…and if you do, then Oh, F U! Just Kidding.

Today is Turkey Day (NOT Tofurkey!) in the good ol’ United States of America, a country that has a special place in my heart.

I have always enjoyed my forays into the US. Be it semi-regular grocery shopping trips to Niagara Falls USA with the missus, or my epic honeymoon to Universal Orlando, or my trip to Universal and Disney MGM as a 12-year old, I have always enjoyed my time heading across the border.

It was in the US where I had one of my best experiences as a member of Phi Delta Theta for example, heading to the Emerging Leaders Institute in 2004. I’ve had my two best vacations south of the border as well. While only one of my favourite sports teams resides in the US – the Green Bay Packers – they have won 2 championships in the last in the last 15 years (note: NAILS!).

Needless to say, there’s much to envy of our neighbours to the south. For me though, perhaps the biggest thing is Thanksgiving.

I’ll go on the record as saying this – we Canadians should have adopted the same Thanksgiving as Americans. I mean, shit – 4 days of family, fun, food, football (holy eff)! Them folks down thur know how to do a holiday right, and it really shows in November.
Today would be so much better if I were at home, perhaps cleaning up for some family to come over and enjoy a turkey dinner. The Macy’s Day Parade would have been on, and I’d currently be having a beer while watching some daytime NFL football. The sweet aromas of sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie emanating from the kitchen. It would be a terrific day.

Additionally, you’d have Black Friday to look forward to! I know, I know – Canadian retailers are doing their own versions of this day. But, really? I mean, Canada already has an “America Junior” complex, do we really need to add “Black Friday Junior” to that? Besides, prices in the US are typically lower than they are here – all Black Friday does in Canada is rub it in that there are costing disparities between our two nations.

But yet, we celebrate in October:

On Thursday, January 31, 1957, the Parliament of Canada proclaimed:

I’m guessing that this wording was considered more diplomatic than: “Because November be too fucking cold to harvest anything but shitting frost-bite.” The history of Thanksgiving in Canada is interesting: it was held at mostly arbitrary dates (in the spring and summer in addition to October and November). 

For a stretch in the 19th century, we seemed to have the same Thanksgiving as the US – a Thursday in November. And then, in 1957, came the declaration above. Thanks, Louis St. Laurent! See – damn Liberals ruin everything.

So, instead of gorging ourselves silly on a Thursday whilst drinking and watching football, and then going out shopping on a Friday, and then recovering for 2 weekend days, we get to fight the grocery stores on Saturday, have people over on Sunday, and then spend Monday trying to catch up on errands and lamenting going back to work the next day. How the fuck was this deemed BETTER? My guess is anti-Americanism, but what do I know?

Regardless, I hope my American friends have a great Thanksgiving. As someone who is almost American at heart, I can only watch your celebrations in envy and hope that one day, a government of ours decides to again arbitrarily set a new date for the holiday in much the same way that the government in 1957 arbitrarily set the date.

I am still undecided on if I enjoy being productive on weekends or not. This past weekend, the wife and I put up our Christmas lights and finished building an Ikea desk, which were awesome feats of “I accomplished a thing!”, and made me feel good. However, in trying to remember the last time I didn’t leave my pajamas over the course of a weekend, doing sweet fuck-all, I find myself drawing a blank, causing me to gaze upon said finer days with a wistfulness generally reserved for memories of Diablo II-related LAN parties.

What sucks is when the most amount of down-time you get is while staring into the gaping maw of work. You sit at your work station/cubicle, dreaming of ways to somehow scam a Lotto-Max win from the OLG and writing blogs about nothing. I can’t play World of Warcraft here. I can’t wear pajama pants. I can’t just leave whenever I want. It’s definitely boo-urns, and there’s little to be done about it except ride it out and wait for something better to come along.

At work, I get time to think about weird things though. I decided at work that I didn’t trust people who wear shawls, because I’m pretty sure that they’re the ones who will panic at the first sign of the revolution and pull giant swords out from under it. I’ve also become relatively certain that the companies on the 4th floor of my office building employ about 85,000 people, because the elevator ALWAYS stops there, no matter what time of day.

I try my best while I’m here but work kills creativity. It even kills the desire to do it later, as many people take their work home with them at the end of the day (despite their best attempts not to). While I feel – I KNOW – that creativity is my way out of this place, I also know that this place is the foil helmet keeping the voices out – but I WANT the voices. So, what’s to be done? I suppose there’s only one solution – efforts must be doubled. That’s all you can ask for.

So, they can’t make a non-fat egg nog latté. Egg-white nog? Patent pending.

Link/Music of the Day

Check out my best good friend Derek’s band, “The Corduroys”. They’re all kinds of sexy, and aren’t adverse to wearing blazers with elbow patches.

What on Earth could possibly possess me to write a blog about friggin’ Twilight? I dunno… ennui? Lassitude? Tedium? Either way, it means I’m bored, so here the hell we go.

I initially thought of this idea because I heard on the radio on my daily soul-crush of a drive to Toronto that people were already lining up for the premier of the latest film on Monday. MONDAY! Today’s FRIDAY! The FUCK!

Regardless, people really want to see the end of the story where a girl with no emotional range whatsoever falls in love with a vampire whose best-displayed emotion is “irritable bowel syndrome”, while harbouring  a crush on a werewolf boy that owns nary a shirt, all the while trying to keep everything from her father – his mustache being the best part of the whole damn movie franchise.

I’m not totally sure what the appeal is of this movie/book franchise, and I worked at a bookstore for the height of the popularity of the book series (the first film hadn’t arrived in theaters yet). As best I can tell, women everywhere love the series because they want to one day fall in love with someone as perfect as Edward Cullen. Now, we may be veering away from reality on this front… you see, Edward Cullen is several hundred years old if I remember correctly. This ass-clown has had centuries to smooth out the rough edges of how to pitch woo. The rest of us had to figure it out on our own while battling puberty, acne, erections and a lack of coordination. But hey, it must be easy, if a fucking VAMPIRE can do it. Thanks Cullen, for ruining it for the rest of us!

Now, this doesn’t bother so much because I’m married and can make faces other than “I need some Pepto”. That said, there has to be a dose of reality meted out to those who turn pop culture into obsession. Any guy my age would be readily agreeable to being with Princess Leia for example – wore a leather bikini in Return of the Jedi, is willing to kick ass with a phaser, uses strong language like “nerf-herder”… but, most guys go the “reality” based route and simply masturbate and move on with their lives. Women don’t. Women stay up at night dreaming of marrying Edward Cullen. It isn’t going to happen. And yet, for dozens of hours, a lineup will form around a theater consisting of teenage girls with no sense that no man IS like Edward Cullen, and 42 year-old virgins whose Facebook page contains equal parts “why won’t anyone love me?” and “look at what my cats are wearing!” status updates. Now, let me change gears.

Dudes – you CAN be like Edward Cullen! No, not the vampire bit. What men CAN take away from this film series though is what women should take away from the Edward Cullen character – a man’s responsibility is to take care of his own. A man should be kind and brave and present. And, he should be able to throw a fastball, apparently…

Either way, the Twilight series as a whole IS pretty awful, and I base this on experience. I’ve read every book (had to know what all the fuss was about, and then had to finish reading it because of the train-wreck metaphor) and I’ve seen the first 3 movies. The first two movies were god-friggin-awful, the third not as bad. All four of the books were terrible however, in my opinion; anti-climactic, poorly-crafted endings, and poorly-written. Essentially, they’re 50 Shades of Grey for teenagers and Republicans.

AND, that leads me into another thing – 50 Motherfucking Shades of Grey. My wife told me the other night that hospitals have seen a spike in babies being born 9 months after the popularity boom of the first book. Fascinating. So, you can add “poor literature” to the list of reasons baby are born by accident, in addition to old mainstays like “broken condom”, “alien abduction”, “GOD!” and “hanging underwear too close on the line”.

I haven’t read these books – nor do I plan to; murdering my brain with Twilight was enough for me – but are these books really providing that kind of jolt? Apparently though, spikes in baby births also happen after natural disasters. I like the idea of Hurricane babies; pulp fiction babies, not so much.

One final note on something I saw on the news today, because it encompasses another pop culture phenomenon – Twitter – apparently, Twitter went loco today because Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad called his nuclear allies “mentally retarded”. My question is this – why is it that the celebrity cabal on Twitter doesn’t seem to have a problem with his numerous threats to annihilate Israel with nukes, but as soon as he calls someone a retard he gets lambasted? Just goes to show – either all celebs on Twitter are vapid peons with no sense of perspective, or they’re anti-Semitic. It’s got to be one or the other.

On a different note:

Not sure if I’ll post again before Monday, so let me share some thoughts on Remembrance Day. From 1914-1918, 1939-1944 and 1950-1953, and again from 2001-present, as well as numerous years in between, Canadian and American men and women died together in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East to protect the things that we take for granted every day, things that we don’t even think twice about. In other countries around the world, people face death daily because they long for the same of the most basic freedoms we take for granted. I hope everyone gets a chance to speak to a veteran this weekend and thank them for their sacrifice. I couldn’t imagine being away from my wife for even a short time, let alone being overseas, being shot at and bombed, all the while trying to convince her that everything will be alright. Many soldiers in Canadian wars weren’t even conscripted – they volunteered – and all to protect the lives and freedom of people who might not even care, or understand, or appreciate it. Thank a veteran, and do a good deed this weekend. It’s the least we can do for our heroes.

The sun rose today in the United States.

Just so we’re all on the same page, it would also have risen had Mitt Romney been crowned President, a man wishing today he had attended more Columbus Blue Jackets games in the last 4 years. Of course, if Romney HAD won, the sunrise would probably have been accompanied by nefarious thunder-clouds dripping blood, sending calamitous lightning bolts down onto all those godless Commie robots who would dare oppose the will of a Republican God (if liberals worldwide are to be believed, of course).

I’m glad today that all of my friends, the informed and uninformed alike, will not collapse into the wail of hysterics that would have occurred had Herr Romney emerged victorious. Today, everyone has their wits about themselves, and that’s great – mental health high-five!

Why am I writing about this election anyway? I guess it’s because I classify the story of last night’s election as culture as opposed to politics. Politics are negative; culture’s not.

If I were American, I’d vote for Obama. I believe he’s better for the United States than Mitt Romney. Would I vote for Obama if I were a Canadian with the ability to vote in the US election? Yes, most likely, though he isn’t necessarily better for Canada than Mitt Romney based on platform. The National Post had a great report on this; I wish I could find it on their site right now. But, who knows? It could be wrong. I could be wrong. It’s happened once or twice before.  The bottom line is, our love for Obama is due to who he is as a man, as a person, not necessarily as a politician. This is a guy who plays basketball, slow-jams the news with Jimmy Fallon, and ordered an honest-t0-God BEAVER TAIL while in Ottawa. How can you NOT want the guy to be your BFF?

What I like about Obama is that he’s as fucking genuine as they come. I don’t believe he puts up a veil or a mask; he lays  it all out there. He inspires hope in a country that needs it, in a country that DESERVES it. The United States is a great, amazing, cool, unique country, one I’d be proud to call home, and it needs someone like Barack Obama. I’m not saying Mitt Romney isn’t what the USA needs; certainly, he seems like an intelligent and capable politician that can deliver big things. If only he distanced himself from the social conservative quagmire that permeates the American Right like a toxic fog (that turns you inside out), he’d be downright electable. I just feel that Obama is the character, the PERSON that America needs to see it through dark and troubled waters.

Obama is just DIFFERENT though. He’s a different kind of politician, and he’s a different kind of man. He inspires and moves. Would it be the same if he were white? Who knows. What I do know is that John F. Kennedy, a white Catholic, was able to inspire and move as well. What I hope for President Obama is that he really runs with it this term. He did little over his first four years as President, often bogged down by partisan division; but he has another four years – and only four – to prove that there is substance behind the hype. I hope he does well with it. The world needs leaders like him. And, I think in a big way, he proves that hope, inspiration, love, sincerity and passion rise above partisanship and politics. I’ll leave you with this note – we should all be so lucky to share a moment like the one pictured when every eye in the world is on you.

Go get ‘em, Barack.

The first week of November is awash with conflicting emotions and varied hangovers. You have a several-day long period of time in which melting jack-o-lanterns on the curb bathe in the soft glow of Christmas lights as the snow shovel and rake keep each other company on the front porch. To top it all off, you have hearty islanders celebrating Guy Fawkes Day, as the quiet irony that your own house could burn down first because of the jack-o-lantern, then because of bad Christmas light wiring hangs in the air like the thick vapours from a mostly-rum rum-and-egg-nog, accompanied by a handful of fun-size Snickers (50% off!)

All in all, it’s a fun time of year, albeit confusing for those not in the know. My front closet houses my softball bag, still in use for autumn ball while the hanger in the closet meant for my winter coat goes empty as the coat is with me. Surplus Halloween candy sits in the kitchen – it temporarily was befriended by a package of Christmas cards too darling to pass on.

Christmas cups were removed from plastic bags at coffee-houses everywhere – fanatics were thrilled; Bah Humbugs were not so enthused. Their lack of respite from too-early-for-Christmas reveling caused a torches-and-pitch-forks rebellion on Facebook against Shoppers Drug Mart, causing that company to stop playing Christmas music; an approach opposite to mine, where I would have invited said complainers to locate their most convenient orifice and violently copulate therein. There are two sides to the fence of when Christmas should begin, and few people perched upon it – the grass is whiter on our side though, I must say.

November is an interesting month, I continue to point out. We take a break 11 days in from gorging on leftover candy corn before it expires, or harassing family and friends for early Christmas wish-lists to pay respect to our heroes – those who donned uniforms and weapons and hope and died far too young. In 1944, a world was saved from tyranny and fear. A world was changed, and we should never forget.

Two weeks later, we get back into the full swing of things: Black Friday. Some souls venture south of the border for deals that can’t be had here, though what do you call such people? Brave? Stupid? Both? To endure such long wait times and such frenzied crowds to save 50% on the electronic du jour may be for some, but it’s not for me. Canada has imported Black Friday in an effort to keep people at home, but it just isn’t the same. Prices in the United States are better on the worst days, let alone on the “best”. But hey, if you can’t beat ‘em…

Thanksgiving is in there too, but only in America-town. I must say, those Americans know how to do holidays. I’d love to have an American-style Thanksgiving – where it’s a big deal, and you get a four-day weekend!

November – in like a Twizzler, out like a turkey sandwich/turkey stew/turkey anything. Enjoy every minute.

And the rest…

So apparently, I’m more heavily scrutinized for bringing a case of beer over the border than this guy is for MURDER!

I hear there’s something big happening in the United States today.

GREAT SCOTT!