Return of the Son of Bacon Explosion II: The Revenge

Nearly exactly a month ago I did a post about the Bacon Explosion. Ever since I made it I've been thinking of possible variations to make it better, or at least different. Behold my latest invention: the Bacon Eh-xplosion.

Probably the toughest part of the original Bacon Explosion was the "woven" exterior. It struck me that the dish would be more attractive if the bacon slices were more regular and rectilinear; it would also make it easier to weave. I also mused that the whole thing would have more structural integrity if the outside of the Explosion were a single piece. It was then that I thought about using back bacon or so-called "Canadian" bacon.

So I bought a single piece, along with a few chorizo sausages for the filling. First I thought about using the denser, less-marbled back bacon to create regular and consistent slices for the outside of the dish, but then decided to just use the shape of the piece itself. So after rinsing off most of the cornmeal coating (I know it's usually called peameal bacon in Ontario, but they've actually been using cornmeal for years) I "filleted" the pork back with a sharp knife.
It got a dusting of cajun spice rub, as well as some chili powder.

I re-seasoned the chorizo much like the Italian sausage I used the first time, using dried basil, ground roasted garlic and cajun spice. I also put in a slurp of chipotle barbecue sauce as well as a bit of maple syrup (!), to cut the heat a bit and add another flavour note. In the meantime, I cooked up about a quarter of the bacon I cut out of the pork back:
Once it was fully cooked, I cut it into small pieces and added it to the sausage meat, then formed it into a chub and wrapped it in the outer layer.
Once formed, it got a coat of Blue Smoke barbecue sauce and another hit of spice rub before going into the oven. I cut a few slits into the outer layer to help drain off the fat during cooking.

The final result was, once again, tasty! This version is a bit leaner because of the lower fat content of the back bacon vs. streaky bacon. I probably should have used a bit of kitchen twine to truss this up - it would have made the final product a little prettier - but overall I'm very happy with the way it turned out.
Maybe I should start coming up with a few dishes that don't involve nearly-pure cholesterol...

I don't know if it's art, but I know what I like

Wow, once again it's been a ridiculously long time since my last post. I'll spare you my feelings on all the political crap that's occurred since then - and yikes, there was a lot of it - and move straight into the topic of this evening's post: food! Specifically, a Super-Bowl-worthy, artery-clogging, spectacular orgy of pork fat.

For the past few days the Internet has been abuzz over a little something called the Bacon Explosion. It's kind of a catchy name, but I'm not sure it does justice to a dish that is so glorious in its excess. As near as anyone can tell, a couple of hardcore barbecue aficionados in Kansas City came up with this particular recipe, although in and of itself there's nothing all that original about it. Anyway, I saw a few pics online and decided to try my hand. Here's a little photo documentary of the process.

The raw materials are simple: about a kilo each of thick-cut bacon and mild Italian sausage. I got mine at the St. Lawrence Market.
Then I created a lattice of bacon strips, that will serve as a sort of casing for the porky goodness within. I added a good dose of Cajun spice rub.
The next step was to cook the remaining bacon. First I fried four strips in a non-stick pan to render out the fat. Then I cooked the rest in the microwave, finishing them off in the pan. The end result was some seriously crisp, flavourful and gorgeous bacon.
After re-seasoning the sausage meat with more creole spice, dried basil, cayenne pepper and ground roasted garlic, I spread it out on a silicone sheet and placed the bacon on top.
The silicone baking sheet was a real help in helping roll and form this into a loaf. I then brushed it with chipotle barbecue sauce before placing it on top of the "sheet" of woven bacon.
After a little bit of finagling I was able to get the bacon rolled around the sausage, and it got one more coat of BBQ sauce before going onto a roasting rack in a 225-degree oven.
It took about three hours to get the internal temperature of this behemoth up to the recommended 165 degrees (and I generally go a few degrees higher for safety's sake). The final result looked pretty good.
The final result was tasty and incredibly rich, as you might expect with all those spices and fat. A little goes a long way. I think I'll probably end up freezing some of it for a treat later on in the year.
The perfect Super Bowl treat: a slice or two of this bad boy in a kaiser bun with a slice of cheese and some good mustard. Yum.

Hey, the Food Network it ain't, but it was a fun way to kill a little time on a lazy afternoon.

Election time in Canada, when the idiots are in bloom

It's been quite a while since my last blog post. My apologies. There, now that's out of the way.

What a time it is to be in North America! Seemingly on the verge of a monumental economic Armageddon, with two – count 'em, two – elections on the horizon. It's almost too bad that the vast majority of us can only vote in one of the two, since nearly everyone I know has been following both campaigns with a greater or lesser degree of assiduity. That said, although it's true that when the US sneezes Canada reaches for a tissue, the reverse is seldom the case.

With only a few hours to go before Election Day here in Canada, here are my musings. First, my grades for the federal party leaders.

• Harper: D-minus. For someone who was supposedly all about raising the level of discourse in Ottawa and increasing transparency, he's done a remarkable job of doing exactly the opposite. By keeping the entire PMO, Cabinet and Conservative caucus on an incredibly short leash, Harper has shown himself to be a control freak of biblical proportion. That sort of so-called leadership ill behooves a democracy. Harper has committed the unforgivable sin (in politics, anyway) of pretending to be the smartest guy in the room. Sometimes he is, sometimes he isn't, but he doesn't seem to realize that no one likes the smartest guy in the room.
• Dion: A solid C. There's no question that Dion knows his stuff. He's always well-prepared and, during the campaign at least, hasn't backed away from the fray. He needs to be better than he is, though. If he were to find a way to create a deeper intellectual or emotional connection with voters he'd do very well. Not this time around, I fear.
• Layton: B. Maybe it's my leftie upbringing, but I really like Jack. In a lot of ways Jack is nearly the perfect Canadian politician. He pales, though, in comparison with some of his great political forebears like Ed Broadbent, David Lewis or the great Tommy Douglas.
• Duceppe: B-minus. Paradoxically, the most experienced federal leader in this election. He knows what he wants, he's perfectly capable of spelling it out, and he's smart (and honest) enough to state that if you're not in a position to vote for him, he doesn't care whether or not you agree with him. You have to respect that.
• May: C-plus. She's capable, and can improve her mark in future campaigns.

Now, for the party campaigns and platforms:

• Conservatives: It's been called a Seinfeld campaign, i.e. a campaign about nothing. The Conservative platform was supposedly unveiled last week – one week before the vote – and I still don't have much of an idea of what they really plan on doing. The entire campaign has been built around Harper and his, ahem, leadership. It kinda has to be, since his candidates have shown a distinct inability to run on their own accomplishments. This is the product of the control-freak mentality; when your boss won't let you have or express any ideas of your own, you end up not having much ammunition. The Conservatives spent most of the first couple of weeks of the campaign committing gaffe after gaffe. By and large these incredible cock-ups were the product of arrogant candidates and campaign managers who didn't realize that they really had no idea what they were doing. If I could anthropomorphize the Conservative campaign, it would be Flounder from “Animal House”. To quote Dean Wormer: “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”
• Liberals: *sigh* The Libs missed the boat on this campaign. The Conservatives goaded the Liberals into thinking that this election was about choosing who was the better leader. If the Libs had concentrated on the issues and – more importantly - their team, I think they could have done much better. To prove it, a quick quiz: who would be the top three Tories to step up if something were to happen to Harper? I'd be willing to bet that it would take you a minute or two to come up with the third, and maybe even with a second, name. Harper has had his caucus on such a tight rein for so long that it's hard to even identify the shining lights. With the Liberals, on the other hand, one at least knows that there is more than one brain in the caucus. I think the Liberals may well do better than projected in the polls, but I'm far from convinced that the Natural Governing Party will return to the top of the heap. As a fictional character, the Liberal campaign is Charlie Brown. People begrudgingly like him, even the people who don't, but he still gets no respect.
• New Democrats: It's well documented that Jack Layton's strategy this time around has been to present himself as the Best Alternative to Steve and the Conservatives. And if it were possible to vote for an individual as Prime Minister without regard to the party he/she represents, then Jack would probably do very well indeed. And the party's TV commercials near the end of the campaign have been excellent, although I'm not sure it's a good thing when the cartoon version of you looks better than you do. Full marks, though, for moving to the left and staying there. Who best incarnates the NDP campaign? Pig-Pen: smart, charming in an offbeat sort of way, but no one's gonna ask you on a date.
• Greens: This one is easy. The Greens are the Ugly Betty of Canadian politics, with Elizabeth herself playing the title role. With apologies to Rick Mercer, one could also say that the Greens are the broccoli of Canadian politics (Rick said the same thing about the CBC being Canada's broccoli). You know it's good for you. You really want to like it, but you just can't bring yourself to do it.

I would dearly love to do a similar deconstruction of the US campaign, but it might be wiser to do that in a separate rant. Congratulations to those of you who made it through this one.

And one more thing: my brother Neil is suffering, er, celebrating a significant birthday today. All the best!

Ach Joni, we hardly knew ye...

The world is ending. C'est le monde à l'envers. They're tearing down a parking lot and putting up paradise (or at least a Torontonian version of it).

If Joni Mitchell were dead, she'd be spinning in her grave.

Postmodern picnicking

I saw something fascinating yesterday. I saw a couple with their young (maybe 10-year-old) daughter. They had a baguette, some nice Brie, a few cornichons, some black olives and even a bit of what looked like country pâté. They had picked it all up at the local grocery store and were having a charming little pique-nique, just like something out of Monet... (wait for it) ... at STARBUCKS. They were sitting at the table next to mine, noshing away at the food they'd bought at the Dominion store across the street (and, curiously, not at the St. Lawrence Market, where they could have got better food for less), along with their grande-no-foam-144-degree-three-raw-sugar-go-easy-on-the-caramel soy-because-I-really-love-milk-but-I'm-lactose-intolerant-and-can't-stand-the-taste-of-Lactaid lattes, and an iced lemonade for Princess or Jewel or Mackenzie or whatever the heck the daughter's name is.

I'm an urban* kinda guy. If you offer me the choice between a week in the country and a week in a big city, I'll pick the latter every time. And don't even get me started on cottages or (ugh) camping. As I always say, my idea of 'roughing it' is when room service is late. There are, though, certain activities that should only ever take place outdoors. Suntanning. Golf. Scuba diving. Yes, rugby. But especially picnics. I mean, come on! Make an effort. At least go to a park. If not for you, do it for the children...

* that's urban, i.e. the opposite of rural, not the more recent usage of urban as a euphemism for 'black'. E.g. "Spike Lee is a master of urban cinema" or "Toronto has only one urban music station".

Was Kafka an Aeroplan member?

Yes, it's time for another screed about the marvels of air travel in Canada. Yet again I find myself in Vancouver, busily not enjoying the scenery or the (not quite fabulous) weather.

My return flight to Toronto was delayed by a couple of hours, so I figured I'd make the best of my down time by booking a trip for my summer holiday, using my Aeroplan points. I've done enough traveling over the years that I have a decent number of miles saved up. (for those of you who were raised post-Imperial system, "miles" are those things that we used to use before kilometres came along. Don't ask me why Aeroplan still uses 'em.)

First off, the new and improved Aeroplan now requires vastly more miles for reward travel than it used to. Back in the early days, there were only a specific number of seats per flight that were available for Aerooplan reward travel. A little while ago Aeroplan made a lot of noise about removing that particular restriction. "Every seat can be a reward seat", they crowed.

Not so fast, Sparky. Although it's true that you can now use your miles to get any seat, the number of miles you need to get said seat can often be ridiculous. Air Canada may have simplified its fare structure when it comes to using hard currency, but the byzantine fare rules didn't actually vanish - they've just been applied to reward seats. So a trip that used to cost just 25 000 miles can now cost 150 000 or even more.

*fume*

But wait: it gets better. After I found an itinerary that wasn't going to involve me shedding my entire stock of hard-earned reward miles, I booked it online. I entered all the flight information, dates, name, address, phone numbers, astrological sign, favourite colour and e-mail address. Then I clicked "submit". (There should be doctoral theses written on the appropriateness of that particular verb in this context.)

The highly sophisticated and no doubt ridiculously expensive reservation system essentially laughed at me. "Error", it said, giving an error code and recommending I call tech support to get past this little hiccup.

Being generally the resourceful type, I changed Web browsers and tried again. Same info; same result. Undeterred, I called up the Aeroplan customer service line (yes, as a matter of fact I do think that's a contradiction in terms) to talk to a human being. I went through the itinerary with her, giving all the required information yet again. She was entering the very same information into the very same database I had been using. Then, just as she was about to click "submit", she mentioned casually that it was going to cost me an extra thirty bucks. The explanation was that there is a mandatory fee for booking reward travel through the telephone system.

My response was something along the lines of "Hulk ANGRY". Why fortheluvva Mike would I go through the rigmarole of booking online, be unsuccessful twice, and then have to pay for the privilege of having someone else enter the same info into the same system, with very possibly the same result? The by-now-very-put-upon agent offered to transfer me to tech support.

*fume some more*

Sooooooooo... another pleasant chat, this time with the customer service guy. (A friend of mine in the IT business calls his customer service reps "monkeys". Until today I thought that was unfair.) It turns out that the error code indicated that my e-mail address was "wrong".

Huh? Wrong? The e-mail address I've been using for something like a dozen years? Why, yes, said the (remember, I didn't coin this term) monkey. "Your e-mail address has only two characters before the @. Our system needs at least three."

That's when I think everyone in the lounge heard all the blood vessels in my head explode at the same time.

The system was expecting more characters? I was speechless. Quoth the monkey: "You could always get another e-mail address". It's funny, but maybe I should quit expecting service from, you know, customer service.

Waving without due care and attention

The province of Ontario is considering a ban on cellphones while driving. Other provinces - Newfoundland & Labrador, Nova Scotia and Quebec - have already instituted a ban, and even Alberta is considering it.

That's a good thing. I can't tell you how many people I see running red lights, blowing off stop signs, passing or changing lanes unsafely, all because they're too busy yammering. Being a pedestrian in good ol' Muddy York can be a real challenge at times.

Why am I blogging about this?

Today I had a moment of true puzzlement. On my way home from work I walk in front of a large office building. The underground parkade there is so busy at peak times that the place could really use a traffic light outside to help manage the volume of vehicles coming out. In the absence of a stoplight, there's a paid-duty policeman who is there to direct traffic. He holds off oncoming traffic on Front Street so that people can get in or out of the parkade; he also protects the pedestrians from getting run over by the drivers. All that is as it should be.

Until today. Here's the fine, upstanding officer of the forces of order, merrily directing rush-hour traffic... and talking on his cellphone at the same time.

Let's recap. The province wants to stop people from using their cellphones while they're driving. Why? Because the attention they're paying to their conversations is attention they're not paying to driving safely (cf. my post re cabbies and cellphones). They're distracted, and being distracted is bad.

Am I to infer from this that it's okay, though, for a police officer to be distracted while coordinating the movements of eight or ten vehicles at once?

Oh, and before you ask: the conversation wasn't a life-and-death matter, either. I think I heard something about groceries.

Language barrier

There's a small food court in the building I work in. As you'd expect, there's a predictably bland kiosk that serves Italian (-ish) food like pizza, panzerotti, lasagne... you get the idea. The guy who works at the cash register has, shall we say, a somewhat imperfect command of the English language.

Normally, as I'm walking away after paying for my lunch I expect to hear something along the lines of "See you tomorrow" or perhaps the ubiquitous "Have a nice day". This guy, though, always says "Good luck" as he waves goodbye. Every time he does that, I look at my slowly congealing slice of 'za and wonder whether he's trying to tell me something...

The end of the world as we know it

I saw this marquee outside the Sony Centre last week. Now, I'm no expert on the Bible, but I have read healthy chunks of it over the years, and I seem to remember this as one of the seven signs of the Apocalypse:


Make sure all your affairs are in order; the end is nigh.

Road apples

No, I'm not talking about the classic album by the Tragically Hip (sorry Darcy). I'm talking about the genuine article. I'm talking about that brown, round, full-of-oaty-goodness equine product that one finds on the road when horses have been, er, doing their thing.

Why, you ask?

Well, I was walking home from the office t'other day. En route I noticed a number of not-so-pleasant reminders of the fact that the Toronto Police Service still has a mounted unit - that is to say, I nearly stepped in a couple of flapjacks as I crossed the parking lot next to my building.

Wow. Those are some big horses.

Then I asked myself a question. The city seems to have vast numbers of bylaw officers patrolling every square inch of the Greater Toronto Area, hunting out those scofflaws who dare take Rover out for a stroll in the nearest park without immediately bagging their beloved pooch's toxic waste. Who watches the watchers? It would appear that there isn't anyone following these officers (and yes, the horses themselves are deemed officers of the law) and issuing tickets.

Maybe there's a law-enforcement exception to the city bylaw re public pooping. I suppose to test that theory we'd have to see a human officer try it. Er...no; maybe I'll just leave you with that less-than-wholesome image stuck in your head.

dum-de-dum-dum...

On a completely unrelated note, I read in the papers (yes, I still read newspapers from time to time) that the NBA has approved the transfer of the lowly Seattle Super Sonics to Oklahoma City. Now, in the history of the NBA a number of teams have moved without changing the team name. That's why we have such incongruously named teams as the Los Angeles (formerly Minneapolis) Lakers, the Utah (formerly New Orleans) Jazz, and let's not forget the Memphis (formerly Vancouver) Grizzlies. On the other hand, some pro teams change their name when they move, usually hoping to attract a whole new generation of fans (and sell a boatload of new replica jerseys), but often hoping people will forget years of suckage. Think of the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals, the Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans, the Québec Nordiques/Colorado Avalanche and, of course, the California Golden Seals/Cleveland Barons/Minnesota North Stars/Dallas Stars.

To complete my thought (finally!): I can't possibly be the only person on the planet who's wondering whether the new name for the OK City team will be the Bombers. Can I?

Sociology

I've been thinking about a couple of sociological experiments that would be fun to try. I don't think anyone would get hurt, at least not badly.

The first was inspired by a bunch of long-haired, cheesy-mustachioed guys I saw walking around downtown a week or two ago. They were wearing skinny jeans and black Iron Maiden t-shirts, and I realized that they must all be in town for the Iron Maiden concert that night.

That's when it struck me. Ever since the Beatles, rock bands have had a major influence on the stylistic mores of their fans. I have to wonder what would happen, or rather what would have happened if the guys in Iron Maiden or Black Sabbath or - to be more modern - Van Halen or Guns 'n' Roses or Billy Idol or Henry Rollins had decided, as their little bit of rebellion against society, to wear tuxedos or morning suits as their costumes instead of leather and denim. I'm not sure the world would be prepared for the instant reapparition of dandies. Think about it. [In passing, I do realize that Slash fans haven't created any palpable re-ascendancy of the silk top hat, but perhaps that's the exception to the rule.]

I wonder if parents had the same problems in Mozart's day. "But Mom, all the other kids at school are wearing their wigs backwards like Mozart!" "Johann Chrysostome Josephus Albertus Emmanuel Philipp, as long as you're living under my roof you'll wear your wig the right way around - and don't let me catch you skimping on the cornstarch or sneaking any of your mother's beauty marks!"

Experiment number two popped into my head as I was in a taxi. From the time I got into the cab to the time I got to my destination, and presumably for a good while before and after, the driver was engaged in a high-volume conversation in one Dravidian language or another. The trip itself was obviously a secondary consideration as the cabbie bobbed and weaved in and out of traffic, yelling at his conversation "partner" the whole way. I almost felt badly for interrupting what was obviously a very important discussion to tell the cabbie little things like where I wanted to go and that I needed a receipt for my fare.

This was far from the first time it's happened; in fact, when one cabbie recently apologized to me for answering his phone without asking my permission I nearly fell out of my seat. Good thing the car door was locked.

I asked myself who could possibly use a cellphone continuously like that. Then it came to me: fourteen-year-old girls. So here's my experiment: all cabbies and all fourteen-year-old girls get a phone to use as much as they want, at no charge. The only condition is that any member of each group can only call a member of the other group. A tweenager can only call a cab driver and vice versa. My hypothesis is that within a few days, such an arrangement would free up scads and scads of cellphone bandwidth, and the number of car crashes on Toronto streets, as well as the average blood pressure of parents, would go down significantly.

When setting up this kind of experiment, it's always important to think about what would happen if the experiment goes wrong. Let's look:

1. There would be a run on formal wear. That can only be good news for the retail and rental market, since this might finally give businesses the opportunity to blow out some of those powder-blue and Key lime-green tuxedos they've had in stock since the 1980s;

2. This one is potentially more insidious. I see two potential unwanted outcomes. One might be that we get a new crop of Hindi- or Urdu- or Malayalam - speaking teenagers. Well, being multilingual never hurt anyone. Alternatively, taxi drivers might start obsessing about their hairstyles, or the latest jeans or sneakers, or that cute guy who sits in the back row of fourth-period English class. That, my friends, is too much for my brain to even contemplate.

On a completely unrelated topic: it turns out that the scribblings of one Lord Black of Crossharbour that I revealed in a previous blog post [which were apocryphal, unverified and not even the teensiest bit libelous] turned out not to be his final writings at all. Maybe ol' Tiny wasn't as tough as we thought.

Imagine my surprise when I saw the other day that Tubby had somehow managed to get an e-mail to, of all people, the Canadian Press. Anyone else would have asked for a file to be smuggled in in a cake or something, or maybe a few packs of smokes to use for barter; instead, our favourite ex-press baron sent the equivalent of a letter from camp: "Hi... um, I guess I'm okay. Bye. PS I still think the judge is a meanie."

Schadenfreude - or - a fictional account from the near future

The note below was found written, presumably in the author's blood, on the walls of a cell at the Coleman Federal Correctional Facility:

My dearest Barbara,

I feel I must give a full account and explication as to the rationale behind my silence over these past several hours. Indeed, it was only that long ago that you and I made our Odyssean voyage to this place from our own personal Xanadu in Palm Beach. I have much to recount to you.

Upon our arrival at this place I was immediately seized [please excuse the somewhat pedestrian pun] by the sheer size and scale of the estate and grounds. I am convinced that the owners – the Federal Bureau of Prisons, I am told – must have hundreds, nay, thousands of minions labouring from dawn 'til dusk at the Protean task of maintaining it. I must hope that the rumours of labour costs of twelve cents per man-hour are true; that would prove beyond any scintilla of doubt that those benighted labour unions have not yet succeeded in spreading their hateful and cancerous message to the peaceful and happy workers of this Utopia.

Imagine my astonishment, then, when I discovered that I will be expected and required to – dare I even say it? - share my accommodations with another gentleman. I daresay I find it quite beyond me that such a fine establishment – thousands of acres and such well-constructed buildings, if perhaps a trifle utilitarian in a Bauhaus sort of way – should want for rooms. I suppose there are some things about this place that I have yet to learn.

Upon my arrival at this fine estate, I was greeted, not without a certain degree of contempt, by a group of men claiming to be “correctional officers”. I found this nomenclature quite amusing when applied in my case; the last time anyone referred to your humble servant being in need of correction was when I was politely asked to quit the hallowed halls of Upper Canada College, my entrepreneurial flair at selling examination papers being, as it was, unappreciated by the educational staff of that heretofore-august establishment. But I digress: the aforementioned correctional officers, or CO's as they wish to be addressed, promptly exhibited their complete lack of even the most elemental form of decency by requiring that I disrobe in their presence. As you well know, dearest love, I am by no means embarrassed of my physique; indeed, in my sixty-third year I must say I am more than favourably impressed by my musculature, and even more so by the even white shade of my skin. When one CO made the request, I laughed politely and demurred, whereupon one of his colleagues drew an instrument which he referred to as a taser and brandished it in my direction. With my expert knowledge of everything that has ever been reported by those alcoholic wretches who claim to “work” in the North American media – even those stories not dealing with me and my vicissitudes with Dame Justice - I was aware of the potential of these tasers to injure my dignity and perhaps – O horror! - inflict harm on my person. Thus I reluctantly complied with the officers' poorly-worded, unreasonable and obtuse demand. Whereupon a group of men approached me and proceeded to ask me a series of questions about my physical and mental health. Mental health! Can you imagine it, my love? These plebeians could not possibly have any understanding of the force of my intellect. Were I to perform an auto-lobotomy – the temporal lobe, I think – still these so-called doctors would still not comprehend the depth of my mental capacity and acumen.

After the physical examination - which I must report was surprisingly invasive and completely medically unnecessary – I was presented with a new suit. As you know, dearest Barbara, although I am by no means a vain man, I do believe that a fine suit looks particularly resplendent on your Lord Black of Crossharbour. I freely admit, however, that I am not completely au courant, as you are, when it comes to the very latest styles from the Continent. The suit which was given me – completely without charge, I might add – is frankly quite odd. It is made of a stuff which must be of the very latest invention; when I asked the minion who presented it to me (in very simple words, of course) he replied that it was a material known to him as “poly-cotton”. This impressed me greatly; indeed, this new wonder material greatly resembles fine linen and is, if you will believe it, softer and more pleasant to the hand. Of course, upon donning the suit I stole (heavens! I thought I had banished that term from my vast personal lexicon) a glimpse of myself in a looking-glass and stopped for a moment to admire the fine figure of a man who looked back at me with Richelieu-like confidence. I was so pleased with my new suit of clothes that I immediately offered to buy one for every guest of the estate. At that moment one of the CO's guffawed in a Falstaffian sort of way and said (and I quote verbatim): “Y'all don't need to do that, convict (what an odd term!). The federal government (he pronounced it “guv-mint”) done already took care of that”. I looked around and discovered that my grotesque interlocutor's utterance was, quite astonishingly in my view, correct; all of the other guests were turned out in a similar fashion to my own - albeit with less panache, of course. Some of your fashion sense appears to have – what is the term the proletariat uses? - “rubbed off” on me, so to speak.

Thus suitably attired, I was escorted – with a colour guard of these bizarre and motley officers – to a small closet. The closet itself, where your humble servant finds himself writing these few lines to you, is an odd affair. It is the tiniest of spaces, obviously conceived to deal with the high heat and humidity of these latitudes, as well as the larcenous nature of domestic help the world over. Put more plainly – and, as Polonius said, brevity is the soul of wit – the closet is a mere six feet by six, and is built with sturdy solid walls and a heavy door of unadorned metal, with naught but a small crenellation by which to view the interior. Perhaps even more oddly, there is a small writing-desk (I note with some bemusement that one of the light-fingered knaves appears to have absconded with the inkwell already), two sturdy metal chairs and what appear to be two sailor's bunks cantilevered from the walls, but no clothes hangers or hooks. As I write this, a sudden epiphany seizes me. I note that there is a bidet, made of something resembling Sheffield steel, in one corner. Upon seeing this, it immediately becomes plain to me that this is no closet at all; it is indubitably a maid's room. It is now obvious that my escorts have decided to play a harmless prank on a new and presumably good-humoured guest.

My forbearance, however, is tested when I attempt to open the door. One of the Neanderthals has, no doubt inadvertently, locked the door to this cubiculum, this ascetic monk's cell. Surely he does not comprehend that this environment is stultifying to an intellect such as mine. Surely this behemoth must know that I shall recover from such a base insult and rise like the phoenix. I am not without humour, but when slighted my vengeance will be terrible.

While I wait for the rude mechanicals to remedy their colleague's great fault, I will cogitate upon how I might best occupy my time here at the estate. I am given to understand that many here are keen to meet me and learn from me, just as Odysseus's son Telemachus learned from Athena in the guise of Mentor. In fact, to continue my conceit of Greek metaphor, the directors of this estate have already recommended that I lecture my peers at my leisure on the topic of hubris, or to use the considerably less poetic but more generally understood concept, “pride goeth before a fall”. Apparently, even before my arrival here I have been put forward as something of a global authority on the subject. As is often the case with the greatest geniuses, I was unaware of the magnitude of my comprehension of the subject, but in any event I shall acquit myself of my duty with brio. I am told that the next topic under discussion will be the concept of poetic irony. I am convinced that I shall be richly compensated for sharing my not inconsiderable intellectual gifts with the other residents of this estate. I also look forward to sharing my thoughts on corporate governance with an audience which will, no doubt, hang on my every word as if I were the oracle of Delphi.

Once I have been esconced in my proper suite, my beloved Barbara, I shall arrange for you to come visit me. I regret deeply that the somewhat arcane rules for this estate do not permit us to be together. I shall endeavour to find out quickly who is responsible for this travesty, and explain why a woman of your breeding and exceptional character belongs here every bit as much as yours truly.

But soft! The motley fools have returned. They have another gentleman – if I may use that term somewhat loosely – with them. He is rather monolithic in appearance, and judging by his countenance I can only surmise that his mind is as small as those of the mindless journalists who have hectored us at every turn over these past years. His name, as I am given to understand it, is Tiny. How pleasant to learn that someone in this place does understand irony after all! Perhaps he is not such an idiot as his physiognomy might lead one to believe. I shall introduce myself and show him how charming a gentleman of my breeding and intellect can be.

At this point the scrawl stops. It is unclear whether the author's death was due to blood loss, or blunt force trauma at the hands of “Tiny”.

The new computer blues

New year, new computer, same old me.

*sigh*

In an earlier blog post I talked about my musings that machines might be psychic. I now have more proof that lends credence to my theory.

Since early December the geekosphere has been running wild with rumours about the impending new Apple products that are traditionally announced by Steve Jobs in his keynote address at the Macworld conference. The odds-on favourite this year was a super-light, super-slim, extra-sexy new notebook. Bloggers and cognoscenti (real as well as self-defined) opined on what they figured a new svelte Mac would, could and should have. I read the reports with bated breath.

After I saw the reports on the new uber-Mac, I started thinking about replacing my well-worn desktop PC. True to my theory, it went gentle into that good night (to paraphrase Dylan Thomas) last week, leaving me computerless.

I had decided some time ago that my next home computer would be a Mac. I was one of the earliest Mac aficionados/evangelists, going all the way back to (gulp) 1984, when I bought a top-of-the-line (well, actually, only-of-the-line) beige Mac with a whopping 128K of memory. I went through the heady days of disk-swapping, Sad Mac icons, upgrading RAM, the world’s slowest dot-matrix printers… ah, happy times. When my last Mac, a “beast” SE with two megabytes of RAM, two floppy drives and a 20MB external HD, finally chewed up its (second) power supply and gave up the ghost in about 1994 I got a home PC and have lived with Windoze ever since. But I never really abandoned my love for all things Apple.

So on Saturday I bought a sexy black MacBook, knowing that by doing so I was practically guaranteeing that all the rumours would turn out to be true.

And was I right? Steve Jobs announced the MacBook Air (who comes up with these names anyway?) to the enthralled conferenceers in San Francisco on Tuesday morning. I’m convinced that if I had held off on my purchase, the announcement wouldn’t have taken place.

One of the things that any computer buyer has to be prepared to accept is that whatever machine one buys will be obsolete within about fifteen seconds of delivery. But you know what? I’m okay with that. As drool-worthy as the new MacBook Air is (did I mention it fits into a manila envelope? And the flash memory option?), I’m perfectly okay with my not-quite-state-of-the-Apple-art machine.

Maybe this means I’m growing up. I don’t need to have the best and flashiest.

Naaah. I still want the best and flashiest.

Hey, at least I'm honest.

A great typo

One of the good things about being in a job where I spend much of my time either reading or writing is that I catch a lot of spelling and typographical errors. I even commit the odd one myself.

Sometimes these typos are the innocuous-albeit-annoying ones like teh instead of the, or -toin instead of -tion in words like association. At other times, though, the misspellings create malapropisms that are just plain funny. I've lost count of the number of times I've read about people who have tried to diffuse tense situations instead of defusing them... or the never-ending they're/their/there, it's/its, you're/your or born/borne. And don't even get me started on affect/effect or licence/license.

I think I have a new favourite. As is my wont (not want), I was reading through the comments on a recent CBC News article online. One of the posters wanted, no doubt, to talk about the vicious circle of paying higher rates for a lower level of service on his cellular phone. But the spelling gremlins got there first and our hero ended up referring to a viscous circle.

Ewww.

I couldn't stop myself from thinking about how Gary Larson would have drawn a cartoon to illustrate something like "Gerry suddenly found himself drawn into a viscous circle". Mmmmmmm... imagine all that cartoony goodness.

And, for a bonus point: isn't a spell checker something a wizard should use to make sure his charms are up to snuff? Okay, okay... I suppose a spelling checker isn't much better; imagine a checkers piece rhyming off words like "perspicacious" or "accommodate". How about an "orthographic verification routine"?

Oh, the heartbreak...

You know, sometimes life just gives you a good swift kick in the teeth, even when you don't deserve it.

Over the years, I've grown used to living in towns that have sports teams that start losing shortly after my arrival. I grew up in Saskatchewan, so I've seen the ups and (ahem, mostly) downs of the Roughriders. My NFL team has always been the Oakland (don't ever call them the Los Angeles) Raiders, who haven't done much of anything since Super Bowl XVIII over twenty years ago. I lived in Boston (Celtics/Bruins/Patriots). Hamilton (Tiger-Cats) and Edmonton (Eskimos and Oilers) came next. And of course, now I live in Toronto where the Maple Leafs are now in season 41 since their last Stanley Cup, Toronto FC will finish the MLS season in the cellar (with the longest scoreless streak in the history of the league), the Jays finished well out of contention and the U of T Varsity Blues are on track to become the losing-est college football team in Canadian history.

And then we have the All-Blacks. I'm not from New Zealand - never even been there - but the way these guys play rugby intrigued me well before I ever played the game. When I did start playing, NZ were the champions of the first-ever Rugby World Cup. Most people spoke of them with a kind of awe. And awe-inspiring they were: strong, tough, inventive and entertaining to watch. And how can you not love any team, in any sport, where there's a traditional war chant/dance before the match?

The poor All-Blacks are, however, not immune from my little personal curse. After winning the inaugural RWC in 1987, they haven't won it since. The only tiny consolation is that arch-enemy France have never won. The sting isn't entirely gone, though, since France has spoiled the All-Blacks' tournament a couple of times, most notably a 1999 contest which some call one of the great rugby matches of all time.

This weekend the All-Blacks managed to break my heart again. Despite being the team to beat in this year's World Cup, they got, well, beaten by (*sigh*) France, 20-18. NZ missed a couple of kicks, and to my dying day I will argue that the pass to Michalak that led to the final French try was forward... but the final result is the final result.

I don't really hold anything against France. It was the French who taught me to love the game, after all. But do they have to crush my haka-chanting, black-jersey-with-silver-fern-wearing heart?

[a word of warning to the wise should suffice: the first person who says "it's only a game" gets a punch in the mouth)

*****
On a cheerier note, something quite funny happened to one of my server friends the other night. A customer asked her what the word "reciprocity" meant. Before she could start to explain the meaning of the term, the customer asked her whether it was a Canadian word. At this point, my friend just started to laugh; it struck her funny that an American would have no idea of the concept of reciprocity. I suggested that the customer might understand it better if put in terms he could understand, i.e. the opposite of unilateralism... but we both thought it better to just leave the poor guy alone.

I know, I know: it's not fair to blithely label all Americans as ignorant of their own language, as well as global politics. But it sure feels good.

The *real* World Cup is on!

Mmmmmm.... rugby...

The Rugby World Cup started last week. I'm in heaven. An Irish company called Setanta Sports is carrying all the matches - plus a whole bunch of other rugby (union and league, but no word of sevens yet), soccer, Aussie footie, hurling (!), Gaelic football (!!) and other stuff. A must-have, at least for the four-month minimum subscription.

Adding the channel to my cable TV lineup was a foregone conclusion, although I had to convince the people at the Rogers call centre that since they were advertising the channel on air, they really *should* have it in their subscription system. It took about five tries, with five increasingly-baffled call centre employees, to finally add the channel to my account.

Now my only concern is that the tournament is in full flight just as all my regular must-watch programs are starting up for the fall season. Good thing I have two PVRs.

Jazz is good for you

No, it's not good for you like, say, broccoli or a good night's sleep, but a group of researchers are studying how the experience of improvised music could serve as a model for collaborative work in other areas.

Quoted in a newspaper article, U. of Guelph professor Ajay Heble says: "A group of people who may have never met, who know very little about one another - may not even speak the same language - can create inspired music. What makes it work and what does this tell us? These are the kinds of questions we are asking." You can read the full Globe & Mail article here.

I can see it now: instead of butting heads with management representatives at a bargaining table, I'll just walk in with a horn and call a couple of tunes. Maybe the choice of song would even have some effect on the tenor of negotiations (pun completely intended): perhaps The Meaning of the Blues if things are going badly; In Your Own Sweet Way if I'm feeling conciliatory; All Of Me for concession bargaining; My Favorite Things during the initial stages when each side presents its initial wish list; Old Folks when we discuss pensions... my mind is spinning with possibilities. I'll leave it up to you as to when I might play a tune like You Don't Know What Love Is or (ahem) Oleo.

And oh yes... Todaybour Day is Labour Day! (sorry for the *-gasp!-* US spellings in the linked cartoon) I think Bennedetto is one of my favourite Homestar Runner characters.

Chairs

I am one of those people who appreciates having a chair to call my own. It gives me a sense of belonging; an attachment; a home away from home if you will. It's a place where I have at least a certain measure of, not necessarily control, but perhaps droit de regard over the things that go on around me. And come on, what man can resist being told that "that chair over there is for you"?

In the past few weeks, this agreeable experience has happened to me not once, but twice. The first time was at the very end of June, just before I started my summer holidays. After months of griping about how my office chair was broken and how I needed a new one, it finally arrived:

It's very comfortable, and I can work at my desk all day - if I have to, that is.

Those who know me well know that I like to find a watering hole close to my place of work. It's a good place to sit and decompress from the travails of the day, meet and chat with friends, to meet people, to flirt with waitresses... you know, a real neighbourhood-y place.

I've been a regular at this particular bar on Front Street pretty much since the day it opened about five years ago. I've stuck with them and they've stuck with me. After months of teasing about how I should have my own designated spot in the place, they finally came through.

Yes, they put a plaque on one of the chairs designating it as mine. It was immediately pointed out to me that if any other bar patron named Keith comes in, I'll be out of luck.

Being a regular at a bar is just fine with me, as long as no one ever confuses me with that other famous barfly from TV:

Hmmm... come to think of it, I am starting to look a little like ol' Norm - although you're not likely to catch me wearing a tie too often. Okay, maybe he's a bad example. How about Morn from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine?

Nope, not much resemblance there, right? Right?

My summer vacation

Ahhh... there's nothing quite like the impending end of a summer holiday to remind one that summer holidays are entirely too brief.

This year was much like any other. I spent a week at Humber College at a jazz workshop. I've been doing it for the past six years or so, and it's always entertaining. It's a great opportunity to network with a goodly number of Canada's best jazzers. Just before the Humber workshop there was the annual Toronto Jazz Festival; I was able to get to a few shows, including Metalwood (check them out), guitarist Mike Stern with my favorite (living) electric bassist Alain Caron, and buddy and former Saskatonian Jon Ballantyne.

Also as in past years, it took me a little while to pry myself away from the office. This year, though, it was more because of events and less because of me not being able to disconnect. Of the four weeks I've been officially out of the office I actually did some work for about a week. I do get the time back, though, so it's not like I've done myself out of anything.

One of my work-related activities involved a quick two-day trip to Montreal. My responsibilities kept me there for the full two days, but the meetings were interspersed with lots of downtime, so I was able to catch some of the Just For Laughs comedy festival, as well as Nuits d'Afrique and a snippet of the big international fireworks competition. Mind you, just walking along any of Montreal's major streets is a mini-vacation in itself; the city is sufficiently unlike any other in Canada (or North America, for that matter) that one feels the same dépaysement as one does when vacationing in another country.

Another pseudo-tradition is the time spent catching up on all things Potter. I saw Order of the Phoenix - twice - and read Deathly Hallows - yes, twice. Apparently there is a big international academic conference on Harry Potter here in Toronto in the next couple of weeks. I don't know whether I'll be able to catch any of it, or see any of the conventioneers, although my downtown location (work and home) virtually guarantees that I will bump into some conventioneers at some point. And don't worry, I won't spoil the ending of the HP novels for you - unless you ask me to, of course.

In other news: after years of threatening to do so, I finally got around to getting a busker's permit. Now the question becomes: will I use it? Stay tuned.

In other other news: I read a scary snippet online the other day. Apparently the city of Salzburg has just launched - no, I'm not making this up - a cable TV channel that runs The Sound of Music 24/7.

*shudder*

Just one more reason I'm glad to be living in Canada.

Is it an emergency if it happens all the time?

A brief rant:

I frequently use taxicabs to get around. More frequently than I'd like, to be honest, but that's another story.

There are only so many things a guy can do to kill time while riding in a taxi, so I've spent a couple of seconds looking at the customer's "bill of rights" as set out by the local taxi commission. A customer has the right to ask the driver to turn the air conditioning on and off; to direct the driver on the route to be taken, and a bunch of other motherhood-type rights.

One expectation we clients are also allowed is that the cabbie will only use his/her cellphone in an emergency. So why is it that nearly every cabbie I've dealt with over the past year or so has a headset welded to their ear? And why is it that they are all so deeply engaged in conversation all the time? I can't figure out to whom they could possibly be talking for such long periods. It strikes me that all the attention they are paying to their long, voluble and (sometimes) high-volume conversation is attention that they are taking away from, you know, the "driving the vehicle and keeping the client safe and comfortable" part.

Nearly every time I get out of the cab at the end of a ride I promise myself I'm going to write to the commission and complain. I've yet to do it.

*harrumph*