Rotating Pineapple

"Are you a feminist?" I was in Grade 7 when I was asked that question. The inquisitor was a girl who happened to be one of my fellow junior high students and she had a number of her girlfriends congregating around her shoulders, smiling craftily at me as I pondered my response. I was 12 years old and had only the vaguest notion of what feminism was. I knew about Gloria Steinem through Mad Magazine and I'd remembered seeing a panel of feminists complaining about something (probably men) on the Phil Donahue show but other than that, I had no idea what feminism was all about. I knew that feminists supposedly didn't have a sense of humour, which isn't true by the way. Everyone is humourless when you make jokes about what is sacred to them. When they asked me if I was a feminist, I thought they were asking if I played with dolls or wore girls' underpants, so I said no. The girls were shocked at my bigotry and I was labelled a "male chauvinist pig.&qu

I was asked to write my memories of THE ice storm. You will notice that THE is all-caps, which suggests that there is one ice storm that stands as the definitive ice storm. Since I am living in Eastern Ontario, I will assume that I am to write about the ice storm that struck this region in early 1998. Some weather pundits consider it the most serious ice storm in recorded history. Thousands of people in East Ontario and parts of the United States were without power for about a month. The storm did major damage to the power grid. My memory of that storm is hearing about it on the news and being happy I didn't live in Eastern Ontario. I was in Calgary and I was dating my very first girlfriend since high school. She was blonde and she wore a black beret. She had a fish named Matisse and once we bought curtains at Ikea (I bought curtains with my girlfriend, I mean. Not Matisse.) My girlfriend had lived in Montreal for a few years so she knew some people from the area who we

My best friend used to drink a Super Big Gulp everyday on the way home from school. I'm talking EVERY DAY! At the time 7-Eleven sold the Super Big Gulp for about a dollar. A Super Big Gulp was more than one litre of pop. That means my amigo was drinking more than one thousand millilitres of Coca-Cola everyday. I viewed this habit with quiet alarm. My friend was a little overweight but he didn't seem too distressed about it. Also, we were too young to worry about crap like mortality anyway, but I was still concerned that my friend was drinking too much pop. So don't go around telling me that bigger is always better. - One of my New Year's Resolutions is to stop drinking pop. I'm going to go 365 days without a drop of Coke, Pepsi, Sprite, Root Beer or my beloved Dr. Pepper. 2015 has been on for five days now and I don't miss pop at all. In fact, I'm enjoying my water. A couple of years ago, I ran into a friend and his wife. I noticed that she'd

My inspiration for note-a-day (also known as Rotating Pineapple) has always been YOU, my readers. It's a challenge to get something - be it a phrase, a word, a question - from someone else's mind and then write something about it. I never tried to plumb any depths with these notes. I just write off the cuff and go wherever the muse takes me. That's why some of the notes are goofy (strange even) while some are serious and, at times, poignant. I made a peculiar observation while reading over some of the notes. I found that the best ones came from titles given to me by people who don't know me that well. Perhaps that's because the people close to me tend to feed me titles that will strike an emotional chord (my father is fond of giving me titles that recall my childhood memories with him.) With strangers, it's anything goes. Besides note-a-day, I find that there are several things that inspire me when I am writing fiction. 1. Christian theology. 2

I used to give my sister Archie comics for Christmas. She loved Archie comics, as do millions of readers around the world. They love them for one reason - they are light reading. They exist only because we live in a world where it's necessary to wait. I would go to the used book store and buy about $20 worth of old Archie comics, which I would then load into a cardboard box. My sister was never offended with this. She knew that a used Archie cost $1 whereas a new one would cost at least five dollars. When it came to Archie comics, my sister valued quantity over quality. When I was a student at a Christian theatre school back in 1991, we went to this Christian camp where there were Christianized Archie comics. Those stories did not include Sabrina the Teenaged Witch and the main storylines were about how Archie and the gang made the world a better place by spreading the gospel message. Reggie had to reign in his vanity and Veronica had to deal with her greed and Ju

We used to make fun of people a lot when we were in junior high school. The reason: We were projecting our fears of mediocrity on to the masses. We believed that if we could convince ourselves that we were surrounded by untalented ugly dolts then we would be beautiful by comparison. That's a bad way to look at the world. Wish I could go back in time. Instead of mocking people, I'd have made it a point to see the good in everyone. Then, if I had sufficient courage, I'd let them know what they're good at. But I can't go back in time. All I can do is pray that the people I've hurt have forgiven or forgotten. Ain't gonna live my life that way anymore. Think I'll build people up instead. Inspiration: Chris Bourgon. Happy birthday.

I bought One Direction tickets for her 13th birthday. She has about nine months and three weeks to go until the One Direction concert. By that time, she may no longer be a fan of One Direction. It's entirely possible that she could discover Led Zeppelin or Marilyn Manson, though I sincerely hope not. I don't know who she will take to the One Direction concert. I hope she takes a friend. Twenty years from now, when she looks back at her adolescence, I would like her to see the One Direction concert as a happy memory. And, yes, I'd like her to remember that I made it possible. I was around her age when I went to my first concert. It was Huey Lewis and the News. I went with my mom. This mildly embarrassed me. I would have been mortified had we been at a concert where I would have seen "friends from school" but Huey Lewis was hip to be square. Didn't run into anyone and so I had fun. My mom bought me Alice Cooper tickets for Christmas in 1989 a