Ninja Gadget

The Cellular Telephone; a tale of true triumph. Not only has the Cell Phone slimmed down from being the Fat Kid and made ‘cool’ the Class Nerd by finding a diverse group of friends, but the Cell has become the Ninja Gadget, or Nadget, or Ninjadget, or Ninget, maybe Gadja, Gadginja, even Ganja… or maybe not. Regardless of what its name-bar reads, this dark knight is like the Batman of the technological world, handing beat-downs to jokers like the portable DVD player and Ashton Kutcher approved cameraettes (small cameras with a glossy, wildly unnecessary glowing finish… supposedly they take pictures too, but no word on that in the old advert). The Cell is bonafide bad-ass and so much a part of our world that we entrust it to keep company in our trust tree with our most prize processions; Les Hommes nestle it neatly next to their packaged goods in the front pocket of the pantaloons and Las Chicas check it with all matters of worldly importance in the purse-inator. It takes a true friend and hero to the human to be able to crack that comfort zone.


It’s no longer the new kid in school and comrade to only rich drug dealers and big dorks (don’t worry dorks, you still have your little Bluetooth niche); Mr. Popular has donned the crown, and is king for a reason. My grandma has a cell phone, my 70 year-old neighbor has a cell phone, the barefoot, of-the-earth hippie has a cell phone, and there are 5 year-olds taking pictures and emailing them right now from their cell phones. We cradle it in our car, take it from the office to the bedroom, dress it up, protect it, never forget it, and wouldn’t dare speak of a life after it. It’s like the orbiting moon to our favourite planet.


I heard a statistic the other day: 35% of full-fledged Amish participants use cell phones at least once a week, an additional 40% own a cell, and a totally of 90% know that cellular telephones are not ‘Magical Witch-doctor Voodoo for summoning the Devil’. That statistic is fake, but it could be real, that’s how far cell phones have come. And if you’re a rebel with a cause, and that cause is to boycott the cellular revolution, I have two words for you: Give Up. You have no hope and you are only hurting yourself. In fact have 4 more words (one is hyphenated, who cares though, semantics): Don’t be a Baby.


Cell phones are calendars, to-do lists, voice recorders, clocks and alarms. Cell phones are your GPS, your social network access, your web browser. Cell phones play your music, your video, and store your books. Cell phones tell you where to eat, when to sell your options, and how to play the guitar. You don’t even know that you need it yet, and your cell phone’s got it. Plus, on top of all that, it allows you to talk to someone on the other side of the planet, or on the other side of the room, or on the other side of Ugly. I just beat my friend at chess, showed him a Google Maps satellite image of his back yard, and made him cry like a little girl with an update on his team’s latest loss. The Cellular Phone is here to stay, so don’t fight it. Automobiles did it, televisions did it, microwaves did it, and so did the dishwasher. In fact it wasn’t so long ago that the Cellular Phone of our ancestors stormed the scene and changed the way of the world; a quest for fire. They captured it on film in fact, it was epic. You know what happened to the Goof-ball Caveman that fought that fade? He died. He froze to death. Don’t freeze to death because you ‘don’t want to be a slave to the cell’. Man up already, unhook your metaphorical buggy, free that tired old horse, and love your car… befriend a cell phone. And to all those who say, “But Jack, I hate people, why would I want to make it easier for them to find me?” I say, be free of people. Simply turn on the airplane-mode and continue about your day with everything you could want in a Cell minus the burden wireless human interaction.


Let’s say that you are committed to this planet and its way of life and are the proud owner of your very own piece of gadgetry art-work. Now that you have a cell, there are some rules that must be followed. These aren’t the ‘advanced items’ that the people who own the flashing 12:00 on their early nineties VCR fear and ignore. There’s time to learn how to bookmark your mobile internet favourites, there is no time however for total technological incompetence.


Item One: you must know how to charge your cellular device. Do not be that Guy or Gal who can’t be reached because they can’t fit ‘recharge battery’ into their schedule. And no, ‘I don’t know how’ isn’t going to work. Just go ahead and plug it in. If this has been a go-to excuse for not being available, it is weak, you are better than that, you need to be more creative.


Item Two: set up your Voice Mail. The Voice Mail innovation is beyond brilliant. Now you can screen your calls, get the information, and not have to talk to the person at all, maybe ever. They even have worked out a way for you to send calls directly to Voice Mail; do not answer, do not let it ring, go directly to cell phone Jail. And take that extra step and record something that is somewhere between ‘a waste of time’, and ‘trying way too hard’. “Hi you’ve reached So-and-So, I can’t take your call right now, please leave your name and number and a brief message after the tone, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible”; this is not acceptable. Don’t tell people what they need to do, they understand how ‘leaving a message’ works. There’s no need for names and numbers, caller ID can be useful for more than just deciding if you want to answer or not. And tones? Is anyone unsure as to when they should start leaving a message? Come on, if your recording says anything about tones you should hang up on yourself, immediately. “…I’ll get back to you as soon as possible”, really? Quit being so desperate and just tell them the truth: ‘I’m busy’, ‘I don’t like people’, ‘Don’t call this number’, ‘I’m an astronaut, nough said’, ‘I’m torturing a terrorist’, ‘I need to return some videotapes’, ‘I sleep a lot’, ‘I chose to not talk to you’, or things of that nature. Now, when it comes to the ‘trying way too hard’ extreme, let’s just say you’ll know when you get there. It usually involves bad karaoke, animal sounds, a poor reenactment of a comedy routine, or trickery; ‘clever’ is difficult at this stage of the game, most of the good wit has already become cliché, don’t try and dupe people.


Item Three: Choose your ringtone wisely. This is perhaps the most important stage of the cell phone setup. You must know that others will hear your ringtone and will judge you on it. This is an accessory to an accessory and it is out there telling the world about who you are. Do you want to be an angry, but strong woman? Then go with Pink’s latest Top-40 shot. Do you like it when a dude’s voice sounds like a 13 year-old girl? Or are you a big Tool? Let Akon tell you to answer the call. Do you enjoy being punched? If yes, pick one of those default ringers that sound like a blender and keyboard making sweat love. I’m not audacious enough to think I can tell you who you are, but I will tell you that if you’re not careful, someone will, and they will feel free to not let you forget it. Aim for simple, unique, not-stupid. You don’t want boring, but you also don’t want excessive. You want people to notice and then forget almost immediately. And the most important thing to remember is, don’t ever- …


In addition, use that silent mode. Exercise the Vibrate feature. Make sure that Ringer-Off is enough of a habit that you don’t forget and become the villainous ignoramus who has Britney belting out a gem during the big meeting, the suspenseful on-screen climax, or the final stage of your late night B&E. No one wants to have to deal with that kind of reputation at the next Cat-Burglar retreat.













Item Four: Beware the wireless risks. True the chances of strangling one’s self during an intense telephone conversation have become much more challenging with the lack of leash, but many people cannot handle the responsibility of freedom. With no structure or limitation, the wireless world has allowed for people to wonder about, roaming the land cell in hand. If you answer a call in a quiet car on an afternoon train, everyone is listening. Try and chit-chat while in a bar, at a concert, or inside a day care, and the other end of the line will tell you it’s the end of the line. And the first thing I do when I see someone on a phone in a public washroom, flush. Without the cord, every time you talk to a cell phone, its user could be in deep shit.


Five gets its own tangent, because texting has risen above its host and become much more than a cell phone feature. Texting is the virus that has convinced us all that it is the cure.


Walk the Walk, except when you text and talk. I saw someone on a long board the other day, surfing down a path with thumbs that turned faster than the wheels he rolled on. I polled the audience (me, myself, and iPhone) on the dangers of multitexttasking. The question was, ‘What is more dangerous, texting while skateboarding, or texting while driving?’ My mind meandered. There are no close calls on a long board. You’re either on the board or you’re on a date with pavement. Hello ground, meet my face. It’s one of those no-chemistry, she’s-an-abusive-whore relationships. There are pebbles and breaks in the path, dogs and unpredictable Walkers with headphones and a hunger for trouble. But these are all owies compared to the be-all-end-all that awaits a slip-up behind the wheel. It’s entirely possible that while playing this Russian Roulette with your vinegar-and-baking-soda cell and a loaded vehicle combo, you can travel for complete minutes and end up somewhere without ever knowing the details of the drive. Text-Walking, much like it’s cousin Sleep-Walking; this inbred relative to the dozing zombie waltz is careless, subconscious, and terrifying to awake from. When you text and drive you get all the distractions of a good phone conversation with the added benefit of not being able to see where you are going. It’s got to be the most dangerous thing the average person can participate in, and I’m including Wal-Mart Shopping into the average person’s repertoire. But then again, despite the break-neck risk factor, the likely hood of firing a live round is probably scarcer than drifting off the path.

I gave my overactive imagination a time-out. I realized that not only is the answer much simpler than I was making it out to be, but so is the question. So I danced around with these two epiphanies: What’s the most dangerous thing ever? Texting!






















It’s not just the multitexttasking that longs for disaster; it’s like making an edgy joke in mixed company every time you press send. Unless you’re following the rules of the word, you need to be pretty textastic at firing off these mini-messages, or hearts will break, fun will falter, and text-you will make person-you look like idiot-you. There’s no accounting for tone, sarcasm is a lost cause, and passion is boxed up and trapped inside a bunch of emotion icons; a concept that is so devoid of actual feeling that the idea itself is heartlessly conjugated into a mechanical convenience, ‘emoticon’. So this all means that you have to break the mold; do not fear punctuation, it is your friend, avoid ‘conversation’ and don’t touch heavy topics, laugh out loud, joke, unleash a cackle or guffaw, and employ the little face friend but do so on your own terms:


8) smiley face with a little more face
*) a wink with a twinkle
:B buck teeth
:{ guy with a mustache
<3>
\ , , / rock on


Unfortunately many people miss use the textawge, and full fledged conversations will pass soundlessly across the cold abyss. Be ready, this may feel like a passive form of chit-chattery, but the truth is you need time, tenacity, and ‘the touch’ to commit to these convos. The text message was designed (in my opinion of course, which let’s face it is nice and weighted) as an innovation to the pager. It’s an alert with a caption. An elegant concept in theory, but a butchered relation in practice. The pager felt like old technology before it even reached the mass populous, but the idea was good; to contact someone when a phone conversation is too much. Therefore the text should be a quick update, change of plan, an idea without a reply. It can be stretched to solve the ‘can’t talk’ situation, the ‘one last question’ exchange, and the ‘sweat love note’ class pass. The text can be used to connect two people voided by space, but only in the way that a letter can replace an embrace. As an added layer of love the text message is beautiful, but as a crutch the TXT is a surface level liaison.


Is texting good? Definitely. Is it bad? Absolutely. It is in the eye of the beholder and the thumbs of the user and abuser.


And then how about the Cell? It doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad. What matters is it’s unwavering power and forceful strong hold on the lives and lies of this world. We need it, we don’t need it, it helps, it hurts, it brings us closer, it stands in our way. The Cell Phone is evil in the same way that a vehicle is a weapon, that TV is a waste of time, that running is boring. People forget that ‘guns don’t kill people, postal workers kill people’ *) It’s up to you. Own it or let the excuses hide you from that crushing misery that stalks your being. It is no longer just a phone, or even just a Communication Device, the Cellular Telephone no longer exists, instead we carry an extension of ourselves and our link into the next level of this life. Plus it worked for Kirk and his Star Treking team back in the day, so I think we’ll be alright. Really all we’re missing is the ‘Beam me up Scotty’ app and a button to activate the phaser... and that ladies-man Shatner swagger of course.

the Skill Testing Question

I found myself at McDonald’s the other day. It wasn’t that I ‘found myself’ spiritually, and I hadn’t actually become physically lost, but I did break free of the Happy Haze long enough to remember that Stupid Happens. And it doesn’t just happen sometimes, or occasionally, or when big idiots are around, Stupid Happens always. This is why I spend a significant amount of time in the Happy Haze, where my above average idiot-tolerance and elite ability to ignore ignorance allows me to focus on the Good, and joyously bound from cloud to cloud in the celestial bliss of a CareBear style world. Now, you may think that I frown at such stupidity, that anything boldly idiotic enough to tear me back down to the ridiculousness of a CareBearless world would set me off. But that’s not true. Not at all. I long for these extra-special situation. It’s these unique and baffling moments of total mental lapse that charge up my day, bring me a smile, remind me that although Good is good, sometimes Bad is good too.

I like McDonald’s. And since I’ve already harped on the hamburger haters at length (see the June’s Hi-Jacked! episode the ‘Hamburger Hitmen', it’s juicy) and feel no obligation to convince anyone of the benefits of an MC’s episode, I will move on. Except to say that if you can’t allow yourself a golden-arches smile every now and then, you need to spend more time in the Happy Haze. Don’t be so miserable. And ask yourself ‘Why, so, SERioussssssSah?!’ Okay, I’m done.


I live on the edge when it comes to fast food. Sure I’ll decide the establishment in advance as oppose to just hope that I end up somewhere greasy and good (heaven forbid I park near the word Organic, that’s a red flag), but when it comes to the order, I let the building speak to me. I make my decision as I walk up to the smiling face of the McDonald’s Master. Actually if you can find someone, somewhere who is even close to a ‘Master’ of the McDonald’s, hold on and don’t let go. With no experience behind the Ronald McDonald counter, I can only assume this is an excruciatingly difficult job that requires more brainpower than most can muster. I think that very few are truly ever ready to take the plug into the challenges of a career at the Arches, leaving the average MC soldier to be overwhelmed and outmatched by the Extra Value Meals and the Super Sizing and the Apple Pies (why do these things exist, who is buying ‘Pies’ from the ‘1 billion burgers sold’ crowd, is it possible that at some point this ‘Pie’ adder was a good idea, and is it in fact a ‘Pie’, cause it looks a lot like a ‘Mistake’, and seriously, Apple, am I to believe that even the artificial flavouring injected into this mess is suppose to be Apple… Apple Pies, big Lies).

It has to be the impenetrability of the job that makes getting my order anywhere-near-correct so tricky, right? I mean it’s either that, or the place must be infested with lifeless hallow morons. Hurry, join me in the Haze: it must be the challenge of the chore.

Nonetheless I drink in the menu board, watch for deals and steals, open myself up to the sights, sounds, and smells of the McDonald’s, and that is where my order comes from. Unless of course I am armed with the weapon of choice.

Coupons are a different game all together. A game I will play any time. Now, I have direction, I have goals, I have an Ordering regime. And I have my ticket into a world where Stupid Happens. Coupons require a level of cunning that most Cash Register Wranglers haven’t been able to tie down. It breaks down like this: I go to McDonald’s, I order food, I eat food, I am happy… I play McDonald’s Monopoly, I win food, I order food, I am happy. But wait, as it turns out, the fun isn’t over yet. The way it actually breaks down is like this: I play Monopoly, I win food, I order food, I am presented with a skill testing question. What? What is this little pop-quiz all about? Here I am, ready to sample the staple of the MacDee world with its ‘Big’, and the Master-in-training has surprised me with a math test. So now I’m doing math… so that I can eat McDonalds… something is not right here. It’s fishy and it’s not the Fillet O’ (do people buy that, the Fillet o’Fish, does anyone think That is a good idea?) So I answer this ‘question’, which is worthy of quotations because it is both an embarrassment to math and to the number 28.

42 - (6+8)… hmmm. If only I had brought my graphic calculator, or a set of marbles.

There are way too many things wrong with this scene for me to stay in the clouds. Bye for now you Caring Bears. I ‘play’ Monopoly, I win a prize, why am I playing a new game to try and win the same prize? I’m not playing these games for fun. They are miserable games. Monopoly at the best of times is just a big fight waiting to happen. And Math? That’s not even a real game. That’s learning. I don’t want to be learning when I go to McDonald’s. In fact I think I actually have a subconscious longing to become stupider when I go to McDonald’s. So what am I doing here?

By this time, my Happy Haze has evaporated and I am choking on the strangle hold that Stupidity has on me. Stupid Happens, and it’s happening right meow. The best part about the whole thing is that everyone, the MC Master, the Burger Chef Extrordinar, all the Wranglers, head of operations at the drive-thru window, the kid in the play-place trying to eat one of those balls in the sea of colour, Mr. Monopoly, me, we are all too half-witted to even realize the sluggishness of the corner-office brains behind this lost cause operation; I can feel them trying so desperately to flex their grey-matter. Nothing seems out of place to any of us. That is until I start thinking about what the Skill Testing Question is all about.

I launch into a rundown of possible explanations that might relieve some of the pressure on my soul from all the ‘game play’. Stupidity is tasking. As I worked my grade 2 math skills I decided to multitask and eliminate the most obvious options that were even too Stupid for our little Arches Adventure. I figured that this little math conquest couldn’t have anything to do with identity verification. There’s no limit to the number of times you can ‘win’, so there’s no need to keep track of who has claimed prizes. I briefly pictured myself as a really dominant MacDee participant, epically pulling Monopoly pieces off of Big Mac boxes, collecting an entire Extra Value Meal’s worth of freebee winnings and being surrounded by cheering employees and random people in the background riding large tricycles, doing cart-wheels, holding up neon signs that read ‘Jack for President… suck-it Obama… you too Kathy Griffin, cause I hate you, you’re not funny… at all’.

I kept running down the list: Was this to prove that you were indeed a human? Was there fine print that excluded Dogs and Park Benches? It can’t have anything to do with knowing simple algebra. There’s no prerequisite to eating fast food. It’s not like the assistant to the Drive-Thru Manager has a second job that gives him the power to confiscate your drink if you can’t divide the number of fries in your Large by the total number of flat disc shaped thingys in your double Royale with Cheese. Are they trying to make sure that all customers are smart enough to understand the risk they are entering into by eating this nutritious and delicious option? Is anyone on the planet still surprised that on the scale of ‘Broccoli to High-Fat-Plutonium’ a Number 1 combo is in the same food group as mercury-enriched-dirt and expired-bacon-fat? Was this part of the prize? ‘Hey, look at you, you won some more McDonald’s for yourself, here quick, keep your spirits high, do some Math!’

When I answered the question correctly the MC Master congratulated me and gave me a very rewarding smile. I smiled. It felt good. Hmmm, maybe I was on to something. Now not only was I about to get my prize but I was also a genius. 42 - (6+8) = 28, Yeah it does!!! I wondered what would have happened if I had got it wrong. Is it good enough for the employee to simply announce, “No, I’m sorry, but that is Not the correct answer, you got a Zero on this test, you have failed at the Skill Testing Question, and you have failed at life”. Humiliation can be quite powerful, especially when Stupid is happening. Would they deny your winnings? Is that what the Skill Testing Question is, a double or nothing? “So you’ve won a burger, now do you want to let it ride for a smile and a warm fuzzy feeling inside?” Did it matter at all? I suddenly wished that I had answered with the square-root of two, just to see what would happen.


(as an aside, how creepy is that dude? Ronald McDonald... he looks like a crazy person, a crazy person disguised as a murderer in a clown suit)

I stopped thinking and realized that some things are just beyond the realm of logic. Some things are neither built for speed nor strength. Some things are a riddle wrapped in a paradox on an imaginary IQ test written in invisible ink. I thought about one-handed clapping and trees falling in the forest when no one was around. Pompous questions. Just attempting to answer such a question makes you an imbecile. I left McDonald’s having accepted the fact that along with the ‘Caution: contents may be Hot’ warning on your Scalding cup of HOT coffee and the fact that on most alarm clocks the snooze button is snuggled right up against the Off button, the Skill Testing Question was one of those loop-holes in the universe that didn’t have to make sense.

Normally that story would be enough to give me a good old chuckle and remind me that La Vita E Bella, but things get better. A few days after I receive my 100% grade at McDonald’s, my nagging mind took me to Wikipedia:

“The combined effect of Sections 197 to 206 of the Criminal Code of Canada bans for-profit gaming or betting, with exceptions made for provincial lotteries, licensed casinos, and charity events. Many stores, radio stations, and other groups still wish to hold contests to encourage more purchases or increase consumer interest. These organizations take advantage of the fact that the law does allow prizes to be given for games of skill, or mixed games of skill and chance. In order to make the chance-based contests legal, such games generally have mathematical skill-testing questions incorporated.”

Well played Universe, well played indeed. Wikipedia went on to state that in order for these questions to be ‘Skill Testing’, a minimum of three numbers must used in the arithmetic exercise. And here I am thinking I’m being all clever and witty, when really I’m competing with the freakin Law to see who’s stupider.

So in the end I left my Stupid Happens event a little smarter than when I had gone in. Touché. On the one hand it’s nice to know that Math is not being used and abused, but on the other hand, I miss having this McDonald’s mystery hanging over my head torturing my love for logic and order. I guess I could always look into the raison d’être of Diet Soda (Don’t want to get fat? Want to be health? How about Stop drinking Soda, go on a real Diet, not a Soda diet).

Now, I know what you’re all thinking though, because I did this on purpose, ‘thank goodness he gave us the answer to that MC’s universal Skill Testing Question, cause after the brain battle involved with rationalizing the consumption of McDonald’s, my mind is in no state to be dealing with unsolved mysteries, let alone mathematics…’ So remember kids stay in school, Skill Testing Questions are fun, and the answer is 28.






















When Stupid Happens Brother-Neil and I get pretty Jazzed...

Find yourself a Holiday Romance

It started with a story about candy. That’s really all we cared about. There were conditions and rules and precautions, but we were 4, everything went very mwa-mwa-mwa a la Charlie-Brown after the mention of sweeties and bonbons.



By early grade school the ‘Costume’ had found some importance, and acted as an expression of one’s self. Don’t be too cute, or too classic, or too Not-Cool. We began to create and mastermind our costumes, or rather conduct our parents in the orchestrating of these outfits. The Day-Of became the show-and-tell of the year. Like most aspects of peer-to-peer childhood, we were judged. There was laughter, tears, fighting; all the usual good stuff that make the memories last.


Hop-skip-and-jump a few years to a time where there had always been cards and arts-and-crafts and orange-black construction paper accidents, but along with our graceful entrance into adolescence came the pride of decorations. It was no longer good enough to simply dress-to-impress, our house needed to join the masquerade ball. Cob-webs, lights, spookiness, ghoulishism, jack-o’s and stuff to go bump in the night; the haunting of your house was a chance at greatness.


As high school scarred the awkward and praised the popular, ‘Parties’ joined the scene replacing the treats with the tricks. Word of Captain-QB’s epic blowout would scorch the masses like wildfire, shuffling the priority of even the most academic’s to-do list. Whether it was the Grade-12-Royalty Rager or an Underground-Art-House Affair, our plans told a tale and our shindig shuffle was school gossip. They are the best years of your life, unless of course they are the worst.


Before we were too old to be young and after the retirement of the fake-ID, plans for The Night took precedent. Bars, clubs, house-parties, soirées, themed events, great galas, spectacles, festivals, fêtes, and grand celebrations were traded in our schedules like Pogs of the old school yards passed. It had to be the right venue, with the right friends, for the right price. Drinks, contests, music, and status were always priority when it came to evaluating the specs. There was also a resurgence in the impact of the Costume. Along with quality came ‘cleverness’ and ‘creativity’. The usual suspects were too easy when it came to the Costume, now more than ever ‘unique’, ‘topical’, and ‘fantastic’ were the goal.


When ‘Too-Old’ joined the equation, the cycle was reborn. We became the support-crew. The end of a second round of Hallowing from the ‘Tinny-Trick-or-Treater’ to the ‘Masked-Miscreant’ brought us to one of two characters: the Old-Recluse, with his dark ‘fun-is-bad’ house, offering candy of the kind that falls into either the ‘garbage’ category or the ‘none’ category, and the Old-Neighbour who juggles flavourful memories of costumes and chaos gone by as they fill the trickster with the treats. Unfortunately this late in the game the ‘Old-‘ is a guarantee.


It’s Legend, it’s Lore, it’s Christian history masked in Pagan Past. From its Celtic birth as the festival of Samhain to the eruption of décor that covers our calendar, October 31st is never a Sunday or Tuesday or any part of any day of any week, it’s always just Halloween.


So now I ask: What happened to you on the Eve of the All Hollows? Were you tricking for treats, carving up characters in pumpkins, pub-crawling, bar-brawling, finding frights in flicks in the dark, or did you drop the duties all together and power through another Saturday? Was October 31st simply the day before a new month of more of the same? I’ve always been intrigued by those who question a Holiday. Those who are above commercialization and don’t buy or sell the hype. I’ve wondered about the ‘whys’ and ‘what-fors’ that people use to criticize and condemn a good anniversary. It seems that no matter the celebration, the commemoration, the tradition, or the religion, there are always those who ignore and dismiss and battle the buzz of the day. Those who find fault in the fun. Those who argue and discuss and debate. Those who rain-on and wreck and pooh-pooh the parade. Those whose love is to hate and whose hate is the game.


I have worried that this misery is something that one develops, something that can’t be combated with the smiles and laughs that fuel me today. So with the hope of avoiding the ‘bitter’ that too often takes the lead in ‘bitter-old-man’, I have asked the question of myself: Why get wrapped up in a Holiday? And the answer for me is festive-universal.


St. Valentine’s Day has trouble recruiting Singles, Easter highlights the Christian calendar while trying to explain its Egg obsession, Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving are a month and a half apart, Christmas feels the pressure of its marathon run through November and December, and then there’s Memorial, Martin Luther King, Family, Victoria, Canada, Independence, Labour, Columbus, Remembrance, and Veterans, all wanting a Day, all wanting a card, a commercial, some calendar space, and some attention. So what? Who cares?! What day of the year doesn’t suffer from a little quirk here or a fault there? It’s easy to set up a platform and begin rhythm-and-rhyming off reasons why the tragedy is in the gift giving or the TV specials or the distractions that take away from the truth and the origin. But why? So that we curb the fun? So that we educate the Casual and demand ‘better’ from the Committed? Or is it so that we can ignore what we have created?


The complexity of the 21st century Holiday allows for so much more than a celebration for the target few. While Christmas is still the birth of Christ and St. Patrick’s remains the Irish’s Day for the Patron Saint, gifts and music and new tradition have opened up the calendar to allow for community. Devout Catholic? Celebrate Advent. Not Irish? You can still drink a green beer. To some it’s the harvest, to others it’s football, to many it’s a feast, and yet because of this acceptance, to everyone it’s Thanksgiving.


And it’s this flexibility that in itself should be celebrated. Give a valentine, sport the green, wear a poppy, haunt-up your house, and don’t just participate, enjoy it. Because it’s an excuse to find unity. In a time when a person can live for weeks without face to face interaction, sometimes a custom is exactly what we need to feel the warmth of connection. So when the countdown to December’s 25th crosses paths with a good Morning-After smashing of a pumpkin, I say embrace it. Let a holiday distract you from the 9-to-5. Feel free to plan ahead and get carried away. Take advantage of this world that encourages celebration. Because in the witty words of the wise Wilder, Van: “Don’t take life too seriously, or you won’t make it out alive… write that down”. So again I ask, ‘Why get wrapped up in a Holiday?’ easy, Why Not.


Here's hoping you had a Happy Halloween, will Remember Remembrance, are thankful that we give thanks, and get ready to prep for a New Year’s Eve 10-count with a little Christmas cheer or Chanukah happenings. I’m not condemning Grinchery or suggesting you bottle up your inner Scrooge, I’m saying harness the Whoever that your Holiday character is and don’t drive around the calendar without site-seeing a little.























Just a couple of crazy Cats that had an award-winning time at the Uptown's Halloween Howl.