Tap Dancing

Listening to the radio the other day, when a solo, Clayton spoke up about the person at his local Tim Horton's laughed at him when he produced his debit card to pay for his morning coffee, then proceeded to insert the chip and punch in his password and so on.  "You don't have tap?" she scoffed.  The situation caused nothing more than an uncomfortable situation and subject matter for the morning show.  Normally, Clayton has an announce partner, Stacie, who was absent this day, so Clayton had the listening audience weigh in. 

Clayton described that he did not have the TAP feature on his debit card, adding that he felt it wasn't a necessary feature. Plus, he mentioned, it's way too easy for someone to steal your wallet and go on a spending spree.  I can't say that I don't agree, as that last part never even entered my mind.  Thank you Clayton for adding to my list of presently existing paranoia's. 😄 

Like Clayton, I resisted the TAP feature on my debit card for a very long time, finally succumbing to peer pressure when I began getting stuck behind slowpokes in checkout lines, who'd leisurely punch buttons searching for the right bank account and yada yada yada.  It was impatience that finally tipped the scales for me, a decision that I've come to regret, although I continue to use the TAP feature on my card.

I recall being a young boy, in seventh or eighth grade when another classmate, Jimmy, presented a news article in class.  The short article described how in the future, cash money would no longer be required, going on to explain that we'd all have plastic cards that would access our money.  The article also mentioned that the Devil was behind the science to bring about easier access to our monies, a factor that had our young minds oohing and aahing, at the time, but in retrospect, seems far-fetched.  The news article being little more than the rantings of some bible-loving crackpot.  The whole thing sounded like fantasy, as if a practice featured on an episode of Star Trek.  

Not to date myself, I do remember that at that time, if you hadn't visited the bank by Friday afternoon, you didn't have money for the weekend.  However, Jimmy's news article eventually did come to fruition and the article he shared during that show and tell from my youth always played out in the back of my mind.

In the beginning, I remember having my card in hand and making frequent visits to my bank machine, which at the time would administer money in $5 increments.  We, as a society, no longer had to race to the bank by 5pm on a Friday if we wanted to do shit on a Saturday.  Plus, for a lazy guy like me, having to stop at any bank or bank machine to grab cash of any amount, was enough of a deterrent to prevent me from spending money, until...

Using our debit cards to access our bank accounts at stores, became a game changer.  No longer having to make an effort to stop, get out of the car, punch in my info a bank machine, getting charged a whopping $2.50 to access my own money,  just to grab a few bucks...  I began spending a little more money, as I imagine happened with a lot of people.

If anyone recalls this progressive step forward, there were a number of setbacks.  We'd swipe our card and often, nothing would happen, as the magnetic strip on the back of our cards would wear out, forcing clerks to improvise.  One method was cladding the card with a plastic bag.  The practice worked sometimes, but other times the clerk would then add a strip of scotch tape to the card, swipe it through the machine then tear away the tape like a band-aid on a scraped knee, taking the magnetic strip along with the tape, rendering the bank card virtually useless.  Society, already past the visiting the bank stage, would often meander through life, now with a shitty card that didn't work and aggravating people in checkout lines forever thereafter.

For every step forward that science and creativity provides us, usually we're pushed two steps backward.  Banking's effort to push us forward, was not working, so the chip was added to our cards.  No longer did we have to rely on crossing our fingers in hopes of the strip working, now we just had to insert the chip and punch in our shit.  This progressed crowds a little quicker, but we were still stuck behind grandma who just didn't quite "understand how these new-fangled things work" and lineups continued to grow.

Ever notice how when things change in an effort to make one's experience easier, tends to be plagued with negatives.  Everyone fails to see the big picture in favour of the benefits they believe with come of the changes.

I resisted getting the TAP feature on my card for the longest time, not because I was afraid of some dastardly dick stealing my wallet and accessing my vast (un) fortune, but more afraid that I'd be that very dastardly dick, TAP dancing all over town buying shit without really thinking about the consequences.  You may notice that the money flows much easier when you remove the arduous task of punching in security codes 'n' shit.  Sometimes I won't even realize how much money has drained from my account, due to this ease.

In recent weeks, my attempts to get my car up and running, had me traipsing all about town buying this and that and tapping my card every time.  I'm afraid to look at my account balance.  Spending money is way too easy, nowadays, and the rising prices aren't helping matters any.  Government and all these banking institutions bombard us with the necessity to save money, yet they make it so difficult to do so with the cost of living rising on a daily, dare I say, hourly basis.  Shit's gotten so bad, I think back to that Show & Tell with Jimmy and his crazy news article and I can't help but think, maybe the Devil is responsible.  The financial anguish definitely feels like torture.

Shit Talking

The morning was cool and moist.  I'd loaded up my truck, arranging all the packages according to town and destination.  Normally it took me about an hour to load the Ford F-450 cube van all by myself, but the task flew by relatively quickly and I sped off, ahead of schedule.  The time was close to 5am and the sun had not yet broken the seal of a new day.  I headed north, towards Prince Albert, my first stop.  The world around me at that early morn, was stranger than usual.  The humidity hung in the air, evident only by strands of fog stretching across the four lane split highway, like ribbons on a gift wrappers table.  Each appearing as eerie as it did elegant and beautiful.  It's an image that returns to my mind on those brisk spring time mornings.

I'd arrived and departed from the storage facility in Prince Albert, located at the south end of town.  I had no incident.  In and out like an international spy, racing away with secret documents.  Only I didn't have any such items in my possession.  Only half a truck full of large boxes and some car parts.  My destination was now Melfort, located about an hour to the east.  By this time, the sun was beginning to peek over the horizon, shining extra brightly, piercing through my visor and blinding me, by the time I'd reached Birch Hills, SK.  It was also around this time where I began to feel a little off.

It wasn't sickness or anything alike, but it was more of an uncomfortable pressure.  I had a poop coming on.  I was confident that I could not only make it to Melfort before anything bad might occur.  The guy I met every day, was usually a few minutes late arriving when I would be there, so I thought I could make it to the Tim Horton's in well enough time.  With the lack of traffic at that time I arrived with only minutes to spare, however, as fate would have it, the guy I normally had to wait on, was already at the meeting site.  I didn't have a whole lot to hand off to him, mostly just large items, so I helped load him up, all the while fighting the pressure that was building in my downstairs region.

I was relieved when the fella departed right away, rather than engaging in the small chit-chat that he regularly partook in.  I locked up my van and began the arduous trek across the uneven broken ground between the parking area and the Timmy Ho's.  By this time, my butt cheeks were clenched so tight, that if you'd have placed a lump of coal between them, I would have produced a diamond worthy of royalty.  My travel was laborious and difficult, on account I was only able to take small steps from the knees down.

Best I could, I rushed into the donut shop and headed straight to the washroom, but...  Yes.  It was too late.  The floodgates from hell opened up, filling my brand new red boxer briefs in the process.  I had just shit myself and yes, in case you needed to ask, I did feel tremendous shame.  I could have and should have excused myself, when I had initially arrived in Melfort, but like a "tough guy" I chose not to and now I was paying dearly.

In the following weeks, I had a couple more close calls, nearly filling my red boxer briefs before locating adequate facilities.  Once, I needed to duck between lockers at the storage facility in Prince Albert.  I rested my back up against the wall and unleashed the fury.  Another time, happened in Birch Hills.  I was much more vulnerable there, opting to hide behind some large farm equipment and doing my business there.  Again, I was wearing red underwear.  I began seeing a pattern here.  Every time I wore the red under garments, I either had a terrible accident or a near-fatal accident in my shorts.  Even around town, when I'm making a quick run to the grocer, if I'm wearing red undies, I'd better stick close to a public washroom, or else.

I saw my Diabetic nurse today.  A quick meeting to try out one of these sensor things that attach to my arm so I can monitor my blood sugars more easily.  For years, the doctor requested that I do blood check with the strips and the little device, but alas, I am a diabetic and even in Canada with our awesome healthcare, diabetics still get f*cked over.  Those strips cost a LOT of money and I don't have a benefits package at my job.  Hell, if we're being completely honest, I don't even have a f*cking job at this time, but I can't afford to pay, out-of-pocket for those strips.  So I was given some of these sensor pads to try on my phone.  Equally as expensive, so I'm told, but I thought I'd give 'em a try.

Diabetic nurse helped me out, then I was on my way.  I headed to the Wal-Mart to grab some milk, bread and subsequently, some treats for my boy, Monkey.  No sooner had I filled my cart with all my items, that I felt something rumble.  I farted, but it wasn't a fart. It was more beefy than it was gaseous.  Immediately, I recalled slipping on red underwear when I got dressed this morning (TMI?🤨) and the race was on.

Like a starter pistol had fired off, I began to push my cart back across the store.  Of course this shit happens (pardon the pun😉) when I'm at the furthest point away from the public washroom.  Stepping from my knees down, once again, I arduously raced past confused onlookers and congested hubs of hanging apparel.  As the destination drew closer, I felt something tickling my butt cheek, dancing down my leg.  I thought I was losing my keys through another hole in my pocket, but when I shook my leg to free up the keys, a meatball rolled out, coming to a stop under a display of dehumidifiers.  I paused, completely shocked and disgusted by what had just happened.  I'm not as disgusting as those videos of people dropping trow and shitting in a deserted grocery aisle or that pig who squatted in front of a counter at a Tim Horton's in Ontario and took a whopping shit, despite of all the onlookers.  I had apparently shit, nothing terribly catastrophic, but equally as bad.

The situation in the bathroom was not nearly as horrific as I'd initially believed.  It was actually a quick and easy clean up.  I used a LOT of paper, mind you.  Didn't require it, but in these cases, it's better to be overindulgent than thrifty.

This is the kind of shit (again, apologies for the pun), that most people probably wouldn't or shouldn't share with anyone.  Especially my friends and peers, but whatever.  Everyone has shit themselves at some point in their adult lives.  If they claim they haven't they're probably f*cking lying.

I remember one time when my nephew was quite small.  He was just getting out of the diaper-wearing game, so accidents would happen sometimes.  I remember this one time, he shit himself and my sister went off on him.  The kid had a lot of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and this always lead to his accidents.  He believed that something exciting might happen while he was in the bathroom.  So this one time, my sister is shitting on him for shitting on himself and the poor kid felt terrible.  He came over to where I was sitting, with tears in his eyes.  I tried to comfort the boy by admitting to him that accidents happen.  That sometimes even adults poop themselves.  My sister overheard this and ripped me a new asshole, yelling at me to stop lying to him and that I needed to tell him I was lying.  Instead, I looked her dead in the eye and asked, "Are you f*cking high?"  Everybody shits themselves.  I've done it at least twice in my adult life.

I doubt anyone will read this, which is why I feel confident in writing this blog.  Judge me or don't.  I don't don't give two shits.  If a person can't laugh at themselves, sometimes, then they're just shitheads...  There's a lot of shit talk this post.  Hmm. 🤔

A Hidden Agenda

It's not often that I get to recycle a picture for my blog, but when the opportunity arises, it only makes sense.

As stated in my previous blog, I've traveled from my home in sweet Saskatoon, to the bowels of Hell, aka Regina, for the bittersweet weekend among friends, to commemorate and celebrate the memory of our friend and family member, Darcy.

The last few years, we've stayed at a hotel on the northern end of the city, but this year we've moved to a new spot.  I'm not certain when this establishment was built, but the rooms are nicer, bigger and way cleaner.  To put it plainly, I'm not afraid to sit on the bed spreads while wearing shorts.  The rooms all, from what I've seen thus far, are all generic with practically the same artwork on every wall, but over all, I believe this experience will be for the best.

The location is superb, seated just off a main drag.  There's a decent speckling of restaurants and fast food joints all around, unlike the other place that had a Burger Baron across the street and a Tim Horton's about a block south.  The Burger Baron's food is so sub-par to what should be considered edible, and the walk to the Timmy Ho's is not for the faint of heart.

I got to visit the Carl's Jr, down the street from this Days Inn and though it fell short of my experience when I visited the one in Kelowna, British Columbia, the food was still okay.  The only downside to that visit was the bearded toilet and the creepy albino dude who lurked behind the corner of my booth, readily available to jump out and inquire about my meal.  He asked three frickin' times.

The hotel, costs about the same per night as the previous one did, only this one seems to have a plethora of hidden fees that the other never seemed to have, or at least hid better than this one does.  The room is $128 per night, which by my math, comes out to about $256.  I'm being charged just under $300.  When asked about the extra charges, the quirky fellow behind the desk proudly answered, "Taxes and other fees."

Taxes, I understand.  We can't get away from that, unfortunately.  No matter what a person does or buys, the government needs to have their hand out for their share, too.  It was the "fees" that sparked my interest.  "What sort of fees?"  I asked.

"Well," he explained, "There's the destination fee."

"Destination fee?" I asked, "What's a destination fee?"

"Regina charges visitors a fee for coming to the city." he said.

I found this reasoning, absurd.  "The city charges people to visit their city?  That's ridiculous."  I said.

That sounds as stupid as the conversation with the bank last week, who told me that the bank charges it's customers a fee for banking with them.  Now this city charges people a fee for the "privilege" of visiting their city?  That doesn't make any sense.

"It's to help pay for events like the Exhibition (fair) or Agribition (agricultural exhibition)." he explained, without so much as agreeing that the premise seemed deceitful or devious and no matter how much prodding I made, he wouldn't budge and admit that it was stupid.

I look at situations like this and wonder where I fell short, unable to think up a helpful service that people require then charging them a f**king fee for being so helpful.  I couldn't do such a thing, though.  As much of a scoundrel as I can be at times, I can't be a complete asshole.  I wanna be an asshole, but I can't bring myself to it.  Regina, on the other hand, in addition to being a giant toilet, is proving itself to be every bit the asshole I've always suspected it to be.

Who Shot Will Sasso?

Got a call yesterday from my brother-in-law who is also my accountant.  I took in all my receipts and documentation to do with my income taxes a week or so ago and he's completed my taxation already.  For the first time in years, I'm finally going to get a refund, as opposed to having to pay in.  I guess unemployment has it's perks, although I'd imagine the fifty-two bucks coming my way will be diverted into the outstanding amount owed from four years ago, which I'm thinking is still in the thousands, or something along those lines.

I asked B___ what I owed for doing my taxes and he compassionately told me to simply bring him a coffee with cream.  As I said, unemployment has it's perks.  So I stopped at the nearest Tim Horton's by his office, to assure freshness and temperature, but what a chore that ordering process was.  [Head slap!]

I've voiced my opinions on this subject before and god damn it, I guess I'll be voicing them again.  I feel for any poor f*ck who faces oppression on a day-to-day basis in whatever backward f*cking country they come from, having to flee to the freedoms provided by one of the greatest countries in the world, Canada, but god damn it.  Learn the f*cking language.

It's good that there are people coming into this country who are willing to take those shitty f*cking jobs that no one with a grain of self respect would ever do as a life long vocation.  Flipping doughnuts, schlepping french fries or whatever the f*ck, but damn it!  Learn the language.  If you want to speak your jibberish in the back of the kitchen while preparing salads or cream-filled eclairs, then by all means, do that.  If you're going to work the front counter, then learn the language.  If I, myself, decided one day, "F*ck it!  I'm going to move to Buttf*ckistan."  I'm going to learn to speak Buttf*ckistani, come hell or high water.  I would show the Buttf*ckistanians that much respect.  I wouldn't dream of clumsily selling goat milk with my thick non-Buttf*ckistanian English.  The same should go for here in Canada.

An order that should have taken sixty seconds, at most, to place, took nearly four minutes of my endless failures to comprehend the less-than-broken English of (more consonants than vowels) girl.  I asked for an extra large coffee with cream and got the response, and I'm not exaggerating, "Doo da tray dee dee?"  I assume she asked a question as her tone rose at the end of her garbled speak.  "No," I said, "I want a large co-ffee, with creeeeam."

"Doo da tray dee dee?" she asked, with a look on her face like I was supposed to know what the f*ck she was saying.  "WHAT?" I confusedly responded.  She just smiled and repeated, "Doo da tray dee dee?"  I stared at her blankly...  "I...  I don't know what that means."

"Doo. Da. Tray.  Dee dee?" she said slowly, as if that was going to help.

"I want an extra large coffee with cream." I said.

"Ah." she muttered, and I swear I saw a light coming on.

"Oh good," I said, "I thought I was going to have to shoot myself in the head over that."

"Oh.  You want shot o assass-oh?"

"What?!" I charged, "Who shot Will Sasso?"

"No. You want shot o assass-oh!"

"WHAT?!?" I just stared at her, as she stupidly smiled back at me.  Truly a living example of: The lights are on, but nobody's home.  Dumb as f*ck!!

The one thing that stupidity has that I would consider to be a good trait is; Stupidity is colour-blind.  In fact, stupidity is affirmative action.  Stupidity, for all intense purposes, accepts people of all colours, cultures, creeds, and etcetera.  No matter what background you come from, whether you're a camel jockey from Kuwait or a race car driver in Milan or that Ivy League professor in Connecticut, you all possess the possibility of being painfully stupid*.

I don't know what the solution is to all this.  I wish there were a simple vaccine that people could get shot in their asses, that would vanquish stupidity forever, but until that day comes, I'm afraid all of us, myself included, are going to have to grow thicker skins in order to deal with these stupid f*cking people, whether they are domestic or imported.  In the meantime, maybe we need support groups.  A weekly meeting where us normal people can meet up for tea and cookies and a sympathetic shoulder to lean on while we talk out the idiocies that we're forced to contend with on a daily basis.

I did, finally, get my order.  Like I said, it took way longer than it needed to have taken, and it was finally because (more-consonants-than-vowels) girl finally handed me off to another bloke.  His English was atrocious, as well, but at least he was smart enough (barely) to take my order, accurately, and send me on my way.

.

Side Note: (*I met a college professor once, who was highly decorated with all kinds of diplomas and certificates.  He had a brand new car, which was failing miserably.  The cause was no oil.  He'd run the car for a couple of years, never changing the oil or even checking it or anything of the sort.  Then one day, he turned the key and the engine had seized up on him and he couldn't figure out why.  No oil,  stupid!!)