TubaOrNotTuba

The original premise struck me as one without much credibility. Someone had released a game for the Wii that was on double-sided media, and since the console had single-sided support, then you could send your console back and the company would upgrade things, free of charge. I mean, Nintendo might have deep pockets, but the sheer logistics of having umpteen million crazed owners shipping their beloved boxes back to the warehouse for individualized hardware changes seemed fantastic, in every sense of the word.

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The fleet has come to port. Lock up your children and pets. That’s not really fair; I don’t know anything about naval personnel other than the stereotypes presented by hundreds of years of literature and dozens of years of cinema, but the local wharf has a king’s ransom in expensive military yachts tied alongside. There’s an open invitation to go and tour, but the thought of standing in line with thousands of others for the chance to walk up and down some metal stairs is hardly a drawing card; I’ll abstain.

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“De-” from the Latin prefix to imply “out of” (among other things). Have you noticed that when the prefix is used in English, the words tend toward the ominous end of the language spectrum. Words like “detoxify”, or “decontaminate”. How about the word for today, “deconfessionalize”. I’ve just returned from a meeting that stretched on for hours, with the set purpose of trying to “demystify” the latest educational direction of our provincial government. Nothing like that happened.

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Sometimes I think that the perfect job must be “Devil’s Advocate”. After all, if you have anything more than a speck of the sceptic in your genetic profile, it’s hard to take the world around us at face value. Particularly a world where someone always wants to sell something to someone else. Like telemarketers. Anyone that calls me at home with a financial offer had better be ready to pony up, or else I will take the time to expose the weakness in the argument. It’s in my nature.

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If I had to create a lexicon for the workplace, I think I’d try to apply foods as metaphors. For example; to describe an occupation that was “predictable”, as in “I know what’s going to happen next”, then the food would be porridge. Porridge from the hand of the holy grandmother. An acquired taste, which I never acquired. One that can be modified with brown sugar and fresh milk, but that remains bland.

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Tonight I’ve set aside my spy novels and adventure potboilers, because the news channel offers far superior material to anything available at the local bookstand. The current government seems to have a certain amateur air about many things including the “dating game”, if revelations from this evening are credible.

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Throw a mix of Beethoven sonatas into the soundtrack, get rid of the colour (black and white is the only way to make a movie about the earlier times feel real), let Billy Bob Thornton do both the lead role and the narrational voice, and then sit back and watch the master at work. I have to tell you about a movie I watched this afternoon, because it was actually much better than I would have expected. A gestalt effect, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

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Given that I awoke before the rest of the house this morning (well, pretty much any morning), it only seemed fair that I take the car by myself and go off to the malls. Time to purchase a few pairs of pants that aren’t made from blue denim, in recognition of the approach of summer. It didn’t take long; by now I know what size I wear and what the price point should be, which left colour as the only variable. I was home again before they even missed me.

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For the last thirty years or so, I’ve lived a civilized existence. Far from the noise and squalor of student residence, I’ve had access (for the main part) to beds with non-industrial mattresses, heating that functioned when I wanted it to, less than fifteen competing stereo systems (simulcast was born in a mens’ residence) and above all, clean tubs and showers.

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I’m in the midst of devolution. Much more and they’ll be sending in a film crew to catch my meltdown. No, nothing that is really important, just a swamp of details. For example, at least three computers around here are demonstrating that a virus has taken control of the desktop. After putting in more hours than I like to think on one machine yesterday (victim of Vundo), the family seemed pretty much reconciled to a reformat and regroup our forces, when two others started randomly flashing a popup window that claimed to be “personalizing settings”. At least, that’s what we’ve determined the message to be.

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