Iceberglandia

So, the time came late on a saturday afternoon. I buckled, I caved in, and decided a 3 day weekend just wasn’t the same without beer. No surprises there, since hardly a weekend goes by without some liquid entertainment. But I had thought I could pull it off. And, courtesy of George Bush’s legacy, I guess I really should start pulling it off. Soon.

Had I decided a beer run was a good idea 24 hours earlier, I would have walked in mild, above-zero weather. But since this is still february in Canada, I had to walk in -7 (feels like -19) fucking weather.
I strapped on my winter jacket, put on my trusty Toronto Maple Leafs toque, and grabbed my wallet and my iPod on my way out.

The strip mall where I usually go has, in a way, every essential. There’s a Beer Store, a Coffee Time, a Royal Bank, a computer store (where I bought this computer a year ago), a pizza place, a corner store, a tobacco store, a couple of clothing stores, a dental office (where I fixed the stupid front tooth that decided to fall off last year), a wine store, a dollar store, a supermarket and a Zeller’s (kind of a canadian version of Kmart).
Across the street one can find a Burger King, a Subway, a Rogers Video store, a Money Mart, and a dozen other places. Even a fucking blood bank.
The only reason to go anywhere else is if you’re brand-specific, or if instead of beer you find yourself in need of hard liquor.

As I walked towards the mini-mall, I had a bit of nostalgia for my days living in the most secluded part of Mexico. I don’t know why, but the cold and the winter-dead foliage made me think of when I was 12. Do certain smells, sights or sounds do that to you? Anyone?

First stop: the bank. I had to withdraw money. I owe my sister. Fuck, might as well take it all out.

Next: well, I need cigarettes, and phone cards to call my gf, so the tobacco store it is. Then, I tried to remember if there were any groceries I might be missing. All I could think of were limes and vinegar. Sour as my life is, I still needed those ingredients.
A quick recipe: buy onions and habaneros. Slice them thinly. Add, in a 30/70 proportion, vinegar and lime juice, enough to cover. Add a shitload of salt. Let sit for a week. Add on to EVERYTHING. You’re welcome.

So, I’m picking 10 limes (sign said 5 for a buck! for fuck’s sakes, in Mexico you have lime trees in your back yard!), when I see a coworker. She looks nicer in street clothes!
I go to the 8 items or less register. Some ancient woman decided to strike a conversation with the cashier. Lucky me, the one next to it is available! I make my 3 dollar purchase. As I walk out of the supermarket, almost as I’m walking in front of the dollar store, I remember… I HAVE NO BLUE GARBAGE BAGS! And, I need clear bags as well, due to my “spring cleaning”. I grab a bag of each, and cute as she may have been, the stupid bitch charged me for 3 items, instead of two. I could have argued, but really, who wants to be ‘that’ guy? Over a fucking dollar? If somebody came here right now and asked if he/she could have everything I’m disposing of in clear bags and asked for a dollar to remove said items from my sight, forever, I wouldn’t bat an eyelash. Plus, she’s probably sucking some other guy’s dick, who doesn’t happen to be me, so in the end it’s all her loss. That’s my “revenge” for everything. Assuming they’re at a loss because they’re not fellating ME.

I exit the dollar store, and head for the beer store. I just can’t get over my fascination with these people buying my garbage. I get 2.40 every time I finish a case. It’s like they’re rewarding me!

I start the way home. Shit, it’s cold. Somebody’s car failed at the lights. The tow truck is picking it up. Fuck’em, in 20 minutes I’ll be drinking beer. I’ve had my share of vehicular malfunctions, and nobody ever gave a damn.

As I cross the sewage canal, I see there’s a couple of ducks wallowing in the water. I feel like communicating with them. IT’S FREEZING, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, GETTING WET?. Alas, I don’t speak “duck”.

By now, sensation in my hands is but a memory. Who knows how I’m going to open my door. But there’s more important things on my mind. Such as “why do Zippo lighters fail when you need them the most?”. Finally, my damn Zippo decides to kick in, and I can smoke my perfectly-timed-so-I-can-put-it-out-as-soon-as-I-get-home cigarette.

Now I’m home. Feeling’s back in my hands. And I have the first of 24 beers sitting in front of me. I’m off to slice habaneros and onions.

The Iceberg

Have you ever woken up with the sudden realization of something – something big?

I have, several times. Today was one of them.

I suddenly realized that for all my love of music, and for all of my pursuits in finding different music from all over the world, I haven’t done one thing I guess would be a requirement in order to proclaim that you do, in fact, like music.

I’ve never listened to a Beatles album.

Yes, I can hear the hushed mumbling from the crowds. But I’m here to correct that. Sure, I’ve heard songs, here and there. I guess I’ve heard all the classics. But, being a metalhead and all, I’ve always felt more inclined towards playing something by Iced Earth or Slayer than something from “those pop boys from the fifties”. Or, I get trapped by certain tendencies, such as my current one, which is listening to a lot of indie-alternative stuff.
While growing up, I used to play my parents’ records, and yes, my mom had a whole bunch of Beatles records. But they weren’t albums, just a bunch of singles. My dad, on the other hand, had Black Sabbath and the Rolling Stones. During my teens, well, during anyone’s teens, your parent’s music is “old shit” and you go for whatever there is in the present. I went through a series of phases, and settled for metal. Not that I listen exclusively to metal (I do tend to keep an open mind and see -and enjoy- the merits in other genres). I just never looked back.

Some of my friends have a profound admiration for music that existed before they were even born. Led Zeppelin, the Doors, the Rolling Stones… in fact, some of them are weird enough that they go through jazz albums from the 20’s and 30’s. Me? I can’t seem to find any personal value in that. The first Sabbath album, sure. Other than that, everything I listen to was recorded after I was born. Yup! I’m old. Even Judas Priest’s “Rocka Rolla” didn’t exist when I was born.
In fact, one of my so-called phases was going through the whole Rolling Stones catalog. But the fact of the matter is that I’ve never sat down to actually listen to a fucking Beatles album. And I’m going to change that.

My project for next week is this: I will download* everything I can find from the Beatles. And next saturday I will listen to everything I was able to download. How’s that for a project?

I hope this doesn’t end up bad. Last time I tried a project like this, I listened to Sirius Alt-Nation to find music for my birthday party that never happened (I would have loved to entertain my would-be guests with the discography of Morbid Angel, but that wouldn’t have flown quite well). To this day, I’m still on an alternative bender.

So, yeah. March 7th will be Beatle-Mania day o’er here. Fuck it, why not?

The Iceberg

*What? you still think downloading is bad? I’m sure John and George won’t mind. Ringo might, though, so next time he’s in town, I’ll buy him a beer. And Paul? Well, I guess his ex-wife would mind.

Well… not really, but they sure as HELL (ha! ha!) can be entertaining. They offend so easily. And now that they have internet access, they love to show the world just how close-minded they are when it comes to popular media.

Of course, not all Christians are like that. I’m not trying to become the target of Christian hatred (you just HAVE to love the hypocrisy in that one, eh?). I know many Christians are down to earth, and respectful of others. You know, just like Jesus intended. But then there are these wackos…

First, let’s mention ChristWire.org (a site I just discovered 20 minutes ago). With headlines such as “Hollywood Atheists Preparing To Worship A Golden Idol Named ‘Oscar’ in Bizarre Ceremony” and “The Gays Use Japanese Music and Babies To Try And Turn Youtube Viewers Gay“, you know they mean business. And by business, I mean THEY’RE FUCKING NUTS!

Then, there’s that other site, ChristianAnswers.net. While they lack the craziness of their ChristWire cousins (and offer actually good reviews from a christian point of view), the crazy often shines through, such as in their review of the movie “Lakeview Terrace”, which begins like this:

In Matthew 19:19 Jesus commanded that we “love our neighbor;” he might not have been talking about those living on Lakeview Terrace.

Sure, the movie is about a neighbor, but the pun is uncalled for. Even Jesus himself would smack these guys on the back of the head and tell them “dude, when I said neighbor, I wasn’t referring to the people that live in the house next door”.

And then, there’s my favorite! The holier than thou PluggedInOnline.com!
These guys not only review movies, but music as well. And sure enough, the crazy is present. In copious amounts, to boot. When reviewing an album, they divide their ranting in usually three categories: “Pro-Social content”, where they mention the Christian values the album has, if any; “Objectionable Content”, where they usually do all of their ranting; and “Summary Advisory”, where they give advice on how to tell your kids to run far away from the album. An example of one of their reviews (yes, I picked an easy target… sue me!):

SLIPKNOT “Slipknot”

Pro-Social Content
None

Objectionable Content
To remove the foul language is to gut the lyrics. Obscene ranting, misery, angst and a will to die are all common themes. Lead screamer Corey Taylor envisions the suffering of his enemies (“Spit It Out,” “Surfacing,” “Sic”), takes someone captive (“Prosthetics”) and claims, “Every reason is a right to hate . . . Only one of us walks away” (“Only One”). Taylor’s despondency and anger turn inward on “Tattered & Torn” as he considers “opening [his] wrists.” “Eyeless” poses the disturbing question, “How many times have you wanted to kill everything and everyone/Say you’ll do it but never will?” (Pray some disenfranchised fan doesn’t take that as a dare.) A tortured soul finds no solace on the frantic “Me Inside.” With gruesome imagery, “Scissors” implies that Taylor is giving himself over to the elements, having lost all hope (“Just let the blood run red ‘cause I can’t feel”).

Summary Advisory
Nine guys. Nine masked, demented guys. The members of Slipknot have developed a cult following even more for their gross-out stage antics than for their hateful lyrics. In concert they’ve been known to masturbate, defecate, vomit, urinate on one another and light each other on fire. Sick and twisted. It’s safe to say that young fans of this band have far deeper problems than a simple lack of media discernment.

I’m no expert on Slipknot’s stage antics, but after having viewed “Disasterpieces” I didn’t (that I remember, anyway – and I would remember, I guess) notice anyone rid themselves of bodily waste onstage. I could be wrong, though.

A few months ago I posted on my spanish-language blog about a certain religious guy from Costa Rica who made some really stupid statements in the press, regarding how ever since Iron Maiden had played in the local soccer club’s stadium, the team hadn’t won. He went on to say Iron Maiden cast a curse on the stadium (thus recognizing, albeit wrongly IMO, the existence of forces other than God… way to go, dude!), and that people who wear black shirts worship the devil, and how for years bands like The Rolling Stones stomp chickens onstage.
I had such a laugh.

I guess my fascination with Christian outrage started when I first heard (from Christian wackos, of course) that KISS stood for “Knights in Satan’s Service”, and that heavy metal bands put subliminal messages in their music inciting the fans to worship the devil and to commit suicide. I won’t comment on that, I think Bill Hicks already did a much better job of that than anything I could ever say.

But, um, check out those sites I mentioned, if you want a good laugh.

The Iceberg

Of all the things to forget when going to work – keys, lunch bag – I left the most unimaginable one at home yesterday.

I noticed while I walked from Pedro´s car to the plant. Something about my feet was too, um, white. The sense of stupidity hit me even harder than the cold wind which was blowing against me. “Er, Pedro”, I said. “I think I’m gonna have to jet back home”.
“Why?”, He asked.
“I forgot my safety boots”.

Yes, I arrived at work wearing my Adidas. Cue the Run-DMC track.

Now, It would make sense to most people to leave your safety boots at work, right next to the rest of your safety equipment. And it makes sense to me too, but see, I had brought them home over the weekend to clean them up a bit. A locker that smells of feet would be frowned upon, even by myself.

So, I reported the situation to my coordinator, and he agreed I should come home and grab them. Lucky for me, this was at the start of my shift, which means it was the end of the previous shift. One of the guys who was leaving offered me a ride home. I grabbed my stupid boots and walked back to work. That was fun! To make things more interesting, my Zippo was soaked and wouldn’t light.
Anecdotal stupidity aside, that meant missing 1.5 hours of work. I’ll see if it’s possible to make it up.

Yes, my boots are in my locker now. From now on, I’ll clean them there.

The Iceberg

I wanted to see it live. The moment when the Academy would, or would not, give the Best Supporting Actor statue to Heath Ledger. Either way, there was ging to be controversy.
I didn’t know Heath Ledger personally, nor do I give a fuck if he gets nominated for a million awards. Yes, he played the Joker on a Batman movie. So what?

Then comes the personal side. The part of people to whom an artist’s performance speaks. To give an example, I couldn’t give two shits about the Bangles’ “Walk Like An Egyptian”. But to that guy over there, that song could bring back memories. He could have conceived his first child to that song.
I didn’t conceive children to the Joker’s performance, but it was special, given the time and the people I was surrounded by. I am fully aware that had Heath Ledger been alive, he wouldn’t have been nominated. Yet, the pressure on the Academy was huge. Either way, controversy was to be had.
But the Academy played it safe. The Oscar went, posthumously, to Heath Ledger for “The Dark Knight”. I’ve quoted the Joker so many times, I carry a joker card in my wallet… So in a way it was a triumph not unlike a SuperBowl victory. Only for nerds.

Is all this fair on the other nominees, though? This question bears pondering. You have to ask yourself what went through Philip Seymour Hoffman’s mind when he found out he was nominated for an Oscar along with Heath Ledger.

In any case, the controversy is over. He did win. Not that it matters to him, either way.

The Iceberg

Fuck you. Fuck you very much.

I used to order from you frequently. As in, once a week. Nothing like a lazy sunday with a bottle of rum and a large 5-topping pizza for 20 bucks (dipping sauces included). I even made it a point to tip your rude delivery people well. Well, except that fucking chink asian dude who threw the pizza at me. I threw a toonie back at him, and he didn’t bother to pick it up.

Then, I went into a health thing/economy thing, and I stopped ordering pizza. Until a couple of weeks ago. I ordered one. When it arrived, the poor delivery guy slipped on the ice. I helped him up and settled for having all my toppings on half of the pizza. It wasn’t his fault, I’m not complaining, just sharing an anecdote.

Well, today I was in the mood for a pizza. Having had an account with you guys for years now, I decided to log into your site.

I was fascinated by your new design. Did a 5 year old speed freak do it? Because it took me a while to find anything relevant.
Then I tried to look for your online delivery thing. When I found it, I noticed things had changed. I immediately went for the “Specials” tab, hoping to find the 12.99 5-topping special. Nope, I didn’t see it. All I saw were offers to buy two medium size pizzas with 3 toppings each, for 20 bucks. Or 2 large, for 27.50.

That was when I saw your “Any way you slice it” tab. Cute name, by the way. I saw the small, medium and large pizzas all cost the same. What the fuck is up with that? For 12 bucks I can get either a shitty half pound of pizza or a full pound? Of course, for the XL you charge 2 bucks extra. Against all logic, I clicked. “Let’s order!” I said. “Dammit, I’m hungry!”

Since I only had 3 ingredients to choose from, I played around a bit. Sun-dried tomatos? or bacon? Steak strips, or extra cheese? The possibilities are endless! Hell, just for kicks, I selected 4 ingredients at once. That’s when I noticed you charge 1.95 for each additional ingredient. The question begged to be answered: settle for a cheap ass 3 ingredient pizza, or succumb to your corporate greed and pay 2 bucks on every ingredient I coult think of to make a pizza taste, well, good.

By now I was just fucking around. I pretended to select 3 ingredients, to see where that would take me. Nice touch, adding free toppings. I’ll take the hot peppers and the hot sauce.

Oooh Joy! I get a dipping sauce! Of course, 69 cents could get me two. Let’s see where that gets me.

Gee, my total order comes to over 20 dollars. For a 13 buck pizza. That’s not including tips.

Now, Pizzapizza, what would you do? Would you pay upwards of 20 dollars for a merely edible meal? When you can just walk downtown and get yourself a nice New York Steak for 16.99? Or the all-you-can-eat Chinese place you can walk out of only 12 bucks lighter?

I’ll tell you what, pizzapizza. I have some fish here. As well as pasta, ground beef, chicken… I won’t go hungry. I’m sure you won’t go out of business with my little boycott. So let’s both go our separate ways. And if somewhere down the line you decide to bring back your previous specials, we might be able to talk.

All I wanted was to not cook today. I just wasn’t desperate enough to not cook that I’d pony up 20 bucks for substandard food.

Thank you, and fuck you.

The Iceberg

I don’t mean to preach unto you that “do unto others” thing. True as it may be, I’m referring to another Golden Rule. In other words, another boring old Iceberg flashback.

It must’ve been the printed ad I saw last night from a local store where they buy/sell coins, gold and silver, while looking over this week’s edition of “The Guelph Tribune”. Hey, what else am I supposed to read while taking a dump, Of Mice And Men? Anyway, something stuck, and today I awoke thinking about another place of business named “The Golden Rule”.
When I lived back home during my high school years, and I might have mentioned this recently in my spanish-language blog, I used to save up my money and cross the border, either to McAllen, or Brownsville. The purpose of this was to purchase music. Being a non-expert in the commercial geography of said cities, I always headed to the mall. Musicland, Camelot. That was it.

Well, one day a friend mentioned a store in downtown Brownsville, called “The Golden Rule”. Apparently, this fine establishment dealt, among other things, in the buy/sell/trade of music products. As in, you could take your LPs, cassettes or CDs and trade them in for other stuff. Being that the products being traded in were used, they were placed in a nice little bin where they were specially priced.
Now I was no traitor (ha, get it? trader sounds like traitor!) to my music collection. The trading of music was not my goal. I intended to keep all my cassettes and CDs. Including the Dokken ones. But upon hearing of such a place, I just had to go.

Getting to the store was a whole different bitch. I was used to getting on a bus over to Sunrise Mall, or Amigoland Mall. I hadn’t bothered with the downtown. If memory doesn’t fail me, the store was located somewhere on Jefferson Street. I finally found it, and entered. With a whole $70 dollars to spend!

Now, my friend had described this place as a metal fan’s paradise. “oh, yes, you can pick up Morgoth’s ‘Resurrection Absurd’ there”, he said. And well, any store that carried obscure german thrash bands was good enough for me.
Unfortunately, I had recently entered the CD era. As such, I frowned upon the masses who still used cassettes. Cassettes, for christ’s sake! It’s the 90’s, people!
Sure enough, I saw Morgoth cassettes. But I wanted CDs. And the few CDs they had, well, the collection paled in comparison to the cassette bin. So, I walked out of the store that day with one planned purchase, and three random ones.

I had already set my mind on Sepultura’s “Chaos A.D.”, which I found. On CD!
I also picked up some other CD. To say the truth, I can’t remember which one.
The other two purchases had nothing to do with the auditory enjoyment of music. Just a couple of T-shirts. An Ugly Kid Joe one, and a Green Jellö one.

That day, as luck would have it, was the only time I set foot inside that store. Soon after, it went out of business.

Fast forward to 2005. I had just arrived in Canada. I lived with my sister in Bumfuck Fergus, Ontario. Looking for work, I came a couple of times to “the city”. Right downtown, there was a store that also dealt with the buy/sell/trade thing. When I finally moved to Guelph, and had a job, I decided to visit the store. Guess what?

Yup! It had gone out of business. So now my options are HMV and MusicWorld (if it even exists anymore) at the mall, or the internet. Funny thing about the internet, its catalogue is huge! I’ve yet to see a Pigface CD at HMV. Or Morgoth, or Tankard, or __________ (insert random 80’s thrash band). If Britney, or Rihanna or fucking Beyonce were my market, I’d be covered. But things being what they are, I love the internet. Plus, it lets me share with the world my anecdotes of when I visited a music store 15 years ago.

That Sepultura CD still kicks ass, by the way. The T-shirts were stolen in Cancun. And you thought your life was interesting.

The Iceberg

I just did my groceries for the next two weeks. Three, if I’m lucky.

Now, I know grocery shopping is not the most interesting blogging material there is (although in my case, every chance to get out of the house is!), but it’s not the actual contents of my shopping cart that I want to discuss. It’s the experience.

See, being an afternoon shift slave at work, I’m used to doing my groceries in the morning. Less people, less hassle. But since we’re off fridays, fuck it. I wasn’t getting up any earlier on thursday.
To say the truth, I would have loved to postpone my trip to “No Frills”. It’s fucking cold. But a brief peek at the forecast for tomorrow put me on my feet and out the door. Plus, the Beer Store is right next door, so that was a motivation.

Off I went. The new-fangled playlist I copied unto my (now suspended by Rogers) iPhone as company, and as many layers of clothing as I deemed comfortable.
First things first. I had strapped on my backpack, and in it, the empty case of beer cans. Hey, you get 2.40 for it! That means something like BUY 11, GET ONE FREE! And all those years I just tossed them in the trash… Anyway, I got to the Beer Store, dropped off my empties and placed a new case into the backpack, and it was on to the supermarket.

A simple task, it would seem, walking into the supermarket to pick up groceries. But of course, things had to get interesting.

Does this ever happen to anyone else? That there is a person, or a group of people, that seem to get in your way ALL THE TIME?
It started right away. Once you get into the supermarket, the first thing you see are the chili peppers. I, of course, love that section. I put 30 habaneros into a bag, and went to put them into my cart. As I returned to pick my jalapeños, I saw a family enter the store. The cunt that would turn out to be the wife grabbed my bag, the one I had laid on top of the jalapeños for a mere 10 seconds while I went over to my shopping cart, and blocked the whole chili section while she poured handful upon handful of perfectly selected serrano peppers. “Fuck it”, I said. “I’ll come back later”. I went for carrots and cabbage. I returned and was finally able to grab my jalapeños.
I moved my cart over to the fruit section. Of course, the nice little family got in my way again. And again, in the meat section. I swear, by this point I could have just shoved the little kid into a stack of cans.

I’m a cheap motherfucker. Not so much at the Beer Store, but in the supermarket, every penny counts. Which is why, except for a few items, I hardly go through the aisles. The veggies, fruits, meat and dairies are all placed around the store. Yet, I eat like a king. Knowing how to cook does that. As a matter of fact, I only went through two aisles. I needed flour tortillas, and beans. Laugh at the stereotype, go ahead.

So, I push my stupid cart halfway to where the beans are, because guess who the fuck was occupying the whole aisle? Yup. I go the rest of the way, take my bag of black turtle beans, go back to my cart, and set my coordenates to the international foods aisle.
Curse the heavens! Guess which bunch of assholes had moved on to that particular aisle. By this time, and believe me, I’m not a rude guy, I felt like pelting them with Herdez “Salsa Verde” cans. Fucking people!
So, I grabbed my tortillas and decided to head for the checkout.

After waiting in line behind some retarded idiot who decided to organize his groceries right at the cashier (really, dude? asparagus?), finally the chick started scanning my stuff. I went over to the end of the conveyor, where you’re supposed to, and started bagging my groceries. My oh my, guess who was in line behind me!? And guess who I almost strangled to death when he started putting random items into bags – including MY stuff? Of course, his fucking parents were of the opinion that what was happening was comedy gold. Fuckers. One of my patented “evil stares” set them straight.

Fuck, I tell ya, all I needed to finish off the experience was to fight with them over the cab I had called.

Beer in hand now, so all is good.

The Iceberg

Yesterday, I made a very painful (for me) discovery. As I seethed, I wrote the following on my Facebook status:

Here’s what I wish for a very particular someone (i’ll tell you who later): Lots and lots of cancer. And may his (or her) kids grow up to be gay junkies. FUCK!

Due to the space constraints of said Facebook Status thingie, I wasn’t able to express the whole of my anger, What I really wanted to say was more to the effect of “Here’s what I wish for a very particular someone (I’ll tell you who later): I hope he develops cancer, which slowly evolves into a lot of pain. When he finally achieves metastasis, just before he (or she) kicks the bucket, I hope he (or she) remembers that one time when he (or she) had the audacity to steal my domain name. Also, I hope he (or she) and the rest of their family end up bankrupt and miserable. And may their children grow up to be AIDS-ridden drug addicts who whore themselves out to people of their same sex for money. May their dog be bitten by a rabid animal, etc.

Yes, I’m bitter. And pissed. See, for years I’ve worked on different instances of the project www.averycoldplace.com. Finally, in January of 2008 I was able to buy the domain and start developing content. When I bought the domain, however, I only did so for one year. I saw no need to buy it for more, as it was just a starting project.
So, January 2009 rolls around, bringing with itself a whole economic crisis. I called my webhosts, and they said they had every intention in the world to help me out, but that due to the dollar’s volatility, they couldn’t help me with the actual domain name. Yeah, right.
Finally last week I was able to cough up enough expendable cash, wired it back home and tried to get things up and running. Much to my fucking chagrin, however, I was informed that the domain name had been taken.
I’ve tried all the whois available on the ‘net, and noone is able to produce information on who the fuck owns my domain name.

Well, the world won’t come to an end because of that. I guess I’ll just have to come up with another domain name, redesign everything I already had, and take it from there. But, yesterday I was fucking pissed. And I posted that on facebook.
Two minutes after, I received a notification that somebody had replied to my status.
This someone is a friend who used to be my boss at work. He has since moved to another plant, all within the same company. But, his status as a higher-up, and the content of his message, have left me kind of worried. He replied:

Why do I think this is work related????

Sure, work isn’t paradise, but I don’t remember ever having feelings so strong about anyone there. But that’s not the point. The point is, what makes him think it’s work related?
It could be nothing, but in these paranoid times, I feel,well, paranoid. Does he know something I don’t know?

The Iceberg

Where I come from, when the thermometer reads 5° Celcius, people panic. Of course, this is the place where summers are known for their “lovely” 45° weather. In the shade. IN THE FUCKING SHADE. Winters are usually mild. Why, I was there just a little over a month ago, and I fondly recall drinking a couple of beers with my buddies in 30° weather.
When a cold front blows through, however, it blows hard. And sometimes, perhaps two or three days a year, the temperature drops below the dreaded 5° point. Schools suspend activities, and children are invited to stay home. Grown-ups go into a frenzy of talking about the weather. Not absolute chaos, mind you, but it’s something that requires taking precautions.

On the other hand, here in Canada, while last week the thermometer offered temperatures of minus fucking 20 (with a beautiful windchill of minus thirty), things changed over the weekend. The temperature has gone up, and well, whe have been around those 5 degrees. And I couldn’t be happier. Well, actually I could, but I’m using a cliché here.
The best part of all this is that at least 75% of the snow that had gathered is gone. Sure, winter isn’t over, and won’t be for at least another month, month and a half. It’s supposed to get cold again over this weekend. But for the time being, I can see grass again, the “ashtray” bucket outside of work reappeared (despite personal efforts to dig it out with a shovel, I hadn’t been able to locate it), and for the first time since I returned from vacation I was able to smoke a cigarette while sitting down.

So while back home it is a curse to have 5° weather, up here it’s somewhat of a blessing. I guess even with weather the old maxim applies: “one man’s shit is another man’s treasure”.

The Iceberg