sex warehouse

My memory of the details is foggy. After all, it happened 39 years ago and anybody who could tell me anything about what happened is no longer with us. So, as I sit here mulling this over, I realise I have few facts but a lot of speculation.

I vaguely remember Dad telling me he was going to out to look for Mom. I don't remember this, but I'm guessing she left a note which prompted his search. He eventually found her. She had gone to his office and climbed into an outside container meant to hide the unsightly trash cans from neighbourhood. Dad took her to the hospital and had her stomach pumped. I can't say whether whatever she took would have actually killed her but nevertheless, there was the intent.

What happened afterwards? Counselling? Visits to a psychiatrist? I don't know. I do remember that the issue was never brought up; at least not in front of me. Then again, I don't think I ever talked with my mother about this incident. I headed off to university shortly after this occurred and I never again lived at home for any length of time.

Nevertheless, I have at times over the years thought about my mother and this incident as I have discovered, or maybe conjectured, that I have gotten more of my genes from my mother than from my father. Physically, no doubt, but temperament, personality, mental make-up, ah, it seems we share some common traits.

My mother was born in 1929. She grew up in the Great Depression and suffered the loss of her own mother when she was 8 years old. Grandpa remarried however that didn't work out as well as it could have. Appearances can be deceiving, but I'll leave the story of my grandmother to another time.

The main point was that my grandfather decided to not send my mother to university. It was a waste of money as my mother would just get married and that would be the end of it. I think this always gave her a sense of inferiority in the community where she ended up. My father was a medical professional. We lived in what I have since grown to appreciate was an upper middle class neighbourhood surrounded by similar people: doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. Just about every wife in the neighbourhood had a university degree except my mother. How many were stay-at-home moms like my mother? I'm not sure. I know a couple who worked; heck, one was a doctor like her husband, but I think this being the 1950s, it was common for wives to not work.

In looking back on all this, I can't help thinking of the era, the 1950s and the 1960s, married to a professional, etc., I get the idea of the Stepford Wives, robotic wives who are pleasant but vacuous, designed to serve but not necessarily participate. I don't think this satisfied whatever craving my mother may have had.

My mother was, for lack of a better word, an artsy fartsy personality. - I know that expression "artsy fartsy" has a pejorative sense to it and I'll come back to that in a moment. - Mom did some painting and some sculpting, took lessons even, but never dove into it. She dabbled. I wouldn't say she was passionate; she had not been truly bitten by the bug. She liked to read, talk about "stuff", and was a good socialiser. I could characterize the decades of the 1950s and the 1960s as idyllic, but then again, I was only a kid and what the heck did I know?

I still remember this vividly. I was 16 years old. There was some sort of family get together with another family up the street and my mother had a touch too much to drink. I found her being inebriated to be both embarrassing and annoying. I distinctly remember her telling me to "loosen up, have fun". Her dancing around with some other teenagers struck me as being, well, stupid.

In the subsequent years, I was witness to my mother being drunk and I mean really drunk, a couple of times. In retrospect, I am sure she had a potential to becoming an alcoholic. If she stayed out of the danger zone over the years, I wonder if this had a lot to do with my father. He was one of those salt of the Earth, traditional type of guys, and I don't think I ever saw him intoxicated. Not once.

In 1971, Mom decided she was going back to high school. She had originally completed high school with a four year secretarial diploma. Unfortunately, at that time, the 5th year was a necessary requirement for university and I think she had gotten the idea of possibly going to university. My final year at high school had me seeing my own mother in the school hallways. We didn't have any classes together; ah, that might have been just a tad too weird.

Now for what I think may have been the straw that broke the camel's back. It's 1971. The hippie era of the 1960s may have been over, but I certainly had enough people in my immediate circle of friends who were continuing to live that sort of lifestyle. And drugs were a part of that time and of that social circle. Now let me be clear, I was a weekend hippie. Yes, I'd go to concerts with a group of friends, get stoned, crash at somebody's place on a Saturday night, but I was still the son of a professional living in an upper middle class neighbourhood. I was playing at it, but I wasn't being a full-blown hippie.

My mother found me one evening and guessed that I was high. I think she then asked and all the kids confessed to having done a little experimenting. Now us trying a few drugs was in no way a reflection on her parenting skills. Heck, at that time, if you had not tried drugs, you were the exception to the rule. Nevertheless, I have speculated over the years that this peccadillo on my part, on our part broke her in some way. If she doubted herself, if she undervalued her contribution to the family, if she suffered from a sense of inferiority, her children having tried drugs was a clear indication that she had also failed as mother.

My mother was a wonderful mother. You couldn't ask for a better one, but over the years I've come to realise that while children are dealing with their parents as parents, they completely forget that their parents are also individuals with hopes, dream, and aspirations just like anybody else. I am convinced that her finding out I experimented with drugs pushed her over the edge. Her suicide attempt happened a few months later.

Years later, I remember talking with my Dad about various things and the topic of Mom came up. Keep in mind that we rarely talked about what I'm sure one would label as personal stuff. It wasn't that he wouldn't or couldn't, but I understood that for my father, there were no real personal issues to discuss. He was a very even keel type of guy. He had a good career. He made good money. He travelled; he socialized; he didn't really want for anything. What was there to discuss? Life was good.

Nevertheless, for my mother, it wasn't the same. She wanted to talk. She wanted to feel. She wanted to do something, achieve something, but whatever that was, it was never clearly articulated. She dabbled, but there wasn't a clear lifetime goal like my father had. Dad went to university, got a degree, got a career, and became a professional; he was living the dream. Mom, no.

Coming back to talking about this with Dad. He said he would have supported her in anything she would have wanted to do. When she wanted to sculpt, he got her lessons and set aside part of the house for her work. When she tried painting, he did the same. She just never stuck at it. She had talent and I'm sure she could have done something with art, but she didn't stick to it. What was the missing piece of the puzzle?

My Dad also told me they had discussed divorce. But why? What was missing? What was she looking for? I do remember her one time, and I think just one time, revealing that she felt Dad didn't want to or was incapable of communicating with her; that he was cold. Really? As I said above, for Dad life was good. What was there to talk about? Was this one of those glass half full half empty things?

I have heard tell of women for whom being a mother is the be all and the end all. They define themselves as mothers and if their child doesn't measure up to their expectations, their life isn't complete; they have somehow failed. In light of that, I am stunned at the stories of other people. I recently heard the tale of a mother whose one and only son became a heroin addict in his late teens and spent five years in jail. He got out and came back to live with his mother then went back to drugs, stole from his own family, and finally his mother had to turn him in. His mother told me that during a visit with him in jail the second time; he told her he was better off in jail as it provided him with a structured environment away from drugs. How does a mother live with such a thing?

My mother lived another 25 years. She died prematurely from lung cancer as she was a smoker. I do not remember ever talking about Mom's attempt with either my mother or my father. If you ask me why, I would have to honestly say that I don't know. How do you bring up the topic of one's attempted suicide?

Final Word
I had not thought about this family event for years, but something I read recently reminded me of it. As a child, even as a grown child, I seemed to have this tendency of thinking of my parents as being my parents. When I became a parent, I became aware of the fact that I had step-children looking at me as a parent. However, the realisation dawned on me that yes, to them I was a parent (step-parent) but I was still me, just another guy with his own hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Yes, I was a parent, but I was still your run-of-mill average guy trying to get along in life and figure things out for himself. Did my step-kids understand that about me? I didn't seem to clue into that about my own parents.

Sometimes I think back on my parents and wonder about their hopes, dreams, and aspirations. What were their successes; what were their failures? I'd certainly love to talk to Mom about her attempt and why she was so desperate at that time. By the way, my mother never completed high school. She never did go to university. I'm sure Dad would have supported her in any endeavour, but she never again tried anything major. Why not? Did she "give up"? What did she do for those remaining 25 years?

I said I seem to have gotten my genes from my mother. I'm a bit of an arsty fartsy type. Good? Bad? Thinking about her makes me think about myself and ask if there are any lessons to be learned.

About ten months before her death, about four months before she was diagnosed with cancer, she went to a sculpting studio for a few lessons and to do some work. She completed a piece for which she made six finished glazed copies for each member of the family. It was a partially abstract piece of a woman holding her arms out as if she was praising or blessing something or possibly about to hug somebody. My mother called it, "Joy". Out of it all, out of 66 years, she left behind her husband of 46 years, her children, and a little "Joy". If I had the chance, what would I ask her? What would I talk to her about? I'll never know.


References

Wikipedia: Suicide
Suicide (Latin suicidium, from sui caedere, "to kill oneself") is the act of a human being intentionally causing his or her own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair, or attributed to some underlying mental disorder which includes depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism and drug abuse. Financial difficulties, troubles with interpersonal relationships and other undesirable situations play a significant role.

Over one million people commit suicide every year. The World Health Organization estimates that it is the thirteenth-leading cause of death worldwide and the National Safety Council rates it sixth in the United States. It is a leading cause of death among teenagers and adults under 35. Rates of suicide are higher in men than in women. There are an estimated 10 to 20 million non-fatal attempted suicides every year worldwide.

Wikipedia: List of countries by suicide rate
Canada: 11.9 per 100,000 (2005)
United States: 11.1 per 100,000 (2005)

StatsCan: Suicides and suicide rate, by sex and by age group
There were 3,611 suicides in Canada in 2007 or 11.0 per 100,000.

StatsCan: Leading causes of death
There were 235,217 deaths in Canada in 2007. Cancer accounted for 30% of deaths, and heart disease, 22%. Stroke, in third place, accounted for 6%. Ranked in order, the other seven leading causes of death were chronic lower respiratory diseases, accidents, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, influenza and pneumonia, kidney disease and suicide.

my blog: Alcoholism: I'll drink to that!

I wrote this essay and after having read it over a zillion times, I'm still not sure I've said what I wanted to say. Maybe sometime I'll come back to it; maybe sometime I'll just start again from scratch and see what comes out.

2011-04-26

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Years ago, I went through a traumatic episode in my life. At the time, I realised that this was beyond the norm. This wasn't something to talk over with family or friends, but something requiring an unbiased professional eye. I found a psychiatrist and luckily, the fees were covered by my government health plan.

I had never been in therapy before so I didn't know quite what to expect. I had seen things on television and in the movies meant to portray the experience; however that was entertainment not reality. I had four sessions altogether. During the first three, I basically talked and the psychiatrist listened. In the fourth, we had something of a discussion. He gave me his assessment which amounted to this. Yes, I was going through a traumatic experience. Yes, I was depressed, but given the circumstances, this was not surprising; this was normal. However, I seemed to be able to clearly see what was going on, to properly analyse it, and to come up with a remedial course of action. He then asked me what I wanted to do. Did I want to continue seeing him?

At the time, I had an idea I picked up from movies and television of people who stayed in therapy for years and years. This was the idea of self-indulgent, narcissistic people who had nothing better to do than spend an hour a week spouting off gawd only knows what to a psychiatrist without any specific goal of achieving something. Doesn't "get better" mean you stop going to therapy? Freudian analysis - patient babbles, psychiatrist listens - can be quite open ended in this regard and I had a somewhat negative impression of the process. I come back to the word "self-indulgent".

When the therapist asked me if I wanted to continue, I thought of his assessment. Yes, I'm bummed out about my traumatic episode, but I had a remedial plan. What else was there to talk about? The only thing left to do was to go out and put the plan into effect. Right?

I declined his offer to continue this 50 minute session per week therapy and headed off to implement my plan. However, as time wore on, things weren't working out as well as I had hoped. In fact, I seemed to be dragging around some baggage that I couldn't get rid of. Had I missed something in therapy? Should I have stuck with it? Was I too dismissive of the process and had failed to give the process its due?

Four years later, I found myself in circumstances which allowed me to take another stab at therapy, however this time; I planned on committing to a length of time, a hopefully meaningful amount of time to see where this would lead. It turned out that I spent 8 months going to a psychiatrist for a session of 50 minutes every week. Over eight months, that would work out to be 30 times, setting aside one or two weeks for holidays.

Unlike my first time where I sat face to face with my therapist, this was truly the typical couch session. The psychiatrist sits in a chair at the head of the couch while the patient lies down on the coach and stares at the ceiling. This was stream of consciousness. I just talked on anything which came to mind with no specific agenda. That, in retrospect, is the odd part of this type of therapy. There doesn't seem to be, well there wasn't for me, any structure or guidance. It was just me trying to figure out something, but I'm not sure what It was the strangest thing. If there is no specific agenda; there is no specific goal and if there is no goal, how do you know when you're done?

This happened over 25 years ago so I have absolutely no idea of what I would have babbled about for those 30 sessions. I do remember as I droned on about gawd only knows what, staring at the ceiling, sometimes counting the holes, the psychiatrist whose name I've forgotten, would sit out of sight towards the head of the couch. He would always sit with a pad of paper and a pen to record whatever revealing Freudian slips gushed out of my mouth as I sometimes desperately sought to find something to say. He did tell me once or twice that I could be silent if I wanted.

Comically enough, I remember being aware of his breathing. I could hear this. Occasionally, I would detect this subtle change in his breathing that I recognised as him having nodded off. I'm spouting great pearls of revealing insights into my psyche and my therapist is having a snooze. This began to make me think that this "extended" process of therapy I had decided to try out was more like my interpretation of my first time in therapy. It was self-indulgent, maybe narcissistic and at the end of day, was it really a question of doing your stuff or getting off the pot. Remember that this was just me talking. I don't think he ever interjected anything. I just talked and talked and talked.

In session number twenty-nine, my penultimate session, I had the most extraordinary experience. It was so memorable; I recall it today like it was yesterday. I think this was for me the pinnacle of defining moments of my whole time in therapy. It was around the thirty minute mark. I was talking about heavens knows what, staring up at the ceiling when all of a sudden, in some sort of lull when I was catching my breath, the psychiatrist said something. Please keep in mind that for all these sessions he had been dead quiet while I was on the couch so him saying something was not just unusual, it was unexpected. He asked me this question, "When you were a little boy, did you worry about the size of your c**k?"

Have you ever had one of those moments when somebody says something to you but it doesn't register at first? The words are uttered, but you don't comprehend them. Then in your mind, you rewind this mental recording of those words so you can double check that what was said was in fact what your heard.

I lay there staring at the ceiling. I was dumbfounded. There was this moment of silence during which I didn't speak and the psychiatrist didn't say anything else. First of all, I was absolutely stunned that he had used the word "c**k". He had spoken so rarely that the fact he opened his mouth was stunning enough. But to have used this profanity? It was like having a bucket of freezing cold water dumped on you.

My next thought was, "It's come to this." All of a sudden, the absurdity of this therapy had this big, fat light shining on it. S**t or get off the pot. If I don't do something, if I don't implement my remedial plan, he's going to eventually link this back to some childhood memory about me feeling inadequate about the size of my manliness. Or would have it been at that age boyliness?

If I had been standing up, I probably would have made that gesture which means, "Oh brother" by rolling my eyes and slapping myself on the forehead. If I had been sitting, I would have leaned forward, tilted my head down then covered my forehead with my hand while uttering something like "Oh my gawd." As I was lying on the couch, I was silent for a moment then said, "No" as if I was responding to some sort of normal, regular question. "Would you like cream with your coffee?" No. "Do you think it's going to rain today?" No. "When you were a little boy, did you worry about the size of your c**k?"

At the end of the very last session, I remember him saying to me something about me now understanding how breakthroughs came about; how the process allowed the patient to arrive at conclusions about themselves. I suppose, but I couldn't help thinking there was an open-endedness to the process which failed to push a patient to face the facts and then move on. Of course, not every patient is the same but here I was thinking specifically about myself. Sometimes we need therapy; sometimes we need a kick in the ass?

This may look like I'm against therapy. I'm not. Going back to the beginning of this article, I did say that sometimes we need an unbiased professional eye. I suppose I could also add, and this is from experience, that we should all recognise that the fireside chat we may want to have with a member of the family or with a close friend may be going beyond the bounds of what an informal chat may be able to do. In fact, it may be so far beyond the bounds of that informal chat, we could very well be taking advantage of the good graces of the other person. In other words, we need a professional. Let's spare the family and friends and go to a pro.

I'm currently in the middle of another traumatic episode of my life. I went to therapy for the first time in almost 30 years forking over $100 per week to talk it out with a paid professional for about 5 months. It is interesting how talking to a live human being can be helpful. I know that I sometimes talk out loud to help me work through an idea or practise a speech, but talking to another person can be very therapeutic.

At the end of two grand though, I found myself back to the idea of do it or get off the pot. I could talk from here to tomorrow, but at some point I have do something. Doing something may mean implementing a remedial course of action or it may mean accepting what is beyond our powers to change. The sun is going to come up in the morning and there is nothing I can do about it. The sooner I accept this fact, the sooner I will be able to move on.

The following may be considered as corny by some, but I think it is very applicable.

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change things that I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.


References

Wikipedia: Therapy

Wikipedia: Psychotherapy

Wikipedia: Counseling

Wikipedia: Serenity Prayer

2011-03-30

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Star of the hit television series Two and a Half Men. Played opposite Michael Douglas in the 1987 movie Wall Street. Currently the highest paid actor on television at $1.8 million per episode. That's me 23 years ago?

[chuckles] Well, not quite. Ha! Not even close. However, all of the papers have been full of stories about Sheen, interviews given by Sheen and tabloid pictures of Sheen which have painted an unflattering portrait of a man possessed by a runaway addictive personality. Alcohol, drugs and sex, not necessarily in that order, have taken a hold of dear old Chuck and he has no idea of which way is up whether he realises it or not. I'm seen the interviews. Believe me, he's hasn't got a clue.

Just this past February 8th, I celebrated 23 years of sobriety, Now I'm sure any of you who continue to trip the light fantastic may be thinking this could be the start of a holier than thou diatribe against the evil of spirits and a rant about the merits of the Women's Christian Temperance Union and the reinstatement of prohibition. Nothing could be further from the truth. I buy alcohol; I serve it; I do my part to let wine breath properly by decanting it and try in assist in the creation of a good pairing of grape and entrée. My expertise in this area is admittedly limited but my point is that what I choose to do is in no way a factor in determining how others choose to imbibe. My choice is a personal one.

However, a person who suffers from an addiction can be just as loony when they're sober as when they're high. Yep, you heard me. Being addicted to alcohol and/or drugs can change your thinking; some call it the alcoholic thinking. Charlie Sheen has all the classic symptoms. He's got it good, but he's ungrateful. He wants more; he's never satisfied or satiated for that matter. He's not at fault; any problem has been caused by somebody else.

As I read the columns in various publications, I know that Charlie's days are numbered. If Time Magazine is going to refer to him as a "class-A tool", I am certain that his employers are going to begin question the profit margin on a commodity which is looking more like a liability. And this is a burdensome liability which is not getting any cheaper. Sheen is getting $1.8 million per episode right now and is shooting his mouth off about demanding $3 million for the next season. Guess what? No one is irreplaceable and all good things must come to an end.

Robert Downey Jr., right in the middle of starring in the television series Ally McBeal for which he was nominated for an Emmy in 2001, gets fired and is written out of the show because he is arrested for drugs not once but twice!



Conan O'Brien Goodbye Speech - May 11, 2010



References

Wikipedia: Charlie Sheen

The New York Times: Famous, With Foot in Mouth
By Alessandra Stanley - Feb 28/2011
Troubled politicians and celebrities often turn to television and radio to retune their images radically — it’s a One Step program to persuade themselves of their own powers of persuasion. And self-delusion has no borders.
...
Mr. Sheen’s grandiose rants on the nation’s two leading morning talk shows — and via live stream on the gossip Web site TMZ — were more unmoored than most, but he showed all the usual symptoms of an insulated star with an unreasoned belief in his own invulnerability.

Asked if he was bipolar, Mr. Sheen said he was “bi-winning.”

That he only made himself look worse isn’t exactly new. Mr. Sheen, who spoke out after CBS suspended production of his hit television sitcom, “Two and a Half Men,” follows in the unsteady footsteps of Tom Cruise and his 2005 diatribe against psychiatry, Ritalin and Brooke Shields. There were echoes of Michael Jackson’s infamous 2003 interview with Martin Bashir in which he described sharing a bed with children at the Neverland ranch, and also of Whitney Houston, who in 2002 denied to Diane Sawyer that she used crack. (“Crack is whack,” she said.)

2011-02-28

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On October 23, 2010, #1 Nana became a senior citizen when she turned 60. "It seems like it wasn’t so long ago that I wasn’t trusting anyone over thirty…and now I’m twice that age." Ah, now doesn't that make you stop and have a look in the mirror. Time marches on and what the heck are we going to do about it? I remember hearing somebody say something to the effect that we're all going to go through life once. We can go kicking and screaming, but we're going to go through it once.

However, a little humour is necessary to ease the burden and maybe ease the pain. After all, you might as well laugh as it feels better than crying. #1 Nana writes:

The spouse and I took a cruise in September. The boat was filled with older people. It came as a shock to me when, in a brief moment of enlightenment, I realized that they weren't older people, they were my peer group. I am a senior.

A friend of mine called 60 the start of the 4th quarter. His football metaphor - Or was it a simile? - clearly pointed out that we better fit it in now as this is pretty much our last kick at the can. Okay, that sounds a little ominous - We ain't dead yet! - but he certainly meant that we better stop saying, "One of these days, I'm going to get around to doing..." That day has come. Check your bucket list then put on your parachute and jump. (see my blog Parachuting: If God had meant me to...)

What I find so utterly amusing about this age is the experience and (supposed) wisdom one has in doing the everyday things we all do. A twenty something laughs at a "new" joke while I'm thinking that joke has been around since the beginning of time; it's just recycled, rebranded and repackaged. A twenty something looks at me as being "old" not realising that once, I was twenty years old too. A twenty something may be polite with me watching his choice of language not knowing that I grew up in the era of George Carlin's Seven Words You Can't Say On Television. The twenty year thinks that because I don't use my Twitter account as much as he does that somehow I am completely out of touch with life.

#1 Nana, as a retirement project, decided, like myself, to do some blogging and share her experiences and valuable insights with the rest of the (online) world. She got me laughing about a 60 year old dealing with a teenager.

According to her posting "WTF Wednesday: Nana Gets a $1.00 and a Boner", Nana has retired but is doing some substituting at a middle school. For those not in the know, this is a junior high school, grades 6 or 7 to grades 8 or 9 depending on the locale.

I immediately knew I would like Nana because I just love an educated, experienced, up-front woman who is not afraid to drop the F bomb. Tell it like it is, baby!

Apparently, a young gentleman was setting the rest of the class all in titters by showing off a one dollar bill on which he had written in large letters the letter B preceding the word "ONE" and the letter R just after it to form BONER. What caught my eye was that I still remember with some fondness (and embarrassment?) this silly type of off-colour humour which was the stable of the pre and post-pubescent ages of both middle and high schools. We thought we were utterly brilliant while anybody over the age of 18 considered us to be absolutely "retarded". - Anybody remember George Carlin riffing on how kids would snicker at saying something like "cockroach", a non profanity which just sounds dirty?


Nana's picture of this dollar bill is just hilarious and I am thoroughly amused that she would take a photo of it and publish it along with her story in her blog. Of course, she took the bill away from the student to keep order in the class but she did promise to give it back: I told him to have his mother stop by to see me and I was perfectly happy to give it back to her, after he explained to his mother the significance of the writing on the back.

It gets better. In her next "WTF Wednesday" published a week later, she tells of how the students discovered her blog and started leaving comments. While some of the comments are supposed to deliver a certain angry condemnation of the dollar bill being confiscated, they come across as being funny in their stupidity and ineffective communication. I like how the owner of the dollar bill posts his comment anonymously then turns around and writes a message which clearly indicates who he is. Smile for the CCTV.

So cold, so deep.
It just occurred to me; I had completely forgotten about this. Some of the Canadian bills have a picture of Queen Elizabeth on them. The older bills, dating back to around 1970 had a different picture and there was a way of folding them over so you could cover up part of the Queen's face leaving her cheeks exposed in a manner that looked like bare buttocks. Maybe this is slightly more creative than BONER but I suppose I would publish it in the same book of "(Dumbass) High School Pranks I Thought Made Me Look Like A Genius".

Nevertheless, this posting is to talk about it being never too late to be juvenile. A couple of years ago, at the ripe old age of 57, I go into the men's room to find a colleague, Roger, standing at one of the urinals. I silently take my place just next to him and we both stand there staring at the wall doing our business, all without talking. After 20 seconds of silence, Roger quietly says, "Boy, is the water ever cold."

Out of context, out of the blue like that, I'm not sure I understand what he is talking about. My mind races over the company we work for, the business we do together, our projects, etc. but comes up empty. Then there is this glimmer of recognition; this vague memory which had remained untouched, dormant for how long? Thirty years? Thirty-five years? Something from high school when we guys would make not brilliant but illuminating references to our genitalia. Yes, the remarks were not necessarily brilliant but they were illuminating about our post-pubescent fixation on being a man, scoring with girls and the size of our equipment. Could it be? Could Roger be making a reference to something from high school? I wasn't sure.

As I mull all of this over, another good ten seconds passes in complete silence until Roger once again speaks as softly as he did the first time. "And it's deep too."

I realise that yes, he is making a reference to life in high school. I cracked up. I started laughing so hard I'm surprised I didn't pee down my pant leg. The juxtaposition of two fifty-seven year old grown and supposedly mature men standing at the urinals and saying some high school joke about the size of one's equipment was the height of absurdity. I honestly had not heard anybody, any man say such a thing since high school when I must have been 16 or 17 years old. It was now over forty years later.

Roger can be a very funny guy. And yes, once in a while we will break from our moulds, a pair of now fifty-seven year old supposedly mature men, to make some juvenile joke about... well, I don't think we've said "boner" but I'm sure I wouldn't put it pass us.

Final Word
Are you ever too old? I guess a little humour is always called for. And sometimes a WTF doesn't hurt either.

A few years ago, a friend and I were sitting out on a terrace having a cup of coffee as we watched various people walk by. Please picture two 53 year old men. At one moment, a rather attractive young lady of 25 walked by. I leaned over to my friend and said quietly, "Hey Dennis. Look at that woman over there. She's wants it. [a pregnant pause] Just not from us."

Yep, you're never too old to be juvenile or maybe that just means you're never too old to be silly.


References

Benchmark 60
Serving the Blogosphere since 1/3/2010
I retired this past year. I hadn't really thought about what to do next; I just knew it was time to do something different. I will turn 60 this coming year. Both events seem like benchmarks in my life. Shouldn't I have some insight or well-won sense of purpose by now?

2011-02-24

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Is there anything else which so fundamentally sets women and men apart? Men are standing on Mars; women are sitting on Venus.

According to Wikipedia: Toilet seat: "Up or down" debate:

While males are used to raising the seat, females are not. Females do not typically raise the seat for anything other than cleaning, which generates debate among cohabiting members of the opposite sex. Frequently, males are expected by female users to ensure that the seat is always lowered after use. A toilet seat tab can be used to alleviate this problem by reminding males to put it down for females and makes it cleaner and easier to lift/lower the seat.

Another line of reasoning holds that the appearance of the toilet, and by extension the bathroom, is more aesthetically pleasing when the lid is left down between uses, conforming to the designed appearance of the toilet.

Leave it down out of love
Put the toilet seat down by Larry James - June 2004
Come on, guys! Maybe it's time to be a little more considerate. Like paying attention to the little things.
...
Indifference is like water to a fire. The flame of love grows dim with indifference to your partner's needs. By far the most common and important way in which you can exercise your attention to your partner is by listening. Listening is an act of love.
...
Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes. So, maybe it's time to make the best use of your time to show your partner that you are sensitive to the little things.
...
I encourage the men in my seminars to use their bathroom experience as an opportunity to ponder the thought that... "Foreplay begins with putting the toilet seat down without being asked!"
...
Or... as a comedian once said, "Avoid arguments with the Mrs. about lifting the toilet seat by using the sink." (Not recommended!)

The Scientific Analysis
In the paper "Up or Down? A Male Economist’s Manifesto on the Toilet Seat Etiquette" which smells of academia with a whiff of tongue-in-cheek, Jay Pil Choi of the Department of Economics at Michigan State University goes after the issue with a systematic fervour. He carefully examines all sides of the argument with not only unbiased meticulousness but arithmetic precision.

In this paper, I investigate whether there is any justification for the down rule based on economic efficiency.4 I find that the down rule is inefficient unless there is large asymmetry in the inconvenience costs of shifting the position of the toilet seat across genders. I show that the “selfish” or the “status quo” rule that leaves the toilet seat in the position used dominates the down rule in a wide range of parameter spaces including the case where the inconvenience costs are the same. The intuition for this result is easy to understand. Imagine a situation in which the aggregate frequency of toilet usage is the same across genders, i.e., the probability that any visitor will be male is ½. With the down rule, each male visit is associated with lifting the toilet seat up before use and lowering it down after use, with the inconvenience costs being incurred twice. With the selfish rule, in contrast, the inconvenience costs are incurred once and only when the previous visitor is a member of different gender. The worst case under the selfish rule would occur when the sex of the toilet visitor strictly alternates in each usage. Even in this case, the total inconvenience costs would be the same as those under the down rule if the costs are symmetric. If there is any possibility that consecutive users are from the same gender, the selfish rule strictly dominates the down rule since it keeps the option value of not incurring any inconvenience costs in such an event. This logic can be extended to the case of asymmetric aggregate frequency of toilet usage across genders.

Mr. Choi has tackled his subject with the utmost objectivity and scientific methodology. Being an economist, the author goes after his elusive "correct answer" with all the analytic skills at his disposal leading him to produce such explanatory equations as:


I don't know if this constitutes a macroeconomic view within the framework of the Keynesian model or a more classical Marxian labour of value analysis but whatever it is, anything which makes use of indexes and exponents along with Greek letters impresses the heck out of me.

I do make note of three compelling reasons to leave the seat down in one of the footnotes found in the paper:

Internet search generated the following non-economic/scientific reasons for the down rule. First, there is an argument that being considerate to one’s love partner’s needs supports things going well in and out of the bedroom. To quote a phrase in the internet (available at http://www.celebratelove.com/littlethings.htm), “Foreplay begins with putting the toilet seat down without being asked!” Second, it is not good Feng-Shi to leave the toilet seats up. Third, a toilet is not the most attractive household appliance. Closing the lid improves its appearance and prevents things from falling into the bowl. The last argument, however, proposes not only the seat down but also the lid down.

In his concluding remarks, Mr. Choi states that the "selfish rule" is the best and gives what I think is a perfect alternative example: the car seat. In a family where all members share an automobile, each driver adjusts the seat according to their preference when they get in the car. They do not re-adjust the seat when they are finished because arguably, no one knows who the next driver is going to be.

Other opinions
A web site called "The International Center for Bathroom Etiquette" with the slogan "Performing #1 and #2 in comfort since 1995" discusses the problem in their article "Seat Up, Seat Down" and arrives at the conclusion that down is the correct answer.

Somebody by the name of "moJoe" in an article entitled "I will REMOVE the f**king toilet seat if you don't shut up" ponders how anybody can fall into the toilet when the seat is up. Didn't you look to see if the seat was down? He tells of how he fell into the toilet at the tender age of seven and ever since this traumatic and embarrassing experience, he has faithfully verified the position of the seat before embarking on any activity.

The author Jerry Zeinfeld in his article "Keeping it equal" has hit upon an option which levels the playing field for everyone involved.

Keeping on the topic of the bathroom.  I am tired of hearing women bitching complaining about “leaving the toilet seat down”.  And more importantly hearing men complain that they don’t want to do it.

Know what I do?  I put the seat and the cover down after I go.

That way no one has the advantage.

Final Word
Men are standing on Mars; women are sitting on Venus. Oh gawd, I am so tempted to mention the seventh planet.

Personally - I know you are dying to find out what I do - I always sit. As somebody pointed out, there's less to clean up. It's neater and cleaning up afterwards is merely a flush away.

For me, the issue is resolved. However for anybody who wants to continue to argue, my response is this: Instead of dancing around the issue, I think I'll sit this one out.


References

Wikipedia: Toilet seat

Scientific paper
The social norm of leaving the toilet seat down: A game theoretic analysis
by Siddiqi, Hammad - Nov 2006

Scientific paper
The Troublesome Toilet Seat: Up or Down? Three Schemes
by Anand Venkataraman - May 1999
Speech Technology and Research Lab, SRI International

blog: Life, and why it sucks by Infidel, Australia
I shouldn't have to put the seat down! I DEMAND EQUALITY!
This female blogger argues for the seat being down. I'm not sure what "equality" has to do with it but considering her wrath, I'm going to make sure I always put it down. Rule: pick a fight you're going to win. :-)

my blog: Another Great Debate: Toilet Paper over the roll or under

2011-01-21

Site Map: William Quincy Belle

Canada's Federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq announced today, Thursday, December 30, 2010 new requirements for warning labels on cigarette packs. Newspapers have reported that the new warnings will be more graphic covering 75 per cent of the pack and include a phone number for a quit-smoking hotline. The current anti-smoking warnings take up 50 per cent of the packaging.

An example of a new warning prominently features a picture of a woman who clearly is in the last throes of cancer. She appears wasted and boney; the disease having ravaged her flesh. It is a frightening image of a not pleasant death and it is an image which makes me want to turn away and look elsewhere. Who is this woman?

Barb Tarbox was just another person like you or me. She was born on April 10, 1961 and notably but unfortunately was a smoker all her life. She died on May 18, 2003 at the age of 42 having succumbed to cancer which had infected both her lungs and her brain. Before her death, she decided to do something noble with the remainder of her life by talking frankly with people about her illness and the circumstances which lead up to her condition. She apparently admitted that even after finding out she had cancer, she still could not quit smoking.

A photojournalist from The Edmonton Journal, Greg Southam was given the assignment of taking pictures of Ms. Tarbox's last days. Some of those photos are published on the web by the Canadian Association of Journalists. As well, David Staples, a reporter for The Edmonton Journal teamed up with Mr. Southam to write a book Barb’s Miracle: How Barb Tarbox Transformed Her Deadly Cancer Into A Lifesaving Crusade. Mr. Staples has recently written an article about his experience talking about Mr. Southam's pictures and his recording of Ms. Tarbox's final days.

According to the reporters, Ms. Tarbox wanted to serve as an example, a warning of the dangers of smoking. She wanted the images of her and of her sickness to be used as anti-smoking publicity in the hopes she could in death dissuade others from smoking when she herself could not. She wanted people to see, to understand and to appreciate that cancer was a possibility and it could happen to anybody.

My mother: a personal story
My mother died in 1996 at the age of 66. She had smoked from the age of 14, a span of 52 years. Her cancer started in her lungs, spread to her brain then ended up in her liver. A vibrant woman in life, she had wasted to a scant 84 pounds (38 kg). She had but 6 months from the first diagnosis to her death.

When she first announced her cancer, it was a family meal in August 1995 out on the patio in the backyard. I remember the announcement as being somewhat surreal. I heard the news; I'm not sure I fully grasped the significance.

Over the next few months, I came from out of town to visit several times a month. I remember one time when I was about to leave to start my 2 hour drive home, I hugged my mother and said, "I'm going to miss you." My mother replied, "I know." We both knew we were not talking about me leaving to go home; we were talking about her dying.

In the final weeks, my mother was so weak, she could no longer walk. My father had set up a bed on the main floor of my parents' home so my mother no longer had to attempt to climb the stairs. The doctor had her taking methadone pills to combat the ever-present pain. My mother didn't seem to be lucid and I didn't know whether this was from the constant pain, the medication or both.

At one point, my mother was moaning and I asked her if she was in pain. She sort of said yes so I decided to give her another one of the methadone tablets. My father was worried that this wasn't following the doctor's prescription and methadone was addictive. I'm smiling about this now but at the time I said to him a little exasperated, "Who cares? She's dying!"

After she died, we held a funeral and the community came out to say good-bye to her and wish the rest of us well. That evening, we had a family dinner where we tried to comfort one another and carry on the tradition of eating together but this time, minus one.

At some point during the evening, I asked my sister, my brother and my sister-in-law outside for a private talk. All three of them smoked. They had done so since their teenage years just like Mom. I told all three of them that yes, it was up to them to continue or not but I wanted to remind all three of them that our mother died from smoking. They graciously accepted my "speech" as the tone of it was that I was just a little ticked of being deprived of my mother by something which was totally preventable.

As I write this, it is 2010, 14 years later. Not one of them has stopped smoking. Now am I one to get on my high horse and berate them? I am an alcoholic and I drank like a fish for about ten years until I had the luck, the good fortune to stop. I will be shortly celebrating 23 years of sobriety but I do remember the merry-go-round and the difficulties of getting off. Addiction isn't fun.

The bunch of us from the family have about another 9 or 10 years until we all reach the age of 66, the age of my mother when she died. What's going to happen? It's inevitable that we are all going to die sooner or later; the question is whether or not we are going to be checking out naturally or thanks to the big C. I have joked over the years that being the non smoker of the family, I have inhaled gawd only knows how much second hand smoke. The irony of it all would be that instead of anybody else I get cancer. Now wouldn't that be a laugh? I would be the very first to look up to the heavens and say, "Good one. You are hilarious!"

Don't think of that as me being morbidly funny. Heather Crowe (1945-2006) was a Canadian who also got involved in an anti-smoking campaign when she contracted lung cancer. However she had never smoked. She claimed this was from the second-hand smoke she encountered in her job as waitress over 40 years.

Speaking about "cosmic jokes", I am reminded of the story of Chuck from high school. He was a heroin addict and I mean the worst kind. A nice enough guy but he took to stealing from everybody including his friends to support his habit. He was completely out of control.

He showed up at a stoner party once and told me he had been up for 8 days straight on drugs. Man, is it possible to stay awake for 8 days without sleeping? Heck!

Finally, Chuck gets himself off the drug; he gets straighten out and puts his life back on track. At the age of thirty, he is holding down a good job with a construction company and being a responsible citizen. One day, he's driving a bulldozer and the machine slips on an incline then rolls over crushing Chuck to death. When I heard the news, I laughed at the cosmic joke. Chuck had been to hell and back because of his addiction to smack and it ends up he gets his life snuffed out early in a freak accident.

Final Word
Life is precious and it is short. Every moment needs to be savoured, treasured and valued beyond gold or diamond. If Barb's picture stops one person from smoking, it will be worth it. I know she's not going to stop my brother, my sister and my sister-in-law: too bad, so sad. My father died two days short of his 80th birthday. I would rate that as a good, long life. My mother died at 66 and I would say she lost out in comparison with my Dad. Hmmm, now that I think about it, I would say that I lost out too. I was deprived of my mother early when I should have had her for another 14 years.

According to reports, Ms. Tarbox's photos have made their way south to the United States and are being considered there for an anti-smoking campaign. Others see the graphic nature of the images of her final days as a hopeful deterrent in the effort to sway a population from the life altering choice of lighting up. I certainly remember the final days of my mother and it is not a pretty sight to watch the human body being consumed alive by a ravenous disease that spares nothing during its unstoppable journey.

If you smoke, I sincerely wish you the best in your efforts to stop. Addiction is not a easy thing to wrestle to the ground. I know; I speak from experience. Remember that an addiction will kill you and just because you didn't die today, doesn't mean that sooner or later that day will not come. It's inevitable.


References

Wikipedia: Barb Tarbox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barb_Tarbox

Barb's Miracle by Greg Southam, The Edmonton Journal
Photographs of Barb's last days
http://caj.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/mediamag/awards2004/cajAwards/theAwards/08_photoJ/Miracle/pages/00.html

The story behind Greg Southam's renowned deathbed photograph of anti-smoking crusader Barb Tarbox
By David Staples Wed, Nov 10 2010
http://communities.canada.com/edmontonjournal/blogs/commons/archive/2010/11/10/the-story-behind-greg-southam-s-deathbed-photograph-of-barb-tarbox.aspx

Wikipedia: Heather Crowe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Crowe

2010-12-30

Site Map: William Quincy Belle

I have an on-going joke about resolving to do something in the New Year.

Somebody: So, what's your resolution for the coming year?

Me: I'm going to quit smoking.

Somebody [frowning with a perplexed look]: Ah... but I thought you didn't smoke?

Me: I don't but I always like to start with something easy then work my way up to the more difficult.

How many times just before the clock strikes midnight have I said to myself under my breath that I promise to do such and such a thing? Has it worked? In reflecting back on these moments, I can't say one way or another whether I've made a promise I've kept or whether I've even made a promise which was as specific as something like quitting to smoke. I think that generally these promises have been of a more vague nature like "be happier", "try harder", or "save more money". Okay, I suppose "save more money" could actually be quantified so if I put together a spreadsheet and start tracking this in the coming year, maybe I can come back at the end of the next year with some perceptible pecuniary proof of my promise being kept. - Sorry, I couldn't think of a "p" version of "being kept" to keep my alliteration going for five P's; I'll have to be content with four.

The other two resolutions, "be happier" and "try harder" are vague, unquantifiable, the type of promise which may be construed as not really being a promise. They are more of the warm and fuzzy type of thing one says to make everybody feel good, a politically correct thing to say in company which at the end of the day, do not necessarily translate into anything concrete. You can't take that one to the bank.

As I look through some articles penned by various journalists, most of them of an amusing slant on the end of the year tradition, I find this comical take by one lady who talks cynically of her own resolutions by saying that most are broken by day three and discarded by day seven. I suppose that if we start with something vague like "be happier", this is very true but what about "save more money"?

The Wealthy Barber
I recently reviewed this book and would remind everybody that one resolution you should make and keep for the New Year would be reading that book and getting your financial house in order. This isn't just for the coming year; this should be for the rest of your life. And one thing which is attractive about this resolution is that it is quantifiable; it is something which you will be able to sum up and at the end of the year you will have a "total" on which you can reflect.

In that article, I talked about creating a spreadsheet for yourself where you could track your finances. For me, I have a simple sheet divided into two sections: my income and my expenses. Of course, the section on income is simple: it is merely my pay check deposited in my bank account every two weeks. However I have the sheet set up in columns with the headings of the columns marked with the date of the event in question. Consequently, I have columns corresponding to the deposit of my pay so I know exactly on what date I get my moo-la.

The bigger section is my expenses and once again I have columns showing the date of an expense. By glancing at the columns, I can easily see the dates of when any expense is due whether it is a mortgage payment or paying off my VISA. The most important aspect of doing this is that I can see what's coming up in the near future. If I have to pay off my VISA this coming Monday and I can see the cost is $400, I know that I should be judicious in what I spend for the rest of the week and the weekend knowing that I have to have $400 next Monday. Without this overview, I'm not sure how I could keep track of my cash flow and how I could respect my obligations.

I ofttimes read in the newspapers about how many can't seem to control their finances and find themselves in debt especially debt on their credit card. Without some sort of means of tracking my finances, I assume I'd have my own situation messed up and I could even find myself borrowing on my credit card. Actually, I'm not sure calling it "borrowing on your credit card" is an accurate description. I believe people just don't have enough at the end of the month to pay off the entire balance and consequently just make the minimum payment. Okay, that sort of gets you into the next month but has anybody who does this checked at the rate of interest? It's astronomical! Avoid that like the plague.

Enough preaching
Okay, I started off wanting to say something amusing about resolutions but then got off on a bit of a tangent about something practical in which I strongly believe. Money may be the root of all evil but it is certainly a nice thing to have on a rainy day or any day for that matter. Ha!

So for you, what else? Go on a diet? Finish that project? Quit smoking? All are laudable resolutions and I wish you the best of luck in getting past day number three. Just don't forget reading The Wealthy Barber. That is a resolution you can take with you to the bank.

Final Word
This year, I'm going to hold a Monty Python New Year, meaning "And now for something completely different." I've decided to ring in the New Year by myself. I've decided to spend this final time of the year by myself to reflect on both the past year and the coming year in some vain attempt of figuring out all the great issues of cosmic importance concerning my place in the universe. - Wow, now is that profound or what? - I'll have my thumbed copy of the Wealthy Barber open for consultation as I work through my spreadsheet playing "What if?" scenarios to try and figure out either how destitute I'll be when I retire or whether I can afford gold leaf on my bathroom fixtures. Either way, I'll keep a window cracked so I can listen for anybody in the neighbourhood yelling "Happy New Year!" out their window at the stroke of midnight.

In returning to my opening and my "easy" resolution, I will leave you with one final question for this end of the year extravaganza:

Anybody got a light?


Some suggested resolutions
A few items of interest from my blog you may want to consider for the coming year's "promises to self".

Death-defying feat: Parachuting: If God had meant me to...
I didn't realise how influential I am. This past October 8, I did a tandem parachute jump and shared my pictures afterwards with my colleagues at work. One of them just told me he has "resolved" to bestow a gift on his daughter for her birthday this spring which will involve the two of them doing a skydive at the same club I visited. Ah, a brave soul indeed!

Exotic Vacation: Egypt
How about a vacation in someplace you've never been before? My wife arranged for us to spend 2 weeks in the land of the pharaohs and I can qualify this as one of the most fabulous trips I've ever taken.

Unusual activity: Sedona: Hot Air Ballooning
You don't have to go all the way to Sedona to do this but believe me, it is a very nice part of the United States to visit. I talk about taking my very first trip in a hot air balloon and it is quite the experience. Check out some of my links; you can do this near to Toronto.

Something for Couples: Ballroom Dancing: A metaphor for men and women?
I talk about my wife and me taking ballroom dance lessons. One, two, three, cha-cha-cha. Yes, how about something for both you and your partner?

2010-12-28

Site Map: William Quincy Belle

I think the first time I heard this word was about 7 or 8 years ago when an American woman visiting the family brought one for an outdoor patio meal. I smile at how the Americans love to mangle the English language in search for new words, new formations, and new abbreviations, whatever. I rolled my eyes at the word and said to myself, "Now what?"

I listened to the description of how a chicken is stuffed inside a duck which is then stuffed inside a turkey: tur(key) - duck - (chick)en. WTH? What the heck? I'm sorry; this just sounded a tad bizarre. However being a brave man I stepped right up to the table with my plate and served myself up a helping. My impression? I don't think my palette could quite figure out just what it was tasting. There seemed to be such a mishmash of flavours. Was I eating chicken? Was I eating duck? My brain had an expectation of something but what the taste buds were reporting back to it didn't match the brain's memories of that flavour.

In the end, I can't say I was partial to the dish. I love chicken; I love duck; I love turkey but all mixed together? I didn't know what to taste. Now granted, that was just one recipe. Are there others? The Internet seems to have scads of them so maybe one of these other recipes may make a believer out of me but at the moment, I am remaining sceptical. Oh and I'm not dismissing this because of just one go with the triple bird. I had another occasion to taste this woman's culinary artistry regarding this dish and the second time didn't leave me panting for more. I'm not sure if my reaction is strange as it seems there are people who swear by this dish. Beats me why.

Nevertheless, my research into this dish leads me to rethink this as something more popular or mainstream then I initially thought. After all, Paul Prudhomme, the American celebrity chef has a recipe for this which would give the dish an air of legitimacy. This isn't just some screwball I-got-drunk-one-night-and-thought-three-birds-would-be-funny meal. In fact, it seems that the whole idea of cooking more than one bird or more than one animal together has been around for a long, long time; centuries if not millenniums back to the Romans.

Apparently the roasting of several birds or animals has been documented for centuries. The only restriction for some of this cooking is that it was more for the wealthy. Hmmm, not everybody could afford three birds at once? What, they had turduck? Or ducken? Or maybe turken? [laughs]

Wikipedia's article on turducken talks of a company called Hebert's Specialty Meats in Maurice, Louisiana where supposed this dish started in America. According to a story, a local farmer brought in his birds and asked the company to prepare them a certain way and the company has continued since 1985 to make the dish. Their web site says they sell about 3,300 turduckens per year.

I see that there are variations on this dish. A "gooducken" is a chicken stuffed in a duck which is stuffed in a goose. In England, there are various multi-bird roasts including a five-bird roast: a goose, a turkey, a chicken, a pheasant, and a pigeon, stuffed with sausage.

Some newspapers have run stories about how people, in search of something new for the holiday season have decided to replace the traditional turkey with a turducken. Really? Is this thing catching on? Other than the American woman, I've never been anywhere else when somebody has offered me that dish. For me, it seems like a rarity.

Then again, maybe the world has moved on to something else. According to this Twitter entry:

Turducken stories are out of date. This year's hot trend is turducklambhamcowen.

O... M... G... ! :-)


References

Wikipedia: Turducken
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turducken

Wikipedia: Whole Stuffed Camel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_stuffed_camel

About.Com: How to Make Turducken Recipe - Step by Step Recipe
http://homecooking.about.com/od/turkeyrecipes/ss/turduckensbs.htm

Turducken by Chef Paul Prudhomme
http://www.chefpaul.com/site.php?pageID=300&view=186

2010-12-16

Site Map: William Quincy Belle

As a blogger, I am shamelessly looking for ways to promote myself. Yeah, my thoughts are important to me and maybe the rest of the world needs to find out just how important those thoughts are! ... Sorry, I do get a little self-absorbed at times. "Hi, how am I?"

I discovered there are various apps which set up feeds from a blog to Facebook or Twitter. Ah, cool! So I set up one for each.

Here's me on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/WilliamQuincyBelle

And here's me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/wqbelle

As you can see, the entries in Facebook and Twitter are merely a summary of my blog entries with a link back to the original entry. What's nifty for me is that all I have to do is publish a new blog entry then a short time later, the app kicks in, reads my new entry and updates my Facebook account and my Twitter account. I don't have to do anything; it's all automatic.

Of course, now that I've done this, what does it mean? Do I now have people beating down my virtual door attracted by my literary skills and transfixed at my pearls of wisdom? Hardly. In fact, I wonder if anybody has run across my stuff on either one of these social networks at all. Certainly the number of page views per day of my blog is still nothing to write home about. I remain a legend in my own mind.

However I have had a few callers which have turned out to be odd to say the least. On Facebook, I have had 2 so called females soliciting me for what I can only guess would be a "good time" and on Twitter, I've now had 8 other so called females offering their own "personal video". Are these being sent out one at a time by a human being or is there some sort of robot which is capable of finding then contacting the various accounts in these two systems? I like to think I'm popular but I know I'm not that popular like a rock star to have totally unknown females throwing themselves at my feet. Let's not forget that if you change just one consonant in "spam", you end up with "scam". A fool and his money are soon parted. A fool with a libido and his money are soon parted.

The first Facebook message with the picture of a cute young girl called Estelle Gonzalez was (I left in the spelling errors):


What? How did anybody even find me? The account is so new I can't even imagine how anybody could run across my name by chance.

Block sender. [chuckles] I just looked back on this message - it's now 6 weeks later - and the picture is gone and there seems to be no account anymore. I guess if you don't catch any fish, you take your line out of the water and go home.

Just now in my Gmail account, I have received an email entitled, "Marla is now following you on Twitter!" I open the email and read the following


I go to my Twitter account and look at my "followers". Sure enough, there is an entry marked Marlame56 telling me to go see "My - new super-sexy video _ - http://tinyurl.com/Marlame56".

For starters, I'm not interested. Second, this has to be about 10th time I have received one of these emails in the past 2 weeks. One evening I had 4 of them over the space of 2 hours. Brittneysa57, Elizabethwi48, Jessica5476, Agnespu27, Glendaki33, they just keep showing up all with references about their new super-sexy video. Just a tad annoying.

Final Word
The sex sellers are everywhere. Gawd, they're in my email - although Gmail does some great blocking - and now in Facebook and Twitter. Stop it! No more "super-sexy videos"! Give me a break!

Hmmm, does IM actually stand for I masturbate?

Update
In the past couple of days, I have got up in the morning to find some emails in Gmail telling me that so-and-so is following me in Twitter. I go look at my account and don't find any new names. I go back to the email and click on the name to discover that the account has been suspended. Ha! Obviously somebody else has reported this spammer and they are now toast.

Open Salon
There's another blogging system called Open Salon. I discovered they also have an automatic connector from my blog to their system. I've set it up and now all my blog entries are also posted into this system. Yes, it is merely a copy of my blog but hopefully it may get me a little more exposure.

http://open.salon.com/blog/wqbelle


2010-12-10

Site Map - William Quincy Belle

Follow me on Twitter

"The Better Way", the slogan of the TTC, the Toronto Transit Commission, is a recommendation for anyone in town. In the city, a car is not an asset, it is a liability. Parking can be limited and if available, it can be expensive. However, given the proximity of almost anything you want, shops, cinema, restaurants, who needs a car? Why not take the subway or why not just walk?

However, we must recognize that we have to be in town to get the most out of the subway. It's been over two years now that my wife and I left our suburban home for the lights of the big city and our condo apartment. Already this couple who owned two cars has managed to get rid of one of them. When we were in the suburbs, it was easier to drive to the office than take public transit. Now that I'm in town, now that I am faced with a sharp increase in traffic outside my front door, I discovered that the "better way" was indeed the best way and I take the subway to get to the office. I no longer have to go through the bother of finding the right way around traffic jams, of waiting at red lights or of turning my index finger beside my temple every time some nut bar demonstrates a total lack of skill behind the wheel of a motor vehicle.

All I have to do now is to walk to the station, wait on the platform for the next train, find a place to relax and enjoy 45 minutes of free time to read the newspaper, cogitate on world affairs or snooze. I think this is the ideal way of coping with the daily commute from home to work for me and for a lot of people. Once we find a seat, we all have this time to be alone with our thoughts, oblivious to everything around us. Nevertheless, from time to time, there is an interruption in our quiet, sometimes a moment shared by everyone.

The Announcement
Over the years I've been in the situation probably everyone has experienced where the sound system in a public place, whether in an arena or at the train station is not quite comprehensible. I hear the sound of a human voice from a loudspeaker somewhere but because of the distortion, the static, I cannot really discern what the voice is saying. Is it something important? A danger? Or advertising? Is this announcement applicable to me? What do I do? I only know that there is an announcement that I should listen to but I cannot hear it very well.

I was on the subway going to work one day when I heard the sound from a loudspeaker which indicated that someone had turned on a microphone and was going to make an announcement. "This is Transit Control. We would like xxx mmm eeee eeeee ... problem ... hhh ssss. We will notify you dddd eee ..." That is to say that I could not hear the whole message because of the static. It was very frustrating and of course, I began to imagine all sorts of problems which would prevent me from making it to work on time and enjoying that first cup of coffee as I go through my email.

During the pause that followed, I could see around the car various perplexed expressions of the other passengers who also couldn't understand the message. Everyone looked around hoping that someone else would offer an explanation.

Suddenly, we all heard again that distinct sound from a loudspeaker, a microphone being turned on, that indicates the beginning of a message. "Ladies and gentlemen. This is the driver of your train. Transit Control just made a very important announcement and I wanted to take this opportunity to repeat it." The voice spoke in a very methodical manner. The sound quality from the loudspeaker was perfect. In comparison with the other message, I could easily understand everything that this man was saying.

The driver continued to talk but at this point, it was obvious that the driver had put his hand over the microphone and was trying to reproduce with his mouth the distorted noise from the first announcement. "This is the Transit Control. We would like xxx mmm eeee eeeee ... problem ... hhh ssss. We will notify you dddd eee ..." For a very brief moment I wondered about the significance of what he said and then I realized that the driver was joking in trying to imitate the bad sound quality of the first announcement. The fact that a subway driver would pick up the microphone not to make an announcement but to make a joke was so out of place, so unexpected that it made things even more comical. I laughed out loud. Looking around I could see all the other passengers laughing too.

Without any reference to his joke, the driver then explained that Transit Control was announcing a signal problem, that there would be a short delay and "... everything would be cleared up as soon as possible. Good day." All of us continued to look around smiling at one another enjoying this quite comical shared experience.

Pious Poop!
From time to time in my so-called normal life, I come across something unusual, so unusual that I have to wonder if there is a rational explanation for the origin of this incident. Who were these people? Why had they done this or that? What were the results of these actions or is it that there was nobody else there to witness this incident?

One day I took the subway to work. I waited on the platform the next train. It arrived, the doors opened and I stepped into the subway car. I stood at the door for a moment to look around trying to determine the best seat to choose for my 45 minute journey to the office. To my left I found two free benches, in fact, there was no one at this end of the car. Nobody. A little curious, but perhaps I was ahead of the wave of workers traveling during rush hour.

I took a couple of steps to the first bench. I was about to sit down when I noticed something on the floor. What I find so funny now, is how it sometimes takes a moment for our brain to process visual information, to verify that what we see with our own eyes is indeed real and not imaginary. I looked at the floor and what I saw was out of context. It was not something I expected to see here in a subway car and I had to stare at it to really conclude that what I saw was in fact what was there. Someone, an unknown person or an animal had defecated on the floor. I was starring at a mound of poop on the floor of a subway car! It was incredible. I was quite stunned. Ugh! Disgusting! What an abomination! Who could do such a thing?

I turned around and walked towards the other end of the car. After a few steps, just the other side of the door, I saw a bench that faced back to where this "meeting of the Third Kind" had just happened to me. A mischievous idea came to mind. Sitting down, I could be on the lookout for what would happen when other passengers would unknowingly come face to face with the most unexpected of rendezvous.

The first victim, a woman, did almost the same thing as me. She remained at the door for a moment, she looked around seeking an available seat and then she turned to the end of the car where there were the two empty benches. Like me, she almost sat on the first bench before freezing as she looked down at what would probably turn out to be the worst moment of her day. I chuckled quietly, imagining how the neurons were functioning at high speed trying to reconcile two contradictory ideas: a subway car and a mound of poop. The woman made a 180 degree turn and walked by me as she headed down towards the opposite end of the car.

At each stop, my eyes remained fixed on the door to see what the next person would do. Bewilderment, disgust, even a little smile. One guy turned so pale when he saw what was on the floor made me think he was going to vomit. Once I arrived at my office, I phoned the TTC to report this incident in car number 5545. The customer service thanked me for having called in expressing surprise about such a thing happening on a subway car. I added that I had never seen such a thing in the subway before in my life. It was the first time and hopefully the last time!

The Last Word
I visited the city of Toronto for the first time 40 years ago. Since that time, I have spent almost 25 years in Toronto and I consider this city as home. I find the city and its subways safe and clean. I have had the opportunity to take the subway in New York, Washington, London, Paris and Lyon and I always found the experience enjoyable and efficient. I'm sure others could speak of similar oddball experiences in other subways, some as amusing some maybe worse. For the moment, I leave the reader with two of my experiences in Toronto's subway which broke up the monotony of the daily trip to and from work. I trust if you take the subway, your trip is uneventful or at least amusing. I hope you don't run into a mound of whatever!

2010-12-09

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