A Letter of Complaint to Dollarama Canada (A Rant)

An example of correspondence I really wish I could send to some corporate entities. Written with channeling the spirit of my inner Lewis Black.

To: The Department Head of Useless Junk and Product Flim-Flammery of Dollarama Canada

From: A very dissatisfied customer

To whom it may concern,

I wish to inform you about a recent purchase I made from one of your stores, that being a decoy owl which was purportedly labeled as a “scarecrow” owl, to be used to deter and scare away unwanted avian vermin. I just wanted to let you know, with some resounding clarity, that . . . IT DOESN’T WORK WORTH A SHIT!!!

For several weeks now, I have been bothered by the presence of not just one, but two annoying pigeons that have been attempting to occupy and commandeer my second-floor balcony space. Initially, they tried building a nest in my barbeque, and then later, took to sneaking their unwelcome activity into the space behind it. Their (very) early morning, every morning, rustling and loud, obnoxious, cooing can be heard directly outside my bedroom window. So frequent is their annoying presence, I thought that we should be acquainted on a first-name basis, with me dubbing them names, reflective and befitting their bothersome little asshole selves: Percy and Edna.

I can’t even guess as to how many days it has been going on now, but it has come to the point of being ritualistic.

I get woken by the loud and repetitive cooing by horny old Percy, who has been trying to woo his frigid old stick-in-the-mud mate, Edna, who has been resistant to his courtship, possibly due to his less than impressive site selection and nest-crafting talent. Whatever the case, the bloody cooing is non-stop! Each morning, I thrash my way out of the bedsheets between an hour and an hour and a half before my actual regular alarm time, even earlier yet as the solstice approaches. I head out onto the deck of balcony, flailing my arms, and well-prepared to strangle the little bastards if I could ever catch them. I threaten and yell at them with insults and curses: with me calling them a bunch of useless, noisy, parasite-festered, deck-shitting, feathery-rat squabs. They temporarily flutter off and perch on the nearby telephone line, six metres away and another five metres upward, glaring defiantly at me, and with their ululating cooing, I imagine they are returning insults and curses akin to comparing me to some sort of grouchy old, courtship-spoiling, nest-wrecking, mangy looking half-monkey varmint; one that’s too stupid and inept to know how to climb up a telephone pole, in Pigeonese of course. Apparently, they are either too stubborn, or too stupid to know what intimidation behaviour is from a human.

I first thought I was the luckiest man of the day when I chanced upon finding your very lifelike rendering of a plaster decoy owl on one of your store’s shelves. The gleeful thought of, “AHA, a solution! . . . I’ll fix’em now!”, came to mind instantly. I hastily purchased the item, took it home, and set it on the spot on my deck where they perch most often. Like they did to treasured weapons way back in the days of yore, I even decided to christen the fake owl object with a name. I named her Hecate the Owl (Hecate l’Hibou en français): a real cool and mean-ass-sounding witch name. However, it didn’t take even a day, nor even an hour, but 15 MINUTES, until I heard the cooing return. I poked my head outside and found that that damn owl didn’t repel these pigeons at all, but rather it seemed to attract them! Moreover, Percy and Edna were even more persistent with the cooing, both in frequency and loudness. Perhaps, they thought since this damn thing wasn’t responding to their first calls that this follow bird was half-deaf, so they had to turn up the volume! And goddamn it! If that wasn’t enough, I swear, I caught old Percy trying to mount and copulate with Hecate! And I blame Edna! - if she acquiesced to Percy’s charms at least once in a while, he wouldn’t have to resort to this kind of wild kinky bullshit! Now, because pigeons are resilient, and just because the natural world seems to hate me so much, I fear that there may indeed be some strange chance of some insidious miracle of biological reproduction happening. That soon I’ll find a nest with a clutch full of eggs, which once hatched, will yield some freakish half-pigeon flesh/half-owl plastered bastard pigeonling/owlet monster offspring things, that will make a whole damn chorus full of fuckin’ spooky mutant hoot-coo sounds, as well as being equipped to peck out my eyes and shred my skin with sharp talons like any other vicious and angered bird of prey would … and Jesus Christ! Only God knows what will happen to my property! Can you imagine what a half-plaster being would do when it starts crapping all over the place? I’ll need a jackhammer to clear the shit away when it dries! All because of the false promise of your “scarecrow” owl being effective at deterring the presence of such unwanted critters!

I would bring this poor, now sexually assaulted, mannequin owl back for you to refund my money, but you’ll probably invoke some legalese bullshit about the owl being advertised as a “scarecrow”; not a “scarepigeon”. Or else, after this account, you will reject my plea due to suspecting old pervy Percy risking tainting Hecate with some sort of weird, avian STI. So, as perhaps it is so with some of your other customers, in a similar such situation, I’ll just accept that I’ve been screwed over!

Thus, I have no other recourse than to do this. I’ll leave this pigeon-pecker befouled statue at the store it came from, and strongly implore you to take that useless, piece of shit - and shove it up your ass! . . . sideways!

Sincerely,

The grouchy, mangy looking, half-monkey varmint from Saskatoon, SK Canada.

Good Riddance 2023; Welcome 2024

I’m seeing right now how long it has been since I last put in an entry. The reasons being that since COVID struck us, my life has been neither very outgoing nor adventurous, and really has been just a stale withering away from a slow and dull form of decay, which culminated into some crisis events. Coping and dealing with those moments were captured elsewhere in writing. They weren’t things I would share openly. But, when things seemed so down and low, I gave myself no other direction to look to except upward, and that’s the course in which I’ve been steadily trying to move. I’m not going to mince words, the year of 2023 has been so bad for me, worse actually at some points than the actual onslaught of the pandemic in the years earlier. I kept denying these things and putting aside my own health and security to cope with them, rationalizing with the truth that so many others around me were having worse luck than I was. However, it didn’t change the fact that I was also suffering for a long while and not attending to it in better ways.  The best thing about 2023 was that it forced me to change; to embrace better change. I’m going to focus on what has been good.

Last Purchase of 2023: Technically, my official last purchase was a tray of sushi on New Year’s Eve, but the biggest, most significant purchase was getting a new laptop. The old one was becoming retarded in every literal sense of the word, because it’s over eight years old for one thing. I was justified in using the Boxing Day sales as an opportunity to replace it.

Best Purchase of 2023 for under $100.00: A Chromecast dongle. The best thing about it is being able to readily stream in YouTube instructional/science videos on my TV screen with a greatly simplified interface. Those instructional videos consequently have led me to better things and outcomes.

Last Accomplishment of 2023: I reached the 5000 km mark in recorded runs in the Nike Running Club app. I should have finished this years ago, but health issues got in the way, despite the effort to live healthier. It is a reminder that it’s OK for things to be postponed until I’m in better shape to tackle them again.

Last Book of 2023: I didn’t partake it a formal Yule Bookfest this year with any company. It was debatable as to when it actually would have been (was it on Dec 17 or on Dec 24 this year?) Anyway, I’ve been trying to embrace as much outside walking time as I could whilst the weather was mild, and I serendipitously found a meaningful free book in one of the community’s little library boxes. It is by one of my favourite non-fiction authors, Bill Bryson, and it is one of his earlier works titled Neither Here nor There. I hope it will inspire me to travel again someday, and to keep being curious about and enjoying walking tours of strange, unknown places; both figuratively and literally, even if it has to be alone.

Best App of 2023: To anyone who has scoffed at the idea of meditation, I would retort that they just aren’t brave enough to face just how really messed up their heads are. That’s where the app Balance comes in. I’ve tried meditation a few times before, and I confess that I wasn’t ever successful at calming down my monkey mind. I indeed need a more guided approach to it, and this app serves to do that. It is available for Ios and I’m sure it is available for Android as well. It has been most powerful for me in terms of re-finding my focus, taming down anxiety/stress, approaching my days with more positivity and gratitude, and overall generally motivating me to live a healthier lifestyle. Without it,  I would probably be still carrying around an extra 14 kg (or more) of excess body mass, sleepless, constantly brain-fogged, and perhaps even dead from some other imbalance, or inflammation induced affliction.

Most Useful Knowledge taken from 2023: Lot of scientific stuff related to mechanism of mitochondrial uncoupling, a foundational, and of course a cellular thing, that’s largely neglected in the medical and nutritional fields. Using that to adjust my diet accordingly has made a huge difference in both my body and mind. Finding a balanced and feasible amount of exercise to do that’s right for me has been most helpful as well.  

Newest Ambition for 2024: I rediscovered the beautiful system and mechanism of flowcharting ideas, and now that I can focus better, I want to apply myself to do more coding and programming. I reason that if I can trouble myself daily to learning the irrational stuff about the weird intricacies and manner in which other foreign languages are spoken (i.e. grammatical gender)*, wouldn’t it be sensible, more so even, if I tuned in more and learned about a language that was more purely algorithmic and rational (to a machine), which I could regularly use in a practical application to automate stuff in my life. I changed my diet over significantly, and thus I have veered away from doing a lot of extra cooking; so I need another hobby to substitute for that time which is equally economical and productive**. The new laptop needs a purpose. There are also other physical projects and objectives to engage in and be challenged with in 2024, but those are too personal to relate here.

*- My Anglophone mind/self is always perplexed as to why a chair in French is considered feminine, or why a girl in German is neuter thing, or why some abstract thing like “a project” in Spanish is the masculine “un Proyecto”, or why water and beer in Swedish are some strange gender designation apart from the sexes of man or woman in their language.  It is why English speakers are especially challenged by this ridiculous and archaic concept in linguistics and language learning in genera, and arrogantly think that everyone else should just learn English. Degrees of the formally in addressing the 2^nd person singular/plural in other languages, especially German, are also bothersome for me with my English speaking mind.

**- Three days earlier, a complete stranger in the queue at the grocery store was guessing that I was a computer programmer. What prompted him to dare to engage me about this is completely lost to me, but if I look the part, maybe I can successfully act the part.

Dumpling Day

There has finally been a reprieve from this period of the depressing days (and daze) of winter with warmer weather finally arriving, coupled along with a longer stint of time off from work. Upon reflecting through this past while and trying to think of what to do with my time ahead during this brief holiday I realized three salient things to reckon with:

a. I haven’t been very proactive in being creative, or learning any new skill lately,

b. my aptitude for cooking has seriously suffered and declined: due to me giving more attention to dieting (Boo!), plus being less willing to shop for a long time, and just getting by with simple basics, and moreover,

c. I haven’t written anything meaningful in a long while since the pandemic arrived, or as it continues to give us all daily worries and woes. With all the measures of social distancing and isolation necessary, it’s a challenge to be a better communicator at all.

These last two years have been nothing that I want to really chronicle as they aren't the better ones in my life. I’ve been tuning away from, and dropping out of, social media more in general, quitting some platforms entirely. After dealing with so much bad news and negativity for a long time, I decided if I am to practice on keeping my writing skills up to par for relating anything, it’s this time more than ever when I’d want it to do so in a manner that’s positive, educational, and informative. Of the lettered things I listed earlier, I picked an activity to kill two of those birds with one stone, and to gather the wherewithal to write about it.

I don’t know if selecting my project came out of logic or instinct, or whether I was driven by a need for a sense of challenge, or a sense to seek comfort, which is strange, because those seem like forces that are actually quite antithetical to each other. The returning appetite is a reflection of that. If there is any food that perfectly represents the union of those two opposing drives, I would have to say that it would be some form of handmade, hand-filled dumpling. I played through my head as to when it is that I have to force myself to do the most radical overhauling and transforming of my kitchen space, by creating stations, and being meticulously conscious of detail and organization of my mise en place to make a particular sort of food item, like I'm strategizing for a big battle ahead. This seems to all go down during the very time-consuming activity of whenever I wrap and stuff things into individual bite-size morsels, be it perogies, cabbage rolls, or dim sum buns. I know a few tricks already, but I am still open to learning about more technical intricacies of the craft for quality and efficiency, and to learn a greater variety of recipes. I chose to focus on being a better dumpling maker and accepted this daunting challenge for something I think of as a perfect form of comfort food. For the sake of novelty from the source I used*, I selected more Asian styles of dough and fillings to experiment with. I don’t have many powered kitchen appliances to use, thus I had to do things at a hardcore basic level.

A useful kitchen hack: use chopsticks
for initial mixing of dough before kneading.
Two narrow pieces of wood are easier to
clean than almost any other utensil you have.

I didn’t use premade wrappers; I made the wrapping dough right from scratch as well. Through doing that, on top of acknowledging the opposing elements of challenge and comfort that dumplings represent, I discovered that there are other things with a yin/yang quality about them too in the making of them. The ideal hands for forming and crafting them, for instance. I’d have to say that the best hands for making the Chinese style dumplings would be smaller, but super strong for kneading and properly activating the gluten to make a sufficiently stiff and elastic dough (of the recipes I selected) and making it a uniform mass. It was really tiring. It’s like one has to have hands like some kind of Kung Fu Master who is endowed with some mystical power of being able to crush and pulverize a bag of pebbles into fine sand. At same time, assuming such an expert at this is a singular person, those same tough hands need to retain enough good fine motor skill, dexterity, and finesse in handling these little treasures later without squashing them as they are being filled, formed, and sealed. I can forgive myself easier should I screw things up at this introductory echelon of learning this science, since the same thing probably applies with this craft as with the rigorous sand disciplined tutelage for sushi-making for to reach some degree of being ‘acceptable’. That is, one can’t simply or fully learn this in minutes or hours; rather it probably requires months, if not years, of focused practice to achieve something approaching excellence, especially for someone beginning with hands as clumsy as mine.

Uniformity is important for making dumplings.
My instrument for exact measurement was simply my
 cleaver for sizing up my dough portions for these
Blood Orange Chicken Potstickers I made.
The dough is rolled cylindrically to the same
size in circumference as my cleaver handle,
chopped into morsels as wide as the end of my
cleaver handle, which are then rolled out into circles,
with the diameter being the same width as the
 broad flat edge of the end of my cleaver's blade.

I chose Asian style dumplings to make because they were an opportunity for utilizing the remainder of my strange and exotic collection of dried mushrooms and fungi I have acquired from previous trips to the ethnic food shops. I have such things because my most recent dietary kick is to be consuming more of this stuff to substitute for umami flavourings that I’ve been missing from my much cherished fatty meats. Dumplings are great in the sense that they are like sandwiches, in that there is a near infinite combination of stuff that can be packed into them. In fact, the freakier the ingredient is, the more likely I’d be inclined to roll it into a dumpling than to put it into a sandwich.

Sometimes I eat these freaky things called
"vegetables" once in a while. This stuff
I've whipped up in this pan is filling for
gyoza. The cabbage, carrots, black fungus,
onions, garlic, ginger, and spices in this
mixture, getting stuffed in the eggless dough
 wrappers I made even qualify this as "vegan" . . .
I could just about slap myself for doing this!
 

They are the perfect comfort food that is a balance of all cravings I get without being gluttonous: some carbs from a little dough instead of over-indulging in a huge slab of bread, or an overloading mass of pasta; any range of taste of savory, sweet, sour, salty, zesty, spicy, from saucy bits of protein all in one bite. Two or three is enough for a little meal that stays within moderation, which goes well with a cup of tea: at a moment when is one relegated to tune down and relax. I included a recipe of one of the three things I made for the day. It is one I constructed on my own, to simply use what I already had in my kitchen instead of running out to acquire more stuff. And, remarkably, if you can believe it, I had the good sense to write down the measurements I used.

Monkey Head Mushrooms, also known as Lion Mane Mushrooms,
called so because of the hairy textured surface
of the edible fruiting body of this fungus.

Pork and Monkey Head Mushroom Dim Sum Bun Filling

200 g     Minced (or ground) lean pork

175 g     Dried Monkey Head Mushrooms, finely chopped (about two large, dried mushrooms, soaked in water for a least 2 hours, then drain and squeeze out excess moisture), or use the same mass of some other favourable/available mushroom in your locale

1 Tbsp   Canola Oil

30 g        Fresh Ginger root, peeled, crushed and minced

½ cup    yellow onion, finely chopped

3 Tbsp   Sake (what I used, but one could use another dry, clear rice-based cooking wine, like Shaoxing wine, as well)

1 tsp      Sesame Oil

2 tsp      Cornstarch

1 Tbsp   Oyster Sauce

1 Tbsp   Soya Sauce

½ tsp     Table Salt

1/4 cup Scallions, finely chopped

In a bowl, mix together the chopped mushrooms and minced/ground pork thoroughly

In a non-stick frying pan over medium-high heat, add the canola oil, and then sauté the ginger and yellow onions; frying 1 minute to release their flavours into the oil

Add the pork and mushroom mix into the frying pan and cook until the pork is no longer pink. As this cooks, in a separate bowl, mix together the remaining ingredients except the scallions. Once the pork has cooked through, pour the sauce mix into the pan mixing well, and cook until the sauce has thickened.

Transfer the contents from the frying pan to a clean bowl; allow it to cool completely before mixing in the scallions. Mix thoroughly, and stuff into the prepared dim sum dough as soon as possible after it has cooled, or refrigerate for later use.

Here is a dim sum bun dough recipe I used to contain this stuff. Don’t worry, it’s not one of the tendon-snapping, hand crippling doughs that I used that day as I mentioned before. I suggest preparing this in advance of the filling recipe . . .

2 ½ cup All-purpose flour (unbleached)

3 tsp     Baking Powder

½ cup   Superfine sugar (I used icing sugar)

½ cup   Milk

1/3 cup Water

1/4 cup Canola oil

In a large bowl, sift together the first three dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, mix together, water, milk, and oil. Gradually combine the fluid mixture into the flour while mix that together. Once that is incorporated, turn into a dry floured surface, and knead until smooth for 1-2 minutes. If it appears dry and crumbly, wet your hands slightly; if it’s too sticky, dust with more flour. Once dough is even, wrap in plastic wrap and chill it in the fridge for 1 hour. Divide this mass into sixteen even balls of dough. Cover them with a damp cloth until they needed. This quantity yields enough to contain the quantity of filling listed above. After filling the buns (find/copy a how-to technique on You Tube, search filling bao buns) steam them for about 10 minutes until they expand and are done.

If there is any advice I would offer in terms of etiquette in eating dumplings, it would be this – if your host served you homemade, handcrafted dumplings, or other food served as bite-sized morsels: be they samosas, pupusas, empanadas, mandu, shumai, gyoza, homemade ravioli or tortellini, xiao long bao, piroshki, dolmades, or humble perogies, that obviously needed a great exertion and expense of time, patience, and skill to make, please take the special effort and consideration to chew it slowly and savour it. To thoughtlessly gulp and devour something in seconds that took considerably longer to fashion and form to completion would seem a bit insulting to the chef I’d say. 

*Dumplings = Love, by Liz Crain, published by Sasquatch Books, Seattle Washington USA.   

Madrugada y Solidad

Aches and pains prodded at me, and forced me awake at 3:30 this morning, but I’m now somehow thankful that this happened; to be able to be immersed into this particular hour to have reflective solitude. Even though the sun has not yet appeared, it’s still bright enough to read outside at this hour, thus bright enough to write out here as well. Of all the words that I have learned from other languages that have no accurately comparable translation into English, one of my favourites comes from Spanish. It is the word madrugada. Generally, in Spanish, the word refers to the hours between midnight and dawn, but in a more specific sense, or at least from what I gathered, it refers to the fleeting bit of time around morning twilight/early dawn before the sunrise: the very same time I’m experiencing now. 

It’s kind of sad, and a shame, that English fails to have its own singular concise word, of a similar fittingly lyrical beauty, to denote and describe this period of time, especially in Canadian English: here at this particular latitude, here in a province with such a huge expanse of sky to behold, especially now during the time when both the arrival of the full moon and the cherished long days around summer solstice arrive simultaneously, like this moment I’m witnessing now with the strange and fascinating interlude of moonlight and dawn’s early light playing off each other, colouring the world in muted hues I can’t accurately describe, but yet are no less magical. The scenes from my vantage point on my balcony look like something totally otherworldly. It is a period of absolutely wondrous peace and solace as the mind wavers and drifts between the dream world and lucidity, trying to compose itself from the elements of both places. It’s like a perfect time when poems and songs could be best written, when prayers and good-intentions should become more open and heartfelt, and when any creative idea, no matter how wild and crazy, has a better chance of fruition. It’s a fine and glorious hour, of which I wish there were more of during any given day. If we had the right word for it in English perhaps we could enjoy it more. Despite feeling like my ribs and shoulder are being chewed away by some menacing creature now, I still feel really content in at least the framework of mental calmness.  

Apart from the awkwardness of both wanting to share this moment with my lover, and letting her sleep if she was here, there is a bit of blissful solitude at this hour, despite the fact that it is blended in with this spell of soreness. I know of one song in Mexican Spanish that refers to what goes on during the moments of madrugada. It reminds me of the reversed failing of Spanish for not having a concise accurate word for that of solitude in same the context as English has, as I’m feeling quite the opposite of what was being sang about during that hour of the song. In Spanish, there is only the one word, a sort of false cognate, solidad, that means strictly “loneliness”. I should be corrected if I’m wrong, but there doesn’t seem to be a clear differentiation or distinction between the negative unwanted anguish of being bitterly isolated and disconnected as with  the feeling of “loneliness”, and the positive, purposeful, willful seclusion, self-affirming, gratifying freedom from disturbance/distraction, personal private time of a more introverted state connected with “solitude” and just being comfortable in one’s stead by oneself. Having spent some time living for a while in a Hispanic culture, my more natural Northern Anglo/Nordic cultural tendency to actively seek space and time to blissfully brood and be by myself in peace must have appeared very strange to them; there in a culture where no one seemed to be comfortable to do anything alone by comparison. I sought to comfort myself even more with solitude in that city that comparatively was so much more loud, boisterous, animated, chaotic, disorderly, traffic-congested, and, at times, more violent than anything I ever dealt with at home.

As for now, especially with Covid restrictions still in effect coinciding with my time off, I feel that I’m now meant to relish this part of the day more frequently during summer, if only for the sake of making insomnia so much more endurable. Given that I’m on holiday now, I think I’ll try to enjoy more madrugadas with blissful solitude; though doubtfully at that hour, perhaps I might even get my love to share such a magical time with me. Given how hot it is expected to be during the days for the following week, it may be the only part of the day in which it will be tolerable for me to enjoy outside, hopefully with less pain this time.

Remembering Ella

Pet dogs have always been a present feature in our household when growing up as a kid. They were always my best of friends. In my young adulthood, through knocking about, going to university, from job to job, from community to community, forced at times to live with roommates that weren’t at all ideal, agreeable, or kind to me, I gained a rather good sense of how much the rest of humanity was becoming more of a nuisance to me than as a source of refuge and comfort, being the introverted person I am. As my girlfriend might probably say, sometimes dealing with people all the time becomes a bit too peopley. As life went on, once I was established and had the means and freedom to live on my own, I decided to welcome a dog into my life because I never found them to be nuisances to the same degree as people. I realized that a dog was the element I missed that made a home feel like a real home for me, and despite the fact that most of the rest of humanity was something I wanted kept locked out on the other side of my home’s door, I didn’t really favour the thought of being completely alone either. Dog ownership was the best compromise for me as a single guy. I wanted a smaller dog: as I lived in a small space, and what they lacked in size, strength, and power, they seem to tend to make up for in amiable personalities; honest personalities to boot. I constantly jumped at the chance to look after my friend’s little guy whenever she needed a sitter for him. After she watched me gush more than a few times while playing around with her fur-baby, she finally told me that what I really needed to do was to get my own dog. I thank her for that advice still today.

In the summer of 2006, I got around to doing just that. I regarded it as one of those bigger life decisions that I shouldn’t be making alone. So, I invited that same friend to join me upon answering an ad, one pleading for someone to re-home a puppy, who was barely weaned and being viciously bullied and unwelcomed by two larger dogs established in that household. She needed to be essentially rescued from them. She was so new to them that they didn’t even settle on giving her a name yet, although Daisy was being mulled over (not at all what I would have chose). On that fateful day, I saw her and fell in love with her instantly. It was instinctual – she was a tiny little thing with great big eyes, and colourings that sort of reminded me of one of the favourite dogs I had as young child. She was a strange mixture of long-haired chihuahua, and pug, and a fraction of some other kind of small terrier. I didn’t hesitate to put down a deposit on her to secure her before I made a weekend trip to Edmonton, and then snapped her up eagerly when I returned – still not knowing what to name her yet.

After a couple of days of trial and error of trying to get her acclimatized to her new home, I thought it would be a prudent measure to get her re-socialized with other dogs, preferably with ones that were more her size due to her recent past of intimidation from large ones. So, I took her to a local dog park to do that. I thought also that way it would be practical to get ideas for proper names. As we made introductions, I asked several small dog owners I met there straight out, “What would you name this dog?” Being that most were older ladies, stricken with the sight of her puppy cuteness, I got a wild series of names that were a little too cutesy for the likes of me, like: Sugarplum, Daisy (again), Boo Boo, Peanut, Ella, Mousey, Gi Gi, etc. At some moment, I turned my head a little too long from her, and she ran off without me noticing. I was faced with the problem of trying to call back a dog that had no name. I walked around calling out all the mixture of these random names I was given, hoping she would respond and appear to one of them. As I was calling out the words “Ella!, Boo Boo!”, a lady stopped me with a curious question to ask: “Sir, are you Greek?”. Somewhat perplexed, I honestly replied that I wasn’t. She told me that she thought so initially because she heard me call out “Ella”, which is an imperative command in Greek directed to familiars meaning “Come here!”, and “Boo-Boo”, which she thought was a term of endearment for a fat little baby. Hence, she thought I was calling out “Come here, fat little baby!” in Greek. I took this humorous misunderstanding to heart, and she thenceforth became my Ella Boo Boo, or just Ella for something more dignified.

From that summer onward, I had the pleasure of watching her flourish and grow into a popular presence in our old neighbourhood in Nutana. She was always up for enthusiastically and delightfully greeting, and being greeted by, many shopkeepers, local neighbours, and pedestrians along Broadway Avenue, becoming her own smash hit amongst them, choosing her favourite Aunties (she preferred approaching women over men) amongst the more familiar ones who spoiled her with treats. That probably helped to make her an even fatter fat baby. She was no less sociable and genial to the new neighbours when we moved from there to our new dwelling. She asserted herself in dutifully being my alarm system. I guess she instinctively knew that thing about me that I had mentioned earlier: about me wanting to keep the rest of humanity on the other side of my door. She preferred to greet people with loud, boisterous, barks, but most of the time with a big smile once she got some favourable attention. When she was happy, her positive energy was contagious. Some of her favourite things to do were as follows: playing addictively with her Kong toy loaded with Rollo meat, visiting her human grandparents; exploring and frolicking in their garden, being my co-pilot in car rides and road trips; especially when the windows could be rolled down, shopping at the pet-friendly stores, sleeping by my feet, and collecting herself a bigger social circle of aunties.

To not give her credit for helping me to become a better, happier, and more humane, person would be improperly dismissive. Yes, I initially brought her home to rescue her, but during those times when I suffered my darkest days, both physically and mentally, it was her presence and her unconditional love that helped a lot to rescue me. I had the obligatory mission to reciprocate, and to find the strength to protect her no matter what I was going through, like any parent would if they genuinely loved their child, and that did a lot to prompt me to find the courage to endure and heal during those times. I never became a father to any human children; I never found any chance to do so. I always thought that if I did I would never really have been a good one; if the way I treat my dog is some reflection of the way I would have treated my own kids, the flaw may have been that I would have spoiled them too much - sometimes way beyond my own means. As the course of this pandemic unfolded, I dare say Ella’s company was very much instrumental for helping me persist from feeling too isolated and alone at home, and to keep my wits about me as I lived through this past year of it.

As the days appeared when she was stricken with something of which I was becoming certain that she would never recover from, I did all I could to give her as much peace, comfort, and affection as she had the strength and energy to handle. Over three days, her decline was becoming rapid. For our last day together, I took her to one of her favourite parks: to rest on the fresh clean grass, to listen to the birds, and to smell whatever it was that the wind blew her way. I’m grateful we shared that good hour or so at a place where the sight of the newest green of the freshly appearing spring leaves was coming forth. A favourite sight of mine to see along with my favourite pet. I’d like to think of it as a sign of a sweeter new life coming to her. The last photo I have of her alive that I posted on social media with the news of her demise was of her taking this scene in.

I’m writing all this a few days after she was laid to rest. Being there to watch her pass away, and the very raw, emotional moments of saying my final goodbyes to her are still fresh experiences to me. What I’m struggling for, and want most now, is some clarity of thought amidst all this grief, and writing is an exercise that often helps out with that. I do this purely for the selfish measure of keeping her memory alive in me, as another chapter in my own book of life. Knowing that she’s gone is even harder to process given that she was a tough little critter, so resilient at recovering and healing from past health afflictions. There were a couple of times when I thought that she was going to easily outlive me. What I will miss about her would be a long and exhaustive list if I could ever find the words to write for it all; so I’ll keep that for my own heart to hold. If you, as a reader, ever had and lost a favourite pet, I should hope that reading this brings back the memories of your own companionship and love for them. God willing, if you played life right, there should be lots of happy ones.

The condolences I received were appreciated. My thanks to everyone who offered them.

Bah-Bah-Koo Time

It is now the 100^th day into this year as I begin writing this. I realize that with lockdowns happening, my talent or craft for some cheeky, humorous writing really has been suffering, noting how I haven’t found anything to give me much joy about relating to a bigger audience as we have fully entered into year two of this pandemic. The same joie de vivre has dwindled a lot for all the other activities that I ordinarily enjoy doing and sharing, namely cooking, with me rendered with a lack of gumption and focus from being in this sort of funk like many others with varying degrees of it. I’m returning to blogging to put a depressive state back in the can more than anything. 

After many months of negotiating, better fortune has finally happened, and I have come across a bit of a not-so-instant windfall. Not enough to radically spin my life around for the better, or have me ensconced with luxuries, but enough to make practical moves to replace and improve some things I have that have become inferior and useless from being aged and worn out. To pull me out of my funk, I finally gave myself some permission to stop instantly using my money to react to everything I see as an emergency, and to treat myself to something (affordable) that could bring me back to my happy place.

I was wondering out loud as to how I’d be using my bit of newfound money as I perused the online flyers for home fixtures and appliances in the company of one of the residents whom I serve, both joking around and getting her involved with my decision-making. At work, with the people I serve being clamped down under the restrictions of the pandemic measures, and with nothing much new having a chance enter and transpire in their lives because of halted outings, I’ve been finding myself more prone to taking stories of the ordinary and adding some zany and silly linguistic twist to them: to at least keep something novel and stimulating happening there rather than them being reduced to just having to endure the boring sight of me day after day. Some days it’s a struggle to do, but we do at least keep ourselves entertained that way. Anyway, it was a moment when I was imitating things said by some weirdo Cajun guy from some TV programme I overheard, for my pleasure in seeing her laugh and making her crack up. The only semi-intelligible thing I remember him saying at that time amid his hyped up jibber-jabber, was something like, “Ah sho do wanna gits me summa dat der bah-bah-koo!”  I adopted the word bah-bah-koo* (I assumed he meant “barbeque”) into my own lingo since that moment, as I thought about the sad state of my own propane grill. The word “bah-bah-koo” is perhaps most fitting word for it because, referring to the grilling system I’ve been using, it’s as shabby, beat-up looking, unkempt, and unsophisticated as that witless bugger from the Bayou from whom I first heard saying it that way was. For the longest time, I kept meaning to replace it; now with sales going on for them, and some means to do so, I could now commit to it.

People who know me are shocked to learn that despite having some flare/bit of passion for good cooking, I don’t already have the crème de la crème of BBQs to use for grilling at home. The acquisition of my old propane grill years ago, as I was still settling into this new place, was an odd enough event. I serendipitously found it at a winding up garage sale as I was cruising around on my bike through the ritzier neighbourhood north of me. Getting it was the ultimate reflection and testament to my stinginess and frugality. It was an already very abused and shoddy-looking specimen of a grill, but the owner claimed that it was still functional.  It’s only appeal to me then was that it had a sizeable cooking surface, it was ergonomic for my standards in dimensions and propane containment, and yet compact enough to fit and be stored in the corner of my miniscule deck space. Amazingly, the ignition button still worked, since it’s usually guaranteed that that’s the thing which first goes kaput on cheap quality grills, as one would expect on this one that was that old. After some strange course of haggling, I managed to get it for nothing and the guy even offered me five dollars just to get that hideous piece of shit off his lawn, as it one of the last things he had for sale, and he was in a rush to wrap things up and move on with other affairs of his day. I rode home quickly and returned there with my car, and loaded this dilapidated thing clumsily into my trunk, weirdly satisfied that I yet schemed in an extra five bucks to buy some sausages to grill once I got propane for the damn thing.

The old, Ex-Bah-bah-koo

Well, this thing I dragged home then was jury-rig repaired with some wire and a semi-compatible nut and bolt to haphazardly refasten the lid for it. It had served me well enough while continuing to be a degrading eyesore for another eight years; I still managed to make good things with it. However, it has got to the point now where this region’s weather has gave it a harsh ass-kicking, and there’s too much rust and corrosion in the firebox, where the venturi channels around the burners are starting to flake away and crumble to pieces. Cooking with it now would risk it heating unevenly: charring parts of meat too much while at the same time leaving other parts at risk for being raw enough to foster food-poisoning (something I don’t ever want to experience ever again) or, at the worst, being a complete fire hazard all together ready to blow up in my face. Time for a new bah-bah-koo!

This time, I decided to splurge a bit since I got this old one for nothing. However, getting my replacement grill was not easy. With my luck, I should have never expected for that to happen as such. I found a compact unit at one of the national big box retailers. I wanted to avoid public exposure as much as possible, but the store was filling up too quickly to capacity for my liking. I wanted to leave quickly. It was my just luck that the fates gave me the stupidest of useless boobs working there for assistance, who was young enough to be completely estranged from writing with a simple pen. He was writing up a slip for me to take to their warehouse, and with his handwriting, that he apparently couldn’t even read, he jotted down the wrong inventory number, listing me another model that was $600.00 more expensive than the one I wanted. I tore up the warehouse requisition slip in front of him as turned around and walked out the door. I then resorted to purchasing online, and then was notified that it would be ready for pickup the next day. I felt a little better for doing that, believing then, what was later proven to be false, that I had broke some link in this establishment’s chain of human stupidity.

The next day came, I got the email notification that my order was ready for pickup, and I show up at the service desk of the warehouse . . . and then, I really entered bizarro world. I gave my order number to some woman, who then was angrily barking orders at one of her subordinates, telling him to go and get me my kayak! Somewhat bewildered, I assert myself in correcting her that I came to pick up a propane barbeque grill (remembering at the last second not to call it a bah-bah-koo to create further confusion and misunderstanding). She then shoots some bizarre look at me with a flash of anger, as if I had some totally unwarranted audacity to challenge and defy her authority there, and for a split-second it looked like she was determined that she was going to send me home with a kayak, whether I wanted it or not! She shuffled her papers on a clipboard and mumbled something about a computer failure. It was an excuse that didn’t do much for her in saving face. Then along comes some guy ushering me to drive up from the loading bay to another storage locker. “Finally . . .  I got my BAH-BAH-KOO!”, I thought. However, I got there to discover that, even though this model of BBQ is more compact than the old one for deck space, the box it came packaged in was way too big for either the back seat or the truck of my wee little car: by about only 5 centimetres of clearance on the smallest dimension, and we could not compress or squish things down any further. Yep, I should have known that it wouldn’t be that simple. I was at least lucky enough to track down my brother who did have a sizeable enough vehicle for hauling it, and thankfully, he could find time to deliver it for me. He also availed himself to help transfer a big awkward box up some stairs with me without risking me getting another coronary episode. An hour and a half of assembling later . . . Voila . . . brand new bah-bah-koo!

I decided perfect thing to start grilling on this brand new virgin unit is going to be a well-aged steak for me and my girlfriend for our supper, despite the fact that it’s threatening to rain or snow. After that, there will be plenty of time to try to experiment with and master this thing and its nuances and features, with no fear of having my eyebrows blasted off my head, or my own self being left nice and crispy. Since there’s not yet much happening for social events in the coming warmer months, cooking more at home is still a pandemic reality. Maybe grouchy warehouse lady was indeed right, and maybe I do need to cut lose and get a kayak and go somewhere, but I haven’t got much faith that the tide of the pandemic will ebb just yet for that, and that it will be another summer of mostly solitary staycations. At least I have the happiness of being able to perform one culinary art with some greater satisfaction in the months ahead during the next 100 or so precious summer days we do have.

*- I became curious as to what Google Translate might actually come up with for this crazy word. It turns out that the phonetic (babaku) means “my father” in Sudanese.  

The Ethereal Nature of Money

With the Covid measures in place for over past an entire year plus a few weeks, the action and memory of using physical currency to pay for anything is quickly becoming estranged from me. Zero physical contact equals cards or e-transfers for purchases. I realize that one normal life thing that I miss since Covid came is the handling of actual cash. Before this whole shit show began, my last clearest memory of me consciously and physically handling real cash for some amount over $50.00 was for foreign exchange. It was when I was departing Cuba, just a few days before national lockdowns become a reality, using one of the currencies in a weird and complicated dual-currency system. Tourists, like me, were permitted to use the CUC (Cuban Convertible Peso): a special currency for foreigners to use, in which I was prohibited to remove from that country upon pain of imprisonment for suspicion of exporting it. Now, after reflecting on that trip. I learned that since January 1^st of this year, Cuba is no longer using the CUC; they will be phasing it out over a six month period. The two-currency system has since then has unified into one. Those same Cuban national banknotes, which could have gotten me arrested and put into a world of hurt by their government’s order, had I risked and been caught daring to attempt to smuggle them out of there, are now being rendered valueless and useless to everyone. With Covid arriving, we are all learning the hard way of how quickly the course of history can change, and the nature and use of money itself typically becomes a reflection of that as well.

Sometimes in my dreams, whenever there are significantly life-altering changes due to come to me (either anticipated or unbeknownst), I often get glimpse of me being involved in transactions where I’m handling strange forms of currency: handling coins or banknotes with unique characteristics on them that don’t exist in real life. These dreams are the most significant, sometimes even prophetic, once given some interpretation. Those ones usually involve manifestations of “money” with some sort of strangely engraved images on coins; or bills with some sort of weird colours, denominations, or depictions of wealth/power/influence/fortune/value. This recurring theme in my dream world has developed into a hardcore superstition in my conscious life: in which whenever I unexpectedly come upon finding some foreign currency, either as coins in my change, or finding and handling foreign banknotes, I will be soon due to have some sort of great or radical change in luck or fortune (not necessarily involving money, but not excluding it either).

The extra time being shut in during the pandemic has made me more inclined to explore my more eccentric, yet harmless, interests. Thus this conjunction of superstition and will for betterment of good fortune has morphed into the renewed interest into one of my other minor hobbies: collecting various forms of currency for the sake of ephemera. They are merely collected for the decorative and aesthetic fancies, such as with collecting stamps, matchbooks, or beer labels.

The banknotes and coins that I collect mostly have little to no value anymore except for that of their unique artistic flourishes, or some wild alternate paradigms of when they were once valued, or some representation of a caption of geopolitical history during the time at which they were once used as bona fide legal tender. A banknote is a thing that was an important element of peoples’ everyday lives, despite having no intrinsic value, and monetized for only a temporary period, where people put energy into, and take energy from through its course of the transactions of living. Because I’ve worked in museums with historical artifacts and had been immersed into studying tangible bits of history, a subject like this prompts me to do a bit of curatorial writing about it.

Most of the bills in my collection are now defunct and obsolete, mostly happening for the better in some

cases. Like in the picture here, in the top left corner I have this $1000 Confederate States of America note. It was a serendipitous find; I found it wedged in a book I had bought at a yard sale. It’s a reminder that some forms of money are based on precepts of pure evil. I look at it and I am reminded that the value of this terrible American Civil War relic was once reliant upon an economy based having plantations full of slaves, and that the denomination of this bill, perhaps this very banknote itself, may have once been used to buy and sell Africans as property for forced labour. Thank goodness that history came to be such that the only thing that this is good for now is for a book marker. Beside it is a ten rand note from South Africa; this one was once circulated during the Apartheid days. I keep it by the CSA* note as a reminder that more than one hundred years later, the stain of segregation/racism is slow to wash out, and it even sadly remains an integral part to some economies for a long time. I have an Irish Pound here: worthless in value, and beside that a 1000 bolivar note from Venezuela, a reminder that once I was in a place and time where I technically became a “millionaire” overnight, but also even that wasn’t doing much differently in terms of effecting my substance as a person. It did though bring me closer to more humility as I was immersed and operating in a society that was struggling in many ways. Ever since then, I have been ever more grateful that I have been born and raised here in Canada.

Since it is April Fool’s month, I can’t ignore the weirdest, most outrageous, token note I now have in my collection. Representing the abhorrent nature of hyperinflation happening during my lifetime and the surreal nature of economics and monetary value is my golden 100 trillion dollar banknote from the Republic of Zimbabwe. At the time when that banknote was last circulated, it’s value in Canadian dollars was approximately a whole . . . 50 cents! To break this down into some understanding of what a single Zimbabwean dollar was worth, I’m going to use a universally recognizable commodity for comparison: plain white rice. When I last bought rice, $1.00 Canadian bought me 500 grams of the stuff. Assuming (according to Wolfram Alpha) that a grain of rice is about 65 milligrams, then there are about 7728 grains of rice that can be bought with a loonie. Therefore, upon further conversion, a particle of 1/3.864 x 10¹¹ of a grain of white rice can be purchased with a single Zimbabwean dollar. I won’t go further into calculating how many actual starch molecules that actually is being bought on this scale. It’s a question too stupid for Wolfram Alpha to even compute.

This note is something I keep as a reminder of having a balanced attitude towards money: not to be too reliant on it for security, but not to be ignorant of it either. God forbid that someday our own dollar could crash and become instantly worthless overnight, or with the influx cryptocurrency, a whole new system will change based on different economical viabilities and regulate what this stuff can and cannot buy. Last month, even we here in Canada had a recent demonetization of some banknotes: the $1000 bills printed years ago are no longer usable as legal tender, and neither are any paper $2 banknotes. They are now just left to be collectors’ items in the numismatic sphere.

Of all the international monies that have existed, one of my favourite terms for money is the one that was used by the Germans for their former national currency: the mark. It’s like a true cognate with the English word “mark” which fittingly means an indication, a label, or a representation, not necessarily something that is fixed or substantial. The German word is a truer reflection of the way money really is. Marks for you is a reward; marks against you is a debt. By and large, at the end of it all, marks are insubstantial and don’t mean much of anything if they can’t keep you fed and secure. History-conscious Germans should know better than anybody. In more modern history, the German Republics in their various forms are perhaps the prime examples of how even a modern, progressive society can experience extremes in political upheavals and war, the reflection of them in regards to volatility of currency values since the 1900’s

The truth about money in its essence is an incredibly elusive thing. Two things would probably happen if you just walked down the street like a curious three year old, and asked random strangers if they knew what money really was. First of all, they would probably look at you like you were some sort of alien with two heads; bewildered and wondering as to how it could be that you don’t know or understand what such a ubiquitous thing like money is all about. Secondly, if they weren’t deluded, and truly honest with themselves, they will eventually realize that they don’t really have a sufficient idea, or an adequately simple, concise, succinct answer for that question either. Most of us operate only on an elemental level of knowing that we rely on it to survive and progress. The average person on the street can’t adequately explain how or why a currency attains a certain value, or how it relates to a central banking system and the many rules that regulate its circulation, or how its value fluctuates in comparison to others, or plays through the dynamics of things like inflation. It is further changing into something that gets even more complicated and abstract through this phasing into an era of digitization.  You need a computer scientist to explain and interpret the very esoteric features and details about how the 1s and 0s that represent my credit card debt are secured and different from the 1s and 0s compiled to form this typed paragraph. Good luck even finding 1 in 5000 people born in the last century who can correctly explain how Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies work. I freely admit that I’m no better than the average person at deciphering and making better sense of all this stuff either. I try at times to actively thwart this ignorance with some more intense focus on the subject. However, the only good thing that happens when I begin reading books/tuning into podcasts about banking, finance, commerce, and economics is that I find that they serve to be wonderful sleep aids whenever I have insomnia.

On a basic philosophical level, the only truth I believe to be evident about money, and the influence of its value, is what happens when one gets a large windfall of it. It accords to what I think billionaire Warren Buffet once said about the power of money on a person. What it really then becomes is an energy intensifier of what is already in your true character and personality. It will show others the real level of your altruism and kindness, or alternatively, your level of avarice, egotism, and overall malevolence, It will give an accurate depiction of how (im)practical one is as a person. If you are already a genuinely kind, beneficent, industrious, and generous person, when you have more money, it will enable you to be even more so, with an honourable use of such wealth. If you are malignantly greedy, slothful, egotistical, rotten, squandering, power-hungry, narcissistic, exploitative, impractical, superficial, with unfounded pride/sanctimony, or a false sense of privilege, and generally uncaring towards the rest of humanity: the way you use money when you get more of it will in all likelihood just unveil how much more of an asshole you already really are at the core of yourself. You only need look and see the example of type of personality of someone who would purchase a gold-plated toilet to figure that out for yourself.

*- Just because Confederate States of America and its currency are a past evil doesn’t make the current US dollar any more of a wholesome thing. For example, think about how most of the international narcoterrorism cartels are funded, and the how the US dollar is used primarily as the preferred backbone vehicle currency of that whole operational organism of smuggling, bribery, corruption, cartel violence, and actively creating another economy of enslavement (in Latin America and other production locales, and by fostering addictions) and the social strife that entails all that.