random shenanigans

Sorry folks. Been kind of disjointed lately. Work has been wild. NWT politics is wackier than a Willy Wonka candy creation. Life has been just as crazy. My brain is operating on reserve battery power. So I'll be quick.

Some random thoughts...

1) People! In the manic rush that is our lives it is easy to burn headlong through weeks and months and years, but do you realize that we are getting perilously close to the end of the 00s? It's god-danged 2009! Huh?!?!? How did this happen? Where in the hell did all that time go? We are nearly a decade through the millennium and we don't even have a nickname for the 00s yet. For some bizarre reason, I thought once we hit 2000, we would all stop and stretch and sigh and then take a deep breath and examine our world and come up with solutions to make things a little bit better. But I would have been 17 or younger before 2000, and therefore idealist and therefore naive and therefore unrealistic and therefore stupid. Food for thought: it's been eight years since Bin Laden blew up buildings and he's still out there. I've been through school and a couple jobs and a couple failed marriages (we'll work it out Angelina J....) Time is flying.

2) As a result of the ceaseless march of time, it seems to me I'm hearing way, way, way too much 80s music when I'm out and about in public places. Now, when I was a teenager or a young 20-something, I used to be able to frequent drinking establishments and listen to oldie rock standards from the Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin or David Bowie or the Beatles and enjoy myself. But damn! Since time keeps slipping away, the 80s are becoming classic and I'm sorry my friends, but the 80s are not classic. The 80s sound like crimped hair and acid washed jeans and drug overdoses. The music gives me the heebee-geebees. I'm not saying all of it. I'm just generalizing. And nothing bad has ever happened when someone generalized.

3) Another symptom of time cruising along like a banshee on a fission-powered broom is the fact that I'm getting older. I don't want to alienate any of you out there who may be a bit more 'experienced' or 'grayer' or 'hairier in the nose and ear region' than I, (just humour me and think of how you thought as a 25-year old) but I was in bed last night with my headphones on and listening to Lupe and started, you know, kind of getting into it because I couldn't sleep and starting mouthing the words and then... BOOM... it hit me... how old can I be before that has to stop? When do you start accepting passivity? Can a 45-year old white man, balding, with some liver spots on the scalp, and is psoriasis-ridden and athlete-foot having, still rap along to Lupe? Can I go on a road trip with that shit just cranked? I mean, I'm gonna be the same guy. I'll be into the same shit. Just a little rhetorical one for you to marinate on...

4) Speaking of driving, I came up with a very premature (and generalized) theory on the relation between a driver's aggressiveness and their place on the food chain of life this evening. I was driving home in a hurry (for no reason) and got stuck behind a mini-van puttering along. I was impatient and followed it like a pony in a circus circle (I could smell it's exhaust... mmmmmmm). Every turn, every hill, every second, the van's damn stop lights flash up, and it's frustrating as all hell, but I'm almost home so who cares. Then, at the last turn, the van's lights shoot up again, and it's left turn lights go up, into an income support area in town. I see a car about 50 metres down the road turn onto our street, as the van ahead of me slows and approaches it's turn-off, about 10 metres away. The van slows a bit more. And it slows some more. And it stops. And it waits. And the car off in the distance approaches and passes us 5 or 6 seconds later. And then the van turns. Moral of story: Maybe if you didn't always just sit there and wait for that all-important oncoming car and instead turned and took some initiative, you wouldn't end up where you did. Is it hot in here? (grabbing at collar) Quite the generalization and assumption, but oh well, it popped up in my mind and who cares what I say on here. It's only slinignlingo. Can we start calling bad drivers Welfare Drivers, instead of Sunday Drivers or Prairie Drivers?

5) I realized tonight how much I dislike driving. I mean, I've realized it before, when half-asleep on a couch I have to scrape myself from said comfortable spot to yawningly commute through streets to my sleeping spot at another place. But tonight, I came to the realization of how much driving cuts you off from life and interaction. Especially in the winter. Case in point, I have to baby my truck in -30 and -40. I can't leave it at work or else it dies. I have to plug it in all the time or else it dies. I have to start it all the time or else it dies. I can't just let it be for any amount of time or else it dies. This means that I can't walk anywhere. I can't stop in at places. I can't go for more than three or four beers at a bar or a friend's place. I'm a slave to my ride. So I end up waking up in the morning, driving to work, driving home and then twiddling my thumbs and missing out on things for much of the winter. I realized tonight that I need to live in a place where I can walk everywhere, or bike everywhere or take a bus or subway. For my own mental health.

6) I came up with a name for the now-defunct superboard merger plan proposed by our Finance Minister Michael Miltenberger, but our editors did not want to use it. I wanted to call it the Milten-merger.

7) I hate the whole concept of insurance. It's bullshit. If something happens to you, you've been paying into that shit for how long? It should cover you. And it does, but it just means your rates go up, and you end up paying more in the long. I find insurance to be very indicative of our economic system and I hate the concept of it enough to leave Canada.

Wow, that was ranty.