Les Bonnes Choses

A fierce storm blew through the area last night, with fallen branches downing a number of power lines. Crews are out on the street today, cleaning up some of the mess, as branches lay strewn about sidewalks and roadways. Just now, I witnessed a woman walking her dog. She paused momentarily as the golden retriever sniffed and then peed on a thick tree limb that had fallen on to the boulevard. Territory Fail.

That reminds me of something I witnessed not long ago, here in the heart of the good old US of A: Commies. Socialism at its worst.



You see that? That right there is a forestry crew tending to trees along my street. TREES! Those bastards don't even pay taxes, yet here they are getting free health care on MY dime! What's it to me if the oak tree down the street gets an infection? It's not in my yard. It shoulda taken better care of itself. Probably made some bad choices, and started drawing water from the storm drain or something like that. You know drugs get in that water, from when people flush unused medication down the drain? Probably a bunch of junkie trees. Good riddance, I say. I don't need my tax dollars keeping those junkie trees on the dole.

Anyways, my trees have been doing a good job looking after themselves. Yeah, they've been shedding twigs left and right lately, which Amy was good enough to help me get off my roof and out of my eaves-trough, but on the whole, they seem to be pulling their weight, and doing their job of keeping my house shaded and cool. So I'm not worried about one of them getting sick; besides, when did getting sick ever hurt anyone else?



I don't think my complaints are going to get anywhere. I have been thinking of writing to my local Tea Party candidate, to get him or her on-board. This could be a big election issue. I mean, what next? Making sure that people are healthy?

From the title, you might expect this to be a tongue-in-cheek misogynistic entry. So you should read this, keeping in mind my strong affection for irony and absurd paradoxes.

I heard on the radio today that the women in Saudi Arabia were contemplating a new wave of Middle-Eastern rebellion. You see, an ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam sees is as inappropriate for women from getting behind the wheel of an automobile. This is understandably intolerable for these women, especially since gas in Saudi Arabia is less than $1 per gallon, so it must be like being a diabetic in Willy Wonka's factory. However, the women planned to protest by getting behind the wheel and driving around. Given that they are generally going to be unskilled drivers, does anyone else see a problem with putting thousands of Saudi women on the roads at the same time?

That was one helluva week. I'd like to say that it's over, but it's not, as I'll be cooped up in a basement tomorrow, scanning brains. Compared to the rest of my week, however, it'll be a walk in the park. I'm sure you're familiar with weeks like this, especially if you've had the post-secondary school experience of having two final exams and two term papers due the same week. I had no exams that I had to write, personally, but the student I was supervising did. This meant that her hectic schedule became my hectic schedule. To boot, my other student also had a deadline today.

So it was with great relief that I ended my work-day early today, having also submitted changes to the author proof to my manuscript, which, because of the rest of my schedule, I didn't begin until about 4 hours after the 24 hour deadline indicated in an email that I didn't get a chance to read.

Amy was good enough to give me a lift home, and I unlocked the door in eager anticipation of the chance to put my feet up, and perhaps video chat with my beautiful family. I still haven't put my feet up, nor have I called my family, because I had to first write this segue into what I found when I came home: an Aqua Velva Man. Or rather, the smell of one. I suppose it's better than the smell of chicken left to rot on the fridge (I may have blogged that story once). But to smell a department store musk in one's house when: 1) one has been out all day and 2) one doesn't use department store musk is rather strange.

I looked around the house for clues. No new insurance policies on the table. No for sale sign on the lawn. No retired golf buddies sipping scotch in a leather armchair. So that ruled out the three most likely candidate musk sources. I suppose it could have been the lingering scent of one of my house guests from last night, but I don't think so.

So maybe it's just me. I have had olfactory hallucinations before, so maybe I am joining the ranks of those weirdo synaesthetes. Or maybe it's just the week getting to me. Time to go put my feet up.

It's June, making now a good time to look back at the past school year and take stock of what my son has learned. From the Ontario Junior Kindergarten curriculum: not too much, though his penmanship has improved. That, however, could just as easily be attributable to the copying exercises his Lolo sets out for him and his cousins to keep them quiet on those days they don't have school. He has a precocious grasp of some concepts from physical, chemical and biological science as well as numbers (including the rudiments of binary, which I really must do something with), but here again, we can thank They Might Be Giants, rather than the school system.



So what has my son learned in school this year? For the most part, I'm not entirely sure, but I do know this: There is a computer in the classroom. Over the last 9 months, he has aligned himself with the morally ambiguous element in his classroom, and was preoccupied with figuring out his teacher's computer log-in and password, mentioning it almost every time I dropped him off at school.

Today I received a letter from the IRS. No! Wait! It was a good letter! It read something along the lines of:

We reviewed your tax forms and think you made a mistake. You paid us way too much in tax. Unless you disagree with us, expect a pile of cash to land in your bank account with a satisfying thud. If you would like to disagree with us...[instructions and mailing address follow]

Seriously?

My experience with the Canada Revenue Agency has been ... different. For starters, I don't think I have gone more than one year without one of my deductions being challenged (this year I have to submit my moving expense receipt). I've certainly never had the CRA tell me they owed ME money. And it's not because I've never been overtaxed either, because I'm pretty sure you can find one of my old blog entries describing how a phone call to the CRA to resolve their claim that I had a balance owing uncovered that they owed me several hundred dollars from the previous year. So I guess maybe in a perverted way, I did receive a letter that resulted in the Canadian government refunding me money, but only if you are open to very unconventional interpretations.

So that's one difference I have noticed between the two countries, perhaps rooted in America's historical roots in a tax revolt. But that's just a guess. And I suppose it could be worse: In Soviet Russia, the taxes refund YOU!

Ever get the feeling that this generation of kids is getting a really lame childhood experience? They are. And it's going to bite them in the asses. Now, I'm not advocating eugenics, but there's something to that saying about "whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger" (that's true to a point, though it's hard to argue an upside to getting maimed).

The other thing that kids don't get is all that awesome television programming for which we all have a deep sense of nostalgia. Why, just this weekend, I was having problems sleeping. Finding myself awake at 6:00 on a Saturday morning, I was thinking about tip-toeing downstairs to watch The Hilarious House of Frightenstein.



Classic.

Last week, Gill came over for some social interaction, as her roomie was off in the 'Peg buying a house or somesuch. I ordered a Homemade Pizza with my favourite fancy toppings: roma tomato, basil and prosciutto (my other favourite topping combination is pepperoni, bacon and green pepper). This isn't really germane to the story, but I just wanted to set the scene.

We watched The Social Network, which was a fair movie, though I don't think it was in the same league as The King's Speech. They definitely made Mark Zuckerberg out to be an ass; I found this to be an interesting observation, as I found his character to be similar in many respects to my inner monologue. Early in the movie, the Zuckerberg character is creating some kind of juvenile prank website over the course of an evening, and drunk-blogging about it as he goes along.

That's the inspiration of this blog entry. Except I'm not drunk, and I'm not making a prank website. Instead, I'm doing something much more practical: I'm making dinner, but don't really have a plan. Let's see how this turns out, shall we?

• 16:45 - What am I going to have for dinner? Everything's frozen. Crap. Seafood and chicken breasts defrost pretty quickly in running water. Both combine well with linguini. Let's go with the frozen scallops because I seldom have them (Rebecca hates them).


• 17:05 - So, scallops are defrosting. What goes with scallops? Bacon-wrapped scallops are tasty. And bacon is in a carbonara sauce, isn't it? I'll also need some kind of sauce or something...


• 17:30 - Basil, olive oil, salt and pepper, lemon and garlic. I have no idea if this is going to work with the bacon, but I've mixed up a thin paste with these ingredients. I plan on tossing the scallops in them and searing them in a cast-iron skillet on the BBQ so as not to stink up my house again.

Earlier in the week, I made seafood, and the house ended up smelling more like a wharf than I would have liked.


• I should have patted dry the scallops.


• 17:57 - Bacon has been cooking for the last 10 mins on the BBQ on the warming rack part where you normally put your charred hotdogs. I decided that I'll roast some veggies to go on the pasta. Went with grape tomatoes, orange pepper and garlic. Not sure if roasted garlic counts as a vegetable.


• 18:05 - Remember the charred hotdogs I just mentioned? It turns out that more than 10 minutes, even with indirect heat, will leave your bacon in about the same state. Bacon do-over. Resolve to be more vigilant. Eat the charred bacon anyways.


• 18:09 - Bacon cooking again. Scallops searing. Pasta cooking.


• 18:20 - Dinner is served.

Conclusion: garlic does not work well as a vegetable, even when roasted. Everything seems to pair well with bacon.