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Painting Pictures With Words

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This is a new thing for me. What I mean when I say a “new thing” is writing a blog post without using any inline images. Normally, I will break up a post here and there with either an image or a video or possibly some text formatting in order to give the piece a bit of shape.

Not today.

I’m taking a bit of risk with this. I get some fairly decent traffic, but it’s still not enough to make a living on, so the desire for me to pretty this up with flashy images is high. I’m a writer, though, and pictures, for the most part, are not part of my standard operating procedures.

There’s the old adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” and it’s true. In fact, in 2011 I started a project where I would post a picture and people would submit a 100-word paragraph to me about it and I would stitch ten of them together to make a thousand-word essay about it. It was a cool exercise and it helped me get a sense of what words come to people’s minds when they see an image. I found this quite relevant seeing that, as a writer, I’m responsible for performing that same act—only in reverse.

It’s not an easy task.

Certainly, there are other ways to consume the written word besides reading them. There are many folks who enjoy audiobooks, many more still who listen to podcasts (which are just people speaking words), and there are even those who use braille, which for me represents the holy grail of users who provide feedback. You see, the world is dominated by the sighted. Just about every interaction we have involves a visual component. We even use phrases like, “See it in your mind.” Well, what about those who have never seen anything? How would my work resonate with them? Would it resonate at all?

I don’t have any of my work translated into braille (that I am aware of) but I would like to see how that works out one of these days. For now, I’ve decided that a decent half-measure would be to write a post and keep it as simple as I can. Words and characters as they would appear in a novel, with paragraph breaks and sentence length—and strategically placed em dashes—my only tools for altering the visual structure of the piece.

How’m I doing?

A common problem with many writers both new and old… er… experienced, is purple prose. It’s also often referred to as “flowery”. When trying to paint a picture for the reader it’s easy to slip into the habit of tossing in descriptor after descriptor like rice at a wedding (or rice and toast when seeing a performance of the Rocky Horror Picture Show).

“The woman glided across the sparkling marble floor, silently, on shimmering blue satin slippers as the brilliant midday sun shone through the only stain glass window in an otherwise gilded ceiling, which reflected the sunlight and sent it dancing throughout the room.”

That might not be the best example, but you get the idea. When you try to dress up your text with a few fancy words, more than a few commas and end up telling the reader more things than you’re showing them then you’ve got an issue. It’s a constant struggle and when I am writing a novel it’s always at the forefront of my mind. If I were to re-write that previous paragraph I’d go with something like this:

“The woman’s slight frame combined with her satin slippers on the marble floor allowed her to move without sound. The midday sun shone through the stained glass window in the ceiling and it warmed her face. There were few shadows but that didn’t mean there weren’t places to hide. She tilted her head using small movements to improve her chances of picking up the sound of anyone lurking unseen in the nooks and crannies of the vast cathedral.”

I think that’s much better. Certainly not award-winning narrative, but you can see the difference, yes? In the second paragraph, we’ve learned much more about the character and the story than in the first one. She’s moving without sound on purpose. We know she’s in a church. We know it’s a bright, sunny day. I don’t know about you but I want to know more. Why is she walking quietly in a seemingly empty cathedral, but concerned that it isn’t empty, in the middle of the day? There’s more to this story and hopefully, it’s written in such a way that the reader will want to find out more.

Question:
If they each were the opening paragraph of a book, which one would you be more likely to continue to read? (And no, there isn’t a third choice of “neither”).

The job I’ve committed to is putting together collections of words that don’t paint a picture for the reader but help them paint the picture with me as we move through the piece together. If I feed them too much description then I’m stifling their imagination. I give this advice to other writers about writing sex into non-romance books: Less is more. If you give someone enough to get the idea of what’s happening their mind will fill in the blanks better than any of your words will be able to. But, sex sells, right? Sure it does, but that doesn’t mean you need to spill all the dirty details in order for it to be effective. It doesn’t take much to go from engaging to gratuitous and when that happens you risk losing your reader.

So, it’s a delicate balance that the writer must strike when they sit down at the keyboard and start their journey. I have got to tell you, though, when it works, when you get in that zone and you can close your eyes and let the visions in your head flow through your hands onto the page, there are precious few feelings as good. It’s in those moments you’re most likely to have painted a picture with your words and brought something into the world, not just for people to read, but for people to experience.

Links:

Patreon Video Greeting and WIP Excerpt

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Greetings and Salutations

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

You can get excerpts like the one below, blog posts, lyrics, and videos like the one above over at my Patreon page a full two months before you will see them here. Affordable tiers ($1, $3, $5) and something for everyone. Don’t wait to see it on the blog, check it out on Patreon!


Sometime in 2020 the first book in The “No” Conspiracies series, No Fixed Address, will hit the shelves. Here’s your first look at the antagonist, Peter. Take note that this is an UNEDITED excerpt and may end up looking quite different after it goes through my editing team.

I am the only person in Dallas who has ever had this phone number. My dad pulled some strings for me when I moved here and he ensured that it had never before been in use. He also pays the bill. The only time it rings it when he calls me every Wednesday evening at seven PM.

The ring sounds like someone has let loose a compendium of three-year-olds with wooden spoons banging every pot and pan in the house. It is deafening. In the three years I have lived here, I have not been able to figure out how to turn down the volume and I am too lazy to replace the phone with something less obnoxious.

I am awakened from a deep dreamless sleep to the cookware cacophony that is my telephone. With my heart pounding like a bass drum in my chest at one hundred and eighty beats per minute my arm shoots out and knocks over my stack of bedtime reading comic books. Until that moment it was topped with my black hardcover engineering notebook. It makes a nice thwack as it slaps against the wall and slams to the floor.

I glance at the clock. Three PM. Four hours of sleep after writing code for the previous twenty does not feel like enough. I find and answer the phone without so much as clearing my throat.

“Hello?”

“Pete!”

The enthusiastic, high pitched squeal of my boss hits me like a steak knife on a stoneware plate. You have got to be fucking kidding me.

“Peter?”

At least the useless peon is correcting how he addresses me now. I am not a fan of short forms or nicknames. I empty my lungs with a long sigh. I cannot resist getting a quick dig in. The man loves to be called Rich.

“Yes, Richard?”

Incoherent mumbles come through the phone’s plastic receiver. Is he laughing? Heh. I hope he does not think I am being playful. The fact that an asshole as dim as a 4 Watt bulb is working that job never ceases to amaze me. The fact that he is an insufferable brownnoser makes it worse. The fact that I have to report into him makes me want to shove a Costco-sized bundle of sharpened number two pencils up his ass. Yes sir, one hundred and forty-four miniature graphite enemas coming right up. I should write that into the computer game I am working on.

“Pete—Sorry—Peter, are you there? We have a bit of a situation here. We need some WLCs to fill in for an Overnighter.”

WLC stands for Weekend and Leave Coverage; the Overnighters are the group that works the eleven P.M. to seven A.M. shift.

“How is this a situation? Our job is to cover off other people’s shifts. Why does it need to be me? Not interested”

“You’ve been specifically requested.”

“By whom?”

“You know how the hierarchical game is played, Peter. That’s not the direction this type of stuff flows.”

Richard is incapable of pronouncing hierarchical. Every time he tries, it comes out sounding like the name of some science fiction villain. Hire-arch-eee-cal. He uses big ten-dollar words all the time to make him sound managerial and important.

“I am intimately familiar with the office pyramid of accountability. How long are we talking?” Shit, I should not have asked that. Now I am negotiating. Never negotiate with terrorists or idiot supervisors. I look to my floor for my notebook, find it within an arm’s reach, and grab it.

“Well here’s the thing, it’s for the foreseeable future. Between you and me, it’s likely going to be permanent.”

I open my notebook with one hand and catch the pencil as it falls out from between the pages. “I am still not interested, Richard. I am not real keen on busting my ass as a full-timer and not getting any of the other benefits that come along with it.”

I am still not fully awake and my pencil leaves shaky scribbles of numbers on the page already cluttered with the last set of algorithms I am working on for a special assignment.

“You should be excited, Peter! Y’all are coming off weekends and leave.”

My grip on the handset tightens. The fake excitement in his voice makes me want to set my phaser a degree or two past stun and fire off a shot right at his throat. “You said ‘y’all’, Richard. Who is ‘y’all’?”

Thanks for reading!

~ Andrew

Opening From No Fixed Address

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Sometime in 2020 the first book in The “No” Conspiracies series, No Fixed Address, will hit the shelves. Here’s your first look at it. Take note that this is an UNEDITED excerpt and may end up looking quite different after it goes through my editing team.

You can get excerpts like this, blog posts, lyrics, and videos over at my Patreon page a full two months before you will see them here. Affordable tiers ($1, $3, $5) and something for everyone. Don’t wait to see it on the blog, check it out on Patreon!

The table in this exam room is gray. The countertop is gray. There is a thin slice of scratchy gray paper between my butt and a cushioned if you could even call it that, gray table. Heck, there is even a gray paper towel dispenser dispensing gray paper towels.
Everything on the counter is perfectly aligned except for the biohazard box. All the jars with gray lids filled with cotton balls, long sticks with cotton on the tips, and tongue depressors are lined up with their sides touching and lettering exactly parallel to the edge of the counter. The bright red biohazard box with that funky symbol on it, however, is skewed to the left facing away from the others. It’s probably embarrassed. Everything inside it is sickly, or dirty, or lethal to anyone who comes in contact with it. I’d be embarrassed too if I was a walking death sentence, which for all I know I am.
I clench my fists and shove them under my legs to help stifle the urge to straighten it and instead focus on the mystery breeze blowing on my bare ass from an as yet undiscovered vent. I complain about the open-at-the-back gowns every trip I make to a clinic or hospital. Doesn’t everyone? Of course, what is the alternative? Open at the front? Ugh. 
A young doctor enters through the gray door. Stereotypical white lab coat? Check. Stethoscope hanging around her neck? Check. Friendly but detached expression trying to convey concern the same way you see a television doctor saving lives 60 minutes at a time, minus the commercials? Double check. 
I stifle a laugh-cough, but all it does is sound like I’m suppressing a belch. She directs her attention to her clipboard and flips to the second page and then back to the first.
“Good morning Mister…Um… Mister…” 
I’m not baling her out. She is on her own. She hasn’t bothered to update her office with a computer so the least she can do is put in a little effort to learn my name. Even if it is a pseudonym. If I didn’t think I was dying I’d get up and leave. 
“Mr. Phillips. Right. Mr. Phillips. Hey, there’s a doctor named Phillips on that TV show.” 
“He’s my cousin.” 
The Luddite doctor cackles and it sounds like my kindergarten teacher on the army base where I grew up. I wonder whatever happened to her. She has likely passed on. Cause of death: Got too close to the biohazard box at her last check-up. 
“My name is Doctor Jordan. What seems to be the trouble today?”
“I’ve got what appears to be a growth on my shoulder. It’s probably cancer. I’d like you to take a look and refer me to someone who can remove it.” 
“Well let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Mr. Phillips. Take the top part of your gown off and we’ll have a look-see. Where on your shoulder is it?” 
“Just around back near the top of the scapula is a gnarly looking brown lump. Asymmetrical, multi-colored, raised. Nasty looking.” 
“Hmm. Well, it definitely looks suspect. Let’s book you for a consult with a dermatologist.” 
“Can’t I just make an appointment to have it lanced, or scooped out with a grapefruit spoon or something and then sent for a biopsy? Wouldn’t the most efficient path be to just lop it off and be done with it?” 
“It’s not about efficiency, Mr. Phillips, it’s about your overall health and wellbeing. We don’t want to be any more invasive than we need to be. We’ll have an expert take a look and we’ll go from there, okay?” 
“Listen, one way or another, this thing is being cut out. I was going to do it myself but I thought it’d be worth the trip to see if you could recommend something less drastic than a fifth of Jack Daniels and my hunting knife.” 
“Do you often have the urge to cut yourself, Mr. Phillips?”
“No, I only have the urge to cut myself when I notice an abnormal growth sticking out of my shoulder!”

Thanks for reading!

Hard Truth Opening Chapter

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This is the opening to my first fiction novel, Hard Truth. Available now from Amazon (.com or .ca), Barnes & Noble, Indigo, Walmart, iTunes, and Google Play. 

You can get excerpts like this, blog posts, lyrics, and videos over at my Patreon page a full two months before you will see them here. Affordable tiers ($1, $3, $5) and something for everyone. Don’t wait to see it on the blog, check it out on Patreon and stay ahead of the curve!

Monday, July 10, 11:30 a.m.       

Thomas held his sleeping mother’s hand as she lay motionless in her fancy medical bed. Her face wore an expression of pain and discomfort. Even with the oxygen mask, she had difficulty.
The nurse was singing a song and folding laundry. Sandra was putting a perfectly folded fitted sheet onto a pile of flat sheets and pillowcases forming on top of the dresser.
“Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?” Thomas offered.
“That’s very generous of you, sir, but it’s not necessary. Go to the office or go buy your wife something pretty, I’m sure she’ll appreciate that,” Sandra suggested.
“Yes, I’m sure she would, but I want to spend some time with my mother during the day for a change. How’s she doing today, anyway?”
“Not great, but you know she’s been having ups and downs for a while now.”
“I should have expected a downturn. She had a couple good days in a row and it was probably too much for her to put together one more. Go home.”
“Are you quite sure?”
“Yeah, I’ll be staying here for the remainder of the day and at least until Mrs. Van Steen or Brittany get back.”
“As you wish. I’ll just finish with this laundry and then be on my way.”
“Sounds good. I’m just going to hop in the shower. If I’m not out by the time you’re done, just let yourself out and we’ll see you tomorrow.”
He retreated to his washroom to clean up and throw on some casual clothes. It wasn’t often he got to wear jeans on a Tuesday. When he came out of his bedroom dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of well-worn Levi’s 501s, the nurse was gone. There was a basket of perfectly folded laundry on the coffee table with a note that read, “She didn’t eat much breakfast so she might be hungry. There’s soup in the fridge. Thank you! Sandra.”
Thomas took the note and threw it in the garbage and checked the fridge. There was a bowl of soup with a plastic lid and another note on top that read, “For Mother.”
Thomas checked his watch and saw that it was just about time for lunch so he pulled the soup out of the fridge and microwaved it for a few minutes, which turned out to be entirely too long, as the bowl was too hot to the touch when it was done being nuked. He grabbed a dish towel from the handle of the oven door and wrapped his hands around the bowl before shuffling back the way he came with extreme caution. He didn’t spill a drop. 
He walked like a tightrope performer around the corner and into the room, nudging the door open with his knee. She didn’t budge as he fumbled his way to her side, ensuring he took a wide berth around her bed to avoid a hot soup disaster. Setting the bowl down on the nightstand and pulling up the rocking chair, he sat down, closed his eyes, and rocked himself for a few seconds. The quiet was nice.
The cell phone in his pocket rang with the chorus to Sweet Caroline blasting through the faded denim. He jumped up to silence the phone and his knee caught the edge of the nightstand and knocked a glop of soup onto the hardcover copy of Dickens as well as the alarm clock. He pressed the answer button on his phone as he reached to the floor where he dropped the dishtowel after delivering the soup.
“What?” he whispered.
“Thomas? It’s Roger from Doodlepants Toys and Collectibles. I have some news about your costs.”
“Yeah, it’s me. Just dealing with a, uh, situation here.” Thomas wiped the soup off the book. “Lay it on me, how bad is it?”
“It’s bad. After your up-front capital costs for basic materials and transportation…”
Thomas flinched and bumped the bowl of soup as he was trying to clean up his mess and sent more spilling onto the alarm clock, table, and floor.
“God damn it. Go on, but hurry it up. My situation got worse.”
“Want me to call you back?”
“No, I need to know now.”
“Well, after the up-front capital costs for basic materials and transportation it’s going to cost at least three times what you budgeted for the manufacturing and distribution.”
“What? Did you say three times?”
“At least.”
“Jesus Christ. What the hell happened?”
“An earthquake. It damaged the manufacturing plant. No casualties, but no production for a while either.”
“Son of a—”
“Listen, if there’s any way to get out of that contract I’d find it. You’ll be lucky to make a third of what you were hoping.”
“Fuck.”
He ended the call, slumped down in the antique rocker, put his head in his hands, and rubbed his forehead. The flashing blue light on his phone caught his attention and the little envelope icon indicated he had a voicemail. He dialed and wedged the phone between his ear and shoulder to listen to the message. As he leaned forward to mop up the soup, his hand pressed a button on the alarm clock and the radio started blasting.
“For the love of—”  He scrambled to unplug the alarm clock as he listened.
“Thomas, it’s Stephen. I’m still waiting for the contract. I thought Jenny was supposed to make copies and fax them over before she left the office. Get me back with the status ASAP. I’ll be in class so send a text or leave a message.”
He looked down at his sleeping mother with a big grin on his face. “She hasn’t faxed it.” His hand found a cord behind the night side table. He gave it a yank and his mother’s ventilator started beeping loudly. “For fuck’s sake.” She stirred in the bed and he reached down and yanked the plug out of the wall for the clock and fished around for the cord to her machine. Soup was everywhere. His fingers found his target and he felt his way down the wall until they touched a wall plate. After two tries the machine’s quiet hum and her labored breathing were the only sounds in the room. He checked his watch and calculated twenty minutes to get to the office—if traffic cooperated. He kissed his mother on the forehead and bolted out the door.
He waited only a minute for the elevator to arrive and in that time he left a voice mail for Jenny to not fax the contract. The elevator doors opened as he cursed Jenny for not being in the office or answering her cell phone. He stepped in and pushed the button for the lobby, the last floor for his elevator, and cursed the design of the building for having a separate elevator to take you to the parking level
He hammered on the door close button in false belief that this would result in the doors taking less time to shut. The automated voiced announced he was passing the ninth floor, the lights turned off and the elevator came to an abrupt stop. There was a moment of total darkness before the emergency light came on. “You gotta be fucking kidding me.” He slammed an open hand against the elevator wall. “Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuckity fuck fucking fuck!” He pushed the emergency call button and nothing happened. There was no beep or buzz or ringing or any indication at all that it was working.
He turned on the security monitors in the elevator and cycled through the floors until the image on the black and white monitor showed the lobby. It was a wide shot of the foyer with the security desk in the corner and Mitch out around the other side gyrating and twitching like he was having a seizure.
“Answer the call button, you worthless idiot.”
He pressed the audio button and the blues-driven sounds of Keith Richards’s guitar penetrated the steel box. The sound had a distinct echo, as if it were broadcasting out of a giant tin can, or say a small metal box eight-and-a-half floors above ground.
“Screw you, Mitch. You’re a terrible Mick Jagger.”
Mitch ran to the other side of the desk and picked up the security phone, and Thomas, watching and listening to the conversation, tried something different.
Thomas took out his cell phone and checked for a signal and was immediately disappointed. There was no cell coverage and he was out of Wi-Fi range for his unit or anyone else’s. On top of that, his battery was sitting at less than ten percent.
“Shit.”
He closed his eyes and fought to remember if he plugged mother’s machine back into the proper socket—the one hooked up to the backup power. He was so angry and flustered that he couldn’t visualize where his hand was on the wall. Normally the alarm clock plugged into the regular socket so it would have been easy to tell, but with the phone call and the soup debacle, both were unplugged. He furrowed his brow, squeezed his eyes closed more tightly, and rubbed his temples. Even plugged into the wrong socket the battery backup would last about half an hour.
He started to hyperventilate and his chest became tight. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead and he pulled at the collar of his shirt. He checked his watch and his hand shook as he looked at the time. It was 12:02.

Mother had twenty-eight minutes to live.

Perspective

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Today I’m going to write about perspective. Not in the artistic sense, nor even in the sense that on any given topic we each have our own, but in the cosmic sense. You see, there’s a condition that afflicts all life as we know of and that has ever been. That condition is called existence, and as the only known species with the intelligence to comprehend what that means it can be easy to get full of ourselves and lose sight of the big picture.

As with any good conversation on this topic, it’s probably a good idea to lead with a little Carl Sagan. Many of you have seen this picture before.

NASA – Image in the public domain

It was taken in 1990 by the Voyager I probe on February 14 at the request of Carl Sagan. It took a decade for the request to come to fruition, but after it did here’s what he had to say about it.

We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
— Carl Sagan, speech at Cornell University, October 13, 1994

To give you an idea of exactly how far away Voyager I was when it took that photograph, here’s a picture, though it’s not to scale. As we’ll see in a bit the scale of the Solar System, and indeed the Universe, is staggeringly massive.

Joe Haythornthwaite and Tom Ruen [CC BY-SA 4.0], from Wikimedia Commons

How far away is that? It’s far. I mean, really far. The Pale Blue Dot photograph was taken 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles) away. If you zoom in on the above photo you will see a date beside the white line near earth. In September 1977 Voyager I was launched, and traveling at an average speed of roughly 60,000 km/h ( mph) took thirteen years to get that far away. Space is big.

Someone put together a fascinating GIF of the solar system and all the “stuff” in it. Here we see one Earth year of movement compressed into five seconds.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/5a/a4/4c/5aa44c326b9d7e83f3c0b77852544612.gif

Take a look at Neptune (blue circle, top left). In one Earth year, it has barely moved. In fact, it takes Neptune 165 years to make a single trip around the Sun. When Neptunians say “winter is coming” and have a look of concern on their faces, it’s for good reason.

But let’s start a bit closer to home, shall we? The Earth in of itself is a pretty big chunk of rock and it’s configured in the Solar System in such a way that at any given point in time half of it is in darkness. There’s a neat map from our friends at Solar System Scope that shows you night and day across the planet: http://www.solarsystemscope.com/daylightmap/

If you want to be truly mesmerized then the International Space Station has a live feed from one of its cameras that you can watch. Flat Earthers beware, from these cameras alone there’s sufficient evidence to put a hefty dent in your little “theory”: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/iss-hdev-payload

Humans have also spent a great deal of time, energy, and money putting satellites and cameras and telescopes into space to help us understand not just our home, but our surroundings, and our place in the Solar System (and indeed the Universe). One of the coolest series of pictures I’ve seen is a solar eclipse as seen from beyond the Moon and the ultimate photobomb of the Moon getting in between a weather satellite and the Earth:

Image Courtesy NASA (via Tumblr)
Image Courtesy NASA

That last GIF makes the moon look pretty small. As it was, it took the Apollo space missions about three days to get there. Did I mention that space was big? Well, what if the moon were the size of a single pixel on your screen right now? It’s a cool exercise to ponder and it gives us a real sense of the vastness of our surroundings. In fact, someone thought it was so cool that they created a model for it. Spend a few minutes scrolling (and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling) through it. It’ll blow your mind.

If the Moon Were 1-Pixel: http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html

The folks over at Khan Academy have done this awesome video which also provides a bit of scale to our celestial neck of the woods:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GP53b__h4ew]

This is all well and good, but what about beyond our Solar System? We orbit but one star out of hundreds of billions in our galaxy alone and our galaxy is but one of trillions in the observable Universe. To get a sense of what lies immediately beyond our Sun there are a couple of really cool, interactive sites you can visit:

Our Stellar Neighborhood, http://stars.chromeexperiments.com/, allows you to zoom and pan and view 100,000 of the nearest stars. Solar System Model, https://www.solarsystemscope.com/, is a similar tool, but this one has more features and also includes options to show spacecraft, constellations, dwarf planets, comets, and a lot more. Still, nothing we’ve seen so far gets us out of our galaxy, the Milky Way, at the center of which is a black hole.

Black holes sit at the center of just about every galaxy and if you thought things were big before, check out this video on just how massive some of these things get:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgNDao7m41M]

And there are more than a trillion of them. Most people don’t have much of a sense of how big a trillion of something is. Let’s put that number into context. I think everyone will agree that one second is pretty quick. If you string enough of them together though, you start to see how they add up. For example, a thousand seconds is roughly 16.67 minutes. A hundred thousand seconds is a little over a day (1.157 and change). A million seconds is ten times that or about eleven and half days. A billion seconds is 31.69 years. A trillion seconds? 31,688 years. So yeah, big.

A few years ago, while pondering the vastness of the Universe, some smart person at NASA decided that they would take the Hubble Telescope and point it at a small square of nothingness to see, well, what they could see. Suffice it to say they were not disappointed.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/xdf.html

Every bit of light you see in that picture is a galaxy. In each galaxy are hundreds of billions of stars. This picture represents only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the sphere of our night sky. To photograph the rest of it you would need to take another 12,913,983 pictures. What would that look like? Something like this:

Wikipedia Commons

Note that the above image isn’t to scale. Not even remotely close, to be honest. So exactly how big is the Universe?

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxs5wye0JXs]

Which is all fine and dandy, but again, people have a hard time comprehending the scale. All of our reference points are too small and too slow. Fortunately, someone at NASA put together something that shows that even if you travel at the upper limit for speed – the speed of light – it takes a really long time to get anywhere. One could say that the speed of light in that respect is rather slow. Put another way, space is huge.

How long it takes for light to travel between the Earth and Moon

How long it takes for light to travel between the Earth and Mars

Finally, for anyone wondering where God and religion fit in, I will leave you with this (enlarge the photo when it loads and scroll):

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/19eyi7t3h9ocnjpg/ku-xlarge.jpg

~ Andrew

Other Important and Interesting Links

Happy Little Accidents

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I used to question the theory that every moment in a person’s life has led them to the moment they are experiencing right now. I mean, how many throwaway moments have there been? Certainly a lot. We’re not living a fictitious life within the pages of a best-selling novel. Not everything that happens moves the plot forward or develops our character. Sometimes the tip of your pencil breaking is inconsequential, and then sometimes a sequence of events gets strung together over twenty-five years to culminate in an experience never to be forgotten.

Like this one.

Back in my first year of university, I met a few people that, even at that early stage, I knew were special. My buddy Riaz, my friend-girlfriend-not friend-friend-girlfriend-fiancee-wife, Jodi, and my friend-lab partner-roommate-colleague-boss-friend, Jason.

Riaz introduced me to Jodi. I met her properly in his room across the hall from mine. She was playing Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Genesis and he and I were listening to music, playing Ultima Underworld on his computer, and burning incense. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Jodi and Riaz introduced me to this band called The Watchmen. Jodi pushing their first album, Maclaren Furnace Room, and Riaz in love with their second one, In The Trees. Ri and I would take in as many of their shows as we could over the years and have more than a few stories to tell about those times.

Jay was a friend of some friends and lived on a rival floor in residence, and later became my lab partner and my go-to friend for a game or ten of pool, often played at the on-campus bar where this one album with the strange name, Shakespeare My Butt, by this obscure band called Lowest of the Low seemed to play on an endless loop.

Life was grand. Responsibilities were minimal. Parental supervision was non-existent. Our relationships were rooted in amazing Canadian music; the less mainstream stuff like Watchmen and Lowest of the Low, as well as the national heroes The Tragically Hip. Then, things started to change. Not overnight, though looking back it does feel like it was, but in slow motion over the span of years and decades.

Jodi and I married and a year later Jay married this wonderful woman, Tamara. Riaz moved back out West. Jay and Jodi stopped going to Watchmen concerts with me, but Tam was a big fan and stepped up and started being my “date” for shows. There was this one concert that all four of us went to one day. I think it was before kids were in the picture and we could all be out on a Friday night in Toronto (about an hour away from where we lived) without feeling guilty or tired. We saw Lowest of the Low open for Billy Bragg. Jodi’s a huge Billy Bragg fan and we were all in love with Lowest of the Low from our days hanging out in the on-campus bar.

For me, though, it was The Watchmen that held my attention. In the early days of me falling in love with Jodi, they were there. We’d argue over which of their first two albums was better. I could pull a lyric from any song and relate it to something about us. Strangely enough, on a couple occasions Danny, the lead singer from the band, would sing a Billy Bragg song as his signature a cappella song during their concerts.

In 2011 I decided I would do something special for my anniversary. I took some singing lessons and got a band together, with Jay on guitar, and I surprised her with an a cappella Billy Bragg song (sadly, not a romantic one but the one Danny sang at his shows) and a rendition of The Watchmen song, All Uncovered, the chords and lyrics for which were really hard to come by. Enter in Facebook and the super talented and one hell of a nice guy bassist for The Watchmen and solo artist, Ken Tizzard. I sent Ken a message asking for help with the song and he sent me back, within a couple hours I might add, some photos of their songbook that was no longer in print. It was an awesome gesture and was the reason the performance went off without a hitch (or well enough, all things considered).

While this was going on I was working on my writing and meeting a lot of really cool creative types on the internet. One of them was this fellow by the name of Alex Kimmell. He writes creepy, mind-bending horror now but he used to be a musician until MS decided to send him a swift kick to the nards and take that away. Back in the day, he was a drummer for this grunge outfit Out Vile Jelly.  Korn opened for them at one point. It was then, through a connection at a record label that he was introduced and got into the music of The Watchmen. Alas, when I met him the MS prohibited extended travel and they weren’t touring anymore, only playing gigs in Toronto and occasional other Canadian cities. That’s when I got the idea that whenever I would go to a show, I would record his favourite Watchmen song for him so he’d get to experience the experience a little bit.

In the middle of all of that, like a gut punch from out of nowhere, we lost Riaz. It was sudden, it hurt like a sonofabitch, and it left a big hole. In the intro to my video tribute to him, there was Watchmen playing in the background. Hearing their music would never be the same. Every song would be bittersweet and carry a deeper meaning than I ever thought possible (more on Riaz in this blog post).

You might be thinking that this is all fine and dandy but what does it have to do with my opening paragraph? Well, that’s where Friday night comes in. All of what I just described (though it happened in much greater detail in real life) came together to give me the greatest concert experience I will likely ever have.

It actually started Thursday night when I got the last-minute idea to message Ken once again asking for a favour. I thought it would be cool if, before they played Alex’s favourite song, they tossed out a dedication to him. So, I asked. Ken got back to me in rapid fashion again and had some bad news. They were swapping out that song for something else for this show. He did say he’d discuss it with the guys though. I thanked him for even considering it and wished them a good show.

Friday comes and Tam agrees to drive into the city and we arrive at the venue ten minutes before the opener hits the stage. Because we’re old we got seats up in the balcony this time and were able to sit down for the show. It felt weird at first, having never seen the band from a chair before, but my aching bones would thank me later. The opening act? A fella by the name of Ron Hawkins. No, not the one from Arkansas currently in the Canadian Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Someone better. The Ron Hawkins who happens to play guitar and sing for the Lowest of the Low.

Ron opened the night with a close-to-45-minute set that included some solo stuff, some Lowest of the Low, some Rusty Nails, and a few snippets of some cover tunes just for shits and giggles. He even brought the LotL guitarist, Steve, on stage to do a couple of their classic tunes. It was a lot of fun, and the place was already close to capacity. The mood was set for more good times, and oh boy, were they delivered – in spades.

 

Due to curfew rules for the venue, The Watchmen came on at 9:02. Early by concert standards but to come on stage so soon after such a good opener turned out to be a great idea. Everyone was excited and feeling good, including the band, and from the very first chord, it showed.

Now, because I wasn’t sure if they’d play Alex’s song or not, at the end of each song I’d get my phone ready to record. It wasn’t a big deal because I was sitting down. I just put my phone in my lap with my camera app open and clapped and cheered like everyone else while we waited for the next tune. Then, the band did something different. The bassist grabbed an acoustic guitar and the drummer grabbed some bongos. Sensing something special coming I started recording, and Danny gave a little intro and they kicked into a cover of a Tragically Hip song. It was emotional as hell.

For those who don’t know, The Hip (as they are affectionately known) lost their lead singer, Gord Downie, a couple of years ago (about a year after I lost Riaz). The nation mourned (I wrote about that, too), but Friday night when The Watchmen played one of their tunes, it was a celebration. I, along with every other person in the joint, was close to tears, but it was a celebration and a damn fine tribute.

Then, the band played my favourite Watchmen tune acoustic-style. It’s the one I learned to play for my anniversary.

That was followed up by Danny’s a cappella. It wasn’t Billy Bragg this time, but it sounded like gold. His voice was like butter and while no live performance will ever be executed perfectly, it was perfect.

The whole show was fantastic. Every song was tight, the sound was clean, the audience was into it, and the band looked like they were having a blast. Toward the end of the show, they called out Ron to do a song: Billy Bragg’s A New England. It was off the charts fantastic and because I was at-the-ready with my phone I captured it.

I didn’t record every emotional moment I had, though. I started recording one of my favourite songs toward the end of the show but it was too much. It was one of Riaz’s favourite songs as well and he would often quote the opening lyric to me randomly on facebook or via email. As soon as they played it I put the phone down and just sat and watched, and listened, and immersed myself in the moment. Even now, the emotions are overwhelming.

With the show coming to a close and one encore set already done it was clear that I had just experienced something truly special. Then, the guys go and outdo themselves yet again. There was a bit of a discussion on stage amongst the band and then Danny informs us that they’re “calling an audible” and instead of only getting one more song to end the night that we’re going to get two. Camera at the ready, I started recording and then I heard the telltale opening drums of Alex’s favourite song, Say Something.

They played the last song after that, just Danny and the guitarist Joey, and the lights came up. Tam and I looked at each other and agreed that it was probably the best show of theirs we’d ever seen. We bypassed the main stairwell and headed down the side steps that led directly outside. Two paces to the right outside on the sidewalk I see a friend from high school that I interact with regularly on Facebook. I haven’t seen him face-to-face in probably twenty-five years. He hadn’t been at the show. He had been out with friends and was waiting for an Uber. He’s a hell of a guy and a wonderful blogger, and it was the perfect random encounter to cap off the perfect evening, all made possible by a quarter of a century of seemingly random and inconsequential events. Bob Ross would have called them happy little accidents, and after Friday night I’d be inclined to agree.

~ Andrew

Cover Reveal: Hard Truth

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On November 27 you will be able to purchase my first fiction novel at Amazon, Barnes & Nobel, and Indigo. In fact, you can pre-order it right now (links below)! In the meantime, I present to you the cover for this book created by none other than Casey Cowan at Oghma Creative Media. You should check out their website and see some of the other amazing work he’s done (and who knows, maybe you can pick up another book or two after you pre-order this one, because more books!)

To the outsider, Thomas Van Steen seems to have everything—a successful business, beautiful, sexy wife, loyal best friend, expensive cars, and custom-tailored suits. But on the inside, his life is not as perfect as it seems. His aging mother is experiencing rapidly declining health. To see her through her last days, he has set her up in his New York City penthouse, with the best care money can buy. The second flaw in this perfect life? Thomas is oblivious to the fact that he’s a misogynistic, narcissistic hypocrite who treats everyone except his mother with contempt and disdain. 
Celebrating a huge win at a poker game, and on the verge of closing an incredible business deal, Thomas and his idyllic existence come to a screeching halt. Exiting his apartment in a rush, he finds himself trapped in the elevator when the power goes out. Feeds from the building’s security cameras are still live, though, keeping him from being completely cut off from the exterior world. Unfortunately, these only provide grainy pictures and sounds echoing off the building’s stairwells, corridors, and lobby to give him clues to what’s happening outside. Nothing he sees or hears is reassuring. 
Trapped inside, powerless in every way, he feels the cracks forming in the carefully-laid foundations of his world—exposing a cold, hard truth he is unprepared to face.
“Deeply unsettling, kept me up late into the night. A writer to watch.”
—AJ Aalto, Bestselling Author of The Marnie Baranuik Files


Preorder it now!

The Culture of Me

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There’s a disturbing trend that’s seemingly reaching every corner of the globe. A veritable tidal wave of populism, nationalism (particularly of the white variety), and protectionism is crashing down on the United States, the United Kingdom, and yes, even here in Canada.
At the root of the problem seems to be this notion that it’s every person for themselves That somehow if only everyone else would just get their shit together that everything would be okay. There are myriad problems with this attitude, but the first thing I notice it is that it does a wonderful job of highlighting a person’s privilege. There’s this attitude of, I’m okay, so why aren’t you okay? I got what I wanted, sorry about your luck, with an implied or sometimes even whisper-spoken “sucker” tacked onto the end.

Is this what we’ve become?

There’s a hole blown in the middle and everyone seems to have been forced to one side or the other, ready and primed to vote for the candidate who promises the loudest and with the most fervor that not only will you get dinner before sex but you’ll get a cigarette after as well. One thing is certain, someone is getting screwed and you don’t have to be a member of the party “for the people” or a very stable genius to figure out who.
True to my prediction in my last post, Doug Ford (a.k.a. Trump North, Trump Lite) took power in the province of Ontario and true to form he and his supporters have been wreaking havoc and showing their true colours. For the uninitiated, Doug Ford is the equivalent of a state governor (though how he got there is a little different and how the government behaves is a little different as well). Presently, he’s invoking the notwithstanding clause in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a document in which there is a bevy of rights bestowed to all the citizens of the Great White North. 
By Marc Lostracci [CC BY 2.0  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]
via Wikimedia Commons
However, in order to get the damn thing ratified back in 1982, there was a notwithstanding clause added. This allows a federal or provincial government to essentially override the Charter for some (but not all) of its guarantees. If invoked, it only applies for five years (during which time there will be an election) but it can be re-invoked after that indefinitely. Québec has invoked it a whack of times, but they were never on board with the Charter in the first place. 
In Ford’s case, a judge ruled that he violated a section of the Charter and that his legislation was therefore unconstitutional. He’s invoking the notwithstanding clause to get around the ruling he doesn’t like for legislation that no one voted on and he never even mentioned once on his campaign. You would think that if a citizen’s rights were being stripped it would be over something pretty egregious. You would think it would only be used in extraordinary circumstances. In #DoFo‘s case, you would be wrong. He wants to reduce the city council in Toronto by almost half – weeks before an election. Say what you want about the judge that ruled that by doing this he is violating a section of the Charter, using the notwithstanding clause to override this decision is akin to using a sledgehammer to drive a thumbtack into a sponge. 
In other words, he’s being a colossal ass hat. 
On top of that, he has promised to use the clause at every opportunity in the future. The clause shouldn’t even be a thing and should never be used. But, since it is and since it does, it should be used in the rarest of occasions. Is the size of Toronto’s city counsel extraordinary? Not even close. Do Ford or any of his lackey members of parliament care? Nope. They’re getting what they want and t’hell with the rest of you. If you are part of the 60% of those who voted (and the 75% of the total electorate) who didn’t want anything to do with them, I have a newsflash. They don’t care about you, and they sure as shit don’t care about your rights and freedoms.
As everyone knows, down in the U.S. it’s worse. You can’t even go 48-hours without hearing about how some level of government is abusing their power and giving a large portion of the population the shaft. For cryin’ in the sink, the Senate is all set to confirm a Supreme Court judge FOR LIFE who likely perjured himself during the confirmation hearings! For the love of God, I can’t figure out how anyone is okay with any of this, let alone millions of people.
Kevin McCoy [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 2.0 
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Speaking of God, religion always seems to make its way into these conversations at some point, with those using The Good Book as a defense all trigger happy and ready to whip out a selection of examples that “prove” their point. 
Well, I can do that, too:

  • “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” Matthew 7:1
  • “So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” John 8:7
  • “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” Matthew 7:5
  • “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Galatians 5:14

Funny how you can tell a lot about a person’s character by the bible verses they cherry pick. And people wonder why atheism is growing at such a fast rate? When did caring about your neighbours become a bad thing? When did experiencing happiness over another person’s success give way to resentment? When did selfishness become the norm? When did we start allowing ourselves to be governed by such ineffectual, petty swindlers?

Shealah Craighead [Public domain]
via Wikimedia Commons		 By Andre Forget – Andrew Scheer
[CC0] via Wikimedia Commons

I’ve recently joined several Facebook groups dedicated to my immediate community. It’s a small village of a few thousand that sits within a bigger city of over a hundred thousand that sits within a bigger region of close to half a million people. These groups provide links to garage sales, buy or trade opportunities, local businesses, share success stories of the people that live within a few kilometers of me, give alerts to petty crime and other activities of concern, and are generally used as a forum to connect people who already share a small geographic space.

At first, the only posts I noticed were the ones that made me feel good about the community I choose to call home. After a while, however, it became clear that there will always be those who either don’t care, are ignorant (willfully or otherwise), or are generally insensitive and unempathetic toward anyone that doesn’t fit their specific definition of a model citizen. The bad news is those people tend to be loud. The good news is they also appear to be in the minority.
So, I’ll be doing my part in these groups to hopefully return the notion of being neighbourly to the mainstream consciousness, at least locally, but if you want an example of a community doing this on a larger scale, look no further than the Bangor Maine Police Department on Facebook. They are a shining example of community and compassion and if even a few people from all our neighbourhoods took a page out of their book we’d all be better off.
~ Andrew

Trump North Strong and Free

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Ontario is having a provincial election on June 7. For my American readers, this is much like a state election where you would vote for your Representatives in the state legislature and Governor―only a little different. We elect Members of Provincial Parliament (MPP) and the leader of the party with the most MPPs in parliament becomes the province’s Premier (we also split our province up into what we call ridings, not districts).

Those who have read my blog around the time of previous election cycles know that I am not shy about voicing my opinion but I’m going to take a slightly different approach to this post. Listen, I am no fan of any of the choices that I have in this election. I’m actually finding it hard to decide on what to do. So, rather than focus on what I don’t like about Doug Ford, Kathleen Wynne, Andrea Horwath, or the system in general, I’m going to explain how I think it’s going to play out, and why. Are you ready for it? Here goes:

Premier Doug Ford

You best get used to hearing that on the radio, watching it on the news, and reading it in print. The tell-it-like-it-is brother to the disgraced (and now deceased due to a losing battle with cancer) former mayor of Toronto is the leader of the “Progressive” Conservative (PC) party. A party that is poised to take back the reigns of Ontario and ride us into the sunset on a wave of populism, then over a cliff and into an abyss from which it will take decades to escape.

(Okay, fine. I threw in a little editorializing and hyperbole, but I couldn’t resist. There’s more where that came from, too. So keep reading.)

You heard it here first. Well, maybe not first, but from what I can tell the liberal, #FakeNews media sure aren’t raising much of a stink. Not one that’s going to matter anyway. That makes me wonder if they’ve resided to the fact that the Donald Trump of the North is going to win and there’s not too much that can be done about it.

“How? Why?” you may ask. Well, it’s really the culmination of a few things. A perfect storm, if you will.

  1. Electorate Fatigue and Long Memories
  2. Populism, Wedge Issues, and Donald Trump
  3. An Antiquated (Broken) Electoral System

Let’s look at each one in turn.

Electorate Fatigue and Long Memories

Canadian voters are an odd bunch. Because of the way our system is set-up, we can have minority governments. This forces the parties to cooperate and elected officials to actually compromise from time-to-time. As a byproduct of a minority government, the longevity of the government is shortened, and we’re usually back at the polls in less than two years. Instead of being excited for the opportunity to actively participate in our democracy, people tend to assume an, “Oh no, another election?” attitude. Voter turnout plummets and we ultimately end up with a false majority government that in no way represents the views of the people they represent.

More specific to this election cycle and why Doug Ford and the “Progressive” Conservatives are going to win, the governing Liberals have been in power, either with a minority or “majority” government for almost fifteen years. That’s a long time to be holding the reigns. Even if their track record were pristine, they would have a giant target on their backs, and their track record is FAR from pristine. So far from pristine. Corroded and crumbling is probably a more accurate description.

The leader of the Liberal Party, Kathleen Wynne, is almost universally disliked, if not hated. Strong words, indeed, but with approval ratings hovering below 20% and showing no signs of improving anytime soon, to say that she’s in trouble would be a gross understatement.

There are a lot of reasons for Ms. Wynne and the Liberals being in this position, most of them self-imposed, but at the root of it is fatigue. If you keep doing what you’re doing you’ll keep getting what you get, and a lot of folks aren’t thrilled with that they’re getting.

“Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.”― Mark Twain

An observant person would look at the above and wonder why the scales would tip toward Doug Ford as opposed to Andrea Horwath and the third major party in the race, the New Democratic Party. Well, this is where the long memories of Ontarians come in.

Back in 1990, Bob Rae oversaw one of the most surprising electoral victories in Ontario’s history. He led the NDP of that time to a majority government with a whopping 37.6% of the popular vote. The NDP increased their seats in parliament from 19 to 74. It was amazing and no one predicted it and Bob Rae and the NDP cocked it up in a big way.

With a vague economic plan and a bunch of promises that went unfulfilled, Bob & Friends lost the next election to the Mike Harris “Progressive” Conservatives in a landslide, losing all 55 seats they gained five years earlier plus two more. Their popular vote numbers dropped 17%. Even though those days are almost thirty years behind us, still many a person can be heard muttering, “Not again.”

Populism, Wedge Issues, and Donald Trump

Ever since Donald Trump ran for and was “elected” president there has been a rise in populism in America. It has spilled over into the Great White North as well but been somewhat tempered by the fact that we have a leader in Justin Trudeau that is pretty much the exact opposite of Trump. Still, the seeds of hate have been sown, partially because they’ve always been there and partly because Stephen Harper left behind a legacy of divisive politics, anti-science, anti-immigrant, anti-equality, anti-democracy supporters that are a little more than pissed that Trudeau unseated the mighty King Steve.

This mentality is more pronounced at the provincial level since the politics are more localized. Those little pockets of deplorable alt-righters are enough to swing a riding. Anyone who doesn’t think that’s a winning tactic hasn’t been paying attention to what happened in the United States. Donald Trump redefined the word “elite” using divisive politics, wedge issues, and “dog whistle” sound bites. In doing so he did one better than convincing the world the Devil didn’t exist by convincing them that he came in the form of Hilary Clinton.

Doug Ford already has the Devil we all know in Kathleen Wynne so he’s hard at work with the next phase. Lying and misinformation. Doug Ford says things that are verifiably false and his supporters don’t care.  As an example, little Douggie likes to claim that parents were not consulted about the new sex ed curriculum that Kathleen Wynne imposed on the province to “push her liberal agenda”. The fact is that more than 2,000 parents were consulted. He’ll say things like he won’t personally open up the abortion debate again but is open to one of his MPs doing it (an argument that’s been settled in Canada for a number of years). He makes disparaging comments about people with autism, no doubt playing to the anti-vax, Dr. Google crowd at the heart of the measles outbreak in Toronto a few years ago.

It’s all just sound bite after sound bite. Sound bites with no bite, no substance, and nothing relevant or factual to offer. But that’s okay because there are people who don’t care that it’s not factual and those people are going to vote for him just like millions did for Donald Trump. Kathleen Wynne is evil. He is not Kathleen Wynne. Anything to the contrary is #FakeNews. Did I mention he’s not Kathleen Wynne? He’s not. She is a bad, evil, elitist liberal who will “tax anything that’s not nailed down”. He won’t. No really, he won’t. Everything will be perfect under Doug Ford. No one will suffer. No services will be cut. Drain the swamp. Lock her up.

“But her emails!” ― Trumpists

Doug Ford has openly supported Donald Trump. He’s made excuses for his repugnant behaviour toward women. He even went as far as to suggest that Trump was taking a page out of the Ford NationTM political handbook. You have to pull off some impressive mental gymnastics not to see the similarities. Still, he tries to evade the comparison. He likes the tactics because they are the ticket to the big time, but he knows when push comes to shove, Ontarians don’t want a guy like Trump in charge. We may be bigoted, racist, sexist, ableist, and every other kind of “-ist” you can imagine, we just don’t want it out on display for the rest of the country to see.

Just like with Donald Trump and the ass-backward Electoral College, Doug Ford knows this isn’t a popularity contest. His party’s candidates need to just win one more vote than everyone else in half of the ridings plus one. That’s 63 ridings if anyone wants to do the math. What’s great is he can do it with a tiny fraction more than a third of the popular vote.

Which brings us to the final reason (on my list, anyway) that we’re going to be hearing (ad nauseam, no doubt) “Premier Doug Ford” on June 8.

An Antiquated (Broken) Electoral System

This comes up a lot in Canadian elections, both provincial and federal. It was actually a key campaign promise that Justin Trudeau made in 2015 when he defeated Stephen Harper (don’t get me started on how pissed I am at JT for breaking that promise).

The first thing supporters of this system usually do is point out the flaws of any other proposed system. My system may have flaws, but yours does too, and since they’re both flawed it’s best if we just keep the current system because of… reasons or something. Rather than go into all that here I’ll just simplify how it currently “works” (Yes, I’m using lots of sarcastic air quotes in this piece. I have no choice.)

First-past-the-post was adopted by a bunch of high-on-themselves white colonist men back in the day. It has received virtually zero updates since then and is quite easy to explain:

  • Split the region of interest, in this case, Ontario, into roughly equally populated parcels or districts. Call each one a “riding”.
  • Allow provincial parties to run candidates in the riding. There are rules for this but they’re pretty lax, which is why we end up with three for four major parties (PC, Liberal, NDP, and a distant fourth, Green) running alongside the Go Vegan party and the None of the Above Direct Democracy Party.
  • Hold a vote. If you’re 18 years of age or older, a Canadian citizen, and a verifiable resident of Ontario you’re good to go. 
  • Declare winners in each riding. This one is simple. Count the votes for each person. Whoever gets the most, wins. There are recount rules and blah blah blah, but determining the winner is the same. Get more votes, even by one, than the other people and you’re now a Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP).
  • Count up the winners of all the ridings for each party. Whichever leader of the party that won the most ridings is asked the question of whether or not they think they can form a government. This is where it gets a little flaky. 
    • IF the party who wins the most ridings wins 50% + 1 of them (=63 in Ontario’s case), then that is considered a majority government. Any vote along party lines will result in a pass if the party in charge votes for it. They have 100% of the power for the next four years even though they are usually only mathematically represented by a little more than a third of the popular vote. 
    • HOWEVER, since we have more than two parties, and more than two heavily favoured parties, this creates a situation where oft times the government formed will be a minority government (i.e. fewer than 50% + 1 of the ridings but more than any other party). 
    • When this happens, the party forming government has to weigh whether or not they think they can actually get legislation passed. If after discussions with other party leaders they think they can cobble together enough other party support to get stuff done, then they go ahead and govern. 
    • This usually has a shelf life of about two years before one or more of the opposing parties can’t take it anymore and everyone but the party in charge votes against something big (like a budget). This is called a vote of non-confidence and if the ruling party doesn’t get 50% + 1 of the votes, then the government is kaput and we head to the polls again.
    • BUT WAIT, what happens if the parties that lose the minority government scenario team up and form a coalition? Well, this has happened in Ontario before and it was a moderate success. There are a couple of ways it can be done, but typically one party (the third place finisher) agrees to provide voting support for another party (the second place finisher). However, if the gap between second and third is reasonably narrow, it’s possible that cabinet members from both parties will be chosen (think of this as more of a more “pure” coalition). 

Confused yet? Don’t worry, most voters in Ontario are as well. How does this favour Doug Ford? Well, he just needs to game the system to get 63 of the 124 ridings to swing in his favour. Between the ones that “always vote Conservative” and the ones where the Liberals are on the outs (most of the others) all he needs to do is ensure one more person in each of those ridings votes PC instead of someone else. Entirely possible given all the reasons I’ve explained above.

How Will it Play Out?

If you believe me, as well as literally every poll that’s out there, you will see that the chances of a majority government for Doug Ford are amazingly good. It’s not quite a statistical certainty, but it’s close. So, my first prediction is four years of Doug Ford. After that, the chances of him winning a minority government are virtually guaranteed. This is where it gets fun though, because of the aforementioned coalition government possibility. However, given that the way the Liberals and the NDP have treated each other over the past few years I see that as being a remote likelihood at best.

“Make Ontario great again, eh?” ― Ford NationTM

When it’s all said and done, whether it’s a misread on Mr. Ford, the other candidates, the other party leaders, or the electorate, no one would be more pleased than me if I were to be proven wrong. So, if you’ve got thoughts on this please don’t hesitate to share. Most importantly, if you’re an Ontarian who is eligible to vote (or think you are), check your registration status at www.elections.on.ca and get out there on June 7 and mark an “X”. If you could help prove my prediction wrong while you’re at it that would be fantastic.

~ Andrew

This Stinks

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In my last post, you got to learn a bit more about me. Well, this week I’m going to take that to another level and get a bit more personal. As with most revelations of this nature, it starts with a confession. I started going to the gym about a year and a half ago and that’s when it happened. I got stanky pits. Yes, I know it’s hard to believe, but being an active middle-aged male who was looking to firm up a bit of his dad bod had this one glaring drawback.

Source

Since the first day I started applying aerosol deodorant on my pits after gym class to hopping out of the shower thirty years later this has never been a problem. When I was a teenager if I forgot to apply the musky-scented instant female attraction spray my body’s response was swift and smelly. But, as I aged I found that I could miss a day and still not be embarrassed by it.

Well, apparently if you all of a sudden start changing the routine and adding regular vigorous exercise to it, things change. Oh, man do they change. I’ve got hairy man pits so I tend toward the antiperspirant gels. I find it gives me the best coverage. I’ve got some crazy allergy thing with scents (a story for another day), so whatever I use it has to be scent free. Unscented. It must be unscented.

I was using the Mitchum Advanced antiperspirant & deodorant gel for men. It was pure 48-hour awesomeness… until it wasn’t. One day it just stopped working, and I don’t mean that it kinda stopped working and after vigorous exercise, you could tell. I mean I was sitting at my desk at work and by lunchtime, I noticed that I stunk. I thought that maybe the one I was using expired. Does deodorant expire? I wasn’t sure, but I saw my blessed Mitchum Advanced unscented gel on sale one day and bought half a dozen of them. I figured it was possible that after a couple years on the shelf that maybe they lost their staying power. So, I went out and bought a brand new one. The next day I experienced the same problem.

And so began the quest to find a new deodorant or antiperspirant that worked. There was only one problem with this. Nearly every product out there – for both men and women – had a scent to it. It was either something like Cool Blast or Thundershower Power or Awesome Ice for the men and Spring Sunrise or Waterfall Lilly or Sunsoaked Meadow for the women.

Image courtesy of alex_ugalek at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I started sniffing them one-by-one in the aisle of the grocery store, like some kind of deodorant huffing addict, trying to find one that wasn’t offensive to my scent sensitivity. They all smelled. The first unscented one I came across – in the “organics” aisle – I bought. It didn’t work. Then, I tried a ladies unscented one. “Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman,” eh? We’ll see about that. Again, no dice. It wasn’t strong enough for this man. Not even close. So, with my tail between my legs and my fingers pinching my nose I had to start trying the scented ones.

I went through quite a lot of them. More than ten alternatives when it was all said and done. Every one either stunk like the perfume aisle at the department store or could barely keep the pit stink at bay for an entire workday. I even kept one in my bag so I could re-up at some point.

For some unknown reason, I took a mug shot of just some of the ones I tried (please note that this is not a complete list):

Who is Keyser Söze?

Turns out the ones that were the least fragrant were the “white powder” type and, while they worked pretty well and didn’t stink to high heaven or make my eyes itchy and red, they completely destroyed all my t-shirts. Now I’m faced with having to dish out money for new t-shirts or rip off some crazy DIY solution off of Pinterest and hand-clean the pits of my shirts all afternoon.

At this point you’re probably asking, “Andrew, how did you solve this problem? I must know if you came up with a solution!” and it’s a perfectly reasonable question. Unfortunately, there is no clear resolution, and certainly not a scent-free one. See the third stick from the left in that lineup photo? It’s not white (it’s a blue solid stick) so it ruins my t-shirts less and I’ve trained my body to not reject it and make my eyes water and cause sneezing over several miserable weeks of use. It’s the one I’m going with for the foreseeable future until one of these stupid companies comes out with an unscented gel like my good friends at Mitchum have. Sorry, Mitchum, we had a good run but for some reason, my body chemistry changed and you no longer work. It’s not you, it’s me.

I just want to not stink while trying to not stink and I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

~ Andrew