Alex Carrick’s Blog

Everybody’s crazy, some more than others. I don’t mean to make light of people who have deeply rooted problems that make their lives much more difficult. I’m talking about the large proportion of the population that passes for normal.   Among everyday acquaintances, everyone is bonkers. Some have addiction issues. Some have anger issues. Others […]

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During a recession, some companies buck the trend. For example, shoe repair stores and the makers of Spam have seen sales soar. Macdonalds and Wal-Mart are experiencing an influx of customers. All the trouble that people are having coping means the drug companies will probably do okay as well. In fact, more than just okay. They’ll […]

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Who are you, carbon, that everybody is chasing you? Why do they want to capture and store you? What have you done to deserve such approbation and disapproval? Don’t you have rights too? How did things come to this sorry pass?   You are such a renegade. I’m sure there is a background story. There […]

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Penelope Sue had been an incurable romantic almost her entire life. At least, ever since she discovered the word “elopes” hidden within her own name. She was the nicest girl. Everyone agreed on that count. But she had one fatal flaw when it came to men. She expected too much.   That’s why, at the age […]

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I have decided to write about the year I lived in residence in Massey College at the University of Toronto because I have a bad feeling about post-war “baby boomers”. Having had some experience with human nature, and aging parents, I know the boomer generation is likely to become quite nostalgic as the years plod on. I […]

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If there really are space aliens living among us, they should be fairly easy to identify. The following are some of the tell-tale signs. Once you know them, they seem obvious. Just the same, it’s advisable to have them here for reference.   (1) They know a lot more about astronomy than seems good for […]

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Once upon a time, there was a young Canadian boy name Richard, living in a small Prairie town, who played a major role in world events. Up until the age of 18, he did very little to distinguish himself or to set himself apart from the rest of the population. In fact, he’d shown such a […]

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Sometimes, I feel worn out and I think I know what the problem is. It’s the extra five minutes. You must know what I mean. We’ve all been saddled with a whole list of extra chores that nominally are supposed to take five minutes each, but often take longer. Plus just about everything now takes five minutes more than it should or used to anyway.

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As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I’ve discovered (through virtually no research) that many of the place names in Canada still bear the names assigned to them by the original native peoples. They knew what they were doing when they gave us some of our most unique calling cards. Here are some more examples.

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You know your working day is probably going to seem “not too bad” only in retrospect when one or more of the following happens early on.   (1) The “chimmy changas” you ate last night have stopped dancing and have now turned surly.

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