The catch is, that only every other soldier is getting a rifle. The Commissars are usually saying something like “One man gets the rifle, the next man gets some bullets. The second man follows the man with the rifle, and when he is shot, picks up the rifle and carries on fighting!”

That’s exactly how I feel at work right now.

Hopefully I won’t get shot. But if I am, I hope someone will carry on fighting.

Hey, I’ve got eyes that see
Don’t say there’s nothing wrong with me
You say I’m just paranoid, well that’s something the matter with me
That’s one thing the matter with me

Hey, they checked my vital signs
But I can read between the lines
They tell me I worry too much, now there’s another thing
The matter with me. That’s two things the matter with me.

- The Boomers YYZ, The matter with me. From the album What we do.

I remember way back when LovelyWife and I decided it was time to get a car – the first ever thing we would buy as a couple. The year was 1992 and we were living in Montreal. During a week long visit in Sherbrooke, I had to get new sneakers so we borrowed my FMIL’s car and went to shop for shoes. On our way back from the store, I jokingly said something about buying two modes of transportation during the same week, and sure enough by the end of that week we were driving back to Montreal in our very own 1992 Geo Metro.

Yes, it was that color.

One of the main things I remember from buying this car was the fact that since we were really young, the sales person wasn’t taking us very seriously. Before arriving at the dealership, I already knew how much the insurance was going to be, I knew how much the car was going to be and I even knew what color we wanted. Those of you who think that OCD thing I have is recent, not so much.

We walked in the dealership, and when after a while the first person asked us if they could help us, I simply said: “I want this car, in green”. So the guy started telling me about the engine, the fuel consumption, the handling… So I repeated: “I want this car, in green. I need it for Sunday at the latest.” The guy stopped talking and looked at my FMIL. She said that we were the one buying the car, so we finally sat down and signed the papers. We got the car on the Friday.

We drove that car for seven years. Over the course of these years, the car was often serviced at the dealership, and often the mechanics would not take me seriously. Once I was even charged for parts that would not fit on the car.

I always told myself that since I was 21, this might be somewhat normal.

And then in 1999 I started shopping around for a new car. I was 28, so surely I would be taken more seriously that time, yes? Also, I wasn’t going to get a GM because the car place was treating me like a kid.

No. It turns out that even at 28, you’re still considered a kid by car salesguys.

The first place I went to simply *cough* Hyundai *cough* ignored me. So after standing around in the showroom for a good 20 minutes, I just walked out. Only then did someone managed to pull themselves away from their water cooler discussion to ask an half-assed: “Looking for a car?” Yes, but not here.

I changed my strategy at the second place. I walked into Ford, and went straight to the first salesguy I saw. “I want a Focus Zx-3 sedan, silver, manual. Can we go on a test drive before signing the papers?” I thought that would convey the proper amount of interest in the car, coupled with the allure of a really easy sale. Imagine my surprise when the salesguy reply was: “I only have an automatic hatchback version that you can drive, but that’s not really the same thing… So, I dunno. Wanna do that?” I said no, I didn’t want to do that and walked out.

I then went to Saturn, figuring their no hassle thing would work to my advantage. They were nice enough folks, and by nice enough I meant that they greeted me with: “Welcome to Saturn, the SL1 is staring at 15,999$ buy or lease come here and just sign here you have 30 days to bring back the car red is an awesome color”, but ultimately the car was just not a good fit.

I ended up getting a Toyota Echo. It was a great car, but the fact that I was treated like a human being really made the whole Toyota experience awesome.

When in 2004 I wanted a new car, I just went the Toyota way and “upgraded” to a Corolla. Unfortunately, that car was the worst car I ever bought, and the dealership was the worst dealership I’ve ever dealt with. It’s amazing that I kept this car for four years. Of course, when it was time to get a new car, I didn’t want to drive a Toyota anymore.

In 2008 I leased a Nissan Rogue. I have to say that I really enjoy driving this SUV, and I even thought about buying it once the lease period is over. Nissan was nice enough when I gave them my piece-of-you-know-what Corolla, and gave me an awesome deal on a really nice car, so why not. But I like new cars. So when my FFIL hinted that he was willing to buy my SUV one my lease was over – or sooner – I started to think about cars, research them online, look at options. Yesterday I picked up my SUV from Nissan, and figured I was going to get a salesguy to run some numbers for me, help me crystalize my plan to get my current SUV to my FFIL and leave with a new car.

I thought that at 40, I was certainly going to get the proper amount of respect from a business who was about to take anywhere from 20K to 40K from me.

I turns out Nissan is not that interested in my money. Or so it seems. Because when asked about the whole exchange thing, the guy just said: “yes, it’s possible.” When pressed for more information, I managed to get a little more, just enough to know that my FFIL and I had to be there at the same time.

What. The. Fuck. Giving away money has never been so hard.

Here’s what I told the guy:

“I have this Rogue. The lease on it is finishing up soon, and I’m looking for a way to sell this Rogue to my FFIL, and in the same visit leave with a new car, possibly smaller than what I have right now. I’m looking for an approximate pricing on either a Juke, a Versa sedan, a Sentra, a Leaf, a Maxima or any other model that may be a good fit for what I do with a car, which is drive to the grocery store and back. I like new cars and I like fun cars. How do we make this happen?”

Here’s what the guy replied:

“The Juke is not a family car. The Versa has a 4.5% lease rate, you probably don’t want that.” Finally we’re getting somewhere.  ”But you’re a preferred client, so you’re getting a deal on the rate. This car (points at Versa) is 17K.”

I’m nodding, looking at him. He’s looking at me. He’s looking outside. He’s looking at his watch. He’s slowly walking away.

“Do you have a business card?”

“Not really. See you around.”

I just stood there. Dumbfounded. I’m a 40 year-old dude and I can’t be taken seriously when it comes to buying a new car. There is something wrong with me. I’m hoping the people at Honda are assholes too, because I really don’t want to drive a Civic.

What if there’s no heaven and I live like a priest?
What if I write a book they don’t like in the Middle East?
What if I do something good and nobody sees?
Then, there would be something the matter with me.
Then I’d have three things the matter with me.

- The Boomers YYZ, The matter with me. From the album What we do.

Speaking of the Boomers

Doesn’t it look like I Photoshopped myself in the background there? Maybe a beard would make me more respectable?

Not to scale, mine is much bigger. 

A few days ago, I finally paid off my student loan.

What better way to celebrate than to go kill a few of those brain cells that are finally totally mine.

In other words, beers.

In itself, posting a graphic on your wall is not a big deal. But let’s say – hypothetically – that you then happen to read the caption of the graphic, and it read:

Hand drawn – all rights reserved. Do not copy.

Then you clicked on the picture and saw that once it’s been embiggified, there’s a not-so-subtle watermark on it.

Of course because I can Google shit, my first thought was “bullshit!”. I’m willing to bet it was your first thought too. Unless you thought that it’s a hand drawn watermark?

But being the nice friendly Canadian I am – balanced by the huge skeptic that I am – I had to say something, but something relatively polite and mild. So I wrote this comment under the “hand drawing” that went like this:

“Hey! What graphic program did you use to create this drawing?”

This reply came less than a minute later:

It’s not from a program, it’s done by hand.

So I just let it go. I figured that who cares if that person likes to pretend that she drew a picture by hand when she really just applied a filter. What difference does it make to me? No skin off my back, right?

Wrong.

It turns out that I have a fairly obsessive-compulsive thing going on, and I’m not really able to let go of things. It didn’t help that over the following weeks, that person kept posting all kinds of new “hand drawings” that were clearly done with the help of a computer program. I became literally obsessed by those “drawings”.

I also have a background in social sciences, which unfortunately means that I really really want to help people – even the ones that don’t want to be helped.

So I did what I do best. I asked questions until I got something that could put my mind at ease. My goal was not to catch the person in a lie – even though that would’ve probably been much more gratifying in the end – but to make that person realize why I thought she was using a computer, and ultimately make her realize that people were seeing through her game. I thought that if I could at least get her to admit that I wasn’t crazy for saying her “drawings” looked like photoshop filters applied on pictures, I would call it a day and move on.

You already know that’s not going to happen, right?

For a few weeks, whenever a new “drawing” was posted, I would ask questions about it in the Facebook comment section. How long did this take you to do? What medium did you use? Would you document the work in progress? How did you scan the drawing to your computer? I took it one step further and started commenting on other stuff she posted. When she posted lyrics of a song, I commented that I too loved that signer. I tracked down movie dialogue and literary quotes she posted as her own and commented on how much I enjoyed that movie or book.

Basically, all my comments said: “I’m watching you. I know what you are doing. You may be fooling hundreds of people, but not me!”. There was also a little of “Please stop being an idiot, people know we’re related”.

Finally after 9 “drawings” and a few posts, I received this private inbox message:

Just to be clear on the hand drawings: I do use a Wacom stylus to do them. In 2005, my right middle finger was broken in 5 places so I can’t hold a regular pencil anymore. The only photoshopped part is the watermark, and that’s done to protect my work. Since I use a stylus, they are really hand made drawings.

I immediately stopped posting on the person’s wall, and sent her a polite but frank email about the “drawings”. Basically I asked her point blank to send me the .psd file of one of her “drawings”. I got this:

Maybe for the next drawings. I never keep the electronic files as they take too much space on my computer. You’re funny, it’s like you’re the drawing inspector! LOL!

I told her that I wasn’t, but that I did work with Photoshop and computers in general for the last twenty years or so, and that I was pretty sure that I could recognize a filter when I saw one. I told her that I didn’t mind if her thrill was to apply filters to pictures, but that being told that it was a hand drawing bugged me a little (but apparently not her hundreds of Facebook Friends, who only had good comments to make on her talent). I also included this graphic in my reply, telling her I took 5 minutes of my lunch break to make it.

You can make this bigger. You know you want to.

I concluded my email by saying: “Clearly, you can see where I’m coming from, right?”

Her reply came quickly.

I totally understand how you could be mistaken. Don’t you think that if I post them to Facebook saying they’re hand-drawn, it’s because I’m proud of having succeeded in making these? What would I have to gain by telling people I’m doing these by hand if I’m not?

It took me a good half hour just to think about what I was going to answer, or really if I was even bother to answer. In the end I went with a really long reply, that I will not post here. But basically, I offered these thoughts:

• Maybe it’s just something that started innocently by posting one filtered picture to your drawings folder. Then you started receiving positive feedback on your talent, so you didn’t want to disappoint your fans and basically painted yourself in a corner.
• Maybe you simply like the attention.

I then offered that this whole questioning thing had next to nothing to do with her, and all to do with me. You see, I question everything, so why not question that? However, I’m always willing to be proven wrong. So in the spirit of friendship and family, I offered to make the three and a half drive to her place with a nice bottle of wine and watch her draw for an hour or two.

I even offered to blog about how great of an artist she was, and promised to publicly apologize on her Facebook wall if she could prove me wrong.

When 24 hours passed without a reply, I figured the matter was settled. I had called her bluff and she couldn’t answer. Case closed, moving on. I refrained from any and all comments on her new “drawings” when she posted them. I had tried to help, and had failed. No sense beating a photoshopped picture of a dead horse.

See, I can totally joke about this. I even made the following images on my lunch break and had a good chuckle about it. They are some of her “drawings” overlaid on graphics I found on-line.

Well, that kept me busy for about 7 minutes.

Now flash-forward to yesterday night. I see this post in my Facebook timeline:

To all you guys who “sag” your pants and show your butt and underwear …did you know it originated in prison? It was a signal to the other MEN that you are “available”. So if you wanna keep going around looking like you’re “available” for another dude to “tap that” then keep thinking you’re cool while I think you look like a Fool!!! BTW it’s called – PBS (Prison B*tch Syndrome).LOL Pass this on to the droopy pants that you know.

Can you guess this is from the same person? So I did what I always do when I see people pass on false information or chain letters. I posted a comment basically saying “don’t post crap!” and linked to snopes.com.

That comment got deleted in less than a minute. Thinking that maybe Facebook didn’t like the included link – I had linked to a specific article – I commented again. Deleted in less than a minute once more. That made me suspicious… Sure enough, I discovered that all the comments I ever made on any posts on that person’s wall had been deleted. I could sort of understand that, saving face and all. But surely this comment was something different… Why delete it?

So I reposted my comment on my wall, tagging that person in the comment.

“For those of you who didn’t have the chance to see my comment on (person’s name)’s wall before it got deleted…”

That comment was “liked” in less than 10 seconds by that person. Interesting. Thinking that it really was a link problem – I mean why would someone delete a comment from their wall and then instantly like the same comment on my wall – I made my way to her wall to leave a simple comment without any link and was greeted with this gem of a post:

What if I post that I have blonde hair, blue skin and live in a mushroom? Would you call me out on this too? What difference does it make to you? If you don’t agree with what I post, just hang up and go to the next caller. If you’re looking for an excuse to come to my house with wine, you should be mature enough to just come over without having to make up a whole story to justify doing it.

I am now convinced this person truly believes the reality she constructs. I mean seriously, how do you go from a polite version of “I think you’re a fucking liar” to “I’m looking for an excuse to go visit you”? You that I saw last time about 12 years ago for 5 minutes when I dropped off some clothes for your kids at your place. You that in those 5 minutes, asked me for 100$ and a television set.

Delusional.

The worst part of this is that I now realize that some people are just beyond any kind of help. And honestly, isn’t this the saddest thing you’ve ever heard? I know it’s number two on my all-time list.

Because really, nothing can be sadder than learning that I’m related to La Schtroumpfette.

Come on, get it out of your system… I can hear you say “that’s what she said” from here. 

What is really really hard is parenting other people’s kids. In fact, it’s not “really really hard”, it’s damn near impossible. Okay, it’s impossible. Parenting your own kid is hard enough as it is - I could give you a thousand examples of the situations that are making me lose my mind as a dad and even as a human being in general. I already wrote about how my son got shot in the park, I already asked you for advice about letting CutieDaughter get a Facebook account, I already told you about ripping the wings of butterflies, and of course I already told you that when it comes to my kids I’m a complete emotional mess.

As a dad, I get through those moments by thinking about the eventual benefits we’ll get as a family once we go through the crap. That is what keeps me going, and often a healthy dose of Whisky.

But when it comes to other people’s kids, there’s no real incentive to go through the crap with/for them because quite frankly the rewards would not be mine to enjoy anyways. I’m not saying that always prevents me from trying. I am a real softie at heart you know, and can’t stand the thought of giving up on anyone. Even kids that are mean to my kids.

In that spirit of not giving up on anyone, I spent about an hour chatting on Facebook with a friend of CutieDaughter.

A friend who basically spent an hour writing that my daughter was the biggest liar who ever lived, and also that she really missed her on Facebook since they were BFF. A friend who calls my house at 2am and hangs up when I pick up. A friend who made my daughter cry more times than I care to recall.

I give up.

Goodbye, friend.

Happy Canada day!

To summarize, a vacation is something you do to relax. A trip is something you do to learn things, fulfill a childhood dream, learn new things, visit a new country from North to South and East to West, climb a mountain…

Some examples:

• Spending the summer enjoying the pool in your backyard. (vacation)
• Spending one week camping on a deserted Island. (trip)
• Climbing Mount Everest. (trip)
• Going to Scotland for two weeks, visiting 18 distilleries and driving 2,500 miles. (trip)
• Spending one week in a five star all-inclusive resort in Cuba. (vacation)
• Renting a cottage for the summer. (trip)
• Going to Italy for a month with the kids. (trip)

In order to know if you’re planning a trip or a vacation, picture yourself doing the thing you are going to do. Now picture yourself coming back home after having done the thing you planned to do. Picture yourself dropping luggage in your hallway. Now read this sentence out loud:

“I could totally use a week to rest from this!”

If you can see yourself saying something like this, you’re planning a trip. Not a vacation.

I must be extremely clear on this point: There is absolutely nothing wrong about planning a trip. I think trips are defining moments in my life, and I’m glad I’m planning / doing them. I think going to Scotland was truly the trip of a lifetime.

However, it was not a vacation.

There is something inherently devastating about thinking that you’re going to go on a vacation only to discover that you’re really going on a trip. There are also a few people that I know very very well *cough* LovelyWife *cough* that can’t tell the difference between a trip and a vacation. Those people *cough* LovelyWife *cough* would most likely have this list:

• Spending the summer enjoying the pool in your backyard. (doing nothing)
• Spending one week camping on a deserted Island. (vacation)
• Climbing Mount Everest. (vacation)
• Going to Scotland for two weeks, visiting 18 distilleries and driving 2,500 miles. (vacation)
• Spending one week in a five star all-inclusive resort in Cuba. (spending money to do nothing)
• Renting a cottage for the summer. (vacation)
• Going to Italy for a month with the kids. (vacation)

As you can probably guess, planning something to do as a family for the summer in our house is the constant source of headaches and arguments, normally ending in one of us saying “We’ll do what you want LovelyWife”. It always starts the same way: “What are we doing for vacations this summer?”. Then we’ll each list things that we’d like to do on post-its. It’ll inevitably end up looking like this:

If you didn’t guess yet, I use blue post-its.

So to my LovelyWife I say this:

Even when life with you is far from a vacation; you’ll remain now and forever, the trip of my lifetime. XXX

Because you know that I could totally use a week to rest from this.

I recently moved into an apartment with an ex coworker of mine. It’s not big, and it smells really damp. I have no clue why I moved in with this person – or rather how I allowed him to move in with me, we were not that great friends to begin with – but I guess that’s what I had to do in order to pay the rent.

Times are tough since my wife an I separated.

There’s also this other guy that I used to know when I was studying at Sherbrooke university. For no apparent reason we decided that it would be funny if he would wear one of my shirts for a day, and me one of his.

I don’t talk much about dreams, but these are the kind of dreams I’m having. You’d think that the strangeness of it all is the highlight of the dreams, but it’s not. The really strange things about these dreams? They form a coherent story that stretches as far back as 25 years ago.

I am not kidding.

It’s like all my dreams are part of this parallel universe, where what I dreamed a week or a decade ago is now canon. I once dreamed I broke an arm falling off a tree. In subsequent dreams I had a cast on my arm, and went through a healing process within the dream – but the cast was never the focus of the dream. Subsequent doesn’t mean “the next night” – I think that I dream one timeline, but jumbled – as I’ll pick-up where a dream left off 10 years ago one night, and some other night dream something that seems to be completely unrelated to the main story, but I’ll later discover that it makes perfect sense.

Maybe I’m such a nutjob that my brain “fills in the blanks” between unrelated dreams – sometimes years after the original dream.

Borrowed from http://www.toothpastefordinner.com. I Googled “Weird Dreams” and this fits.

I thought dreams were not supposed to make sense over the course of a lifespan. Mine seem to be part of a fairly complex continuity, and the fact that they totally make sense doesn’t make sense at all. Anybody else has weird dreams? Just me?

Bonne St-Jean Baptiste!

Camping is on top of that list, of course. Shut up, camping is a “thing”. I hate it.

Most mornings, I walk through a Shopping Mall to get to work. The whole thing lasts maybe 2-3 minutes (that’s what she said), and is always a dreadful experience (that’s… well you get it.).

Anyways. I have this thing. I hate walking in a crowd. A crowd of uncoordinated morons, half asleep because they didn’t have their morning caffeine yet, randomly zig-zagging, stopping, turning, backing up…

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the fastest walker ever. I don’t even like walking that much. But I know how to walk in a straight line. I learned the value of being predictable when I walk with / around other people. I know that because I constantly check. For example, this always happens to me:

If I walk with another person to go grab lunch, a coffee, get a new car, the other person will always end up making me go off the sidewalk, brush a wall, etc. I know it’s not me, because once the person is actually touching my shoulder, I’ll change side this will happen:

So regardless of the side I walk on, I always manage to attract the other person. I did the math*, even my near 300-pound gorilla body should not exert that much gravitational pull on another human being. You can imagine what happens when I try to walk in a crowd of people coming and going, half asleep, not paying attention to what they’re doing and their surroundings.

I bump into a lot of people.

Let me rephrase that.

I use to bump into a lot of people. Now I tackle a lot of people. I’m not saying I dive in their knees or clothesline them – did I ever mentioned I used to play football? – but I’m like an anvil wrapped in a thick cushy fat layer. If you brush against me you’ll be fine, but if you hit me head-on and manage to reach the hard core – hahaha like there’s one! – it’s like hitting a padded cell wall. It may be padded, but it’s still a wall.

Especially nowadays, since I’m completely fed-up with trying to avoid all the idiots walking through the Mall, so I won’t make any kind of effort to get out of your way. This was seriously getting ridiculous, you should’ve seen me looking like a monkey on crack dodging, weaving, side-stepping people. that 3 minute walk through the mall was kinda like a 90 minute workout. It’s like I was the Prince of Persia, I swear.

If you’re texting and walking at the same time? Odds are you will hit me because I won’t move. You’re looking to your right and moving to your left? You’ll hit me. By the way, you’ll be surprised how many people actually do that, moving in a direction they don’t look. You stop dead at the top of the escalator? I’ll walk through you. You suddenly stop for no reason? I’ll plow in your back.

Anyways, I was walking through the Mall the other afternoon, thinking about this post. How was I going to do the line graphics, would I look for a Mall floor plan, and mostly how was I going to find the perfect ending. Then I had this “You got to be shittin’ me!” moment, the perfect ending offered on a silver platter. You will never guess what I saw, walking towards me on a perfect collision course.

A Fucking Juggler.

I kid you not. A guy was actually walking through the crowd – while juggling balls. I was too dumbfounded to take a picture, but I swear I’m not making that up. I of course started to giggle like a fool, imagining how things like that only happen to me, and how absolutely no one would ever believe me.

I didn’t even help him pick up his balls.

* Not really