... coming to terms with his fear of octopi

So, picture Little G just before he went to kindergarten, or just after he started going, and he's watching Sesame Street. He's on the couch and one of those little mini movies comes up. They might not have a specific educational message, but are just exposing kids to some different part of life. And on this day they show this one, called

And Now....The Octopus



And Now....G running from the room screaming.

From that moment on, I knew what my greatest fear would be...octopi!

Now if there is one thing about me that has stayed the same my entire life is my desire to research anything that crossed my path that I could not understand. It happened with tectonic plates, and it happened with Scientology.

With octopi, it was different. I couldn't open a book or anything on them because there were going to be pictures there, and those pictures would cause me to slam the book, toss it under a piece of furniture and run out of the room. Of course later I would have to get the book out from under wherever I threw it, and I would be worried that the octopus got OFF the page and was hell bent for revenge. So I spent my youth unable to watch 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea because of the giant squid attack, and most shows or stories with a nautical theme were off the menu.

It wasn't until later in life that I was able to start to research my fear.

And it was worse than I imagined.

I: Their symmetry is pretty random. Look at that video again: you can't even tell which side is up, nor does it really think in those terms. How can you defend against that?

II: Eight arms. We have two, four if you count the legs. They can already inflict twice to four times the amount of damage that we could in a fight.

III: Check out the big brain on Bret. They pretty much drag their brain behind them. Because it's big, it means they can learn. If they can learn, they can adapt. May Clapton have mercy on our souls if they ever start running computers, because with their big brains and multiple limbs, they'll be worse than Skynet.

IV: They can regenerate their limbs. Cut one off, it'll grow back. That means you gotta hit them in the big brain, but good luck with something that can fend you off at almost any angle because it has eight limbs...WHICH CAN REGENERATE

V: Camouflage. THEY. COULD. BE. ANYWHERE. Oh look Marge, there appears to be a little crack on the wall, let me just take a look OH DEAR ABBY, THEY GOT ME! TAKE THE KIDS AND HEAD TO HIGHER GROUND!

VI: Since it can squeeze into anywhere, so even if you make it to the cottage, chances are that one of its comrades squeezed into your suitcase and is sitting there, chortling. But wait, how did it know to get into the suitcase?

VII: They learn and mimic from each other. There have been studies showing an octopus will watch another octopus, or a human, examine their action and repeat it. One study featured an octopus who learn to unscrew a cap, and then its comrade was able to do it immediately after seeing the first, and then did a victory lap in the aquarium. Recently in San Diego an octopus figured out how to open the door in its aquarium to escape. I won't even go into the cases where octopi kept in homes have crawled out of their aquariums to eat fish in other aquariums, because that really have more to do with...

VIII: They can travel on dry land. Normally this is done to go from tidal pool to tidal pool, but so long as they stay moist, they can survive (Are you laughing so hard at points V and VI now?)

IV: They keep to themselves. Not much is known about them because how shy and reclusive and seemingly harmless they are. You know what else seems shy and reclusive and seemingly harmless? MASONS! And Howard Hughes.

X: Nothing that big should have a beak.

That's just the tip of the iceberg, if you will. The more I've read about them, the less I've considered this fear to be some kind of childhood trauma (like some kids and clowns).

My concern that one day they shall amass and move upon dry land and make us work in their salt mines is something I shall be ever vigilant for.

.... is reacalling an old cover

I forgot about this cover until about a week ago when it jumped into my head. Even if you don't know that song title, give it a listen. You'll figure it out pretty quick.

... McFearless

Last night Dawn and I went to see Kings of Leon at the Air Canada Centre. This was our third Kings of Leon show, and the first in a big venue. I remember first reading about KoL (as all the cool kids be calling them) when we were in Paris when their first album came out. It was a review in Entertainment Weekly of them and My Mourning Jacket, mostly about how there was a new brand of Southern Rock and how it tied in with the vowel bands (that actually was the term used to describe bands like The White Stripes, The Strokes, The Vines...all because of the long vowel sounds in them. Even I couldn't make this up).

So KoL were on our periphery for a while, and then my friend He Who Shares a Name With a Part of The City (you know who you are!) said that if we liked the music, we should check them out live. We've heard that about a lot of bands, and some have been better than others (I'm looking at you, Muse), but decided to give them a chance.

The First Time
It was the tour to support Because of the Times, one of the best album titles of the past few years, and they were playing Kool Haus, one of the worst club names of the past few years. We didn't have tickets, so we walked right up to the door and were able to get them. That was part of the thrill. The other part was seeing a band that is HUGE in England in such a small venue.

The show was all that was promised. They played straight ahead, with great ferocity, and stage chatter was kept to a minimum. I think it was pretty much "We're Kings of Leon" and "Thanks". The set might only be an hour long, but they could play an insane amount of songs in that time.

The Second Time
There were rumours of them coming back to town to play a twin bill with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, but that never materialized. But we kept out ear to the ground and when we knew that Because of Only by the Night was going to be released that a tour would soon follow. And it did, and they played the same venue again. This time tickets sold out in minutes, but we were able to score a pair.

The interesting thing about this show was that KoL was being primed for a big breakthrough in North America. "Sex on Fire" was becoming a big radio hit, and the band had appeared on SNL. So while the first crowd was a mix of Anglophiles and True Believers, this crowd was full of, well, tourists. I went over the show in an earlier post. The show itself was great, the band was tight, but the experience in the trenches was much different.

The Third Time
We actually debated going to this show: ACC means big arena rock, and while KoL plays big arenas all over the UK, it seemed a little much for a band we'd seen in friendlier confines. When we found out that The Walkmen were opening, that sealed the deal.

The Walkmen are not, shall we say, a conventional band. They're kinda like The Velvet Underground had a baby with a lot of late 90s bands: their sound is idiosyncratic to put it mildly. They played a great, shambolic set for the few people who stayed around to listen to them. While they do have a soaring sound, a place like the ACC is not the best for them, especially when it's only about 1/3 full.

KoL came on afterwards, and played their typical, loud, tight set. There was a little more stage patter, and the show was augmented by a series of video screens that showed the band (more on that in another post). The set list was good, though some of my favorite older songs didn't get played, and "Slow Night, So Long" to me is always the show closer, not the first set closer.

What was interesting was the crowd. Because of the larger venue and increased exposure, it would be safe to say that there were a lot of tourists or newer fans who were more familiar with the new material. Whenever something from Because of Only by the Night was played, he crowd went wild, loud, exuberant. When they played "Sex on Fire" you could see the crowd on the floor jumping along, but for songs like "Pistol" the reaction overall was just...smaller.

Don't get me wrong: the show was great, the sound was amazing, and the Followill boys can rock the arena with the best of them. Their sound is still intimate, though, even if the experience is now.

ed note: I shouldn't write late at night. I mistakenly called Only by the Night Because of the Night. Thanks to a certain eagle eyed reader for picking up on that. 

... head over heels for Tears for Fears

I recently got Songs from the Big Chair from the library and forgot how much I used to love that cassette.  My favourite song on it was Head Over Heels. Still is. Still a great piece of mid 80s pop.

Hard to belive they were once the Blur to Wham!'s Oasis.

... is explaining why he is a great judge of tomatoes.

I'm not saying it was the worst summer job I ever had; that would have to be the three weeks I was a door-to-door salesman in Charlottetown, PEI. This came a very close second. I was the "General Labourer" (read: janitor and general dogsbody) at a food bank in my hometown of Minto, New Brunswick. I got a lot of the typical warm fuzzies you're supposed to get at a job like that, but I also had a lot of the worst days of my life there. One of them involved spending a hot, muggy afternoon bent over picking rhubarb out of a boggy little piece of property, followed by a day of people making rhubarb jam, which involved three stoves running at full power on another hot muggy day in a building that ran freezers all the time and was not air conditioned. Good times...

The worst day was in four parts.

Part the first, wherin our hero lifts the crates
Minto has one primary industry: coal mining. The coal mined in Minto goes to the coal powered generating plant which provides power for Minto, which mines the coal for the coal generating plant that...you get the picture. The power plant also ran a few greenhouses. From time to time when produce was about to turn they'd call us and ask if we wanted it. We'd say yes and then they would drop it off and we'd go through it and use what we could and freeze the rest.

They called saying that they had many crates of tomatoes, and would we like them. We said sure and called up Leo, one of the board of directors, who came with his pickup truck and we drove out to the plant.

"You know where we get the tomaters," I asked in my best Mintonian.

"Sure sure sure, do this all the time," Leo answered. "Don't even gotta tell 'em we're 'here. Just take 'em."

So there are the crates of tomatoes, and we loaded them into the truck, and they are heavy. I thought that it must have rained a little bit during the morning because there's some water running out of them, and they smell a little gamey. It's tiring work, but we load them into the truck. At the end I have a feeling of already doing a good day's work, and would feel entitled to a nap amongst the clothes left for donations downstairs once I put the tomatoes away.

Part the second, in which our hero sorts bad tomatoes from good tomatoes.
We got back to bank and start going through the crates. That's when I noticed that a lot of the tomatoes were....swollen. Ready to burst swollen. Basically these were the rotten tomatoes of legend. I could see why they were thrown at people: They were big enough that you could get a good grip on them, they were so swollen that they would explode on contact with anything, and they stunk to high heaven. And there was a weird white spiderweb-like fungus growing all over the place.

Since we were getting donated food there would a few of these, but it seemed that the more crates I handled the worse they were getting. The water that I thought was rainwater was actually entire layers of rotten tomatoes. As I could grab one tomato, two others would explode. My hands were pruned from all the water and were starting to get irritated from the tomato juice. I got some of the light plastic disposable gloves like they use in the hospital, but the acid was eating through those so quickly it was not worth it. The bag that I was using to store to rottenest of tomatoes was so heavy that when I tried to lift it, it broke and spilled tomato water and guts all over the floor.

This went on for three hours. We were all livid, even though I was the only one doing any of the work. Sure, we expected a little bit of spoilage, but nothing like this. Eventually, the power plant called. Chris, our office manager, took the call. "I don't know what you think we are, but we spent three hours going through these tomatoes. We're not the dump and...what do you mean?"

Part the third, in which the tomatoes are explained.
It was odd that Chris said "We're not the dump" because there were TWO piles of tomato crates. One was for us. The other were tomatoes that were so far gone that they were to be taken to the dump. Leo, in his haste, took us to the wrong pile. Since he felt he knew it so well that he didn't have to tell anyone we were there, no one noticed we took the wrong ones, nor could anyone correct us when we did since they didn't even know we were there. We had basically salvaged the few good tomatoes from the ones that were destined for the dump. They were calling to see when we were going to pick up our tomatoes. We had recovered extra tomatoes, and sure it was a good deed, but it did not go unpunished.

Part the forth, in which part the first and part the second are repeated as tragedy.
We can't turn down food, so we call Leo and then jump back into his truck and head back to the power plant to get to tomatoes that were supposed to be ours.

Now, these tomatoes that were fresh...er at the start of the day have now been outside in the hot sun waiting for us. So....now they are pretty much in the same state as the ones we borough back earlier in the day. The whole drama plays itself out over again as I delved back into rotten, smelly, mildewy tomatoes and watch my skin wilt and turn bright red.

There were two lasting results from this in the post-bellum period.

1) I gained an almost supernatural ability to tell a good tomato from a bad one.
You could put almost any tomato up to my nose I could tell you how ripe it was. I could tell under-ripde from perfectly ripe to one day beyond ripe. It was uncanny. If there was a team of X-Men with useless abilities, I would have been the Nightcralwer of that bunch.

2) I could no longer stand the smell of tomatoes
If Superman was cursed never to see his home planet of Krypton and condemned to be weakened any time we was exposed to rocks from it, then I could tell the ripeness of a tomato but I was also rendered physically ill by the sight of them and the smell of one that was even a little bit over-ripe. I was THAT GUY at restaurants who had to ask for no tomato on my plate, even as a garnish. If I was walking by them in the grocery store I would actually have to run to the other side. Some days were worse than others, but for almost 10 years even just the sound of the word "tomato" would make me go all Rain Man.

I'm much better now. It took a long time for me to get to the point where a cherry tomato is a nice snack. Some good came out of it in that I learnt you can overcome some fears. Some others have stayed with me my entire life...but more on that later.

... proposing a new way to sell concert tickets

So. I like bands. I like them a lot. I like going to their concerts and hearing them play their music live. This gets expensive.

(Except in the case of Pearl Jam. I will spend a lot of money and go to a lot of concerts for them. There is a new album coming out in the next 12 months, which means tour, which means saving pennies and planning the list of cities willing to travel to see them.)

What this means is that we have to be selective in who we see. For example in a couple of weeks Travis are playing one venue and Kings of Leon (with The Walkmen opening) are playing another. We've seen both headliners live before and enjoy each band but for different reasons. We wound up with tickets for both, so decided to go to the Kings of Leon show since The Walkmen ARE AWESOME.

Later this year U2 will be coming to Toronto. Devotees know how I feel about The U2s, but concert watchers also know that Kaiser Chiefs might be opening for them, and I loves me my Kaiser Chiefs. There was a Death Cab for Cutie show, and it's not a preferred way to spend an evening, but Cold War Kids were opening. Cold War Kids are all that, and all that with a bag of crisps live. Coldplay is coming to the Rogers Centre, Tickets are very expensive and we don't really want to see Coldplay (as much as we love them), but Elbow are opening. ELBOW! There are times I think I'm the only person in Toronto who knows or who has heard of Elbow. And now they come to Toronto, and they'll play, and people will spend the whole time looking for Gwyneth and ignoring Elbow. THE GUYS HAVE WON A MERCURY PRIZE!

We've talked about this and boiled it down to this: What do you do when there is a band you WANT to see, and they are opening for a band you DON'T really WANT to see? Is there a ticket price where you can say "Yeah, it's worth it for a 30 minute set and then we'll watch a little bit of the headliner and then go home"? If there is, it has to be a very small price because once you add all the Ticketmaster fees and everything it gets very expensive.

What if you could do the following: Take the Death Cab show with Cold War Kids opening. Tickets for that were $40.50, and there were two opening acts. Give 60% of the value of the ticket to the headliner and 40% to the support acts (this might be generous, but wait and see where I'm going with this). Now, set up a little area to the side or the back of the hall, cordoned off from everyone else. Put a small dry bar there and a small merch counter that sells only stuff associated with the opening act(s). Now, two weeks before the concert the promoters open that area up. This means that they sell a limited amount of tickets at the price of $16.10 (40% of face value) and people can see the opening act(s), and then get the bum's rush between sets. The area is dry because (1) they're there for a good time, not a long time and (2) it will be easier to move them out if they're not too drunk. The merch counter only sells opening act stuff because that's all you've paid for and not for, as the French say, poseurs trying to pass off as people who saw Death Cab.

Is this a perfect solution? No, not at all. But with some tweaking by people who do this for a living I think it's perfectly possible. The venue would have to be larger than a certain size; You couldn't do this at Lee's Palace or The Mod Club. It couldn't be too big; The logistics of doing this at Rogers Centre make my skin crawl. But at Kool Haus or The Sound Academy this could work.

... welcoming the newest member to the Obama administration

This week a new member joined the Obama administration.

Friday ROCKS presents his musical past, and a surprise endorsement for a former secretary of state.

... Toronto employed, Moscow paid

This part has been the most eventful, but it's also the simplest to explain.

I was hired over the phone by a start up at was in Aurora, Ontario at the time. They were working on the career section of the The Globe and Mail website. We had all the fun of being startup in the early 90s: working out of the attic, getting some office space in a warehouse, finally getting a nice large area that looked like the bridge of the Enterprise.

I did that for until 2001 when I took a job working on the Intranet for a big Bay St law firm. That was a great culture shock for me as I went from jeans and concert t-shirts to shirts and ties. I actually do miss wearing the ties all the time. Once I got used to it, there was something about it I liked. I was a mini Barney Stinson. After a few years there I went to ANOTHER Bay St law firm, where I actually got to do application development. From there it was another jump to client analysis with a software house to my current position as a business analyst for a company with offices in Toronto and Moscow. Considering my interest in Soviet history in university, I've managed to close that loop.

During that time I met Dawn. Our first conversation was based on a shared love of Ralph Wiggum and the fact that we seemed to have been the only people we knew who had seen The Spanish Prisoner. We started dating, moved in together, got engaged, got our house and got married. We even used to work in the same law firm for a few years (we were already together before I started there) without breaking any confidentiality agreements.

Since moving to Toronto I've seen a lot of concerts, met a lot of great people, been published, been sacked, been promoted, been quoted. I've traveled through parts of the world I never thought I'd ever go to, seen works of art I've only ever read about, and been to Cleveland 3 times. In a way it's been the most fascinating time of my life, but it's also the shortest to write about, because there are a lot of great stories that came out of that time, stories which I'll probably post here from time to time...like maybe...the story of the first time I saw the CN Tower.

But that's for another time.

... Halifax educated

So when we left our hero (Me. I'm your hero) he was back in Minto, getting ready for university. As we all know, 17 years old is the best time to lock yourself into a career path for the rest of your life. I mean, it's not like a few years ago your dream was to be a cowboy or a ballerina. You're mature!

I toyed around with a lot of things. Lawyer, pharmacist, yes even priest at one point. Nothing much stuck, so I guess like all people who were confused and not ready to hit the world, I chose teaching. I applied to an was accepted to Dalhousie University, and I was going to do a double major in History and Mathematics. I was in an advanced math class in high school, and the Dal math department had sent me a letter inviting me to join the honours math programme. It was my very first class on my very first day:

Professor: So, let's start with a basic concept. Let's discuss paradoxes. Can anyone name a paradox?

Arms shoot up all over the place, and I just look around bewildered.

Student: Well, there is the (to this day I can't remember what he said, it wasn't Heisenberg but I think it had to do with graphing).

Professort: Eiiiin...that WILL do, although it's a little basic.

Me: under my breath Oh man oh man oh man, this is a bug hunt! Game over!

I'd like to say things got better after that, but they did not. I thought I could hack it, but I couldn't. When we got our first tests back, I got an A-. I was quite impressed, until he said:

I mark on a pretty steep curve. If you got anything under an A, you should wonder why you're here.

So I dropped out of math, that dream quashed.

At the same time I was struggling with my English class. I was okay, but not quite getting it. My ideas seemed good, but they were just bubbling below the surface. The professor was an eccentric named Deverandas P. Varma, and while I admired his lectures I could not figure out what he wanted from me. That was until I had to write a paper on MacBeth about the relationship between Lady MacBeth and the Scotsman himself. I was looking at my blank sheet of paper, compiling my notes when the word symbiotic jumped into my head. I quickly scribbled a few notes down and hit the stacks, looking for instances of this in discussion on MacBeth. The paper just started flowing, and ironically enough I never used the word symbiotic in it anywhere, but it broke through a ceiling. I got it, and then I was pulling down straight As in the class.

That's when I knew: my majors would English and History. Particularly Russian history. Soviet era stuff.

Doing my honours degree, I came across the second prof who would have a great impact on my life: Dr Trevor Ross. His 18th Century Lit seminar was a literal romp, finding all the subtext and ribaldry of the era. The focus on satire and experimentation in that age really struck a chord with me, and it became my passion (I've lost count over the years how many papers and discussions I've had about Gulliver's Travels, and I think it ranks up there with the number of papers I've written on Othello. And yes, the rumors are true: I've read Nineteen Eighty-Four far more times than what one would consider healthy!).

During this time I got a got computer to write my papers on. A real, honest to goodness, Windows 3.1 running PC, along with a printer. Not to sound like a Yorkshireman, but what you have today with USB is luxury. Pretty much back then you had to find out what type of printer you had, what type of PC you had, what software you were going to run and then go into the actual printer and flick some switches to let the printer know what type of data to expect. And then you had to make sure the computer knew the printer was there, which might involve turning them on in a particular order. And then you had to load the paper, which was a pain. And then print...and stand there, and keep the paper straight and fix any paper jams. It was not fun, but it was educational. Then I got a modem. I found I was spending more time tuning my computer and fixing things on it than I was writing about The Canterbury Tales (Whan in Aprille soers shorte...)

I discovered I liked the binary settings of computers: Either something worked or it didn't. You could argue for ages that Phillip Roth's The Conversion of the Jews was about his love of cherry pie, and you could be as valid as a real opinion. But the certainty of seeing a piece of text that I generated on a screen was more thrilling. Plus, it was 1994: Soviet history had ended 2 years before, and 18th Century Lit had petered out around the time of the Victorians. So I went to a technical school for computers, and took programming and networking.

I also fell in with a group of real eccentrics. There were science fiction nuts, fantasy nuts, political people, actors, djs, musicians, writers, and me...the guy who had his own place, so we could all play cards. It was like a French salon, only not.

For a lark I taught myself HTML and set up my own home page. When I finished school I actually did teach for a few months...and failed at that. But I found that HTML people were in great demand. And one such set of people were willing to hire me over the phone and then move me out to their office....in Toronto.

... Minto born and Barbados raised.

In the past few years, really since the advent of Facebook, I've had to try to find a pithy way to distill my entire life down to a quick sentence. Facebook was the catalyst in this because it was the first time that people from many different aspects of my life all came together in one time and in one place, a generation lost in space. Since I'm nothing if not pithy, I came up with the following quick bio.

Minto born, Barbados raised, Halifax educated, Toronto employed, Moscow paid

In the next little bit I'm going to go through those parts of my life and try to explain what they each mean. Will anyone care other than me, probably not. Will it give me something to write about for the next week other than how in the hell is Lady GaGa popular...I mean come on, her first two singles have gone to #1 in Billboard, which means that she has TWO MORE NUMBER ONES THAN BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, BOB DYLAN, PEARL JAM AND CREDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL COMBINED...ummm. yes

So let's start with: Minto born

Minto is a small village pretty much in the smack dab middle of New Brunswick. It's about 45 kilometers east of Fredericton, which really only helps if you know where Fredericton is. Fredericton, so you can get your bearings, is 45 kilometers west of Minto. You're welcome.

Minto is small village, about 1900 people when you get right down to it. It started out as a coal mining town, and has stayed pretty true to those roots. The best shorthand I've come for describing it is Springfield from The Simpsons mixed with a little Twin Peaks: funny, quirky, and its own little universe. Minto even has its own Shelbyville in the village of Chipman, which is about 20 kilometers east of Minto (to get your bearings, that means it's about 65 kilometers east of Fredericton).

I was born in Minto and went to school there. I was an altar boy (first joke you make is your last), learned how to play baseball poorly, and basically did all the things normal kids did from birth until Grade 6 (you know, read about tectonic plates, memorize Trivial Pursuit cards, be a general geography nut). There was me, mom, dad, my sister and my brother. My sister is ten years older than me, and my brother was eight years older.

Barbados raised

On his 17th birthday my brother was in a car crash that took his life. This really shook our family up.

My father, a pharmacist with two stores, one in Minto and the other in Chipman, pretty much decided that life was too short at this point and sold most of his interests. That year the association of pharmacists had their annual package tour, and this year it was to Barbados. Since they had never really taken a vacation, mom and dad went there. They intended to stay for one week, would up staying for two, and then bought a time share for four. We did a couple of Christmases there and they then decided that this might be a good place to live. So in the equivalent of grade 7 I started school at Presentation College in Barbados.

When The Beatles were asked about their first tour, they described it as "A car and a room and a car and a room and a car and a room". Barbados was kinda like that. Up at 6 AM to get ready for school, get my uniform on. Catch a ride either by car or by bus to the other side of the island for school, which started at 8:30. It went until about 3:30, when I would catch a car or bus back to the other side of the island again. Home by 5, take a quick bike ride or a surf (yes, I used to surf, and no, not well) and then have dinner and start homework. End by about 7:30. Watch TV until 8:30 when the heat of the day left you exhausted and then go to bed. Repeat. Do this for three years, three school terms a year, and the best part is that the Christmas and Easter breaks were 3 weeks long each. It was beautiful, it was hot, the water tasted great, and it was just living.

Oh yeah, and did I mention this was an all boys school, and that for about three years I didn't talk to a girl on a regular basis?

We did this for three years, until my sister got married. At that time with the planning of the wedding, and me getting ready to think about university, we moved back to Minto, and I finished my high school there.

Next time, Halifax educated.

... waxing poetic about Opening Day

Baseball Opening Day is upon us. Well, technically the first regular season game is tonight, but I always think it's Opening DAY, not Opening Night. Until the first game is played with the Cincinnati Reds (the Reds traditionally play the first game of the season) then I don't consider the season to have started.

I follow a lot of sports, some closer than others, and to me nothing compares to Opening Day in baseball. There is something to the pomp, the pageantry, the sense of occasion that is just different in baseball. Football has jets flying overhead and big concerts and fireworks, but to me it doesn't feel the same as when the players first run onto the field, the stadium decorated in bunting.

It's the start of a campaign. It's the start of a long days and short sleeves. It's the start of a streak or a slump: both of which will be broken and will be mirror images of each other. It's when you stop thinking in terms of days of the week and in terms of pitchers in the rotation. It's the start of surrendering your passions over to something you have no control over. The die is cast, and the hope in the air.

That is what baseball has more than any other sport: hope. The season is long, the game is not played against a clock, and teams play each other so many times that they can adapt to each other. Earl Waver put it best:

You can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You've got to throw the ball over the damn plate and give the other man his chance. That's why baseball is the greatest game of them all.

On Opening Day everyone is equal and everyone has the same chance, and there IS a chance. A few years ago the Detroit Tigers were a laughing stock and had the worst record ever in the major leagues, and then two years after that they were in the World Series. The Minnesota Twins were considered so helpless that they were rumored to be candidates for a move or contraction, and now they are contenders in the AL Central. Every year a team that was supposed to be a write off comes out of nowhere and makes a good run for the playoffs: Florida, Philadelphia, Oakland, and of course Tampa Bay last year. Meanwhile teams that were supposed to be locks can have a year that for, mysterious reasons, never seems to take off: both New York teams, the Cubbies, Cleveland. And it all starts on Opening Day, one day when the Royals and the Rays have the same chance as he As and the Astros.

Michael Chabon wrote in Summerland that "Baseball is the length by which we measure a summer's day". It's a slow game, a contemplative game, a game that you can't explain in a sentence. It's a game that runs counter to most people's understanding of a game: the defense has the ball, there's no clock, a team game based purely on individual accomplishments. But , as George Carlin pointed out there is something universal in it: The object is to get home.

And in that first week in April, one way or another, we all start to look home

... giving a simple instruction

Listen to more British Sea Power.

That is all.

... recalling the worst thing he ever did.

So I'm sure a lot of people are expecting details from my recent trip, and they will come as soon as we get the pictured developed (yes, we went old school with actual FILM).

So instead, I'm going to rehash an old chestnut of my youth. Some of you know the story already, and some don't, and some just know ABOUT the story. So for posterity, I'll write it here.

This story is called "The Worst Thing I Ever Did". Not a great title, I know. They all can't be Cloud Atlas.

This story takes place just after Christmas. Now, I can't quite remember the year. I'm willing to go with either 1992 or 1993. I was working part time in my sister and brother-in-law's Work World clothing store in the Halifax Shopping Centre. We had a pretty laid back attitude there, probably too laid back, but laid back none-the-less.

Working in a mall creates a lot of existential dread. Spend enough hours there and you get like Apu when he worked many hours in a row, and you're running along like a hummingbird. After that, you will crash, and crash hard. Now, over Christmas, double that.

So, it was a few days after Christmas, and I'd just about had enough of the forced joy and being nice to people. I hadn't entered into complete and utter misanthropy, but I was at the level before it: complete, utter and brutal honesty.

So it was at this time, a few days after Christmas, when the three girls came in. I remember the one in the middle, she looked about 18 or so, long blond hair. I can't remember much about the other two. One was brunette I think. But I remember the one in the middle because she was happy and smiling and talking loudly when she came in. Very eager, very friendly.

They shopped around a bit, picked up a few things. I cannot remember what they were, but I remember they actually did buy something. I was behind the cash when they came up, the happy loud talking blond in the middle, her friends on either side. There was the typical small talk. I noticed that she not only talked loudly, but her voice had a lot of low notes and not many high ones, sorta like she was muffled. "Ah," thought I because I thought I was smart, "she has a head cold."

This is where our little play starts. And remember, I'm in complete, utter, brutal honestly mode, and she's speaking a little loudly and sounds like she has a head cold.

Her: So...did you have a good Christmas?
Me: Yeah, yeah, it was a good one.
Her: Was Santa good to you?
Me:I guess.
Her: You guess? You mean you don't know?
Me: Yeah, if you still believe in that kinda stuff.

All stories have The Point of No Return, the point at which the rest of the action and the climax become inevitable, the point at which the plot takes over. This was that moment.

Her: What do you mean?
Me: Well..you know, the whole Santa thing.

All good stories have the point where the protagonist hits his nadir, the lowest point of the story, when all hope is lost. This was that moment. See how quick things were spiraling?

Her: Do you mean....what....errr...*at which point she starts getting choked up*
Me: You...you...didn't know?
Her: *the sobbing in coming more to the fore, and I can see the look in her face. One of her friends takes her by the shoulders and consoles her a little.*
Her brunette friend: *leaning in towards me, and being quite apologetic considering* Please don't feel bad. Her parents are way too overprotective. You see, she's partially deaf and...a little slow.

Now comes the moment in the story when the protagonist has flashbacks to everything...she was talking loudly. She was very eager to be friendly. She sounded like she had a head cold...OH DEAR GOD SHE'S KAISER SOZE!

Me: Oh....I'm so sorry....you see...I...I'm not Christian and so never really believed in this stuff *moving quickly to cover up he crucifix around my neck.*
Her: *gaining control* It's okay...I....just feel bad for mom and dad...what will they think when they find out? (At least something to that effect. At this point my head was rushing so much that I don't recall everything, but her point boiled down to that she felt she couldn't tell her parents she knew because it would break their hearts, which in turn broke mine)

The rest was pretty much her friends calming her down and taking their purchases and leaving the store. They weren't angry at me, and implied that these types of things happened a lot, where she would have some childhood myth destroyed by someone accidentally. The whole thing took maybe 3 minutes, but they were three of the longest and fastest minutes of my life.

It became one of those moments that I'll think about at the weirdest times and feel like I'm back there. I might even start talking like I was there, making a sort of action movie "Noooooooo" to try to stop it. I'll then want to shrink away and just never be seen again.

I know it wasn't my fault entirely, that there's no way I could have known. But I also didn't have to say the things I did, I could have just said "Oh...it was good" and leave it at that. Instead, because I was in University and knew everything and had to slay everyone's perceptions and myths, I did what I did.

So there it is...The Worst Thing I Ever Did.

Next time I feel the need for a story, I'll tell you why I have a great talent in telling a ripe tomato from an over-ripe tomato.