Tobin has left the building

Short version:
I’ve given up on this godforsaken site due to all the errors. Visit me at tobinelliott.com

Longer version:

Fuck you, WordPress.

For 23 months, I’ve blogged on WordPress, at this site.

In that time, WordPress has eaten more blogs than I can count. After I’d lost my fourth or fifth blog after saving, and yes, I mean, taking the time to write out an entire blog, saving all the way, then hitting that little “Save Draft” button one last time, only to have it come back to a blank screen, all those words disappeared into the ether, I started writing my blogs in Notepad, then pasting them over.

It didn’t stop this damnable site from losing my words, but at least I had a backup. But it’s simply pathetic that I have to do so.

Lately, it’s doing something just as irritating. See the post below this one? Hostage night in Canada? Yeah, I wrote that in Notepad. I pasted it over. Then, I added in some links and tags, and some formatting, bolding, italicizing, etc. Then I saved. When it came up with an “Are you sure you want to do this?” message, but with no way to cancel it, I knew I was going to lose some stuff.

I lost all of those revisions, bolds, italics, links, tags…all of it. Gone.

Did some research through Google. The suggestion was to go up to Screen Options and ensure Revisions was ticked off. Yeah, so, I go there? Revisions isn’t even in the goddamn list. So, instead, I’m ticked off.

When I go to other blog posts, yup, Revisions shows up fine. Back to the one where I need it, it’s not there.

This has happened with the last three or four blogs I’ve written. Every. Fucking. One.

Interestingly, when I go back, spend another goddamn hour recreating everything that was lost, and then copy it all and screen grab the tags, of course it saves perfectly. And the Revisions feature is suddenly appearing now. No, I’m not making this up.

So now I’m done. Life’s too short to fuck around with an application that I cannot trust whatsoever.

So, from now on, no more blogs here.

Come over to tobinelliott.com (a site I’ve had for months, but kept blogging here out of some misguided sense of loyalty). It’s maintained by people who know what they’re doing.

Fuck you, WordPress.

Cruising to fifty, part two: Frodo and the immovable bus

This is the second part of a series of blogs about the cruise the Wife and I went on last October.You can read part one here.

A quick set up:

I turned 50 on October 6, 2012. My wife surprised me about three weeks before, during a particular low spot in my life with a piece of paper. “Happy birthday,” she said. I opened the paper and quickly scanned it.

“We’re going on a cruise?” I said, and my mind kind of shut down with happiness after that. In fact, it wasn’t until several minutes later, as I was refolding the paper, that I saw the word “Greece” and just about shit. This is the story of what happened on that trip, taken almost exclusively from the diary I kept along the way.

Have mercy
Been waitin’ on the bus all day

ZZ Top

October 6 – My birthday!

I turned fifty over the Atlantic, but didn’t notice it until a couple of hours later. Could be I was tired. Could be I was old. Either way, I’d crossed that threshold.

The flight landed twenty minutes early and for the first time, I stepped on European land. Not that I had time to think about it. I think we’re spoiled in Canada and the U.S. when we walk off the plane and straight into the terminal. In Venice, we walked down a flight of stairs, stood on the tarmac and a crazed transport driver came by and did his best to make us puke, or at least drop us all to our knees on the ten minute drive from plane to terminal. Sharp turns with no warning, rapid acceleration and rapid stops were the order of the day.

We managed to hold down our nasty airline food and, once in the airport, desperately look for a washroom. I was quite happy I was male at this time, as I was able to simply walk in, find a free urinal, and do what I needed to do, which was to pee in my first European urinal. You’re a peein’ indeed! My wife, on the other hand, lined up for a solid twenty minutes. We both survived, then got our baggage, then we assembled to wait for our transport to the ship. If I’d known exactly how exasperating it was going to be, I would have hired a taxi. Ah well, hindsight’s 20/20, right?

So the first endurance test was to wait within the terminal. We had to wait until all the Transat travelers arrived. No biggie. The plan was to hop on the bus and get delivered to our various floating holiday accomodations, the Divina, the Jade, and ours, the Splendour of the Seas.

It wasn’t a horrible wait. We’d landed by noon local time, got our luggage by 12:30, and by 1:00, a short, balding, slightly anxious, hobbit-like driver walked us from the terminal to the bus with his hand raised to shoulder height–this from a guy barely scraping 5’3″–as though that hand could be followed through all of Middle Earth to the depths of Mordor.

Ten-ish minutes later, we were at the bus and we separated our luggage out depending on which ship we were headed to. A second group showed up, all headed for the Divina. We were all told to wait outside the bus. It was about ridiculously hot outside, but one of the other passengers described the bus as being “about 900 degrees” so we figured outside was better. Twenty minutes later, our hobbit driver started up the bus and the air conditioning and loaded us on. We were left with the impression we would leave shortly and, after eight hours in a cramped seat on the plane, here we were again, stuffed into a seat with no legroom. Meanwhile, Frodo was out chatting up another bus driver and sweating profusely.

Soon, a couple more groups showed up, stowed their luggage and got on the bus. It’s probably important to note at this point that this bus could likely seat about 70 people. I mention this because that first group I mentioned? The ones going to the Divina? There were eight of them, four couples. They obviously felt a deep, abiding love for each other and very much looked forward to spending a week with each other at sea, because when they got on the bus, they each claimed a section of two seats for themselves. Yes…sixteen seats for eight people. Four couples. Or, should I say, eight ignorant assholes. The other groups that got on the bus kind of gave them all the stink eye, then moved toward the back of the bus.

Anyway, it’s now about 1:45, almost two hours since we’ve landed, when Frodo finally climbs aboard and puts it into gear. Yay! I think, prematurely. We drive out of the parking lot, down a short laneway and get out to what looks like a main thoroughfare–a total distance of maybe a quarter-mile. Frodo then says, “Sorry!” and some other stuff in Italian that we couldn’t catch, then pulled a U-turn and we headed right back to the dreaded parking lot. He parked us in the exact same spot and leapt from the bus and ran back to the terminal.

Several minutes later, sweating worse now, he showed back up with more people and luggage.  He’d stow their luggage, direct them on the bus, grab a little fanny pack from the driver’s cockpit, say something about dropping off tickets, then scoot back to the terminal. Ten minutes later, he’d show up again.

With more travelers and luggage. Which would start the whole cycle all over again. Stow, direct, fanny pack, tickets, scoot, ten minutes.

Every time he came back, there was a feeling of anticipation, of woo-hoo, we’re on our way! Each time we saw more travelers, that feeling would deflate again. This went on for five full trips to and from the terminal for Frodo. By now, it was just getting old.

A solid hour after he’d left the parking lot, then returned, somewhere around 3:00, we’ve now been in Venice a total of three hours and seen nothing but an airport, a parking lot, a bus and a tantalizing glimpse of what lay beyond. We finally left the parking lot again, the bus packed to the gills and the ignorant assholes finally having to give up their individual sections and sit with each other.

Our first real glimpse of Venice from the bus.

On the way into Venice

Our first glimpse of our ship

Fifteen minutes later, we were at our boat. We’d waited almost two and a half hours for a fifteen minute trip. Goddamn.

Anyway, the Royal Caribbean staff were all young, attractive and friendly and we were welcomed with big smiles. From their welcome, we then walked down a long, covered gangway and then…then we were on our ship. And it was beautiful.

The ship from the gangway

We found our way to our room and it actually had a birthday greeting right on the door. Karen let me open the door and I found the room decorated with birthday s

tuff. Holy crap! In all the fuss with Frodo, I’d forgotten it was still actually my birthday.

By now, it was about 3:30 local time, or about 9:30 am by what my internal clock was telling me. We’d been up for about 28 straight hours. We were tired and hungry.

We headed down to the solarium–a beautiful area, by the way–and had an excellent carved roast beef sandwich and it was nice to just sit in a comfortable chair with legroom  and look out at Venice sprawled in front of us.

Venice

At 4:30 (29 hours and counting), everyone had to attend muster–gathering beneath our designated lifeboat (ours was #10) and were taught, in English, Italian, German and Spanish, how to put on a lifejacket. It was interestingly refreshing to not get the instructions in French, as we would have in Canada.

We took a couple of pictures then went back to the cabin for a nap. Okay, I went back for a nap.

I’d just laid down when Karen dragged me back out–twice–to look at interesting things. The launch of the ship out of port and Venice sliding by.

I should say, it’s always been a dream of mine to go to Venice. And here it was. I wanted to enjoy it. I truly did. But 30 hours awake and 4500 miles of travel by plane, bus and ship had done their work. I fell on the bed and died.

I woke up at 6:30. Karen had been too excited to sleep, so she’d taken pictures and unpacked. I’d slept through it all.

It was time for dinner, so I clambered into the teeny, tiny shower and scrubbed off the exhaustion of the past day and a half, got dressed and we headed down for dinner. I had an excellent dinner of pork medallions, mashed potatoes and mushrooms in a ragout sauce with a Caesar salad. Dessert was Strawberry Povlova…which was crazy good.

We took a brief walk around the ship, then came back to the cabin and we both fell down in exhaustion.

And that’s how I turned fifty years old. A little rough in spots, but overall, it turned out fantastic. Story of my life!

Tomorrow was going to be a better day.

See part three here.

Lunching on dogs and foot-in-mouth

Many, many years ago, I worked for Arby’s, the fast food place.  Long story short, my post-secondary education plans fell through and I needed a job until I figured out what the hell came next.  I never realized it would lead to me saying the stupidest thing at the most inappropriate time ever.

And believe me, I’ve said some stupid things.

Arby’s was going to be a quick thing, but somehow it didn’t work out that way and they kept promoting me.  One of the promotions was to Second Assistant Manager, which meant at the time (and I can’t speak for them now, as it’s been thirty years) that I got the shit shifts and the crappy jobs.  Oh, and the pay was spectacularly bad, but I didn’t know that at the time.

Anyway, I was about a year in and they decided to send me for a week of Management Training down in Atlanta, where the head offices were.  The training was a joke, but Atlanta was cool.  Of course, at the time, I was maybe twenty or so, very insecure and feeling highly intimidated by the older guys, and it really seemed to be all guys, in the training with me.

Anyway, I did my best to try and fit in, though I never really felt like I did.  My roommate was an older, married guy, and we had nothing in common, so that was a bust, and, because we were from the first Arby’s stores in Canada, everyone else in the training was American, so it was a little harder for a sheltered geek like me to talk to them as well.

But on the first day of training, as we were learning all about fast food management, someone brought up The Varsity, which was, by all accounts, an unbelievable fast food establishment.  I watched as guys from around perked up and paid attention.  Was I the only guy that hadn’t heard of this place?

It’s important to remember that there was no Google back then to quickly check anything out on.

They promised to take us at some point through the week, and on the Thursday, they made good.  At lunch, we loaded up a few cars and drove the short distance to The Varsity.  Now, bear in mind this is all me running from thirty-year-old memories, so I may bugger up some of the facts.  From what I remember, The Varsity was across from Varsity Stadium, hence the name.

There was so much that made this place impressive, starting with the sheer size of it.  It had its own helicopter landing pad (that they called the Lunch Pad).  I think they went through something like a ton or two of onions every day.

What did they sell?  From what I remember, burgers and dogs, but I might be wrong on the burgers.  Personally, I ordered two chili dogs, a Coke and fries.

Now here’s one of the other impressive things… When you talk fast food, I can still expect to go through a McD’s drive-thru and expect to be parked and the food come out to me.  I can go through a Tim Horton’s drive-thru and expect a line of ten to fifteen cars ahead of me and a five to ten minute wait.

The Varsity averaged seven second service.  Nope, not kidding.  Seven seconds.

I will say they had a separate line for women and children simply because those two groups are slower.  And no, I’m not going to apologize for that one.  Where I’ll slap a five dollar bill down for an 87-cent charge, I’ve watched my wife dig for what felt like fifteen minutes to dredge up the change in her purse, only to come up short, then slap a five dollar bill down for an 87-cent charge.  So, nyah.

Anyway, another thing that’s totally different from your average McD’s or Arby’s or Burger King or whatever…the guy that took my order and how he was positioned.  He was a large, intimidating man behind a counter that–I kid you not–was level with my neck, so he was way above me, like a judge in a courtroom.  And he was making this very strange noise over and over.  It sounded like “Whoodnyaaaaah, whoodnyaaaah, whoodnyaaaah, whoodnyaaaah…”  I found out later he was actually saying, “Whaddya haaaave, whaddya haaave, whaddya haaave, whaddya haaave…”

Anyway, I also got a good lesson in proper ordering etiquette when a guy a few spots ahead of me in line had the sheer audacity to walk up.  The dude is doing his “Whoodnyaaaaah, whoodnyaaaah” thing, and the customer says, “I’ll…have…uuuuuuummmm…”

At which point, counter dude stops, leans way over the counter so he’s nose to nose with the customer and, harshly and loudly says, “I SAID, WHADDYA HAVE?”

Ah, okay, that makes sense now.  “Whoodnyaaaaah, whoodnyaaaah…”  is actually, “Whaddya haaaave, whaddya haaave, whaddya haaave…”  But back to the customer.

The customer, taken aback, stutters and sputters, but doesn’t get an order out.  “BACK OF THE LINE!” counter dude yells, and points his arm at the back of the line that must have a hundred guys in it.  The customer meekly and dutifully heads back.  In five minutes, he’ll have another chance.

When I go up, I have my money out and my order memorized.  Counter dude ain’t gonna rip me a new one.  I order my chili dogs, fries and Coke, give him the money (which he scoops into a hole in the counter) and he fairly throws my change at me as the food is set in front of me.  If it took five seconds from start to finish, I’d be shocked.

I head off to where my fellow trainees are sitting and we eat.  The food is nothing to write home about, but it’s really all about the experience.  And really, it’s a cool experience.

Now, this is where it gets interesting.

We eat.  I pound back two chili dogs.  Mash some fries down on top of it and drown it all in Coke.  We sit for a while as this stuff brews in my gut.  Then we clamber back into the cars and head back to the office.

As we enter the building, I notice two stunning young women heading toward the elevators as well.

I’m going to take a moment to remind everyone that, at this point, I’m twenty, and I’m essentially a walking erection, as most males at that age are.

So, yes, I notice the ladies.

We all get into the elevator.  Maybe five guys, and the two women. Someone presses our floor.  One of the women press a floor below ours.  I’m staring at the short skirts and the long legs and the hair and the entire package.  Once again, I’m twenty, folks.

Then, we reach the women’s floor.  The elevator kind of bounces a bit and all that brewing stuff rolls over and threatens a quick, gassy exit.  But I’m young and I’ve got control.  I clench and hold it in, but the effort diverts my attention momentarily.

I rub my belly and say, “Oh man, there go those two dogs!”

Just as…

The two women…

Leave the elevator.

One of the guys sputters out a braying laugh.  I look at him, then follow his gaze out the elevator doors to the two women, now turned, are giving me the nastiest hairy eyeball ever sent from one gender to another.

I throw my hands up, perhaps as a gesture of placation, perhaps as a ward to the hairy eyeballs.  And I say, “No!  No!  That’s not….”

The elevator doors, deaf to my plaintive cries, close before I can get out the explanation.

The last image I have of the two women?  One is flipping me the bird, the other is doing the full palm in elbow, forearm flipped up.

And inside the elevator, two of the guys have slid to the floor, faces red, bellies clutched, tears squirting from eyes, laughing themselves silly.

All because of two chili dogs.

Damn you, Varsity.

The whole world’s goin’ crazy

Yet another rant on the assholes that I’ve been unsuccessful in kicking off my planet.

Have you ever seen one of those potato guns?  They’re big, homemade contraptions that you can load up a potato as the projectile and get some ridiculous distance and damage with them.  Not far from where I live, there’s a place call Pingle’s Farm and they went one step better, vastly increasing the caliber of the barrel so they could stuff pumpkins and other assorted gourds into and blow them across a full acreage of farmland.

My goal is to go one better and increase the barrel size to fit at least one, but, for efficiency’s sake, preferably four or five humans.  The goal would be to accelerate them to escape velocity and fire their asses into deep space where they can’t be heard anymore.

Because we all know, in space, no one can hear you scream.  Or fart.  Or spout bullshit.

Let’s load up the first one, shall we?

Message of tolerance

Meet Jessica Ahlquist, a sixteen-year-old atheist.  I’m going to state right up front that I’m not the most religious person on the planet, nor am I against atheists.  I believe everyone has the right to choose their own religion.  I also believe in the right of free speech.

Apparently Ahlquist disagrees with me.  There’s a banner in her high school that reads

Our Heavenly Father,
Grant us each day the desire to do our best. To grow mentally and morally as well as physically. To be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers. To be honest with ourselves as well as with others. Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win. Teach us the value of true friendship. Help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School.
Amen.

This is a banner that’s hung there for 49 years.  But now Ahlquist has decided, it needs to come down.  It’s not right to read that.  In her own words, that it’s “almost like making a child get a shot even though they don’t want to. It’s for their own good.”

Apparently a judge agrees with her, ruling the banner is “unconstitutional.”  Fantastic.  So now we have sixteen-year-olds deciding what’s good and what’s not for the entire school and judges backing them up.  Thanks, Jessica, thank God…oops, thank Nobody…(don’t take me to court, Jessica) that you came along to save those poor kids who shouldn’t be reading that horrible, awful message that’s destroyed 49 years’ worth of students that came before you.  Oh yeah, and you’re getting $40000 out of it (so far) too.

I get a kick out John Figdor from Harvard University who appears in the video and says, “We’re very proud of the message she’s making, which is a message of tolerance. [emphasis mine]“

This is a message of tolerance?  “I don’t believe in God, so I can’t tolerate the “Our Heavenly Father” and the “Amen” in the banner?  How about not looking at it?

Hopefully Jessica won’t notice the churches strewn through the town and decide that removal of the crosses is for our own good too.  You know, spreading her message of tolerance.

***UPDATE: It’s been (quite rightly) pointed out to me by a couple of people (thanks Gavy and Lisa) that my focus was off on this one.  They were right.  This isn’t about Free Speech.  What pisses me off is the fact that this went to court, that a kid’s profiting from it, when it could have been solved by pulling four words off. and changing it so it reads like a Mission Statement (it only takes the removal of two words and adding three):

We strive each day for the desire to do our best. To grow mentally and morally as well as physically. To be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers. To be honest with ourselves as well as with others. Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win. Teach us the value of true friendship. Help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School.

And here’s the thing…two people didn’t agree with me.  But we all approached it rationally and calmly and made our points.  No judges, no lawyers, no demonstrations.  I was corrected and I learned from it.

What did this sixteen-year-old learn?  What did her classmates learn?

Pedophile preacher can stay, kids get the boot

Sticking with the religion theme for a bit here, meet Darrell Gilyard of the Christ Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church.  Darrell’s the new pastor at the church.  Fantastic, right?

Well, Darrell’s got a bit of a history.  Turns out, between spreading the Word, Darrell tends to ignore his own preaching.  In 2009, he plead guilty to lewd conduct and lewd molestation of two underage girls.   Apparently when he was the pastor of another Baptist church, he molested a 15-year-old girl and sent a lewd text message to another.  Just the kind of guy you want acting as your morale and ethical leader, right?

Under the conditions of his plea agreement, Gilyard cannot have “unsupervised contact with children under 18 years old.”  Hmmm, that kind of poses a problem, considering the line of work he’s in.  So, what did the church decide?  He got out of prison last Dec 28 and was back to preaching by January.  And the church banned children from the services.

Well, yeah.  Makes total sense to me.  Give the dude with the short eyes the break and screw over the kids.  Because, you know, once you do some time in jail, those tendencies just fall away.  You never want to do them again.  Oh, wait, maybe you do, because they don’t want him near anyone under the age of 18.

And I can see this occurring everywhere.  You know, if you have, say, a teacher that is convicted of lewd conduct and lewd molestation of underaged boys or girls, you can still bring him back to teach.  Just ban the kids from attending his classes, right?

And before anyone busts me about hating on the Baptists…I don’t.  I hate on morons, whatever the race, colour, religion or sexual orientation, okay?

PayPal looks out for you…doesn’t that make you feel better?

Oh those wacky guys at PayPal with their crazy policies, huh?  On Saturday February 18, PayPal brought down the moral hammer on indie book publishers and distributors, threatening them with immediate deactivation of their accounts if they did not remove books containing certain sexual themes.  What themes?  Sexual fantasies that PayPal does not approve of, that’s what themes.

Let’s get specific, cuz sexual fantasies cover a wide range, don’t they?

Now granted, shit like child porn?  Yeah, you know what, let’s stay away from that crap, and PayPal includes a bunch of subjects that many would consider offensive or disturbing in real life.  Not sure where you come down on BDSM (Bondage, Submission, Sadism and Masochism).  It ain’t my cup of tea, but that’s just me.  Most of it is not illegal in North America.  Again, not judging here.  I mean, we have areas in North America where what two homosexuals would do when engaging in sex would be considered illegal.  So it’s a big stupid mess, but that’s not my point.  Here’s what is.

One of the things PayPal included was non-human fantasy creatures.  That means PayPal is demanding the removal of paranormal romance stories that include shape-shifters – if the shape-shifters were to have sex in their non-human forms.

Huh.  First of all, what happened to Free Speech?

Second, does that mean we have to recall all those Twilight books?  Yes, when Edward and Bella get it on, technically he’s in human form.  But technically, he’s also dead.  So that’s necrophilia, right?  That’s illegal.

Okay, so maybe there is and upside to this.

I’m kidding.  Seriously, what’s with everyone trying to spy on us and tell us what we can and cannot do in our own homes lately?

And speaking of spying on us…

Happiness is not a plastic gun

Meet Jessie Sansone, the poor bastard.  Jessie, unlike everyone else above, didn’t do anything wrong.  But just because he’s got a plastic dart gun in the house and a four-year-old daughter with some creativity, he went through hell.

His daughter drew a picture in school of her father with a gun and she told a teacher he was fighting the “monsters and bad guys.”  She’s four, folks.  Kids do that kind of thing.  This apparently “triggered fears that the family home contained a weapon that was a threat to the children.”

Let’s remember a couple of things here.  This is in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.  It’s perfectly legal to own a gun here.  Let’s also remember that the picture did not show the gun pointed at kids.  The girl did not in any way indicate that her father was threatening her or anyone else in her family.  Only bad guys and monsters.

So, the girl’s teacher at Forest Hill Public School was “concerned” by the drawing and called Family and Children’s Services, who assessed the case and called police. No one called the home.  No one talked to Jessie.  Instead, he went to pick up his kid from school and was met by three cops.  After being interviewed by police at the school, Sansone was handcuffed and taken to the police station in a cruiser, where he was strip-searched (because he might have hidden a gun up his ass before picking his daughter up) and held while the rest of his family was dragged to the station for questioning.

They also searched his house.  Without a warrant.  Then, then found the gun.  This one:

Pretty dangerous, huh?

God knows what they would have done to my mother when, in the span of two weeks when I was about six or seven, I draped a perfectly knotted hangman’s noose off our third floor balcony and, as a school project, built both a hangman’s platform with noose and trapdoor made out of twine and popsicle sticks, as well as a working guillotine with a razor blade as the cutting device and an stolen thimble as the basket for the head to fall into.

Has all sense become lost to us as a society?