As Air Force One arrives at Heathrow Airport, President Obama strides to a warm and dignified reception from the Queen.
They are driven in a 1934 Bentley to the edge of central London, where they change to a magnificent 17th century carriage hitched to six white horses. They continue on towards Buckingham Palace, waving to the thousands of cheering Britons; all is going well.
Suddenly the right rear horse lets fly with the most horrendous earth shattering fart ever heard in the British Empire.
The smell is atrocious and both passengers in the carriage must use handkerchiefs over their noses. The fart shakes the coach, but the two dignitaries of State do their best to ignore the incident.
The Queen turns to President Obama, ” Mr. President, please accept my regrets. I am sure you understand there are some things that even a Queen cannot control.”
Obama, always trying to be “Presidential,” replied: “Your Majesty, do not give the matter another thought…until you mentioned it, I thought it was one of the horses.”
The title of this post is a play on the old book title, “Letters from a Nut” which may or may not have been written by Jerry Seinfeld. Either way, it was a great read. That, however, is not the point of this post.
This little furball to your right is. His name is Bobby McGee and he is Mom’s nearly one year old puppy. Having spent a couple of weeks with young Bobby McGee, I’m saddened to say that I’ve learned quite a bit.
First off, you need to know that Bobby is perhaps the most likeable creature on the planet. He isn’t hyper and he doesn’t make a lot of commotion but he is always there. I call him a little Plodder. He gets into everything (like the fridge in this picture) but he does it in such a way that it is impossible to get angry with him.
Last night I was babysitting, Mr. McGee and made the mistake of taking him out for a run. We’ve both beefed up a bit and could definitely use more time exercising and less time treating ourselves to un-deserved treats. The problem isn’t the run so much as the fact, that Bobby gets a little rambuncious upon his return from a run.
So last night I warmed up some chicken stir-fry and discovered that it was too hot to eat after nuking it. I placed it on the table and visited the washroom. Whilst in said washroom, I heard some commotion coming from the kitchen so I hiked up and hustled out to discover Bobby McGee had hopped up on my chair to the table. From there he had found a bag in which Mom keeps his treats and had pulled those out and dumped them on the floor. He had then lept off the table (presumably via the chair) and was about to tear into the bag o treats.
He may or may not have indulged in my stir-fry along the way but I skimmed the top layer off of it just to be safe.
You’ve seen him, it is impossible to get mad at him so I ate and left it at that. Ten minutes later I was on the computer and heard but yet another crashing sound. This time he had ventured up to Mom’s kitchen counter (again via a carelessly displaced chair), had dumped the butter tray on the floor and was chowing down on lard when I arrived on the scene.
Again, nobody could get mad at this face, right? Wrong.
Shortly afterwards, still irked by McGee’s behaviour I recieved a text from mom saying that she and her friends were ready to be picked up. I was putting on my boots alongside Bobby McGee when he took off downstairs. I called a few times before I begrudgingly removed my boots and went to see what was holding up the parade.
Bobby McGee had found my headphones and was finishing off the ear that he hadn’t already destroyed a few days earlier. Again, when I took them away, he looked at me like I was the one in the wrong. Like he was the parade and I was peeing on it.
Not a bad analogy, actually.
In any event, B-Mac’s behaviour got me to thinking. He isn’t obnoxious. He isn’t over zealous. He just does exactly what wants to do, regardless of what others think. He’s a Plodder and he can’t be stopped. He doesn’t hurt anyone. He just does what he wants.
If you’ve never heard of Danny Wallace before, shame on you. He is a British author that wrote Yes Man (which was turned into a movie starring Jim Carrey) and a whole whack of other books. He has a very dry and very strange sense of humour which I find hilarious.
I stumbled across his work when I was in a thrift store in Nottingham. I picked up a copy of ‘Yes Man’ for less than a dollar and I must have read it 3 times before giving it to a friend of mine. It is that good.
In any event, Danny has come out with a new book called, “More Awkward Situations for Men”. Obviously, this is a sequel to one of his earlier books. I haven’t read it yet but I’m sure it is going to be just as good as all of his other stuff.
The thing that I really like about Danny is that he writes about his own life experiences. He’ll put himself into all of these awkward situations (which of course, turn out to be hiliarious) and gets you sucked into thinking “What if I was to do something like that?”
For example, the premise of “Yes Man” is that Danny commits to saying ‘yes’ to everything for a year. As a result, he gets himself in some fine messes but he also opens himself up to a world of possibilities that he never knew existed. While the book is funnier than a fart in a space suit it is also very much a self-help resource.
If you’ve ever read any of A.J. Jacobs’ stuff – especially “My Life as an Experiment” – you’ll find their writing styles and the situation they put themselves in quite similar.
Anyway, I haven’t read it yet and all of Danny’s stuff is hard to find in Canada so if you have had a chance to read it, please let me know how it is.
In the meantime, I’ll leave you with one of Danny’s videos but beware, this tune is addictive and you might find that you’ll be humming it for days.
I first moved out to Vancouver just in time to witness the 1994 Stanley Cup riots. I vividly remember watching the TV in shock as yahoos destroyed their own city. I think it is safe to say that everyone was both shocked and horrified by the behaviour.
Fast forward to June 15, 2011. The city has since hosted one of the most successful Winter Games in history and a lot of the ugliness from 1994 was left in the rearview mirrow… until the Canucks lost another Game 7.
I wasn’t surprised last night by the reaction to the loss. The only thing that did surprise me was the fact that people were actually surprised. These people have obviously never spent any time on Granville Street on a busy Friday or Saturday night. There is definitely an undercurrent of anger and hostility in this city.
I can’t explain what it is but it definitely exists. Anyone not smashed out of their heads would tell you that they didn’t feel safe watching among the tens of thousands gathered on Georgia Street for the Stanley Cup final round games. It was like a volcano waiting to erupt.
Can someone tell me what it is about this city that causes this strange behaviour? We’re like a petulant, only child. We’re stuck on this side of the mountains thinking that everyone is so envious of us. We hate Toronto and think that they hate us but the truth is that they don’t even think about us.
We want to hate Calgary but they have their own Battle of Alberta and again, Vancouver is left alone… stewing and looking for a fight.
As another note, people that were in the chaos last night have told me that the police were as much of the problem as the solution. Apparently, they were very antagonistic towards the crowd and individuals trying to make their way across the city.
One thing that is different in 2011 compared to 1994 is the use of personal cameras and video cameras combined with social media. I think it is going to be very interesting to see some of the unedited footage that comes out as a result of last night’s idiocy.
Social media is the future, folks. Mark my words, the big news networks cannot move fast enough to get breaking news out before individuals are recording and posting real-time to YouTube and Facebook.
These are amazing times we’re living in. Personal privacy is a thing of the past. All of the idiots that thought they were cool looting and creating havoc last night were caught on someone’s camera somewhere and they will face the music.
Same goes with any police behaviour that wasn’t by-the-book. I didn’t see anything that would make me think that any wrong-doing was going on but thousands of cameras don’t lie and it only takes one shot to ruin a career.
Last night’s riot was dispicable and embarassing but the results are going to be a very interesting case study. I’m curious to see how the next two weeks shake out.
I’ve been a little down lately. It seems that everything is taking longer to get going than I had planned and is costing twice as much. Of course, that is life and when we get in these funks we need to just ‘keep on, keepin’ on’, right?
As I sometimes do for motivation I pulled out a dvd course that Vic Johnson put together. It was a live seminar recorded in Toronto and it had a lot of the big name speakers on it. One of them was Lisa Jimenez.
If you’ve never heard or seen her speak before I recommend that you do. She is pretty switched on and in this particular presentation she made a statement that totally hit home for me. This is paraphrased but it was essentially, “Most entrepreneurs are more concerned about looking good than being successful.”
What Lisa was saying is that we must be willing to be uncomfortable in order to succeed. We must be willing to risk failure and face rejection or we have no chance of success.
Of course, she was talking about entrepreneurs but it applies to everyone. How often have you seen someone you wanted to meet but didn’t introduce yourself? How often have you wanted to try something new but made an excuse at the last minute?
We all do this and we’re all motivated by one thing – FEAR. The fear of looking stupid in most cases. This is the reason I don’t like to make cold-calls for business even though I know I have to. It doesn’t make any sense and I’m working on changing it.
The fact is that the fear never goes away. Anyone that says they’ve conquered all of their fears is lying to you – and to themselves. The key is to follow the old addage “Feel the fear and do it anyways.”
Of course, it is much easier said than done but it must be done. Failure is the only other option.
As Air Force One arrives at Heathrow Airport, President Obama strides to a warm and dignified reception from the Queen.
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