Simian Farmer

Banner time

It's a week early, but I've changed the masthead image of the site for the month of May.

This is due largely to the fact that the image shown is very near the top of my list of favourite pictures of my son.  It was last week, out on the back patio in front of our bricked-in barbeque.  We've only just recently begun taking the squirt to roam outside, the weather being a little more accommodating now than it has been.

It was so nice that I found two hours on Saturday to rake and bag our front lawn, and then two more hours on Sunday to rake and bag our back lawn.  22 Big Orange Garbage Bags. 

I also found out that I have oblique muscles.  ...ouch...

On religion

"The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself."

~Sir Richard Francis Burton

As giddy as a little girl

My wife, that is.

The puppies were born late this past week.  Her girlfriend in Lethbridge, five and a half hours south of us, bred her boxer dogs and the female now has a little litter; from which we get first pick.  My darling wife is almost beside herself with excitement.  I'd be very impressed if she could do that.

She's so excited in fact, next weekend she's going to take a little road trip down there for the express purpose of picking out the one 'we' want and putting a down payment on the little fella.  Or fellee.

That means she'll wait until I get home from work on Friday evening, hop in my truck and drive over five hours south.  She'll stay overnight with her folks, get up, go see the pups, ooh and ahh over them for about an hour, take some pictures so she can show me which one 'we' picked out, and finally drive back up through Edmonton again to get home sometime Saturday afternoon.

She'd better not criticise me then when I want to skip out of work a wee bit early on Thursday, May 19th so I can go and stand in line for ten hours for a showing of Revenge of the Sith!

We've been sent pics of the newborns and they really are quite adorable.  (I'll post some when my wife forwards them to me.)  The mom is Laci, the dad is Streetside and they had a litter of nine.  Unfortunately, only six survived.  One was the runt of the litter and didn't quite pull through; another was born completely without a tail and they often develop problems.  This one quite obviously did.  And the third was just an accident.  He was a black flashie (that's the colour scheme), and I hear that's somewhat rare, so he was the prize of the litter.  He seemed to have gotten caught up in some folds of the blanket that was in Laci's birthing bed and a water dish got subsequently spilt on him, unbeknownst to the humans at the time.  He was trapped like that for an unknown length of time and was found freezing cold and shivering, too late to warm him up in time.  So now there are six.

My wife could never raise animals.  Her heart almost broke at hearing of the plight of fully a third of the litter.  She's especially got a soft spot for runts, considering our own Jack Russell was in that boat with his litter.  The very last of his brothers and sisters in the pet shop window.  She's still very excited though.

I'm very excited about the fact that it's less than a month now until our vacation!  Two full weeks off work.  I haven't had that in almost two years now - not since our wedding and honeymoon.  'Twill be so nice.

And then we'll come home just in time to go and pick up our puppy in the middle of June.

Please, please, please let Jango expend the majority of his energy on this new addition...

Spring cleaning & birthday geekery

The inexorable process of cleaning the Fraser household in order to welcome in a new summer season is plodding along with the perseverence of a virgin at the prom.  There's no stopping us! 

The problem being that we have a 2-hour window between the boy's bedtime and when we feel the need to seek the warm embrace of the down-filled duvet ourselves.  (My wife still insists on turning on the electric blanket, and here it is the end of April!)  Plus whatever we can get done on the weekends.  I normally work at least a half-day most of the time and that darned kid of ours keeps getting under foot.  (My wife and I both last night mentioned how we're looking forward to the time, several years hence, when we can arbitrarily assign labour to our children and kick back and govern with a beer in one hand and a cat-o-nine-tails in the other.  Scrub harder or there'll be no broth before bed!!)

Last night started innocently enough.  I put the boy to bed and my brunette beauty was doing the dishes.  As she was putting mugs away she realised how cluttered some of the cupboards were.  Well, we'll just have to get rid of some of these cups and reorganise.

And there were too many cookbooks above the fridge.  And the spice cupboard had THREE bottles of soya sauce.  (What do you need all these for, Simon?!)  And there was a Harry Potter popcorn bucket in the back of one.  She, uh, was rathe insistent on keeping it.  Argue about that, I did not.

Then we ripped down a few shelves in our pantry, which had just been nailed up haphazardly with baseboards as supports by some previous owner, to make room for more important items.  Which meant getting rid of other stuff.  How did we determine which to keep and which to toss?

"Anything that's older than our relationship gets the boot, Hon.  How 'bout that?"

Sounded good to me, so that's what we did.

It was past 10.30 by the time we called it done.  Now we just have to clean and re-paint the interior of the pantry and the kitchen can be stamped DONE.

*****

And with the boy's birthday pending less than two weeks away, we're going to send in a picture of his royal cuteness to one of the local TV stations so they can show it during their morning newscast.  It's called the A-Channel Big Breakfast.

So here's the picture I'll be Emailing in later today with the following caption:

On Declan's First Birthday:

Happy birthday from the Fraser, Farley, Karges & Tkachuk families.

May the 4^th be with you!!

Eschewing religious dogma

I have stated in this space before that although I have very strong spiritual beliefs, I have developed a certain disdain for organised religion.  And to clarify, the Roman Catholic religion in particular; it is the only one with which I have any real familiarity.  Perhaps if I were to investigate joining a Unitarian Universalist congregation, I would change certain perceptions, but that's not going to happen any time soon.

The primary source of my ecclesiastical embargo stems from the propensity of organised religion to stand stiff-backed and stern on its pulpit and proclaim the Truth for all and sundry to hear.  And obey.  And repeat by rote.  And most definitely NOT to argue or question.  Again, this comes from my experiences with the Roman Catholic church, so I don't wish to paint with so broad a brush as to label all similar, or even not-so-similar, religious outfits with the same colour.

But now I have been reinforced in my precept from certain statements made by the Canadian cardinals that participated in electing Benedict XVI to the office of Supreme Chancellor, err, Pope of the Holy Roman Catholic church. 

In defence of Benedict's rather conservative, hard-line stance on issues such as contraception, women priests, divorce and homosexuality, two of the cardinals make the statements that:

The world needs to change, not the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, a Canadian cardinal said Wednesday in a spirited defence of the new Pope.

In his first public comments since taking part in the conclave that elected Joseph Ratzinger as Pope, Montreal's Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte said the new pontiff is misunderstood.

...

"If there needs to be change, it needs to be in the world, not in the doctrine," said Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Archbishop of Quebec.

Yup.  That's right.  The whole world needs to change.  Because the world is wrong and the church is right.

Christ.

Full article here.

Bad Dad II

I think I've used that subject line before, but I'm a bad dad again.  A cad.

I dropped my son on his head. 

Well, not really.  But he and I were playing on the couch and I kinda sorta got distracted by the enthrallingly realistic display of fighting prowess as enacted by Jean-Claude Van Damme in that thrilling classic, Bloodsport.

I raise my head for a few seconds to watch some flying fists, and then,

THUD

...

"Whaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!"

(shit!)

"Simon!!  Did Declan just fall off the couch?!"

"...yes..."

Digs finger into ribs, gives evil eye and proclaims under breath, "I told you that was going to happen eventually."

A bottle of water and a good snuggle on the sofa with the Bad Dad helped make everything OK again.  I still feel like a heel.

Enough linking already!

Are you getting sick and effin tired of me posting a plethora of Star Wars-related links to this site in the past while?  Well fear not, fair Princess, for it will reduce to a trickle and then to nothing at all in a month's time.

But until we are faced with that derth of linkage, I thought I'd share the fact that just released has been the next on-line trailer for the Episode III video game from LucasArts.

I was a very little bit leery of watching it, due to potential spoilers, but the site played some sort of Jedi mind trick on me and I was drawn inexorably to hit the 'Click to Play' button.  So I did.  I was a weak-minded fool, but willingly.

If the light sabre work in the movie is going to be comparable to what we see in some of the video game snippets, and I'm pretty sure it is, then 'twill be a visually rapturous event in that respect. 

I really am getting SO excited!  I wish I could write something a little more poignant than that, but oh well.  The ability to compose a coherent post is insignificant next to the power of the Force.  Or something like that.

Pope Palpatine I

He's been the Grand Poobah of the Holy Roman Rollers for less than half a day, and already is being spoofed.

I don't envy Joseph Ratzinger, aka - Pope Benedict XVI, his new shoes.

It's not like you don't know this already...

But today marks one calendar month until the release of
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

The excitement is palpable.  At least near me it is.  And I know it's excitement because I showered this morning.

Also, there are three new TV trailers just released on Star Wars dot com. (Which, incidentally, now has a nifty new front page.)  Whole lotta light sabre action and some flying ships and a couple of glimpses of General Grievous.  You even get to hear him say, "Crush them!" 

Links to the TV spots are:
Jedi Action 1
Jedi Action 2
Unite

I'm getting giddy.  And nervous.  I mean, this wraps everything up.  This is supposed to validate the efforts, some would say sub-par, made on Episodes I and II.  This is supposed to be the deepest, darkest abyss into which falls the Old Republic until A New Hope arises.

And looking at what eventually happens in Episodes IV, V, and VI, it sort of speaks to the advice of not getting caught up in forming a power-hungry empire of some sort, hell-bent on galactic subjugation.  You're gonna be doomed to failure from the word 'crush them!'.  I guess that's two words.

Case in point:
When Luke and Ben are sitting in his hut after the incident with the Tusken Raiders, Ben states that, "...for a thousand generations the Jedi were guardians of peace in the Old Republic.  Before the dark times; before the Empire." 

Then going through the events that culminate in Return of the Jedi, this 'Empire' lasts all of what, 30 years?  And then we march on in with the New Republic.  So I don't advise going empire-shopping any time soon.  They don't have a really long shelf life.

But getting back to me getting giddy.  A large part of me feels like Grand Moff Tarkin did during the attack on the original Death Star.  I see him looking pensively at a display screen off-camera with a hand to his chin and then turning to the Dark Lord of the Sith.  "I'm taking an awful risk, Vader.  This had better work."  And then, in an instant, the light goes out of his world.

My own New Hope is that this crown jewel of the series doesn't similarly go BOOM.  When I'm sitting in that theatre on Thursday, May 19^th, I want to be blown away.  I'm expecting to be blown away.  And I hate going into a movie with expectations. 

But this is Star Wars.  How can I not?!

Go ahead, you can say it...

...he's the cutest darned kid you've ever laid your eyes on.  Yeah, we know.

He was a great aid to his mother and me when we were getting started on our annual spring cleaning this weekend.  And MAN! did we go hardcore!!  w00t!!

I actually bought a toothbrush with which we cleaned out the window sill tracks.  Have you ever bathed all the windows in your house in your bathtub?  This is what my wife did all day Sunday.  Damn, they're clean.

The barbeque has brand new ceramic briquettes and had at least ten years worth of 'guck' removed from around the burner.  (Yes, I know charcoal is the best way to go.  But having it tied in to your natural gas line is just so handy!)

Got a new storm door to replace the crappy one on the backdoor.  Now we just have to cut out a doggie door, paint it and attach it.

And then tackle the remaining eleven items that are on the Fraser Spring Cleaning List of Death!!

But to be honest, the boy wasn't that great a help in the cleaning part of things.  My beautiful hazel-eyed wife and I took it in turns to monitor him, so he wouldn't abuse the dog or take a header down the stairs, while the other was cleaning.

This did give me the opportunity to take both boys (the four-legged and the two-legged) for a long walk to take a couple movies back to Blockbuster.  (The Bourne Supremacy was purdy good, but not as good as the first one.  And then Finding Neverland was really a great show.  I've turned in to a reall Johnny Depp fan over the past number of years.)

But...  BIG FIND!!  The movie return was Sunday afternoon, so let's go back to Friday night:

I was walking the shelves at Blockbuster and had a couple flicks in hand.  (The aforementioned two, but was looking at others; just in case.)  When what to my wondering eyes should appear but:

A 2-DVD special edition set of
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead  (!!!!!***$##^#^$$!!!!!?!?!?)

SCORE!!
I had asked some schlep at HMV about a DVD some months back and he said, nope, sorry, there ain't one.  So this is either a brand new release or the guy was talking out of his backside.  Either way, I'm gonna be getting me a copy of that just as soon as I have the sheckles.

If you have any sort of liking for Shakespeare, and a smattering of familiarity with Hamlet, do yourself a favour and rent / buy / steal a copy of this.  Well, maybe don't rent it, 'cause then you won't have it anymore when you give it back.  But watch it!  Tim Roth and Gary Oldman are two of my favouritest non-leading men sort of actors.  And I don't know if they've ever done anything else where they were together, but they play so wonderfully well off of each other in this.  So get it.  That is all I will say.

Have a good week...