Camping and Teppanyaki: Together at Last!

Today is an occasion that generally happens once in a son's lifetime - my parent's 25th wedding anniversary. We celebrated in style as my mother, father, Kayla, Lina, my Oma, and my Opa paid a visit to Ichiban, Winnipeg's finest teppanyaki-style restaurant. The food was absolutely top-notch, with my dinner combination of filet mignon, baby lobster, and terriyaki chicken being close to perfect. The atmosphere at Ichiban is fantastic and you'd be hard-pressed to find a more entertaining dining experience. Our excellent chef decided to pick on Kayla in particular, making her flinch a number of times as he threatened to hurl sharp objects in her direction and actually hurling some dull ones. A word to the wise though: laughing uncontrollably at your sister while trying to eat dinner with chopsticks is a challenge unlike any other. A great night it was, full of great food, great laughs, great sake, and holy awesome (!) ginger ice-cream.
 
Weekends allow you to do all sorts of fun things, so I've been enjoying them immensely since I started the new job. There's this little change in you that happens when you take up a 9-5er. Though the evenings are nice, the weekend just screams with possibilities. It's hard to decide what to do and what to leave for the next opportunity, but that just helps you to value your spare time that much more. Those in the same boat as me right now will attest that there is varying degrees of acceptance with this kind of situation and the sooner you embrace this system, the sooner you start getting the most out of life. 
  
This past weekend was a weekend of camping fun in the Whiteshell, some of the most gorgeous country until you hit the Rockies and the West and Europe in the East.



See what I mean? This is one of the highest points in the park, directly overlooking our campsite at the foot of the hill and offering a wonderful view of the expansive forest that is the Whiteshell. Of course, you can't see much because of the tree cover, but you'll have to take my word that it is down there somewhere.
 
Lina, Burtonium and I left on Friday night after work and had a little trouble coming up with a decent and available site that would be suitable for two tents. We finished pitching the tents just before sunset and settled in for the weekend. We spent most of Saturday morning hiking around and visiting various waterfalls in the park, returning sometime in the mid-afternoon. Burtonium had decided not to spend the second night in the park (having remembered to bring his guitar along, but neglecting to enhance his stay with luxuries like a sleeping bag and clean clothes), so he departed shortly thereafter. Cooked to a crisp, Lina and I took a dip in the uber-frigid lake Nutimik and pretty much spent the evening lazing around and drinking coolers before turning in early. Sunday was pretty much reserved for cleaning up the site and saskatoon picking and we arrived back in the city around 3:00ish.
 
Of course, there were two factors that I could have done without. 1) I have never seen so many horseflies in my life. They swarm around vehicles like sharks around a bleeding swimmer, waiting for you to step out so they can take a chunk out of your skin. The persistent buggers really made the afternoon uncomfortable, but disappeared in the early evening. 2) Crows. Dozens of crows. There was obviously no West Nile out there, because they were there each morning making racket at 6:00 am right outside our tent. Good Lord, that was irritating!
 
I also noticed a weird little phenomenon this weekend while camping. There seems to be an unwritten rule that firmly states that you must greet each person you pass them when on a camping excursion. It's friendly and all, but I just find it rather strange. Having grown up entirely in the city, I have a hard time grasping such behaviour. Courtesy? Unheard of!
 
All in all I had a great weekend and I'm looking forward to at least one more trip to the Whiteshell this summer and a return to my storied cabin. Oh, the grandeur!
 
qotp: "Living's impossible; a full-time job trying to change
ourselves into something we love before we're gone.
We can't catch our breath. No wonder we stare."
- David O'Meara, from the poem The War Against Television
 
- Colin (invincibleironman@hotmail.com)

Fog off, motherfogger!

You know, I can accept that humans need a purpose. They need a movement to identify with, a cause to support. Some people seem to need it more than others and some people just can't live without having some greater purpose to serve. They move from one cause to another, with the prerogatve to stir pointless shit up being their pathetic chosen role in society. Tonight I realized that people like that piss me off. I can understand that people were born as the only species able to change their surrounding environment, but protesters and activists really just take that freedom a little too far in my eyes.
 
Yeah, some things are worth protesting for. I mean there's actually good causes to stand up against like strip mining, deforestation, human rights, dumping oil into the oceans... the list goes on. But seriously, mosquito fogging?
 
That's right. Last night, the intense malathion debate reached a glorious crescendo of mediocrity when a Winnipeg woman was actually arrested for disturbing the peace during an anti-malathion protest. Seriously, she spent the night in jail after being charged with mischief, causing a disturbance, resisting arrest, and being a giant ass-head.
 
Malathion, for those not in the know, is the chemical that the City of Winnipeg uses to spray for mosquitoes in order to keep the blood-sucking population to a minimum. Now, malathion is certainly a form of nerve gas and this seems to be the sticking point with lunatics like Mrs. Head. I've heard all sorts of talk about how malathion is what police and armies use to "fog out" their targets, but that just isn't true. Malathion is very, very safe unless you take in a crazy huge amount of the stuff. Health Canada deems it safe for a child to play in a playground next to a Winnipeg fogging truck, so I imagine that we can handle a little bit drifting through the air and taking out our provincial bird. The lady last night was just audacious, wearing a gas mask and screaming "[malathion's] ancestors were tested in Auschwitz!" Did I miss something? Are we fogging for Jews now? The nerve!
 
So I deem the stuff safe. OK, so maybe if you hooked yourself up to the fogger and pumped your lungs full of it, you'd have problems. Lots of gases that way though. Look at chocolate - if you breathed excess amount of chocolate vapour, you'd be pretty damn sick. I think we should all go stand outside Willy Wonka's and protest the production of chocolate mist, don't you?
 
On a completely unrelated note, did anyone notice that there aren't any mosquitoes around? Also, I don't have West Nile. Like I said, this has nothing to do with anything. I'm just saying, you know.
 
qotp: "Dost thou not suspect my place? Dost thou not suspect my years? O that he were here to write me down an ass! But masters, remember that I am an ass. Though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass. No, thou villain, thou art full of piety, as shall be proved upon thee by good witness. I am a wise fellow, and which is more, an officer, and which is more, a householder, and which is more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina, and one that knows the law, go to; and a rich fellow enough, go to; and a fellow that hath had losses, and one that hath two gowns and every thing handsome about him. Bring him away. O that I had been writ down an ass!"
- William Shakespeare, from Much Ado About Nothing
 
- Colin (invincibleironman@hotmail.com)

Independence, eh?

Coming off the most relaxing week in the history of relaxing weeks, I'm getting ready for my first day at the new job. I'm fully rejuvenate and ready to rock. But before I head off to bed, I wanted to stop in and make Canada look really good by comparing it to something much worse.

What better way to celebrate the Fourth of July than with a viewing of Fahrenheit 9/11? Actually, I didn't even notice the inherent irony of the situation until Lina pointed out that it was indeed Independence Day just as the movie was beginning. I've seen Michael Moore films in the past and I'm fully aware that everything he says should be taken with a grain of salt. However, makes some good points over the course of this one, despite certain pieces of information coming across as semi-fabricated or at least embellished.

I could have done without the lengthy, awkward scenes of people crying on camera and the gratuitous and often graphic Iraqi Freedom footage. Even though Moore tends to overdramatize issues with these devices, he still drives a point home - though the point kind of changes over the course of the movie.

I did take a few things away from this film though. I always knew that W was an idiot, but this film really showcases his stupidity. Actually it showcases his ignorance more than anything, but ignorance is just a byproduct of stupidity anyway. If he had any chance of winning the next election at all, this film just obliterated that chance.

I also never felt really badly for the American people when that muppet became the most powerful man on the planet but I kind of do now. Obviously they were tricked into believing in a president that they didn't elect and supporting a war that didn't really exist in the first place. Nevermind the fact that the war was basically a way to cover up the skeletons in his own closet, but he sent hundreds to die for a fake cause and sent thousands of innocent Iraqis to their graves for something they were never involved in. Millions of people were royally duped and paying for it in blood - that's just not right.

The one thing that stood out the most for me came rather late in the movie. Moore does a large segment on US Military recruiting campaigns and shows just the kind of crop the military looks for in times like these. They look for the down and out, the unemployed, the trouble cases. I find it both amazing and disgusting how the people who live in the worst accommodations, make the least money, and have been left behind by their government are the first to stand up and "protect" the system that has forsaken them. And in the end, their sacrifice doesn't serve any purpose other than to increase the profits of the corporations who play puppet master on Capitol Hill.

I myself am proud to be Canadian, where we don't do stupid crap like that. I know our Prime Minister might be a crook but at least he's not killing people to make money. Plus, I'm reasonably sure that we elected our leader and in this day and age that's got to count for something.

So the next time you think we've got it bad just take a look South. I mean, at least we still have choice.

qotp: "This Texas fuhrer, for sure a
compassionless con who serve a
lethal needle to the poor, the cure for crime is murder?"
- Zack De La Rocha, from March of Death

- Colin (invincibleironman@hotmail.com)