Author Archives: Rob MacD

Driving out by C.Tire today and some slow-moving, decrepit van-driving moron gives me the finger. Gives me the finger because HE’s moving so slow!

or

I see Nils at the Canadian Tire today, give him a ‘howdy neighbour’ honk, and the bastard shoots me the finger.

or

I was nowhere near Canadian Tire today.

Yes, Reinvented was my first. Peter was the first who posted in his blogroll a link to this monster. While appreciating the nod, I do think Peter, as far as his blogroll is concerned, is something of a suave ladies man (if blogs were ladies, that is). His blogroll is like his little black book; the links are phone numbers to all the ladies he meets, whether he’s dated them or not. It’s his security blanket. He doesn’t want a Friday night go by, and him without a date, so he’s got his ever-growing roll of names, you know, just in case some bird leaves him in the lurch. Peter is such a great guy, though, that us girls don’t really mind being lumped all together. And besides, since breaking my cherry, Peter’s even called me a few times and given me compliments.

There are other sites I visit, blogs I’m interested in, and I occasionally check out their ‘friends list’ to see if I’ve been added. And even though their lists are smaller and presumably more selective, you know, it still hurts a little bit when I see a blog I like – I mean LIKE like – and it doesn’t even seem to know that I exist. I mean, what’s wrong with my blog? I know sometimes my posts are fat, but I can’t help it. It’s glandular (or is it glanular?). I have a lot to say, sometimes. Besides, my friends all say my blog has a great personality, and lots to offer the right blog reader. I don’t need those other blogs’ links. Any blog that doesn’t link to me just doesn’t know me. It’s their loss, not mine!

But, Oh! Joy of joys. About a week ago, I noticed that one blog I visit daily finally added me to his roll. And then tonight, I noticed another did too. Like Sally Field, you really like me!

Now, though, I’m wondering if my address is written on some online washroom wall? Do these people think I’m easy? I’m loose with my words. Is that what you’re thinking?!

Well, I’m not. Although I am partial to daquiri’s and download sites. But I’m not implying that offering a few of either of those to me will get you anything.

I have a reputation to build and maintain, you know.

Here is an experiment.
As my wife and son can attest, I am a huge NFL football fan, and even bigger Miami Dolphins fan. I start thinking about next week’s game around Tuesday. I keep tabs on all the teams, but not in any statistically anal way. I generally know which teams seem to be doing better than, or worse than, expected but don’t bother with things like how injuries will affect teams (other than the Dolphins and who they’re playing each week), or how team A’s offense stacks up against Team B’s defense.

I tell you this, only so you get an idea as to my general knowledge of football and how that relates to this experiment, which is: I am going to post my predictions as to who will win each game this weekend. I will also post the prediction of a coin-flip. The experiment is to see how much better I do than a seemingly random guess.

On each line below are the matchups, visitor first, home team second. After that will be my expert pick (MP:), followed by the toin-coss pick (TC:).

I’ll inform you of the results next Tuesday, as if you give a shit.

San Diego @ Chicago – MP: San Diego TC: Chicago
NY Giants @ NY Jets – MP: NY Jets TC: NY Jets
New Orleans @ Tampa Bay – MP: Tampa Bay TC: Tampa Bay
Jacksonville @ Baltimore – MP: Baltimore TC: Jacksonville
Indinapolis @ Miami – MP: Miami (of course) TC: Miami
Oakland @ Detroit – MP: Oakland TC: Detroit
Carolina @ Houston – MP: Carolina TC: Houston
Cincinatti @ Arizona – MP: Cincinatti TC: Arizona
Pittsburgh @ Seattle – MP: Seattle TC: Pittsburgh
Philadelphia @ Atlanta – MP: Philadelphia TC: Philadelphia
St.Louis @ San Fransisco – MP: St. Louis TC: St.Louis
Washington @ Dallas – MP: Washington TC: Dallas
Green Bay @ Minnesota – MP: Minnesota TC: Minnesota
New England @ Denver – MP: New England TC: New England

I’m not what you would call political in a social sense. I’m not the type that typically joins things, groups, organisations, etc. I’m like Squiggy’s pal Lenny: I’m a Lone Wolf.
I’m not one to protest, either.

Yet, driving home from work last night, listening to Mainstreet and the coverage of the Souris blockade of the seiners, I had a momentary compulsion to go and join the Souris fisherman. Granted, I don’t know the complexities of the situation, but on the surface it sure seems like what the seiners do is bad for local fisherman. And right or wrong, it can’t be denied that the fisherman feel strongly enough about the state of affairs to risk going to jail.

That got me wondering what is important enough in my life to risk going to jail for. I can come up with plenty of if/then scenarios where I’d do whatever I had to do in order to try and right something I thought was wrong. Things like if my son was molested by someone and that someone was being protected from prosecution for whatever reason, then I’d willingly risk anything to try and get justice. All the scenarios I come up with, though, have personal or selfish motivations to them. Yet, nothing in my life currently is in such a sorry state of affairs where I feel compelled to rectify it through protest or other drastic measures. I guess for that I should be thankful. Or else I should be shown my blindness to the injustices around me.

What about the people who travel to protest G7 and World Trade meetings? Do they protest from a specific personal need to do so, or is it a general sense of social outrage, or are their motivations something else altogether? I suppose for some, trade summits are akin to seiners. If I feel a momentary compulsion to stand with the Souris fishermen, I suppose that I can imagine myself, in an alternate world, feeling compelled to go to BC and stand with the G7 protestors too. In my current world, though, things like mortgages and living paycheque to paycheque tend to temper any simmering social activism in me.

Locally, I see people who protest Social Injustices. It’s usually the same group of people at each event. It almost seems not to matter to them the specifics of what they’re protesting, just that they’re protesting. Whatever the protest, they sure sounds like it’s important to them. I suppose it is, otherwise they wouldn’t bother? However, when you’re protesting legalised abortions on Wednesday and protesting dog leashes on Thursday, it seems to me that you end up devaluing both.

So, I guess I’m keeping quiet until compelled to stand up against whatever it is that ends up pissing me off enough.

I think all people who wear prescription glasses would agree. We hate it when other people ask to try on our glasses. We hate those few times when we cave in and let them try them on. We hate the inevitable reaction of ‘Whoa!’ or ‘Holy shit, these are strong!’. We hate our apologetic feelings of inadequacy that accompany such outbursts; the implied superiority inherent in the ‘Whoa’; the squinting fish-out-of-water feeling we have during those brief unfocused moments.

Or maybe it’s just me.

Never one to indulge, overly, in self-promotion (this flaw, by the way, is the only reason [so I keep telling myself] I’ve never become as famous as I’d have liked), I nonetheless feel compelled to tell the world about a couple of things I’ve been involved in that will be presented at the upcoming Reel Island Film Festival, November 12-16 in Charlottetown.

The first is the 22 minute film Florid. It’s a black comedy about 4 bums (“We’re bums, not assholes!”) who, in the dead-cold of a Charlottetown winter, get the idea to move to Florida and bum in warmer climes. The movie records their endeavours to raise the capital necessary for the move. I play one of the bums. I also co-wrote (along with good pal, Dave Stewart, who directed). This project took far too long (over 3 years, I believe) to complete and has some rather significant plot holes. Yet, beyond all that, it’s a pretty funny, warped movie.

The other involvement is in the showing of the pilot for a TV series called Cinemaniax created and produced by good pal Dave Moses. The format has, I believe, changed somewhat since this pilot production, but the concept was: 3 teams of 2 film-makers are given an idea for a film, some actors and some equipment. They then have 2 days to write, film and edit their short movie, afterwhich the 3 films are presented to an audience which votes for their favourite. Good ole Dave Stewart and I were one team for the pilot, Team Smithee. I believe the 3 short movies created for the pilot are still available for viewing at the Cinemaniax website. The Team Smithee entry is called ‘With This Job’. We didn’t win.

The recent renewed interest in drug-enhanced athletes has me wondering whether drug-testing of athletes should just be dropped altogether. Afterall, the cheaters will always be ahead of testers, always using the newest and so-far-undetected drugs to enhance their performances. With the recent investigaions, it’s now to the point where practically any athlete who excels, whether professional or amateur, is assumed to be cheating, even if tests imply innocence. The sad thinking now is that that individual just didn’t get caught.

Obviously, athletes can’t be allowed to use performance enhancing drugs carte blanche. “Have at it, girls, whatever it takes to be the fastest, strongest” would eventually turn into nothing more than a Hulking freak show. Not to mention the miriade of side effects such embibing would cause.
I wonder if artificial performance enhancing would eventually level out, though? Would there be a line in free-for-all open-knowledge drug-enhancement that athletes wouldn’t be willing to cross? “I want to win, but I don’t want seven toes”. Of course, there’ll always be someone else who will be willing to go that extra step to gain the slightest advantage. And if that person goes that far, then others will have to follow suit, repurcussions be damned, otherwise, they’ll be left in the dust.

I think we all (even athletes) would like a sports world where athletes test the *natural limits* of the human body and mind. I don’t think there’s any way we can have that world. Drug-enhanced athletes are here to stay. So, what do we do?
If we allow athletes to use steroids and other enhancements, ask them to declare what they’re on, without fear of reprisals or sanctions, how far would they take that freedom? How far would we, as spectators, allow athletes to take it before we say ‘this is foolish’ and stop caring? The problem is, once we reach that plateau, athletes will stop declaring the ‘too foolish’ enhancements, yet still take them, and then we’re back to exactly the place we are now: a sports world where we’re all suspicious of any feat of strength or speed or grace.

She just makes me mad.

I am witnessing an odd event happening outside my window.
The street in front of our house has the slightest decline. The hill is not so steep that you couldn’t push a car-that-does-not-start up it. Believe me, I know.
There are currently 5 girls, about 12-14 years old, taking turns pushing each other, in a little red plastic wagon, down this slight hill. Two or three will run and push the rider and wagon afterwhich they go maybe 30 yards on their own. Then they pull the rider and wagon back up the hill for another girl to take her turn. Another indicator of just how slight the hill is: a girl pulling the wagon back ‘up’ can pull the wagon and two riders as well. This is not steep.
Now, what is unusual to me about this event is that it’s 5 girls. Five boys doing this wouldn’t seem odd. Even if, say, 2 of the 5 were girls, it wouldn’t seem that odd. But it’s five girls. I think this is great. What also strikes me as odd is that they chose this part of this street. About a minute away there is a street that has a slightly steeper hill.

Somewhere, I’m sure, there are 5 newly-teenaged boys Easy-Baking.

I am picky about the (so-called) reality shows I watch. I refuse to watch any that attempt to match two people in some false true-love ending (even though I’ve only spent 31 days with you, and in those 31 days, I’ve also spent time making out with 11 other women, I really do love you, contestant number 3. Will you marry me and share in the million dollar prize?). There is something dirty and whore-ish about those. I also don’t watch the ones where the object is to dupe the contestants (what Gwendolyn doesn’t know is that her 12 potential male suitors are in fact transvestites!!!… go ahead tv-hollywood, take that idea). And the contests of foolishness and fear are also shows I’ll not watch (tonight’s fifty thousand dollar winner will be the contestant who is brave enough to shove razor blades and spiders up their butt!!!)

I do like a few reality shows however. The Amazing Race is my favourite, followed closely by Survivor. This current edition of Survivor is quite good. The producers and editors do a great job of focusing each episode towards its conclusion, maximizing suspense. Last night, going to Tribal Council, I was sure that Rupert had convinced the others, specifically Sean, to vote out Trish. Yet, when Sean went to write his choice for eviction, he said something “You thought this was your game. Well, now you’re gone, and the game is mine.”
I’m thinking: “Why are you saying that? You’d never say that about Trish. The game was never hers. You can only be talking about Rupert!” So, I thought he had double-double crossed Rupert and Rupert’d be gone. Of course, they did vote to evict Trish, and now blonde-haired John (who was in cahoots with Trish) is in deep shit.
This is why I like Survivor. They do a great job of manipulating the audience, without making the audience feel like they’re being cheated.

As we were watching Survivor last night, CB says “I don’t like that guy with the underwear.” Which guy? “The bald guy” On which tribe? “The guy that doesn’t do anything. The lazy one.” Who’s the lazy one? “The guy who’s scared of animals.”
I knew who he was talking about (Osten), but I wanted to see how long it’d take him to define Osten by his skin colour. He never did. I think that’s pretty neat.