Thrills on the Throne

I HAVE ALWAYS LAUGHED UNCONTROLLABLY WHEN SOMEONE MENTIONS THE WORD, "POOP."

AND I HAVE DONE SO ONLY BECAUSE THE WORD AND THE PHYSICAL ACTION ITSELF ARE SO "HUSH-HUSH." OR, MORE ACCURATELY, FLUSH-FLUSH.

WE'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO TALK ABOUT STUFF LIKE THAT, A PHYSICAL FUNCTION THAT WE ALL MUST PERFORM, USUALLY EVERY DAY. IT'S VERBOTEN.

IT'S OFF-LIMITS.

Well, no it isn't.

In the spirit of Blazing Saddles and other endearing comedies that at least ventured into the realm of farting and other physically necessary functions that we politely pretend never happen, I'm venturing into the void, so to speak.

So my question here today is, What do you scoop while you poop? What do you read while you're in need? How do you pass the time while your bowels are sublime and doing their thing in rhyme?

What transpires while your expire? What knowledge awaits while you exfoliate? What can you learn while your bowels churn?

These are a few of my favourite readings while I'm on the Throne and all alone...

Us totally buff guys must keep up on our knowledge, of course (HA!)

I have not lost my gut, have not sculpted my body, do not have six-pack abs and do not have better sex. But I can dream, can't I?

A Meme for Stace

I've done these many times before, but when Australia's lovely, intelligent Stace tags me with a meme, I become like the Borg on those Star Trek reruns -- I must comply or I will be assimilated.

Or is that annihilated?


So here's my attempt at revealing eight hitherto unheard of things about me:

1. I'm the oldest of six kids in my family and was as blonde as blonde could be until about age six. Now my thinning hair is dark brown and increasingly speckled with grey. Go figure.

2. I was born in Edmonton, grew up in Winnipeg and moved back to Edmonton after being transferred there in my first real job.

My two kids were born there and then we moved back to Winnipeg, where my two kids are now being raised. Strange...

3. As a kid, I skipped school in kindergarten. The school principal wanted to suspend me and told my mom I had significant developmental or other emotional issues.

She took me to a child psychiatrist, who said I was perfectly normal because what kid WOULDN'T skip school to go climbing trees?

4. Another kid story: When I was four, I ran out on to Logan Street and got hit by a bus.

The only thing that got hit was my head, and while my mom was in hysterics, I was OK and barely had a scratch. Does this say something about my brain function now?

5. My childhood buddy, Brett, lived in a four-storey apartment block across from the townhouse I lived in. We snuck up on the roof of his apartment building and threw little stones at the people below.

Boy, did I get into trouble for that...

6. I failed Grade 10 French. Sacre bleu! But I was forced to go to summer school to make it up.

My marks improved significantly after that, although I still can't speak French even though my heritage IS French, my grandmother spoke French and I grew up in Winnipeg's French-speaking area, St. Boniface.

7. When I brought my infant son home from an Edmonton hospital two or three days after his birth, our van was sideswiped on purpose by two young punks. We did three, 360-degree turns on the freeway (it was late November and icy).

My son slept through the whole thing.

8. My latest book is For One More Day by Mitch Albom, who wrote Tuesdays with Morrie. I haven't read Tuesdays with Morrie yet. I need to.

Connections in my Car

I used to be bitter about it.

Now I'm better for it.

After I split with my ex, I missed my kids incredibly.

I felt shut out of their lives, except for every other weekend when they were at my place.

In between those times, it seemed, my main role in their lives was as little more than a glorified chauffeur.


I'd motor up their driveway to pick them up, take off, have a few minutes to try to catch up on their lives and then out the car door they'd go.

And I'd drive right out of their lives again.

I felt so removed from them, so out of touch with the intimate details of their relationships, their struggles or successes at school, their dreams of what or who they wanted to be.

I felt so peripheral, so incidental, so clueless, so helpless.


And I felt frustrated that so much of our short time together was inside the four doors of my 1996 Ford, ferrying them to friends' houses or music lessons.

Fast-forward to today. Not a lot has changed, except my own perceptions.


In fact, now that my kids are older and more mobile and social, I see them even less rather than more. I drive them around even more, not less.

But what I've found is that those precious few minutes in my car with them have become goldmine opportunities for discovery, not some desolate wasteland of non-relating.

With my son or daughter sitting right next to me in the front seat, I've got 'em! They're a foot away from me. They're MINE, ALL MINE!

There are no distractions. I can talk to them and find out what's really going on, how they feel, what's new.

What happened yesterday in their lives. What's happening today. How they did on that test. What they're struggling with. And I can tell them about me.

It might only last five or 10 minutes. But it's me and them, uninterrupted.


I still miss them and know how much of them and their lives I'm missing. But my car has become my connection to them, in some important ways.

My buddy, Homo Escapeons, has helped me to understand this over time...


...To make the most of the opportunities there are, rather than lament the missing out on the opportunities that no longer are.


I think he's the king of driving his kids everywhere and anywhere, at any time.

Now, I just wonder when my kids are going to start paying for the gas...

Blogging's 10!

I'm sure the Web will be inundated with this, but it's something I didn't know until today, Aug. 1.

It's the 10th anniversary of blogging. Rah, rah, etc. Hip-hip hooray and all that.

Let's give all bloggers the birthday bumps. Alert the media. Stop the presses. Let's get it on CNN, Entertainment Tonight. No, wait! We're not stars! We're just ordinary people! Oh, OK. Forget it then.

Yada, yada, yada.

I am excited about this, actually, but only on a personal level.

I don't much are about the World Wide Web's main features, although they are useful.

I tend to avoid the dribs and drabs and crapola that get 220,000 results when you Google them, although you might want to check out this Wall Street Journal piece:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118436667045766268.html

All that blogging means to me is my exchanges with people like Homo Escapeons, Laurie, Keshi, Dinahmow, Aidan, Stace, Ziggi, Cherrypie, Pam, Gautami, Andrea, MJ, Bibi, Anna, Divian, Clare, Lee, Angel, Hildegarde, Shelly, Menchie and others.

And this element of blogging -- which to me is what blogging is all about, the mostly warm, engaging exchange of ideas and lives -- was sadly lacking in one Canadian Broadcasting Corporation report I saw today.

What they talked about was the 10 per cent of famous people who blog and who want to connect with their public and the other 90 per cent, they said, who blog more or less just for their families and friends.

Almost as a replacement for emails, one analyst described it as. What a doink.

Later in the report, there was a reference to those people who blog just to get news on the Internet...news of an earthquake they felt, or news of a massive fire they witnessed, whatever.

There was no mention at all of people like us...

...People who blog just to get their own thoughts and feelings and lives out on the Web, who seek out exchanges with other people from the planet in an open, caring way, who develop relationships the UN can only dream about.

The mass media, really, seems not to have a clue about what blogging's REALLY all about.

They can't acknowledge that for some people, they and what they report on and how they report it are so inconsequential.

They don't get it. But we do. And they're ignoring us.

It's ridiculous.