pianist envy

Okay.... so one thing I actually fully intended to blog about a couple of weeks ago when we were out apple picking was this: Pingle's Farm, where we went to pick the apples, has some seriously weird-ass imagery going on. Seriously. Weird-assed. Shit. Man.

Check this out:







Am I wrong, or is that a giant vulva those kids are climbing in and out of?



That is the entrance/exit to one of those inflatable bouncy-room injury factory type things. Kids both shimmying into that thing and exiting it face first made for one of the most enjoyably bizarre sights I've seen in a while.


Then we found a giant checkers game with man sized checker pieces. Here's what they looked like:


What the hell are they putting in those pies, anyways? Has no one noticed the extreme sexualization of these children's objects?


Not that I'm objecting. I think we need to expose the inherent sexuality of childhood more. It's just rarely on such unambiguous display.

Quick, Cover The Delorean!

Max is now completely into Back to the Future. We watched part one about a month ago. Since then he's seen one of the three movies at least once every day. We ordered a Delorean scale model. Max sleeps with it.

The thing is that from day one, he had no trouble with keeping track of the implications of the time travel. He thinks fourth dimensionally as well as anyone I've ever met. He likes all three movies, although he has spent significantly more time on part 3, which after all has guns and exploding trains in it. He's warming up to part 2 slowly, which is fitting given the darker nature of it. But what's most gratifying about this for me is that these movies, which I have said numerous times represent for me the pinnacle of big budget summer moviemaking are now just as special to him.


The toy is incredibly detailed. Max specifically did not want a Mr. Fusion model, so we went with the classic part 1 incarnation (you can get a car for each of the three movies). There is a tiny little set of time circuits inside there, along with a flux capacitor and the little digital speed gauge. As you can see, the gullwing doors are fully functional. There's even a detachable "lightning hook" for simulating the end of the movie. Max is busy making plans to construct his own Hill Valley, in part so he can show it to people and say: "please excuse the crudeness of this model." And in part so he can electrify the model and set the car on fire, I'm afraid.

The other thing about this is of course that the entire Back to the Future series is essentially about the past; the upshot being that we've now been able to introduce such concepts as the old west and westerns, Chuck Berry, blacksmithing, Jules Verne, and Huey Lewis and The News. All of which sticks a grin on my face about a mile wide every time I think about it.

your life does not flash in front of your eyes, mostly the inside of your car flashes in front of your eyes

I totalled our car about 4 hours ago. We're fine, really. Max seems completely intact, he has a small friction burn on his neck from the seat belt. Leah has a pain in her foot, but no visible bruising and she can wiggle her toes and put weight on it. I have some shooting pain in my left arm, about a 2 on the pain scale, but I saw a paramedic and we both agreed that this is probably just a sprain from gripping the wheel too tightly during the impact.

Okay, so, as near as I can figure it here is what happened.

We were in the passing lane, on the 401 coming east back from a bucolic day of hay rides, corn labyrinths and apple picking (couldn't you just barf?). We were going with the flow of traffic, maybe 115-125 clicks when the car in front of me (yes there were at least 3 chevrons between us) suddenly swerved.

Now there was a large (about a metre long) piece of truck tire lying across the lane in front of me. I swerved, the car started to fish tail wildly, I lost complete control and hit the divider going pretty fast. At the point of impact we were turned 90 degrees to the lane just about. The airbags fired, the hood flew up and covereed the windshield, we were blind and deaf and right in the middle of oncoming traffic.

No one hit us. This is the actual miracle, since we would have been t-boned and I at the very least would have had to watch as my wife was killed or injured right in front of me. I remember that I could smell smoke, which I assumed was a fire but which occurred to me later was probably just the smell the airbags make when they explode out of their respective compartments. I got directly out of the car and got away from it. We stood on the inside shoulder, lifted Max up onto the divider and did a cursory check for injury.

The car got towed to an impound lot. I'll never see that car again, it's totalled for sure. Now I just have to wait for a cheque from the insurance and start all over again.

Some random thoughts about what was expected versus what happened. Time does indeed seem to slow down, so that every thing that happens during impact seems quite compartmentalized and distinct. You do not go into shock, or at least I didn't, but Leah got very dizzy and had to sit down until her colour returned. I did not have any problem getting right back in the car and driving again about an hour later when we had been given a rental. I did drive a little "extra careful" at first, but no fear or anxiety to speak of. I am totally exhausted now, and it's only 8 o'clock. I do not have any sense of heightened sensation, like the whole "air smells sweeter since I brushed with death" phenomenon.

So I'm home, and I'm sure I'll spend the next few weeks thinking about how I might adjust my driving habits, but other than that all this is is a bureaucratic process that will result either in being given some money, or having to pay some. On to other things.

sweet fuckin' jesus!

What the fuck are you people doing with your time? Who checks an un-updated-for-four-months blog the day after they get married? Get off the internet and begin having sex already, will ya?!? Christ, do i have to do everything around here?

crank it over

I was going to write a real cute little "reasons I started and subsequently stopped blogging" pieces. but really, who cares? it's not like anyone is reading this, so..... okay. This blog existed, and really still exists, as a chronicle of my life before my life now. Amazingly, begrudgingly, I fit in to my current situation. I had perhaps the worst day in a year at work today, a completely disorganized and incompetent string of events all of my making, and it was still a better day by a mile than any day at the last place.

It's just past Yom Kippur, and while it's officially the day of atonement, it's also the end of the first go round of fall jewish holidays, and so I'm thinking about it more like it's thanksgiving as well. So, here are the yin yang of me:

I'm grateful that I have probably the best boss in the world.

I'm sorry I'm spending more time daydreaming about how great it would be if I had everything I wanted. It wouldn't be great, that's for sure. Besides for all practical purposes I already have everything I wanted.

I'm grateful that max loves Back to the Future so much that we will in all likelihood be attempting to build a scale model of Hill Valley.

I'm sorry I don't get involved with school for him. Leah gets right in there, volunteers, knows when pizza day is, gets involved. Something holds me back. I'll never be the parent I want to be.

I'm grateful that I get to work with people who's company I enjoy. I like just hanging out talking to them.I picked them, and I picked great.

I'm sorry I'm not going to finish the one minute movie. But I'm not. I'm just smart enough to know in my heart that I'm no good at that. I'd love to make movies, but I self censor with the best of 'em.


I'm grateful that I can write this stuff down, send it out there, and after six months of inactivity be reasonably sure that no one will read it.