Things are on the upswing. Much of what i’ve spent my time blogging against (fight the power! blog for social justice!) is becoming a non-issue. The author of the weight loss book i’m reading dispenses delicious nuggets of health and fitness knowledge readily, but based on his teachings, i am careful not to eat too many of them at a time, because i want to create a caloric deficit.

Tuesday is my weigh-in day and, according to my bathroom scale - despite being a device designed by the healthy, exclusionary Hated - informs me that i am on track to losing 25 pounds by mid-September. Glory be! My lands! What a thrill.

i am so insanely jazzed about being physically fit that it occupies my every waking thought, as being physically fat did a few short weeks ago. i can’t really explain why so much of my self-worth is tied up in my body shape. It’s crazy. Maybe literally. If i had the choice between wearing a giant scar down the left side of my face and being chubby, i’d say bring on the scar! To be fair, though, it’s not a reasonable comparison. Scars are cool.

Whenever i meet someone new and i’m feeling brave, or when the conversation’s not flowing like it should, or if i just want to sound interesting, i ask to see that person’s scars. i heard somewhere that you can tell a lot about people from their scars. It’s true! You have to be a little delicate in the asking, of course - scar origin stories can range from “me and my brothers were rough-housing” to “one time, this guy tied me up in his basement.”

i have a great scar down the middle finger of my right hand that i ungraciously received from a little dog in an antique store. Back in the day, my mom used to be into the most excrutiatingly boring things, from tole painting birdhouses to tole painting mailboxes. Come to think of it, it was probably tole painting that brought us to the antique store. (Tole painting, if you don’t know, is a kitschy hobby that has you following instructions to paint a rose, a bird, or a Pennsylvania Dutch girl on whatever the hell stupid thing you can get your grubby mitts on. Flower boxes, wooden barrels - you name it. No one is safe. If you find yourself enjoying tole painting, seek help now.)

The antique store was run by this crotchety old couple who were clearly more at ease interfacing with inanimate objects than people. We spent hours in that mildewy little store - i don’t know why. My mom just kept yakking on about this and that while i tried desperately to find something in the store to engage my overactive imagination. The best i could come up with was some sort of wooden dollhouse with Donald Duck painted on the side. It was the closest thing the store had to a toy, and i remember staring at it intensely, trying desperately to let it invoke something fun or interesting in my 10-year-old brain, like an uncomfortable guy in a sperm donor clinic staring at a glossy magazine and waiting for inspiration. But there was nothing - NOTHING - and my brain started to atrophy and my legs felt all prickly and i broke out in a sweat. i hated that feeling.

Beside the cash register was a dog. It was a little dust-mop of a dog, maybe about half the size of a dollhouse with Donald Duck painted on the side. After i had milked every possible shred of interest from the dollhouse, i moved on to the dog. Now you must understand, i loathe dogs. The animals, the people who own them, dog culture - i can’t stand any of it. i dunno if this was the case at the time, or whether this incident helped to solidify that feeling. All i can say for sure is that given a dog and a decrepit old dollhouse with Donald Duck painted on the side, i opted for the house.

By the time i half-heartedly shuffled over to the dog, it was not a happy puppy. It said bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark before i even came close. i didn’t like this dog, and it didn’t like me. We stared each other down and, i felt, had a mutual understanding.

But the woman who owned the store didn’t pick up on this subtle boy-dog social cue. She said to my mom “Oh! Does he want to pet the doggy?” Mom said, doubtfully, “Do you want to pet the doggy?” i said “No, i don’t want to pet the doggy.” The woman persisted “Are you sure he doesn’t want to pet the doggy?” Mom said “I don’t think he wants to pet the doggy.” i said “I don’t want to pet the doggy.” The doggy said “bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark.” The woman said “I think he should pet the doggy.” Mom said “No, i really don’t think he wants to pet the doggy.” i said “i don’t want …” The old man butted in “COME HERE AND PET THE DOGGY.”

Then he grabbed my wrist and thrust my hand towards the doggy. Grabbed it, he did. The dog and i had this moment where we just looked at each other, bewildered. The dog stopped barking. i stared down at the dog. The dog scowled up at me. Clearly, neither of us were very happy. The old man yanked my arm further towards the dog and said “Here! Pet the doggy.” i knew there was no getting out of it, so in a gesture of goodwill i sort of feebly waved at the dog, wiggling my fingers.

Faster than you can say “the dog lunged up at me and clamped on to my finger,” the dog lunged up at me and clamped on to my finger. Reflexively, i jerked my hand back as the mutt’s snaggly tooth trawled along my finger from second knuckle to fingernail, drawing a modest, red line down my finger. Since i was a big pussy, i started crying. i don’t remember it hurting too terribly, but i do remember being tremendously pissed off at the old couple.

The woman started acting all shocked, saying “my goodness! He never bites at home! Your son must have spooked him!” while the old man shook his head like he expected it to happen. “Nope! Naw! You never wiggle your fingers at a dog. No sir. You always make a fist - make a fist when the dog doesn’t know ya, that way he kin smell ya and he won’t bite, an’ blah blah blah yadda blah i’m an idiot.”

Mom, none too pleased, ushered me off to the car. The most the old couple could do was craft far-fetched explanations about why their dog biting me was my fault. To this day, the middle finger of my right hand bears a pale scar, from second knuckle to fingernail. And also, i hate dogs.

So, dear readers … got any scars?

Naturally, the biggest fear any first-time father has relates to whether his baby will be born a freak. He spends his time worrying about whether he spent too much time in front of teevee and videogames irradating his sperm sufficiently to produce some kind of flipper baby or Progressive Conservative. Right about now, our baby is the size of a tasty peanut, and its little rudimentary heart is already beating - a fact which i find unbearably adorable. In contrast, my heart is the size of a tasty peanut and is desperately trying to beat beneath layer upon layer of manboob. Decidedly unadorable.

My plan all along was to be fighting fit by the time my baby arrived, and i’m lucky enough to have been given 8 months’ notice. The baby is due in February, which gives me plenty of time to rip my body into a savage, baby-chasing machine. The desire is deep-seeded; ever since i saw slightly older friends of ours hoisting and hefting and chasing after their toddlers, i knew i wanted to have a fighting chance. Right now, i have trouble holding a standard sack of potatoes, let alone a spitting, pooping, wriggling one. A heaping helping of effort is all i need to advance my body to fathering mode.

i must admit my mind is full of devious schemes to make my baby an ass-kicking one. i’m prepared to apply everything i ever heard about exemplary child-rearing, focussing my energy like a superfather layzzzor beam at my poor, unassuming and unborn child. For example, i heard once of former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney that his parents had him order meals for the family at restaurants, count out change, determine the tip, etc etc. Whether or not his practicing social skills led to him being such an intolerable weasel is beside the point; it’s a relatively easy thing to require of your child, and i’m sure it goes a long way toward boosting his or her confidence and ability to interface with people.

My wife, likewise, has all kinds of tips and tricks up her sleeve. She knows she wants to talk to the baby non-stop - in the womb, out of the womb - she’s read that keeping a running commentary of everything she’s doing while the baby watches is a great way for the little sponge to pick up language skills. Stuff like “i’m cleaning this fork. That’s because when we eat with a fork, it gets little bits of food all over it and that makes using the fork for a future meal unpleasant.”

Of course, it’s all fine and dandy to dream about with 8 months’ lead time. i have a sneaking suspicion that once that baby gets shot out of the womb, God pushes the fast forward button on life and there’s scarcely a chance to catch your breath, let alone teach your baby to do your taxes.

i’m tying this entry up so that i can head off to the gym. Grunt! Pant! Musn’t let … baby … see me … fat …

Last week, my wife and i took a day off to go see her brother graduate.

It strikes me that one event in the life of one family can be received so differently from the same event in another family. i could picture other people saying “drag - i have to go to my brother-in-law’s graduation out of duty and i don’t wanna go but i have to because i’m related by marriage.” Not the case with my brother-in-law. A few years ago, i predicted (much to my wife’s dismay) that by this time, he’d be in jail. He was working some piddly job stocking shelves at a grocery store (no offense to career shelf-stockers, if you do believe that to be your calling. Lord knows the world needs shelf-stockers). Any money he earned went into his car, which is basically like feeding your money to an excitable dog. Beyond that, he quite enjoyed the mary-jiwanna, which i’ve known to be the Supreme Demotivator.

i probably sold him short a little too early. At that time, his parents had just been through a divorce, and while my wife had me as a sort of foundation in turbulent times, he was paired up with his then-unstable (emotionally, financially) mother. Nothing against her either, of course - there are just times in our lives when we’re more or less “together.” This was a very “apart” time for the whole family.

Flashback to last Friday, when my brother-in-law was slated to accept his college diploma for millwrighting (call him a factory jack-of-all-trades). He won a great job directly out of school, he has a savings plan scheduled for a down payment on a house, and he’s probably one of the friendliest people on the face of our glorious planet Earth. So it was with great pleasure that i hopped on the commuter train last Friday morning to attend his graduation.

The kind of pride you experience during this kind of event more or less scales up according to how disadvantaged the participant happens to be. If my brother-in-law had done all of this with only one arm, it would be an incredible moment. Know what i’m saying? If he was blind, a chorus of angels would ring out when he went to accept that diploma. If he was born with just a head and three big toes and overcame his dyslexia to write his final exams with a busted click-pen, whoof! i can only imagine.

That’s why you, dear reader, are less than excited about seeing your own flesh-and-blood sister accept her third community college diploma this year for the office administration assistant manager of business studies program.

Rifling through the graduation leaflet was a bit of a laugh. We were there in Mighty Oshawa’s Civic Auditorium, where the local junior (read:crappy) league hockey team plays, where kids have to get out of the pool at 6 o’clock for adult swim, and where rock history’s greatest bands made musical magic:

Every page of the booklet bore the name of a new and ridiculous Durham College program. Private Investigation. Entertainment Administration. Professional Golf Management. i’m not making these up - they’re directly from the booklet. These days, colleges are just throwing together programs to attract really stupid people and take their really stupid people money. Private investigation?? Days were, if you had a Polaroid and a penchant for voyeurism, you were a private investigator. Now you’re made to feel like you gotta cough up a year’s tuition to take Peeping 101. My wife spotted a program title that describes the job she currently has, for which she didn’t attend school, and wondered why anyone would want to study for a job they’d normally get while trying to find something better. But as i said before, the world needs shelf stockers. If you want to rise above your humble Oshawa origins and pay for 2 years of an Office Assistant program, more power to you. Just don’t expect me to come to your graduation unless you’re bona fide retarded and missing a few limbs.

A certain terrible Toronto school which shall remain nameless (rhymes with “Schminternational Aschmademy of Schmart and Deschign”) takes the “we-offer-fun-course-titles-to-stupid-people” scam to extremes. You can sign up for a course in video game design if you like to play Halo and you can squeeze your parents for the ten thousand dollar a year tuition. Ten large, people, to help saturate an already miniscule job market with your no-talent ass. If i sound harsh, it’s for good reason. Game design is my line, and about six years ago i graduated from a community college and saturated an already miniscule job market with my no-talent ass. It took me the entire six years to be anything but unreasonable at my job, and only with the benefit of some very solid (if reluctant) teachers sitting next to me day after day, month after month, holding my hand a suckling me on their sweet teats of knowledge. And for that, i thank them.

Nothing more needs to be said on the matter. Colleges are business, right? Gone are the lofty days of post-secondary education where visionary, idealistic hippie profs made it their duty to churn out critical, free-thinking students of the world to make it their own and effect positive change. These days, if you know how to take notes and you can afford tuition, you’re in. i was at Trent University for a brief time, and found myself surrounded by stupid people. People who couldn’t properly place an apostrophe in a sentence. People who would let out an exasperated sigh whenever i’d ask the prof a question. One particularly dull girl once barked at me “just let him teach, would you??” Translation: im just trying to copy down what i think will be on the exam, and you’re thirst for knowledge is interfering with my plan’s to remain as stupid as po’ssible.”

Times like those, i wish i knew karate. But i digress.

The graduation ceremony was a wild and woolly affair, filled with cap-and-gown-clad jocks meat-heading their way up the aisle to Pomp and Circumstance. The whole crowd was full of thick necks, crew cuts, big chins, tattoos … and that was just the girls. (hee hee hee ho ho ho me so funny) They were all assembled, appropriately, down in the rink where the hockey players knock around the hackey sack or whatever the heck that thing is. Parents, friends, and unwed teenage moms filled the stands, separated from their loved and/or pimped ones by a thick sheet of plexi-glass that tells hockey players where to stop skating.

i mock, but it was really a great moment when my baby brother-by-marriage walked up the ramp and received his diploma. After all was said and done, we told him we’d take him and my father-in-law out for lunch anywhere he wanted to go. Where did he want to go? The friggin’ Mandarin.

The Mandarin, if you don’t know, is a chain of Chinese buffet that deals in what many suburbanites consider to be upscale, classy food … and y’can eat as much of it as yuh want, which can’t hurt - especially since Oshawa is, i believe, the third most obese city in the Dominion of Canada. When the Mandarin opened up there a couple of years ago, it was all anyone from Oshawa wanted to talk about. Nearly everyone i spoke to from Oshawa, even years after the opening, mentioned to me at least once. At LEAST once. “Didja know we got a Mandarin? Y’can eat as much as yuh want!” Feh.

This, only a few short days after i committed to losing 25 pounds by mid-September.

We pulled into the parking lot midday Friday. The joint was packed. There were almost no spots left. We walked in, and everyone was wearing jp’s. (That’s “jogging pants” to you - and people who wear them aren’t known to jog.) And let me tell you, the jp’s were packed. There were more fat people in there that day than you’d find at … at the Mandarin in Oshawa. That analogy doesn’t work out so well, but you get the idea.

A few years prior, i was on a commuter train, the exit of which was blocked by two enormous ladies. They were so absurdly fat it was funny, because it’d kind of be like seeing two bald midgets dressed as kangaroos standing next to each other. One bald midget dressed as a kangaroo? Tragic. Two? Hilarious.

People on the train were already straining to keep a straight face without these two sharing their diet advice. Said one woman “i really do try to eat well when i go out.” (Sniggers from the crowd on the train.) Said the other, “i know - me too! i mean, when i go to the buffet … ” (people burying their beet-red faces in their hands) “… i don’t go crazy. i take one tour around and get a little of everything, and then i go back and get a plate full of whatever i liked.” (losing it. People actually losing it on the commuter train. i don’t think the fat ladies noticed.)

So i found myself touring around the buffet with the spectres of those ladies haunting my head. i quickly identified everything that would kill me, including deep fried anything and chicken fried rice. i noticed, in passing, that the sushi table had a sign saying “Our sushi does not contain ‘raw fish’.” An entire Oshawa-slamming entry could be written on that sign alone, but i’ll restrain myself.

i’d like to report that i ate a plateful of fruit that day, but the fact remains that while i ate two plates of relatively lower-calorie food, i still had two damned plates of the stuff. Plus dessert. The author of the weight loss program i’m reading has me counting the calories in food and basing my portion sizes on hard numbers, which looks like it’ll help me out in the long run. But at the time of my buffet experience, i hadn’t read that far.

And finally, in my last defense, it was Oshawa. i was at the Mandarin. It’s as they say - “When in Rome, bust out the JP’s.”