While I don’t normally plunk down $40 for a single ticket (well, $32.50 plus extortion charges from Ticketmaster. Do NOT get me started), I felt this was a special case. I go to a lot of live shows, but I’m more the $10-at-the-shittiest-dump-in-the-city-and-get-beer-of-questionable-origin kinda guy.

My love of Through The Fire And Flames started when I first finished Guitar Hero III and the credits rolled. I had a sense of accomplishment. Of being. And then for no obvious reason, the biggest skull-fuck of a song came on. I was only on medium at the time, but I instantly thought this was some sort of joke. Like the developers threw in a huge random number generator and the screen was being filled in some massive while-loop of random notes designed in part with the powerful finger prosthetics lobby to drive business their way for broken digits. Or an Easter Egg to try and illicit a seizure.

I also loved the old video game sounds they incorporated. I have had long discussions with my wife about where some of the riffs came from. I say there is a heavy Castlevania and Mega-Man influence in that song. My wife disagrees and says “What the hell is a Castlevania? Can’t you be interested in boobs like a normal male?”.

I knew then that my friend (who we’ll call ‘G’ becuase I don’t remember how to spell his first name properly), who is an actual really truly professional guitar player, who knows how to actually hold a guitar neck (as opposed to grappling with and choking the life out of a mutant ostrich. This is the technique I prefer) and can do stuff like read notes would love this. I routinely sit through a DVD of something called “G3″ at his place where a bunch (3) of well known guitar guys essentially have an orgasm on stage for an hour holding their instrument (pun intended) becuase he loves to watch these guitar-gods. Something something technique something something. So I knew he would LOVE to get ahold of Dragonforce. I sent him this video, and within hours was summoned to his house.

We decided to play on Expert, and for more than a year now have faithfully played just about every Saturday night. I can now get a respectable 77% correct (he beat me twice. I’m not saying GHB was involved when he did, but I did wake up the next morning in hospital and had to have the morning after pill)  and even setup a 19-foot high tarp to project it against at his cabin last summer so we could play outdoors. (Funny aside story: We play this song on average 12-times every Saturday. No joke. Over and over like meth heads. Our wives HATE this song now. G’s wife was pregnant with their daughter most of the time we would play. Over and over and over. So, when their daughter was born we were over on a Saturday night, and the baby was on the couch in a different room of the house with the lady folk. We struck the first notes and babies head jerked around wildly as she tried to find the sound. She KNEW the song in utero. The song was interrupted as we heard screams of ‘oh my fucking god’ and various other expletives leveled at us. Like having an appreciation of video games and metal is something to be frowned upon at 3-weeks old). We watched the videos on YouTube, and thought Herman Li was as close to guitar nirvana as one can get. They came through town once last Christmas, but we could not make the show. So when they came back last night, we jumped at the opportunity to go.

The opening band was….awful. They were called Taking Dawn. They chose this name chiefly becuase their first choice of name, “Generic Long Hair Dressed In Black Metal-ish Sounding Group #8″, didn’t fit on the banners they had printed.They were trying to whip the crowd into….something. Somehow forgetting they are a non-local opening act for a touring band whos entire job is to simply play anything, and that whatever follows sounds better by virtue of them NOT being on stage. Apparently they didn’t sell many CD’s from their merch stand as at the end of the show, all the band members were waiting by the doors with a stack each of CD’s begging people to buy them for $5. You almost felt like telling them you’d buy them a sandwich at Burger King, but that if you just gave them money, all they would do with it is waste it on more recordings.

The second opener was a band called Sonata Arctica. They had some promise. The opening notes sounded great, and then the singer started. I did a quick lookup on my trusty Android phone on wikipedia and found they are a Finnish band. Which made sense to me as they sounded like Finntroll, a fantastic Finnish band. As they continued, I came to the realization that they were a watered-down version of Finntroll. They weren’t metal-y enough, and simultaneously not folks-y enough. The only metaphor I could come up with was if Hannah Montana or the Jonas Brothers decided to create a side project singing Finntroll covers. It was “safe” Mall Black-Metal™

While we waited for Dragonforce to leap on stage and set shit on fire, we walked around the various merch booths. Sonata Arctica had these T-shirts that looked incredibly familiar, but I just could not place them. G then mentioned the same shirt could be purchased at any postal outlet in a mall, the ones that will print anything on a mug and do iron-ons on their own shirts with witty sayings like ‘I am Canada’. Yes, for only $30CAD you too could have a shirt with a picture of a wolf howling at the moon (no I’m not joking) or an eagle feather. I’m sure Taking Dawn had some stuff, but by this time I was worried I would accidentally burn it, so we walked past. The Dragonforce merch booth was interesting. They went out of their way to round up all the out of work airbrush artists from the 70′s who have been out of work since no one wants wizards, dragons or mostly naked women with lense-flares airbrushed on the side of their vans to make T-shirt designs for them.

Maybe I’ll just continue this in a Part II so those of you already bored can stop reading now before I accidentally say something interesting.

Kubuntu Linux is my primary machine. It hold all the important information I need to have so I don’t  forget it. This machine is like the wife of the relationship. It’s rock solid, dependable, and is always there for me. It keeps me organized and (for the most part) out of trouble (especially Pulse audio. Its constant battles with ALSA and making Flash not work mean porn is pretty much out of the question. And yes, I like the sound). Oh sure, it will only go down on you a couple times a year or so. But when it does happen, you know its a momentous  event that happens only a few times in a life. Like Halley’s comet. So infrequently does this happen, it is almost always preceded by a panic of some sort as no one is quite sure what the hell is going on. You can dress her up, and sometimes she’ll even get downright nasty. But then, she’ll recall how in control of every situation she is.

She can do anything, and can be amazingly flexible, but its maddeningly difficult to figure her out. It takes years and years of trying every conceivable combination, until one day you just happen across a solution that sort-of works so you stay with it and are terrified of trying anything new with her in case you fuck it up.It starts out passionately, then dulls to a nice status-quo

.The Mac is the hot mistress. She looks gooooooood. Sexy and hot, yet polished on the outside, with familiar core on the inside. Shes much more intuituve than the wife, and it is WAY easier to get her to do things the wife would never do. She’s so easy to figure out that it almost makes one ashamed. Like you are taking advantage. But its just the way shes built. Shes there for you to touch, to explore. Ready for a ride anytime, but with exacting standards and pure elegance and sheer beauty. You love to show her off, and to make sure everyone sees you with her on your arm (or lap, if you have the cash). There are times where she’ll throw in some software that blows your mind and you contemplate leaving the wife for good to live happy, but in the end, you go back. You’ll always go back.And being a lady of taste, she’s so much more fucking expensive to keep happy.

She can do anything the wife can, but it will cost a few thousand more. On the plus side, shes pretty immune from viruses.

Which leaves Windows XP. XP is just the cheap hooker you go to when your wife is driving you crazy trying to edit a tiny little goddamn movie and add a still image that should take less than 5-seconds to do, and when the mistress wants $400 to do the same thing. XP is there like a whore, ready to  go any time, quick and dirty, long and drawn out, whatever you like. She’ll go down on you even when you don’t expect it, or want it. Every few hours if you’ll let her. She completely lacks pride, what with her backdoor always open, and a parade of nasty viruses. She can wear the same shade of lipstick as your mistress, but she competely lacks the elegance, the fire or the passion. She’ll make strides to make herself better, but its to no avail. Shes already come on every PC in the world!

Use her and you’re using all the other computers shes already been with. She’ll spread her floppy to anyone with a couple hundred bucks. She tries with her add-on software (like her twin Office) and updates to seem like a classy call-girl and it seems like such a dream to get the two of them together, but under the chic marketing little-black-dress are torn fishnets and running mascara from a night of debauchery with some trojans.Not to say she doesn’t have her place, but its a downright embarrassment to be seen in public with her. And as good as it might feel at the time, you just can’t shower that sort of humiliation off, and you are sure to slag her to anyone that will listen.

And don’t even get me started about the BeOS box. That chick is just a super-hot GILF.

A friend of mine hooked me up with an old Powermac G4450MHz Sawtooth from a “we’re closing some parts of the company out but not everything so don’t worry you’re cool. For NOW!”.

Everyone scoffed. After all, 450MHz is not something blazingly fast by today’s standards to be sure (and yes, I know the old PPC processors’ do not equate 1:1 with an x86 processor) but still! A Mac! I have always loved the Mac platform, but could never afford anything better than an old Umax G3 clone (also inherited in a “going out of business” sale) years ago that sucked badly. I recently picked up a Powerbook Wallstreet for $75 from the best used computer parts guy in the lower mainland. But its exceedingly slow and Panther is really the only OS that will realistically work on it. So, I jumped at a 450MHz. I also had a copy of Tiger sitting around, so I immediately plowed it over and installed fresh.

Things went along fine, but the first time I restarted after installing, I found the ATI Rage128 Pro that came in the AGP slot seemed……backwards. It had both a VGA port and a DVI port. I have a wicked awesome 22″ LCD, so I naturally hooked up the DVI. Turns out, for whatever reason, the DVI port goes to a maximum of 1024×768. The VGA port would get up to the required 1680×1050 so I didn’t have seizures watching it, but….VGA? I mean…..really?

I was sorta pissed at that, but so be it. This wasn’t going to be my primary machine, so big deal. Then I read that the Quartz engine built-in to OS X would NOT function with the Rage! This situation needed to be rectified. The UI was just not as…pretty as I recalled, and Quartz was a big part of that.

I started doing some research and found I could replace the Rage card with something else. And thats when I remembered why I didn’t have Macs. A used nVidia-based GeForce 4 will run about $30. A used GeForce 4 Mac edition will run you about $130. Holy suck it Trebek!

Mercifully, Mac people far smarter than I were at hand. The Mac Elite had a great idea: Essentially, nearly every card ever made with a “Mac Edition” sticker (and associated 2000% markup) had a PC-doppelganger whos only difference was the ROM loaded. So, why not flash the sucker with the working Mac ROM file?

Off I went to Kevins again and got a card. A Radeon 9000 64MB OEM card (complete with NCIX sticker still on the back) for $15.

So I had the card and the ROM file location from here and the utility to flash with from here. Problem is, I don’t have a Windows box, and had no desire to build one to flash a card to put into a Mac. So, for many of the same reasons I posted the P5GC-MX article (becuase I’ll forget) heres how I did it using an existing Ubuntu box:

1. Create a temporary dir to hold everything

mkdir ~/temp_boot
cd ~/temp_boot

2. I used FreeDOS rather than sticking XP or Win98 on a machine. FDOS has made a bootable image that works perfectly, so grab that


wget http://www.fdos.org/bootdisks/autogen/FDOEM.144.gz
gunzip FDOEM.144.gz


3. Grab the flashing utility


wget http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1123g/atiflash360.zip
unzip atiflash360.zip


4. And the proper ROM file


wget http://campahunta.free.fr/Downloads/ROMs/ati_oem_9000pro_131_agp_full.zip
unzip ati_oem_9000pro_131_agp_full.zip


5. Create a temporary place to mount things


mkdir /tmp/floppy


6. You’ll need vfat and loop in order to do this, so load those up into the kernel


sudo modprobe vfat
sudo modprobe loop


7. Mount the FDOS image


sudo mount -t vfat -o loop FDOEM.144 /tmp/floppy


8. And copy the ROM and utility over


sudo cp ati_oem_9000pro_131_agp_full.rom /tmp/floppy/ati_mac.rom
sudo cp atiflash.* /tmp/floppy/


9. Unmount it


sudo umount /tmp/floppy


10. Create the ISO image


mkisofs -o boot.iso -b FDOEM.144 FDOEM.144


11. And burn it (I used a CD-RW as I don’t imagine having to do this many times)


cdrecord -v boot.iso


Now that everything was ready to go, I replaced the AGP card in the Ubuntu box with the Radeon and put in a PCI video card to watch things going on. I don’t know if this step is strictly necessary, but it seems like it would be. The card would have to load its internal ROM before posting, so I can’t imagine you could just go changing it while its loaded.

Once both video cards are in, I attached a monitor to the AGP card and booted into the BIOS. I set the primary video to PCI, saved, and restarted and stuck the monitor on the PCI to watch.

After that, its a simple matter of flashing using the instructions here.  Which, to paraphrase, is:
atiflash -p 0 ati_mac.rom -f where 0 is the card number.

Everything went well. I took out the card, put it in the G4 and voila! The DVI port worked right away, resolution was set to 1680×1050 and I started the Quartz engine going and it just looked….gorgeous.

Which at that point made me remember why I loved the Mac.

They sent a flyer around back in August. My beloved laptop had died, and I was in the market for a replacement.

“Heck” I thought “DELL can’t be THAT bad. They must certainly better than a steaming pile of poop left on my door by a rabid wombat with leprosy. Surely, even they could come through and shine next to something like that”

And yet, I was wrong. So very very wrong. A pile of shit actually EXISTS on your doorstep, unlike my laptop which appears to be made from solid Uranium and includes the flux capacitor which enables it to go back in time (I admit, I paid extra for the time machine-like abilities).

Most of this is totally my fault. I was pretty sure I read where the stoner kid in their commercials had become CEO, so I guess I should have expected the most ass-backwards system known to man.

I order the DELL on or about Aug 23. I go online and “customize” my 1525 and get the better screen, so I can read the LCD in any sort of wayward light. It tells me, okay, this might delay your order for a little while. But, I felt confident. Surely for $499 they would be selling a bajillion of these things and have parts coming in to march them out the door as fast as possible. But, I accepted that it may take an extra 2-weeks. I finish the order, put in my CC info, and get a confirmation email with a tracking number. It lists the date for shipping, and all is well.

So, after 2-weeks when my DELL has still not shown up, I decide, hey, lets give that there tracking number a try. Theres even a link right on the email for me to go to. Thanks DELL!

I go to the link, and put in the tracking number from the email, along with the exact postal code also in the email that they are shipping too. I hit the submit button thinking soon I will be graced with piles and piles of information.

What I got instead is that the DELL systems do not “understand” the number DELL has sent me. Their exact error was

We are unable to provide your order status at this time. Please verify the Order Number and Postal Code and try again. If your order was placed within the last 24 business hours, please try again tomorrow. If your order status is still unavailable after 48 business hours, please click here to contact us via email or call 1(800)847-4096

Perhaps, I thought to myself, it doesn’t understand lowercase, so I tried all caps for the postal code. No dice. Apparently this part of Canada is in the mysterious black-hole I’ve heard about. Probably something to do with CERN.

So, I happily call the number. It asks for my tracking number. Okay, done there you go Mr. Phonesystem! Bring me some good news!

The good news is that the flux capacitor part of the DELL had apparently already been built. I guessed this based on the phonesystem telling me my DELL laptop was shipped already. In fact, it was shipped April 21. Of 1999.

Yes, DELL was so on the ball and so clairvoyant, they had the good sense to start building me a laptop with parts and pieces that did not yet exist 8 YEARS before I had actually requested one. How they knew I personally would order this exact system is truly the 9th wonder of the world. Probably something to do with CERN. And yet, in those long 8-years DELL has been waiting, patiently, pining for me to order this machine, getting the screen I wanted in stock was well beyond their abilities. Although Canada Post is about the slowest thing short of a Java compiler (snort), even 9-years was 3-years more than it would normally take them.

All was not lost, however, for their existed a phone number to call. Perhaps to talk to a real human being. Perchance to dream.

Instead of investing their money in screens to put on laptops, DELL invested in an IVR system second to none. It is neigh-on impossible to actually talk to someone. Did you want parts? Actually, what you REALLY meant to push was the telephone tracker. Tech support? Yeah, we’ll just need your DELL tracking number. And for that, you’ll need to go to the telephone tracking system. Customer service? Absolutely! All we need is your DELL tracking number, which you can, conveniently, put into our telephone tracking system which thinks you are a completely brain dead moron for not picking up the package that was shipped to you 8-years ago.

I go to my favorite site for trying to contact ball-licking corporate entities, The Consumerist,  and noodle around until I find some actual numbers that really do actually technically work. I call, with hopeful resolve and a spring in my step! A yim and a yang yimminee yoo!

I get a very helpful young man who wants my DELL tracking number. Here ya go, lets get that good news now! And heres the conversation we had:

DELL: You can use the online form to track the shipping you know
Me: Yes, I tried that, but it said it couldn’t find my number.
DELL: It says here this was shipped in 1999. If you have not recieved it yet, I suggest talking to your local delivery stop
Me: Um well, see, the thing is……if you look at the creation date for this work order, its 2-weeks ago.
DELL: Yes, I see that, but it has already been delivered.
Me: Okay, but…no it hasn’t. I only ordered it a few weeks ago. Does it show that?
DELL: Yes
Me: Then how could it have shipped 9-years ago if I only placed the order two weeks ago?

We went on like this for a while until I realized I must have inadvertently asked him to explain gravitational anomalies using the Mobius equations rather than something simple like “can you tell me when the thing I ordered from you might actually come to my door”. Again, totally my fault.

I explained all I really wanted to was to watch on their tracking website when my DELL will not be shipped. This was again completely my fault, as I induced what is known as “The Phone Support Razor” which states that anytime you can get a customer off the phone when you are completely bewildered at what to do, do nothing, and tell them to check back when you are not there. This simple request meant he could say “I will update your account and check back on the site in 48-hours” meaning “I will do fuck-all, and the odds of you actually talking to me again are slim to none because I am going on vacation in 47-hours”. And, as all razors go, this one was true. 48-hours, and their tracking site was still mystified as to who I was

I found a form on some DELL site where I could email someone. I thought, A-HA! Filling out another form will surely get me some answers!

Keep in mind, this is on their .ca site. So, merrily away I go and fill out the form. Why they needed my street address, I wasn’t sure, but I filled it in. Probably something to do with CERN.

I fill the form, and submit. Error. Apparently my street is not valid. I live on a “saint” street. Lets say Saint CERN. So I re-fill the form with:

St CERN st
Saint CERN st
St. CERN street
St. CERN st.
Saint CERN street
ST. CERN Street
123 Fuck You st

ALL of which do not exist, apparently (though I’m sure my wife has asked me to go down to Fuck You street on more than one occasion). Every single one came back with the identical error that my street address was incorrect.I hadn’t noticed the house being transported through a rip in the space/time continuum here, but I suppose DELL would know better than I what is happening in my little town. And, being a web guy, this form wasn’t being sent and checked against a geo-caching program. This was way to fast for it to be coming back.  The form just plain sucked (which, as it turns out, appears to be par for the course for DELL. Perhaps they had the error checking being done on my non-existent laptop. Or a computer system at CERN.).

There was a bright spot, however, in all of this. For DELL takes customer retention very seriously. So serious, in fact, that they send me an email every 5-days letting me know they have NOT shipped my computer yet. That is how much they want me to keep them top of mind for when my friends ask me “Hey, we’re looking to buy something but not have it manfuactured or sent to us” I have a ready answer on the tip of my tongue for them. Every 5-days, when I have cooled down just enough to forget how brutally ridiculous they are, DELL makes sure I realize they have done absolutely nothing to find the rare lanthanide elements or summon the mythical Norse god required to make my screen in the past 5-days. Oh sure, 5-days is hardly enough time for DELL manufacturers to fly to the outer moons of Neptune to mine the raw materials clearly required for such a herculean feat of engineering as a 1525, but I am always so glad they remind every week on how inept they are.

Not to mention, I cannot WAIT for something to go wrong and I need to return it under warranty for repair. The fact that DELL is completey moronic when I am attempting to GIVE them money, I can only imagine when I want something from them for free. Something along the lines of “I’m sorry sir, this order number was shipped 9-years ago [13 before I actually get it] and is 8-years out of warranty”. Such fun times. I realize I am bitter and jaded and tend to believe there is no good in the world, but more than anything else, I believe there will be a problem with my laptop, and that it will never ever get fixed becuase my dual-core processor is 9-years old.

So here it is, nearly 2-months after ordering and I ask: Will I buy a DELL again? Well, technically they haven’t charged my card yet, so I haven’t purchased anything from them the first time. Which is a shame, becuase the interest rate I could have gotten 9-years ago would have been killer.

UPDATE: Seems DELL is happy to throw random dates into the equation now. Apparently Oct 31 is the new ship-by date. We’ll just keep that dream alive I suppose.

Think back to those horrible family gatherings where someone would create that “thing” where a brightly colored, semi-sedintary, gelatinous blob kept the discarded bodies of canned mandarins in a perpetual stasis in a mould. Perhaps yours also had the by-products of peeled carrots. Perhaps marshmallow, or whipped-cream. Or someone else (like my wifes family) that used Special K as a crutch for EVERYTHING. Every casserole, every dish that needed something “crunchy”. It was all terrible and you almost invariably have your aunt to blame for it.

But, these are better days, and we know women should not be to blamer for all culinary attrocities. No, these days, we have equality, and so we must also blame our uncles.

Today in the mail I got a box of the most ultimately mis-nomered Perfection instant rice from Uncle Ben. Now, Uncle Ben and I have never been close. I’m not a racist, I just don’t care for his product. I have been known to use Aunt Jemima pancake syrup once in a while, so I figure if anyone calls me out on the race card, that should about cover it. But I thought, heck, I’m making tandoori chicken, so why not. Saves me from dragging out the rice cooker.

Following the instructions (the first step of which I swear says “Easiest Ever Method”) I put some water in a saucepan. Okay, well, seems fine so far. Add the rice. Check. Boil. Gotcha. Though I have never technically used the product before, and as such cannot personally vouch for how much easier this method is, I was slightly mystified as to the target demographic they normally sell to  if the four steps in total, which included “drain” and “fluff”, was now the gold standard the ruling elite geniuses would use to cook rice . Oddly, the presumably much much much harder second method of: 1 – Put rice in bowl 2 – Microwave was more difficult as it included pushing buttons on an appliance Uncle Ben feels so few people have mastered by 2008.

So far, Uncle Ben was about the same technique-wise as Grandma Basmati and Second-cousin-that-no-one-talks-about-and-isn’t-allowed-to-have-forks-or-knives Long Grain, so I had high hopes. Perhaps high is not the right word. Meager may be better.

After the 8-10 minutes of boiling “slowly”, the rice appeared to be done. It was “soft”. Reading step 3 (keen readers will recall I took the “Easiest Ever Method” which included 4, count ‘em, 4 steps), I drained the excess water and plated up. Chicken, mixed veg and some rice. Happy boy!

To describe the flavour is impossible. It simply is. The best I could do is if you think back to sometime when you first moved out and were poor and decided to add gin instead of milk to a box of KD…..you would be living large by comparison.

What the Uncle Ben people have done, to their credit, is add to the super exclusive club of foods that not only cannot be made to taste better smothering them with massive amounts of margarine, but that also cannot be fixed with  a can of mushroom soup.

The list of foods that fall into the “beyond the help of mushroom soup” is short. Minuscule. Asymptotically approaching zero one could say. Even binder twine made of burlap can be fixed with mushroom soup. You could boil a week-dead hamster in mushroom soup and it would taste allright. No, this club is extensively small. The VIP guest list is only the whos-who of terrible terrible ideas that marketers got ahold of.

And yet, the food scientists Uncle Ben employs have managed to crack the code to get themselves access to the club. Deciphering decades of poor decisions to come up with this ingenious product. Had we had them working on Enigma, the war may have been over in mere days.

After tasting it, I felt honoured that they felt so strongly about this, that they needed to tell the world and send me a box. That they had gone to such heights, such feats of epicurean engineering, to me anyway, truly epitomizes “Perfection”.

We had our rough spots, as such close partners do, like when I had to smuggle you in the back of the car in a grocery bag with scotch mints so my wife (your arch-nemesis) wouldn’t know you came along on numerous vacations, or that time we spent doing that chessboard algorithm and I raised my hand to you. It was in anger, you understand, at the bishop and his crazy moves. Not at you, but at positive and negative diagonal moves, but you forgave me and we moved on.

I knew you were in ill health. Your DC-jack had come loose, and the power had to be held in with various band-aids (sometimes literally, sometimes with hockey-tape). The trip to the doctor yielded a hefty bill I was unable to pay, but we both thought homepathic remedies might fix it. And for a while, though we grew distant as your battery slowly drained, it seemed perhaps a cut-rate surgeon and a new kidney from eBay for $7.99 including shipping might be enough to save you. I had to leave you alone, you understand, until the organs came in. Perhaps this was an oversight on my part, and I was not there to see you slip further into the void.

And so it was, that when I fired you up today to help my friend figure out her wireless networking problems, you had one final spark of life as I typed in iwconfig, and then went into the abyss of blackness in a puff of smoke. Blu-ish smoke. Your favorite colour. How ironic.

My Toshiba A30, I shall never forget you! Replace you with something with a screen that can be seen in even the slightest of direct sunlight, perhaps, but you will never be forgotten, mostly becuase of the memory upgrade that cost me nearly $100 becuase of your outdated RAM-type. Rest in peace, little A30.

The A30 leaves behind an ASUS P7A and a Nokia phone. Cash payments to the “Holy crap the EEE looks sweet” memorial fund are asked for in lieu of flowers.

I can handle this, you think to yourself, after all, they’re just small seeds of delicately seasoned goodness packed into a tiny vessel of wonderment and joy. The tiniest packaging of perfection to come from the Mother Nature supermarket surely can be no match for you.

And then before you know it, you’re down on your hands and knees searching the carpet under the recliner hoping PRAYING that a few may have escaped your gaping maw as you recklessly dumped them in way back when the good times seemed endless, when supply was plentiful and all the world knelt before you. It seems as though eons have passed since you cocked your head back and gave a hearty belly-chortle at whatever deity may be listening as more of the saltined vessels crammed their way into your cheek. But, that is fleeting, and you have hit rock bottom trying, in your self induced haze, to differentiate between seed and dust ball.

But wait! Money can be exchanged for goods and services! Theres that place down the street that always hooks you up. They are only open specific times though, so you whip your head around to the almighty clock on the wall. Oh great teller of futures, shall I be in the magic timelines of 7-11? It appears yes! All signs point to it. Scraping yourself off the floor to leave the cat dander and polyester fibres in peace, you bound down the stairs and out the door. It is a quest, a mission. This is how the crusading knights felt as they left to fight the Moors in their search for the Holy Grail you think. Manifest destiny!

And soon, you have them in your hand again. The exhiliration of ripping open the EZ ReSeal top nearly brings you to orgasm. Oh sure, you had to thieve the change from that horrible place in the car where the coffee and drinks spill and the pennies are cemented together in a cacaphony of sugar, but it was worth it! Breaking into your own car seems somewhat of a step down the wrong path, but the though perishes as the high rushes over again as that mischevious tickle of dill pickle flavoring excites every neuron and brings you back to baseline. The day may commence now.

And now the bag is gone. Even quicker than before, and you are wiped. But the body will simply not be punished and used without ramifications, and the piper has come to collect his payment. The bathroom, the stall of Hades, the seat of porcelain forged in the 10th circle beckons. You always forget this part. Its not the pleasant high, and the brain seems to make this particular memory elusive, so its always rambling in the back of your mind, but enough BBQ powder always shuts that little voice of reason out.

Well, the voice has lost its larygintis, and its screaming now. So loud, you can feel it in your very bowels. A long time abuser like you knows its worse to binge than to keep the addiction rampant on a constant plane, and you begin to wonder aloud if this may be partially your fault, but mostly TV and the Internets. The colon, it seems, will not take take the ungodly amount of fibre you have crammed down in such a short period of time, and thus do you seat yourself to allow the demon to walk (naye, run!) once more.

Ah. Thats it. That crappy feeling slowly goes by and the elation returns, albeit in a lower level. You’ve merely survived. But, soon enough you return. You ALWAYS return. The magazines are simply not thick enough to quench it’s thirst.

The fourth return trip and you are swearing “never again” to the same gods that earlier you had mocked. Surely they could not have created both this bitter cold heartless world and simultaneously the panacea of seeded elightenment. Each time your cursing only grows in magnitude and length as you have more and more time in a prone position to contemplate the evil liquidating itself. Tiny flecks of your humanity flushed away. How much more can you take? How much more is there to GIVE? You are only ONE MAN! Surely the universe may be infinite, but this must end. The viscous cycle must have an offramp.

And it does, but you cannot escape the hollow feeling afterwards. There is a hole now. A hole to be filled. Deep down the truth belittles you. You know you will be back. You will do the same dance again, and your card will be filled by only that single fickle mistress who beckons you beyond all sanity to the underworld of All Dressed. And one must always obey one’s mistress.

The thing was built in a record-setting snails pace of 6-months. Feeling ever the masochist, he decided to insulate it and put drywall up. And the long weekend for Easter was coming up, so I was recruited. This, despite everyone knowing full-well my entire lifes-knowledge on anything drywall-related was that I don’t mind playing in mud.

Thursday night while I was there for Sunday dinner (long story), off we went to Home Depot to buy the requisite supplies: Some fibreglass, some mud (and let me just point out the irony of people paying several thousand dollars for a re-modeled something or other, spending untold years of their lives picking out colours, buying furniture and accessories to match etc etc, and then willingly PAYING someone to throw mud on their walls.) and the drywall itself. We managed to pack the insulation into his Blazer, but 14-sheets of 10-foot drywall were going to have to be delivered.

So, we trundled off to the desk that does that sort of thing. The lady was soooo helpful. Let me just state, that though I do not have absolute numbers for this, I am guessing based on the number of home improvement and DIY shows (good god theres and entire CHANNEL for that crap) not to mention the zillion flip-something shows, like “Flip That House”, “Flip This House”, “Flip A House”, “House: To Flip”, “Flipping: A House Story”, “Flipping Is Not Just For Gymnasts”, “OMG THERES A HOUSE LETS FLIP IT!” etc etc, that, by far and away, the single most purchased product is drywall. And somehow, for Klyan or Kryion or Kiyrini or however her moronic parents spelled it, this sku number was completely out of her reach. The fancy dancy computers were clearly just for show. She made us WALK to the other side of Home-freaking Depot (this section was in Coquitlam, the drywall department could well have been in Langley) to get this 6-digit number that was so elusive. Clearly, we were the first people on earth to ever buy this product. You know, I would completely understand if we had asked her to pluck the number for a toilet made of sand from the shaded hill region of Jordan, packed by a man with a mole on his left testicle, and forged under the guidance of the Japanese zen-toilet master Canapoo out of her head, but it was DRYWALL!

Once we GET the sku (oh, and by the way, they DO have an entire phone system in there. People are walking around with little rubber-padded chordless phones, so why she could not call one of them is also beyond my comprehension. I’m guessing all the associates were busy filming a segment for “Flipper: The Dolphin House Seller”. And clearly the ENTIRE public-address system and the tried-and-true supermarket callout method was so archaic, Home Depot would not bring themselves to that level.) we go back and tell K-whatever what it is. Magically, we can continue to give her money now that we have the “secret code” to enter this level. Maybe their idea is to make it like a Sierra/Apogee game: Go get the drywall sku and take it to plumbing to unlock the paint-chip wall to get the green-drill key to rescue the flooring princess.

So we continue on. The transaction comes up, and my father in-law gives his Visa card to pay for it. And its declined. Let me just point out that when my wife and I went to buy a brand-new car, he offered to stick the WHOLE thing on his Visa if we didn’t want to get financing through Toyota, so its not a lack of funds. Small third-world countries regularly call him to see if he could pay off a bit of their national debt.

The Visa-machine said Visa wanted to speak to K-whatever. I bet they regretted that decision. After talking to her face-to-face, I can only imagine the brilliant wry wit she would have over an electronic medium where the person talking to her could not pick up the suttle nuances of her “ohmagod I sooooo want you two to go away so I can update my Facebook” look as I had. At any rate, she called. And at the exact same moment as she placed the call, Visa called my father in-laws cellphone, wondering if indeed he made such a purchase.

This brings me to the point of this entire narrative (and ties in with my clever title): it was $700 total. Let me also point out, with no word of embellishment, that my in-laws go on a cruise or other vacation once a month, on average. And its not to Calgary, its cruises to the Bahamas (4-times at last count I believe), Hawaii (too many to count), the Amazon, the Cook islands, a couple around the world shots, over th England, down to Florida, a cruise around the eastern seaboard in fall. My mother in-law routinely books these trips on said Visa, so it is not in any way out of the ordinary for a 5- or even 10-thousand dollar charge to go on that card at a single time. Sometimes, multiple future trips are done in the SAME month! And NEVER a word from Visa. Even when they mysteriously charge a meal at a restaruant in Vancouver, and then 12-hours later charge something in Brazil, Visa does not bat an eye. But $700 at the Home Depot in his home city? Must be theft. He bought a 61″ DLP TV on that card a few years ago, and Visa could care less. Some drywall? You must be an identity thief.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been called a couple times when we were in San Francisco, so I greatly appreciate Visa going that extra mile for my protection, but man, get yourself some better software filters. Is the FIRST place I go when I steal a credit card to Home Depot? Has house flipping replaced electronics? Seriously, I’m not going to go and buy a new Harmon-Kardon AC 7.1 home theatre, but I’m chomping at the bit to re-do my recroom in gypsum? Are you kidding? We didn’t even have copper tubing, or I could at least understand that. Clearly our police departments have failed us here. They have utterly failed to pick up on this new threat to national security. Any day now, I’m sure untold amounts of tax money will be spent on a joint-task-force to battle the problem. And Dick Wolf will have another spin-off on his hands: “Law & Order: House Flipping Junkies”.

The only conclusion I could come to is that all these people trying to make a quick buck flipping houses have eventually figured out that, yes, TV can do it in 30-minutes, but you cannot. You WILL run over budget, and you WILL NOT make a massive huge profit. And that now, people have begun stealing their neighbours money for their addiction. There, I said it. House flipping weirdos are about on par with crackheads.

This also means I’ve never had to be mutilated any fillings done, nor had to see my friendly neighbourhood DDS for anything worse than a cleaning. So, it came as a bit of a shock when I found out I had the dreaded cavity. Oh sure, tartar and I were bussom friends for a long time, but I never thought my teeth would cheat on me with decay.

I actually put having the things filled for close to a year. Why? Well, my entire idea of dentistry came from TV, which paints a…..less than glorious picture. I went back to the dentist (though I did flirt with the idea of going to see this Hispanic dentist guy across from MetroTown who’s name is Jesus Somethingorother. I figured if Jesus can’t do pain-free dentistry, then theres really no hope for any of us. Then I remembered someone also named Jesus served me something called “corned beef hash” in a diner in Anaheim once. I’m not totally up to speed on my New Testament, but I seem to recall God only having one son, so I figured it MUST be the same guy. And the breakfast wasn’t very good, so I passed on him as my oral surgeon. And I couldn’t find anyone named I. Yankum in the phonebook) I first saw for a cleaning. He seemed fine enough, so once my tooth got really bad, I made an appointment.

I was told when I made the appointment that it was “painless” and “quick”. But in the same breath, was told to bring an iPod or a DVD to watch to “take my mind off it”. So, instantly, my hypochondriac mind took over, seeing the endless, horrid possibilities which would cause someone to tell me to bring something to take my mind off a “painless” and “quick” procedure.

Its something genetic that took over next. I REALLY wanted to see how it would be done. Its a (possibly morbid) curiosity with how the human animal works. My mother had her colonoscopy video taped so she could see it at her leasure, and to this day, I can’t wait to have one. I asked the lady if I could possibly watch the procedure either in a mirror or via camera. Earlier in our conversation, she had mentioned she had worked at this office for 11-years, and I garantee that based on the look on her face when I asked, this was the FIRST time in 11-years anyone had actually asked. To my utter astonishment, she said she would check.

The appointment was made for the next day, so I had very little time to prepare. I looked up the procedure on a number of sites (once again proving Wikipedia and WebMD should be banned from my network) and had essentially convinced myself of imminent death. Disfiguration, no question, but death was surely an inevitable outcome.

The day of, I sync’ed up my iPod. At this point, it hit me that I really did not want to associate the torture to come with any music I actually like, so I got on my wifes machine and got some Dixie Chicks from her collection. If that didn’t make me loathe country, nothing would. I prepared myself mentally: I’m sure they do a couple of these a year; The guy seems to know what he’s doing; He likely has a whole lot of insurance.

I even went so far as to put on boxer shorts. I keep exactly 2-pairs of these. I put them on when it is all but certain my pants will come off in public at some point (so if we’re out having a beer together and you see the waistband of boxer shorts, its probably a good idea to get out of dodge before the misdermeanors start flying). And, feeling a trip in an ambulance was nothing short of assured, I brought a pair out of retirement. I’ve seen ER before, I know they snigger.

I got to the office, and was ushered in. I met up with the dental assistant first. In the same way I say completely inappropriate things in airports, I sat down down in the chair and asked for my shot of whiskey and my bullet to bight down on. She laughed the same way the TSA does before I go “over there”. She assured me everything would be fine, blah blah blah. Right, becuase she would usually say “Sheeeeeeeiiiitttt…..it gonna hurt your sorry-ass”. The watching thing was not goign to happen, she said. Not that they couldn’t, but that there wouldn’t likely be room. Which turns out to be correct. I had enough stainless-steel in my mouth and any given moment to build a Delorean.

Then, the doctor came in. I was pretty terrified at this point. I may have dialed “91″ into my phone and had my hand hovering over the “1″, but everything got kinda hazy.
Actually, the dcotor was super ultra cool. He brought up my X-rays, and answered all my questions about them, and pointed out some cool stuff the untrained eye would never see. So I began to feel better. I also felt, hey, I know this procedure, I want to ask more!

I have a fascination with how things work (as I may have mentioned), and the human machine is no different. I like knowing how things go, if for no other reason than to spew up some small random fact at a socially awkward moment. Point is, I felt much better about the whole thing now, and had switched from paranoid hypochondriac moron, to information gathering mode. I asked if we were using amalgam or ceramic? What wavelength was the UV-light thing on to harden the filling? Could I get the Bling-package if I paid extra and get a diamond in my teeth instead of silver?
The problem, as I think about it and hindsight being 20/20, is that it sounds more “I’m hunting for a lawsuit you quack” than “hey I’m a zany idiot who likes little random tidbits of knowledge”. The doctor was EXCEEDINGLY patient. Far more than I would be with someone asking me about computers over my shoulder (of course, I also wouldn’t have my hand down that persons mouth. Or….) but at some point, and I’m not saying this co-incided with me babbling on though the timing seems suspect, he put a needle in my gums, making the entire left side of my face numb and making talking all but impossible. Just for the record, doc, I really did have a fascination with what was going on.

The procedure was filling two cavities, and was done in a little under an hour. I was thoroughly impressed. SO impressed, I went out and bought 4-pounds of candy and don’t plan to brush until Lent next year. I thank the great team at Dr Elkford (Elkington?) offices for the fine job they did.

I left fairly happy, with my face still convoluted. I was told to try not eating anything as people tend to make hamburger out of their tongues. Good advice. The freezing took about 4-hours to completely wear off, so I had some towels around my keyboard when I arrived home. I did attempt to drink some water, but that ended up looking like incontinence on my pants more than a refreshing imbibement.

I must say, if you’ve never had the freezing sensation, I recommend it. Even just once. Its a little portal to your past AND future. Sitting around, drooling uncontrollably, with a giant wet spot on the front of your pants. Who says dentists don’t have a sense of humour?

However, I also have no problem with what people believe in. Whatever you believe in the privacy of your home is fine with me. Christ, Yaweh, Beezlebub, Welsh Rarebit, I really don’t care. I am quite aware that faith can be a huge thing to people, so I will even listen to their opening monologue before politely telling them I am not interested and to not bother us again. I don’t engage people in biblical inaccuracies or pretend I worship the devil.

This is not to say I was always this forgiving (must be tempering in my old age). Once a few years back they came to the house and asked if I had heard the message of the Lord. I said that I had not, but that I was new to email servers and its possible I had missed the memo. They replied that God directed them to come to me. “Wait” I started, “he directed you you here?”. “Yes!” they said. “Like right here?”. “Yes!”. “Oh my god, my address is in the BIBLE! That is AWESOME! I had no idea you guys worshipped the White Pages! I only rent the place so my name shouldn’t even appear, but I guess God has a better edition than the tri-cities puts out”. At which point they began to slowly back away.

So I don’t bait them, but I do ask they not bother us anymore as its fairly unlikely we will suddenly decide to convert. Its when they just keep coming around that gets me. I mean, even Canada Post will stop with junk mail if I ask, so I should be able to stop junk religion in the same way.

The thing is, of ALL the millions of religions in the world, I am not going to choose the one sold like encyclopedias. This, to me, is the fatal flaw of the marketing campaign for Jehovahs. Fro some reason, the PR department in the Witness church figured the best method of converting people is to follow the vacuum cleaner sales model from the 50′s. I don’t have raw numbers for vacuum sales, but nor do I have a Hoover bought after an in-house demonstration of throwing crushed Oreos all over my floor, so I would say its not that great a model. And besides, “face time” is sooooo 1990′s. Put an “i” in front of something and start an e-campaign to get those youth. Maybe a Facebook page or something. You’d get further promoting “iGod or “iWitness” than “No iBlood Transfusions”.

The door-to-door system brings out the other major flaw in the Witness sect: Do I really want to join the religion that allows the laziest and most sloth people on earth in? The people for whom possible eternal salvation is just too much of a hassle?

“Hello there. We are from the church just down the street. Have you accepted the lord Jesus Christ as your personal saviour?”

“Oh wow. You know, JUST the other day, I was contemplating the meaning of it all. Existance, life, how the minutae of all life as small as a blade of grass must be tied to something larger than I could possibly understand. And then, if so, how my soul could possibly be in perril and subject to an infinity of eternal punishment…….but I’ve just been soooo busy. I mean, what with Maury and Judge Judy being on every single afternoon, who has the time?”

“Well, we’ve brought the answer TO you!”

“Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa…..this isn’t my Batman glass”

“Sorry?”

“You mean, I don’t even have to leave the house to find eternal salvation?”

“Nope”

“Well, I’m still not sure. I’m not very good at making decisions…..”

“This little black book will make them for you!”

“Sign me up!”

“You don’t even have to do that!”

“Best religion EVER!”

This is my basic problem with most Christ-based religions (yes yes, I know most consider the Witnesses outside the scope of Christ-based as they do not believe in the trinity and that Jesus != God, but Christ is still the saviour for them, so we’ll use this loose definition for the time being until I can think of a better one that fits my rant better) in that anyway one can get in no matter who they are. Murdered fifty people? No problem! Like little boys? We’ll forgive you! Its like they need to pad their stats so when they have big religious conventions down in Vegas, they can go to the Muslim booth and show them their growth numbers for the year. The quality of the people doesn’t matter as much as the quantity, a marketing idea borrowed from Dennys.

No, if you’re looking for a new religion, what you really want is Judaism. This is the religion that doe snot even WANT you. Don’t believe me? Go tell a Rabbi you want to convert. DENIED! Its like the exclusive nightclub of religions. There’s a lineup of people wanting to get in, but not just anyone gets in. You have to know someone who knows someone. Sure, you can get into the Christian nightclub by flashing the bouncer your tits, but the Jewish doorman ain’t falling for it. You’ll have to learn and earn your way in. Years of study, proving that you are worthy of it.

And like any exclusive club, it comes with a better set of people than the one that lets any ol’ riff raff in. For example, you don’t read many stories like

A man has been left homeless after his trailer caught fire. Adam Goldberg is looking for new accomodations after his double-wide was burned to the ground after he got drunk on moonshine, passed out and knocked over his lit menorah

Or

Mordechai Silverstein has been killed from a flying tire while sitting on the roof of his RV at a recent NASCAR event. Mr Silverstein was at the event celebrating his sons mitvah.

Either headline I’m sure appears in Baptist church circulars on a regular basis.

So becoming Jewish is really the way to go. You get the people, the learning and more holidays than you can shake a stick at. And they have quite non-english named to them, so feel free to make up some of your own. I am told by other Yiddish faithfuls that really the only thing that is a must for a Jewish holiday is drinking.
And, most importantly in a faith, I wouldn’t want to belong to any religion that would have me as a member.