I  recently had a “for God’s sake, the Minister’s coming up the walk, put some pants on” moment.

First, some background.

I have a good friend, Dr. Scott [Let's just call him Dr. Scott. His actual name is complicated.].  He’s a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina. Scott writes songs – mostly spiritually-themed songs. He accompanies himself on the piano. The songs are very good and he sings them very well.

Scott and I go to the same church, Sunset United, in scenic South Regina [http://www.sunsetunited.ca/.] A couple of years ago, our Minister, Kathy, suggested that Scott perform some of his songs on an evening during Lent. Kathy likes to do evening “events” during Lent. Scott loves to perform, but didn’t want to do something that looked too much like a concert. No problem, said the Reverend Kathy, Ross will speak. He’ll write up some reflections on Lent,  on your songs, whatever.

I was happy to be asked. It was fun. As much fun as a Lenten Event can appropriately be.

Since then, we’ve done a few of these “Scott Sings – Ross Reads – Kathy Presides Reverently” things, earning ourselves effusive praise from  the near dozen people who turn up.

Professor Scott is on sabbatical right now and has used some of his time to record a CD, entitled “Faith is a Bicycle”. It’s not out yet. The CD launch will be at Eastside United Church on April 20th, at 7:00 with an unofficial relaunch at Sunset United on the 26th.

Scott has planned a bit of a prairie tour to promote his CD. He’s invited me to tag along and do some “Ross Reads” bits. I’m in the process of writing those bits. Really. I am. It’s not the sort of thing you can rush, probably. You just have to be ready to write when the bit wants to be written. And I am.

Kathy, sadly, cannot join us for the tour, because she has a job. Very inconvenient. Yet practical. So, we’ll be taking off with only our Google maps and without adequate spiritual direction. Kathy will keep her phone on, in case we lose our way.

We’ll be all over the place -  Maple Creek, East End, maybe Saskatoon. Calgary. Medicine Hat. Edmonton. Selkirk. Winnipeg.

Scott has created a website: http://scottanthonyandrews.com/ . You can keep up with the news there. His website is much flashier than this one. Most websites are flashier than this one. I’m all about “essence”.

If you would like a preview of what you might hear when you buy the CD or attend one of the “events”, listen to this: http://music.cbc.ca/#/artists/Scott-Anthony-Andrews. It is the song “I Say Amen to That”, which will be on the CD. Unless you have an ear of tin or a heart of stone, you will like this song.

So. Anyway. I was out for coffee with Scott the other day. He’d been exchanging emails with my Sister, Heather, who lives near Maple Creek. Among other things, Heather is the Cultural Soul of the South West. That is an unofficial title and, like “blogger” does not have any financial consequences. She and Scott have been busy organizing the concert at the Maple Creek United Church – May 4th, 7:30. I have tried to stay out of the “organizing” part of this, because I am a “big picture” guy and details simply don’t matter to me, insofar as I am even aware of them. Scott and Heather had been discussing the poster that would advertize the Maple Creek concert. My only contribution to the poster project was to suggest that my two blog sites appear on the poster – next to my name, preferably.

Yes, I have two sites; this one that you’re on right now, and the Huffington Post one: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/ross-macnab/. Having two blogs has doubled my blogging income.

Scott had put my HuffPost site on the poster, but he and Heather worried that, if we put up the web address of this site [www.mcmacman.com] people might actually go to it and read what’s there. “We’re playing to a church audience,” Scott explained, “Your sister mentioned to me that the mcmacman blog has quite a bit of bad language.”

“What the …,” I began, then thought better of it.

“And another thing,” Scott said, somewhat uncomfortably, “I looked at the mcmacman site the other day. The most recent post is from December.”

“Yeah, well not having written anything lately is a characteristic I share with Charles Dickens,” I [ought to have] said.

So. I’m profane. Worse, I am “yesterday’s” profanity.

I think Scott and Heather worry needlessly. My Mom is a United Church Lady and she reads my stuff. Of course, she has a natural affection for me, having given birth to me and raised me to be the foul-mouthed fellow that I am. Others might not be so tolerant of my bad wordiness. Recall, however, this is the United Church. We’re pretty relaxed about many of the things that get other religioes agitated. Just as an example, it’s fair to say, in UCC circles, that denial of the divinity of Jesus is less controversial than the denial of global warming. Premarital sex is probably okay, so long as it is “scent free” and you go outdoors to smoke afterwards. These, of course, are not serious examples, but you know what I mean. Let’s just say I have always been comfortable in the United Church.

As for my neglect of this site, I confess that my efforts have been expended elsewhere and nowhere. I try to put something on HuffPost as often as I can, just because, well, come on, it’s the HuffPost – people might read my posts there. People I don’t know, I mean. People I have not individually contacted and said “hey, read this.”

Not only that – the HuffPo people take care of the site. I’m not good with technical details. You might notice that I have no interesting graphics or any other bells and whistles on this site. Every time I try to do something to make the site appear more interesting, I get confused and frustrated and I give up. As a result, this thing is like a great long Word document. Not so with the HuffPo – they know what they’re doing.

Also, you might have noticed that I no longer invite comments. Why doesn’t Ross want to hear what people think? Can’t he handle a little constructive criticism? Well one might ask. No. The answer is that I am inundated with things purporting to be comments on my blog posts but are actually just attempts by businesses to get their websites on my website. I have seventeen thousand pending comments. Seventeen thousand. I can’t sift through them to figure out what’s a real comment and what’s just spammity spam. I can’t even delete them all, there are so many. So, I’ve just turned off the comment invitation. If you really want to reach me – email me at rjmcmac@gmail.com. Do not offer to sell me any product to enhance my manhood.

I’ve looked this over. Over eleven hundred words, not a single bad one. And, as soon as I click “publish” I will be have cleared up the troubling perception that Ross Knows has died. I’m clean. I’m current. Put me on that poster dammit.

It’s Christmas.

I have a Turkey Story.

I’ve been telling my Turkey story for a very long time. My story predates both Mr. Bean’s “Turkey on His Head” skit and Stuart McLean’s “Dave Cooks the Turkey”. I’m not claiming to have invented the Turkey Story genre, nor that I served as an example or inspiration to either Mr. Bean or Stuart McLean – neither of whom likely heard my story before creating his own. I am just saying, consistent with my hipster image, that I was telling a Turkey Story before it was “a thing”.

My Turkey Story, unlike the others, is a true story. Fictional stories, their characters and especially their turkeys, are free of the restrictions that bind true stories like mine. Not having to worry about details like factual accuracy, Stuart McLean could focus entirely on making his story interesting and funny. I can only be as entertaining as reality allows. Keep that in mind as you read this, and be gentle with your judgments.

As I mentioned, it was a long time ago. A simpler time – before the internet and blogging and the Vinyl Cafe radio show. My wife and I were relative newlyweds and this was the first Christmas in our first house together. And, we had a baby – Little Boy Number One [not his real name].

I was a young lawyer working hard to establish a career [had I known then what I know now ...] and trying to make an impression [a favourable one]. When I started with the Branch, I was a single guy, maybe a bit irresponsible and unreliable. I wanted to show that I’d evolved, matured. What better way to introduce my colleagues to the “adult” version of Ross, than  by taking on one of the more substantial tasks of The Office Christmas Party? Other than hosting it. I’m not an idiot.

My father once told me that, in some cultures, their conception of hell is an eternity spent planning an office Christmas Party.

Office Christmas parties are catered. At our office Christmas party planning session, the question ought to have been: “Who will we hire to cater our Christmas party?” Somehow, that relatively sensible question became: “Should we have this catered or do it ourselves?” Even with the question framed so dangerously, surely, sanity would prevail?. It did not. One of my colleagues waxed wistfully about the traditional Christmas dinner – all homemade wholesomeness, warmth, sincerity, roasting chestnuts and figgy pudding. Madness. Sadly, this lone soul yearning for turkey and gravy, in addition to being much-beloved, was The Boss.

What a great idea.

Coincidentally, my wife, who was also a young lawyer at the time – and also working hard to establish a legal career, but with some success – had been given a turkey by a grateful client. It was a big athletic turkey from a Hutterite colony she had done some work for. We didn’t have any plans for this turkey because we were going out of town for Christmas. And, really, I don’t like turkey.

Serendipity – My colleagues needed a turkey; I had a spare one sitting in my freezer.

I volunteered to cook The Turkey. Yes I did. The centerpiece of the Christmas dinner. The focus of the event. The head liner. The most important character in the Christmas pageant, with the possible exception of the Baby Jesus, and the only one who gets eaten.

I had never cooked a turkey.

I’d seen lots of turkeys being cooked. It looked pretty easy. Put it in the oven. Some time later, take it out. Ooohs and aaahs ensue and Christmas is complete.

In case you hadn’t guessed – this is one of those “what could possibly go wrong?” stories. It’s a tired old thing, I know. But it’s Christmas. We celebrate old traditions, even corny ones. Just let yourself go with this.

I knew it couldn’t be as simple as it looked. I asked my wife. She also had never cooked a turkey and, despite her gender, had no innate knowledge of how to do it. She suggested I look in a cook book. I was hoping she would volunteer to take on the task entirely. I knew better than to ask. Again – I’m not an idiot. She didn’t even offer to help, so confident was she in my abilities. Or something.

In retrospect, I ought to have practiced – bought a flock of turkeys and cooked one every day until I’d worked out the bugs. Our mothers and grandmothers perhaps cooked turkeys so well because they’d cooked so many of them? No. Somehow, I figured I would cook this one turkey exactly right the first time. Working without a net.

The Day of the Office Christmas Party came. So soon. The plan was that I would cook the turkey at home and take it over to the party, which my Boss was hosting, conveniently, half a block away.

I used “The Joy of Cooking” – the essential basics cookbook. From what I read, it really wasn’t very hard. The Joy recommended, for a moist and flavourful breast [the turkey's], that I place a butter-soaked cheese cloth on it. Oh. That sounded great. Who doesn’t love buttery breasts? I pre-heated the oven and melted some butter in a bowl. I set a cheese cloth in it – soaked it well. I put the turkey in the roasting pan [I can't remember if I made stuffing. That's something I'd probably remember, so let's assume I didn't. Remember - True Story]. When the oven was ready, I folded the buttery cheese cloth carefully and placed it on the top of “The Bird”, as I was now calling it.

The Bird was big. It filled the oven. It had to be big. It was shouldering a huge burden. Not only would it be feeding all of my colleagues and their spouse-like guests, it would be nourishing their spirits.

My wife had gone out for the afternoon with the Baby – the better, one assumes, to avoid any responsibility for this turkey.

About half an hour, forty minutes later, I  was washing up a few things. We had what I suppose one might call a “galley kitchen” – a narrow room with the sink and cupboards and counters on one side and the oven, fridge, microwave, smaller counter and some more cupboards on the other side. I was standing at the sink, across from the oven, when I noticed I was casting a dark shadow on the kitchen wall. I heard some crackling. I turned. There was a bright light shining from the oven door window. No, this was not a near-death experience. Not yet. My turkey was on fire. Somehow, the cheese cloth that was so butteringly moisturizing my turkey’s burgeoning breasts had ignited and had become the big fluffy wick to a huge turkey candle. Then, the heat and flame from the cheese cloth spread and the whole turkey was a ball of fire.

I opened the oven door, pulled the fiery rack out. This turkey was going to burn down my new house. But, even as I panicked and reviewed my limited options  – the fire extinguisher? baking soda? I paused: I have to save this turkey. It IS the Christmas Party. If I don’t salvage this flaming Hutterite free range and extremely flamable son of a bitch, I will be known forever as “a former colleague who ruined Christmas”.

Meanwhile, things are getting very hot.

I took the first thing I could grab off the counter – which turned out to be a large plastic fork – and I began beating the turkey with it. By now all the skin had burned off and the fire was restricted to the flavour-boosting cheese cloth. The smoke detector screamed in the background. I picked away at the cheese cloth, which had fused to the turkey’s breast by this point. I dunked the flaming bits into the fat at the bottom of the pan, which extinguished them.

I sat on the floor, exhausted, next to a big, black, smoking, skinless bird, its breasts littered with bits of charred cheese cloth. Eventually, the smoke detector went quiet. I looked in my hand and saw, to my horror, that the plastic fork was missing a tine.

The only good news was that, this being the Christmas season, there was plenty of rye in the house.

It had only been in the oven for a few minutes. It was still raw. Yes, it was now skinless. Who eats turkey skin anyway? Yes it was black. So very black. Let’s call it “seared”. I cleaned it off the best I could, got the ashes out of the roasting pan. I gave up trying to find the missing fork tine. I put The Bird back in the oven. I spent the afternoon nursing that bastard back to life. I basted it every few minutes. I basted myself more often. Within a few hours, it was done. And so was I. As I have so many times in my life, I assumed that a bad situation would magically be made better if I drank a lot. And, like always, it worked – as far as I could tell.

I took that beautiful black bird out, put the top on the roaster, put it on our toboggan and staggered to the party.

My coworkers were speechless. Sure, they’d all had burned or overcooked turkey before, but none had ever seen a turkey that had actually been set on fire. Nor one so very very black. I imagine they assumed the worst. I don’t know for sure. I was pissed. I declined the offer to carve my masterpiece. “Let the host do it,” I can imagine I slurred.

The turkey was beautiful. Moist and tender. The juices were sealed in, I guess. And, my aggressive basting paid dividends. I remember enough about the evening to report that my first turkey was a tremendous success. It was a turkey that they’d all be talking about many years hence.

I don’t know who ate the tine.

[WARNING: the usual.  Consider yourself warned. You have only yourself to blame. And, if pressed, I will claim that none of this is true.]

Surely, Ross is not going to trash the sacred Family Supper?

No. The inmates at  McMac Manor are habitual, almost daily, participants in that mythical ritual. Like the family itself, McMac family suppers are rarely pleasant and are frequently awful. However, it has never occurred to us to give up on the practice of gathering together for the evening meal – any more than it has occurred to us to give up on the “family” thing entirely. In the end, the only thing that signals serious family dysfunction  more than a fucking awful family supper is not having family supper at all. We may be losing, but we’re in the game.

Scientists have studied the family supper. To death. The results are good. Eating together as a family at least four times a week unleashes a shower of beneficial effects – lower risk of obesity, substance abuse and eating disorders. Increased chance of graduating from high school. Family suppering kids are less likely to get into fights or be promiscuous. They’re more well-mannered. They develop healthier eating habits. They feel like that have a more stable home environment.

Wistful websites describe the family dinner as an opportunity for conversation; family members sharing the day’s experiences, discussing current events; kids learning to communicate and to listen; parents making that essential connection with their children’s lives and passing on the value of their insight and experience. It is a rich, nurturing time, fostering familial bonds which will last a lifetime.

Perhaps this is the way family suppers work in the lab, where these families were studied by eager scientists searching for the magic secret of the successful family. Perhaps all those good things happen to family supper regulars who follow the prescribed suppering protocols. But, what about us? After a typical family supper, all I want to do is kill them, then myself, then do dishes. I’m not saying that we don’t  or won’t enjoy all the benefits the studies predict. I wouldn’t describe us as a family of fat, drunk, drug addicted, violent, promiscuous highschool dropouts with bad manners and poor nutritional habits – or, at the very least, I’d like to think it’s only part of the story. I’m assuming that some benefits will flow from our practice because all the misery and mayhem, violence and hate occurs at the dinner table every evening and we just don’t have the will or energy to get into any further trouble. And, I comfort myself by assuming that most families are like mine.

Like all parents, we care about our kids’ nutrition. Like most kids, our boys use that information to torment us.

Eat your peas.
I DID!
No. You didn’t.
I ate most of my peas.
You hardly ate any. You ate maybe one pea.
You gave me too many peas. Why do you always give me too many peas?
Well, eat half of your peas.
…

Eventually, the kid is eating one pea at a time, claiming with each pea that he cannot eat even one more.

While the attention of two university educated adults is intensely focused on negotiating the one-at-a-time pea eating of a seven-year old, the middle boy has tossed his broccoli under the table and the youngest has wandered off.

Then, we move to rice or potatoes. Salad. Corn. Beef. Chicken.

Multiplied by three boys.

And on into the night. The food cools and eventually becomes inedible. The struggle threatens all evening plans. It is a battle of mutually destructive wills. As always: lose-lose.

This version of the food fight ruined most days for many years. But it wasn’t the worst thing.

Sibling rivalry and other family “issues” are at their most intense around the supper table, when we wholesomely force mortal enemies to sit facing one another and place sharp implements in their hands. The supper table is a cage: only one can come out alive – at most.

Worst is when there is a sibling truce, so the three can unite to focus on the real enemy.

My non-ex wife and I erred in showing them that we care that they eat. We compounded that error by exposing them to our political, moral and religious views and by demonstrating through word and deed that we care about those things and take them seriously. The next time I have kids, I’m not letting them know that I care about anything. Kids have few opportunities to exercise real power. Fucking with one’s parents is a  source of power. Showing contempt for everything that parents value, while refusing to eat your vegetables? Is  there anything more satisfying?

I can remember as a child denying my mother the satisfaction of having a child with good table manners. That’s how rebellious I was – I put my elbows on the table, didn’t use a knife and fork properly, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, chewed with my mouth open. And I laughed. I mocked her horror.

Whoa. Bad Ass.

If only things were still that simple.

My kids swear at the table. Swear? Are you kidding? Why would they do that?

Because, we don’t want them to.

We subscribe to all the “inclusive” political orthodoxies.

Our kids joyfully and profanely spew racism and misogyny, mock the poor and disabled, scorn the overweight and the unattractive.

We encourage empathy.

They loudly express angry misanthropy. They side with the bully. They cheer the oppressors.

The books say “lead by example”. We do. That’s how they know which buttons to push.

But perhaps the worst is their urge to shock us with graphic sex talk. I’m sure this wasn’t happening in those studies of happy families launching themselves into successful lives by suppering together. Our boys are constantly accusing each other of participating in all manner of wild, sometimes violent sexual activity – consensually or otherwise. This grotesque nattering began when they were young, long before any of them likely had any idea about what they were describing in such detail. I blame the internet and the school system. Most of the sex acts they described were homosexual – I suppose because this had the double impact of playing on young boys’ insecure homophobia while also frustrating their parents’ efforts to foster a home environment, free of those kinds of phobias. And, once it gets started, it escalates and they work themselves into a gay-pornographic frenzy. At least we’re not fighting about eating peas anymore.

Their mother tries to break through the chaos by leaving the table dramatically – “storming” is how I’d describe it – but I sit there, waiting for things to die down so we can get to all that respectful discussion and sharing of the daily news, all that nurturing, bond-forging bullshit I’ve heard so goddamned much about. Good luck.

Despite the Twilight Zone I find myself in, I continue to react like I’m Ward Cleaver, dealing with Wally and the Beave – “Now boys, if I hear one more reference to anal penetration, we’re not going to the Dairy Queen. I mean it.”

And I do mean it. We rarely go to the Dairy Queen.They know who’s boss.

Hello,

After much fanfare, my first Huffington Post blog piece has slipped down the right side of the website and is gone. A fleeting thing, a HuffPo post.

It remains permanently in my “author archive” : http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/../../ross-macnab/.

It has also been pointed out to me that googling Ross Macnab will get you to the Huffington Post Canada author archive as well. I don’t recommend this, because most of you can’t spell Macnab. Try this: turn away from your computer, take a pen and paper and print out Macnab. Now.

Done? Okay – did you spell Macnab correctly? No. You didn’t. No one does. It doesn’t matter to me, though it has led to a lifetime of being mis-filed. People can’t find me in the phone book. They can’t google me or find me on the facebook. I don’t need an alias. I have a name that everybody thinks should be spelled differently than it is.

But this isn’t about that.

My first week as a HuffPost Pro Bono Blogger has been exciting. It went up on the site on Wednesday morning. Right there under Yoko Ono’s blog. I’m looking forward to meeting her at the next staff and volunteers get-together.

I called my sister to let her know that I was a big shot now. When I got off the phone, there was a message waiting for me from a producer for the John Gormley show. She’d spotted the HuffPo piece and thought John would like to talk with me.

Gormley is on A.M. radio, for four and a half hours every day. He has a lot of energy. He’s very popular. I’ve heard that sixty percent of Saskatchewan’s radios are tuned in to him every morning – something that ought to concern Jian Ghomeshi. He has guests and he has people call in. And he talks. Gormley and I couldn’t be described as ideological soul-mates. He and his listeners and most of his guests seem quite a bit more pissed off than I ever am. And, they’re usually pissed off at people like me.

I called back and said I’d be happy to be on the Gormley show but that John would have to carry me. I predicted I would not be very good on the radio and there might be a lot of dead air while I panicked. It was arranged that I’d be on the next day.

Delores, my next door neighbour, and I went to Costco that afternoon. She doesn’t get around as well as she used to, since the stroke, and she likes the help hauling in the cat food.

When I got back, the phone rang. It was CTV in Toronto. They wanted me on their evening news show to talk about Saskatchewan, because of the HuffPo piece. I had to install Skype. It didn’t work, so I appeared by phone. Me and Mayor Pat Fiacco. He took up most of the time alloted for the segment, irrepressible as he is, and so my incoherent nattering was blessedly short. I don’t believe anyone saw the newscast.

All this was preventing me from getting the lawn mowed. And, I got the chickens in the oven late. Oh, I heard about that.

The next day, I spent the morning listening to Gormley. From ten to eleven that morning, and perhaps every morning, John hosts The Hour of Rage, where people call in to share with John and his listeners what in particular is really pissing them off that day.

By the time of my bit, eleven thirty, I suppose people had cooled off a bit. John very generously read out a large portion of the HuffPost piece and said very nice things about it and invited people to call in and say what they really liked about Saskatchewan. He spoke to me for a bit and, as I predicted, he needed to lead me along. John, whatever you may think of his politics, is extremely good on the radio. He was very gracious and kind to me. The rest of the half hour was people calling in. It was a very nice piece. I was happy to have played a role in calming down John’s angry audience, getting them to see the bright side.

After a few hours, blog posts slip down the screen on the HuffPost site and find their way into a bin called “Recent Posts”, where they can be found only by those with patience and good website navigation skills. By Friday morning, I was on page one of Recent Posts. Then page two. Three. Four. Gone.

Still, I figured I’d had at least sixteen minutes of fame, significantly exceeding my allotment.

Friday, another call from a radio show on CJME Newstalk Radio. This time, it was the Richard Brown Show, hosted on that day by Bronwyn Eyre. This is another of those angry, “us vs. them” sorts of radio programs. I guess people never tire of resentment. Again, I was a feel-good segment, though Bronwyn did try to get me to explain why it is that Saskatchewan is enjoying an economic boom of late. I assume that the correct answer was “because we defeated socialism”, but I stammered and stumbled and stuttered out a garbled bit of non-responsive nonsense which was, it seems, too embarrassing to follow up on – she moved quickly to something else.

Now, as my supportive wife reminds me, I have to write something new – even though I have nothing more to say.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Once again, I have changed the names of the characters in this story.

I love this time of year. NBA playoffs. I’m a basketball fan and I have three basketball-loving boys – Boy1, Boy2 and Boy3.

The Miami Heat and the Oklahoma City Thunder are in the Finals. Game three was last night. The Heat are Boy2′s favourite team. Boy3 loves the Thunder, hates the Heat. This game, like the whole series, was going to be both triumph and tragedy, no matter what happened, and would result in much anger and taunting, extremely bad language and very possibly some physical violence. Boy1 doesn’t care who wins, he just wants it to be a long series.

Boy1, the oldest, works till eight thirty on Sunday nights. He always comes over after work for a bite to eat. He was very disappointed that he was going to miss the game. Sunday afternoon, through a texted negotiation, he was able to extract an agreement from Boy3, the youngest, that we would record the game and not watch it until he arrived. Boy1 extracted this agreement by promising to buy pizza. In fact, I ordered the pizza and paid for it. I’m not clear on the definition Boy1 was using for “buy”, but it did not appear to include either ordering or paying.

I’m not sure where Boy2 was. He’d stumbled out of bed sometime mid afternoon and stumbled out the back door without announcing his entry into the day or his departure from the house. I called him on his cell phone and told him we were watching the game late and that he should NOT come in and tell us the final score. It is the sort of thing he’d love to do. He told me he hadn’t been watching the game and would be home to watch it with us. And have some pizza.

A very happy family scene. Wife and Mother [not her real names] had to leave the room, however, because she was so upset by the profanity. What a girl.

Near the end of the fourth quarter [unlike the three part hockey game, a basketball game is divided into halves, then further into quarters] it appeared that the game had slipped away from the Thunder. The Heat were going to win. Out of nowhere, Boy3 offered to bet Boy2 twenty bucks that the Thunder would pull out a win. Boy2, without hesitation, took the bet.

The Thunder did not pull it out.

Boy 3 is furious. He had received a text from a friend, who told him that the Thunder had, in fact, won the game. That’s why he’d offered the bet. He was going to win himself an easy twenty bucks from his brother by cheating.

Boy2 took the bet readily because he had watched the game before he came home and knew all along how it would end. In this particular contest between cheating and lying, then, lying was the clear winner.

A lot of swearing ensued, which upset Mom.

Later, I was cleaning up and noticed a slice of pizza in the box with a bite out of it. Boy1 does this all the time – with cookies, donuts, granola bars, fudge, pizza, steak, whatever. He takes a bite and leaves it. Sometime in the container the thing came from. Sometimes just on the kitchen counter. I’ve recently begun to respond to this peculiar habit by taking his bitten left-over, whatever it is, and placing it on his Blackberry, which he always leaves on the kitchen table or the counter. He came along and found the pizza slice, oozing tomato sauce on his phone.

Fuck Dad, I was going to come back and finish that.

No. You weren’t.

Yeah, fuck, I was. and stop fucking putting greasy shit on my phone. Fuck.

And on and on he went. I maintained my cheery countenance.

The WifeMom could hear this outburst from her bed, where she’d retreated some time earlier. The anger and profanity upset her. I assured her it was all just fun. Boy1 was wishing me a happy fathers day.

I have made several attempts in this blog to latch on to various hot cultural trends, hoping to bring myself significant cyber-popularity. That’s pathetic, yes. And made so much more so by the pathetic results of my efforts.

I did a weight-loss piece – “Lose Weight Fast”. Millions of people, every day, click on fat-fighting sites. Every magazine published in the world has at least one fat article every issue. Write about losing a lot of weight and the massive masses slurp it up like a DQ milkshake. Unless I write it, I guess.

I should have used “before and after” pictures, except that I couldn’t find a Fat Ross photo that I liked.

I tried to catch the “cute cat video” wave. I entitled that piece “Cute Cat Video”, even though there was no video. That’s very much like lying. That’s how desperate I am for attention. I’m sure that my utter lack of success erased the ethical taint of that deception.

Daddy Blogs are very popular, especially among women. Men doing childcare and housework? Are you kidding? Like selling crack cocaine. I tried it - ”Men Discover Babies. Parenting Becomes Important.” Apparently, selling crack isn’t as easy as I had been led to believe.

I’ve done cute kid stories. A piece on the War on Christmas. Political Correctness. Being a Man. I’ve done “how-to” manuals to help people be funny [who doesn't want to be funny?]. My research tells me that each of these things is wildly popular – and so I should be.

No.

But I am not giving up on my dream to become an internet sensation.

Fortunately, there remain a few genres to which I have not yet lent my special touch. One of them is the addiction memoir. There is a limitless appetite for personal stories of spiraling personal destruction through drug and alcohol abuse - all the degradation, violence, anger, sorrow, pain and alienation. And vomiting. Lots of vomiting. Who doesn’t love to read about those things? Especially when those things are accompanied by vivid descriptions of heroic booze intake and the smoking, snorting, injecting and otherwise creative ingesting of various fascinating substances with really cool “street” names. And the characters? Man. Drug dealers, gangsters, prostitutes, junkies, artists, writers, lawyers. All so interesting. Many with cool nicknames, horrific personal histories and fascinating physical deformities.

Of course, every addiction memoir includes “recovery”. In the end, the addict must pull out of the spiral. There has to be redemption. Healing. Reconciliation. Forgiveness. Love. Without all this, the memoir is merely voyeurism – addiction porn. The morbid enjoyment of destruction – like NASCAR.

Practically speaking, of course, without recovery, there is no one to write the memoir.

This is where the genre is misleading. Most of the time, there is no one to write the memoir. Most addicts don’t recover, not for very long. Most are too busy dealing with the urgencies of their day-to-day fucked up existence to write a memoir. They’re also far too invested in denial to write an honest account of their ordeal as they’re living it. Blackouts also make it very difficult for the responsible memoirist to get the story straight.

Then they die. Not romantically or beautifully.The addict/alcoholic death is usually a slow one. Addicts are resilient. It’s a long fall. And ugly. For every exciting young famous flame-out who ”partied” too hard, there are hundreds and hundreds of decaying pitiful souls who give up, break down and expire in squalor. ParTay.

The addiction memoir spares us all that. The danger of certain death looms as a constant background to the narrative – if our hero(ine) doesn’t dry out – but we know everything is going to be okay by the end of the book. Later, a relapse can become the occasion for another book.

Typically, the mandatory “recovery” part of the memoir covers only a few pages. Recovery is the goal but not the guts of the addiction memoir.

Recovery is actually kind of boring – especially compared with what’s being recovered from. And it takes a long time. Think of action movies – how much time is spent in the hospital burns unit after the fiery crash?  Same thing here. Recovering addicts have ordinary lives, like yours, except that they go to a lot of “meetings”. Who wants to read about that?

I won’t list my favourite AddMems [I just made that word up]. Lists are dull. But, I will recommend two. “Lit“, by Mary Karr is absolutely beautiful. Every sentence is a poem. Same with “Dry“, by Augusten Burroughs. On the other hand, comedian Richard Lewis wrote one with the title “The Other Great Depression: How I’m overcoming on a Daily Basis, at Least a Million Addictions and Dysfunctions and Finding a Spiritual (Sometimes) Life“. The book reads very much like the title. Ironic that a guy with no attention span expects us to read his entire, long-winded and unfocused book. But I did.

Some wonderful writers have booze and drug issues. I don’t know if there is a connection. Stephen King, of scary book and movie fame, places his addiction memoir in a book about writing. A great book about writing – “On Writing“. He doesn’t recall many of the details of the writing of his breakthrough book “Carrie”. He didn’t lose his writing chops when he dried out, thankfully.

So, I am one of those people caught up with the AddMem. I’ve read lots of them. Some are my favourite books. I bought a new one just the other day – “Kasher in the Rye” by Mosher Kasher. I’ll let you know how it turns out. I expect he recovers.

I bought the new book, coincidentally, on May 16 – the seventh anniversary of my first day of sobriety. Okay – that’s not quite right. I spent much of my childhood sober, especially during infancy. For much of my adult life, though, I have been an active, though functioning, alcoholic.

At this point, you’re supposed to say “Hello, Ross.”

Well then, as a recovering alcoholic, I am well equipped to cash in on the lucrative Addiction Memoir craze. How lucky is that?

Let’s get on with my crash-and-burn and rise-from-the-ashes story.

Except that I didn’t crash and burn. It was more like I was spending my life driving around with my tires under-inflated.

My story also doesn’t involve an interesting cast of characters. I was a drunk pretty much on my own. One of the questions they always ask on those “are you an alcoholic?” magazine questionnaires is “do you ever drink alone?” I guess that drinking alone is a terrible thing. I never got that – so I’m supposed to always find someone to drink with? What about making supper, doing the dishes, bathing the kids, reading bedtime stories? How could I possibly be a responsible parent and husband while drinking heavily if I had to go to a bar or a party every night? Be serious.

Besides, most of the friends I might socially drink with generally weren’t comfortable with how much I drank. I didn’t want them to worry. Or intervene. Or know.

There are no skeevy drug dealers in my story. All of my dealers were public servants working at government-run liquor stores. I don’t recall any of them having any interesting scars or missing limbs and none of them ever took my money at knife-point.  There were a lot of them, of course, because I tried to spread my custom around. I rotated through the liquor stores because I wanted to avoid becoming a “regular”. I purposely did not learn any of their names. I couldn’t have a liquor store cashier thinking I had a drinking problem. Obviously.

Sorry, my story doesn’t involve snorting substance from a thousand-dollar-a-night hooker’s belly button. I quietly slurped scotch from my favourite little glass, which I filled frequently from various scotch bottles I had stashed about the house.

The AA folks have long asked us to characterize alcoholism as a disease. It is treated as a “disability” in the legal human rights world – though I notice that we don’t get special parking spaces. I’m also waiting on the International Paralympic Committee to declare alcoholism to be a disability for the purpose of the Paralympic Games. Imagine the hockey team we’d have.

It wasn’t a disease with me. More like a condition – like a bum knee. It didn’t disable me. It hobbled me. It prevented me from having the life I’d like to have. Well, not quite. I was actually, for a long time, torn on the issue of what sort of life I’d like to have. I kind of liked the “drinking a lot” aspect of my life. What’s not to like? Perhaps, to a non-alcoholic, the appeal of a life spent drinking heavily isn’t obvious. You’ll just have to trust me on this. At any rate, the successful drunk develops a level of self-loathing sufficient to dismiss any notion that he’d amount to much even without the drinking. In other words, if there was a better life waiting on me to be sober, which I doubted, it could wait. Indefinitely.

Mostly, I could manage. I could accommodate my disability, control my disease. I never missed a day of work. For all hard drinkin’ guys, that’s the ultimate test. I made it to work. Every day. I was really, really unproductive, of course. But I was there – pretending not to be hung over.

And, if I had to, if the circumstances absolutely required it, I could be sober. Of course, I started to realize that there weren’t really that many things that I needed to be completely sober for. It was often enough that I pretend to be sober.

There’s quite a lot of pretending in functional alcoholism. Some might consider this dishonest. I’m not comfortable with that degree of moral rigidity.

The only people I directly lied to were my wife and my doctor. Dishonesty in a marriage is a bad thing. Dishonesty with one’s doctor can be fatal. I figured he couldn’t handle the truth. He’d probably have suggested I quit drinking, especially since the “medical establishment” believes that my level of boozing was bad for my high blood pressure. Had I the energy, I’d have sought out alternative, more booze-friendly, therapies.

My story doesn’t have a dramatic point when I “hit bottom”. Instead, I turned it around as a result of a conversation I had with my wife, whom I had spared the burdensome knowledge of exactly how much I had been drinking for years. She suggested it would be better for all concerned if I learned how to drink “moderately”.

Why would anyone drink moderately? What is the point of that?

I realized I had three choices. I could drink moderately. I could quit drinking completely. I could drink myself to death. I further realized that drinking moderately was my very distant third choice.

She asked how much I drank. And, after many years of answering that question with a lie, I told the truth which, to get all literary, set me free.

I quit drinking. Not right then. I had a buzz going that I didn’t want to interrupt. The next day. Seven years ago. Like they say in AA “seven years at a time”. No, they don’t say that.

I kept a journal of my new sober life. For a couple of years. I looked it over as I prepared to write this. It is very boring. In fact, I note several times in the journal that my new life is really really boring. The worst part of sobriety, aside from how boring it is, is that all your problems – in your career, your family life, your life generally – are still there. Sobriety doesn’t magically solve anything, except drunkenness. And you’re stuck dealing with those problems because you’re no longer too drunk or too hung over to attend to them. Now that sucks. But eventually, slowly, you get used to it.

Many old drunks, when they quit drinking, feel like they’ve lost their best friend. They mourn that loss for a long time. For me, it was like an annoying roommate had moved out: a guy I’d known since high school, with whom I’d shared lots of laughs, who knew me better than anyone else. But I was spending way too much time sitting around home with that guy, on the couch, watching sports. Life outside us and outside our little home was just slipping away from me. He was not cleaning up after himself. He was always late with the rent and bumming smokes. He was too needy. He had to go. It was time to grow up. I don’t miss him. I can’t believe it took me so long to kick him out. Oh yeah, and in this metaphor, the roommate was going to kill me.

I hate how much of my life I wasted. You learn not to dwell on regret. I hope I’ve repaired all the damage I’ve done. But it’s only been seven years.

One thing I still don’t get, even seven years later. Why would anyone drink moderately?

First. Things are not going well on my next post. In some of my “family” posts, I enjoy describing our dysfunction: My laughable efforts to assert my authority; My Wife’s amused dismissal of my parenting ‘vision’; The boys’ profane disdain for all authority, especially parental authority. It’s cute and harmless.

But this next piece is supposed to be about the much-lauded “family supper”. This piece threatens to expose us as deeply pathological. That’s the sort of thing that has to be carefully worded.

So, it is taking a while.

In the meantime, let me correct a couple of things on the last big post – the one about The Charter and the CBC and HarperHostility towards Ross’s Canada.

People do indeed love the CBC. However, I was way off the mark with my special mention of Cross Country Checkup. I said it wasn’t “just another dumb phone in”. It appears that I am wrong about this. The Checkup, some believe, is just an opportunity for the dumb and the boring to be dumb and boring in a “national”, rather than merely  local or regional, way. Others do not like the Host – Rex. I can understand that. He’s very polite, however, and has a very good radio face.

So, I’m drawing back from my effusion with respect to Rex Country Checkup. But not the rest.

Worse than including TyranaPompous Rex in my praise, however, was the wealth of radio gold that I failed to mention. Like Terry O’Reilly’s new Age of Persuasion, which is called Under the Influence. And Randy Bachman’s Vinyl Tap. And, can you believe that I left out Stuart McLean? The Debaters?

Many people like Afghanada. I usually miss it. It’s on the wrong time of day for me. It is one of the dramatic CBC Radio offerings being terminated because of the budget cuts.

So. Sorry.

Enjoy the CBC while you can.

Subscribers to this blog will, this evening, have received an email leading to nowhere. It promised a new blog post. You clicked expectantly. But no. Nothing new.

For the first time, like, ever – I made a mistake. I clicked errantly. I wanted to see how something would look – so decided to click “preview”. But, in my haste, I misclicked and published it – thus setting into motion an automatic email distribution mechanism that I was helpless to prevent.

I am very sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.

I am working on a new post. It’s not going very well. Don’t hold your breath. When I do get it done, I can’t promise it will have been worth the wait.

Move along. Nothing to see here.

Last Tuesday morning, April 17, I listened to The Current - a news show on CBC Radio. Much of the show was devoted to the 30th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms – thus demonstrating how out of touch my CBC Radio is with my Harper Guvmint.

The Strong Stable National Majority Harper Government chose not to mark the 30th anniversary with much official fanfare. Rather than a parade or fireworks, they celebrated with a press release. Par-Tay.

The press release referred to the Charter as “an important step in the development of Canada’s human rights policy” and noted that the Charter was built on the Diefenbaker Bill of Rights of 1960. There was nothing in the press release to indicate that it was intended to be funny. If these guys had a sense of humour, I expect it would be “dry”.

April 17th, thirty years ago, in a ceremony in the rain on Parliament Hill, the Queen launched the Charter era. [Imagine the Tories not just loving a story with THE Queen in it.] The constitutional entrenchment of fundamental rights and freedoms is not a “step”. It is a fundamental change in the relationship between Canadians and their governments. April 17, 1982 launched the replacement of Parliamentary supremacy with judicial review on Charter grounds. It’s a big deal. The Queen’s signature also entrenched the recognition and affirmation of “existing aboriginal rights”. That has also turned out to be sort of a big deal, hasn’t it?

And then, there’s the “patriation” thing. Small detail. Up till April 17th, 1982, our written constitution was a British statute – The British North America Act – and could be altered only by the British Parliament. Patriation was the culmination of eighty years of efforts by federal and provincial politicians – of all political stripes, spots, shades and hues - to address our symbolic national infancy. Finally, a practical manifestation of Canada’s independent nationhood that did not require the deaths of scores of young Canadian men in the mud in Europe.

So, break out the champagne and issue a press release!

The government also issued a press release that day announcing the investment of $42000 to Hinterland Wine Company Ltd. towards the purchase and installation of new sparkling wine processing equipment at their facility in Hillier, Ontario. There was no effort to tie this development to the Diefenbaker Bill of Rights.

So, it was a busy day for our Government.

When the Prime Minister was asked about the decision not to mark the anniversary in any substantive way, he said that the coming into force of the Charter in 1982 “was an interesting and important step, but I would point out that the charter remains inextricably linked to the patriation of the Constitution and the divisions around that matter, which as you know are still very real in some parts of the country.”

What a sensitive, thoughtful guy. He doesn’t want to make a big fuss about the Charter because it might hurt the feelings of those who didn’t like the patriation process. I assume he’s speaking of Quebec. Rene Levesque and the separatist Quebec government did not sign on to the new constitution – them being separatists and all. Harper doesn’t want to rub salt in the wounds of that exclusion. He’s got a light touch, our PM.

Okay - here’s an obvious point. The Charter is very popular in Quebec. Always has been. So is patriation. The Queen? No. And yet, she’s popping up all over the place since the Reform-a-Tories took power. Everything Royal is new again. These guys hate an unelected Senate and distrust unelected judges, worried as they are about democratic legitimacy, but they like a hereditary monarchy? You can call her the “Queen of Canada” all you want; it’s not selling in Quebec. Why no respectful silence there?

And, let’s not forget His government’s initial enthusiasm for a re-enactment of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham – right there in the middle of Quebec City -  to celebrate the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the defeat of New France and the triumph of the British over current Quebecers’ ancestors. Sort of “in your face”, I think. Where was Harper’s famous “sensitivity” then? He dismissed objections to this event as divisive rhetoric from separatistes trying to play politics with Canda’s proud heritage. Apparently, the idea of being conquered isn’t anywhere near as humiliating as being left off the patriation document.

At some point, someone in the governmental brain trust had a “what the fuck were we thinking” moment and the reenactment was cancelled. I assume they lost the deposit on the muskets.

And, then there was the “Reckless Coalition” business. Recall when the three opposition parties threatened to defeat Harper’s minority government and attempt form a coalition of sorts that could sustain the confidence of the House. He and his fellow Tories had no qualms about dismissing the Bloc Québécois, the party that represented the majority of the people of Quebec, as essentially illegitimate. Sensitive?

I think the more likely explanation for official indifference to the thirtieth anniversary is that our Tories don’t find the Charter to be something to celebrate. The Prime Minister has repeatedly expressed his fear of activist judges who thwart the democratic will of Parliament. He appears to long for the days of parliamentary supremacy and the common law. And the Queen, of course.

It was the Charter, after all, that helped give us gay rights, same sex marriage, abortion on demand, a right to collective bargaining. It also jetissoned the Lord’s Day Act [so much for the Fourth Commandment - can graven images and coveting be far behind?]. It also enforced all kinds of legal rights for bad guys, stifling the efforts of police, courts, jailers and Parliamentarians to get “tough” on crime. It even led to prison inmates getting the right to vote. This is hardly a wish list of Tory policy goals.

Still, he’s the only Prime Minister who has launched his own Charter challenge. About ten years ago, Mr. Harper went looking for one of those activist judges willing to thwart the democratic will of Parliament.  He wanted the Court to nix legislated limits on third-party campaign spending – because those limits violate the precious freedom of rich people to express themselves by spending unlimited amounts of money in support of a political party (we’re not sure which one): [http://csc.lexum.org/en/2004/2004scc33/2004scc33.html]

He was the President of the National Citizens Coalition at the  time. Check out the website of this group: http://nationalcitizens.ca/. These are folks who do not like government. And they want to convince all of us that we should also not like government. Perhaps Mr. Harper thought the NCC’s goal of widespread dislike of government would be best served if he became Prime Minister.

Sadly for NCC President Harper and all of those unfortunate rich people who so want their money to express itself politically, they lost. The Supreme Court did not exercise its dangerous judicial activism to  nullify the legislation – though not out of any great reverence for parliamentary supremacy. The Court found that the limit on excessive expressive political spending was proven to be justified in a “free and democratic society” because, among other things, the legislation would ”preclude the voices of the wealthy from dominating the political discourse”. Some Charter.

The NCC has pursued other Charter litigation as well and has succeeded in having legislation overridden – in spite of that “democratic will” thing.

So, it is somewhat a surprise that Mr. Harper doesn’t more enthusiastically celebrate the Charter and it’s potential. Perhaps he’s a hypocrite.

As I was saying at the beginning, I was enjoying The Current. I love CBC Radio. Many people I know use the word “love” when they talk about CBC Radio. It connects me to this country. It connects me with other Canadians. I feel part of something unique and worthy when I listen to CBC Radio, which I do much of the day, most days, and have done since I was a child. And it is not just because other Canadians, all across the country, are also listening to it. Other Canadians are probably, like me, drinking Starbucks coffee, checking out the NBA scores and watching Law and Order reruns. That doesn’t make me feel connected to them nor does it give me a sense of participating in something Canadian the way that CBC Radio does. Cross Country Checkup is not just another dumb phone in. The World at Six is not slick and does not lead with that which “bleeds”. As It Happens, The Current, Ideas, The Sunday Edition. I am not treated like an idiot when I listen to these. Q, Tapestry, Writers and Company, Spark, Wiretap, The Irrelevant Show, Day Six, DNTO… and on and on. It is a rich source of engagement and entertainment not available elsewhere and upon which I am happy to spend my tax money. I’m happy to spend other people’s tax money on it too, I guess – with my thanks, of course.

Oh, but what a surprise,  the residents of Harperville value my CBC radio as much as they do my Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The CBC will have its budget cut by ten percent. There are cuts everywhere, of course, and pink slips are going out to public servants across the country as I write this. The Tories will cut over five billion dollars of spending over the next three years, they tell us. Few areas of government are spared. I suppose the CBC, including my CBC Radio, must carry its share of the austerity burden.

But I worry.

I worry because I just don’t think the Tories value the things I do about Canada and its culture. This is true across a broad range of issues, but I’m focussed right now on the Charter and my CBC Radio.

These guys make cuts not just to be fiscally responsible. They do it for ideological reasons –  because they want to reduce the “size” of government, reduce the presence of the federal government in our lives, give us more “freedom”. The fact that there is a budget deficit to slash is just a happy coincidence. This is not a secret and, I guess, democratically speaking, they are entitled to pursue their New Canada project – because of that “majority government” thing.

I assume the cuts to CBC, which are more substantial than cuts elsewhere, are similarly a step towards an ideological goal – to reduce the presence of CBC in our lives, to be replaced, I suppose, by private broadcasters and their commercial sponsors. More freedom.

During the last election, several successful Tory candidates, including Rob Anders, invited web-surfers to sign an on-line petition on their official Tory websites, requesting  Parliament to not just cut the CBC, but eliminate it entirely. Mr. Anders conducted a poll of his Calgary West constituents and found that eighty percent supported the defunding of the CBC. Mr. Anders is famous for being removed from the Veterans Affairs Committee because he fell asleep during a committee hearing, probably because he was tired from lying awake at night, fussing about the damn CBC.

And what does the PM think?

Well, let’s look back at the National Citizens Coalition website. Read its Agenda For Canada. Mr. Harper has carried many of the NCC’s goals into office with him – like “smaller government”, lower taxes, the elimination of the Canadian Wheat Board… And, you guessed it, the NCC calls for the end of the CBC.

The Charter will stay. It’s the constitution. You can’t just starve it. The amending formula is designed to make changes almost impossible to accomplish.

But my CBC radio is not so secure. Nor is it loved by many Canadians the way I love it. So I worry.

Maybe if we changed its name to The Royal Canadian Broadcasting Corporation…

The last few days, I’ve been researching and thinking about what I thought would be my next post. It was to be a heart-rending story about the Charter of Rights and the CBC. Two things that go to the heart of Canada’s social, political and cultural identity. Two things I dearly love. My current Prime Minister does not share my love. We’re so different, Stevie and I.

We have lived in “my” Canada for many many years; I suppose it’s only fair that Stevie have Canada the way he likes it, for once.

Anyway, I had overcome the usual barriers to my getting down to writing – all of them either emotional or related to the domestic arts - and I was sitting right here, ready to give it a try.

“Ping”

No, that’s not an idea popping into my head. That’s a representation of the sound my computer makes when I get an email. This email changed my plans..

It was from John Williamson. I don’t know John personally. He’s the Member of Parliament for New Brunswick Southwest. He’s a Tory, as so many of them are these days. You maybe can’t place the name, but most Canadians are familiar with his performance in The House of Commons upon the passage by the Senate of the legislation abolishing the long gun registry:

“Free at last. Free at last. Law abiding Canadians are finally free at last”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mdCEjNygm6Y

“Oh yeah. That Guy,”

Imagine being known across Canada as “Oh yeah. That guy.” From relative obscurity, John burst into our consciousness and, almost instantly, ascended to the status of famous twit for his impression of Martin Luther King delivering the last lines of his iconic “I Have A Dream” speech. Of course, John modified the speech a bit so that it would refer, not to the end of slavery and the hope of an end to segregation and racial hatred, but to the scuttling of the long gun registry.

Yes, the worst thing about slavery and racial segregation was, like the long gun registry, all those pesky forms to fill out.

If ever anyone in this world needed a “do over”, it was the Honourable Member for New Brunswick Southwest.

Where were his friends, his colleagues? Why was there no one to take him aside and say “John. Buddy. Are you sure you want to do this? Remember, when we speak in the House, we’re on TV and we’re just one click from The YouTube. And the press, John. They’re likely to pick this up. You know they hate us. Think about it.” ?

If he were my friend and he tried out this “free at last” bit on me, I’d rip his notes out of his hands, scream, “Are you out of your fucking mind?” and lock him in a locker in the Members’ gym until the House had adjourned for the day. John had no friends that day. Worse. In the House, his colleagues encouraged him, clapping and cheering – like passers-by on the sidewalk yelling ”Jump!” at the guy standing ten storeys up on a window ledge. With friends like this, who needs Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition?

Ironically, John’s performance fell on the week of the 44th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, giving the Globe and Mail an opportunity to note – in a news item, not an editorial - that James Earl Ray killed Dr. King with a long gun. Wow. That’s some bad press, John. No way you could have seen that coming.

So, John has become that irredeemable dweeb who will henceforth be known primarily as “Oh yeah. That guy.”

Those of you who read this blog religiously will recall that I posted something entitled “Free at Last” on November 7, 2011. You may wish to go back and read that now …

Done? Good. Let’s continue.

That post, as you know, was about the legislated death of the Canadian Wheat Board – another item on the Tories’ “Freedom” agenda. I quoted Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in an attempt to savagely mock the ridiculous rhetoric the Tories kicked around when they talked about the CWB – all that nonsense about farmers being “shackled”,  references to the CWB as an Orwellian “Big Brother”, and how wheat and barley farmers would finally be liberated by the Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act. The Tory talking points were so over the top, it was difficult to mock them. They were self-mocking. But, Gerry Ritz deserved derision, and I thought, what better way to make fun of him and the other Tory Freedom Riders than to pretend that orderly grain marketing was exactly the sort of thing that Dr. King had in mind when he invoked “the words from the old Negro spiritual…”?

I thought it was a way of demonstrating the absurdity of their ”Great Liberators” pretensions. Devastating irony.

I guess not.

Of course, John’s inappropriate invocation of MLK is mild compared to what came from the mouth of Larry Miller – the MP for Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound. Also a Tory – like so, so very many of them. Who? Larry Miller? He’s the guy who said – also in the House of Commons – that the gun registry was an example of the sort of thing that “Adolf Hitler tried to do in the 1930s”.

Oh yeah. That Guy.

That’s right, Larry, start registering long guns and the next thing you know, we’re invading Poland.

Imagine being this stupid. So stupid as to not appreciate that references to Hitler and Nazism, slavery and Jim Crow are not only out-of-place in a debate about the long gun registry, they are offensive – especially to people who have suffered real oppression, been victimized by real evil.

Still, it’s good to know, if Gerry Ritz and Vic Toews are both unavailable, the Tories have a couple of guys who can step up and deliver the message in that distinctly Tory way. To use a sports metaphor: the governing party is “deep” at the twit position.

So, I was sitting in my kitchen, reading about this controversy in my Saturday Globe and Mail and thinking bad things about John and his cell-mates. I got on my iPad and looked up this guy, this John Williamson. He’s not a dumb guy – he has a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics. He was a founding editorial board member of the Nation Post, National Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Association and, just prior to being elected in 2011, was Prime Minister Harper’s Director of Communications. Stunning that a guy with that impressive resume could be “That guy”. He deserves his own chapter in “When Dumb Things Happen to Smart People”.

I found his email address. I agonized over what I would write to him. I’ve never written to an MP before. As I fumed, I became afraid that I was about to do something stupid, something I’d regret. Unlike a Tory MP, however, I stepped back from it. Rather than write some nasty, profane rant that would look creepy and have the Mounties coming to visit me, I just wrote this: