Tag Archives: revenge

Day-to-Day, Meaning of Life

Absolute Zero Socks

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cold naked tree
cold naked tree

As I exited the house this morning I noticed the temperature was +25. Above absolute zero. As the only parts of my body not covered in layers of clothing were my eyes, I couldn’t help but think this must be what it’s like to wear a niqab or barqa, just without the subjugation and humiliation. And I can wear bright colors. But mother nature was humiliating me by making me dress this way. And making me wear those cruel boots again, thus creating a conflict between the sock, foot and boot the likes of which resemble Middle East conflicts, just with less chance of a resolution. Largely because NONE OF YOU has come up with the requested sock Viagra I demanded that seems to have struck a chord with many of your readers. (Can 6 really qualify as many, especially when one of them is my mom?)

Just before I climbed on to the train to go work this morning, I noticed several things. Not moving when it’s sub-arctic weather is silly. So is being outside in -18C. I also noticed that as the slovenly, unkempt, disheveled, sleepy kids were getting off the train to go to the private school, one of the teenagers was just too well turned out, too well coiffed, too prim and proper. I bet he gets beaten up in gym. Survival of the fittest, kind of like surviving this week’s impending arctic explosion barreling across my corrupt city.

Where was I? Oh right, in the bathroom then in the kitchen. Yes, I washed my hands, I wasn’t handling raw chicken in the bathroom, nor the kitchen this morning. Relax, people, I am sanitary of body, if not of mind or soul.

But I digress again.

My long underwear-clad legs took me to work this morning with music blaring away, trying to distract me from the sinking, evil, bunching socks, but not the cold. My mind wandered to the topic of work where a number of my colleagues and friends are on their way to Las Vegas for a big sales event, where the weather is several hundred degrees warmer than here, and I couldn’t help but secretly wish somewhere in a primordial part of my brain, or in one of my shrunken frontal lobes that wouldn’t it be great if one of my colleagues on his or her way to the airport to spend three days partying it up and eating buffet food were to be abducted by, I don’t know, a rogue band of disenchanted and under-caffeinated fashionistas or Communist rebels. And then forced into hard labor sewing knock-off wallets. Then I would get the last minute call to appear in Vegas, gleefully free of long underwear, seven layers of clothing and potential frostbite.

Now, I know you’re saying, “how could you possibly say that you’d wish such misfortune on someone else?” First of all, I wouldn’t say it, I would think it. And secondly, if I were to say it, it would be most likely be quietly, in an elevator, so that no more than four or five people would hear me. Besides, wishing others ill while morally reprehensible, is a healthy thing. It’s a vent, and outlet, a blow-off valve, giving the brain and emotions time to breathe deeply and calm down. And time to read the floor plans of my enemies’ homes and so I can direct the rebels using Google Maps and maybe find a good croissant and coffee close by.

What does this all have to do with anything? My socks are irritating me and I need a nap.

The right (and left) honorable Judge Drunker

 

 

Day-to-Day, Meaning of Life

Parental Payback

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Parental Payback

Do you remember that Alan Parsons Project song “Games People Play“? I barely do, but what I do recall of it was a mess of whiny, annoying pop drivel that made me reach for the tuning knob on my old radio in a desperate effort to find something entertaining to keep me from having to do my homework. And no, I didn’t play video games largely because I sucked and was massively uncoordinated in the fine and gross motor skills department. But as a child I wanted to do something well enough to impress my dad so I’d gain his love and respect as any child would. And show him he was getting old.

Hence this episode of the parentally-themed, Picasso-esque visual tour de force brings to light a topic that so many of us, the intentional and accidental creators of offspring, must deal with – the generation gap. Happens to all of us, the coolest of the cool, the dopest of the dope, even the hippest of the hip, including those who have had multiple hip replacements. We eventually stop being cool as nature intended us. Were we to remain eternally cool, we’d piss off our kids so much they’d either run away and join the circus as some do, or they’d kill us for stealing their thunder. Nature has this way of replacing the people who are ahead of the curve with those just behind them, kind of like ducks flying south in a V-shape. At some point, the lead duck has to give up and let a stronger duck ahead.

But that doesn’t mean parents have to completely give in to our children. In fact, by being intentionally uncool, non-hip, or even lame and loser-ish, we hold the great trump card in the eternal battle of child versus parent. All it takes is some well-timed and skilfully placed verbal blunders, particularly in front of the kids’ friends,even better if you’re in your underwear or wearing a filthy mustard-stained t-shirt with swear words on it, and you have sunk their battleship like an Exocet into the side of a Bismarck.

Armed with the knowledge that your child will one day replace you and make you obsolete, much like that last technology with the came along and made the one before that look so yesterday, know that for a brief time, say about 10 years if you’re lucky, you will appear cool, the hero, the dude to your child and then it all goes south in a medley of disco pants and bad hairdos and they’ll make fun of you too. Until their kids make fun of them.