Where’d That Come From???

As my journey to work began this morning I noticed something was different…besides the thick frost on my windows that is. The City has finally painted lines on a road that they paved about a year ago. The paving was completed so long ago I thought they had decided to forgo the line painting. It’s not like anyone really abides by them anyhow. I imagine it was all in the name of saving money so I guess I shouldn’t be complaining. I just found it odd that this was done so long after the paving.

Get A Little Closer

I’m the type of person who values personal space. Being tall and, to put it mildly, slightly overweight, I take up a lot of space period. It is obvious to anyone who happens to glance my way. The size of my presence is likely even obvious from their peripheries too but lets not give too many people that kind of credit. Now that the stage is set with minimal sentences and all but this one not being a long, drawn out, run-on sentence, I will get to the story.

The morning of yesterday was cold, the hint of snow in the air but as of the start of this story, no flakes had fallen in the ‘Shwa, at least none that I knew of. I had found my way onto the train somehow and took a seat that I frequently occupy (I will not say my usual seat because I am in denial that I have a usual seat on the train) for the morning commute into the big city. Things were going as uneventful as ever, which is the way we like it, when I heard the end door swing open.

With my music already playing its sweet melodies in my ears and my nose in my book, I caught only a glimpse of the person, noticed that he was a fair size and dismissed him as I thought he would walk right on by. I was wrong. Such a small decision as to what seat would be best seemed too tough for this man on this morning. He twitched as if he was going to continue walking then hesitated. Next he looked as if he was going to sit in the foursome across the way from me but he balked there too. That was when I knew what he had decided, maybe even before he did.

You guessed it, he sat right beside me. Why else would I be writing this? Despite the car having more vacant seats then the Cable Box, once know as Skydome, during any Blue Jays game, this man, all six foot something and two hundred or so pounds of him, ignored the many other empty seats and sat right beside me. He seemed to keep his distance when he first sat down but just as I was thinking he was going to give me some space, he shifted closer to me; so close that I though he wanted to be my conjoined twin, connected at the shoulder. It just got worse from there but my arm is starting to remind me of the encounter so I must stop typing now.

Okay it wasn’t that bad but I did receive numerous elbows as he struggled to take his coat off. Why didn’t he take his coat off while he was standing up? you ask. As Kid Rock would say, only God knows why.

Welcome to Zombieville

As I sit at my jail cell (a.k.a. cubicle) looking out at the minions, I notice a slight difference to them all today. Something is not quite right with them; something about the look of their eyes. Overnight their eyes have become almost lost in puffy flesh swelling up from just below and the once bright white appearance of their conjunctivas now give off a grayish hue and are streaked with red giving them all the look of zombies from science fiction movies. The really cheesy b-movies that can be seen late nights, or rather very early mornings, on Space channel, around the time soft porn is available for viewing on City or the italian station TLN. To complete the picture, their eyes are also glazed over, void of any real feeling as if the past four days have successfully sucked the soul out of them and left them futilely drifting in this cold cruel world.

Or maybe it is just the sign of a Friday before a long weekend. One that is expected to give us one last reminder of summer before the cold, windy days of fall take full control, forcing the masses into hiding.

Forgot Something

With all this construction going on in Toronto, there is a great opportunity for the builders to invigorate the skyline with interesting and fun architecture but what they do instead is create tall columns of glass. That’s it. No odd angles or any other ingenious design aspect that makes one take notice. Just boring old glass. At least it is better than columns of ugly cement.

Irritants

It's election time in Canada again and that means campaing time! Time for the various party leaders to promise us the world in hopes that they be elected into office where they will get post election amnesia and forget the promises they made. Time for the leaders to call each other names and point out their parties faults and past mistakes as if their own party is innocent of all evils. Pictures of kids in a sandbox comes to mind....

And then there are those people who like to continually complain of the high gas prices. I bet they are the same people who spend $80+ per bottle of toilet water and then bathe in the stuff so rather than enticing others the chemicals attack the senses of those unfortunate enough to pass them in the hall or on the street. Did I forget to mention being stuck on a train with them too. That is even worse because there are no real alternatives. I guess changing seats is an option, if one could find one that isn't close to one of these chemical lovers. Speaking of change...

The platform numbers at Union Station changed over the weekend. There have been notices posted everywhere, including GO Transit's website, for the past few weeks so people knew the change was going to happen and gave the appearance of someone caring. Instead of them providing the new mapping (i.e. platofrm 1 will become platform x) they get to stand back and watch the confused faces of the commuters while they try to figure things out. It shouldn't be difficult since most trains will be leaving from the same track but they could have made things easier by not keeping the new numbering system a secret.

While I am on the subject of making things better, changes are greatly needed in the world of sports broadcasting. The use of ex-player/current player analysts needs to stop. In most cases there is no value added and in some cases (Pat Tabler, Darrin Fletcher, Rance Mullincks) it actually hurts the whole game experience. This past weekend as one of the MLB divisional series entered Game 3 with the one team down 0-2, an analyst was asked what the trailing team needed to do to win. Is that not obvious! Score more runs then the other team. Have everyone playing like they deserve to be in the postseason, perhaps. We don't need some slightly above average ball player from a team long out of the playoffs to tell us that.

September 2008 Quotes

…it is appalling to reflect upon the billions of hours and the masses of material which are utterly wasted every single day all over the world, by being thrown away on trashy amusements, none of them providing more than a single day's excitement, most of them offereing much less, and all of them based on the idea of Having a Good Time, which really means having a momentary impulse and satisfying it. We must be related to the monkeys, because so few of us seem to realize that pleasure is not the same as happiness.
- Gilbert Highet (Man's Unconquerable Mind)

As we go down life's lonesome highway
Seems the hardest thing to do is to find a friend or two
A helping hand - some one who understands
That when you feel you've lost your way
You've got some one there to say Ill show you
- Lionel Richie (Say You, Say Me)

...to the well-organised mind, death is but the next great adventure.
-J.K Rowling (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone)

It is not by the consolidation, or concentration of powers, but by their distribution that good government is effected.
- Thomas Jefferson

...all achievement in life requires the overcoming of fear.
- Isaac Asimov (Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain)

…power will always end up with the sort of people who crave it…
- Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game)

People are people and it is not wise to overtempt even the best of them.
- Isaac Asimov (Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain)

Beware of all, but most beware of Man!
- Alexander Pope (The Rape of the Lock, Canto I)

…past glories are poor feeding.
- Isaac Asimov (Foundation)

When a government begins to die…mistakes are about all that it can make.
- Bruce Hutchison (Mr. Prime Minister 1867-1964)

Since when is the evidence of our senses any match for the clear light of rigid reason?
- Isaac Asimov (I, Robot)

…being…rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger.
- J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)

I think that’s what people most almost always do with the stuff they can’t make out – just forget it. Doesn’t do a person much good to remember stuff that doesn’t make any sense.
- Stephen King (The Green Mile)

…for the sake of unity we cannot be neutral in Canada.
- Ernest Lapointe

Not always Actions show the man: we find
Who does a kindness, is not therefore kind;
- Alexander Pope (Moral Essays, Epistle I)

And I, too, am nothing but a silly old ass
- Robin Brockman (The Message)

People are the most interesting things in the world. They are also the scariest.
- Dean Koontz (Dragon Tears)

It may be possible for human beings to learn good habits under pressure, but relieve the pressure and the bad habits are back at once.
- Isaac Asimov (Nemesis)

...when one had an opportunity to choose between power and honour, honour was more important.
- Karen Molson (The Molson's: Their Lives & Times 1780-2000)

If trouble were as easy to get out of-as into-life would be one sweet song.
- Isaac Asimov (Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain)

…luck is an unwelcome intrusion into the illusion of an ordered universe…
- Leonard Koppett (The Thinking Fan's Guide to Baseball)

The truth…It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.
- J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone)

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them – words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried when you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.
- Stephen King (The Body)

Some men…choose to seek greatness, while others are forced to it. It is always better to choose then to be forced. A man who's forced is never completely his own master. He must dance on the strings of those who forced him.
- Robert Jordan (The Great Hunt)