Author Archives: Andrew Butters

The Real Black Friday

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Being born on the thirteenth of a month (in North America at least) can be fun. It means that throughout your life you’ll have a Friday the 13th birthday. My first was in 1981 (7 years old). I honestly don’t remember it. The next one was in 1987 when I turned thirteen on Friday the 13th. That day was awesome; everyone was so nice to me. For one day I was the coolest kid in school.

The next one was just as memorable: in 1992 I turned 18, my birthday present was sex for the first time, and even though I was all grown up I still couldn’t watch the Friday the 13th movies (too scary!) My 24th birthday in 1998 was uneventful unless you count the fact that it was around then that I quit smoking (haven’t smoked since!)

Then began a nice stretch of more than a decade without a birthday on a Friday. That stretch ended in 2009 at the age of 35. It also marks the loss of my wife’s brother and will forever be remembered as the worst. birthday. ever.

Every birthday since has been bitter sweet. On one hand I am reminded of all the truly wonderful people that I have in my life. I’m also still having birthdays, and that’s a good thing. On the other hand it’s tough because Ryan meant so much to everyone, and that day is just one more reminder that he’s gone.

This year marks the first Friday the 13th since that fateful day six years ago. My wife and I are taking our daughter for a follow-up with her surgeon and the family will go out for dinner that night. We’ll celebrate my life for a few minutes and remember Ryan’s as well. Last year the cat died on my birthday so this year we’re hoping either the frog or the hamster will take one for the team.

My next Friday the 13th birthday won’t be until 2020 (when I turn, wait for it… 46). After that I can look forward to that special birthday in ’26, 37, ’43, ’48, ’54, ’65, ’71, and ’76 (where I’ll be a ripe old 102). I hope to make it that far and beyond, remembering Ryan on every Friday the 13th birthday, every other birthday, and each and every day in between.

Live. Laugh. Love.

~ Andrew

Daylight Stupid Time

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There has been a lot of talk about Daylight Savings Time lately, but I only have one question: Who does a guy have to bribe around here to get rid of it? [political snark] I’m looking at you, Kathleen Wynne [/political snark]

The concept of DST has been around for centuries, with one notable Englishman pushing for it quite heavily at the turn of the century (the previous century, for all you millennials thinking about 15 years ago). It wasn’t until WWI, in an effort to conserve energy and keep people from wasting those precious early daylight moments, that it established a stronghold on Europe and North America.

Every year around this time articles start popping up about the effects of DST on the people. Trust me, it’s a real thing. I’ve been suffering from insomnia for years and am basically a (reasonably) high functioning idiot. Anyone with children also knows what kind of havoc DST can have on a sleep schedule, but it’s more than just about giving up an hour of sleep. Daylight Savings Time is almost 100 years old. This concept was conceived before there was widespread electric light and it was propped up by an energy crisis more than 40 years ago. If there’s a better example of doing something “because that’s the way it was always done” I have yet to find it. It’s archaic, and it’s pathetic.

I used to think it needed to be an all or nothing sort of thing but take a look at this map:

Wikimedia Commons

Blue represents places that use DST and red the places that never have (and presumably never will). The orange parts are all the places that used to implement DST but chose to stop. So it can be done. It HAS been done – many times – and even from states / provinces / territories within the same country, and regions within those!

We are beyond needing that daylight to save coal or “conserve energy”. The world has fantastic ways of conserving energy ALL THE TIME, not just at some ungodly hour of the morning. And don’t tell me that the golfers like it because they can play longer. No one gives a shit about whether or not they can get in 4 more holes. No one.

“It will cost so much to fix it!” people will say. No it won’t. Estimations for what DST costs us every year are astronomical. Plus, anywhere that uses it already has mechanisms in place to handle switching it back and forth. Just “forgetting” to keep switching it is a trivial exercise when you compare it to something like, oh I don’t know, changing the dates on which the change occurs.

So what’s the problem? Why can’t we change? It’s as if there is a collection of nations out there all getting dressed in the morning and putting on the latest trend in clothing and calling each other to make sure their outfit meets with everyone’s approval. International time management powered by peer pressure. At this point there’s a greater chance the United States will switch over to the metric system, but that’s a rant for another day.

All I know is I want it to stop.

Please make it stop.

Just stop.

~ Andrew

Based on a True Story

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Being a writer, especially one without decades of experience under his belt, is always an interesting experience. Every time I sit down at the keyboard to write, edit, or research I come across something new that either challenges me, alters my perspective, or sends me scrambling to the corner in tears. Lately, I’ve come across something that touched on all three: 

Non-fiction. Thankfully they were tears of joy and not fear or agony. 

 Now, I have written non-fiction before. It was actually creative non-fiction in the form of a short story titled Losing Vern that was published in the Orange Karen: Tribute to a Warrior anthology. It’s a great anthology with all royalties going to another writer, Karen DeLabar, to assist her with some pretty hefty medical bills. You can read all about it here. My contribution was an embellished version of the story of the death of my wife’s brother and the few strange days that followed. As I mentioned, it was more creative non-fiction than anything else. 



 The piece of non-fiction that has me excited to be a writer this week is more of a documentary than anything else. There are no embellishments or creative licenses taken to sensationalize otherwise mundane events. It is not a “how to” or instructional. It’s just a story. A true story about real people sharing their true emotions and real experiences. It also happens to be the story of my daughter and how she, my wife, and I navigated through the scary waters of an 11 hour scoliosis surgery as well as the months of agonizing waiting before and agonizing recovery after. 

 One thing I discovered was that this type of story was much easier to outline. I’m smiling as I type that because the outline was pretty much already written. With over 60 blog posts over at our family scoliosis blog over the past 5 months or so all the major plot points are laid out quite nicely. 

 Another thing I discovered was that there will be a lot less dialogue. This frightens me slightly as everything I’ve written to this point (blog posts excluded) has been quite dialogue heavy. If I were to evaluate my skills as a writer (not comparing them with anyone else) I’d say that near the top of my list would be my ability to write dialogue. In fact, it’s the most frequent compliment I get from people who have read Losing Vern (which includes my father the English major, retired educator, and voracious reader who is not known to throw around literary compliments all willy nilly). This story will rely on the power of narrative to keep the reader engaged, which isn’t my strong suit. With my fiction novels I sometimes embark on the familiar “show don’t tell” struggle, so this will be a good exercise for me. That being said, I open this latest book with dialogue (in some circles this is an egregious no-no). 

 The last thing I discovered is that this book will not be finished for another 11 months. To be fair to myself most of it will be written before the middle of this year, but I wanted to follow the story from diagnosis (March 31, 2014) through to a full year post surgery (January 20, 2016). That leaves quite a bit of story left to tell, but trust me, it’s compelling stuff. Any story that contains a war wound like the one my daughter is sporting is worth telling, and worth waiting for. 




At this point I think I’ll do something I haven’t done on the blog before – share an excerpt. Without further ado, here’s the opening to my latest work in progress:

Bent But Not Broken

One Family’s Journey from Scoliosis Diagnosis to Surgery and Beyond

By:
Andrew F. Butters (Dad)

With Contributions From:
Jodi Wilks-Butters (Mom) & Avery Butters (Patient)


“Daddy, so Avery has screws and rods now.”
“Yes. Two titanium rods and 27 screws.”
“Are they on the outside or the inside?”
“They’re on the inside.”
“And they had to cut her open to get them in there?”
“Yes, they did.”
“They sewed her back up though, right?”
***
Ah, to be able to see the world through the eyes of an 8 year old boy. That was a conversation I had with my son, AJ, two days after his 12 year old sister, Avery, awoke from an 11 hour surgery to correct her scoliosis.

Scoliosis is a lateral curvature of the spine. When viewed from behind, the spine looks like an “S”, but the actual deformity is much more complex. It occurs in three dimensions. Avery’s spine was bent and twisted like a helix. Left uncorrected the condition would have impacted her internal organs, squeezing them into places they were not meant to be. Digestion would have been impacted and breathing would have become difficult. Her spine would become increasingly deformed, squishing her torso like an accordion. There would have been pain; a whole lot of pain.
What caused it? We don’t know. No one knows, not even the doctors. “Idiopathic”, they said. Which is just a fancy medical term for, “we don’t know”.
  • How did we find out?
  • How long did you have to wait for surgery?
  • Was she scared?
  • Were you scared?
  • What exactly did they do to fix it?
  • How long does it take to heal?
  • Will she be able to do everything she did before?
  • Will she beep when she goes through airport security?


Those are just a sampling of the questions my wife and I have been asked since we decided to go public with this diagnosis (with Avery’s permission, of course). I suggested that my daughter start a journal to capture her experiences and thoughts in an effort to help her process everything. Her mother and my wife, Jodi, immediately went looking on the internet for other people’s experiences and didn’t quite come up with anything she found particularly useful. There was a lot of medical information, most of it from the United States, and a whack of case studies, but very little in terms of what we as a family or Avery as a patient would be experiencing. So, she stared a blog where we could all contribute and share our perspectives on this life changing event.

To answer the first question, “How did we find out?” we, naturally, have to start at the beginning: with a suspicious mole on our son’s neck.


Rockin’ Robin (Tweet, Tweet)

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I sometimes have a hard time titling my posts. Today’s was easy because I’m taking you back to the world of Twitter, and pretty much anyone in the Eastern part of North America is wishing for Spring. Hell, we’re practically begging for it. That first robin sighting will be a monumental event, and what do robins do? They tweet. At least the rockin’ ones do if you believe the Jackson 5.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4VCUbL7jsc?rel=0]

Okay, that’s enough of an explanation as to how I got the title for the post. Now on to the content!

Way back in May/June of 2011 I wrote a series of posts centred around social media – specifically Twitter. I had been on Twitter for a few years by then and still hand’t quite figured it out.

In all of this, however, I neglected to get to the actual key to Twitter effectiveness. Engagement. Now, in my defence, I was new. I was still amassing followers and followings. It wasn’t until I was following close to 500 people that I began to realize that the Twitter sea could be a cold and lonely (and useless) place unless you had some sort of system. So, I started using lists.

I had thirteen lists then. Today I have seven (including a mysterious “People Not in a List” list). A couple of familiar lists are still kicking around: “Writing” and “Community”, and yesterday I made a few observations:

So, I’ve covered how I got the title of this post, and now I’ve explained how I came to arrive at this topic for this week. I suppose the only thing that’s left is to get to the point.

The first observation was interesting because I don’t tend to pay attention to who’s following me (which is a partial lie because when I made this writer following-to-followed comment a couple years ago Margaret Atwood started following me on Twitter and to this day it makes me absolutely giddy). I find it interesting because I find writers are great at reciprocating the Twitter follow, more so than any other group of people, I think.

I started thinking about why that would be when I came across my second observation: self promotion. Look, I get it. We’re all trying to sell stuff, and with the state of publishing and self publishing being what it is competition is at an all-time high and royalties are at an all-time low. The problem I see with this is that it’s an awful lot of noise.

I don’t know about most people but I follow an awful lot of writers, most of them not well known, so I’m not sure the average Twitter user has the same view of things. One thing I do know though is that I’m way more likely to re-tweet or comment (engage!) when someone’s stream isn’t just a a constant flow of “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!” Naturally, unless Tweeting is your full time job you can’t respond to everyone all the time – that’s just not a sustainable practice. You can, however, take a good look at who you’re following and what those people have to say and find out where you can add value to that conversation.

Hey, I’ve certainly been guilty of shameless self promotion on Twitter. If you were to check out my feed from the last year and a half you’ll see mostly links to photographs I took or blog posts and very little “other” stuff. It sucks, and I’m not proud of it. Which was my third observation, and the reason for this post. Now that my life is settling back into somewhat of a normal routine, I started thinking about how I wanted to start engaging more on Twitter and get back to the good old days when it was entertaining and informative. I hope you’ll all join me.

Finally, and this is probably the most important thing you’ll read all day:

Don’t be an asshole. 

It’s Oscar night and three years ago a friend and well respected member of the Toronto media, Neil Hedley, had some words for people tweeting insulting and bullying bullshit about movie stars on the red carpet at the Oscars. I wrote a post about thinking before you tweet that was well received. Last year a few actors even did a parody sketch on this as part of the opening segment. Regardless of how many people point out that slamming an actress for her body image amounts to bullying (and generally being an asshole) there will still be throngs of people who do it. Don’t be one of them.

~ Andrew

My New Hero

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If there’s one thing you can count on when you pick up a book it’s that there will either be someone or something to root for, someone or something to root against, or some combination of the two. It’s what makes the story interesting. It allows the writer to take the reader through a series of ups and downs and showcase all the pitfalls and adversity that the main character faces on the way to achieving, or not achieving, their dramatic need. While certainly there are myriad ways to accomplish this many times it boils down to something simple: protagonist versus antagonist, good versus evil, hero versus villain.

If you ever have a choice, always be Batman.
http://wallpaperswide.com/batman_and_joker-wallpapers.html

I’ve read quite a few books in my day, and seen quite a few movies, and I find myself drawn not as much to the hero as I am the antihero. That’s just a personal preference though and I’m sure there’s a psychologist out there who could explain it. Never the less, I like my heroes (or antiheroes, or villians for that matter) to be based on the types of people I see on a day-to-day basis and on the news – only exaggerated. You could say that I enjoy stories that involve fantastic versions of everyday people.

Sherlock Holmes is a good example. Here’s a man using his wits and ingenuity to fight the evil lurking around the corner (who is also just an exaggerated example of a bad person you could meet on any given day). Iron Man would be another.  Tony Stark is a flawed, but thoroughly brilliant and excessively rich man who invents technology to build a virtually indestructible armored suit he wears to fly around in saving the world from harm. I also think this is what draws people to Batman. As the caption in the photo above reads, if you ever have a choice, always be Batman.

If you were to ask me who my two favorite heroes are I’d answer without hesitation: Iron Man and Batman. At least that would have been my answer until January 23, 2015. That day everything changed. If I’m being honest it had been changing for months, but that was the day my answer changed for good. I can even pinpoint the precise moment: 9:40 AM. It was at that exact moment I looked into the eyes of a girl we call Princess Pants (Pants for short) and I realized that the only answer to the question, “Who’s your favorite hero?” that I’m ever going to give is this: my daughter.

I’m not sure how many of you have been following along but my wife, daughter, and I have been blogging about my daughter’s experience with scoliosis. It’s been a terrifying journey and one where I have learned a lot about myself, my wife, family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and kind-hearted strangers from all over the world. But what I have learned from all those people combined pales in comparison to what I learned about my daughter.

You can read about the adventure on the scoliosis blog, and I would encourage you to do so, but it can be summed up thusly:

My daughter’s scoliosis was getting worse and worse by the day. Each week that passed you could visibly see the deterioration. It was just a matter of time before she would be experiencing constant pain and her spine would accordion and look like a flattened “S”.  Surgery was required, and on January 20, 2015 that’s exactly what she had. I walked her to the operating room and at 8:20 AM that morning she drifted off to sleep. More than eleven hours later we got word from the surgical team that they were done. Two titanium rods were now permanently screwed into her spine with 27 titanium screws. The surgery was a success but she was under for so long they were keeping her sedated and on a ventilator for another 12-24 hours. Oh, and she needed 6 liters of blood during surgery (just about two full transfusions). Oh, and she was covered from knees to neck in hives from an unknown allergic reaction. At 9:30 AM the morning of the 21st they woke her up and extubated and got her breathing on her own. The hives had disappeared, whatever the allergic reaction was had worked itself through. Three hours later she was sitting in a chair with a Popsicle. The ICU nurse said she was hours ahead of the curve. By 4:00 PM that afternoon she was the healthiest kid in the ICU, and since they needed the beds, she was on her way down to a ward room. She skipped the step-down room altogether. The next day, January 22, she was getting out of bed and sitting up in a chair and eating (albeit very little as the pain meds and anesthetic do some weird stuff to your appetite). On January 23 at 9:40 AM she took her first steps with her newly reinforced spine and that, my friends, is the exact moment I knew.

My daughter was unstoppable.

She’s even wearing a cape!

Now, this is a surgery that’s done quite a bit. Not as many result in rods as long as hers (they cover fourteen vertebrae from T2 down to L4), and not as many have that extra hour and a half in the OR, but it’s a surgery that happens about 10 times a year at this particular hospital and hundreds more times a year across North America. The expectation is the patient gets up and walking quickly, so that she can start healing. She needs to get her muscles moving again and begin to sort out how to live with her new body.

I have to tell you though, after seeing what she went through; after seeing how much pain she was in; after seeing her struggle to do something as trivial as roll onto her side in bed, or lift food to her mouth; after seeing how afraid she was; after seeing all that I saw something that I’d never seen in another person before. It was in her eyes, and it stopped me in my tracks. It was powerful, it was crystal clear, and it simply said this:

I will.

It wasn’t just that she was going to figure out how to walk. Of this there was never any doubt. It was the look in her eyes that said, “Nothing is going to stop me. Ever.“

And I believe her.

If you are interested, here’s a great animated short that explains what they do for the surgery:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBIf4AQj5s0]

And here’s a look at my new hero Princess Pants, before, and after with all her new fancy hardware:

~ Andrew

Happily Ever After

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I love it when my muse just shows up unexpectedly. No call beforehand. No knock on the door. No need to pick up that pile of clothes in the corner or sweep the floor. It’s like having the best house guest in the world, and they come bearing gifts!

I’ve been under a lot of stress lately and the urge to do any writing or editing has been at an all-time low. I finished a short novel for NaNoWriMo and took a couple weeks off in December and then found out that the date for my daughter’s scoliosis surgery would be January 20. Suffice it to say I have been a bit distracted ever since.

A funny thing happens when I’m doing nothing but trying to take my mind off something. I think of the strangest and most wonderful things. I suppose it’s a byproduct of an active imagination going into overdrive in an effort to shield itself from the scary, unknown, things that are keeping me up at night. That being said, I hadn’t had any new ideas worthy of pursuing for quite some time and it was starting to get on my nerves.

Then she showed up. My muse. And she was wonderful.

I had just finished seeing the movies The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything. I had also just read the book Fahrenheit 451 and was working my way through Slaughterhouse Five when it hit me: the best idea for a novel I’ve ever had. In my mind it’s destined to be one of the best novels ever written, but for now let’s just say that it’s a good idea, and I am thrilled that it popped into my head when it did.

I quickly scratched out some notes and sent them along to a couple writer friends whose opinions I trust and asked them what they thought. I was pleased to hear that this would be a book they would read – and they weren’t just saying that because they were my friends. They’ve both given me direct feedback on excerpts that didn’t only contain praise. I gave my notes to a third person to look over and they verdict came back the same. Yay me! I had an idea that I was passionate about that, at least at first glance, had some from people living outside my head.

I figure I’ll start writing it when my daughter is in the hospital this week. I won’t have much else to do and while I’ll be contributing to the family scoliosis blog those posts won’t take me hours upon hours to write – and we’ll be spending full days and nights at the hospital for about a week! I figure I’ll get 10,000 words done if I keep off the damn Facebook and Twitter. The only obstacle I can see in front of me is the fact that I have absolutely no idea how the book is going to end.

I can envision a prologue and epilogue that bookend the story nicely but I can’t seem to dream up that last page. This is a strange feeling for me as I normally start with the end and then create all the things that needed to happen to get the reader to that last point. I thought I had the perfect ending and told one of my idea sounding board friends and she didn’t like it. Her husband did because it wasn’t a “standard” ending, and that’s probably why I liked it too – at least initially. Happily ever after endings drive me crazy. Sometimes people die, sometimes the bad guys get away with it, sometimes the boy doesn’t get the girl. The more I thought about it though, the more I was worried about what kind of message my ending would be sending.

This was also a strange feeling because to this point nothing I’ve written had any sort of message. At least nothing that I would consider profound or noteworthy. They are just bits of entertaining fiction meant to be enjoyed. Move along please, nothing to learn here. This new idea however has a message and one that I feel is rather important. How the main character ultimately relays that message to the reader, I think, will make a substantial difference in how that message is digested. Get it wrong and risk the reader becoming too focused on the actions of the main character instead of on the message she is carrying.

Maybe I’m over thinking it? Maybe I should just start writing and see where the story takes me? I’ve got a couple hundred pages to churn out before I hit the third act climax and have the MC realize their dramatic need (or not). Still, it doesn’t quite feel right. Not knowing how that last page unfolds is disconcerting. I guess I’ll spend some time thinking about the possibilities and jot them down with my other notes and see which one feels right.

One thing is certain, it won’t end with “and they all lived happily ever after”.

~ Andrew

“Fact” = Fiction

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* This post contains language which some may find offensive *
  1. Fact: something that actually exists; reality; truth
  2. Fiction: something feigned, invented, or imagined; a made-up story
  3. “Fact”: See #2.
Thanks to Dictionary.com for the definitions for #1 and #2. I added the third one. I added it because it would appear that there some people out there that are confused. That’s not normally a problem in of itself but it would appear that there are an inordinately large number of confused people who are also loud… and have internet connections.
Perhaps you have seen this meme (in red on the left) floating around on the internet?
Refutations to Anti-Vaccine Memes
 
As the side on the right (cleverly put together by the folks credited tot image) shows, it’s really easy to make stuff up. The problem is a lot of really loud, ignorant people, are too lazy to do a simple Google search to check to see what level of bullshit it contains. The falsified information presented to them supports a position they already hold and they latch onto it like their lives, and everyone else’s, depend on it. My friend Gordon over at Skeptophilia has done numerous posts on this. In fact, if confirmation bias doesn’t come up more often than any other single topic on his site I’d be surprised.  
It would be one thing if this was  limited  to a few internet memes but unfortunately it’s not. Apparently misinformation isn’t limited to the 1’s and 0’s of the World Wide Web. It’s infested our news outlets as well. Of course not all of them, but there are a few out there that don’t seem to care much about actual facts so long as what they’re saying supports their position. The real problem with this is that these questionable news sources are funded by some astonishingly rich, racist, elitist men – who also fund lobbyists, politicians, and their political parties. 
There used to be a time when things were different. Before information was published, in any form, it had to be fact checked. That is to say, there needed to be actual research done to substantiate what was being said. Whether it was an eyewitness, a document, or a peer reviewed research paper… there was always something to back up the claim. Apparently none of that matters any more and what we’re left with is a bunch of people yelling at each other, ideologies firmly in hand. The really scary part? The only one left standing will be the one with the most money and the loudest voice.  
I saw a FOX News piece rhyming off some statistic that was the complete opposite of the truth. A simple Google search would have pointed you to numerous government websites that provided the correct information but they ran with the lie because guess what? It’s all Obama’s fault. Someone I know pointed out that the statistic, reported correctly was still an indication of a poor economic forecast, but guess what? That’s not the conversation that was happening. It wasn’t a question about what constitutes economic prosperity. It was a question about the propagation of lies. A point lost entirely on my acquaintance – and a whole lot of people just like him. 
So where does that leave us? Well, at absolute best there are people who are condoning the spreading of false information and at worst there are those who encouraging it. 
The great Richard Feynman once said, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” Well I’m sure he’s rolling over in his grave  because apparently simply being an opinionated asshole with axe to grind qualifies you to be a scientist these days. 
Dictionary.com includes a “difficulty index” for all their words. It’s a measure of how many English speaking people are likely to know the word. 
For the word “fact” it tells us that, “All English speakers likely know this word”, but for the word “fiction” we get, “Most English speakers likely know this word.” I added the emphasis to highlight my point. “Most” is not the same as “all”. Written mathematically: most < all, which means that there are some people out there that don’t know the difference between fact and fiction. These are people perpetuating memes like the one on the left at the start of this post. These people should not be allowed to have internet access. 
What angers me most is that we, the scientifically minded rational thinkers of the world, the ones that know the difference between fact and fiction, spend so much time defending our position only to have it wiped out in one 5 minute misinformation segment on FOX News or one blatantly false infographic on some spurious website. And it’s not limited to Autism or vaccines or GMOs. It’s climate change, it’s institutionalized racism, the economic state of North America, democracy… the list goes on, seemingly forever, and it’s fucking exhausting defending against it. 
Well if it’s war they want then they’ve certainly got it. My biggest fear though, is that they’ll win it through attrition because too many people, just like myself, are tired and just want some peace and quiet and a good night’s sleep. I’m so goddamn fed up with all the ignorant assholes with loud voices ruining my quiet time. Fuck you, ignorant assholes! Fuck you to hell and back you sorry pieces of shit. /endrant
~ Andrew

Work, Work, Work

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I just did a podcast with a friend where he argued that the whole Christmas thing was a bunch of hooey. In the end, I think I managed to convince him that December was a season where people of all faiths get a chance to practice being better people and focus on the things that help us do that: charity, generosity, happiness, … That if you can see past the commercialism, really, it’s just a time to enjoy each others company and brighten up a world that can be all too grim.

Many people I know are taking the next two weeks off work to spend time with their families or concentrate on recharging the batteries. I am not one of them. While I enjoy the time off, I only have a finite number of vacation days for the year and I’d prefer to use them when the weather is warm and the golf courses are open.

He marks his scorecard and checks it twice.

A lot of creative folks I know (writers, photographers, painters, and poets) use this time to feed of the joy around them and get shit done. Many of the writers I know use the momentum from November and carry right through to the New Year, letting the ideas flow to the page as swiftly as the breeze that blows off Frosty’s hat. I am not one of those either. I’ll be working the day job Monday and Tuesday of this week and next. Chained to the desk, as it were, like some modern day project manager version of the ghost of Christmas past.

Jacob Marley has deadlines too.

I can’t complain though. I like my job and my boss and I can take time off when I need it, I just choose to take it off at times when we get more than a handful of hours of sunlight in a day, that’s all. The real heroes of the season are all the countless individuals who keep the lights on while everyone else takes time off to celebrate.

Every year there are thousands upon thousands of people working their butts off over the holidays to make sure that everyone else can stay safe, stay warm, stay healthy, stay fed. They’re the ones who probably need the time off more than anyone else, yet they’re the ones that are out there picking up our slack while we sit on the couch, put our feet up, and complain about how hectic the season has become.

So here’s a toast to everyone from the minimum wager pouring your latte to the fire chief worrying about whether or not everyone’s Christmas lights are up to code. If you’ve got time off take a minute to thank these folks, and if you are one of these folks let me take a minute to thank you.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

~ Andrew.

The Best Kind of Gifts

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There are a lot of posts and articles out there about getting the perfect gift, for a writer, for your significant other, for the person who has everything… Well it is the season for giving, and there’s no shortage of options.

(Click here if you want to skip all the reading and go straight to the point of this post. Hint: it’s something that will make you feel good inside)

I personally love this time of year because it’s just so darned festive. I’d prefer if the festivities didn’t start until December 1 and promptly ended on January 1 because I just find it to be a little too much. I’m only good for one month of overjoyedness, music, and excess by just about every conceivable measure. That being said, you can play me this clip of Clark Griswold every day of the year and I will love it just the same:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk74WprmZxY?list=FLY4crN9n5xSE5PJD7yBo4NQ]

Oh, and for that matter, this one too:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afbLb8A6oSE?list=FLY4crN9n5xSE5PJD7yBo4NQ]

It’s all fine and dandy to give gifts to those you love, because why not? You love them and you enjoy seeing them happy and possibly receive something they really needed or would have not otherwise bought themselves. WestJet took this concept to great heights last year when they asked a bunch of people getting on a couple of their planes and asked them what they wanted for Christmas. By the time they landed all the stuff they asked for came out of the baggage claim. Here’s the video in all it’s awesomeness:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIEIvi2MuEk?list=FLY4crN9n5xSE5PJD7yBo4NQ]

This year WestJet took this to a whole other level, and this gets straight to the point of my post this week. This year, WestJet went to a village in the Dominican Republic and asked them what they wanted for Christmas – and then gave everyone what they asked for, even the guy who asked for a horse – AND they build the kids a proper playground too:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-BKX3G0BpQ?rel=0]

And here we arrive at the point of this post. While this is the season for giving, and a lot of giving happens, there are people in need throughout the whole year, many involving people with special needs, as well as a good number of children. Too many children. So, I’ve decided to encourage people to help out in a couple of ways. It doesn’t have to be a lot. Five bucks here or there can make a big difference, it really can.

The first is called “Blessings in a Backpack”. This is an organization that sends kids home for the weekend with a backpack of food. These are kids who take advantage of the meal programs in schools during the week but go home with a cloud of uncertainty about how they will get their meals on the weekend. This campaign is being run by an old high school acquaintence of mine, Harv Glazer, and his family. Their goal is to feed 100 kids on the weekend for an entire school year.

You can read about the campaign and donate here.

The second involves a friend of a friend in Rhode Island. An autistic man, who is the son of my friend’s friend, was struck by a car while at a crosswalk recently. He will survive but his recovery will be a long, arduous one. Due to the nature of his autism it is difficult to say how “old” he is, but understanding that we are all kids at heart it’s not surprising to hear that he’s a huge fan of Marvel Comics. I’m heading down to the comic book store and mailing him some ASAP so he can have a nice big stack of reading material to take his mind off the pain and the struggles he is going to face in the upcoming months. If you want to send some Marvel-ous (sorry, had to be done) comics or swag down his way you can get in touch with my friend Alex Kimmell on Twitter and he’ll get you the info.

Finally, whatever you’re celebrating and however you’re celebrating it, I wish you all the best.

Namaste,
Andrew

‘Tis The Season

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If there’s one thing I love about this time of year it’s the sweaters. Yup, sweaters. My personal favourite is argyle, so much so that it was even incorporated into name of the coffee shop trio I was a part of a couple years ago: Argyle Speedo

Now that I think about it, I think it might be a bit of an obsession. I mean, I’ve got several pairs of argyle socks and at least five or six argyle sweaters. Hell, at work all the aisles of cubicles are named and I recently moved into aisle ‘A’ a.k.a. “Argh! Aisle”.

I almost bought another argyle sweater today at Old Navy (30% off!) but heard my wife’s voice echoing in my head from yesterday. Something about possibly wearing sweaters that aren’t argyle pattern. I can’t be certain because all I heard was “argyle” and I drifted off into a colourful diamond dreamland.

Even better than argyle though, is the quintessential holiday garment: the ugly sweater. These have become such a hit that people are throwing ugly sweater parties where each attendee has to wear the ugliest sweater they can find. In the little village where we live (Hespeler, within the city of Cambridge, Ontario) there was an ugly sweater float. Even the NHL has a line of ugly sweaters you can purchase directly from their web site (I have an Ottawa Senators one that’s positively horrible looking).

http://shop.nhl.com/Ugly_Sweaters 

I did a bit of research on the topic (one Google search) and naturally ended up at http://www.uglychristmassweater.com/ where they claim that none other than Bill Cosby is considered to be the “father” of the ugly sweater. While hard to argue with such a spectacular array of terrifically gauche knit attire, I’d like to think that good ole Sparky Griswold, a character made famous by Chevy Chase in the holiday classic movie “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”, played a larger role from a pop culture perspective.

Whatever your fashion style choices are for the season, try to have fun with it. Me? I’ll be stocking up on argyle and ugly sweaters and getting out my stretchy pants for the big Christmas dinner at my sister’s place and the in-laws on the 27th. I’ll be wearing this:

Tweet me a picture of your best ugly sweater: “Hey @andrewbutters here is my best #uglysweater”

~ Andrew