My bros and me...

WELL, HOW DO I START THIS...

First, I love that I come from a big family. And I love that we're evenly split, three brothers and three sisters.

The two nobs above are my two brothers -- Gerry on the left (the youngest) and Doug on the right (No. 2 in age behind me).

I will forever love my mom and dad for having tons of kids. My mom popped us out about every 12-18 months or so, like some assembly line operation that got wildly out of control.

After me and Doug, three sisters came along: Lori, Lisa and Shauna. Then Gerry.

While my sisters are very special to me -- probably, all of them, much closer to my heart, as females can be, because they're so much about the heart -- my brothers are also very special to me.

And this is about my brothers, two very special dudes.

And the context here is that while my three sisters live here with me in the city we were raised in, my two male siblings are not here. Doug's in Eastern Ontario. Gerry's in northwestern Ontario, about a two-hour drive away.

And us three brothers have only been in sporadic contact in the past 20-30 years or so as we've built our lives and our careers and our families and seen a lot of changes geographically and every which way in all those ways.

Jobs have been abandoned and others have replaced them; dreams have been lost, to be similarly replaced by others; marriages have been lost, with great pain one of the results; but lives have been rebuilt.

Even through all of this, and almost as a sidelight in a way, have re-emerged our brotherly beginnings, our childhood jokes and criticisms and debates, parts of our weird relationships, while all this has gone on.

And this is an amazing thing.

And I need to begin with my brother Doug, whose most memorable words to me ever were: "There is love in silence."

Doug is a very intense and alive soul.

He cares about things most people don't care about. He's a stickler for detail, in some ways, and if he doesn't understand you, he asks -- no, demands -- to know what it is you're talking about.

Doug is far more quiet and cerebral than I am, I think.

The guy is/was brilliant. He's younger than me but in Navy League Sea Cadets, he made the Chief Petty Officer's rank while I was just an "Acting Petty Officer."

So that meant he was my frickin' boss as we were on the poop-deck, the little moron. Actually, he's the farthest thing from a moron. He's super intelligent, both emotionally and intellectually.

I could not/can not match him.

But I sure gave him a tough time when I would try. I remember us both as little boys with blonde, curly hair. He had big wire-rimmed glasses early on, while I didn't get have to get glasses til I was 14 or so.

I was always getting into trouble, going up on the apartment roof-top with the other neighbourhood troublemaker, for instance, to throw little pebbles at the kids below.

Doug was more on the straight and narrow, as I recall.

It's strange how, as a younger brother, he used to hang out with me and my friends. Later on, as teens, I ended up hanging out more with his group of friends than my own.

And he accepted me into that group.

I have always admired Doug for his sensibilities and his no-BS approach to things, even though he could and can be a pain in the ass sometimes. Because he's very intellectual and that's where he argues from.

I usually argue from an emotional point of view. He usually wins those arguments, the cad.

While I was the high school sports guy, he was the president or vice-president of the student council.

Enough said. But I think we have both taught stuff to each other.

And when he was going through his split with his ex, we had very intense exchanges of support or advice, which I'll always remember.

The thing is that now, he has evolved enough to find someone new, and he's found a great job where he can finally use his brilliant talents.

But his unwavering support for his kids and his absolute insistence on being a great dad has always been there.

And perhaps more than anything else, that's what makes Doug a guy anyone should dig.

I admire him greatly. He is an incredible man. I am proud of him and I am proud to say I take lessons from him on how to be a better person.

NOW...

On to Gerry...

Gerry is the biggest, physically, of us all. But he's the youngest of us all. So for most of us, he was just the young punk kid growing up at 196 Kitson Street. An afterthought, in a way; a late throw-in to the fray.

A last son or brother. Or should that be bother? He has always had attitude.


The thing about Gerry is, he's pretty intense but laid back at the same time. And he looks quite a bit like me, the lucky guy, but in a taller package.

All I can tell you is he's a kibitzer, somewhat like me. And this is no surprise, seeing as he and I hung around quite a bit together when I was a teenager and he was a punk.

And I mean punk only in the most fond of ways.

See, Gerry was a pretty good athlete. He became a very good hocky goaltender, and we spent a lot of time in our basement with me shooting rubber pucks at him and playing hockey.

Those are some of my most happy memories.

My dad was a goalie and so he loved that Gerry was too, and that was one of the things that tied them together, but in another way, it tied Gerry and I together too.

Still, at some point, I moved on to other things. And I kind of evolved away from him as I got involved with women and stuff.

And he and I, at least in some way, partially lost that childhood connection that had seen him come with me searching the backlanes for bugs and stuff or playing spongee on the front street.

Except that when I was about 22 or so and he was about 12, and I was on a trip to India, I received a little letter from him.

It was type-written and not paragraphed, just a bunch of lines thrown all together.

And kind of stuck there in the middle of a glob of sentences on how hockey was going or whatever, out of nowhere, hidden in the thicket of this's and that's, was a line something like this: "I miss you a hell of a lot."

I have always remembered those few words.

But here we are now, all grown up. And he's got an important job running a very important tourist region in northwestern Ontario.

And we see each other from time to time when he comes into the city.

And, as with Doug, we still have some important connection that, now through email, has been reconnected and enhanced. And it's most certainly cool.

The end for me and my Bum Buddy

SHE HAS FONDLED MY BUM FOR AT LEAST 10 YEARS, MAYBE 15 OR MORE.

DAY IN, DAY OUT, SHE'S BEEN THERE FOR ME, PROVIDING ME A WARM COMFORT ZONE FOR MY LEFT BUTTOCK, ALONG WITH CREDIT, CASH, AN IDENTITY AND EVEN AIR MILES.

NOT TO MENTION SHE'S MADE A SHROUD OF TURIN-LIKE IMPRESSION ON MY BACKSIDE AND BURNED A HOLE IN MY DENIM BECAUSE OF HER CURVES AND FAMILIARITY.




"She" is my wallet. And today, after a lengthy and loving relationship, I cast her aside for someone new.




She's been loyal and faithful, a constant companion.

I've taken her out of my back pocket, rifled through her, caressed her, held her, taken a lot of things out of her, and then just stuffed her back inside my pocket.



She's never complained once.



But she has worn herself out, or at least I've worn her out. She's getting a little frayed around the edges. Inside, she's a little tattered and torn, no doubt as a result of me trying to put too much in her.



So when my daughter asked me what I wanted for Christmas, a new butt bumpkin was one of my answers. And she came through.

Here it is on Feb. 29, a unique day, when I decided to say goodbye to Wilma my Wallet.



We've spent most of the day just going over old times and exploring the recesses of our minds, seeking out those old memories.

I've now emptied her of all her contents so she feels rather alone and naked, but I've assured her she's beautiful in her nakedness.

No more credit cards, frayed health insurance cards and the like, my driver's licence with the goofy photo.

Her leather skin has faded but is still that same old beautiful brown, Made in Canada, that was stuck to my cheek all these years.

I've lightened her load and I've told her my life will never be the same.

But it's time for her to go, because my daughter has found me someone new.

She's very pretty, shiny, and that same brown that I like...and I explored her this morning on my bed to learn more about her.

She's made in India, not Canada, for one thing. Is anything made in Canada any more?

Not to complain, mind you. But there are other things I've noticed.

She has way more slots for credit cards. And I try to limit my credit cards, so I inserted other cards in their place. I hope she's OK with that.

You might also note that this new wallet, whose name is Winona, came with a Diner's Club card and a Gold Mastercard, although apparently, as below, they mistook me for someone else.

So my pseudonyms are now Frank Helgen Felder and Bruno Olivier. No problemo. Those credit card numbers seem a little suspicious, but I'm sure I can get by with three identities rather than just one.

All I'll have to do is show the fancy inner lining of my Winona, and any skeptical maitre d's or cashiers will immediately be sucked in about the extent of my great wealth.

And if that doesn't impress them, certainly my change purse and the very obvious reference to my Winona being all-leather will wow them. I don't anticipate any difficulties at all, although I put all my change in my pocket.

So today, I have mixed emotions. I'm giving up one bum buddy for another, who will be new and have her own character and will conform to my butt as she sees fit.

Wilma has asked to be cremated, but I don't know if I can bring myself to do that. I hear burning leather kind of smells.

I might just kind of keep her hanging around, just in case Winona doesn't work out or she dumps me...or I dump her.

Someone Saved My Life Tonight*

NO, REALLY!

ALL SOMEONE HAD TO DO WAS DROP THESE TWO LITTLE CARD THINGIES IN MY MAILBOX, AND NOW ALL MY PROBLEMS HAVE DISAPPEARED!

(*This post examines and criticizes the notion of all religions from my point of view; it is not intended to offend. So please stop reading if you do not want to run the risk of being offended.*)

It's the Church of Sc(i)entology, which worships all things that smell, except for that (i) in brackets.

And while no one knocked on my door, I expect a couple of clones of a famous Hollywood actor were the culprits, passing along the word of Omigod, just to save me...


...Save me from life's perils, the worry over the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Republicans actually getting re-elected again, our own Canadian blubberment led by Steven (Let's Get Even) Harper...

And it all comes from here, some glittery star-struck haven in L.A. or Vegas or wherever it is...


Yes, Sc(i)entology is going to sharpen my senses, rescue me from pollution, greenhouse gases, my own procrastination, this cold winter we've been having, my mountain of debt...it'll give me all the answers, right here, right now.

And I don't even have to think for myself! All I have to do is join and absorb the message!

WHAT A CONCEPT!

This reminds me of the brother of two of my very best friends in my teens and early 20s. He disappeared. They found him in New York. He had become a Moonie, one of Sun Myung Moon's mindless disciples.

WHO WOULDN'T WANT TO WORSHIP THESE TWO SUPER-HUMANS?

They're all followers, that is...not thinkers, followers. Mindless. Searching, my friends' bro was, as we all sometimes do, and they found him, like a deer blinded in life's headlights and paralysed by fear. And they brainwashed him.

He was eventually rescued from being "rescued," in the real sense, by his family and friends, and spirited back home and deprogrammed and unbrainwashed and now he's doing fine, thinking on his own again.

That means he's human. That means he makes mistakes and he pays the consequences and lives a real life. Good things happen to him, bad things happen to him. He does stupid things, he does smart things.










The point is, HE'S the navigator, he's the captain of his own boat sailing the sometimes calm or sometimes rough seas. His life is governed by him, not by some deity or religious belief system that he can grasp to save him.

And so with that, we come back to the subject at hand.


Where did religion come from? ALL religion? This is what I imagine, and I'm going to use the most historically correct mass media production of all time -- Monty Python's Holy Grail -- to illustrate the point.

The historical timelines and years don't really mean much here, and so they won't be accurate in my depiction. Suffice to say that long before organized religion, living on Earth was a very dark place.


It was no picnic, apparently. And we have these historical pictures to prove that. Violent deaths awaited many. For those who survived that fate, they lived very short, difficult lives in squalid conditions.




While the lives of regular townsfolk and villagers was a living hell and dominated by the fight just to get enough to eat and to stay alive, wars were commonplace and towns and villages were pillaged often, with horrifying results.




Only the soldiers and warfaring upper-class had any fun at all.

It became clear, as history stumbled along, that this wasn't going to work. The upper class wanted to continue its lifestyle and its need to go to war and conquer others, which resulted in tremendous power and riches.

But it couldn't do this without a middle- and lower-class that could survive and thrive (if only in a mundane, far more poor manner) and continue to support the warriors and merchants while they did their thing -- make war and make money.

And the upper class needed to be able to recruit strong young men from the lower classes to be able to sacrifice themselves in war for the greater good (that is, for their good).

So they got together one day and they invented religion.

Something for the masses to believe in, to fall back on, to look to for strength and spiritual nourishment, for morale, for a reason to keep on living, for the answers they didn't have.

At the same time, those villagers and hut-dwellers were getting together themselves in the town squares, kicking at the dead rats and eating dog meat. None of them had any teeth, but that's besides the point.

One elder stood up and gummed, "You know what? We have no clue what we're doing in this life. We're invaded all the time and our women and children are raped or killed and we get the shit kicked out of us.

"Or we sharpen our spears and axes and arrows and we go and do the same thing to them. But we have no idea what we're doing or whether any of it makes any sense at all! We need a belief system!

"Gimme that ole time religion!"

So realizing they had no way of proving there was any point to their measly lives or having no answer to why they were here or what they were supposed to do or how they could possibly cope on their own, they were prime subjects for the upper class's new religion.

And so it happened. The scholars started writing the Bible, developing incredibly unbelievable scenarios that they dared you to buy into, such as parting seas, burning bushes and the like.

History's first mass Public Relations campaign was put into motion, as these pictures from that critical juncture in Earth's history clearly suggest. An idea was planted of a supreme being up above and all you had to do was look up to God.




Heaven and hell were invented, God and the devil were devised. Tales of lore were penned. Holy places of worship were constructed, popes were appointed, priests grew out of the woodwork, monks started combing the countryside.


They wrote a book about people dying on crosses and three stars and salvation and after-lives and this and that. Ten Commandments. Seven sacraments. This and that in other religions which I'm not privy to.

And as the upper class cemented into the collective consciousness the religion of their region and the need for the population to believe, they made it stick by including guilt and the threat of eternal damnation if you DIDN'T believe.

So while the masses were held to this new religious standard and burned at the stake for not believing and were told to embrace things like the Ten Commandments, the upper-class was breaking all of those same rules.

Eventually, a great war was waged. In fact, since the advent of religions worldwide, many great wars have been waged, continue to be waged and will always be waged, often because of religion and the need for power and resources.

But that's besides the point too, I guess.

The whole thing is, this religion thing has all been an extremely poorly done PR campaign. It clearly hasn't worked and will never work. It's a divisive force, not a unifying one, in the global sense.

Yeah there's the Far Right, the Christian Right, the Mormons, the Jehovah's Witnesses, Islam, all with their own belief systems and all of them at war with each other, either in the media or with actual weapons.

And it's all about going to Heaven and avoiding eternal damnation. Or surviving in a screwed up world. Or whatever. Billions of people feel they have to believe in something beyond just who they are.

And even as we speak, even as we've had all this proof that religion just doesn't work as a crutch or as a unifying force or as a placebo or real cure for what ails us inside or out, new religions continue to be trumpeted onto the scene.

What are they lookin' for? Whatever it is, I don't think they or their followers will find it.

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