Late Night Thoughts

There are days when I miss being unemployed. There was a time when I could spend an entire morning doing nothing more than making breakfast, picking up a good book, and smoking a pipe. Particularly in my old place on Victoria Street, where the morning sun would light up the living room, and I could lazily read some Yeats as I basked in the sunlight. Those were some good times.

I'm not opposed to working per se, but there just never seems to be enough time to do everything that needs to be done. I'm still waiting on that 36 hour day that I ordered about seven years ago. That would allow me to wake late, go into work for ten hours or so, then come back home and have almost an entire day to go for walks, read good books, and play video games. I could then sleep for twelve hours, and repeat the cycle all over again.

But instead, I'm stuck with this stupid 24 hour day. Barely enough time to get eight hours of sleep, grab a bowl of Cheerios on the way out the door, and make it time to watch Dr. Phil and three straight hours of CSI before I fall asleep on the couch.

I jest. That's not really what I do with my evenings. I still work on school assignments and train with the Reserves, and wander around my beautiful if overly pretentious neighbourhood. But, oh, how easy it would be to fall into the sleep-work-TV trap. That's perhaps the thing I fear the most. Getting into a rut, and only noting the passage of time when I turn forty, or need to go out and replace a worn-out couch. Those of you who are now working stiffs - do you ever find yourself slipping into a similar routine? And, if not, what do you do to keep yourself active and motivated when you come home from work?

I caught a cold when I was in Boston, but I seem to be over the worst of it now. It seems to be going around the office, so maybe I didn't catch it in Boston after all. I tried to see if it was the same cold, but my co-worker had such a disgusted look on his face as I was describing the symptoms that I decided to just leave it an unsolved mystery. I hadn't even gotten to the point where it felt like someone surgically implanted a small pumpkin in my sinuses, either.

I've been really good since I moved, and haven't smoked once in my new apartment thus far. It's been really tempting - particularly with the many boxes of Cuban and Costa Rican cigars sitting not ten places from where I'm sitting - but the apartment isn't exactly massive, and I have a feeling that everything would smell like cigars in a day or so, if I decided to relax the rules.

I shouldn't say that I haven't smoked in my apartment at all, because I smoke in the bathtub. About once every two or three weeks, I'll get a craving for a cigar and pour myself a steaming hot bath. That way, I can close the door, jam a towel in the gap, and crank open the window, and thusly I avoid stinking up my apartment, though the towel is a usually a little worse for wear soon thereafter. Andrea finds this absolutely hilarious. I prefer to think of it as inventive. Your thoughts?

Lately, I've been really pissed off about this whole seal hunt protest by Paul and Linda McCartney. I used to have a lot of respect for Paul McCartney, particularly because of all the work he's done to raise awareness on the threat posted by landmines. The seal hunt protest, however, does a lot to discredit it.

To begin with, Paul McCartney poses for a photo with a white seal pup. Naturally, one would think that he is protecting the white seal pups. This is made unnecessary by the fact that it's already illegal to hunt the white pups. Next, he claims that over 300,000 seals are clubbed to death each year, while in fact most of the seals are shot, rather than clubbed.

I'll admit, those are minor details. A seal pup is no longer white just a few days after its born (it's legal to hunt seals once they're older than 12 days old) and shooting an animal isn't much kinder than clubbing it to death. After all, aren't the seals an endangered species?

Ah, no.

It's believed that there are nearly triple the population of seals these days relative to what there were in the 1970s. That's 5.9 million seals, according to estimates. So, why then are activists spending so much time going after seals that are in no danger of becoming extinct?

Because they're cute, and cute brings in the big bucks.

I'll admit this much: if the world was a perfect place, I wouldn't want the widdle baby seals killed either. But let's face it. The majority of humans eat meat. That meat needs to come from somewhere. We'd be pretty shallow if all we ever did was eat the ugly animals.

The thing that bothers me most about this is that it's another example of style over substance. I am all for the McCartney's posing posing beside a cute little seal pup, but only after they've taken their matching orange jumpsuits to the breeding ground of an ugly endangered animal, like the sturgeon or the Gila monster.

In the mean time, I look forward to this issue fading to obscurity as the McCartneys take their jumpsuits to the aide of some other helpless and photogenic creature. As for those who would boycott Canadian goods to show solidarity with the seals: I wasn't happy about Canada selling our hard-made goods to stupid, shallow people anyway.