Mad Cooking Skillz

Yes, I have a smoke detector, but it is not attached to the ceiling. It sits on top of my microwave, which sits on top of my fridge. Sometimes, the detector sits on the top shelf of my kitchen shelves. It sits high up, that's the take away.

It's a sensitive soul. I suspect my detector was designed by a millennial: thoughtful, sensitive, easily triggered, but has weird timing.

But what my smoke detector does not understand is that a certain amount of smoke is acceptable while cooking. Yes, during some of my more creative cooking sessions, my kitchen might look like a bar with a broken air filter, before smoking was banned. But smoke is perfectly acceptable when being creative in your cooking, that's the take-away.

But my detector has no appreciation for that. It's a sensitive soul and gets easily triggered when it detects too much smoke.

Frankly, I feel judged when it screams at me and that's unkind. I'm trying to create! I don't need a single tone repeated at me endlessly! So rude!

So that's when my overly-sensitive, easily-triggered detector needs a time-out. Despite it's good natured-protests, it gets taken down and gently placed in the refrigerator until it calms down.

It's nice and quiet in the refrigerator. The detector continues to protest, but eventually, it rethinks its poor life decisions and calms down. Then I take it out and put it back on the high ground so it can look down on me again, in it's snooty way.

My smoke detector is a vital member of my household and I appreciate it, despite the fact that it has unreasonable ideas about my mad cooking skillz.

That's the take-away.

Republican Speech 2016

Right off the bat, let me say that I am not an American: I am definitely Canadian. However, the results of the American Presidential race would definitely affect me, so I do have a vested interest in what happens, even though I get no say in the matter.

Being a witness to the degradation of the American political climate over the last 8 years, I have formed opinions on what has gone wrong. Now faced with the very real possibility that Mr. Trump may lead the Republican party, I think the GOP must face the fact that they created this monster that is now rampaging across their constituents.

The only way they could regain the faith of the people now would be to come completely clean and own their mistakes in a public way. They would need the high-profile Republicans to make and stand by a very public statement of what they did and how we got here, someone like John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, or Chris Christie.

This representative would need to get in front of a camera, deliver the following speech, broadcast it far and wide, and live with the consequences.

Fortunately, I wrote them this speech and in the interests of preserving World Peace, I offer it to them free of charge (although I would love to be invited to the White House to tell stories as Canada's Storytelling Ambassador, just sayin').

*deep breath*
Do not vote for Donald Trump. He is a fate you do not deserve. Do not vote Republican in this election. This is a fate we deserve. We did this.

Roughly 8 years ago, we were faced with a reality of which we could not conceive. For our Republican ideas to work, we came at our policies from a top-down perspective. It was Republicans over Democrats, Good over Evil, Right over Wrong, Men over Women, Whites over everyone else, and with us at the top and all the voters at the bottom.

But when Barack Hussein Obama became President, our comfortable world turned upside down. The Bottom was now the Top. This was unprecedented and we had nothing in our playbook to handle it. Obama's left-wing plans and liberal vision of equality would destroy everything we had understood to be true and right. In hindsight, our fears caused us to gravely over-react. 

We decided that we would reject this model outright. We decided that we would reject anything from this President because his very existence was a rejection of our reality. This type of man could not be President, and therefore, his word could not be law.
The only way we could make this work was if all Republicans were on-board with it. Sure, there were rebels here and there, and there were people who could not keep the edges of the plan secret, but by and large, the plan worked. The problem was that it worked too well.

To create and sustain this situation, we had to reveal the ugly underbelly of American culture and stoke its fires. We had to rile the people up, we had to amplify their fears, we had to raise the threat levels. This would encourage the people to perpetuate the message that Obama was a mistake, an insult to the natural order of the world, and that he was an abomination that needed to be stopped. Once Obama was removed, we could flip the beast back over again and get back to making the country work in the way we had become accustomed.

What we could not have known was how hot those first would burn, and not only could the beast not be flipped back over, but that the beast could be turned against us. This is where Donald Trump stepped in.

Mr. Trump has been watching this maelstrom that we created for the past 7 years. He could see the chaos we were engineering and he has the insight and the vision to see how he could step into that chaos and use it to his advantage. When the moment was right, he stepped into our playing field and took control of it. He added fuel to the fires we had stoked, he used our own rhetoric against us, and he refused to toe the Republican line. He is a wildcard that we cannot control because he owes no allegiance to anyone except himself.

Mr. Trump is not a fool. If he were a fool, he could not be the successful businessman that he is today. His strength comes from his ability to spot an opportunity, commit to pursuing that opportunity, and do everything in his power to make it work to his advantage. These are qualities that make for rich businessmen, but the collateral damage to the people around these men can be devastating, extensive, and irreversible. 

The main aspect that has made him palatable to a modern audience is that he purports to tell the truth, to "tell it like it is". In the political arena, we cannot always be 100% transparent, but we do need to balance our plans with the public's right to know. However, in this failed strategy we adopted in 2008, we lost sight of our responsibilities to the American people. Over time, these lies became more and more difficult to maintain to the point that we have lost all credibility with our voters. After so many years of double-talk, having a non-politician promise to tell you the hard truth heedless of any political consequences is intoxicating.

But now the situation has grown beyond our control. We created this Gollum and it is rampaging out of control, highlighting our failures and promising more destruction than we could have imagined. And we are the one who did this to ourselves and to you, the American people.

We took these actions from a place of patriotism. We did it because we were dedicated to the continuation of Republican American idealism and exceptionalism. Our critics may not believe this, but we also did this out of love for our families, our friends, our God, and our country. And now, we are still speaking from this place of love, even though it kills us to have to admit our wrong-doing.

For what we just did for the last 8 years, we deserve to lose this election. If you want to put another Democrat in the White House, we deserve that decision. To watch the GOP be destroyed in the next election is definitely what we deserve as justice for our actions.
But to elect Donald Trump as your Commander In Chief, this is a fate that you do not deserve. Your anger and frustration is a result of our actions and inactions over the last 8 years, but the destruction that Trump would bring to America is a fate that you do not deserve. This man is not a Republican. This man owes the American people nothing. This man is not the fate you deserve.

We did this to you. We did it. Do not destroy yourselves to punish us for what we did. Put a Democrat in the White House. Give us time to regroup and put ourselves back on the right track.

Do not vote for Donald Trump.

The American Republican Party 2016 

The Ring Box

This is a true account that I posted this on my Facebook recently, about 5 minutes after it happened. The memorial referenced was for the passing of my good friend Jack Nissenson (June 24th 2015).

I stepped out of the metro car, fighting back the tears that threatened to flow as I rehearsed what i would say at Jack's memorial when I spotted it. It was a tiny red ring box with a golden knob on the front. I stopped to pick it up, afraid the ring might still be in it. The box was empty.

I thought of who bought it, who might have received the ring, and the whispered joys of unknown years to come, and i could not help but smile. I put the box back, thinking someone else might enjoy the sight of it, and turned to face the metro. There was a woman on the other side of the closed doors with a single hand pressed against the glass. She had been watching me the whole time and she was smiling. I smiled back and we held each other's smile as the metro slid away.

Sometimes, I love this city.