insert witty title here

Thanks everyone for your well wishes.

In case anyone was wondering, Honey had flown up here for the weekend, so my proposal did consist of more than just my weblog entry. But, I thought it was appropriate to announce it here given that we had met through our blogs. She's doing a wonderful job describing our weekend, so please wander over to her site to read all about it.

The next step for us is to secure a passport for her daughter so that the two of them can come up for an extended visit in April. Unfortunately, getting the passport will require the cooperation of her ex-husband - something that we both suspect will be easier said than done.


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My darling Heather,

My life forever changed on the day we met. From an existence filled with shadowy regret and self-doubt, you entered my world and filled it with the heartfelt gifts of compassion, tenderness and devotion.

In the months we've shared, we have only grown closer together. Opening our lives to each other...sharing our triumphs and our sorrows. Investing in each other. And although we've had to bide our time during those terrible weeks between visits, we've always made the most of those fleeting moments together to reaffirm our love and devotion.

Despite the vast physical distance between us, I believe that we have found in each other a bond that surpasses all obstacles. Each of our journeys to one another has been a homecoming - regardless of where we laid our heads.

Your love for me has enriched me beyond measure. My love for you has grown to define my very purpose for being - and I cannot imagine a life without you in it.

We've spoken of it many times and I know that our future path is one that we shall share together, but with the whole world as my witness, I ask:







with undying love,

your adoring Christopher


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Oddball news stories are generally labelled under the "man bites dog" category. The inference being that a dog biting a man is regular news but when it happens the other way around, it's truly strange.

Well, it happened: Man bites Dog

LONDON (Reuters) - A blind man has been arrested in Scotland after witnesses reported he sank his teeth into his guide dog and kicked her across the road, police said on Thursday.

The incident allegedly occurred outside a busy shopping center in the Scottish capital Edinburgh.

David Todd, 34, is expected to face charges of cruelty to animals and breach of the peace.

A police spokeswoman said the 8-year old dog had been handed over to a charity dedicated to guide dogs. "When we took her into custody, she had no apparent injuries," she added.

Todd is due to appear in court at a later date.

On a wholly different topic, I subscribe to an email-based motorcyling bulletin board and one fellow there recently announced that he had switched to a different set of high-performance tires. When asked what he thought of them, his response was:

They're more confidence inspiring than an asthmatic porn queen"


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In which Christopher forces someone to think.

As many of you are aware, my job involves managing a large network of logging roads. Many of these roads are also used by the public and they will often phone the company to find out what sort of condition a particular road is in. For the most part the inquiries are pretty innocuous, but every so often...

*telephone rings*

Christopher: Hello, Christopher speaking

Older Gent: Yeah what's that road like, the one that goes over the mountain?

Christopher: Can you be more specific? Most logging roads go over a mountain

OG: It's the road off the highway. You drive down the highway and it's right there!

Christopher: Sir, I have over two hundred roads in my inventory and many of them connect to a highway. You're going to have to narrow it down for me

OG: Look, you drive down the highway to Chilliwack, turn off the highway and you get on the Chilliwack Lake Road and it's right there!

Christopher: Well that narrows it down to twenty possible roads, sir.

OG: Okay, you drive to Chilliwack and you turn onto the Chilliwack Lake Road. Then you drive down Chilliwack Lake Road for about twenty miles and it's right there!

Christopher: I know the area you're describing and there's no logging road there that goes over a mountain.

OG: *sighs in exasperation* Look, you drive to Chilliwack and you turn onto the Chilliwack Lake Road. Then you drive down Chilliwack Lake Road for about twenty miles to a logging road. You follow that logging road for about ten miles and you come to another logging road and it's right there!

Christopher: Oh now I know the road you mean. It's the Groom Falls Road.

OG: Yeah, it goes over the mountain. What condition is it in?

Christopher: It was closed down six years ago and you can no longer access it by vehicle.

OG: Okay, thanks


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This morning while having breakfast in the rooftop restaurant of my hotel, an older fellow came in wearing jodhpurs and knee-high leather boots. For those of you unfamiliar with jodhpurs, they look like the pants that Patton wore in World War Two.

My understanding is that they're also worn by horse riders, but since there isn't a horse (or a world war) to be found within ten miles of downtown Victoria, it seemed a little unusual.

As a fashion statement, I can see why jodhpurs went out of style. You have to be pretty secure to walk around in pants that are skin-tight around the calves but have a huge saggy, baggy behind.

Then again, perhaps he was wearing an adult diaper and these were the only pants that would allow him to carry it off.


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Rest in Peace, Mr. Thompson.

I never could understand why you were saddled with the appellation of gonzo.

Webster's defines gonzo as: "idiosyncratically subjective but engagé" but to me, the word will always bring to mind this plucky fellow.


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so I'm finally home for a weekend...it's been over three weeks since I've been back in my own bed. If I had a cactus it would have died of thirst by now.

not that I have a cactus in my bed. I don't want you getting the impression that I deflower plants.





that was a horrible pun...


Why are people here at the office compelled to tell me that I'm here? Do I look like I'm somewhere else?

I can understand folks saying "Hey, welcome back!" or even "I'm not glad to see you!" but why do folks all start off with with some variant of "You're here!".

Obviously I'm here you idiot, I'm standing right in front of you.

As I suggested to Honey this morning, perhaps when people exclaim "You're back!" I should immediately burst into a rendition of AC/DC's Back in Black.


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This was a google search that recently lead someone to my weblog:

"what i should do if i get a ticket in toronto for driving without proper headlights motor vehicle"

Well I think the first thing you should do is not seek legal advice from the internet.

And since the subject of driving has come up, I thought I'd take a moment to talk about a personal irritant of mine: the cyclist.

Now I'm not exactly sure when it became okay for these self-important hogs-of-the-road to take their toys off the sidewalk and start using them on the street, but I for one am sick and tired of having to toddle along at ten miles per hour behind one of these spandex-clad twits in their stupid little helmets.

And when did bicycles acquire right-of-way priority over cars? Is a bike harder to control or stop than a delivery truck? Where do these road hamsters get off demanding that vehicles get out of their way? I'll tell you what Bub...we'll pit your ten pound bicycle against my three thousand pound truck and the winner gets to go first.

Here's what it boils down to: if you want to pretend that you're a car, then you should have to make the "vroom-vroom" noise as you pedal your three thousand dollar hemmoroid machine through traffic. But until then, a little more common sense and some humility would go a long way towards ensuring that you don't end up as my new hood ornament.


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Roses are red,
violets are blue
I wake up each morning
so in love with you

Happy Saint Valentine's Day sweetheart!


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another testament to torn testicles

"LONDON (Reuters) - A British woman was sentenced to two and a half years in jail Thursday for ripping off her ex-lover's testicle with her bare hands during a drunken brawl after he refused her sex.

Amanda Monti, 24, flew into a rage in May last year after Geoffrey Jones, 37, who had ended their long-term relationship, rejected her advances.

She grabbed him by the genitals, tearing off his left testicle, then hid it in her mouth before a friend of Jones handed it back to him saying "that's yours."

Monti, of Birkenhead, near Liverpool, pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding at an earlier hearing."

A couple of things pique my curiousity about this story...

If they were dressed when they fought, how did she get manage to a grip on his balls?

If they were naked, what was the other person ("a friend of Jones") doing in the room with them?

This last sentence: "Monti...pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding at an earlier hearing" implies that there is such a thing as a lawful wounding. Go figure.

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This news story is about two weeks old, but regrettably, I only heard about it recently.

Micheal Moore called the insurgents in Iraq "freedom fighters". Well Mr. Moore, here's what your freedom fighters are up to over there.

Terrorists use mentally handicapped child as suicide bomber

The Associated Press
Updated: 3:53 p.m. ET Jan. 31, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq’s interior minister said Monday that insurgents used a handicapped child as one of the suicide bombers who launched attacks on election day.
Falah al-Naqib told reporters in Baghdad that 38 attacks were carried out on polling stations in Iraq on Sunday and that one of the suicide bombings was carried out by a disabled child.

“A handicapped child was used to carry out a suicide attack on a polling site,” al-Naqib said. “This is an indication of what horrific actions they are carrying out.”
He gave no other details about the attack, but police at the scene of one the Baghdad blasts said the bomber appeared to have Down Syndrome.

© 2005 The Associated Press.

Another article, which I can't seem to find at the moment, stated that the child was identified by it's head, which was severed in the blast.

I hope you're satisfied with the performance of your revolutionary heros, Mr. Moore. A just God will make sure you share the same piece of Hell.
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According to the doctor, I have a couple of little problems with my left shoulder...

This:



and this:



Have I ever mentioned how unimpressed I am with the whole "getting old" thing?

It's the Chinese Year of the Rooster, so as they say in Nanking: Gong Hai Fat Choi!!




They say that you take on some of the characteristics of the animal whose year you were born in. Since I was born in the year of the rabbit, that goes a long way towards explaining why I have such a fuzzy rear end.

File this story under "You Need A Life Outside of Sports"

Soccer Nuts

LONDON (Reuters) - A Welsh rugby fan cut off his own testicles to celebrate Wales beating England at rugby, the Daily Mirror reported Tuesday.

Geoff Huish, 26, was so convinced England would win Saturday's match he told fellow drinkers at a social club, "If Wales win I'll cut my balls off," the paper said. Friends at the club in Caerphilly, south Wales, thought he was joking.

But after the game Huish went home, severed his testicles with a knife, and walked 200 yards back to the bar with the testicles to show the shocked drinkers what he had done.

Huish was taken to hospital where he remained in serious condition, the paper said. Wales's 11-9 victory over England at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff was their first home win over England in 12 years.

It was an emotionally interesting weekend. I was over in Vancouver on Friday, doing a small promotional video for my line of work, and afterwards I picked up my father at his apartment and brought him back to Victoria for the weekend.

He'd made the suggestion a few weeks earlier and, since I possess an overdeveloped sense of familial obligation, I agreed to have him over for a visit. He's turning 67 in April and I suspect that becoming more aware of his mortality has inspired him to have an emotional bond with his son. Unfortunately he's about 40 years too late, but nevertheless I found myself going along with it for his sake.

I'm really of two minds on the matter.

On the one hand, I realize that because he's chosen to alienate every other living relative of his, he's now afraid of what I call "dying without a trace". In other words, the fear that his death won't even leave a ripple among acquaintances and relations.

On the other hand, I find myself deeply resentful that he expects me to ignore his lifetime of self-centered and unpleasant behaviour simply because it now suits his purposes to feel a close bond with another person.

The end result left me feeling distinctly guarded and neutral towards him during our time together. We don't have any sort of rapport - and never did - and I'm both bothered and bewildered (but not bewitched) as to why he'd behave as if we did. I guess I hoped for a little more humility, or at least some recognition that he now desires something that he never cared about before.

And I think that's the real source of my tension...that the arrogance behind his expectation that I will accomodate his fear of mortality is the same sort of arrogance that he conducted himself with all of his life: the world is still revolving around him and what he wants, with no thought to how others may feel about it.

When we parted on Sunday morning, all I felt was relief. The same sort of tired relief one feels when the dishes are done, the carpet is vacuumed or the in-basket emptied.

I hope to Hell I'm creating a better legacy than that with my own children.

Courtesy of The Last Amazon, here are 20 Questions to a Better Personality

For those who are curious, here are my results. I have no idea who Paul Begala is so please don't ask.

Wackiness: 56/100
Rationality: 58/100
Constructiveness: 56/100
Leadership: 44/100

You are a WRCF--Wacky Rational Constructive Follower. This makes you a Paul Begala.

You are unflappable and largely unconcerned with others' reactions to you. You were not particularly interested in the results of this test, and probably took it only as a result of someone else asking you to.

You have a biting wit and intense powers of observation. No detail is lost on you, and your friends know it--relying on you to have the facts when others express only opinions. You are even-tempered, friendly, and educated. Foolish strangers may mistake your mildness for weakness--they will be surprised.

You entire approach to life is enviable. You will raise good kids.

Of the 88057 people who have taken this quiz since tracking began (8/17/2004), 4.7 % are this type.

Two related stories out of Germany:

Five million Germans out of work

On Wednesday, the German Federal Labour Agency said the jobless total had reached 5.037 million in January, which takes the jobless rate to 12.1%. Unemployment has not been this high in Germany since the 1930s.

German prostitute sees sex trade hope for jobless

BERLIN (Reuters) - A celebrated Berlin prostitute has said that German job centre advisers shouldn't shy away from offering jobs in the sex industry to the long-term unemployed.

Molly Luft, who sold her famous Berlin brothel two months ago and now runs a bar in the city's lively Kreuzberg district, on Monday said the sex industry was always looking for new recruits. "Why shouldn't they send the unemployed to work in the sex industry? Before it was a grey zone, but now employees are insured and receive benefits," Luft told Reuters. "People would no longer be unemployed and could earn themselves a living."

German sex workers have been on a par with any other employee since the government legalised prostitution in 2001. They are entitled to social security benefits and pay taxes.

While a legal sex trade isn't something that everyone would endorse, it's a far better alternative than the last solution to Germany's high unemployment crisis.

FREMONT TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) _ A golden anniversary is ancient history to Jim and Mary McSweyn. The Saginaw, Michigan, couple recently celebrated their 72nd anniversary.

The McSweyns have 19 grandchildren and 32 great-grandchildren. Like their wedding, their anniversary party was a low-key affair, a spaghetti dinner with family. Mary McSweyn says they didn't have a big wedding. She didn't even have a wedding dress at her nuptials during the height of the Great Depression.

Daughter Sharon Walker says her mother's frugal ways continued long after the Depression ended. Walker says her mother made all the kids' clothes. Walker adds she didn't get a store-bought dress until she was in high school.

Think about that....seventy-two years of marriage. A marriage that's lasted from 1933 to now - with no apparent signs of slowing down.

Hopefully the longevity of the marriage is based on love and not on something akin to Bono's lyric in So Cruel, from their "Achtung Baby" album:

"I'm only hangin' on to watch you go down"