Call Me Old Fashioned

Well, it's early December and here we go again. As seems to happen every week for some reason, I had to make my way to the grocery store the other day. We try to be as efficient as possible when it comes to grocery shopping and running errands. We make a list of things we want to eat in the coming week and then if there is any thing else we need at other stores, we try and pick those things up on the same trip. This cuts down on the time we spend running all over town and saves some a bit on the gas budget at the same time. Neither my bride or I like shopping at the best of times anyway so there is also that as well. Instead of heading out to the store three or four times a week we try to do everything in one trip. We still have to go shopping but it's like pulling off a bandage. Just rip it off and be done with it.

On my trip the other day I was bombarded with Christmas music. Every store I went into was blasting the cheerful holiday pap at the weary customers. From what I have gathered, some stores have been doing so for a couple of weeks now. Why? Why must we torture ourselves with this stuff? If I find it hard to put up with on my few trips to the store, how on earth do the employees of the stores put up with it every day for hours on end? I used to work retail. I loved Christmas. Even when I was working. People would come into the store all panicked and sometimes surly, and I took great pride in being nice to them. Sometimes my niceness really pissed them off! I thought it kind of funny, being the season of kindness and giving and all. But while I was on shift, the seasonal cds mysteriously disappeared and then returned when my shift ended.

Now the whole Christmas consumer culture we live in drives me nuts. It's too bad that the whole 'better to give than receive' thing has turned into 'It's better to spend more money than others'. The whole Christmas gift giving scene has become out of control. With the advent of so called 'Black Friday' sales in Canada, it's only going to get worse.

Anyway, as I went to the three stores that I need to visit the other day, I heard the same sappy Christmas song in those three different stores. Why can't we slowly gear up to the full on Christmas tunes? You know, start with one or two an hour early in December and as the month progresses, increase the number of tracks and frequency of play. Then the week before Christmas play however much you want (cause I'm usually done my shopping by December 15 anyway). Perhaps next year we will do all of our Christmas shopping online, because if I hear "The Little Drummer Boy" blasting at me again this century, that little drummer boy might be the one getting 'pa rum pa pum pummelled'. Bah, Humbug!

It’s the ‘80s Fault

Let me start off by saying that I love almost all things '80s. Movies, music, games, and even fashion for the most part. Like most of my friends, I grew into my teens during the '80s and so my life was influenced by the culture of the times.

Do you remember playing Trivial Pursuit till the wee hours? What about listening to the radio for hours in the hopes of hearing your favourite song play without the announcer's voice or a commercial, so that you could tape the song (without having to buy the whole album)? Remember the days before the internet and Cell phones? Did you have a Tandy computer? Intellivision, Atari 2600, Frogger, Pac-Man, Rubix Cube… Ah, the good old days right? For those of us who grew up during those ten years, it seems so.

The other day I was playing some music while we cleaned up the house. My kids love Genesis and a lot of the older music that I grew up with so I was playing some of the hits of the '80s for them. As they asked me what each song title was, I got thinking about mixed tapes. Do you remember the excitement you felt when that special someone made you a mixed tape? They would put songs on it that reminded them of you or had a message in that particular song that they wanted you to pick up on. Or when you made one for someone else? The effort that you put into picking just the right song? Hours spent fast forwarding and rewinding those tapes, in order to get the exact timing between songs. Then carefully printing out the song titles on the label. I get exhausted just thinking about it.

Looking back twenty years on (yes, we are getting old!), this was kind of a strange thing to do. Especially when you look at the titles of some of the songs. Can you imagine if someone from the '80s, time travelled forward to today and had a crush on someone and made a mixed tape (or mixed mp3, or whatever), how strange and disturbing it would be. So in the interests of making my point here is my creepy retrospective mixed tape playlist (and yes, I know 'playlist' is not an '80s term!).

1. Always On My Mind – Pet Shop Boys
   
2. I Want To Know What Love Is – Foreigner
   
3. Why Can't This Be Love – Van Halen
   
4. Every Breath You Take – The Police
   
5. Eye In The Sky – Alan Parson's Project
   
6. Lay Your Hands On Me – Thompson Twins
   
7. Can't Fight This Feeling – REO Speedwagon
   
8. Missing You – John Waite
   
9. Hard Habit To Break – Chicago
   
10. Follow You, Follow Me – Genesis
    
11. Better Be Home Soon – Crowded House
    
12. I Just Died In Your Arms – Cutting Crew
    

Let the stalking begin!

Time After Time

"At the sound of the tone after ten seconds silence, the time will be…" If this rings a bell for you, you are obviously a listener of the longest running show on CBC radio – The National Time Signal. For those of you who have not, or do not listen to the CBC on a regular basis, a little explanation. Every day at 2:00pm, the national broadcaster here in Canada runs this public service so that you can set your clock to the official national time in your time zone. I find this to be one of the funniest things on the radio. Every time I hear that official government voice announce the "At the sound…" intro, I look at whatever clock is near and see how far off I am. From time to time I do change the time on the clock if I see it's more than a few seconds off, but then I wonder why.

As I go through my house I have a clock or time piece of some kind in almost every room. Alarm clocks in the bedrooms, the computer clock, the coffee machine and the stove all have clocks. Most days I have on a wrist watch. Not one of them shows the same time. Why is it so hard to have all of the clocks in the house on the same time? It's like living in some kind of broken time machine. I leave the living room at 1:00pm and enter the kitchen at 12:58pm. Then I go into the bedroom and it's 1:03pm. In the course of the day I must time travel a couple of dozen times. I wonder if I was to set each clock a couple of minutes slower than the previous one and ran through the rooms from the fastest running clock to the slowest, would I age in reverse? Could I travel back in time to change history?

I have long given up trying to set my clocks all to the same time. It's like trying to stay ahead of the laundry or setting the time on a 1980's vintage VCR – impossible. I guess it's good to know that the nice people at the National Research Council here in Canada know what time it really is, because I sure don't.