Rotating Pineapple

Assignment: Write a poem that mentions a vegetable, an American capital, and something you'd find in a hardware store The reason I'm so drunk with power is I just ate a cauliflour it makes me want to jump and fight and munch on veggies that are white O cauliflour, you are great I swallowed you at half past eight and now, with hammer in my grip I'll build a house, I'll build a ship I'll build a mansion and a rake I'll build a fence to guard the lake I'll build a garden that's so pretty I'll build a jail in Carson City I'll build until the day is done and then I'll build myself a sun to shine on me throughout the night and shine on veggies that are white

Sailboats are boats that are powered by the wind. If there's no wind, you don't go anywhere. You have to get out and kick. Unfortunately, if you do that, your sailboat is no longer a sailboat. Now it's a kickboat. Sailboats are often spotted in water near where rich people live. That's because the average brand new sailboat costs $100,000. You can buy a house for that kind of money (or two tickets to a Toronto Maple Leafs game.) I just went to a website and found a sailboat for $4,900. The boat is from 1965, which means the boat is older than the moon landing. I'm not sure how safe I'd feel on a boat that old. When you're buying a sailboat, you need to ask the salesperson how windy it will be when you go sailing. If the salesperson says it won't be windy at all, you need to tell him he is bad and go to another sailboat store. Either that or just buy a motorboat. You can go boating in a motorboat no matter how windy or non-windy it is. Al...

In 1987, a band called Guns N Roses released an album called Appetite for Destruction. The album looked like something you would find in a church for skeletons. Here is a picture of it: That album is more than 25 years old. Most people think it only has three songs, which are Welcome to the Jungle, Paradise City, and Sweet Child O Mine. There are actually a lot more songs on it but they are bad because they have the effword in them and songs with the effword are bad. This means that most rap is bad. Here is a picture of Prince in 1987, when he was touring with his album Sign O The Time. 1987 was a great year for saying O instead of Of. I guess Axl Rose needed the F so he could use the effword in You're Crazy (which is another song on Appetite for Destruction) and Prince needed it for the end of Play in the Sunshine (which is strange since it's a song about how great life is when you don't do drugs or alcohol.) But when you think about it, Sweet Child O Mine w...

"Make me the bad guy." My dad used to tell me that when I was having trouble getting my friends to abide by the house rules. We had about five flats of Pepsi in the garage and somehow, my friends got it into their heads that the Pepsi was free for the taking. I do believe my dear old pops actually busted one of them walking out of the garage with a couple Pepsis in hand. I wasn't even there. I believe I was off at a trumpet lesson. "I don't want you friends having anymore Pepsi," my dad told me once. "I didn't buy it for them." I think I tried reasoning with him... telling him that I was entitled to certain perks at my friends' places so they should be entitled to certain perks at mine. But my dad was having none of that. Our garage was meant to store the vehicles and, in this one instance, house Pepsi. It was never intended to be a convenience store where everything is free. Tried telling pops that my friends would be u...

A famous magician once said that magic is unique among the arts because it allows a rank beginner to appear like a master with very little work. This is offensive and probably a little true. The late magician Don Alan invented something called the Invisible Deck. It is one of the best-selling magic tricks of all time. The idea is you "hand" someone an invisible deck of cards and you have them shuffle it, take one card out, look at it, turn it around, and slide it back into the deck. Then they give this deck back to the magician who magically makes the deck become visible. To prove this, he runs through the deck and discovers one card is upside down. You guessed it, it's the card the guy "looked" at. The Invisible Deck is easy to do. You really can buy it at one in the afternoon and be fooling people with it at 1:15. It is a trick that every magician performs the same way. Poor Don Alan died hating magicians. He must have felt the same way Tho...

There used to be a Grade 13 in Ontario, the province where I live. Not anymore. It used to be called the Ontario Academic Credit but the province's Ministry of Education abolished it in 1998 and it was ultimately phased out in 2003. I was working for a newspaper in that time and the graduating classes that year were huge. It was all part of the "double cohort," which was a juggernaut of a term that meant "extra big class." Eliminating Grade 13 was the New Democrats idea. They started studying the issue in the mid 90s when they formed the government. Then when the Progressive Conservatives took over, they acted on the NDP idea. This basically means that all the parties in Ontario thought eliminating Grade 13 was awesome. I don't know what the Liberals thought. I don't care either. Gen X'ers who went to high school in Alberta had no Grade 13 to contend with. They graduated at age 18, which meant that they graduated on the onset of adu...

For as long as I can remember, people referred to my dad as El Barto. Now that I am a little older and I understand a little Spanish, I know that El means 'the' and o is a suffix that designates masculinity. So a literal translation of El Barto is "the male Bart." El Barto sounds cooler. - My dad's real name is not Bart. That was simply the moniker he picked for himself when he entered the competitive field of radio. I believe he started on the east coast and eventually emigrated to Saskatchewan, where he met my mother. At one point, there had to be a conversation about how a guy named Ian managed to start dubbing himself Bart. I think this was my dad's inspiration: That's Jack Kelly, who played the role of Bart Maverick in an old Western TV show called Maverick. My dad likes westerns so he likely named himself after a childhood hero. I imagine he was devastated when the late 1980s arrived and then the world's most famous Bart bec...

Since I am not a nerd, I have no way of knowing that Dalaks are bad guys in the Dr. Who universe while the Borgs are Star Trek villains. I have no idea what a Dalak looks like. I know Borgs have turtle shells on their foreheads. Let's google image a Dalak and see what we come up with: Okay, so it looks like a Dalak is something that can go wrong with your spleen. If Dr. Who has a spleen, he is probably susceptible to it. If Borgs have spleens, they can probably get dalaks too. So I guess if the Borgs were at war with dalaks, it would depend on how much grapefruit they ate. Wait a second. I spelled it wrong. It's D-A-L-E-K. I'm going to keep everything I already wrote because it's freakin funny. Okay, here's a picture of a bunch of daleks Daleks look like gay lighthouses at a 1970s disco party. As such, I think the Borgs would win because no one is really afraid of lighthouses except maybe bats and vampires. I'm pretty sure the Borgs would have the...

My friend, Tomas, specifically asked for this date, May 17, to give me my note-a-day title. It is, of course, "in memory of my papa." My father, thank God, is still with us and I must assume that Tomas's father, unfortunately, is not. And I am sad for this. I do not know Tomas well and I have never met his father, but Tomas turned into a good and decent man and his father certainly played a role in shaping him, so bravo for his father. His dad was probably at St. Gerard's church once while Tomas and I served as altar boys, so I suppose I can safely assume that I and his father breathed the same air. If your dad is still alive, you should tell him you love him and appreciate him. My father did not have a good relationship with his father and left home as early as possible. Despite this, he still allowed his children to know their grandfather and he allowed his dad the luxury of being a grandfather. I have a corkboard beside my front door and on it ...

My dad tells me that when I was a toddler, I was addicted to game shows. While other kids were jonesing to Sesame Street and Mister Rogers Neighbourhood, I was getting my jollies watching Price is Right, Family feud, and Jokers Wild. Bob Barker was my very first role model. I used to dream about hosting my own TV game show, holding super skinny microphones and reminding everyone to get their pets spayed or neutered. I'm also a proctologist There was a time when our evenings consisted of one-and-a-half hours of PBS, also known as the Public Broadcasting Service. We'd start with Sesame Street, go into Mister Rogers Neighbourhood and end with the Electric Company. Mister Rogers was boring because he was sandwiched between a show that featured lots of cool puppets and a show with Spiderman and rock music. All Freddy boy had going for him were his land of make believe, his cardigans, and his awful singing voice. That's not very nice, neighbour But then it was t...

I don't take very good care of myself. This is evident to anyone examining my footwear. I just got through another winter wearing a pair of boots with more holes than the screenplay to E.T. My running shoes are in a similar state of disrepair. The grips are all but gone; the soles of those shoes are as smooth as glass. But I wear 'em anyway. Why? probably because I figure I have more important things to spend my money on. Yes, my winter boots are holey. At one time they were waterproof. They're not waterproof anymore. Now water gets in them anytime I walk through a puddle. When this happens, I am happy that I am just walking across the street and that I am not a POW being forced to march 50 miles in wartorn Germany. Now I am suddenly thinking about Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse Five, which was mentioned briefly in the 1984 movie, Footloose, which starred Kevin Bacon and John Lithgow. If you haven't seen Footllooose yet then you are either o...

My son is one year old. He is fussy about what he plays with. When he is at my place, his toys must have the following traits: - It must be black - It must be made of plastic - It must serve a purpose There are only two plastic black things in my bedroom. One is the telephone, one is the remote control. My son only wants to play with the phone long enough for him to take it off its receiver. Once it's disconnected, he will throw it on the floor (or, preferably, hide it under my bed.) He will only play with again when I put the phone back on its receiver and then leave the room. He only wants to disconnect it when I am not there. So now that the phone is off the hook, he wants to play with the remote control. His favourite time to play with the remote control is when I am watching DVDs. Just yesterday, I was watching a magic instructional DVD by the UK magician, Mark Shortland, who Heather should hire for Victoria's next birthday party (this is assuming that Mark does ...

Christmas Day of 1984 and my family was celebrating at the Chaputs' house, which was about three blocks away. We enjoyed Christmas dinner and we did a small gift exchange and then the kids were banished to the basement so the parents could have some adult time. On TV was The Wizard of Oz. I was 11 and I was trying to convince myself that Wizard of Oz and its heroine, Dorothy Gale, was stuff for babies or girls. Star Wars was my thing, man, can you dig it? But my attitude did not last. Somehow, I got drawn into Dorothy's plight. When our dad announced that it was time to go home, we elected to run instead of drive. We thought we'd make it home faster than our parents would in their minivan, and it turned out we were right. We left as soon as the next commercial break started and I believe we arrived home just as Dorothy was meeting the cowardly lion. I remember my heart pounding, my head aching from the Christmas cold I'd just breathed in, my winter ja...

There's this story about Frank Sinatra going out on stage one night and completely blanking. There he was... ole Blue Eyes himself. The orchestra's goin bonkers, the people are cheering, and the chairman of the board can't remember the lyrics. He stops cold. Stares. The orchestra dies. The crowd is quiet. And then Frank, mortified beyond belief, says to the audience: "I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen. I'm very very sorry." From up in the balcony, a man stands up and yells "That's okay, Frank. We love you." Slowly, the crowd rises and applauds this icon of American music. Frank accepts the applause and then the orchestra starts up again and this time, he nails it. Song's over and Frank points to the man in the balcony. "I love you too, pal." - I haven't been in a play for more than 10 years. My entire 30s were spent depriving planet Earth of my talents as a thespian. This may not be a bad thing. But...

I have a fuzzy picture somewhere of my mom standing outside a tent at Dinosaur Park somewhere near Drumheller. The year was 1983 and that would have made her 32, which is nine years younger than I am right now. I was 10 and it was my Grade 4 class's spring camping trip. It was the biggest and longest field trip I'd ever been on. We camped there for two or three days and we ate meals that had been cooked over campfires, we went on hikes, we saw snakes and cacti and "bottomless pits" and we saw a whole lot of dinosaur fossils. My mom was there as a chaperone. I'm not sure why she went. I didn't ask her and I was a little scared that she'd embarrass me. But she didn't. We had a grand ole time. - When you reach middle age, there's something scary about seeing pictures of your parents when they were younger than you are now. It's really scary if you're in the picture too. There's a picture of my mom lying on the floor an...

I used to have a friend named Christina Long. I met her only once. Here is a picture I took the day we met. Christina is still my friend but her name is no longer Christina Long. Her name is now Christina Gerbrandt. Here is why her name is Christina Gerbrandt: She married someone whose last name is Gerbrandt. I am happy that Christina found marital bliss but I am unhappy that she changed her name because now, I can no longer make awful puns about her last name. There was a time when Christina would email me after a few months and I would reply: "Wow! I haven't heard from you in a LONG time." Now I have to say: "Wow! I haven't heard from you in a Gerbrandt time." Not funny. So for their fourth anniversary, Christina and Josh should go to the department of name changes and change their last names to Long. Both of 'em. Then I can keep making Long jokes and they will be funny. Kurt Browning approves of this message. He disapproves of the Hair ...

The late Christian apologist Walter Martin once said that if there is alien life on other planets, there would be serious implications for the Christian faith. He said that's because the Bible is silent about life on other planets. He wondered, if there's intelligent life on Mars or such, what this would do to the doctrine of justification by faith. - I have written before about Ray Bradbury and how he differentiated between science fiction and fantasy. He said if it could happen, it was sci fi. If it couldn't, it was fantasy. He considered most of his work to be fantasy. But as science progresses, I can't help but wonder if one day, we might colonize Mars. We wouldn't do it if we found oil there. The cost of transporting it back to Earth would not be economically viable. Also, you couldn't build a pipeline between the two. And if there was oil on Mars, we'd have to conclude that there was carbon-based life there at one time. That's ...

I have been doing magic shows for more than 25 years now. I've performed in restaurants, bars, trade shows, community halls, theatres, pretty much everywhere. And in all that time, I have only had three groups of Christians tell me that what I am doing is evil and Satanic and leading folks to hell. The first two encounters came when I was relatively young. The first was when I was 19 and had managed to score a gig doing magic at Curly's restaurant and pub during Sunday brunch. I approached a trio of senior citizens - two ladies and a gentleman - and the man told me he wasn't interested in watching any magic because he "had a best friend named Jesus Christ." There was a brief yet friendly disagreement about whether or not card tricks were tantamount to witchcraft. I tried to explain that I wasn't interested in witchcraft and one of the ladies responded with "Well when you get into drugs you don't start with heroin now, do you? No, y...

It was 1994 when I first wandered into Words Books & Cappuccino Bar on the corner of 17th Street and 17th Avenue SW in Calgary. Words was one of three stores in a tiny commercial building on that corner. I'd arrived to apply for a job at a balloon store at the west end and got a haircut at the barber shop in the middle. Words was at the eastern end. I walked in to say hello and I met Rook St. Peter, who soon became one of the most important figures of my early 20s. I was 21 and I was in the middle of sabotaging my senior year as a theatre student at Mount Royal College. I didn't have a girlfriend, I still lived at home, and I wasn't making a living as a magician. I was angry - nay, furious - about all these things. That was partly because I was too stupid to realize how dangerous it is to think of yourself as a genius. If you want something, you have to work hard for it. It was May of 1994. Twenty years ago. Wow. Hard to believe. Rook was a tall skinn...

When I was 25, I got a prank call from someone pretending to be a serial killer. "You're my prey," he said in an electronically-altered baritone voice. "I am a serial killer. I will hunt you down." I heard teenagers snickering in the background. "Pal," I said. "If you ever met a real life serial killer, you'd crap your pants." And I hung up. - I know one person who has killed another person. He was declared mentally unbalanced. He is walking the streets today. I have met all sorts of people who claim they've killed before. When I was 16, I worked in a ticket booth at the Calgary Stampede. My co-worker was a fat stupid ugly man who claimed he was a spy working at the Stampede undercover for the Canadian government. He claimed that the RV parked nearby was his and that it was packed full of top secret equipment like surveillance monitors and chemical bombs. He said he had 12 years of close combat training and knew 83 si...

I get mad when people tell me there could be multiple universes out there. There can't be. It's impossible. There's only one universe. The problem is semantics. When most people talk about the universe, they are talking about galaxies. They are talking about outer space and stars and planets and black holes and moons and stuff. That's only part of the universe. The universe is everything that exists. Period. All matter makes up the universe. If it exists, it's part of the universe. So there can't be another universe because that other universe would be part of the universe. Does that make sense? Good. - Like I said, the universe is everything. It is stars and planets and solar systems and the Milky Way. It is also other things, like: - Sub-atomic particles - Cheez Whiz - Wilford Brimley's mustache - My friend, Nah-lee, and her husband, Ari, and their two kids, who all live in California - California - A little kid eating grapes - ...

I would slay this guy right here: Who is that? That's Brad Richards, who used to play for the Tampa Bay Lightning. He was a member of the Lightning in 2004 when his team beat the Calgary Flames in the Stanley Cup Finals. Brad Richards was instrumental in beating the Flames and bringing the Cup to Florida, which is a state that does not have ice, snow, or winter. Calgary has all those things. In droves. I was devastated, man. I was sitting in the Atlantic, a pub in Alexandria, with my friend, Stephanie, and it was game 7 of the Finals and the Lightning won that game 2-1. I was pissed. I was sad. I cried. Seriously, the Lightning should have said: "You know what? We should just let Calgary win the Cup because no one in Florida cares about hockey anyway." Actually, I could use the slay anyone card on Martin St-Louis, Vincent Lecavalier or Nikola Khabibulin, who were all instrumental in helping the Bolts get their mitts on the Holy Grail. But since Richards l...

I've been a bachelor all my life. I never went to culinary school and I hardly mastered the fine art of cooking when I was living at home. As such, I've made a few blunders in the kitchen over the past four decades. One of them stands out and I will share that story now. I was working at a newspaper in Brighton, Ontario when I came across a cookbook called Easy to Make Pasta Dishes. So I bought it. I was delighted to find a recipe called Garlic and Oil Linguini which looked quite easy to make. All I needed was some linguini, some water, some olive oil, a few spices, and three cloves of garlic. All were available at the grocery store. I bought them, went home, and made my meal. I ate it and it was yummy. The next day I go into the office. Immediately, Christine the receptionist says: "You ate garlic last night, didn't you?" I reply that I did and should I go home and brush my teeth? No, she says. But you do smell of it. Christine isn't the ...

"Suppose someone invented an instrument, a convenient little talking tube which, say, could be heard over the whole land...I wonder if the police would not forbid it, fearing that the whole country would become mentally deranged if it were used." The Dutch philosopher Søren Kierkegaard said that about 100 years before television made its appearance. And although he was probably talking about physics rather than technology, opponents of television often repeat this quote to reinforce their own positions. For the past 15 years, I have lived without television service. I own a TV but I can only use it to watch DVDs. There is no satellite hookup at chez Shteevie. My reason for being TV-free is more pragmatic than puritanical. I have dreams, you see. I want to publish a novel. I want to be a better magician. I will accomplish these goals much faster if I spend my evenings writing and magicking instead of watching reruns of the Simpsons. Having said that, I c...