A few years ago, i joined a dragonboating team. It did not go well. My dragonboating goals were to drop 25 pounds, to sit at the front and drum, and to get a picture of myself with the team so that i could prove to my then-unborn daughter that at one time in his dark, distant past, Daddy did actually try to lose weight. i only accomplished one of those three goals, and my teammates weren’t happy about it.

Hop in your DeLorean and taking a brisk 88 mph drive to now. i’m about 10 pounds North of my holy-crap-am-i-actually-this-fat watermark. i’ve been through two pregnancies (second-hand). There was a brief breakthrough last year when we resolved to have mywife stay home with the kids, and send me to work every day smashing rocks with a hammer. Since the life of a housewive consists, of course, of putting your feet up on the ottoman while eating bonbons as your children skip and laugh and play and live out their very wonderful existences in perfect harmony around you, we’d amp up the difficulty a little. My wife would now be responsible for hunting for food and making meals.

In the early months of last year, this plan worked out very well. We stopped ordering out. We saved a ton of money. i dropped a bunch of weight. The pillowy fat around my pincushion-like face began to recede, and you could almost see my beautiful hazel eyes, glittering like mystical gems, therein. But since, as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men end up getting that retarded guy shot in the head, so too was our meal plan cranially aerated and left to fester in a slump on the barn floor, as my analogy completely runs away from me. We were no longer ordering fast food, but rather my wife was somehow cooking fast food. We stopped short of installing a deep fryer and wearing little paper hats. My home-cooked diet now consists mostly of pizza, pasta, milkshakes, and the occasional, labour-intensive batch of french fries. Would you like pointlessness with that?

My wife uncharacteristically took up the charge late last year and started taking fitness classes to hurt her body back to pre-dual-pregnancy form. The classes were very expensive, and she took a lot of them. You could buy an awful lot of Peanut Buster Parfaits with that money. And i would have, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids and your lousy dog (and my wife and her fitness classes). The fitness class franchise here in the city is called “Booty Camp”, which is unfortunate, because i’m not an ass man. That’s where poo comes from. If it had been called “Perky Titty Camp”, i may have been less reluctant to cough up the dough.

Nevertheless, my wife took a ton of these classes, season after season. She yo-yo’d back and forth according to her commitment level. i definitely noticed a positive change when she went, and i could see her slipping back into loose pants between seasons. But she would constantly RAVE about how great she felt when she exercised, and how she wished i could feel the same way.

So last week, she ran out and registered ME for fitness classes. They weren’t called “Booty Camp”, thank Holy God, but i knew they may as well have been. i knew it would be filled with women who i’d feel guilty for ogling. i knew it was going to start at some hilarious hour in the AM. And i knew that it was going to hurt like a split nipple on that first day.

My classes are run by a pair of brothers. One brother, the leader of the two, is called Mr. Tits. i call him “Mr. Tits” because that is the only name i could possibly call him. He has very disproportionately-developed pectoral muscles that look like a very soft lady-bosom that i alternately want to cuddle up against, or motorboat, in equal degrees. When i arrived at class the first day last Friday, at 5:45 in the friggin’ morning, it was his brother Bert running the class. i call his brother “Bert” because he kinda reminds me of that Muppet.

Bert and Mr. Tits are not, happily, members of The Hated. They both do physiotherapy, and have worked with enough miserably gimpy people that my inability to raise my arms straight above my head is unlikely to shock them. It was probably par for the course, as well, when on the first day of class, i did three lousy exercises, and then started feeling so unbeliveably nauseous that i thought i was going to vomit Planet Earth. i stopped exercising. Bert tapped two fingers to his shoulder and said something about “make” “vomit” and “badge of honour”, but the ringing in my ears and the overwhelming urge to throw myself out the second-story window and end it all made him difficult to hear. Between near-heaves, i asked him to clarify: “You’ve never had anyone puke in your class [huff huff hwaaargg], and that’s your badge of honour??”

“No,” he said, “HAVING people puke in my class IS my badge of honour.”

Oh, crap.

The rest of the class went downhill from that point. i walked through the shuttle runs while the two ladies in the class glowered at me, through their panting. i held the plank exercise for about three seconds before collapsing on my own face. And i abandoned the forward lunges to take an enormous dump in the middle of class. i could barely croak “goodbye” to Bert as i left the dance studio to stagger back home, desperate for bed. At the top of the stairs, ominously, sat a wheelchair. i remembered joking on my way in if that was to wheel me out when we were done.

That were no joke.

My wife warned me beforehand that exercise was going to feel GREAT, but that the first few classes were going to suck. That was an understatement. Exercising - i mean really exercising, instead of putting some time in on a cross-trainer - after all this time is less like getting into the swing of things, and more like kicking heroin. The key difference, and i mark it as an important one, is that i didn’t get to experience the joys of heroin.

The taste-memory of large fries and a gallon of high-fructose corn syrup ring hollow. My only recourse to make this all worth it, is to somehow figure out a way to inject Boston cream into my neck.

i put in a token post about once a year, in the vain hope that i could rekindle a dead journal and get excited about writing again, but the new demands that were placed on me were too consuming to give myself up to the same schedule as before.

My wife and i had a baby, and my posts narrowed to a trickle. Then we had another, and they stopped altogether. In between, i left my job and started my own company - technically our third baby. And yea, there was much nipple-sucking and cleaning up poop and vomit. And that was just the new company.

So i’m back, more than a year after my last post, to put in my time, and to consider what it would be to keep writing. i used to write very often for the company - every day, at one point - until i realized there wasn’t any money to be made in it. There’s far more value in me writing posts here. If there’s one thing this journal does for me, it’s that it is a recorded history of my life and attitudes as i travel through it. Some stuff has changed, but i’m generally the same person i was when i began. For a relentless self-improver, this is not great news.

i’m still overweight. i’m still unkind. And my ambition still outstrips my actual abilities. Now add to that the fact that i fear i’m a lousy father, and my self-loathing enters a new dimension: time. It’s one thing to take a snapshot of yourself at some point in your life and to dream that you’ll become a better human being at some point in the future. It’s a different thing entirely to keep revisiting the same broken, disappointing individual year after year. i’m like Ebenezer Scrooge without the miraculous conversion. And lately, i’m thinking about death more than i ever did.

Remember that scene in the Disney version of A Christmas Carol where Daisy Duck is dancing to the fiddle music and you swear that if you paused the VCR at exactly the right moment that you could see her undies? … Okay … more to the point, do you remember that scene where Pete, as the Ghost of Christmases Yet to Come points to an open grave, and Scrooge asks him whose grave it is, and Pete lights a match and it has Scrooge’s name on it, and the music peaks and Scrooge freaks out, and Pete laughs and pats him on the back and shoves him in, and then Scrooge falls through this bottomless pit and does a few somersaults and winds up in his own bed?

And you swear that if you paused the VCR at exactly the right moment during that somersault, you could see his McDuck?

i was no fool, even age six. i knew that there would one day be a tombstone with my name on it, and that didn’t bother me. i was raised a Christian, and i was constantly filled with these upbeat stories of going to heaven. What - me worry?

And i still believe that. But the eventuality of my passing bothers me a lot more now that i consider the disarray that an untimely departure will wreak on my young family. i mean, my wife has a strong back, so she can plow … but my little girls? At ages 1 and 4, an honest day’s work in the sun would do them in. These kinds of thoughts keep me awake at night.

If i were to be absolutely honest with myself, i’d admit that i don’t enjoy being a father nearly as much as i hoped i would. Just like taking a job in a cake factory, all i could think about was having all the cake that i could eat. In reality, a cake factory job kinda sucks as much as any other difficult, mind-numbing menial job. And every once in a blue moon, you get cake.

i feel that every once in a blue moon with my oldest, i get cake. But the rest of the time, she’s a very loud, very demanding and very obnoxious 4-year-old. She’s rubbed me the wrong way since she was a baby. She would never stay still for cuddles, always cried, always complained. She’s rarely nice to be around. This problem is compounded by the fact that i only ever see her after i get home from work, which is her witching hour. And witch she does.

The younger one is all cuddles and sweetness. She’s like a little Ewok. But most of the time, i’m trying to keep the oldest one from impaling the cats with BBQ skewers or yelling at her to stop blowing her nose on the teevee that i don’t put enough time or energy into the cute little muffin. i always pictured sitting down with my child and teaching. That’s what i wanted to do. i wanted to teach that kid all about the sun and moon and stars, about science and nature, about why soda pop fizzed and about what koala bears ate for breakfast. But whenever the tall, bony one and i sit together and i try to show her a YouTube video about some amazing animal, or try to help her count, she gives me this fake yawn and says “Daddy, i’m too tired to learn.”

She’s SO not! Believe me! 4-year-olds are such lousy liars.

In business, i’m feeling very alone. My only employee just quit in the middle of a big project - something about being adverse to my unreasonable demands, which included sitting in a comfy chair in a temperature-controlled office near the subway line, and working on a fun project with no deadline, with all the free Diet Pepsi he could handle (Diet Pepsi - his pick, not mine). i’ve been trying to get a trusted colleague involved in the company for some time, and the fact that i’m pulling teeth to do it, after surviving three years in the black on my own steam, give me pause.

In trying to convince him to partner with me, i used this analogy to compare his life at a full-time job with mine as an entrepreneur:

He is driving down a wide divided highway in a very large Oldsmobile, wearing a thick sweater, a helmet and kneepads. The car has dual airbags and is painted bright orange. Despite the illusion of safety, his car could fly off the road at any moment and kill him.

i am going through life straddling a missile. It zips wildly through the air, very nearly crashing into every damned thing, with no straight course and no target in sight. Every so often, the missile will whip around a corner and i’ll catch a glimpse of fabulous riches that i can’t quite grasp. And around other corners, there are angry mobs with pitchforks and shotguns trained on my face. And then, predictably, i die.

And as my lifeless body is lowered into my grave, you swear that if you paused the VCR at exactly the right moment, you could see my underpants.

That’s because i am fat, and Jesus was not. And i’m not talking about the historical Jesus here - no one really knows what He weighed, but given His nomadic lifestyle and diet of loaves and fishes, i wouldn’t put Him past 150 pounds wet. No, i’m talking about White Guy Jesus - about American Bible belt bearded hippie trucker hair Jesus. The guy you see on commemorative plates and airbrushed posters, hanging out near waterfalls and rainbows, surrounded by wolves and unicorns. That’s the Jesus people in my culture are really into. The vaguely swarthy, white blue-eyed roadie for Nickelback Jesus. i’m definitely fatter than that guy.

So no one’s ever suggested i should play Jesus at church. When it came time to handing out roles for Christmas and Easter productions, i was always cast as “fourth wise man” (??), or “evil king”. i played “evil king” a whole bunch. One time i played evil king Nebechudnezzar in the children’s musical, and i got to pace around the stage, cackling and sneering and generally being a big dick. And the set was made of these two huge 10-foot columns, and at one point in the play, all the little kids from the church were sitting under the stage left column, and out of nowhere it started falling, and there was this loud scream from the audience, and all the little kids scrambled away just in time as the massive set piece came crashing down, nearly taking out a few four-year-olds.

A horrified silence fell across the congregation. And i ground my teeth and furrowed my eyebrows, and in my nastiest “evil king” voice, i bellowed “Well?? PICK IT UP!!!”

And the whole church laughed and they told that story to each other for ages, because they weren’t allowed to tell each other penis jokes.

So i got to play evil kings and vile tax collectors, and maybe once i got to play Joseph in the Christmas play, but only under a thick bathrobe so the audience didn’t think i was the pregnant one. And the guy who was picked to play Vanilla Jesus was always the guy in the church who actually had his own carpentry practice … usually the same guy who built the rickety set for the children’s production. He was always the guy who, despite not having long hair, had a decent set of washboard abs that were worth removing his shirt for.

That was partly the reason. Nobody wanted to see me with my shirt off. i remember one church, one year, where Jesus was crucified wearing a T-shirt, but i think some of the emotional impact was lost.

So a big part of it was aesthetic. And the other part was practical: it was much safer to pin a wafer-thin guy to a homemade cross than to drape a chubby guy over it and watch the wood bow. Even with the skinny guy getting vaulted up on the Big T, i remember there was always this moment where the whole congregation held it collective breath, as the population of Roman guards seemed to triple so that the good men of the church could get their chosen Christ up on the cross without incident. The cross was built by the same guy who made the columns, after all.

So now that it’s a New Year and the rest of the world is going through the tired motion of making impossible resolutions, i thought i’d go through the same tired motion and join them. And this year, it’s the same old thing: lose weight, exercise more, eat right, kick heroin, yadda yadda yadda. But this year my wife decided to throw a tangible twist into our goals, by introducing an actual quantifiable proviso: no take-out for a year.

i like this plan. This is a resolution that i can actually try to adhere to. The rules are clear. We cannot buy any convenience food from a restaurant or a grocery store, whether eat-in or take-away or gosh-that’s-sticking-out-of-the-dumpster-but-it-sure-smells-good. Nothing. Everything we eat will be a meal home-cooked or cobbled together from proper grocery store ingredients.

Naturally, this puts nearly all of the pressure on my wife, who suggested this plan to begin with. We had our second child last September, and with the price of child care in Toronto, she wasn’t earning enough to cover two kids in care. So she’s been home with the baby and the toddler, our eldest, playing house and cleaning up and causing me to feel like an enormous male chauvinist despite myself.

So her take-out ban has forced her to take some pretty drastic measures - namely, shopping for food more often than biannually, and keeping the kitchen clean enough so that you can find the sink without chipping through eons of caked food strata.

For my part, i’ve been milking my new role as the head of my own company by leaving every day at 4:30 and hitting the gym for an hour. Since the fifth of the month, i’ve kept up at least four weekly visits at an hour apiece of pure old boring, blue-blooded cardio. And so far, i’ve seen results.

It’s an enormous disappointment that the key to weight loss all this time has actually been diet and exercise, and that the experts weren’t kidding about there being no magic bullet. It really is that hard. My poor wife has to cook even when she doesn’t feel like it, which is always, and do the extra laundry that i generate by gushing sweat all over everything when i collapse in the closet after an hour of cardio.

The result, so far, has been about eight pounds of weight loss. Not a bad start, but it doesn’t make me Jesus.

It was one of those bad luck moments that i’ve rarely had in my generally charmed. i’ve never broken a bone, i’ve never been diagnosed with cancer, and i’ve never had stitches. One of those is no longer true.

i had just finished dropping my daughter off at day care, which is set up in a little house. i usually bring her stroller through the gate to the backyard and cover it up, and then come back out through the gate and walk home. It was on my way down the driveway from the gate that i stepped to cross over to the front walk. There was a mound of ice there.

It was the kind of ice that forms when a pile of snow dwindles and melts until it becomes a shrivelled, compacted stretch of hard lumpy glass. Thanks to a recent thaw, it was also one of the only patches of ice left in the city. i came free-wheeling down the driveway, nearly skipping like a leprechaun and pleased as punch with myself because i loved my daughter, it was a bright sunny day, and i’d lived my whole life cancer free, with intact bones and no stitches. And then, out of nowhere, my legs flew out from under me to my left.

As gravity pulled the rest of me down, i remember thinking “Hey, legs. That’s not the way you ought to go. You see, walking is like controlled falling. i fall forward, and then put a leg out in front to catch myself. Then i repeat the process, thereby achieving locomotion. But this whole business of you swinging out sideways is entirely counterproductive. You see, for one thing …”

And then i hit the ground.

Or rather, my right knee hit the ground.

Or rather, the icy patch.

Or rather, the lousy sonofabitching icy patch.

At this point, gravity and my unfortunate and recent weight gain formed a pact to do their job in tandem. Gravity pulled me to the ground, while my bulk made sure to make it a hard landing. My first reaction was shock. My second reaction was to look across the street to see if anyone had noticed me falling, because that’d be pretty embarrassing. And my third reaction was to say the effword.

Then i got up, gingerly, and said the effword some more. The effword was, in fact, my fourth, fifth and sixth reactions. It also formed the better part of reactions seven through thirty-five, as i shuffled around in a circle, clenching my fists despite the pain, and uttering “EFF eff eff eff EFF eff eff eff” like some profane choo choo train. Like the Little Engine that Could … Offend Your Grandma.

i chugged around my little circle, the words of my non-existent grade ten gym coach running through my mind - “Walk it off, Pidwerbeski. Walk it off.” My name wasn’t Pidwerbeski, and i stopped taking gym in grade nine after it was no longer mandatory. Hmm. Maybe i’d seen that gym coach in a movie?

i sat down on a little bench in front of the day care to survey the damage. How come it hurt so much? Ah, yes. There it was. i had torn my pants wide open at the knee. i hiked my pantleg up a little and looked through the gaping hole. There, in my leg, was another gaping hole. Apparently, i had also torn my knee wide open at the knee.

There was an ugly little flap of skin, growing paler by the second, bunched up below an inch-wide hole in my knee. There was very little blood coming out of the hole, perhaps because of the way the wound was formed. It was deep, but not deep into my knee towards the bone. It was deep down the length of my leg, if you get my drift.

If not, i have buried an extremely graphic image of my wound below the fold. Please continue only if you have an extremely strong stomach or, failing that, a bowl nearby to contain the profuse amount of vomit you’re likely to spew at the mere sight of this.

You see how Beaker’s mouth is like a vertical, open gash? That’s a little like what my knee was like. Picture Beaker with his mouth closed, and you get the idea.

Please, ma’am. Please - it’s over. Please stop vomiting.

Immediately after my knee sent extremely powerful pain signals to my brain, it stopped. i see this as the fulfillment of a contract between my body and brain after a conversation i had last week. i’ve said over and over, last week at the latest, that pain makes no sense to me. i mean, yes - thank you, body. i realize i just slipped on the ice like a dumbass and that i did you some harm. You can stop sending my brain pain signals now. i am well aware of the danger.

So being, as i mistakenly thought, well aware of the danger, my body decided to humour me. It stopped sending pain signals to my brain entirely. It was the weirdest thing. i sat there with a hole in my knee, feeling right as rain.

i wondered for a moment if i should go into the day care and ask for their first aid kit, but i didn’t want to traumitize a room full of adorable little cerubs with my bloody open gash, and i DEFINITELY did not want a Dora the Explorer band-aid. That little girl is so stupid that i worried i’d become more of an idiot through osmosis with her plastered all over my body.

So i marched on home, gaping wound, wondering what my next move should be. Play along at home, if you’re interested. In my position, would you:

a) Wait for six to eight hours in a Canadian hospital emergency ward waving a little flag and saying “yay for universal health care”
b) Sit idly by and hope for some of that rad self-healing that Wolverine experienced in all those non-fiction medical pictorials
c) Sit idly by letting the wound fester because you had this cannot-miss business call from the CEO of the world’s largest corporation in your industry, and spend your six to eight hours later in the day when your time wasn’t so damned precious.

If you chose “c”, you could be me. Aren’t you lucky?

The call could not be missed. i didn’t care if i had a shard of plate glass sticking out of my eye - as long as i could carry on a coherent conversation with mister bigshot CEO, i didn’t care. The call had been scheduled for several weeks, and i wasn’t about to miss it for a simple gaping knee wound.

i did call my wife in the intervening hours. My Big Call wasn’t until noon, and i hurt myself at 9. In between, i asked my wife what i should do, and i sent her a blurry picture of the wound with my camera’s last gasp on a low battery. She said i should get it looked at. Like any brave little soldier, i wrapped my yawning leg hole up in some gauze and waited for the call.

Once it was over, i went down to the walk-in clinic a few blocks away and waited, a patient patient, for the on-call doctor to see me. i was invited into a room about 45 minutes later.

The triage nurse asked me all about the accident and when it had happened. It was this bizarre foreplay where we skirted around the issue for a good long time before she finally asked to see the wound. She asked if i thought it needed stitches. It was kind of like a mechanic asking you if your car needed a new fanbelt. i had no idea. Wasn’t that up to her?

i pulled up my pantleg and slowly began unravelling the gauze. As the dressing became thinner, layer by layer, the stain of seeping blood and amber ooze got thicker and thicker. i felt like i was unveiling the Elephant Man’s face after Botox. The nurse’s eyes grew slowly wider until the Big Reveal. And there it was - my knee nexus - in all its gaping glory.

The nurse said “Uh … yeah. Pfft. Oh yeah. That’s gonna need stitches.” She looked at me as though i’d said “Doctor doctor! My body gets wet when i swim!” As if i should have instantly known that the window into my insides could only be helped by sewing it up. Lady, i’m no doctor. And i failed home ec.

The nurse said the people at reception should have sent me in sooner, and was surprised they hadn’t asked me my condition when i registered. i’m actually glad they stopped doing that at the clinic. i was never a fan of handing my health card to the lady behind the glass and saying, before a crowded and silent room, “IT BURNS WHEN I PEE.’

i’ll spare you the details of my suturing. Suffice it to say, i have a higher pain tolerance than i thought i did. Also, doctors don’t wait for freezing to take effect. It’s like a boxer who starts punching before the bell even rings.

Today, nearly a week later, i grew a beard in the waiting room. i waited a few hours to see the on-call doctor to have the stitches removed. The room was silent when i finally saw him.

He took one look at my black, necrotic knee, and said “Oh.” It was the way your mom says “Oh” when you tell her you knocked up that mentally retarded girl from down the street. It was a despairing, disappointed “Oh.” He took a swab of the fizzing liquid dripping from my wound like Satanic tree sap and put it in a tube. Then he grabbed a pen and said “Is it okay if i write on you?”

i felt like saying “you’ve got a notepad right there, Doc,” but he had alarmed me a little to the point where my inherent smartassed instincts didn’t come as naturally. “Mmsure.”

He drew a circle around my wound. Then he looked at me, locking his eyes with mine. It was a scene from an M. Night Shyamalan movie, where everybody speaks in hushed tones, and the twist ending was that my knee was infected and was going to kill me. He said “You see this circle? You see this red area? If this red stuff extends more than a half inch outside this circle, i want you to call us right away.” i nodded gravely.

He invited me to come back after the weekend to “have the stitches out”, in the same patronizing way you’d tell the son of a death row convict “daddy’s in Heaven now.” It aint’ gonna happen. i’m going to show up on Monday, and the doctor will be there with a bonesaw ready to amputate my leg.

Here i sit, staring intently at my knee, at the circle. My left hand is on the phone receiver. My right hand is on my gun. i keep hallucinating the redness creeping outside that boundary, and my finger tightens on the trigger and the receiver, one after the other. If it happens, i don’t know how fast i need to make the call, but i know this: if i don’t dial the number in time, i’ve got six bullets that say the infection’s not gonna make it to the area my bathing suit covers.

i need that body part to solve the mystery of my burning pee.

There are just as many homeless people here this year as there were last year, and they’re the most upsetting thing about the city. i really have to wonder at the hearts and priorities of the people living here when there are so, so many middle-aged men - all of them black - wandering around downtown either shouting for money or enjoying a crack buzz. Homelessness is, of course, a very complex and difficult problem in many places in the world. What i find suspicious about so many American cities is that the homeless people have dark brown skin.

Here in Toronto, a veritable “tossed salad” of faces and skin tones, as they say, it becomes a bit of a Where’s Waldo exercise to find black homeless people. Our homeless come in all stripes. What’s more, you get a lot of independantly wealthy “weekend homeless”, who appear out of nowhere on weekends in only the high-traffic areas of town. Some of them, like the bearded guy on the Southeast corner of Bay and Bloor, are destitute.

Bearded Guy lies around in a sleeping bag on the sidewalk moaning, cup in hand. The curious thing about Bearded Guy is that he’s only homeless from Thursday to Sunday, and he’s only on the sidewalk when there’s no snow. It’s exciting to know that he is blessed with a miraculous healing experience as soon as tourist and pedestrian traffic dies down, only to spiral into dire need the following weekend. Quite a roller coaster of a life.

Aside from being black, the key difference in San Francisco’s career panhandlers is that they’re much more creative and enterprising. i walked out of my hotel with a fellow i met on the plane, and a very eccentric-looking but absolutely groovy black guy smooved up to us. He was wearing a caramel-coloured shiny leather trenchcoat with a cool black fedora. He was small and scrappy, like i imagine James Brown to be, and he had crystal blue contact lenses that unnerved me a little. He gave us three restaurant recommendations, told a joke, showed us a mathemagical trick, and told us how to get to the tiki bar i wanted to visit, all before finally hitting his pitch about how he wanted to go down the block and tuck into a big bacon cheeseburger. After all that, i was glad to throw him a few bones.

When i walked out of the Bay Area Rapid Transit Station, a panhandler shouted with open arms “WELCUMM A SAN FRANCISCAAA!”.

Contrastingly, pro panhandlers in Toronto expect you to give them money. The most they’ll do for you is open the door to the subway or to Tim Horton’s when you’re perfectly capable of doing it yourself. Most often, you’ll just get a guy robotically chanting “Spare change ma’am. Spare change ma’am. Spare change sir. Spare some change ma’am.” It seems like the difference between a country where everyone is taken care of through social service programs and welfare, vs a country where you’re on your own and completely screwed, while constantly being fed the line that opportunity is all around you and you get out of life what you put into it.

i also hear the sourdough in San Francisco is pretty good.

That’s where you wake up one day to discover that an entire year of your life has sped by, and you didn’t experience a second of it. Oh sure - you have memories of everything that happened. You know that last year, you went to your cousin Kate’s wedding and you broke your toe walking into the coffee table and you took that vacation to St. Sunny, but you didn’t actually experience it. It’s like someone hit the big cosmic Fast Forward button on your life, and you find yourself a year older and a year chubbier.

The gap in the dates between this entry and the last is about a year. My life has been fast-forwarded. A few of the entries i wrote about have been erased forever. To save myself the pain, i prefer to blame this on being sucked through a TimeHole. In reality, suffice it to say the following: if you meet a Seattle teenager in a chat room and he offers - nay, insists - on hosting your site for free, don’t do it. Walk away. You don’t need to suffer the pain of having your funny entries about Farting in Bed and What’s the Deal with the Bazooka Joe Comics deleted for all eternity. You don’t deserve that. Walk away.

Just … just walk away.

So since i didn’t walk away, i find myself in the unenviable position of having had stuff deleted. Everything i wrote from around January 2007 onward is gone. Thankfully, that only accounts for a few entries; my passion and time for this journal died down a little when i acquired a little baby who needed food and diapers every five minutes.

But there’s something inherently awful about losing so-called “knowledge work”. i’d much rather lose something like my teevee, because i know that somewhere in the world, there’s a blueprint for the thing, and that a man in a moustache just has to pull a lever on a machine and - SCHLANG - out comes a new teevee exactly the same as the old one.

Not so with writing … particularly the stream-of-consciousness nonsense with which i fill this site. (i call it “stream of nonsenseness”.) Once the thoughts stream from my mind through my arms to my fingers, and are released by the keyboard, it almost amounts to permission for my mind to forget them. It’s okay to destroy the blueprint. No new teevees are required.

That work is lost and no blueprint exists. Worse still, i can’t even remember what was lost. i think i wrote three entries on the strict high school administration that formed my worldview of people in power and will ultimately lead to the Great Urfhaug Uprising of 2013 (check your history books from the future). There was probably something in there about the baby.

It’s a shame, really. One of the reasons i keep at this journal is so that i can look back years later and wince, and scream at the computer screen and say “IF I ONLY KNEW THEN WHAT I KNOW NOW!!!” Sometimes as i type, i try to listen to those echoes from Future Me. What’s he trying to tell me? Exercise more? Don’t get on that bus? The winning lottery numbers for next Tuesday are blah blah blah? i’m not sure.

i’m left with a few paragraphs to try to sum up one year of a life lived, and it was a doozie. The hugest news is that i left my job last September to strike out on my own. i’ve never really mentioned here what my job was, and i don’t think i will. Basically, like so many of my generation, i sit down all day and push electrons around into interesting piles until it’s time to go home, and if we ever run out of oil and coal and uranium at the same time and the power goes out, i’ll be as useful as a solar-powered flashlight.

My daughter learned to walk and talk and throw temper tantrums this year, while i learned to take tiny steps and to interpret baby babble and to give stern time-outs for such dire offenses as swatting at mommy and daddy’s faces like a little velociraptor and refusing to put the banana peel in the garbage.

That’s it, really. i suppose the year hasn’t been all that interesting. There will be tales to tell, for sure, as i find myself flung from the cliff this month with my severance package expiring, suddenly having to eke out a living on my own by killing whatever dinosaurs i can find and dragging their tasty carcasses back to my luxurious cave, a cave that i couldn’t really afford to begin with. Presently, i’m writing this entry from my hotel room at an industry conference chock-full of dinosaurs ripe for the killing. It’s early in the morning and i’m finishing this entry to achieve a certain peace of mind before i wax up my club and go hunting.

i’m not sure how my two random readers who stumbled here searching for Stephanie Seymour’s cock will feel about it, but for as long as the electrons stay in their neat little piles and our uranium stores keep uraniating, twistedhip has officially returned.

Her fortune:

“Being aware of your fears will improve your life.”

“In bed!” i added. “RAHHH HA HA HA!! Get it??”

She rolled her eyes at me.

My fortune:

“Being kind to others will bring rewards.”

..

…

wait for it …

…..

“… in bed.”

Ah. That was satisfying.

i propose adding “in bed” to certain other phrases to make them that much more palatable. Take, for example, a heavy tax assessment:

Dear Twistedhip:

Your income tax return has been assessed. Please remit the sum of $21443.95 to the Accounts Receivable department of any Canada Revenue Agency branch by March 21st 2008. You may also pay by cheque or money order by mail, or by credit card when calling the toll-free number in bed.

BWAH HA HA HA HA!!! That was so worth it.

Sort of.

Replace “left arm” with “computer” and “amputated” with “sent away to the computer infirmary with a faulty power supply” and you get a clearer picture. i still have my actual left arm, though i may as well not have it for all the good it does me.

My whole life streams through that computer. i do all of my work on it. It is the conduit for my communication with the outside world. My teevee signal marches merrily from the wall up its snaking cords, where the computer beams the signal to other devices in the house. My telephone is hooked up to it. i press the button to extend the little tray that holds my coffee mug. It does everything short of reaching into my chest and squeezing my heart to make it pump blood to my chubby, atrophied limbs … though i’m sure if i searched the tech sector in Chinatown, i could find a peripheral to do that too.

Being without my computer was like being without a boss, a trusted confidante, a professor, a mother, and a smokin’ hot girlfriend who does all sorts of freaky stuff. Its absence from my home was palpable. It made me restless and irritable. i imagine kicking H would be easier than spending more than a day at home without a working box.

When i picked it up from the Hospital for Sick Computers (give generously), my mood swung the other way. i plugged in all the cables and clapped my hands together like a dandy fop who’d just been given a fancy new snuff box. i delighted at the alien-green glow of the fancy new power supply. i listened to its soft hum, and ran my fingers delicately across the smooth, flat surface of the side panel. i sensuously teased the power button with the tip of my tongue, drawing tiny circles around its circumference, dabbing and darting my glistening organ at the button’s centre and gripping the base of the tower firmy, gently. Finally, overcome with passion, i ripped the computer’s lacy bodice from its metal frame and overcame it with the fiery surge that boiled up from deep inside me.

When it was all over, and i lay panting on the carpet beside my ravaged piece of machinery, i began to feel a nervous. It’s clear by now that i am more than a little reliant on my computer. How, oh how, will this complete dependance on technology play out in the face of the inevitable Zombie Apocalypse?

i can see it now: i’m watching my favourite teevee program, which is about a talking, crime-fighting horse who’s partnered with a nearly-retired veteran alcoholic cop (it’s called “Mount Justice” and it stars Ed Begley Jr. as the horse), when suddenly there’s a late-breaking news flash. The news guy says something about mobs of reanimated corpses crowding the city streets before the teevee signal goes blank. Clearly, one of the flesh-eaters has chewed through the hi-speed fibre optic Internet cable that services my high-rise condominium.

i look out my window, and sure enough there they are: thousands of zombies, arms outstretched, ambling up the street and feasting on the sweet, succulent brains of any hapless fool who gets in their way. It’s the Zombie Apocalypse. And i was expecting Jesus.

It’s time to form an evasive plan. Zombies don’t intuitively know how to use elevators, but accidents happen. And i’m damn sure they can find their way around a stairwell, so there’s not a moment to lose. “Quickly!” i say to my wife. “Grab the baby and let’s get out of here.”

My Wife: Where are we going to go?

Me: We need weapons. i’m going to do an Internet search for the nearest army surplus stores.

My Wife: But the Internet’s down.

Me: Right. Shoot. Okay - we’ll have to do this without guns. There’s a hardware store just up the street. Let’s make our way there.

My Wife: What time do they close?

Me: Let me check their site. Dammit.

Alright. Let’s just pick a route that isn’t infested with zombies, and we’ll run for it. You pack up the stroller …

My Wife: Sure thing.

Me: … and i’ll check the traffic cameras to see how many zombies are on the Don Valley Parkway.

My Wife: Internet’s down.

Me: SON OF A BITCH!

Okay okay okay. Take a deep breath. We’ll just call our service provider and …

My Wife: Phone’s VOIP.

Me: Nyaaargh! We’ll check Wikipedia to see which does more damage: a squash racquet or CRAPDAMMIT! It’s still down!

My Wife: i hear scratching on the door.

Me: Then let me write a final farewell blog entry …

My Wife: Can’t.

Me: … email my Mom that i love her …

My Wife: Nope.

Me: … masturbate to obscure German celebrity sex tapes …

My Wife: Nuh-uh.

Approaching Zombies: Nrrrr ….

And so it goes. The zombies crash through the door. In a last-ditch attempt at self-preservation, i throw my baby to them in the hopes that i can sneak past while their mouths are full. No such luck. So i try to use my wife as a shield and muscle my way past, but they pop her open like peel n’ eat shrimp before i can escape the apartment. Finally, i grab the computer tower, yank its cords and wires out like steaming entrails, and slam its bulk into the head of the nearest flesh-eater. There’s a satisfying *crunch* as the zombie’s noggin snaps off its shoulders and lands on the carpet, where one of the cats strolls by to lick the soggy eyeballs.

i blaze a trail through the hallway, hefting my computer tower left and right, dispatching hordes of zombies by flattening their ripe oozing melons against the walls with the devastating bulk of my machine.

Hooray for technology.

i remember my mom asking me about the dolls, and i remember not knowing anything about them. i did overhear her talking to some other adults about how they were really hard to get and that people had to wait in line-ups and stab each other or whatever to snag them. i didn’t desperately want one, but my mom desperately wanted me to have one. It was that kind of toy.

So the day came when she picked me up from day care and there was a big shiny box in the back seat, and inside the box was a bag of potatoes and some other produce from the Farm Boy supermarket in Peterborough Ontario. But next to that box was a Cabbage Patch Kid.

My Kid’s name was William. That should have tipped me off right there. Cabbage Patch Kids all come pre-named with a birth certificate and breeding papers or something like that, and an Xavier Roberts “tattoo” on their bums. They were branded children with papers. Stuffed slave children, really. i used to pretend mine like sewing wallets in the mines.

Most Cabbage Patch Kids’ names are picked straight offa the tin mailboxes outside trailer parks. There are Ruby Sues and Glory Maes and Virgil-Pete Duncans, but no Williams. i didn’t discover this fact til much later.

i also didn’t discover the fact that my Kid’s hair was different from other dolls until much later. Everyone i knew had a girl Cabbage Patch Kid, and at five or six years old, i didn’t know many people. Many, many years later, i met a Cabbage Patch boy. His hair was very different from William’s. It looked “right.” William’s hair looked … weird and fuzzy.

William also had unusual taste in clothing. For example, he had a work-out suit that utilized brand new 1980’s underwire technology, so that you could bend his limbs and pose him as though he were doing stretches. It was all very Newton Johnish. Again, many years after i adopted him, i met some other kids who told me that the suit looked totally ridiculous, and that my Cabbage Patch Kid was probably gay. That’s when i started suspecting something was up, and i held my doll at arm’s length from then on.

i couldn’t remember who had picked out that exercise suit for William. i mean, it certainly couldn’t have been me. i’m not gay. i just figured that William wanted to “get physical,” which meant doing exercises. He wanted to get himself all buff and tan for the other Cabbage Patch Kids, so that he could squeeze into those little jeans that they made for the later series of tiny “Premie” dolls. There’s nothing gay about that, right?

But the hair. It really was the hair that made me start asking questions. i was about twelve before i finally started putting all the pieces together. Why did William’s birth certificate have that crusty powder on it? Why was his hair so fuzzy? What was with the work-out suit? Why was he always trying to go down on me?

i asked my mom, who finally cracked under the pressure of keeping such a dark family secret for so many years.

When she had battled her way through the legions of mobbing parents at We ‘Iz’ Toyz back in ‘82, after having keyed some father of three in the face and stepped on another woman’s neck to get to the shelves, they were all out of boy dolls. She bought Ruby Sue Ella Mae Cooter Beth Bessie-Jo Jolene in the morning before work, and spent the day giving my doll a haircut and whiting out the name on his birth certificate. She ran it through the typewriter and sloppily wrote “William” onto the paper, naming the Kid after my grandfather.

My mom gave my Cabbage Patch Kid a sex change.

If i had had half a brain that afternoon, and if i hadn’t been six, i would have noticed her eyeing me nervously in the rear view mirror as i pulled the doll out of its already-opened box in the back seat of our 1980 Dodge Diplomat. And then i … and then i hugged it. i feel so betrayed.

William, i feel so betrayed. i mean, i would have expected this kind of deception from her, but from … but from you?? i mean - oh GOD - you’ve seen me SHOWER. i … *urp*

*rrroooowlflflfphhhhhaaaargh *

… i’m sorry. i just threw up a little. i don’t like thinking about it. It’s all Madame Butterfly n’ crap. Or The Crying Game, but i wouldn’t know because i haven’t seen it. But i do know that somehow, there’s a weenis involved.

Of course, Cabbage Patch Kids aren’t anatomically correct. That means i’m still straight, right?

Right ??

i called the nice lady the next day and pledged the system to her and her nice family. It was a Christmas miracle, really, except that instead of actually being miraculous, it was kind of just this thing that happened. i figured that since Exemplary Purchase had a shipment of systems (from which my Wii had been pilfered), it wouldn’t be such a stretch to pick one up that Friday. i mean, what was the worst that could happen?

Apparently, this was:

After pledging my hard-won unit, i told my co-worker who ha also waited in the rain that day and had come home empty-handed that Exemplary Purchase had a store room of three hundred Wiis and was waiting til Friday to release them into the wild. The plans were set: we would be conservative and wait til quarter to eight. We’d - you know - play it safe.

We rested that night with visions of sugar plums and all that jazz. Aww yeah. It was gonna be sweet.

i called Exemplay Purchase that Thursday night to confirm three hundred Wiis available Friday morning.

- Hello. Are you stocking any Wiis tomorrow morning?

- Yes.

- And how many do you have?

- Fifty.

- FIFTY??

- Yep. Fifty Wiis, and twenty PS3s.

- *gulp* Is that so? And uh … what do i have to do to get one?

- You gotta line up. There are people lined up right now.

Crapmas.

My heart sank. Fifty (actually forty-nine) lousy units, and people willing to line up overnight to get one. i pictured myself not getting the toy i wanted for Christmas, and it wasn’t a good feeling. Then i pictured going back in time and NOT committing my system to the nice lady at the church with the four nice kids, but that obviously wasn’t going to happen until i had perfected my TIME CRYSTALS.

So to cheer myself up, i pictured the smiling, happy faces on those four nice kids when they open their system … MY system … and their little arms flailing all around because they don’t know what they’re doing, and some kid throwing the controller too hard and breaking the strap and smashing into the Christmas tree, and everyone crying, and me, right at that crucial moment, busting into the living room and ripping the console from the wall, then cackling maniacally as i kick over their fishbowl and leap out the window with the still-steaming system glowing hot under my arm.

But no - no need to get too worked up. The people who were waiting in line the night before? Fanatics. There would be two or three of them, tops. i could still saunter down to Exemplary Purchase at quarter to eight and be, say, the seventh in line for a system.

So that’s what i did. i sauntered down to Exemplary Purchase at quarter to eight the next morning to find myself fifty-seventh in line. Fifty seventh. Or, for my black readers, fitty seventh. i axe you: how you gonna play me like dat? Daaaamn.

The people who lined up after me were, to say the least, dismayed. i laid it out plainly for them: there were fifty Wiis (actually forty-nine), and twenty PS3s. i was number fifty-seven in line. So they’d have to count on at least a few people buying PS3s instead of Wiis if they ever had a hope.

So one guy decided to figure it all out by polling the people in line: what are you buying - a PS3 or a Wii? He burned through all his respondants pretty quickly. When he popped back into line, the results were grim.

Every single person was there to buy a Wii.

It didn’t look good. In fact, it look bad. It looked downright unChristmassy. i’d go so far as to call it Chrustmassy.

i waited a short time longer for my co-worker to appear, and i told him somberly that i was fifty-seven, and he was fifty-eight. He looked confused. “Really?” he said. “Are there only fifty-seven people in this line?” i said yeah. He said there HAD to be more than that.

Then he asked me if i had counted the people inside.

i stepped out of line and looked through the cracks between my fingers. Inside the building, in a little alcove next to the store, there were at least one hundred people coiled around in a tight, exhausted, waited-all-night line-up before the fifty-seven outsiders’ line even began.

We decided to leave the line and go to work. It was the first wise decision we had made.

But instead of spoiling a streak, and in a move of desperation more than hope, we hit a slew of stores on our scenic route back to the office. We went to Warehouse World, which wasn’t open til ten o’clock. Then we went to Hit Movie Rental, hoping that they would sell us one of their rental consoles. (As it turns out, they got out of the business of renting “video-game” consoles just last week.) We hit the good ole itch-in-your-pants Duffy Mall and went on a rapid-fire tour of duty around We ‘Iz’ Toys, The Core by Technology Metropolis, the Prices So Cheap North America is Outsourcing its Manufacturing Mart, and the “Video-Game” Depot, which didn’t actually open til 9:30 but we waited around like idiots anyway.

It had been a crushing defeat, made all the more crushing by the fact that i had a hot, fresh Wii sitting under the Christmas tree that i had foolishly promised to some filthy-faced orphans or whatever. It BURNED me. Doing the right thing ALWAYS burns me, like the time i said “hi” to that ugly new girl in the youth group, or to that awkward dwarf in high school, and they both ended up STALKING me MERCILESSLY. But that’s another entry.

i’ll skip the part about the anguish i endured between Friday and Sunday morning, when i went to church to seal the deal. Suffice it to say, it was palpable. i could palp the anguish. It was able to be palped, should one so choose.

That Sunday morning, extremely valuable Wii in tow, i met with the patriarch of the Chosen Family. “i’m supposed to talk to you about a ‘video-game’ console?” he asked clandestinely. i said yeah. He said “Now, are you going to be out money for this thing?”

i was horror-stricken with the fear that he thought this was a donation.

“NOT IF YOU PAY ME MONEY FOR IT!” i blurted in shock. And then i added “HEH! HEH HEH HEH! HA! Hm. Ahem.”

“Well then … is it … is it here?”

i said yeah.

“At church??”

Flashback to Exemplary Purchase.

“Yeah. At church. It’s downstairs in the youth room.” So he followed me there. Reluctantly, for some reason.

i could already tell something weird was going on, but i couldn’t figure out what it was. Could he not afford it? Maybe that was it. In that case, i tried to give him a gracious ‘out’ as he paced around the room.

“No no no - that’s fine. That’s what you paid for it. i’ll take it from you.” He pulled out his checkbook almost like he was daring me.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing! Nothing at all.” He was stalling. “A Nintendo Wii, eh?”

“Yeah,” i said. “Just like your kids wanted.”

“Riiiiiight … my kids.”

We both looked at each other without blinking.

“Is it a good system?”

“Well … yeah. i like it.” And i WANTED it. What was the hold-up? Why couldn’t he just put me out of my misery?

“Is it as good as, say … the XBox 360?” The XBox 360 is another popular “video-game” system at the time of this writing.

“Um … yeah. The 360 is a good box. i have one of those.”

“[grooooan]. Yeah. So you like it?”

“What - the 360?” (What was going on??)

“No - the Wii.”

“Uh - yes. Yes i do.”

“And you have one?”

“No. But i’ve played with them at press junkets. They’re fun.”

“Well if you don’t have one, why are you giving this one to me?”

“Uh … selling? Why am i selling this one to you?”

“Right.” (What was his angle? i couldn’t figure it out.)

“Well … your wife asked me about it. And they’re really hard to get. Impossible, actually. And so i thought i’d save you the trouble and give you this one.”

“But you don’t have one?”

“No. i went through some stuff to get this one for you.”

“Well, i’d hate for you to have gone through all the trouble … ” He began writing the cheque.

“Wait! Wait a second! Stop writing! What … why are you being so weird? Don’t you want this thing??”

“Well, i … well, you see, it’s like this: i already bought an XBox 360.”

“Wha … ?”

“It has better graphics.”

“Well … yeah, but …”

“And Gears of War, which is a popular game at the time of this writing.”

“Yes it does. But your kids shouldn’t really play G…”

“And i need to play Gears of War, man.”

“But your kids … ?”

“i need it.” He was shaking me by my theoretical lapels, which i don’t have because i dress like a slob.

“Let … go. You’re … hurting me.”

He came to himself and released his grip. “Do you UNDERSTAND now? Do you UNDERSTAND what i have to do??”

“What uh … what do you have to do?” The room was dark, and his face was lit from below to make him look sinister or deranged.

“i have to BUY it, see? i have to BUY Gears of War.”

My eyes widened.

“i have to BUY it, and then i can PLAY it. i can … i can PLAY it before Christmas, even!”

“But … but your kids! Their present!”

“i can TEAR open the box in the dead of night, and play Gears of War all by myself, with no children around … and then i can tip toe around the living room and wrap the box back up for Christmas morning, and no one will know!” He pantomined tip-toeing, and then threw his hands up in the air on the word “know.” Lightning flashed in the windows, even though it wasn’t raining and there are no windows in the youth room.

He starting speaking in sing-song. “No one will know! No one! Not the kids, not my wife, not God …”

“God will know.”

He nibbled at his fingertips a little, like a nervous squirrel. He was hunched over, his eyes rolling up into his head as he scanned an invisible heaven for the prying eyes of God. i grabbed the Wii and slipped out the door behind him, leaving him in the darkness.

And then i flew home with bells, wings, and angel farts on my feet with my even harder-won “video-game” console. i threw it down on the living room carpet and tore into it like a wedding day bride. And then, my friends, i played. Oh, HOW i played!

Christmas bells tolled in the background, and Tiny Tim was heard to remark “God bless us something something” as Bob Cratchet hoisted him up onto his shoulder, but i couldn’t hear him because he’s a character in a book and i was too busy playing madly away on my white-hot tickle-me Christmas toy.

And all was right with the world.

*********************************

Epilogue

*********************************

When i was in line on the Friday morning, having counted all the people up to fifty-seven, i struck up a brief conversation with the man behind me right before he polled all the people to ask which “video-game” console they were buying. i said “Man, this is really something. There hasn’t been a naturally-occurring Christmas phenom like this since the Cabbage Patch Kids in the 1980’s.” (i discount the Tickle Me Elmo craze of the 90’s because i felt that it was largely manufactured by Rosie O’Donnell on her teevee show. Also, being a huge Muppets fan, i can honestly say that Elmo sucks it so hard the finish comes off.)

i looked the man up and down. He was bearded, in his 40’s or 50’s, and looked to be about the right age to have lined up for a Cabbage Patch Kid back when the heat was on.

“The interesting thing about Cabbage Patch Kids,” i continued, “was that here, you’ve got a lot of college-aged kids lining up. That’s not surprising. But with those dolls, it was grown-ups. It was grown-ups duking it out in lines and waiting hours and hours in the cold and rain hoping to catch a glimpse of one.”

A blank look came across his face. He looked as though he was having a flashback, a horrible horrible flashback. All of a sudden i felt as though i was matter-of-factly explaining the Dresden fire-bombings to a war vet who had been there.

And then i remembered what my own mother went through for one of those dolls, and for the sacrifice we all had to make …