Same Old, Same Old

I THINK I'VE SAID BEFORE ON HERE THAT I USED TO BE AN ALTAR BOY.

That's right. In fact, the Roman Catholic church used to be a very significant part of my life.

I was born into the religion, was baptized, was confirmed, attended Sunday School, went to church most Sundays and, when I was old enough, became an altar boy, donning the black and white robes and all.

Ringing bells at spiritually crucial parts of the mass service itself. Carrying the cross to lead the priest into mass in front of hundreds in the congregation. Kneeling in deference, memorizing Our Father, the whole bit.

Later, as a teenager, I got more heavily involved by playing guitar and singing with other friends in what had evolved into folk masses in the early '70s.

And then even beyond that, working and calling bingos to raise money for the church and for the Catholic elementary school and high school that I attended, all of them closely linked to one another on one city block in my neighbourhood.

And I have not one regret about that.

Some of the most influential people in my life were priests and nuns. One priest, a guy I'll always call Max, came to our church from Montreal, a young man with progressive ideas who taught me how to be me and not be the church's me.

Ironically, he eventually left the priesthood.

But not before he and I and some of my closest friends had taken two summer trips all the way to the East Coast, catching our own cod in a fisherman's dory in Newfoundland, body-surfing at Cape Breton, climbing what we called Mike's Mountain.

At my Catholic high school, there was Father John, as obviously flaming gay as you could be, but a positive, always smiling influence.

And Father Robert, an all-business religious man with great intuitiveness who steered me straight after I flunked Grade 10 French.

Religion had become a huge part of my life.

But somewhere along the way, I left most of it behind. I think it was when I realized that the church didn't want me to think on my own but when it wanted to do my thinking for me.

For example, when it imposed conditions on my wedding and forced me and my bride-to-be to take courses before it would give us its "blessing" and allow us to be married in its hallowed halls at all.

I think it was when I realized that the church said the same things, over and over again...

...And how eventually, I realized that belief system was flawed and was more intended to give me guilt than to somehow guarantee my life would be great.

When my parents split up I realized that, hell, we'd all gone to church all this time, had been the model Catholic family, and shit like this could happen to us after growing up listening to how the Christian way was the good way?

I'm not saying that it isn't for some and I don't mean to offend anyone.

But for me, it just didn't wash. I realized I had grown up learning to trust in something that really had no influence at all on what good or bad happened or didn't happen.

In fact, it was all a man-made diversion that filled me with more confusion, not less. More guilt, not less. More frustration and angst, not less of that either.

It had become a poor excuse for a crutch and the wood it was made of had rotted and couldn't support anything.

The Bible, the Ten Commandments, all that stuff...it rang true but in a very hollow, shallow, uninformed, unrealistic, outdated sense.

It didn't provide any answers. I ended up figuring out only I could do that myself.

And some Catholics might say that my abandonment of this doctrine or way of life is the sole reason I ended up getting divorced and all myself.

Bullshit.

None of that had any bearing on my parents or myself.

Nor would or will religion have any bearing on my kids, on Iraq, on Afghanistan or on the future of the world, in any sense, except to blind us to what's going on by tricking us into trusting in anything other than ourselves.

In fact, religion is a huge part of what's causing all this crap. There's no place for it, at least in my life. My spirituality is within, not without (no pun intended!); it's certainly not inside some so-called HOUSE OF GOD.

*****

For the first time in a long time this past week, I found myself inside a Roman Catholic church.

I was attending the funeral of the father of a workmate I really respect and am good friends with. It felt strangely odd. I was there for my friend, no one else, and sitting with a bunch of other workmates in the pews.

But my childhood came roaring back when I was in that church.

Adorning the walls were the stations of the cross, I think they're called, the images of Jesus Christ's stages of suffering where he supposedly died for our sins. (GUILT!)

Behind the altar, of course, the familiar life-sized sculpture of J.C. crucified on the cross. (GUILT!) In front of the altar was the ceramic container that had the ashes of my friend's father inside it, with his picture right next to it.

We were there to honour this man I never met and to be with his family who loved him. I stood, sat and stand when the middle-aged priest urged us to do so, of course.

But nothing had changed from my childhood. Not the words, not the hymns, not the guilt-inducing message, not all the pap about salvation, not the need for sacrifice...nothing.

It really was the same old, same old. And I was shocked by that, but it also reaffirmed that I was right to leave it all behind.

Not the memories I have of it, mind you, because having that long-time first-hand experience was good; at least I'm an informed abstainer.

I don't want the crutch and would rather stand on my own, although if it works for you, great. It doesn't work for me any more. My sense of logic in a world filled with a lot of illogic doesn't permit it.

I do believe in some higher power, but not in the way we've figured it out with our own devices and forced contrition to ideals and conditions that just don't work and just aren't documented, trustworthy or which can pass my BS Meter Test.

To me, this whole thing is dubious. Kinda like this building near where I grew up, probably the most religious of shrines in our entire city or even in Western Canada, which burned when I was a young lad and which still stands as nothing but a shell today.

They won't tear it down, I guess it's part of our history. I concur, it's an historic building. But that's all that it is...as is, as far as I'm concerned, the religious tenets it was founded on in the first place.

Bob's Yer Uncle

Well, we created quite a furor recently at the workplace.

You see, our newspaper, as part of a plan to become more...whatever, has opted to move all of our departments around in the same space as part of our attempts to become more modern and on-line or something or other.

So our sports department, also affectionately known by all the other reporters and editors as the toy department, has been moved from one side of our dreary office to the other.

But we have lost our little pod separation thingies, which never really gave us any privacy but which seemed to. I have a fairly loud, deep voice so whatever I said carried pretty much two miles anyway.

But now we have absolutely nothing separating us from our city and night desk operations, or from our on-line people or anything else.

I am facing directly towards a walkway, a mere foot away, where everyone comes and goes.

I hope to take pictures at some point, if I will not be shot doing so.

Suffice to say, however, that no one can pass by my desk without hearing me conduct interviews or, at the very least if I'm sitting doing nothing, being forced to catch the football I throw or the teasing remarks I toss at them.

And rather than wallow in despair at these inter-office developments, I have taken to harrassing our business department weenies right next to us as they conduct interviews with exceptionally boring bank executives.

I also have been throwing balls at the backs of the heads of our online staff and to the front reception desk females, most notably the beautiful Dianne, who loves kibitzing around with me in such merriment.

Or, if I can't do that, I simply tell them, "Bob's Yer Uncle."

And so I started wondering, 'Well, is Bob really Yer Uncle?" I have an uncle named Bob, so in my case, it's true: Bob IS Yer Uncle.

And me and my goofy friend, Homo Escapeons, whose real name is not Bob, say this to each other quite often.

But I wondered, statistically, if this common saying was really true.

In other words, does everyone have an uncle named Bob?

Being the inquisitive journalist I am, I set out to find the answer. And for the 5.8 fellow employees I surveyed, the majority had to admit that, yes, they did have an uncle named Bob.

I also recently asked this question in a blog post and of the few of you who responded to this serious query, I would say that yes, Bob's YER Uncle too.

My own Uncle Bob, in my experience, drinks like a fish and resembles an oak tree, about 6-feet and 3,000 pounds. He is bigger than life. If he sees this, I'm dead meat. I opted not to include a photo of him.

But the more I teased people by saying "Bob's Yer Uncle," the more I found out. There's a band named Bob's Yer Uncle, for example. Somewhere in the blogosphere is, in fact, a blog called Uncle Bob.

Having heard me flirt with her workmate Dianne about this important issue -- Dianne never catches the football when I throw it to her and when she threw it back to me recently she hit my boss in the head -- another front reception woman, Lynne, surprised me.

See, she also has duties in our newspaper library. So she went and fetched this from some obscure encyclopedia of modern culture or something or other...

"Bob's Your Uncle: Everything is perfect: c.p: from ca. 1890; slightly ob. 'You go and ask for the job -- and he remembers your name -- and Bob's your uncle.' 'Still going strong in Australia" (B.P., 1965).

So now, you're up to speed...and Bob's Yer Uncle.

Big Blogger Blabbermouth

Just a short note from the frozen hinterland, folks...

I had to delete my second-most-recent post in which I detailed the sports I'd be covering all this week, including the one involving rocks and ice. That sport is hurling, except with a c as the first letter, not an h.

In fact, as my brief explanation following shows, I'm the one with rocks -- in my head.

That sport is so popular in Canada that it turns out at least one website devoted entirely to it found that post, liked it, they know who I am and who I write for and what I'm covering, and they linked to it from their website.

So that might have brought all kinds of people -- who read my stuff in the newspaper I write for and who assume I'm objective and all, which I am -- to my blogsite, where I write about all kinds of stuff: zany, personal or what-have-you.

I was going to delete my blog altogether but I figured I could just delete that post, which I did.

So if anyone was wondering where that post went, it's vaporized.

Now I can go back into hibernation. Carry on. And as they say in (h)urling, HURRY HARD!

THERE'S COLD, THEN THERE'S STUPID COLD

EVER HEARD OF EXTREME SPORTS?

HOW ABOUT EXTREME LIVING?

Bundle up, Baby, Because you're in for a Big Boot in the Bottom. Don't worry, though.


You won't be able to feel it anyway -- or anything else -- if you live in Canada's unforgiving Prairie. As this following Environment Canada weather forecast makes abundantly clear...

Extreme wind chill warning issued
Updated at 5:21 PM (Friday, Jan. 18)

Environment Canada has issued an extreme wind chill warning for the second time in two days for Winnipeg.

Temperatures tonight are expected to drop to a low of -35 C, but the extreme wind chill will make it feel like -44 C.

The deep freeze is expected to continue tomorrow with the morning temperature predicted to be -45 C with the wind chill and the thermometer only expected to rise during the day to a high of -25 C.

Temperatures are expected to drop again on Saturday night to a low of -35 C, which with the wind chill will feel like -43 C. Normal temperatures at this time of year are a high of -13 C and a low of -23 C.

UGH!


Now on to some form of explanation, from a Weather Almanac website I found.

THE NORTH WIND DOTH BLOW
"Upon retiring for the night, I tried to blow out the candle," a Winnipeg, Manitoba settler wrote in his diary one cold winter night in 1879, "But the flame was frozen, so I had to break it off."

Although the settler spun the cold truth a little loosely, the depth of January cold is infamous across North America. That is not to say that North America has a monopoly on cold weather in the Northern Hemisphere.

The very name Siberia conjures images of frigid cold, ice, snow and blizzard winds.


But North America is unique among the arctic continents because the major mountain chains run north-south rather than east-west as in Europe (the Alps) and Asia (the Himalayas).

This makes nearly all of North America susceptible to vigorous cold fronts.


Without the mountain barriers to block them, Arctic cold outbreaks can sweep southward toward the subtropical Gulf of Mexico, even crossing its waters on occasion.


The birthplaces for most of these frigid outbreaks are the continental expanses or northern Canada near or within the Arctic Circle (Eds note: Translation here is directly north of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta).


Here, long, dark winter nights couple with clear skies and a surface covered with snow and ice progressively chill the air.


Since in these regions the sun does not rise or only skirts the horizon for much of January, there is no warming heat from the sun. And snow and ice on the surface reflect away what little sun weakly beams down.


To compound the lack of incoming heat, snow very effectively radiates away what little heat it has, thus dropping surface air temperatures still further until it reaches the temperature of the high atmosphere.


As the air cools, it becomes denser, forming large domes of high pressure.


Eventually, this cold dome breaks its bond with the spawning ground and rushes wildly southward (Eds note: BRRRR-RIGHT TOWARDS US!). Howling winds precede the great dome, announcing its advent to all life.


(See it? That big band of no clouds? That's us, right now!)


Trees shudder. Birds shiver. Rabbits burrow deep within snow banks. (Eds note: human bloggers inhabiting these regions retreat into their homes if they can and whine, whine, whine to the rest of the planet).


THIS is what I'm waitin' for...the 30C heat, the wide blue skies, the mosquitoes.
I want it. Now.