IMMINENT DISASTER

MY TIME ON THIS EARTH AND IN THIS EXISTENCE IS OVER.

The clock is ticking. I'm a goner.

It's time to hit the panic button. My life is flashing in front of me.

My head is exploding at the prospect. A nuclear device has been detonated -- or will be, soon, I'm certain of it -- and it will obliterate me.

Is this what all the believers are always talking about? The end-times? The apocalypse? Armageddon? Shudder...THE RAPTURE?

I don't even have a will. But wait, if the world's about to end, I guess I don't need one.

In fact, I don't need to write my own obituary, I don't need to schedule a funeral service, I don't need to have my body cremated.

All that will be unnecessary. Because I have only a few last tick-tocks on the clock to live.

Yep, it's a nuclear holocaust in my head.

But I WILL be saved!

And so will everyone else who happens to be around me when my head explodes!

They'll all be swooped up in the vacuum of veracity that I have lived!

Even as the sinners are systematically and summarily sent to Satan!

Oh, wait. Maybe not.

No, it's just an email from work. The subject line read, "IMMINENT password expiry date in 14 days." And it had a red exclamation point that eerily resembled a mushroom cloud.

I'd better tend to this. Go about your business.

Chris,
A reminder that your login password expires in 14 days and must be changed before this time.

If you do not change your password before this time, you will lose all access to your email, VPN, and network drives.

Please remember that passwords must be a minimum of 6 characters and include at least one capital letter and at least one number or symbol.

If your password has already expired, you will not be able to change it and will have to call the helpdesk in order to have it changed.

I would post something more.

But I'm too frozen in time, circumstance, space, snow, -40C windchill temps and the like to do so.


But all of you go ahead. It has taken me an hour to type out these almost 50 words up to this point.

I can live with rejection and you, unfortunately, will have to live with me unable to visit you.

BLUE MONDAY, TERRIFIC TUESDAY

JAN. 19, 2009, was this year's so-called BLUE MONDAY.

The origins of the term, dreamed up only recently in this context, seem to trace back to some sheister part-time professor in Cardiff, Wales, in some crass commercial endeavour to sell the need to buy something to cheer us all up.

But if you google "Most depressing day of the year" you'll get 408,000 results back in less than one second.

And many of them will talk about how today, Monday, Jan. 19, is supposedly the most depressing day of 2009 on Earth, or at least in the Northern Hemisphere -- the Monday of the third full week in January.

It's alternately called Miserable Monday.

The rationale? For millions of people, the long, cold winter has set in and it's not about to loosen its icy grip. The credit card bills from all those Christmas gifts you couldn't afford are pouring in.

The days are short, the nights are long. Summer's warmth is just a dream. All those New Year's resolutions are being broken, one by one. This spells it all out.

But the irony is, Blue Monday is happening in the midst of something much more positive and on the eve of an historic occasion that has me feeling upbeat, optimistic and truly, as has been his mantra, filled with hope.

What will follow Blue Monday today, on Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009, is the end of George W. Bush's de-BOTCH-ery in the White House and the beginning of Barack Obama's new order.

And it has even warmed up considerably here in the Great White North, just in time for Obama's inauguration, although I hear it's cold as hell in Washington, D.C.

So while we could focus on the ugliness of Bush's last eight years and the Iraq war and so many other things about his presidency, let's turn up the volume on what Blue Monday's REALLY all about.

Let's say goodbye to this Texas Twit...

My god, how he has so ruined the planet and America's standing

on the world stage...his only contrition has been that he "might" have made a few mistakes...



He has left Obama with nothing but problems, he's left the world with far more problems -- avoidable ones, problems HE created -- than when he took office.



The beautiful thing is, now he's finally riding off into the sunset.

All that's left now, rather than bemoan his awful legacy, which so many have done over these past few years, is to look ahead in a warm and positive light and what we can only hope is to come.

Obama's inauguration on Tuesday will be something to behold. It's a lot of pomp and ceremony, but this is a global event that cannot be under-estimated in its importance for all.

I can't remember in my lifetime feeling that a politician so moved me or gave me so much hope in the wake of so much despair about the way things were. Now it should be all about how the way things can be.

I believe, I really do, that this man is a messiah in the human sense of the word, not the religious one.

I see him as the person, with his team, that can bring sanity back to world affairs, just because of who he is and who I believe him to be.

So if Jan. 19 was Blue Monday or Miserable Monday, then Tuesday will be a new kind of Super Tuesday or Terrific Tuesday, and I'm not talking about the U.S. primaries.

We'll have to wait and see. The fact is, as America goes, so goes Canada and the rest of the western world and, in some ways, the whole planet. This is historic, it's hope and it's happenin'.

Go Ask Alice

I HAVE BLOGGED BEFORE ABOUT MY LONG AND SO FAR FRUITLESS SEARCH FOR THE PERFECT WOMAN (FOR ME).

I have posted bits on my online dating disasters, and at times have done serious pieces about women I really care for but, for one reason or another, it has not worked out.

Either for me, for them, or for us both.

And you don't know a fraction of the various paths my quest has taken me on, but that's the way it should be.

Suffice to say, women are beautiful creatures. In my singleness, next to my kids, finding the perfect one for me in the perfect circumstance seems to be one of my top priorities.

And there have been a good number of candidates in these past few years.

In fact, my best buddy, Homo Escapeons (AKA Donn), constantly makes jokes about it. It was HE, for example, who sent me this a few months ago.

It was HE who, one night when he was over here, started grilling me for the names of all the women I had gone out with or spent time with. And it was HE who gave me this can opener as a house-warming gift.

I have other reminders of the female gender in my apartment. A woman's breast coffee cup, for example. A wall hanging I bought in India of a man and woman performing a sexual act.

For Christmas, as I blogged about a few weeks ago, my sister gave me this, but it doesn't do it for me.



So enter Donn's wife, Alice. I'd put her picture in here but she might kill me instead of hug me the next time I see her.

Thanks to the no-good tattle-tale Donn, Alice knows all about my exploits, which I think lead her to believe I'm nothing but a womanizer. Of course, this couldn't be further from the truth.

Still, I'm told Alice has adopted a strategy of hiding her single friends from me, believing it's the safest thing. And this week, even though it was HER birthday on Friday, Alice gave ME a gift.

I hope you can make out all the little sales pitches on the package. I realize the photo is a bit out of focus, but you get the picture.

"She's a real party girl." "She's ready for a wild time, no strings attached." She'll do whatever you want, no questions asked." "Her hobbies include swimming and hanging out with you."

On top of all that, she grows up to 600 per cent when I submerge her in water. I wonder what she'll turn out like?

No, I imagine she'll be more like this.

I'm not sure, actually, that I'm even going to take my mistress out of her package. My kids have already seen her and laughed beyond belief.

Besides, I'm looking for a longer-lasting female that won't wrinkle and sag to the extent that I assume this mistress would.

I suspect it will become another display ornament thingy on my fireplace mantle.

In the meantime, I've enrolled in a new online correspondence course: How to become a monk in 30 days or less. The only problem is, I'll have to relocate to Tibet and pledge lifelong celibacy.

I'm not sure I can (sorry Ally Baby!)

Winter...and LOVIN' IT!

WW plows a portion of the snow in his apartment block driveway Friday.

WINTERPEG -- TRULY A WINTER WONDERLAND.

BONUS CHRISTMAS-RELATED POST

Believe it or not, nuns were a big part of my upbringing.

As a born-and-raised Catholic from a long line of Catholics, nuns taught me at Sunday School.

They taught me at the Catholic elementary school I attended and at the Catholic high school just down the block from that.

When I was an altar boy, one of my tasks was (GET THEE TO A NUNNERY!) to walk to the convent just a few minutes' stroll from the church to pick up the hosts that the priest would serve at mass.

So it's accurate to say that nuns have not been nones in my life experience. Some drove me gonzo, some were great. I could never understand why they'd pick that path, but that's not for me to judge.

So here I am, decades later. Haven't gone to church regularly for all those decades. Haven't hardly stepped inside a church. Certainly haven't seen a nun or dealt with one on any level.

And what does my goofy sister do? The Garage Sale Queen, who picks up the goofiest things and then hands them out as joke Christmas presents each December?

She gives me a Nunchuck toy for Christmas, complete with four little plastic nuns ready to be chucked (as in the photo above and, in my bad attempt at a closeup, below).


I'm pretty sure I'm not going to actually open the package and test out the Nunchucker, but instead will display it somewhere as a salute not only to nuns around the world but also to my sister.

She has not given me permission to post her picture on my blog or elsewhere on the Web, but I think I can show her from behind.


This is her hugging my daughter, I believe last year. I originally had a photo of her bending down, showing her butt. However, given the overwhelming sentiment that I would soon die at her hand, I have removed it.