Ironic Things That Could Happen

Today, as I biked home from work, I passed a residential intersection just one block from my house. Coming perpendicularly from the right was a "ParaTranspo" bus, Ottawa's "Para" equivalent for its OC Transpo bus line. Knowing that the bus had a stop sign and I didn't, I continued unabated through the intersection.

Then I mentally pretended that I was just so ballsy that I sped through the intersection with a devil-may-care attitude purposely to cross it before the bus came through. This led to me imagining getting hit by the ParaTranspo bus and the accident severing my spinal cord, effectively turning me into a paraplegic who would need to ride on that very bus I was speeding past, trying to save time.

Hence the irony.

Let’s Slow Things Down a Bit

In the face of concerns that my humour here is a bit too esoteric or high brow for the masses, I give you a little gem that came my way thanks to Susan over at Unnecessary Dramatics. Thank you for enriching my life.

A Candid Letter to the Two Pygmy Marmoset Babies Who Live on My Left Index and Middle Fingers

Dear Baby Marmosets,

Look at you there, all curled up and peaceful. It has been three-and-a-half weeks now since we have come together, and I cannot tell a lie: they have been three-and-a-half of the most special weeks of my life. Were someone to ask me, "what has been your most special consecutive three-and-a-half week period during your life thus far?", I am not ashamed to say that this would come very close to the top of that category.

You came into my life during a brief trip to Peru, where, while resting my hand on a tree during a hike, you apparently mistook my fingers for small branches. The sight of your oblivious faces clinging so tenaciously to my digits warmed my embittered heart, and I smuggled you back to my native country by concealing my hand in a large mitten.

I must be honest with you, however, marmosets:

I have decided to leave you on the bonzai tree in my dentist's office.

Perhaps I had not thought this partnership through as fully as was needed, and for this, I apologize. Though my love for you both is as strong as it ever was, it appears fated by the gods that we must part by my next dentist's appointment.

Mental Lapse

It's not that I've been particularly busy.

It's not that I've not experienced anything that I could weave into an interesting post.

It's not quite that we just passed a long weekend whose effects have lingered long into the week.

I guess I just want to make something really special and substantial, and I just need to sit down and do it. After all, you deserve no less than that.

For now, I've posted a picture of a kitten…

Isn't she a darling? Well, yes, let's move on.

This evening, I'm planning to go over to my parents' place and watch a soccer DVD with my dad. Back at Christmas, he received a big-ass 5 DVD set of soccer documentaries from this girl.

He's yet to touch them. What with the world cup coming up, and an impending trip to Italy in June, I'm sure there is much more impetus to watch it now than there was back when he was more focused on trying to keep his back hair from frosting in the winter chill than on Maradona's rise to glory and cocaine-laced fall from grace.

Classified.

Yesterday, I'm pleased to say, I did some business in the Parliament buldings, here in our Nation's Capital. I can't say too much, for national security reasons, but I had the opportunity to organize a special reception in the Senate area.

All went smoothly, except we ran out of punch glasses, and, at one point, I was forced to roam the Centre Block's hallways and steal some styrofoam cups from a coffee machine, because the lady at the Parliamentary Restaurant wouldn't help me.

If the ease with which one is able to abscond with juice receptacles from the house of our nation's government is any indication of the success of the current administration, I'd say we're all swimming around in one big shit-heap of trouble.

That's right; you heard me.

Hear, Their, Everywhere.

In this nutball world, it takes a special person to fight the honest fight and look out for our forebears, who sweated to give us a framework with which to communicate. A simple set of rules in the hopes that we might properly convey our meaning more accurately.

Until now, I have been flying solo, fighting a lone crusade against an army of heathens who are willing to die for their right to use 'it's' instead of 'its', 'your' instead of 'you're'–and that most vile of creatures: "That belongs to Diane and I".

No longer so. As of this moment, I am sanctioned by all monotheistic (hell, even polytheistic) religions. Thanks to my fellow writer over at Man vs. Clown, who no doubt shares my plight, I was made aware of a wonderful test of both grammar and style. One can show off one's results as such:

———————————————–

How grammatically correct are you?

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!

Congratulations! If your mission in life is not already to preserve the English tongue, it should be. You can smell a grammatical inaccuracy from fifty yards. Your speech is revered by the underlings, though some may blaspheme and call you a snob. They're just jealous. Go out there and change the world.
Take this quiz!

Quizilla | Join | Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

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And so the quest continues; only this time, I'm good enough to put in your mouth at communion time.

THE END

Going Down?

The elevators in my office building and I have a unique relationship. They open for me and I thank them by not tracking unpleasant odours into their encasements or spitting on their finely woven ruggery.

When I say they open for me, allow me to be clear. I do not press the call button.

Rather, they appear to merely sense my presence as I approach them, and are ready with a freshly opened door and an empty elevator car when I am within stepping distance. This is a great boon to me, as I am freed from the oppressive push/wait cycle that plagues my building's cohabitants.

While I had heretofore left the two elevators' services unsung, I can no longer avoid giving them due praise, particularly after Friday's exceptional aid.

My work day had come to an end. I packed up my satchel and, with usual weekend fervor, exited my office's suite 301 and strode casually but decidedly towards the elevators in my floor's foyer. The elevator on the right (picture above has been changed to protect the elevator's identity) presented me with a wonderfully open door devoid of any other passengers. As excited as I was to get the weekend started, I thought it would be prudent to empty my bladder first in the bathroom adjacent to the elevator door.

Taking the elevator's gesture for granted, I rejected its offering and entered the bathroom to relieve myself. The requisite amount of seconds later, I re-entered the foyer, and, not expecting a second gesture, approached the call button.

But no. With all the precision and timeliness of a Manhattan hotel's doorman, the elevator opened itself unbidden once more just as I stepped forward. Flabbergasted but honoured, I stepped into its quarters and rode the sweet shaft. I rode it to the ground.

Precisely the kind of service that will kick start a gentleman's weekend.

THE END

(The situations described above are in no way embellished, and to even think such a thing would be an affront to the elevator in question.)

Things My Brain Makes 5

• Let’s say the Earth got shifted off its axis and proceed to get closer to the sun year after year. First, people in wintry countries would celebrate the warm weather for a while. Sure, people along the equator would die first, but, then again, they’ve always sort of been used to the short end of the stick, no? But despite everything else, amid all the chaos and mayhem, there’d be a few really great months for tea companies, when business would be nuts. I mean, if you gotta drink boiling water, it might as well be flavoured, right?

• If a spider were to crawl into my brain and lay eggs at the base of my medula oblongata, I think I would probably quit my job.

• Fast forward to an age where intergalactic travel is commonplace. We interact with other intelligent species on a daily basis, travel on cruises around Betelgeuse and Alpha Centauri, and hang out in seedy spaceports instead of singles bars. In all the popular science fiction movies, television shows and books, they’ve still never touched on what I feel is a key issue: who gets to decide what planets are called on universal maps? Consider a race that’s two billion years old from an adjacent galaxy to ours.

Talent Incarnate

When you have the opportunity to see an elderly man play Italian folk tunes on a leaf, you know you're living in a special world.

Last night, on the stage of the Canadian National Museum of Nature, the 2nd annual Ottawa Italian Community Talent Show took place. Showcasing some of the finest talents in the community like myself, the event brought together some powerful contenders for best Italian-affiliated showman (or woman) in our fair nation's capital.  I threw together a quaint little Italian number with my girlfriend (who learned the Italian lyrics in a day and a half) called "Siamo la coppia piu' bella del mondo," or "We are the most beautiful couple in the world."  I won't go into how the song really spoke true to us or how the crowd fawned and sighed at our attractiveness on the stage.  What I will say is this:

An old man playing a leaf.

You know how, as a child, you used to pick a thick blade of grass, hold it between your thumbs and make a piercing squeal by blowing on it?

Picture that piercing squeal playing a tarantella, and that just about sums it up.  It reminded me of that talent show on the Simpsons where Milhouse is playing a tune by hitting his teeth and head with a spoon.

That's the kind of dedication this guy had, and you could tell it had always been his schtick, since he was a kid.   At family reunions, cottages, bar mitzvahs (well, not so much bar mitzvahs, since he's Italian….but I bet the Jews would eat it up).

"Giuseppe, play 'O Sole Mio' for the bambini."

"Giuseppe, make-a you sound like a trompetta." 

"Giuseppe, grampa gonna getta you a nice leaf of basilico, if-a you play la Reginalla for Nonna."

Next year I'm going to play a rousing rendition of the Italian national anthem on my armpit…it should be equally successful.

MAYHEM!

The vagrant in the torn overcoat staggered violently toward the organ grinder who had been, up until that point, blissfully cranking out his favourite measures of his favourite music cylinder. The man lurched forward and grabbed hold of the organ grinder's lapel and began shaking like a parasitic polyp. The small monkey noticed his owner being accosted, dropped his collection tin and leapt upon the shoulder of his owner's unnamed assailant, sinking his primate teeth as deeply as they would go into the man's sweat-caked neck.

As the drifter let out a piercing squeal, he heaved his body backward; the backs of his legs caught the end of a passing baby carriage, spilling its fleshy child nugget onto the sidewalk, while sending the overcoated man careening headlong into the street's slick pavement, where, as if by some unfortunate providence, he found himself directly in the path of an oncoming street-sweeper. As the driver made a vain attempt to stop, the monkey leapt onto the grill of the street sweeper, just as the unfortunate man was pulled into the machine's spinning bowels and torn asunder.

The mother of the child who had been tipped onto the walkway screamed in horror at the sight and scooped her baby up from the sidewalk. The sound of her screams sent a nearby flock of pigeons up into the air just as a crowd of passersby began to gather around the crumpled and mutilated corpse that had just been vomited out the back of the street sweeper like an unsightly mucus.

Three stories above, Tom Abrams was nearing the end of a long day of window washing, when a multitude of pigeons decided to make his suspended platform their rest spot. Mrs. Butterworth's great dane, Guthrie, unbeknownst to Tom, was an impassioned proponent of snapping his gaping maw at pigeons, and was also peering out of a window exactly one storey above. Unable to contain his excitement, Guthrie leaned out of the apartment window.