Dad

There is a song that never got finished, back in the old Knockin' Dog days, It started "sooner or later we all turn into our fathers", maybe it just needed to be an instrumental piece with that as a title, or maybe one day down the road it will roll, who knows, hopefully it rocks.

I guess it's in our nature to emulate the people who raised us; I know I think I had the best father ever. I think everybody should think that about his or her father, it means they loved you and it came through.  I'm glad I can't understand any other way, and I hope when my time comes my children think the same for me.

I guess that's why we have to become our fathers... perhaps the paranoia gets translated in other ways, or the systems applied on other grids, but the root values manage to find a way through.

Dad was my gardening guru... somewhere there is a photograph of me knee high to a grasshopper standing in the garden with dad working a rake.  He was what I might call a "method" or "production" gardener... if he produced 87 squash he might gleefully announce "Darn right, you go to the store and start pricing squash you will see".  At the time I was more horrified at the concept that we had enough squash to eat every night until next years harvest.  Did I mention putting butter, brown sugar or salt on squash was a non starter?  The experts claimed butter was bad for the heart, sugar would bring on diabetes, and salt would raise your blood pressure and stress your kidneys?  Dad would always be very liberal in pointing that out, every night, as a matter of routine, and he is correct... plain baked squash is better for your body than squash soaked in flavour enhancers.  It wasn't until much later in life that I realized that most families didn't have an overzealous health conscious roll model to analyze every decision with regard to what is better for your long-term health.  Truth be told, I don't always take the correct path when given the choice but having this encyclopedia of food health knowledge as part of my being, I at least know what I'm doing right or wrong.

I was pushing for a peach tree, but at that time Toronto didn't have the climate for peaches, and the two old apple trees didn't really produce eating apples but were more wasp attractants, I'm sure those facts had dad waffling over whether or not to get another fruit tree. He liked cherry trees but was worried about fighting birds for the cherries.  I get it now... now that I have become him...  he was so focused on all of these other factors he went and bought a Damson plum rather than the Italian prune plum tree his heart desired.  I don't really know what happened that day at the nursery... maybe they were out of Italian prune plum's but he was all geared up to plant a plum tree... he had a head of steam... this was going to happen.  So he bought the Damson tree and we went home and put it in the ground. Next thing you know we stood around it all proud... a fine family moment of positive unity.  It was good… perhaps it was too good!  This is how it works... you feel great, you have something great, then the paranoia kicks in. whoa this is so good somebody might want it... want it so bad they might steal it... and then he notices we are all standing around glowing at this tree, so he says under his breath "we should stop staring at it, we are going to draw attention to it, and I don't want somebody back here stealing plums".  For the next decade the bloody tree barely produced an eating plum until finally dad "cut the damn thing down", cursing the fact that he didn't put in an Italian prune plum tree.  He gave up fruit farming after that, claiming it wasn't worth the effort... if you are stressing it, then no it's not worth the effort, well played.

Nothing was better than getting dad laughing:

I remember those as two of his favourite cartoons, there were others, the Herman series really hit home with dad, he really liked the expressions on the characters in light of the situations.  Sometimes I would pull out a Herman book and ask dad if he wanted to read it with me rather than study. He was a strict authoritarian always study hard school teacher but once you got dad going it was all gasping, tears and repeating punch lines...  Soon the glasses would come off and the tears would need to be wiped, sometimes we would even need to take a break, so dad could rest up for the next round.  Laughter is the best medicine, readers digest says, it's always worked for me. 

I think one of the greatest attributes of my father was that he did what he did because he thought it was right... it wasn't because other people were doing it or it was cool it was because he thought it was right.  The 60's movement missed dad, I think it did anyway... he was doing his thing and it wasn't at Woodstock if you know what I mean.

Dad was composting in the 60's, his focus being "free organic soil".  My whole life it was unconscionable to put table scraps into the garbage... that was free fertilizer, and there were systems to deal with any garden pest that wanted to try and get some.  The system, for the record, was cinder blocks on an old wire gate with the compost just dug in a hole in the ground... in the end it would be a mound... a squash mound... a very productive squash mound.

Dad was ruing bird habitat loss in the 70's, he liked bird watching, he liked science and nature, and he liked to be out in it walking, breathing fresh air, and observing what was there.  He actually kept bee's up the street when it was just a field, but as the highway 401 expended he felt his bees were getting slaughtered crossing the highway, and it was at that time people were against bees, because they stung... only 4 decades later are progressive cities now trying to encourage beekeeping for obvious reasons. 

In the 80's he became a master of selective hearing... probably a child rearing issue.  My sister and I were in high school in the 80's. You could ask him a question at point blank range and get nothing, but yet if you were whispering upstairs his hawk ear would pick it off and dismantle the effort.  Clearly if you were whispering it was important... I see that now, when it grows quiet you know you might have problems.

In the 90's he was retired and thus started a new era of the laid back dad... he never missed working that's for sure, there was a short time he had a part time job but once he found out that gas company's are swindlers he lost his appetite for work altogether, which is good.  He always lived within his means, perhaps a few notches under for safe keeping... who needs more things and more money when you are actually happy?

We had lots of good times visiting a couple of times per year, as I had moved out west around 93.  I mentioned Dad missed Woodstock but he did catch Knockin' Dog at Localpolluza at the Samoo pub, Roadbed at the Railway club and the Cottage Bistro, and he even made it to a couple of Super Robertson Supper Shows... just saying he had some indie credibility.

Now my father is gone, but he lives in me, the good he had, I have taken and tried to make my own.  Always the same, just be that guy and people will learn how to deal with you.  Be interesting, and be interested in what others are doing, after all they might be on to something.  Learning how to do things better is better than doing things the same.  Get out and walk, probably the best habit I inherited from dad, exercise and a chance to think and mumble to oneself.  Eat well, love nature, grow food, laugh, be honest, care, respect and enjoy your life while you can.

Dad, you did that for me, thanks

Bruce Gordon Robertson 1933-2012

Open letter to Adele

Greetings Adele,

Now i imagine that a person in your position probably has every jackass and his brother trying to pitch songs to you by the truckload.  I think the words "no unsolicited material accepted" make a good point. And of course you seem to be coming up with some pretty good material so "why fix what isn't broken"?

Well songs are songs, and i have this song called "Never wanted to be anyone".  I started writing it years ago when i got into music and we were all sitting around and the discussion was "Who do you want to be?", as in "Do you want to be the next Keith Richards, or the next Robert Plant...?".  My answer was that i wanted to be the first me, i didn't want to spend my life trying to fit into somebodies image of what i should be.

It appears that you are doing that, under what i can only imagine, would be incredible pressure... Well done!  From my vantage point you are the best singer going and would surly kill the song.  In fact driving back from the beach today one of your songs came on the radio and as we were grooving one of my daughters suggested i get you to sing... i mentioned you might be a bit busy, but hey, if you never ask you will never receive... so they say.

So here is the song, if it can't speak for itself then this whole conversation is for nothing.

Never Wanted to Be Anyone

These are the best years of our life
You got to live them while you can
While your a young woman
you got to live good
you got to sing good
you got to feel good

I never wanted to be anyone
Just want to be like myself

These are the strange and significant years
And I'm not shedding tears
You got to get what you can, while you can
you got to live good
you got to sing good
you got to be good

I never wanted to be anyone
Just want to be like myself

My first open letter, let the mocking begin.

sincerely,

Super Robertson

Clarification... and blurring the lines

I was hoping to clarify a few points i had made earlier, but it's hard to find the time when you are so busy having fun... it's a hard life but somebody has to live it.  For the record it is about perspective and not luck, luck is a fork in the road, and the ones who took the wrong turn yell at the others that they are lucky.  In reality i am lucky i wasn't born in some part of the world where some other lunatic decided that my town needed to be bombed for the greater good of mankind.  I don't even mean that as a joke, but more a serious reflection of reality.  The country i was born in has a lot of natural resources, but the governments have always been very free to give unlimited access to international corporations and hence are a friendly nation, thus classified.

my point was more.. well when i started... i was thinking of of trying to work the one armed lunatic who was forcibly removed from the bus the other night in a totally bizarre sequence... no no no, sorry it was about the hockey post.  yes indeed, that was it.

Since i tarred and feathered our team leadership and perhaps made it appear that they deployed me improperly, i think i should mention  this rather excellent turn of events. 

First of all, i didn't mean to sound like the only good player on the team, in fact there are a few.  I think i was just frustrated with the fact that this thing that occurs on hockey teams happened again.  You show up, play with some people, it goes really well, people assess your value and then decide you are valuable... then they start thinking  now "how to deploy you",  you are then taken out of a role you were successful in and put in a new one with more expectation that you can help save the team but with no chance.

I played on this one team years ago, and i was fast so they put me with this other fast guy, but his main play was to take off for a break away pass every time and if you were able to hit him on this low percentage play he was sure to take a slap shot high and wide... for some reason we didn't put up the numbers that were expected, given our collective speed.

But hey, it's a new season, and i have to give our leadership credit where credit is due... we lost 3 slugs and picked up 3 good players and it's nothing but smiles on the bench.  On hockey teams, bad team players tend to linger, but after our first season, changes have been made and the problems are solved.  A clear cut case of a cancerous dressing room... once insanity and negativity take over the game the leadership is making calls from a distorted perspective.

But the right calls were made, however they were made, i don't know... all i know was that it was all smiles on the bench and it didn't matter where or who you were playing with, cause they did what they were suppose to do, and that's what you need when you are dealing with a team.  As they say, there is no I in team.

internetting

Twitter- trending today is #DefineObamaInOneWord which turns into a really ugly mess of stupid people trying to show how stupid they really are.  Why would you define any human in one word?  We are multi dimensional, i mean I'm all for hate, but make it make sense... and I'm pretty sure it was the President before him that flushed the country down the jimi john.

News- Oil spill in Alberta- accidents happen, as long as it's only simple people and clean lakes and rivers decimated it probably won't hurt the companies.  Did you hear there is a solar and clean energy revolution going on? If you were a politician in the pocket of an oil company you might just look like a mighty jackass in a few short years... hell you might even now.  If it was my land that was ruined i think I'd just walk away, cause fighting it is a guaranteed loss.  I remember seeing a Nature of things episode on a decade after the Exxon Valdez spill... it's a brutal watch, and the lesson is Oil Companies don't pay... and those who fight them end up penny less and insane.  They destroy renewable food resources and deny doing so, destroy people, families and a way of life.

Phoenix Coyotes - They had an owner who was in a shithole lease and was going broke losing millions per year... nobody gave a shit.  It wasn't their money.  So the owner tried to pull a fast one on the NHL ans sell the team to a Billionaire REM mogul who wanted to move the team to Hamilton Canada.  The league went ape shit cause nobody tells the boss what to do, and it all collapsed but it came down to the wire and he was offering millions to all kinds of people who were losing money by the truckload.  Fast forward to now... the league has owned the team for a few years losing a paltry 25 million or so per year, and now they found a "potential buyer" who is getting a sweetheart deal on the leasing and management fees, and things are coming down to the wire again with taxpayer watchdog groups threatening to sue and trying to block votes.  If they only could have given the first guy this lease deal.

Facebook- looks like i was tagged in a "groin photo"... it is what it is.

More riots in  Montreal-  When are these people going to get it?  Don't you know Money calls the shots!  Got to like the spirit, at least they don't roll over like the rest of the stiffs in the country.  That European spirit that says "fuck you we are shutting this one down cause it's bullshit".   So people are getting hit with rubber bullets and pepper spray.  You see students have been protesting for 4 months over tuition increases, and this weekend there is a Grand Prix F1 motorcar race that they are not to happy about.  Some thing about city takeover, noise pollution, the glamorization of fossil fuel waste and the exploitation of the sexualization of women.  When they had the Grand Prix in Vancouver years ago before we kicked it out of town, due largely in part because the land was too valuable to exploit to build overpriced condos of questionable construction quality.  I met some of the workers as a mailman... they would wait by the mailbox to see if a cheque came for them and if it didn't then they would go into work to try to pry an advance from their boss because they worked a few days last week... totally serious.  And they still had a job.  Hey guys you reinforced this concrete right... oh yea man... cause it would be really bad if you just slacked off and threw the rebar back in the pile and poured the concrete anyways because doing rebar is a lot of hard work... no fuck no man we did it.  OK.  Weird tangent.

And this one i like:  A little dose of reality for  a routine ceremony for sure, i think it's great.  And in other news a high school physics teacher has been suspended and might lose his job for giving out zeros to students who failed to hand in assignments and missed exams.  Buy the ticket take the ride.  Did i ever mention i taught Physics and Chemistry in high school in Toronto years ago... it was a private school who were ahead of the curve when it came to doctoring marks to keep the studens paying the fees.  I caught a kid cheating in the final, and the kid knew nothing about chemistry so i failed her, and the school just changed the mark i gave her, no discussion no acknologment... just carry on.  I thought it was funny, never let integrity get in the way of good comedy.  And in the end they offered me the job full time because apparently i was the best science teacher they had had in a long time.  I passed on the job, cause i felt i would have just stayed there and stagnated... i had eyes to come out west and play some music and change the world with rock and roll... well that didn't work out either, but we had some King Hell times.  And here we are.

My website - Speaking of me... no really, enough about me  i really want to know... What do you think of me?  Derailing my points here going for the cheap laughs. But seriously my website came in handy today... a clear victory.  I'm not sure any website of mine has ever come in handy before?  They are usually just a massive pain in the ass for me... a grand waffle between what i think i understand people think i should do, and between what i think i want to do given the various insanities i have caged myself in. You see the twins turn five on June 11, so we are having a party tomorrow for them, so i had to bake 2 cakes, and i needed to fine my mothers chocolate fudge cake recipe which was on a recipe card that had suffered some decay... but then i remembered i put the damn recipe in the recipe section of my website and i saved the day for myself.  i even have to say i distilled it down quite nicely, and in the end i aced it... i baked the cakes to perfection... i was so proud of myself.  Getting them out of the pan in one piece is another game in itself... a game i am batting .333 in.  Not a bad average for a pro baseball hitter i might add in an effort to put some positive into the situation.  Classic science experiment... every time you get over one hurdle and you are there celebrating to yourself how well you did that's when you slam into the next hurdle.  Like a video game, learn all the moves in sequence.

Plastic bags.

The city i live in has banned plastic bags... you get a paper bag.  Believe it or not you can put garbage in a paper bag, easily done when the city will collect all of your food waste in the green yard waste bin. Only question is why do we still create garbage? Kind of a no brainer when you think of it... but who thinks now a days.  Thinking is old fashioned... no, sorry, make that "radical".  Old fashioned is when you have some clearly bigoted opinion on some progressive issue, and rather than see the light you call yourself "old fashioned".  Old fashion people believe what they read in a paper owned by some jackass who has other business interests and when questioned on the clear disparity just claim to be "old Fashioned"... kind of like "born again"... hey I'm "born again" and i oppose you for your radical views and anything i did that was totally fucked is now nullified because i am "born again".

My hometown of Toronto just passed this ... a plastic bag ban coming 2013, and the lunatic mayor calls it a disaster and BLAMES "the people"... are these the people you were elected to serve?  There is this other issue, a little one that some "old fashioned" people perhaps don't believe in...  it's a scientific fact, if you believe in science that is... I'm not talking about the science that makes it possible for steel fighter jets to fly and shoot bombs with great accuracy... cause that's undeniable... Go War Go!... I'm talking about the more debatable science that has shown plastic doesn't break down but will rather stay in our living environment causing all kinds of problems for living organisms.  It might be debatable if humans are living organisms... hell why not, just deny it make the fuckers prove it and when they do just say we don't believe it.. we believe in something else.  We believe in the economy, and oil powers the economy, cause we built it that way, and good old plastic bags are a side industry of oil, so it's all good.

Did i mention that apparently banning plastic bags in B.C is not possible?  I have to ask, How can i live in a city that has banned plastic bags and yet hear it is not possible?  It means some fool is making money and will find some "legal" way to stop it.  Now didn't 7 heads of tobacco companies years ago step up in the grand court of life and plead that, as God ad their witness, they didn't know tobacco was addictive.  And it turned out to be all cool...OK they didn't know, which was odd given the companies had spent all that money on how to make it more addictive and how to lure more people int the vice.  Perhaps they became "born again" and in some grand spiritual awaking forgot and were cleared of all of their misdeeds for their former life.

Write and wrong, legal or illegal, shit sandwich or rose... it's just a series of letters strung together.

There is that Great Pacific Garbage patch the size of... well even that is now being debated.. the size of Texas was the common measuring stick for a few years, but as awareness and that blasted Internet (which we need to control for the safety of the citizens) has increased many studies are coming out that are saying "hey it ain't that bad"... wonder who is funding those studies.

Believe it or not... depending on what your pre-conceived beliefs are... the plastic does break down into tiny pieces that will end up in fish and ultimately humans.  So to all the whiners out there in the comment sections of the news stories saying things like "if they ban plastic bags then I will have to buy them!"... which is really an incredibly selfish and short sighted angle to have on this issue...  hey rather than change my sloth habits i will have to do something that will cost me to buy something that has no chance of ever reintegrating into the planet that's environment supports my life.

It's unbelievable but yet a more popular "old fashioned " belief.

Why we have throw away packaging, and plastic waste is a question i'm sure people will one day just shake their head at.  Hopefully in the future they can invent a time machine and come back and groin kick all the fuckers who stood for quick profit over sustainable development... but that ain't gonna happen.

Robertson logic

So i bought some fire hot sauce the other day and I'm hitting my food with it like a badman.  As a result i have been punching the air and drinking lots of water.  The key is in the water... i don't drink enough of it even though i try to tell myself to do more, so i have done what Robertson logic would allow and come up with this masterful plan.  CT was a bit more negative on the whole issue, claiming i am going to change my stomach pH and run into a whole other mess of problems... but i like my chances.

For those just joining the journey, i would like to point out the nature of "Robertson Logic"... take one segment of life and over analyze it... then work up a mighty paranoia with regard to the issue... then take up a secondary habit that will help lead you in a direction to lessen the paranoia of the initial infraction.

One time, Dad, who is and always will remain the most health conscious person i have ever known, was fixing the tub, and so he had the shower door in the hallway one night, and i guess he got up to use the washroom and slammed his toe into the shower door on the way to the can.  My sister happened to be a "candy stripier" (person who volunteers in the hospital to pad a resume for future medical school consideration), and was working the next day... the same day Dad went to the hospital to have his foot X-Rayed that found a hairline fracture in his toe.  But the killer was that Dad was smoking in the waiting room (you could do that back then) and when my sister saw him he replied "I'm smoking to calm my nerves".  You see Dad has always been very nervous with regard to health related issues, and pain tolerance was not his strong suit, so in that situation, he managed to talk himself into his greatest bad idea Smoking!  Because apparently it calms peoples nerves... I'm not saying it doesn't... it does all kinds of things, many of them are most excellent, and some of them are totally unacceptable.  When you are an extremest it's hard to ride the middle ground.


Me, I'm a hitting the hot sauce for good or ill.  I like the idea of over doing things, it's funny and comedy is king in a world full of idiot voters who would gladly vote for their own death penalty if somebody on a TV add called it a rose.

When Robertson logic becomes absolute, which it is by it's definition you can accomplish some significant things.  It comes in handy in long term lifestyle grooves.. it's a handy force to have against consumer impulses, passing fads and it's good for saving money. I used Robertson logic to avoid taking taxi's for years and years saving me money and of course earning interest on the money i saved.  I would always walk home... good exercise and a chance to sober up before hitting the bed.

Robertson logic can harm you in other ways... you can miss a lot of experiences in life by staying true to some slight tangent in the grand scheme of things.  Often times you are misunderstood because people see an action and think the action is a reaction rather than a reflex as determined under the laws of "Robertson logic".

Mom had some classic Robertson logic the other day... as per usual there was a theft paranoia where she was sure somebody came into her room and stole a bracelet she had, but then when we went over the scenario we noticed that she was wearing the bracelet when she thought the crime had occurred, but she didn't miss a beat... the only question was...  How did they steal it off her wrist without her knowing?  So fixated on the paranoia that any other solution is irrelevant.

One time dad developed a system for vacuuming rugs.  You vacuum the rug then you flip it over and vacuum the bottom side and the bristles that beat the rug knock a fine dust on the floor so you sweep that up and then you flip the rug, and vacuum it again, and then you flip it again and vacuum the back side, and then... you get more fine dust... now you are getting serious.  Around the 9th flipping you need to remind Dad that he is probably personally breathing in a lot of harmful fine dust, and then one of 2 things will happen.  1) we will spend the rest of the day in dust masks vacuuming the rug or 2) we will stop and go outside... once outside you could easily lobby for a nice long healthy walk.

It's the way we roll.

the economy and a fly

I had this nice little point i was going to make but then by the time i had signed out of one account and into another a pesky fly started zooming around my head space and landed on the computer screen.  Apparently you shouldn't kill other things, so i catch them and put them outside.  When i was a kid i would catch grasshoppers and put them in a spider web and then watch the excitement as a spider raced out on the web and rolled up that "cling" as we called them and then bite the fucker causing one final kick of the hind leg.

My Dad thought that was great, he loves biology and hates garden menace insects, and has the common sense to not use poison on vegetables he wanted to eat.  In fact years ago i offered to make a "railway tie" retaining wall for a mound up at the cottage, and after careful consideration he declined because he didn't want the toxic tar from the railway ties to seep into the well water.

How did we get from online shopping to well water?  Serendipity i believe, because the point is about the local economy.  CT bought some shoes online and they arrived in the mail today, they were a real deal but then she mentioned how she was reading how when you buy things online you are "hurting " the local economy.  Now i get that, and on principle i agree, it's just that i disagree with the word "economy", perhaps disagree is the wrong word.  I just don't think economy really works... the word has kind of been ruined, having been used as a fear tool to motivate sheeple, and then collapsed, only to be propped up again by sheeple, and now we need to worry about it again.

So if i buy my shoes down the street the guy can pay his rent to somebody who lives where and then he can have more shoes shipped in from some where far away...  I have had similar arguments with many "working musicians" or "aspiring artists" just to put the ball back in my court.  They say you need to make and sell CD's to survive, and that people should support the buying of CD's.  I mean if anybody wants to buy some CD's i have plenty of sealed pressed cd's i can cut you a deal on... but really when you get to the point where you are justifying making a piece of plastic is your only avenue for survival then you know for sure that you have hit the zone we like to refer to as "INSANE".  I'm insane, i put out a CD last year... i went without the shrink wrap and printed on a recycled cardboard sleeve, but i still produced a plastic CD that is essentially an undesirable piece of crap to most of the population of the neighbourhood.  Is it better for me to set out a stand in front of the house and try to "sell" my plastic to people, or is it better for me to find a better way to be happy stable and sharing music.

The answer is as obvious as it is clouded.  It is not acceptable to buy into a system that creates unnecessary waste, even if that waste could benefit you in the short term.

when the system brings you down
when the system changes how you feel
its is time to change the system
it is time to bring it down
             -"fuck the system" Sons of Freedom

hockey

Time is the weirdest thing, it's apparently eternal but there is never enough of it for all of us self important humans who think we are overwhelmed and lost but yet don't have the spine to collectively stand up and work together to do something about it... is the word spine or intelligence?

Sorry old sport, i was too busy looking at a manufactured screen for multiple hours today  to be able to make a difference... I should note that i did "like" various social media posts that had to do with saving the environment as my personal effort to change the world.

I just got on a weird mind tangent.  Probably be best not to get into it, but i have never been a fan of "what would be best".  What would be best is how we ended up with a thick stack of shit hole cookie cutter popular music songs, and shitty movies that have part 3 in their title.  Hey this will sell,  those fucking idiots will buy it, get it out there.  It was a Hockey thing actually, as are many things in my life... you see our team was defeated in the semi finals the other night by a score of 3-1... i happen to be the leading scorer on the team by a fair margin, and for this game, our fearless, or avant-garde thinking leader decided to put me on defense, much to the horror of my former line mates and the team in general. The problem with hockey teams is that somebody puts them together and then, for some reason, they become the voice of the team, no matter how insane that voice is.  They told me i played very well on defense, i made a few good plays breaking up  some stuff and chasing down a few breakaways, but apparently they needed more offense from me.  Looking at the stats, when i play right wing/center with my 2 regular line mates we are good for about 4-5 points per night... oddly enough i was paired with my regular left winger on defense, and then the wingers were never on the boards for the breakout.  Strange stuff for sure... everybody on the bench whispering to me "why are you on defense?".

Why was i on defense?  cause we have a couple of floaters and a guy who wants lots of ice time, well a number of them actually, but one of the main guys was playing defense and he didn't want to put a floater on defense to rob him of his ice time so he put the hustlers on defense opting to go with 5 defense and 2 complete forward lines.  Have you ever been in a situation where somebody has made some insane call and you just try to make it work against all odds.  That was us in the semi finals, somebody thinking outside the box but stuck in a triangle.

Pretty much anybody i have ever played hockey with would state emphatically that I should play forward.  It's true, I'm getting older and slower and in these coming years i should be evolving my game to transition to that position, and in all honesty i worked hard trying to think the game in that way.  I did play defense for a few years on the pylons back in Vancouver, but that was a division 10 team and i got the roll because i was one of the few that could actually fluently skate backwards.

I hate losing, bottom line, and i hate insanity.. the combo ain't good.

Hopefully the team reacts to the speech i will give at the start of the summer season.  You see it's odd being in my situation... I am the main offense of the team, so they are very keen to have me stay on the team, but yet they are insane giving into singular selfish desires.  Hockey is a strange gamet, nothing better than winning and coming together as a team, but yet everybody wants to play center and score, even if they couldn't win a face off to save their lives.  In hockey there are systems... but a system is useless if everybody isn't doing their part... hockey is a reactionary sport.  Meaning a unique situation just occurred, what do i do? and i have a second to make that decision... some get it better than others.  My basic mentality on that is that you need you wingers on the hash marks for the breakout and if you can't do that then good fucking luck.

Is this insane?  Can't be worse than my "what if all art in the world was destroyed tangent", which had merit, but didn't really apply in the grand scheme of things.

It should also be noted that i had many chances including a late game breakaway in which i managed to Goat up a storm.  I was a braying in the oat field... there were times as a defense man where i was rushing the point... there were times when i was screening the opposition's goalie.  I could have won it, but i failed to do it because my shot failed me... or maybe it was the stick... that cursed stick... with it's omen forever scarred into it's history.