Alex Carrick’s Blog

Now that our oldest son Tom has returned to university, it is my task at night to walk our beautiful dog Daisy before we all lay down our heads.

While the journey is usually pleasurable, there are always hidden dangers lurking around the corner.

This preamble is by way of saying that Farley and Grover are thinly disguised stand-ins and I sometimes have disturbing premonitions.

Farley and Grover learned to love ritual.
Their strolls of an eve turned habitual.
Man and dog side by side,
they’d glide with firm stride,
an experience dearly to wish you all.

From shadow to streetlamps’ white glimmer,
day’s cares would recede ever dimmer.
They’d bask in the night,
suburban traffic grew light,
mind and body kept fitter and trimmer.

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The old Canada is changing very quickly. The interests displayed in the new Canada contain a considerable number of carry-overs, but there are also some stark changes.

The following ditty attempts to bring the sometimes co-operating and sometimes conflicting sentiments together in a cohesive whole.

Canadians love hockey,

you know that’s no lie,

still there are other icons

we’d never deny.

Polar bears and cod fish,

salmon, prairies and wheat;

toques perched jaunty on heads

                as we trek snowy streets.

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The following are my ruminations on the passage of time and the aging process.     

There are also some wry observations on how tolerant society is towards the elderly.     

What’s required may be a little more patience. Of course, most of this is tongue in cheek.   

Tick-tock or digital flash,     

seconds race a headlong dash.     

Minutes to hours to     

days then to years,     

accumulation of time     

soon ranks first in our fears.   

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Griselda Beamish was happier than she had been in a hundred years. While others of her kind were having trouble adjusting to modern times, Zelda embraced the new. All of the most recent advances in technology made her life simpler.

There were opportunities that she could never have imagined before. Take her job for instance. She worked from her pretty colonial two-story in the suburbs as a telemarketer under contract.

It didn’t bother her at all when the people she called got mad and screamed she was a witch, then hung up. “You got that right, sweetheart” she’d say to herself.

She particularly liked the hands-free option that came with some cell phones. She could be brewing up one of her imaginative concoctions and never miss a beat.

Zelda started in the business with intimate chat lines. Her voice and manner were well suited to stringing some poor sucker along.

When she asked, “So big boy, can you imagine what I’m doing right now?” very few of her clients guessed she was in the process of stir-frying and eating a bat.

But even Zelda found the phone sex to be tawdry, although it did teach her there were a lot of lonely people out in the stratosphere.

It inspired her to begin work on her greatest creation, a love potion for the masses. This led to frustration. She could never get the ingredients quite right. There was always something missing.

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Twitter has a quaint tradition known as Follow Friday. This is the commendable practice, carried out during the last workday of each week, of recommending fellow tweeters for following.

The means is to list names (the @ avatars) along with an accompanying hashtag description (#fridayfollow).

The problem is that a mere listing of names quickly turns bland. In fairly short order, it seemed desirable to spice up the exercise by inserting a more colorful phrase, such as “Authorized to investigate Twitter’s suspicious crop circles” or “Driving responsibly in Twitter’s bumper cars.” Rotating through several of these each week kept my interest alive.  

But before I could say, “Why am I doing this?” I found myself adopting a particular theme each week.

Hence, there was Beatles week (“With Long Tall Sally on Twitter’s Yellow Submarine” etc.) and Gilligan’s Island week (“Tweet-wrecked with Gilligan, May Ann & the Howells” etc.)

So far so good. The process may have been evolving like Godzilla, but that was yet to be fully revealed.

However,  now I’ve really gone off the rails. I’ve started writing mini-short stories.

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I’ve come up with a parlour game that’s the mental equivalent of twiddling one’s thumbs. Think of an imaginary statement, proposition or news item that uses at least two popular song titles. Then consider what the reaction of an impartial observer might be.

Is this confusing? Read a few examples and you’ll quickly catch the drift.

**

(1) REACTION: That’s something you don’t see every day. It’s also a noteworthy demonstration of grace under pressure.

STATEMENT: Take a look at me now, I’m on fire. (Phil Collins and Bruce Springsteen)

**

(2) REACTION: When high-stepping of an evening, quality workmanship is important.

STATEMENT: These boots are made for walking, all along the watchtower. (Nancy Sinatra and Jimi Hendrix)

**

(3) REACTION: What are you up to? Maybe I don’t want to know.

STATEMENT: Why is it every time you go away, I can’t find my sledgehammer. (Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel)

**

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Here’s something I’ve never shared before. I try to live according to the words of wisdom from my own personal adviser and alter ego, Ari Noshuns. Emulating his spirit of generosity, the following are passed on to you as a means to achieve deeper enlightenment.

(1) A man is only good if there is a strong woman standing behind him. Then he can be used as a shield in a shoot-out.

(2) People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Nor should they start a marijuana grow-up in their living room. Especially if their next door neighbor is a cop.

(3) A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet. Unless, of course, Rose happens to be the name of your gorilla. The name Stinky might draw more attention to her problem.

(4) Mountain high, valley low, river wide, verbs unnecessary.

(5) During the intermission at the opera, to be or not to be is not the question. It’s to pee or not to pee?

(6) Beware of man who speaks with forked tongue. Be even more wary of the crazy little woman who attacked him with cutlery.

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The Carrick family thinks it has the nicest pet dog in the world, a beautiful golden retriever named Daisy. But even we know there are times when Daisy seems a little lazy. A dozen-plus examples follow.

(1) She once had a race with the oak tree in our back yard. The oak won, the dandelions placed second and Daisy failed to show.

(2) The tortoise and the hare use Daisy as their finish line.

(3) She doesn’t sniff other dogs’ butts. Instead, she gives them a handi-wipe and tells them to be more thorough next time.

(4) She eats most of her meals through a straw. That’s after the cat purées her kibble.

(5) She doesn’t chase cars anymore. She calls them really bad names.

(6) When it comes to tooth care, she forgets to eat her milk bone. Then she and the cat fight over the last strand of dental floss.

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The following are a dozen good reasons a proper young lady should never date a vampire.

(1) There’s not much point to installing a mirror over your bed.

(2) Your blood pudding will never measure up to his mother’s.

(3) When you tell your BFFs about his mother, they’re disappointed you think she’s an old bat.

(4) Getting him to open up about his feelings is like pulling fangs.

(5) Every time you cook him a special meal he gets sick. He says he’s lactose intolerant but you suspect it’s the garlic bread.

(6) Whenever the two of you go into a beer hall and the bartender says “pint or quart,” something mortifying happens.

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How hot and humid is Toronto this summer?

There’s no question it’s a scorcher.

We’re setting new record highs daily.  

It’s such a sizzler that… 

(1) Out-0n-bail G20 protesters have declared a moratorium on burning cop cars.

(2) Casual Friday has become sponge bath Friday;

(3) All of the city’s mayoral candidates want to tax and license running through sprinklers.

(4) The pavement on Yonge Street is melting faster than the ice surface at the Air Canada Centre.

(5) All of the mayoral candidates want to tax and license panting dogs.

(6) The air is so thick and rubbery, the Raptors are trying to dunk it.

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