Howl of a Run

Part of what makes me a Cidiot is my uncomfortable relationship with nature. To me the wilderness is a place to visit, to spend a week or two marveling at its sights and beauty and then head back home. In my mind it's sort of Disney World without the 75 dollar price of admittance and of course when I run into a mouse I don't try to get a picture of me hugging it. Magic Kingdom is a nice idea, but you don't move in. The same goes for the country in my mind.

But still something made me think I needed to get in touch with another side of myself. To embrace the small town atmosphere, maybe wake up early on Saturday's and help a local farmer till his fields.

Now I don't quite know what tilling is, but I imagined it'd be back breaking yet leave me feeling rewarded once the harvest was done. In this scenario I also seemed to have magical abs that glistened in the sort of sunlight only Hollywood could light, the farmer's daughters watching from the comfort of a local porch.

And so I went east to Belleville, Ontario when it came time for me to go to college. During my years there I never once did anything productive on a farmers field, unless partying and shortcuts count. The only agricultural crops I grew were mold, and that was a most unfortunate bumper crop.

My brushes with nature were also short lived. Convinced I'd run into a crazed moose or something on the path between my dorm and the college I rarely ventured far.

Then one night my fears seemed to come true.

I like to call it a tale of near death if you will.

I was walking through the forest-y portion of the path late at night as I headed back to place. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed something coming through the trees. At first I passed it off as just a dog and continued on my way. Then I began to think about how strange it was that there would be a dog. In all my time on campus I had never seen a dog, they weren’t allowed, why in the middle of the night would one randomly be walking in the woods?

Slowly turning to look at the thing from the woods again it hit me how much it looked like a wolf, in fact it looked identical to a wolf. I started to walk faster, and as I did the thing started coming at me, every time I went a little faster it went faster.

My mind swarmed with thoughts. Was this how it ends for me? Killed by a wolf?

As it got closer tomorrow’s headlines ran through my head:

“Little Red Robertson’s Corpse,” “An American Werewolf in Belleville” or my personal favourite, “The Boy Who Didn’t Cry Wolf… Because it Ripped His Vocal Cords Out.”

I took off running and it did too.

As I braced for the end a campus security guard came out from the woods.

It's funny, one minute you're fearing for your life, the next your trying to explain very rationally to campus security that the reason you were running away from the drug sniffing dog was you thought it was a wolf trying to kill you.

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Epilogue to the Horror Film

For those of you who haven't skipped right ahead to the play button let me say this week's Cidiot is a little different than normal. It's part of a stand-up set of mine edited specially for Confessions of a Cidiot (as noted by the Cidiot specific intro and extro.)

My girlfriend Amanda has a love of horror movies and from time to time she'll try forcing them on me (a man whose late night imagination and paranoia are not well suited for the genre.) After sitting through one to many I got to thinking...

I could go on with the back story (in fact I already have, but luckily for you my fingers found the backspace key) but really just sit back, hit play and enjoy this special Halloween edition.

I had fun with it and I'm hoping you will too.

(Note: Despite the appearance of a video screen, this is solely an audio presentation. Do not attempt to adjust your internet connection.)

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Pied and Go Seek

I’d like to introduce to you a small village nestled in Norfolk County, Ontario. Granted they didn’t ask me to make this introduction and they might even be shy or bashful in me doing so, but still I feel the need to introduce you.

So meet Waterford, and Waterford meet… my favorite reader.

Waterford, Ontario is home to 2,500 villagers, and if you are to go by one of the strangest opening paragraphs in a Wikipedia article the Yin Family are notable residents being that they are of the rare Chinese variety of Waterfordian’s. They run a Chinese restaurant there, and (if one can assume from their inclusion on Wikipedia) are the talk of the village with sentences that begin with, “do you’s know what them crazy Chinese folk were up to the other day?”

Originally a railroad town along the Canadian Southern line, trains had all but stopped coming to little Waterford at the turn of the 20th century. The village’s growth was halted, and those that remained turned to agriculture.

That is until someone dreamed up Pumpkinfest.

Ah Pumpkinfest, or as the locals call it “Tricking Cidiot’s into Traveling Hours to Fill Some Guilt Ridden Need to Take in Some Agriculture.”

Some four years ago my sister gave into the need. Little is known of how she came to be aware of the pumpkin harvesting festival, though I suppose a lot would be known if I asked her, but picking up a phone and calling her is far above my duty to this column.

Regardless, she convinced my brother and I to pile into the car, whisked away on several hours of journey to the promises of midway games, pumpkin pyramids, and, as my sister promised, “the best tasting pumpkin pie you’ll ever have.”

The promise of pumpkin pie, and the best of our lives at that, was enough to drag us out of the comforts of the city. Before long we were surrounded by the darkness of country roads, and the eventual, inevitable realization that we were lost.

A dimly lit convenient store appeared about this time, the way such a store spookily appear in a slasher flick, first to the relief of the travelers, but before long between blows by an ax they are wishing they had never stopped.

Not to disappoint a man sat on the old convenient stores wood veranda. Perhaps on break from his local militia duties he donned a skinhead and matching camo pants. He glared at us as we approached the store; I was convinced we were heading straight for shallow graves; our bodies months later would become the topic of town conversation.

“Did you hear about them bodies they dug up in old Roy’s tobacco field?”

“Ah, I imagine he’s mighty pissed, all them fascist cops trampling round there he’ll liable miss the harvest.”

Did I mention I graduated with honours from Small Town Stereotyping School? Though that D I got in ‘Introduction to Alabama Inbreeding Jokes’ nearly cost me my diploma.

Needless to say my Cidiot minded fears were not shown to be true, instead we got the much needed directions as well as several packages of salt and sugar laced carbs.

We were back on the road and before long we had arrived, I could practically taste that sweet pumpkin pie.

Before we could dig in my sister insisted we take in the other sights and sounds of Pumpkinfest, a short-lived plan as it seemed we had missed the fest side of things. After lost induced detours we had arrived to late, the midway was closing up. The much raved about parade had long since marched by.

But we could still have pumpkin pie!

No, we couldn’t.

In all the snack shacks and restaurants, and amongst all the fair tents hawking fake tattoos and your name on a grain of rice, there was no pumpkin pie to be found.

We traveled from end to end of the village, but nothing. Lit in the glow of a pumpkin pyramid I could hear the theme music to The Twilight Zone kick in as we gazed across a field to a sign that read “No Pies Available This Year!” In case the exclamation mark added insult to injury a second sign had been tacked on above reading “Sorry”.

The town was pie dry. It didn’t just say ‘No Pumpkin Pie’, it said ‘Pies’. Apple, Strawberry Rhubarb, or Boston Cream. Why if this sign was correct the odds of finding Chicken Pot Pie or even a Pizza Pie were slim to none.

How had such a thing happened? How had an entire village rallied together to ban a delectable treat that had dated back to 2000 BC? What had led to this decision? Some tragic pie related accident that had shocked and horrified the citizens of Waterford? Not even the Nazi’s, whose bans, restrictions and all around authoritarianism has spawned the annoying quip when faced with some new rule, “what is this Nazi Germany?”, had ever gone so far as to ban a pastry.

It didn’t matter what had led to Waterford’s backlash on pies. There were none.

I tell you this story because we had vowed never to return, that is until now. This Friday we’ll return to Waterford’s Pumpkinfest, curious and anxious to see if the Pie Ban of ’03 has yet to be lifted.

I’ll keep you posted, but at least I know if worse comes to worse I can always visit Yin’s Restaurant, serving “Chinese and Canadian food without a buffet!”

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What's In a (Domain) Name?

My name is Derek Robertson, yes, but if you like what you read here and want more you won’t find me at derekrobertson.com. Someone beat me to the punch.

I grew up in a world of Etch A Sketch’s and Pogs, so I wasn’t prepared half a decade later when everyone and their mother bought their own personalized domain name.

Yes, it’s too late for me, but not for my kids. Somewhere in the distant future when my wife (or inappropriately young mistress… what? Accidents happen all the time) suggest a baby name I won’t get bogged down thinking about what sounds good…

“How about Rachel?” she’ll ask

“Rachel? Rachel Robertson? Really? Dot com that and our daughter’s screwed. Unless you’re willing to raise her in the United Kingdom, rachelrobertson.co.uk is available.”

Forget the birth certificate, when my daughter is born the only documentation I want to see is ownership of her new domain name presented to me by the hospital’s IT department.

What can I say, I’m a 21^st Century father and when the time comes for me to force offspring upon this world (sorry world) they can rest easy knowing their shameless self promotion, inane blogs, or if she’s a bit anti-social, pictures of her favorite types of cats from around the world, will have a home at _insert_name_robertson.com.

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Conversion Conversation

There’s a website called Craigslist which, for those of you whose internet usage revolves solely around Confessions of a Cidiot (and in my mind that is all of you), is a website featuring lists. They are on job postings, personal ads, apartments to rent, junk for sale… basically everything that makes up the chunk of the newspaper you grab first when going to build a fire. Presumably there’s also a guy named Craig, a little less popular then Myspace’s Tom and understandably, when was the high stakes world of classifieds a glamorous place?

On Craigslist in the personals category they have a section known as ‘missed connections’. The idea is that one person sees a person they find attractive, but instead of trying the age old method of going up to said person and saying hi, they run home to their computer, write out the event and hope the other person checks Craigslist, reads it, and contacts them.

I really don’t know what the odds are that two socially challenged individuals connect over a ‘missed connection’, though I am not holding my breath for a wedding invitation.

I’m not really a fan of this process, I mean isn’t part of life that awkward surge of adrenaline as you teeter on the edge of rejection during your well planned out speech that went something like, “so um, yeah, I guess I was sort of thinking, um, like, I don’t know, if you’re not busy or whatever, um, maybe we could do something, um you know, together? Sometime, maybe.”

Regardless I have written my own ‘missed connection’, though I am not sure old Craig will run it. It goes like this…

You, late 30’s – early 40 year old balding scientologist, me 22 year old non-believer. Should I have taken you up on your challenge to fight?

I’ll explain this in a moment.

From time to time I am greeted by people who want to stop by my house and see if I am familiar with Jesus. Apparently there is a deep seeded feeling amongst the religious community that my house lives in such a vacuum that even a Mel Gibson movie hasn’t come to my attention.

“Like Jesus Christ Jesus? Or are you talking about a Mexican who just moved into the neighbourhood?” I ask, because I clearly have nothing better to do in life.

“We speak of the Lord and Savior.”

“So that rules out the Mexican?”

They’ll always ask me if they could come in for a few minutes and tell me about their beliefs. This is a strange notion, and I wonder how many people say, “oh yeah, come right on in!” I mean half my friends haven’t even seen the inside of my place, why would I invite someone in who the minute I excuse myself to go to the bathroom they might be spiking my Kool-Aid?

“Try new Kool-Aid mystery flavours! The Kool-Aid where you don’t know what you’ll get till you’re drinking it! Now in Cherry, Grape, and new Jonestown Valium & Cyanide^TM! Oh yeah!”

I did once allow someone to enlighten me on their door to door religious beliefs, but she was very attractive and so I figured, you know, it was only polite to listen.

She told me that there was a prophet on Earth and that once a year he speaks to everyone via satellite. When asked if I would be interested in being a part of all this I replied, “No, but do you know if your prophet is hiring anyone to shoot his next video?”

What? In my industry you always have to be on the look out for the next job.

And then there’s Scientology, a group who I haven’t interacted with much. Once, while I was waiting on a friend, I was asked to sit down and be tested by an E-Meter. Bored and looking for amusement I agreed. Sadly there were no attractive women in the equation this time around.

The man told me to think about different things in life and his little meter went up and down over and over, very theatrically. He took some notes and told me my life was filled with a lot of stress and that he had a ‘cure’ for this. He pulled out two thick books written by one L. Ron Hubbard and told me I should buy them.

A machine to justify you buying over priced books? Genius, why didn’t Amazon.com think of this?

In fact I was so inspired I have been thinking of sitting outside of bars, comedy clubs and theaters I perform at with a ‘C-Meter’ designed to tell you your life lacks comedy and you should probably buy a ticket and come inside.

I’ve never wished any of these people whose beliefs did not go hand and hand with mine any sort of ill will, and up until this weekend they too have treated me with the respect you’d expect from people secure of their place in the afterlife.

So back to my ‘missed connection’, I was walking at the time with my sister and my girlfriend as we passed a tent full of Scientologists selling, yes, books by L. Ron Hubbard.

As we walked by, having our own conversation, the bald man must’ve misunderstood something, or maybe he was just suffering from overexposure to the E-Meter, because he lost it.

Threatening us he demanded we come back and say it to his face. That we didn’t walk away like chickens.

I don’t really know why, or what it was he wanted said to his face, but he was on the verge of becoming a cartoon and erupting in a cloud of smoke.

I guess it must be tough being on the fringes of belief, I guess sometimes it must make you just want to lose it.

So maybe I don’t give my money to your organization, maybe you’re not attractive enough to be invited in for a good old converting session. But can’t we all be friends?

I’d like to leave you with a song I’ve written as inspired by the classic 1970's Buy the World a Coke song, for frustrated pilgrims and prophets everywhere.

On a hilltop in Toronto
I’ve gathered door knocking converters
From all over the world
To bring to you this message
From religious fringe sects
From all over the world
It’s the real thing – Flavor Aid
And they sang…

I’d like to buy the world a temple
And furnish it with love… and life savings
Exit our human vehicles and board a spaceship
And self-immolation

I’d like to teach the world to chant
In perfect harmony
I’d like to buy the world a Flavor Aid
And wash it down with cyanide
That’s the real thing.

I’d like to teach the world to chant
In perfect harmony
I’d like to buy the world a Flavor Aid
And wash it down with cyanide
That’s the real thing.

What the world wants today
Flavor Aid
Is the real thing

What the world wants today
Flavor Aid
Is the real thing

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