For the first time in six years I am driving into work on a daily basis. My policy has always been to live near work so that I would not have to deal with commuter traffic, but with my decision to move to downtown Edmonton I am no longer a stone’s throw away from the office. This means that every morning I shove myself into the daily streams of motor-vehicular run-off.

And this means dealing with other drivers on a regular basis.

One of the great failings of the Internet has been the ability for people to be annoying anonymously. Hardly anyone would be mean to people if you had to go have a chat with that person face-to-face. The same holds true for drivers. We’re cocooned in our little four doors, strapped to our seats and touching the road vicariously through the steering wheel, gears and the pedals. In our little worlds we can scream, shout, laugh, sing, cry, lament, soliloquise, berate, snooze, drink, eat, and well, do just about anything we please. For some reason, the fact that there are windows doesn’t seem to faze people at all. Apparently, the windows in a car are only for seeing out. Behind that steering wheel, we are transformed into powerful, childish, idiotic and somewhat selfish beings.

I find that I am being greatly entertained by watching people drive. Last week, and it might have had something to do with the cute girl that was driving behind me, I started thinking about how driving styles might compare to what these people did in bed or with sex. I spent that morning driving in a daze categorizing the players in our little life drama.

The Screamer: These are the vocal drivers who are ready to start screaming at you from behind their wheel on a moment’s notice. An excitable lot, only a small little screw-up is enough to set them off.

The Spooner: The driver who refuses to get out of your blind spot and stays glued to the side of your car in an almost loving embrace.

The Stalker: The one who drives in your wake hoping that you will go through a speed trap and shield them.

The Premature Ejaculator: This is that driver that always wants the green light before the green light is even there. I’m sure they’re quite impatient in all aspects of their life and probably come to quick conclusions.

The Doggy Style Afficianado: These are the wonderful drivers who are always about two inches behind you. They follow without any thought of the fact that slight pressure on the brakes from you would send them careening through your back window.

And finally:

The Pimp: The driver who is always on the phone, chatting away and doing business with goodness-knows who with a coffee in the other hand and checking out the “bidness” in the other cars. All they would need is a leopard-print outfit and a giant purple fedora.

Yes, I get bored easily in my, now routine, morning commutes.

“Is there a Dups in the House? … Dups is celebrating his birthday today, he’s 32, single, gorgeous and dressed like a virgin!”

That was the DJ at the dance club we ended up in as the night turned to Saturday and my evil friends decided to taunt me last night.

I’m not entirely sure when it happened. Maybe it was my 7th birthday when I almost died from malaria. Maybe it was my 26th birthday, maybe my 27th but quite likely it was my 28th birthday. Somehow, I started hating celebrating my birthday. Getting older depresses me and this year seems to be no exception. I admit, 32 isn’t exactly like I’ll be starting collection of my government pension, but growing old irks me to no end. I realize it’s melodramatic, drama-queenish and certainly quite childish.

Normally I would disappear. One birthday I managed to work all night in the office and sleep the entire day so that I wouldn’t have to deal with it. Unfortunately that was also the year my parents tried to first arrange a marriage for me. Nice birthday gift. I woke up, read the emails, fumed and decided to get plastered. Probably not an uncommon reaction. This year I was quite prepared to maybe drive to the mountains or hole up in the house and play video games or write and deal with the inevitable family phone calls. Incidentally, my father got screwed up on his time zones and which way the world turns and phoned me 24 hours ago to wish me a happy birthday.  My mother, bless her, will likely want to phone me again on November 28th as she keeps thinking I was born in November.

But no, I have evil friends.

Meghan and Darcy decided their gift to me this year was a birthday party. Now you can’t turn down a gift. So now tonight, a few people will gather at their house. I will likely sit in a corner, sulk, drink and get older. I guess if I am to feel this way about it, best to do it in the company of the best friends in the entire world!

Most of my friends are aware that since I turned 28 or so I have had numerous “mid-life” crises directly related to whatever I decide on the birthday of the previous year. These crises have seen me disappear to weird places and high mountains (Kilimanjaro, Asia, Russia and Mongolia). I can feel the stirring within me now. I know something is brewing; the discontent is spreading. Where will this mid-life crisis take me?

Oh. And it’s snowing outside.

Every morning I start off my day by perusing the BBC News website. This morning, having been rudely awoken by a call in search of “Dorothy”, I was glancing through the many news stories about deaths in Iraq, global destruction and general badness when I saw this article about Orthorexia Nervosa.

A quick introduction: Orthorexia Nervosa is not a recognised medical condition. It’s a brand new condition which attempts to explain those that are obsessive compulsive about the health of the food that they eat. Those that scan the food shelves for organic foods, attempts to eat local food, tries to be knowledgeable about what it is that they ingest. So obsessive compulsive that the person falls into the same trap as Anorexia and ends up hurting themselves nutritionally.

So the question that I asked myself is “am I orthorexic?” After all, I am very careful about what I eat. I try to eat organically. I am vegetarian because I refuse to eat farmed animals (or fish, though fish are mostly vegetables). I also roam down the store aisles looking for healthy treats. I doubt however that most orthorexics could also be suffering from “Bacchus Nervosa”, not quite alcoholic but certainly enjoying the art of drinking a little too much. I should probably style myself Bacchusorexic!

However, the whole article did get me thinking about diets and health. A ton of my friends are what you would call “picky” eaters. I know vegetarians like my mountain climbing friend Keli Ryan. She refuses to eat meat even when faced with the potential of scaling the world’s tallest mountains. I have other friends who are deathly allergic to peanuts. One I know is allergic to… alcohol. Yes I believe that would be rather tough for me to get through.

Despite the idea of Orthorexia Nervosa I truly believe that the food we eat does physically affect us more than making sure that we have the correct nutrients to functional biomechanically. Some foods make me happier, some make me feel smarter, some make me feel relaxed. This isn’t rocket science. If distilled versions of various compounds such as LSD can make you hallucinate and affect your pleasure and other centres then regular food should do the same. How much of our mental problems, deficiencies and health is based on the food that we intake? Patch Adams believed that laughter and feeling good could cure any disease. Could something as simple as food do the same thing? Think about that the next time you sit down at a fast food restaurant. Like I said, this isn’t rocket science!

I’d like to think I’m a pretty normal person. Sadly, though, I realize that I am a geek. Only a fellow geek could possibly understand the happiness I feel right now. I suspect that many of you will simply shake their heads and think “wow this guy needs to get a life!” Take a look at the photo below:

Reach back deep into your childhood and remember those Hardy Boys books you might have read? Well, pictured is a complete collection of the revised text edition published in the 60s, 70s and early 80s. I picked up the final three books to complete my collection today. This means I have books #1 through #82 in my personal library (amongst the other *gasp* six hundred children‘s books)… Some day, some kid, likely a niece or nephew considering how “busy” my own dating life is, will be very lucky. I’m sure that Craig and Jason, who both collect comics, can understand the collectors passion.

They will also understand that E-Bay is to collectors what crack cocaine is to a junkie.

I think I will now go bask in the glory of my complete Hardy Boys collection. Yes I know I have problems. Have you not read the rest of this web site?

The Edmonton music scene has kind of exploded while I’ve been here.  Or maybe it’s just that I’ve managed to finally get “connected”. For a small city of a million people there are an amazing number of relatively good bands from or coming through here. I’d like to think that they are all coming through for my personal entertainment, but I have a strange feeling that it is a confluence of events such as what brought forth “grunge” from Seattle in the late eighties and early nineties or the indie punk movement of the bands in New York in the mid to late seventies.

For one thing, we now have a fantastic commercial radio station which seems serious about promoting new, alternative, indie music: Sonic FM. Having worked with CHMR at Memorial for many years, I had all but given up on commercial radio playing anything but your most annoying Top-40 mix. When I arrived in Alberta in 2001, you could listen to Nickelback back-to-back as you dialled through the stations. Either that or Garth Brooks remembrance channels.

On a hot tip from a friend at work, last night we descended upon one of my favourite night spots in the city, the New City Compound.  “We” in this case was the usual hotbed of the hard-core drinking group from BioWare plus Melissa and Vivian (who was celebrating her birthday). Naturally, due mostly to my simple-minded nature  I had decided to wear a lot of white yesterday. If you’re going there, remember that the entire club is filled with black light. Considering my dark features, I think I was simply a floating shirt and t-shirt for the remainder of the night.

The two bands that serenaded us (there was a third but they came earlier) were The Secretaries and Hot Panda. We had come to see the Secretaries and were not disappointed. There on the stage were three very attractive women, dressed to the nines in old-fashioned outfits right from the 1950s jamming away with an engaging indie/rock sound. If you check out their profile on MySpace you will note that Robot Ass Slap, Percussive Ankle Twist and Masked Floor Hump are part of the array of instruments that they play. Nevermind all that, Amy van Keeken does a mean recorder solo and Natasha Fryzuk’s heavy breathing instrumentation lit the fires of most guys in the audience. Naturally, Dan Fedor and I bought the ladies a round of tequila shots.

Hot Panda was also quite good. Let me tell you that there is nothing sexier than a female drummer. Yes, I know there are the obvious jokes. Regardless, both The Secretaries and Hot Panda featured female drummers. That certainly rocked my world! Hot Panda was more poppy but guaranteed us that their sound was 85% danceable. I agree. Check these bands out and go support them at a local club wherever you are! You won’t be disappointed!

Bibliomantics, the Alberta RAGSN Adventure

1. Day 1: The Bible knows good scotch
2. Day 2: Solomon does not like vegetarians
3. Day 3: Plenty of room for freaks in Alberta…
4. Day 4: The Arrival of Dr. Niall, M.D. Proctology
5. Day 5: Jasper Jeff and his concubines
6. Day 6: The Mannionati
7. Day 7: The Alcoholic Bible
8. Day 8: You shalt anger your neighbours…

I was skeptical about the success of using the Bible to divine numbers for Lotto649. Admittedly during Mike, Niall and my week-long Bibliomancy adventure the Bible had led us to fine restaurants, saved us from near death mountain experiences and even found us good scotch. But the true test was to see whether the Bible could win us some money.

I fully realize that there is a special place waiting for me in Hell. I suspect that it will be suspiciously warm.

I checked the Lotto649 numbers last night and was dismayed that Niall, Mike and I were not to be millionaires. So does that mean the Bible was wrong? Apparently the Powers That Be have a sense of humour. Walking down Old Strathcona’s Whyte Ave in Edmonton shortly before the end of the adventure, Mike and I were handed the following:

On the back of this considerably large sounding note is a warning to all those that God will not be happy with those that sin and that I should (ironically) “read your Bible daily and obey it.” I think I will lay off the Bible for a while, the power of its divination is too scary for words.

On a separate note, Mike and Niall supposedly arrived in Montreal with no problems. So did their luggage, despite all participants being cared for by Air Canada. Of course this is travel on Air Canada with Dr. Mannion of the Mannionati… as Niall informed me via instant messenger:

Niall says:
So Mike got the emergency exit with 4 feet of leg room. The flight arrived early. and I got a free copy of the economist… They also went to randomly search my stuff and then decided it might make me late so told me to go on through security.

Dups says:
Had I been there, I would have missed the gate, been boarded as cargo and left on the tarmac.

Niall says:
I am travelling with Mike from now on.

Dups says:
Damn the Mannionati…. damn them all!

Niall says:
The water was broken on the rear toilet but we were right next to the middle one… thanks to Mike. You probably would have been near the rear of the plane.

Dups says:
No, probably in the luggage compartment working on the sewer line.

Bibliomantics, the Alberta RAGSN Adventure

1. Day 1: The Bible knows good scotch
2. Day 2: Solomon does not like vegetarians
3. Day 3: Plenty of room for freaks in Alberta…
4. Day 4: The Arrival of Dr. Niall, M.D. Proctology
5. Day 5: Jasper Jeff and his concubines
6. Day 6: The Mannionati
7. Day 7: The Alcoholic Bible
8. Day 8: You shalt anger your neighbours…

Yes, I live. What a week this has been. If you have followed my previous posts, you will have noted that Mike Mannion and Niall Brown were dropping into Edmonton to visit a bunch of us and to have an adventure. As also noted, Bibliomancy was set to take centre stage. Where would the word of the Holy Bible take us? Well, wonder no more. I have posted my account of our entire adventure (at least what I remember) and backdated it to the correct days… Enjoy.

I dropped Mike and Niall to the airport earlier today. I even walked up to the Air Canada counter with them despite the heart palpitations that came upon me as I came closer to the dreaded Air Canada sign. I’m sure that Dr. Mannion and the newly minted Doctor of Proctology, Niall Brown, will not be beset with my Air Canada curse. Mike and Niall seemed to be of a different opinion and were concerned about my presence during check-in.

By the way, for anyone going to Edmonton International Airport and flying Air Canada, be prepared for the most moronic process I have ever laid witness to. Many moons ago Air Canada was losing money and needed to shed some check-in staff. Having discovered this new-fangled technology called computers with touch screens, they erected a number of computerized computer terminals. Naturally at first there was much skepticism as there were only a couple of these terminals. Since then they have at least ten of these terminals at Edmonton’s airport, which makes things a lot faster. You would imagine that would mean a faster process to getting checked in. Oh, no no, that would be way too smart for Air Canada.

Instead of lining up for check-in desks, you have to now queue to drop your baggage off. When we arrived the line was about fifty people deep, many of them wanting to board their plane within the hour. How many baggage clerks to get through this? Two.

So what have we gained? If you travel with baggage, nothing. You end up waiting longer than before. Even after you wait patiently, jump through all the hoops, there’s always the fear that they might “accidentally” ship your luggage to somewhere on some other continent. Great work Air Canada.

Bibliomantics, the Alberta RAGSN Adventure

1. Day 1: The Bible knows good scotch
2. Day 2: Solomon does not like vegetarians
3. Day 3: Plenty of room for freaks in Alberta…
4. Day 4: The Arrival of Dr. Niall, M.D. Proctology
5. Day 5: Jasper Jeff and his concubines
6. Day 6: The Mannionati
7. Day 7: The Alcoholic Bible
8. Day 8: You shalt anger your neighbours…

The final full day of this adventure involved my housewarming party. The antics of the night before affected all of us the next day. Niall was consumed with attempting to rid himself of the demons that had sought to enter him during his war on the Golden Hammer record. We did not see him for the whole day. Mike and I were rather slow-witted but still fine and prepared mightily for the night’s festivities. Booze was bought, food was arranged and in divining the future of the party the Bible sought to warn me that I would anger the neighbours and make them my enemies.

Despite this dire prediction I continued with careless and carefree abandon.

By early evening, more than twenty had gathered at my new apartment and I feared that if more showed up I would not actually have space to put them in my small apartment. Booze was flowing like water. We did not need to have water being turned into wine on this night. At the end of the night I counted several empty bottles of rum, vodka and wine, not including the boxes of beer that were drunk. In a perilously direly drunken situation, a good crowd of us piled into chariots (taxis) and were driven off to the Atlantic Trap and Gill to enjoy east coast hospitality and music. The neighbours were not angry, I sighed in relief.

I like the Trap and Gill, but God help me if I would ever get caught in such a place in Newfoundland. With fishing tackle decorating the place, it is almost what one would consider a mainlander’s vision of what a Newfoundland bar would look like. And unfortunately they had the worst band ever playing there last night. I have never heard, and hope never to hear again, the version of Barrett’s Privateers that they performed. It was a happy bouncy version. Several of us thought that continued drinking was the only answer to this perversion.

I was also supposed to meet friends of Chris Smith’s, Tracy O’Brien and her boyfriend (Ted) at the Trap and Gill. Unfortunately Tracy had never met me and only contacted me by finding my website and having recognized my name. I told her to look for a brown guy wearing an “England” jersey. As it so happened, she had gone up to some other brown person and asked if he was Dups. Ah well. In the end, as luck would have it, we wound up sitting next to them.

The rest of the night is a blur. I had already drunk a half bottle of vodka and the double rums certainly didn’t help the clarity. I remember Eddie chasing taxis, rain pouring down upon us, and finally getting home in a drunken haze. As we were settling in to go to sleep, I heard a knock at the door and there stood my angry neighbour pleading for us to be quiet. The Bible had divined my future correctly.

And so ends this tale of Bibliomantics. This week the Bible led Mike, Niall and I on a journey of epic proportions. We were taken around Alberta on a 3000km road trip, filled with hedonism and debauchery, fun and laughter. Not to spoil the plans, but boy do we have great uses for the Bible… Hopefully ye shall all find out in due course.

Go on, go turn the Bible randomly to a passage, ask a question and divine your future. You too could be on a Bibliomancy adventure!

Bibliomantics, the Alberta RAGSN Adventure

1. Day 1: The Bible knows good scotch
2. Day 2: Solomon does not like vegetarians
3. Day 3: Plenty of room for freaks in Alberta…
4. Day 4: The Arrival of Dr. Niall, M.D. Proctology
5. Day 5: Jasper Jeff and his concubines
6. Day 6: The Mannionati
7. Day 7: The Alcoholic Bible
8. Day 8: You shalt anger your neighbours…

The Bible is a fantastic book. If it were to be put on sale now, it would probably be classified as an “R”-rated work of fiction. Instead, it is the prime source for not one but three of the world religions and renowned the world over. Driving back to Edmonton, I discovered the parts in Leviticus which gave the proper laws on how God wanted the Israelites to live. I found out that any form divination would lead to death by stoning.

I decided that we would truly use the Bible in the way it was meant to be used. We used it to buy Lotto649 tickets. By randomly selecting positive passages in the Bible we set about creating three sets of six numbers which we then entered into the draw for 8 million. Yes, you heard right, we used the Bible to gamble.

Next when we arrived in Edmonton, we proceeded to spend the night at Marc and Angie’s along with Kraig and his girlfriend Karen in a night of hedonistic drinking. Our goal was to try and break Ted Martin’s record of four Golden Hammers. A Golden Hammer was a drink that Marc concocted: a pint of Strongbow cider with a shot of scotch (preferably bad scotch like Glenfiddich). On record most people are destroyed after two (I myself lay down on the bar at Junctions in St. John’s after two Golden Hammers). Tonight we had decided to beat Ted Martin’s record.

We did not break the record.

In order to decide what and when to drink, we decided to use the Bible as a drinking game. Yes you heard correctly, the Bible can be used as a drinking aid. During the night I remember drinking off the kitchen floor, dragging Niall through the house by his feet when he had decided to lie down, helping Niall flush the toilet as he proceeded to expunge the evil demons from his body, and generally losing all coherency. Do not give the Bible to alcoholics, it does not cure them of their sins, it aided and abetted us.

Bibliomantics, the Alberta RAGSN Adventure

1. Day 1: The Bible knows good scotch
2. Day 2: Solomon does not like vegetarians
3. Day 3: Plenty of room for freaks in Alberta…
4. Day 4: The Arrival of Dr. Niall, M.D. Proctology
5. Day 5: Jasper Jeff and his concubines
6. Day 6: The Mannionati
7. Day 7: The Alcoholic Bible
8. Day 8: You shalt anger your neighbours…

The Bible led us south along the Icefields Parkway towards Lake Louise where we would be spending the night at the hostel. Entertainment was provided courtesy of a CD of seventies music that I picked up at the petrol station in Jasper. Mike got some of the antics on video and I’ll have to see about getting it put up on YouTube or something. Mike tried desperately to disavow all knowledge of myself and Niall. Unfortunately he was locked into the back seat wailing in despair and making up a new version of Revelations.

The journey led through amazing mountain vistas, past crawling glaciers and aquamarine silted lakes to Lake Louise. Immediately we went for lunch.

Niall and I have a theory about Mike. You see, for the previous few days, no matter where we ate, he would get his food first, and as with Air Canada he is treated better than us minions. Our theory is that Mike is actually the head of an organization akin to the Illuminati - the Mannionati. We suspect he arrives and gives them the secret handshake and the “wink wink nudge nudge”, points at me and makes sure that I am cursed. In this case my food arrived with most of the food missing. We figured that the Mannionati owned this restaurant “Oh, Dr. Mannion, all will be well, aaah, yes Dups is with you, we will fix that…” The Mannionati also own Air Canada, it is the only explanation.

The Bible led us to that actual Lake Louise and finally we divined that we should go show Mike Banff. The Bible described Banff as a prostitute and boy is that a good description. Banff is a sprawling tourist trap with many Japanese tourists clicking photos and buying Anne of Green Gables souvenirs (yes I realize are no-where near Prince Edward Island). Mike was suitably shocked.