man and rears up.... only to give him a big hug.  Because (you see) he is driving an electric car.  Electric cars are good for the environment and thus the polar bears love you if you drive one. 

This seems somewhat unrealistic to me.

I think we should all think about this from the polar bear's point of view.  First off, these annoying humans are heating the planet leaving me and my friends trapped on rapidly shrinking ice floes.  Then they get all up in our business and are always filming promo ads/documentaries.  Then they co-op our identity to sell cars (with the vast majority of the models that are sold adding to the fact that the ice floes are melting).

If I am a polar bear, I am not hugging anyone.

Instead, I am mauling the shit out of every human I see.  That commercial would have been so much better if the polar bear rose up and proceeded to eat the car driver.  Then the words "Brought to you by Polar Bears - we will kill you. P.S. we drink Pepsi."

I think we are on the verge of animals restoring order to the world. We all need to be vigilant.  The signs are there.

Last year, a whale took out its trainer at sea world: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyZqq_1hXus.  The sheriff says no indication of foul play.  The whale is LITERALLY a killer whale.  The cops really need to get there act together on this.  I for one am constantly watching my back for the ever present threat of a whale jumping out and squashing me.

If the whales no longer want to jump through hoops and the police won't protect us, we need to take matters into our own hands.

I for one will be watching the squirrels in my neighbourhood very carefully.  They are clearly the masterminds of the coming revolution.

Only Wu can prevent racism.

I am now finished American Horror Story season 1, Louie Season 2 and It’s Always Sunny In Philly, Season 7. 

Quick hits:

American Horror Story:  It is so cheesy, but so good.  I literally tried to explain what it was about to my wife’s best friend and my description of the plot was like something out of an 8 year old’s mouth.  There’s this house and its haunted.  There are ghosts, but you don’t know what the ghosts are at the beginning.  There’s this maid who is a ghost, but they don’t know she’s a ghost and she looks both young and old.  Oh and there’s other dead people too and they can’t leave the house and there’s this thing with babies and Satan and the black Dalia and murals and gazebos and cheating... It was agreed it was more fun to have me try and explain it then to actually watch it.  I kept on saying it was all very clear when you were watching.  In retrospect it probably wasn’t.  But it was good scary fun.

Louie Season 2:  This is my new favorite show.  Louie C.K. basically said to FX give me way less than other people get for a show.  But – here’s the caveat... I get to give you the show and you don’t get to change anything.  The result is a very personal show that when it works is amazing.  It reminds very much of Woody Allen at times in that it is very surreal.  Plus the stand up is awesome in the show.  This show is a can’t miss. 

AWSIP7: Solid.  Never fails to make me laugh.  I appreciated that Mac actually gained 50-60 pounds just so his character could gain “mass”.  That is commitment. 

Now I am back to Deadwood Season 2 which I abandoned mid watch to watch these.  Something about Deadwood is making hard for me to finish.  It is good, but it is uninteresting.  Except for Wu.  He is the best.  Wu is literally the head Asian in an old west town on the lawless frontier sometime in the past (the fact that I can’t even give you a decade shows you that I am not your phone a friend when it comes to history).

Wu works as a butcher of pigs and has a relationship with the saloon owner (Al Sweringer) where he literally serves as the disposal outlet for the dead bodies that pile up at the saloon.  They are fed to Wu’s pigs.  The awesome thing about Wu is he actively tries to communicate with Sweringer about what is going on in the camp when he learns information about what people are planning.  The only English words he knows are Sweringer, Wu and Cocksucker.  The scenes between the two are hilarious because both earnestly try to communicate but often there are misunderstandings.

One such misunderstanding has to do with Sweringer trying to understand why there are suddenly other Asians in the camp (they are working for a rival saloon owner).  Wu knows they are there, but can’t communicate it to Sweringer very well.  Sweringer wants to understand what “juice” the Asian has (i.e. what backing he has).  Wu thinks he means Jews and hijinks ensue.   The scene might be one of the more offensive scenes on TV as it simultaneously offends both Asians, Jews and I guess women (as I think one of the people being eaten by the pigs is a whore who was killed for no reason).   That being said this was America circa I don’t know (see above).  I imagine that this level of racism is probably historically accurate. 

It does remind me of my interactions with my some of my wife’s family.   My wife’s grandparents consists of me smiling waving and them saying Tiiiiiiiiiiim and nodding.  Evidently my name sounds like “wealthy” which is good luck and the totality of our communication.  I sometimes broaden our communication by naming dim sum items in Chinese.  

I sometimes wish that I had a need to communicate with them like Wu and Sweringer have because then we would get to know each other better. 

I would also learn whether the barbecued pork they bring for dinner comes from man-eating pigs.

Maybe ignorance is bliss.    

A sisyphean task.

I am terrible at doing the laundry.

It is perhaps the biggest item of contention between my wife and I.  I say I will do the laundry, but I don't.  I say I will fold the laundry, but I don't.  I say I will put away the laundry, but I don't.   

It is a wonder my wife hasn't left me yet.  She tolerates the hell out of me. I love her for it. 

As I thought about this today, it made me think of Sisyphus.  He was a Greek man who was sentenced by the Greek gods to continuously push a rock up a hill and as it neared the top it would roll back down and he would have to start again. 

To be fair to the Greek gods I think Sisyphus did seduce his niece and then had her kill the children she bore with him.  Maybe he got off easy.

Greek myths are fucked up.  As I remember the guy who stole fire for all of mankind (Prometheus) was sentenced by the Greek gods to have an eagle eat his liver out.  Every day.  The gods made it so his liver would re-grow each day so it could keep happening.  That is seriously messed up.  Guy wants to make fire and is rewarded with eternal-eagle-eating-liver torture.  Seems severe. 

Other tales (bonus points to those who can name them) involved a god cheating on his wife with a woman and then turning her into a cow, a man being turned into a deer and eaten alive by his hunting dogs for looking at a goddess' breasts and a sister of a god being kidnapped and forced to live in hell half the year for eating six pomegranate seeds.  If six seeds sends you to hell, the fact that I drink a glass of POM juice a day is worrying.  There really needs to be a warning on the container for that one.  

POM:  Contains Anti-oxidants (note: ingesting this product may cause eternal damnation).

The problem is that the minute I do the laundry it just starts piling up again.  I think I have isolated the problem:  Clothes.  Solution is obvious.  If I don't wear clothes then there will be no piling up of laundry.  As an added bonus my wife will have to not wear clothes too.  Hopefully, I don't get turned into a deer and eaten alive for looking at her breasts. 

Nudists are not more liberated than the average person, they are just more lazy.

Chinese Bun Lady (revisited)

I  never knew my words would have such an influence.

You may remember one of my first posts was about the terror regime of the Chinese Bun Lady (for the uninitiated see http://timwilltell.blogspot.com/2011/10/on-buns-and-bagels.html). 

Well ding dong the witch is dead... the Chinese Bun Shop has closed.

I went today to get a Chinese bun and the shop had turned into an art shop.   Instead of the smell of barbecue pork buns wafting over the underground instead there is now the sight of very bad oil paintings of barns. 

Oh what a fool I have been.  I know it was my words that caused this.  The Chinese Bun Lady ever mindful of plots to steal her buns must have set up an Internet search to be one step ahead of the horde of bun thieves.  Her engine must have highlighted my post and she saw the error of her ways and either killed herself or she is currently on a pilgrimage back to China to rediscover what it was that she first saw in Chinese buns that ignited the passion in her.

Or she was right to be so mindful of thieves and it really is true that stealing of buns makes Chinese bun shops economically unsupportable and she was forced to close down.

Either way I feel I have wronged the Chinese bun lady.  I guess it is true what they say.  You never know a good thing until it is gone.  Somehow my bagel just doesn't taste the same. 

I wanted the Eastern European Bagel lady to be a little meaner so I could remember. I will hug those close to me a little closer today and one day tell my child of the Chinese bun lady and her ways.

Rest in Peace dear angry lady who would always check my bag to ensure I wasn't stealing a .99 cent product

Rest in Peace.

Learning to Count (or Why Raffi is a Racist)

So we are trying to teach our son how to count.  One of the ways we are doing this is by playing him kid’s songs which go through numbers.  This probably is futile as he is just now comprehending that he can eat, so abstract concepts such as numbers are probably outside of his primitive grasp of reality.  Nevertheless, if I don’t set goals, how will he be able to not meet my expectations.

One of those songs is by Raffi and called the “Numbers Rumba”.  In it Raffi sings a rumba about each number and then describes how the number looks. 

In the song number one is described as “straight but fun.”  This struck me as somewhat strange way of describing the number one as it implies that straight is not normally fun.  Rather than interpret this as a homosexual attack on traditional values (I am after all not a Republican candidate), I instead interpret this as Raffi commenting on the fact that if Number One was more curvy it would be even more fun.  This is backed by the fact that Raffi describes number two as “having big breasts is not taboo”.  To be fair to Raffi, he might say “two big feet on a kangaroo”.  He sings it really fast.

However, I do know Raffi is racist. 

In one song he sings about the children of the world and recites their names.  The song starts off nice enough.  Bonnie is from Canada.  Sounds all right.   Olga is from Russia.  Um...okay, if a little obvious.  Jose is from Mexico.  Bordering on offensive.

And then...Ching is from China. 

Seriously Raffi? Ching is from China?  No one told you that is infinitesimally close to Chink is from China? 

I can just imagine  how this exchange went down. 

Raffi:  Ching is from China.   

Producer:  Wait, Wait, Wait.... Raffi are we sure about that one... Ching?

Raffi:  Do you know who I am?  I am Mr. Banana Phone.  Shut the hell up. 

Raffi Singing:  Ching is from China... Nigel is from Africa.

To be fair despite the possible racist undertones, the song is very very catchy.  So is the Numbers Rumba.  Raffi only goes to Three (“Three Banana on Banana Tree”).  Unlike Raffi I feel my son will need to count beyond three, so my wife and I have invented the rest. 

My favorites are in no particular order:

• Number 5 – winding road in the country side
• Number 7 – Looks like number 7 (My kid will appreciate irony and nothing rhymes with 7 that is not overtly religious or forces my son to become a baker or work at a convenience store – think about it).
• Number 8 – Infinity sign stands up straight.  (Yes my son will be a nerd).

Inventing these number rumbas has been very hard.  I literally walk around all day trying to come up with the perfect rhyme.  It occupies all my waking hours. I now know why Raffi ended up hating all children of every creed and colour. 

The Numbers Rumba made him do it.