Best of Cidiot, Volume 1

After writing a humour column for the past few years Derek Robertson looked back and selected his favourites for a three volume best-of series, and here embedded for you is a digital copy of Volume 1.

This first volume featurs the stories Bowl-a-Drama, Boobstruck (originally article titled Rock and Tackle), Snowball Effect, Unravel Over Scrabble, Insecurity Sticker (Volume 1's cover story), and Derek's Inferno. Plus 'Ask a Cidiot' and 'What is a Cidiot?'

To read a digital copy of Volume 1 just click on the thumbnail image below.

(Note: for optimum viewing click the 'full screen' option on the tool bar above the magazine)

Read Confessions of a Cidiot - Vol. 1

Check back in a couple of weeks for Confessions of a Cidiot, Volume 2!

Volume 2 is set to feature:

- From Russia with Febreeze  

- The Once and Future Pogster

- Baggage Claims

- Hanging Up is Hard to Do

- Ask a Cidiot

- The Taken Seat

- Gettin' to High off Masculinity

Those Dangerous Games

There are politicians who like to preach that we should ban video games, burn them, protect our stupid minds from them because if we don't we'll go on a rampage of carjacking, killing prostitutes, and randomly beating guys on the street with a baseball bat in hopes glowing money will pop out of them.

Grand Theft Auto I am looking at you.

I didn't believe you political fringe types, I thought maybe you just realized you spend a lot of time and money to get elected only to discover you don't really believe in anything and so desperate, you looked for the easiest target to go after. Porn was taken by the Junior Representative from Lackawanna County, and the movie industry was under attack from a Senator out of Utah, so you thought you'd settle for video games.

That's what I thought, I did. Until I realized you were right! It's hit me!

You my dear fear mongering friend of Fox News were right, its happened to me!

One day I am immersed in several hours of Mario Kart Wii (Rainbow Road I will make you mine!) then the next I am driving my Saturn, minding my own business. Suddenly this guy starts riding my tail, he's all up behind me and I don't know what to do.

Perhaps if I was a level headed video game free individual I would have just let him go about his tailgating. Perhaps.

But no, I did something so horrible, so shameful it is hard to admit.

I finished the banana I was eating, rolled down my window and then... then... yes, that's right I did it! I through the banana peel back at his car.

But it gets worse, my slippery slide into mindless, easily influenced video gamer continued.

I don't even want to tell you what happened, but lets just say the turtle I promised my little sister I'd take to the vet, well it never made it.

So you were right and I was wrong. We can not trust video games, we as humans are so stupid. How could I ever have doubted you?

I have to end this here, have to rush to the pet store before my sister gets out of school. I'm kind of cutting it close, but I figure if I pop a few mushrooms it should give me the speed boost I need to make it in time.

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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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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Derek's Inferno

Somehow I had gone my whole life without ever visiting a chain of Swedish Furniture Outlets, at the time this didn't seem like much of an achievement. I've never been to Polish Car Dealership or a New Zealand Waffle Maker, though I bet the Polish would make some pretty reliable cars.

Last week this all changed as my sister Emily and her husband Chris (experienced Swedish Furniture Outlet shoppers) wanted to take my brother Will, my girlfriend Amanda and a friend of my girlfriends to get stuff for their new places as they prepared to start a new year of university. Being the dutiful brother and boyfriend that I am I agreed to tag along as soon as I got off work.

My instructions were to take the Swedish Furniture Outlet's courtesy shuttle to get there, but when I arrived at the pick up point the shuttle was no where to be seen and I was hardly in the mood to wait around for it. Being born and raised and a big city where you could walk to everything I made a mistake I've made far to often all across the continent, I believed I could walk it.

The thing about the Swedish Furniture Outlet is that the largeness of its building, topped only by the largeness of it's epically flat and barren parking lots, forces it to the outskirts of the city, with all of the other big box stores, a sort of freak show at the edge of the fair.

"Not for the faint of heart but to your right you'll see a store the length of two football fields that sells nothing but bean bags!" Everyone gasps as they take in the freak of shopping nature, "how can such a thing exist?" one would ask in amazement before adding, "man I hope they take debit, I could use bean bags in every room of my house!"

And so there I was, on the edge of Sanity and Suburbia, convinced that I could navigate the streets towards the store in the distance. Why I thought I could do this I'll never know, in my experience suburban streets dip and loop, seeming to want to avoid straight lines at all costs, quite often by the time you reach the end of one long and pointless curve you'll realize the street has no exit. These needlessly long journeys down arching streets are made worse by the monotony of seeing identical home after identical home, your sanity kept only by the fact that some cookie cutter homes have basketball nets on the side of their driveway, some do not.

My walk became longer and longer and just as tiredness was letting me have it for choosing to walk I found I had looped right back to where I began, the courtesy shuttle waiting for me like some cruel joke.

It's tough to say anything bad about the courtesy shuttle, for had I not gotten aboard I may still be wandering the streets right now, but all the same the small bus had wooden 'seats' running down both sides of it, forcing passengers to sit face to face with their fellow travelers, our knees practically touching. It felt more like we were being shipped off to some sort of war, my fellow travelers and I prepared to do battle against the insurgents in bedding and linen.

When we arrived at the parking lot for the Swedish Furniture Outlet I fought the urge to storm the beaches and instead met up with my party.

As my fellow shoppers began loading up on things for their dorm rooms I wandered along amazed, the store was carefully crafted so that one had to wander down a path through each department, never missing one. Windows and clocks were non existent, unless they were for sale in the windows and clocks section. The store was beautifully crafted to ensure you'd see see every object that was for sale without ever having a concept of how long you had been in there or that there was a world beyond this windy path of 'Swedish' goods. I was finding myself throughly impressed and appalled all at the same time by these manipulative tactics.

Then there was the Swedish. Every product had it's own Swedish name. If you wanted to buy a rectangle bowl you were buying the Rektangle tm. As far as shopping experiences go with the girlfriend this one was looking up, at least I could learn the Swedish word for over priced - poorly constructed lamp (that's " över kosta - torftig anlägga lampa " I believe). If I could learn the Spanish name for mini skirt my easily distracted mind may be more tolerable on some of her other shopping ventures.

But then, as any outing with me seems to do, things took a turn for the worst.

I had the sudden and unrelenting need to go to the washroom. This was no big deal at first, I split off from everyone else and began to follow the signs to the restroom. At first I expected it to be just around the corner, when this was not so I figured it would just be another turn or two on the Swedish twisty path, but it was not.

Suddenly as I found myself wandering from rugs to bathroom accessories (a cruel irony if ever there was one) it occurred to me I was trapped in the nine circles of Swedish hell.

As I darted through the first circle I couldn't help but think how tempting several show toilets looked, but I had to say strong, surely another bend or two in the path would lead me to salvation.

I arrived in lighting, our second circle of Swedish hell, where one is convinced by the charming name and reasonable price to buy a paper bag over a light bulb and set it up within their home proudly, for reasons their friends will never understand.

Another sign with an arrow towards the washroom lay ahead, and either hope or wishful thinking filled me, I bounded around the next corner and straight into the circle known as Prints and Frames, where one could buy I concede some beautiful paintings, but with so many of the same print for sale you just know someone would come over to your house and go "oh, Swedish Furniture Outlet, I saw that on sale a few weekends ago".

I continued my journey deeper and deeper into Swedish hell, finding myself bombarded by Swedish words like Vildbar or Smyekn as I searched desperately for the 'toalette' as Swedish hell may call it.

As I passed through the end of Home Decoration I seemed to be getting close, the maze of paths and shelves of things were coming to an end, the building was changing around me, surely this must be where the washroom would be found.

It wasn't.

In fact I was in Self Serve Furniture, a warehouse where customers could grab pieces of furniture off racks upon racks. I contemplated how one would self serve themselves some furniture on the top shelf, wondering if letting Joe Suburban use a forklift would end well. My concern for the safety of the people trapped shuffling around this circle of Swedish hell passed quickly as my own needs took center stage again.

I ran through the checkout, passed the Swedish Foodmarket, finally arriving to where the signs had began leading me to several hours or days ago. There were two individual washrooms, individual... individual. For a store of such massive size there were two washrooms that could be used for a maximum of two people at a time. Nearby there was a sign cheerfully telling me if these were in use I could find additional washrooms at the front of the store.

I pulled out my cell phone, prepared to call my brother and tell him to avoid Bathroom Accessories for the next little while, as something bad was about to go down.

My cell phone had no service, I was cut off from the rest of my party, lost and still desperately searching for my salvation. Lost in Swedish hell I began my journey all over again.

If you ever find yourself traveling through the nine circles of Swedish hell my one piece of advice for you is this, check out the Cooking and Eating circle, they've got some fantastic deals on bägare's!

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