theblogofthehandoftamm

I’ll have more stuff later but, in the meantime, to keep you bastards satisfied, I have this entertaining exchange to set up.

As you will recall, I operated on little sleep following Thursday night’s frolic. I did rather similarly (if less dramatically) on Friday night. By Saturday, I was an extra from Shaun of the Dead. Nonetheless, the family and I went to visit friends in a New York border town which eerily resembles Barter Town from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. No, it doesn’t.

We had a lovely visit but I began to flag before long. I needed a nap after dinner if I was going to be able to drive back to Toronto. Nap I did, for about 30 minutes. This was followed by a little more chit-chat and coffee and jumping jacks and slaps across the face. Much recovered, we said our thank-yous and took our leave.

Reaching the border, we were dismayed to find the line-up was growing long and only longer by the minute. I guess everyone wanted to leave the USA with trunkloads of Thanksgiving Sale shopping and trampled big-box store employees in their trunks. Sensing a dull time of crossing the bridge, my passengers all promptly fell asleep just to taunt me.

We crawled along, bumper to bumper, for the entire duration of Thievery Corporation’s excellent Mirror Conspiracy album and, upon reaching the last cut, I was in front of The Man. He asked where we were from and what we were bringing back with us, to which I replied (truthfully) that we had nothing.

“So your trunk is empty then?” He asked.

“Oh no,” I foolishly (and truthfully) reply. “It’s full up.”

“With what?”

“Um… stuff.” Honestly, this is the best I could come up with. Total zombie brain. If he would have asked me what make of car I was driving, I would have been stumped to call up the right word. We stared blankly at one another for five seconds that felt like 500 (he, I imagine, thinking ‘that can’t be your answer, numbnuts’), before I began stammering something about jackets and school bags and diapers and what-have-you but our Canada Customs agent was already suspicious that I had a trunkload of booty or was a complete idiot. He commanded me to open the trunk for inspection and soon confirmed I was the latter, as I had no commercial goods, purchases, or contraband in my possession.

The ride home was uneventful. Despite my poor command of vocabulary at the crucial moment, I was alert enough to keep children and adults alike safe on the highway. We (or I, more accurately) listened to Saint Etienne’s marvy Finisterre album on the trip, followed by a touch of the Ceeb. Did I go promptly to bed when we got home around 11:30? No, I watched a movie.

My sleep defecit continued to make itself felt until I collapsed into sleep last night at 7:30pm, even before my children. Didn’t get out of bed until 7:00 this morning. This zombie finally concluded his swagger ‘n’ stagger routine. Much to the sure dismay of Mrs. thehandoftamm, I predict the dead may rise up again in their stink and muttering and poor example in the latter days of this week. Stay tuned for updates in the zombie forecast here.

Days go by and no news from thehandoftamm. They’re braying in the streets that I’ve given up after the typical 3-4 months of more regular entries before a blogger loses interest. This is not the case at tbothot, I assure you. What can I tell you of my life?

Let us begin with Thanksgiving weekend. Plan A was to go to the rural retreat and spend a day lakeside. This got switched minutes before packing the car and Plan B became sending my familyoftamm away and me staying in town for working on the house. Working on the house, in my version, means going to the lumber yard and then having the lads over for ale, meat, and ale. And gin. And then going to play music. Playing music while half in the bag sounds terrible. That’s why all the hard-partying rock bands are total phonies. Party during or after the show, not before. There will be no posted audio from the weekend, like I did that other time. Sorry.

The rest of the weekend was unremarkable but I did get my reno work done amidst a lot of sweating out toxins and using the saltiest language possible. I also killed a mouse and that was satisfying in one sense, as I had been tracking that littlepieceofshitmotherfucker for weeks already but my camera was out of town so there’s no blood-soaked evidence with accompanying poetry here. Sorry.

The weekend ended harmoniously and then our civic obligations kicked in. Once everyone was over their turkey hangovers, they were asked to go out and cast ballots for politicians. I guess those turkeys were really weighing people down because more than 40% of the eligible electorate couldn’t be bothered to vote. While I can’t blame them for apathy when our menu of choice was so poor on all fronts, there is still a duty to at least go out and spoil your ballot if everyone is too horrible to contemplate voting for. Only losers don’t bother going to the polls. And, it would seem, other losers actually go to the polls as well. My idiotic countrymen voted in Adolf Harper and his Unprogressive Conservatives again, albeit for another minority mandate. These are the same kind of right wing pigeons that handed the keys over to George W twice. The more people I meet, I become only increasingly convinced that most people are imbeciles. I’m little better, admittedly, so shouldn’t be pointing fingers but come on! The alternatives weren’t very good but THE CONSERVATIVES? I guess there’s some solace to be taken in the knowledge that Little Stephen will throw temper tantrums again and again until he calls another useless, nothing changes election in another 18 months or so. Let’s hope any other party can get their asses together between now and then.

While I’m at it, how about we eliminate parties altogether? You vote in your local representative and then, when they’re all gathered in Ottawa, they elect a PM from amongst themselves. And if that PM is crap (coz the chances are very, very good) then they all vote that person out and try another, because everything has to be done with some kind of non-partisan consensus. Yeah! That’s the way it’s going to work. I take back what I said about me being little better than an imbecile. I’m a certified genius, based on this idea.

Also, the Olympic Games need to work like jury selection: you get notice in the mail that you have four years to train because, baby, unless you can prove why you can’t be available, you’re doing the 100m hurdles at the 2012 games. Start doing laps, tubby.

Speaking of tubby, I joined a gym today. Mrs. Thehandoftamm said if I didn’t lose 20 pounds by Christmas, I was going to be served papers by the lawyer. I offered to lose the weight by cutting off my nuts and giving them to her. She could then make change for my 50 off her ample buttocks. I’m sleeping in the car again for the rest of this week. Nobody can take a joke anymore. Sorry.