Random post-Canada observations

* Let's say you're at the airport. If you walk determinedly in your path, not moving for anyone and not giving the impression that you're going to, and you're heading right at someone, and they dodge to one side as you get close, and then you veer right into their new path, that really fucks with them. Clearly, dodging again, though courteous, would be admitting fault, and is therefore discouraged.

* I have a question: is it wrong to stare at a girl who is digging into her crotch? There was certainly nothing sexual about it, but I still feel I'm going to hell partially for this (that I am going to hell is not in question, that was decided years ago). I pardon myself by saying that nothing attracts the eye like the truly bizarre.

* Like my nephews' fun little game called "wee-wee/booty". I don't know where they got this, but they know that "booty" means butt, so everything they mentioned was modified with the word "booty". The fish were all "booty-fish", I was a "booty-head", etc. Well, at some point one of my nephews started ramming into the other's booty, yelling "Wee-wee! Booty! Wee-wee! Booty!" while the other giggled. The adults exchanged glances, and ignored the spectacle. That was probably the best way to deal with it. My brother handled the sight of his sons booty slamming with admirable calm.

* If you want to strike up a conversation with me on the plane, have something interesting to say. I'm just as bored as you are 1.5 hours into the flight when the only decent music channel has already repeated and the interest rate of Germany's central bank is not as interesting as I thought it would be when I felched The Economist from someone, but let's kick it up a notch, ok sweetheart? Yes, the movie is stupid. No, you can't have my nephew's window seat. Yes, the clouds are pretty. I don't feel like going into my life story either, but your interest in the weather is inversely proportional to your value as a human being. And for God's sake, pull your pants over your underwear.

* Toddlers are chick magnets. So is Mr. Bun Bun. Having both together and being the uncle is the trifecta of door opening qualities you can have to female strangers on a plane. It's like having a puppy, a flashy car, and huge bag of coke at a party, anywhere, except you sometimes have to hold a kid up so he can reach the urinal.

* If someone says, "I'm not going to say anything racial ... " they already have. Someone knocked over the marina we use at the lake in Canada, stealing a grand from the till. Acknowledging that stealing is wrong, who the hell leaves a grand sitting in an unlocked register? Either way, when the marina guy said this to me and my Dad, my immediate thought was, "Geez, even up here in the bumfuck part of Canada you can't get away from blacks being blamed for everything." Later on my Dad informed me that he was referring to the Native-Canadians. Oh right, they're the black people out there.

* Only people with phones will lobby the association to block any new phone lines to be run. My Dad, who has a weak heart and needs to be able to reach his doctor at any and all times because a donor heart could become free at any time, will lose his rather expensive phone access when analog cellular is discontinued this year (he pays $8 a minute right now). The plan to put up a digital cell tower was put on hold when the association formed a committee to study the feasibility of forming a committee to study the impact a cell tower would have on the natural beauty of the area. These people all have hard phone lines, with their concomitant poles and underwater cables, already running to their places.

* People who have a little fiefdom will wallow in their self importance. It's not just property associations. The security screener at the airport in Toronto let me through, but was a total dick about it. With a hard to understand accent: Take off your shoes. DON'T PUT THEM IN THE TRAY! Put it through the machine, SHOES FIRST! SHOES GO IN FIRST! (as he grabs the tray out and rearranges with a pissy look on his face) BACKPACKS GO IN FLAT, FLAT!!! After that guy, the next guy, who almost confiscated my chapstick, was normal and cool. But still. I can't imagine the national security of Canada is at risk if my shoes are in the tray or if they go in after my backpack, which might have been sitting upright. Little man probably goes home everynight and gets beat by his wife.

* Every person between the ages of about 13 and 21 are bored and/or pissed off, especially when forced to be in public with their families. This is especially true for girls.

* You can go to Florida for 2 and a half weeks and get some sun, but go to Canada for 1 week and get a bitchin' tan. I am living proof that you too can reach your goals.

* Hornets sleep. If you must defend your nephew from a hostile hive of ground hornets, do it right after sundown, or just before sunrise. The swarm of hundreds you saw in the day will be down to 2. Stupid bugs didn't know what hit 'em.

* Mosquitoes come out hardcore for about 30-45 minutes around sunrise and sunset, and then go to bed also. That's some prime fishin'.

* The magnetic quality of fire is innate. Everyone, from my 3 and 5 year old nephews, to me and my brother, to my Dad and Aunt and Uncle in their 60's, couldn't stop watching and playing with the fire. There's just something satisfying about tossing a pincone into hot coals and watching it burst into flames, curl into itself, and sputter out into a radiating pinecone shaped coal. Yeah!

* Climbing to the top of the highest point is not enough to get it named after you.

* The word "obelisk" has many meanings. I always thought of an obelisk as an ancient Egyptian monument, in the shape of the Washington Monument. In Canada, an obelisk is a pile of rocks arranged to look like a man that symbolises hospitality.

* Canadian Tire is actually a Home Depot (or more accurately, a Menards).

* Canadians like their Tim Hortons. At one of the exits off the interstate, there were two signs for Tim Hortons, one pointing left and the other pointing right.

* Canadians are proud and worried about their involvement in Afghanistan. They have a pretty large force there now, and bodies come home pretty much every week. Their losses are low enough that they have enough time to lionize every soldier on national news. This is both good and bad. We tend to forget about Canada's involvement in the war(s) over there, but they most assuredly have not. They opted out of Iraq, but who can blame them? Thank a Canadian for slogging it out with us in the mountains of central Asia.

* Despite popular belief, Canadians don't sit around saying "'eh" all the time. They're usually standing up, slugging beer, and shaking hockey sticks at each other. Haha! Just kidding. I only heard it once or twice over a whole week, and the way they use it, it just flows with the conversation and you know exactly what they mean.

* Canadian women don't have a good grasp on proper warm weather attire. If you're going to wear tight white pants to show off your figure, something I have no problem with, you need to wear a thong or no underwear at all. If you opt for the second choice, you should "trim the hedges", so to speak.

* Canadians aren't as nationalistic as I previously thought. That's because most of them apparently moved to Lebanon, or whatever country they're really from. Actual Canadians are pretty solidly pissed off that they live there and pay the taxes that were used to evacuate 50,000 Lebanese-Canadians who only come to their adopted country when they need medical care or to avoid a war. Unlike the US, Canada does not require citizens to pay taxes unless they live there. So for those who put in the requisite 3 years and then go home, they truly get free health care since they put nothing more in after those three years. They get their social security payments mailed to them out of country too. Canadians have chosen a socialist path and that's fine, but they're way too lax about who and where they send their money to, and to whom they extend citizenship rights.

* Canadian football is similar to ours, but they have 3 downs and 25 yard deep endzones. If you punt or kick off, and get the other guy down in his endzone, you get 1 point and they start at the 25 or something. You can't down the ball in the endzone, you have to run out. Their field is a third wider than ours. Canadian football starts a month earlier than American football.

* Canadian post office drop boxes are red instead of blue. And they have AAA, but they call it CAA even though the logo is the same. They also have a different name for the IRS, but it does the same thing. Britain has the BBC, Canada has the CBC. After awhile I started to feel like I was, oh I dunno, in a different country or something.

* I overheard someone mentioning people coming up from south of the border, and my immediate thought was, "That's odd, I haven't seen one Mexican since I've been here."

* Canadians are pretty much just like us, or how we would be if we lived in that climate, but Canada itself is not. The differences are subtle, but they're there. I haven't picked up on all of them, but here's a few. They're socialist by our standards. They don't really have any history of colonialism (aside from the creation of Canada itself, and their membership in the commonwealth). They named half of their country after the royal family, and seem proud of it (by contrast, I almost wrote an angry letter to the paper in Ann Arbor when I found a King George Blvd). They casually toss out references to the queen, like you can't kick someone out of any part of the lake because it's the "queen's bottom" (you can imagine my confusion). They put British royalty all over their money. They get one day a month off, even if they can't come up with a reason why. The holiday for August was called a "civic holiday" which just means, the government wanted you to have a three day weekend, enjoy.

* I had a great time up there. Next stop, Vancouver!