Rotating Pineapple

Both of my best friends dealt with addiction. They are dead now. One died despite his addiction; the other may have died because of it. "You should get down on your knees every day and thank God that you don't have an addictive personality," one of them said to me. I don't thank God every day - mea culpa - but I understood the sentiment. He was saying that for some people, it's easier to fall into addiction than most. I myself have experimented with nicotine. I have been drunk a handful of times; I am ashamed of this. But have I ever been addicted? Not a chance. - From the National Institute on Drug Abuse: Many people don't understand why or how other people become addicted to drugs. They may mistakenly think that those who use drugs lack moral principles or willpower and that they could stop their drug use simply by choosing to. In reality, drug addiction is a complex disease, and quitting usually takes more than good intentions or a strong will. Drugs c...

 We had a family zoom chat tonight. At one point, dad asked us kids if we had any happy memories of childhood Christmases. He asked it in a roundabout way, telling a sad story about how neither he nor my uncle had a whole lot of happy Christmas memories from when they were kids. Indeed, their happiest memories of December 25 mostly involved fleeing the house after what passed for good tidings of comfort and joy had come to an end. I guess all three of us knew he was looking for reassurance, so we gave it to him.  My younger brother talked about the living room of Hooke Road, which, I'm pretty sure, is the first house he remembers. The Christmas tree was always situated in a corner of the living room and, he recalled, waking up on December 25 and seeing the living room overflowing with presents. It was a typical middle class 1980s Christmas. Times were booming and a two-income home like the one I grew up in could afford to spoil the kids.  Again, I told the story of Electr...

 Today, the shortest day of the year, the Rotating Pineapple breaks new ground. For the first time ever, the note-a-day will include a recipe. I channel my late grandfather, Edward Morris, who ate this for breakfast many a morning before trudging outside to his giant green John Deere tractor (I hope) and then tilling the wheat fields of his Saskatchewan farmland. You need the following: - bread - butter - tomato juice. 1. Toast the bread. 2. Butter the bread. 3. Cut the bread into strips. 4. Pour tomato juice into a glass. 5. Dip the bread/toast strips into the tomato juice and eat it. - I am not a farmer but this is one my go-to breakfasts. I substitute the tomato juice with V8 and usually add a pinch of Mrs. Dash, but the recipe remains pretty much the same. It gives you the energy you need in the morning. - There is not much else I can say about this except that I can picture my granddad doing this. He gets up while the household is still sleeping, while my mom and her sisters a...

In 1843, Edgar Allen Poe published his classic horror story, the Tell-Tale Heart. Is it about a man who murders another man, cuts his body into pieces, and lays them under the floorboards of his bedchamber. When the police come to investigate, they find no sign of foul play. But the murderer eventually confesses because his guilty conscience makes him believe that the dead man's heart is still beating, even as it lies buried underfoot. Thump thump thump. - I became aware of this short story in Grade 9 English class. That was not because our teacher had chosen it as acceptable study material. No, he mentioned the story as a tangent. He wanted his class to study three songs from Alice Cooper's 1975 album, Welcome to my Nightmare. Apparently, one of his superiors objected to this, deeming the material too morbid. My teacher countered by asking why Tell-Tale Heart was still on the list of approved material. When it comes to depraved acts of violence, Mr. Poe had Mr. Cooper well bea...

 It is comforting to see that young people today like the same music that their boomer and Gen X grandparents enjoyed. Take a stroll through your average high school and you'll see kids with T-shirts extolling the likes of the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and Guns N Roses. They know that something happened to popular music around the turn of the century - that songwriting stopped being an organic in-studio process of self-expression and started being a factory-produced collection of computerized synth-beats. Kids got tired of the phoniness of top 40 radio. Craving real music, they went back to the past, and they found it there. - The phonograph dates back to the late 1800s. For more than a century, it - along with its descendants - was the most popular way people would listen to music. By the 1940s, the phonograph became known as the record player. Those things got workouts in the 1950s when rock and roll was all the rage. And with the advent of LPs, musicians had another artistic o...

 Is Santa a gnome? I’m not sure. - I’m not sure why garden gnomes are so popular, or any lawn decorations for that matter. If I had a front lawn, I wouldn’t need it to be a visual curiosity. - I’m convinced that the primary purpose of the garden gnome is to be kidnapped. Said gnome should then be taken around the world, be photographed in front of various landmarks, and have those photos sent back to the gnome’s owner. It is less expensive to take a garden gnome on a trip around the world. This is because airlines charge admission for flesh and blood, not for paint and plaster. - I recommend the movie, Amelie, which is one of the best movies ever made and also features a scene where a garden gnome is kidnapped. - I used to own a gnome. His name was Glengarry. Glengarry my gnome. We used him famously in a competition at the Glengarry News. I was the biggest fan of that competition. It has since being retired. And this note is now being retired.