I saw this at Ajooja‘s place, and since he took it from someone else, I’m stealing it. From his blog: “Kilax had a great post last week where she asked her readers to cast actors to play their parents in a movie.”

This might be fun thing to do, I thought. Without furter ado, here we go:

My dad reminds me of Sean Connery a lot. It’s not just the look, it’s the strong quiet type, the fact the he’d easily be casted as a King for any movie he’d be in. There’s also that little twinkle in his eye. My dad turns 60 tomorrow.

Kathy Bates could play my mom. She’d need some props (glasses, cigarettes, coffee) but she’d pull it off for sure. Kathy Bates had her first nude scene at 43, and this is the kind of ballsy thing my mom could pull off. Easily. Like going back to school at 43.  

My sister is the purty one in the family. Can’t you tell?

My baby brother is kinda all grown-up now. He has a beard, his own blog and makes cheesy sound effects while doing the dishes, playing golf or driving.

It your turn now!

What about me, I can hear you think. Well, I don’t know. There’s a lot of pictures of me lying around on the Web, I think this is where you come in. Who would you cast to play yours truly, and why? 

I work here. It’s officially a bilingual place, as you can see from this sign I took from a door a few months ago. 

On another note, here’s a reply I got today by email:

Please migrate all my cours sur la nouvelle plateforme.

Isn’t that special? Of course, I’m an idiot, so here’s my reply:

Please follow the instructions dans le courriel original.

I wonder in what language I’ll get in trouble now…

I got so many.. Ahem… let’s say “special” responses to this project that I’m thinking I should start a wall of shame. Now that would get me in trouble…

Here’s a great ilustration of how much of an idiot I am. True story. Well at least the part that’s not imagined.

I recently talked here about my finger numbness, and also wrote that my chiropractor told me he “forgot to work on this”. I think I should qualify that this was probably just my chiropractor way of allowing me to save face because he couldn’t call me an idiot in front of other patients.

Let’s backtrack a bit:

Mid-March I mention to Dr. Denis that my fingers are numb. For a few weeks after that, he makes the little tool go clickety-click near my clavicles and on my wrists. It doesn’t seem to do anything, but I’m willing to give it time.

And then, on April 1st…

Do I really need to say this? Of course.

On April first during my treatment, Dr. Denis cracks my neck, my back and then takes his little tool and clicks it near my clavicle. Immediately, I went “Haaaaaaaaa! I feel much better!!!” while doing spirit fingers.

He made a puzzled face, and I laughed and said “April fool!” and we both chuckled.

But that’s when he stopped going clickety-click with the tool. I’m thinking he thought I had been joking about the whole numbness thing instead of just getting instantly better. I’m an idiot because that’s the vibe I got right then and there and didn’t say anything about it.

Instead I assumed that he knew me (he doesn’t) and my sense of humor (he doesn’t). And then I didn’t say anything for a long time, and lived with pain because I am an idiot. Mr. Fab has the tagline “Someday my sense of humor is going to get me killed”, but it might actually happen to me first. I can picture it:

“I think I’m having a heart attack… I should’ve jogged more. Okay I should’ve jogged period… Tell Lovely Wife I said something nice about her. Urg.” I drop to the floor, spilling my half-eaten bucket of poutine.  

It takes half an hour for people around me to realize this is not a bit – they’re crying because i am sooooo funny - and that they should call a doctor. As I twitch on the floor and float above myself at the same time, I can hear them: “ha ha ha! He even went as far as to drop food for comedic effect!”, “Oh that Mike, always with the physical comedy”, “he’s peeing his pants and so am I!!” and “I’m putting this on YouTube!”. Sigh.

I step into the white light. It’s not at all what I was told it was supposed to be. No one’s around to greet me, no loved ones, no bearded guy with a great big book, no pearly gates (They’re more like Star Trek doors without the sound) and the whole place smells like a giant abandoned Costco.

“Hello?” Nothing.

“Anyone? Anything?” I never was that much of a believer.

From behind a cloud, a big bearded man stands up. His face is red, his eyes are puffy. He’s been crying.

“Grandpa?”

“Shit, we thought you were joking. Hey it turns out it was not a joke. Yeah, come meet us here. Ok bye.”

I notice the bluetooth headset. This must be Hell.

Finger numbness report: Day 73.

It’s getting worst. Last weekend I started dropping stuff. It hurts to type. My job involves typing things all day and transporting fragile precious unique artifacts on a tightrope suspended 200 feet over diamond floors. Kidding.

I’m thinking that weird smell might not be the need for a shower, but leprosy setting in.

I might never play guitar again.

I’m almost willing to admit I’m scared.

Darn.

Today is my friend Isabelle’s birthday.

Happy Birthday to you, 
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday, Dear Isabelle,
Happy Birthday to you!

Ever since I started going to the chiropractor on a regular basis my fingers have been numb. At first, I didn’t say anything – you know what they say about us Canadians and our legendary friendliness / politeness, right? Well, I’m pretty much like that even when it comes to what might be a fatal disease slight malaise of some sort (oops, getting ahead of myself here) – because well I figured it might be caused by the fact that my back used to be so misaligned that when moving things around back there it might be normal to experience some temporary discomfort in other parts of my body, and quite frankly I won’t be caught dead going to the hospital unless I carry something in an iced-filled plastic bag or because I just wake up already there. Please don’t view this as a critique on the Canadian health system; it’s just a guy thing. It turns out that being “polite” and a possible hypochondriac goes together about as much as trying to hook up you electrical service while kayaking down the Red River: If you don’t kill yourself, you’ll at least be shocked.

If you think you’re sick, please don’t Google your symptoms.

This is what I should’ve told myself. I mean, looking back on this, I could’ve guessed that I’d have some hypochondriac tendencies, because my brother is one and most of what he thinks he has runs in hereditary, fatal or contagious (or a combination of the three).

I should Google my symptoms.

This is what I told myself instead, and I’m pretty sure it was a huge mistake. Within seconds, I had 29 possible diagnosises (diagnosii? Diagnosis?) for “numbness of the fingers” from wrongdiagnosis.com, but how good is this site if it’s called wrong diagnosis? The danger of that website comes in the form of a “multiple symptoms checker”. I started going down the list of other symptoms, thinking that I possibly had all of them. That was no help. Back to the list of 29. Oh look: diabetic neuropathy, multiple sclerosis, alcoholic neuropathy, Guillaine-Barre syndrome and (drumroll) leprosy. I left frostbite out, because it only rarely happens in Canada in May.

Armed with that new knowledge (har!), I casually mentioned to my chiropractor that my fingers had been numb ever since mid March. He looked at my file and went “Oops” and said he totally forgot to work on my finger numbness since the beginning of April. He told me he was going to fix me and not to worry about anything.

So of course, I started worrying about everything.

(to be continued… hopefully)

WTF WAS THAT?

And what’s the deal with those gophers? Really.

That is all.

He says: “I need to cut some branches from the tree, they almost touch the car.”

She says: “OK. First we’ll go shop for groceries, then we’ll drive back home, put the groceries away and drive back to buy a thing on a pole to cut the branches, and flowers – we need flowers. We’ll shop at two different places for flowers. Then we’ll drive back home and unload the flowers, then I’ll mow the lawn while you cut the branches, then I’ll bring the hose out and just leave it there so you could stop cutting the branches to install it, then I’ll go in the basement and open the water forgetting to close the drain in the pipe flooding the basement and you can come downstairs close the drain and take the water away, then I’ll roll the BBQ so you could stop cutting the branches and clean the BBQ and drive to get some gas for the BBQ, then I’ll move my bicycle and look at it for a bit in the kitchen so you could stop cutting the branches and come help me change the back tire and we’ll be out of garbage bags so you could drive to the store to get some. It’ll be a great day.”

And on Monday when asked what you did on the weekend:

He says: “I am so f*cking tired leave me the f*ck alone! I hate weekends!”

She says: “My husband cut some branches. They were almost touching the car. We never do anything fun on the weekend.”

Dear public transit passenger,

Do you really think it’s that smart to spell check documents marked with huge red letters across the top: ”Confidential – Protected B”? Furthermore, I can read “Final Grievance Escalation” as the object of the letter, and the name, position and phone number of the plaintiff.

Who the hell writes official letters in Arial bold 18 points anyways? I’m 3 seats back and I can read the whole thing. It doesn’t help that you’re holding the document vertically above your head. You corrected typos on 3 of these letters while I watched and watched at least 6 other people reading them. FAIL.

I won’t mention the actual content of the “We are rejecting your grievance” letter, but I will say you are not a nice man, I wonder how you sleep at night. On some level you must realize this is not “just a job” and what you are doing is most probably destroying lives.

You’re just lucky I forgot the name of your company, otherwise this would be an e-mail to whoever’s in charge instead of this anonymous blog post.

I had drawn what I thought to be a funny cartoon for today, but new information came to me this morning and I’m pulling it out. It’s not funny anymore. Sorry!