Opinions?!?!? More Opinions here!

I have loads and loads of opinions on a rapidly growing list of topics. And it seems that others are at least vaguely interested in hearing about them, or at least until their bus comes or they need to flee. I quite enjoy their fleeing and have some opinions on it as well, but that will have to wait until a future date. The opinions you are about to read are mine and mine alone - hands off! No one is paying me to think these things and I've asked a lot of people! Not even a nickel! Anyways, thanks for asking, I love to share, hope these don't cause you to lose any sleep, and if they do, less then you are alreayd losing. I hope you enjoy!

My take on...


...defrosting freezers: Defrosting freezers is not my favourite task, nor is it my least favourite. In order to help me figure out exactly where it ranks in my hierarchy of tasks, I spent hours ranking and re-ranking all tasks using a complicated 25-point scale using 15 different criteria. It turns out, defrosting freezers is my 45th favourite task out of 75 household tasks. Not bad - the result seems mostly accurate. So, it did take me hours upon hours determining the criteria and the relative weighting of the different items involved and the outcome was good, yet something about this just didn't satisfy me. I guess I think that if I put a little more effort in defrosting freezers could move up the rankings and maybe even crack the top 30. So, with this new-found motivation in hand (yes, I did write the motivational words down and am currently holding them in my left hand) I have decided to attack the freezer with a new found gusto and passion that I had previously reserved for vacuuming and removing drier lint. Let's see what else do I have to say about defrosting freezers...as I child I often had a dream where I mysteriously became completely filled with an icy buildup and just when it seemed that all hope was lost and I was done for, a fairy godmother, in the shape of my family's stand-alone freezer, came out of nowhere in the blink of an eye (a disorder I struggled with as a child and after seeing specialist after specialist found that a homemade concoction of super glue, tofu and cat hair miraculously cured) and defrosted me. That fairy "freezer" and I grew quite close in these dreams and spent so much amazing time together floating through the sky, buying and storing ice cream, reciting poetry (mostly coming from me, she was a freezer after all). Initially my parents were quite supportive of my growing love of dreaming, and even of my odd fixation with our freezer (at one point my entire room was filled with pieces of "freezer" art that, while quite good for a boy of 10, started to raise eyebrows among our family friends (although with some it was hard to tell from a distance if they were raised as their eyebrows were quite blond and fair). My parents tried hard not to worry but overtime they grew quite concerned, especially when I stopped seeing my friends and I had quit baseball and violin practice (funny story - I only signed up for violin practice as a means to see this pretty girl from school who was also studying violin and my parents only signed me up for lessons at the same time as this pretty girl as a means to expose me to violins hoping that when it came time to choose, I would choose the violin as it would never hit puberty and fall in love with the star quarterback only to later on recognize and grow enamoured with my non-traditional good looks only to decide to disappear on a trip to get in touch with her inner self returning unannounced months later with dreadlocks and a new cat, wearing a sari and going by a new, completely unpronounceable 5 syllable name. Little did my parents nor I know at the time, but we were both mistaken as the girl was actually a violin all along and thus, never went through puberty at all. I have had sort of a thing for string instruments ever since) and started demanding to return to the fairy freezer in my dreams - saying things like "I love her, the freezer, I love her", "only she can melt the ice inside me" and "only with her, in my dreams, do I feel truly awake, and yes, I do understand that that makes little to no sense at all, as I am aware I only communicate with her in my dreams and I am not awake when that is happening and that communication with a freezer does sound a bit off-the-wall or actually, who am I kidding, completely off-the-wall but that is the way it is with love sometimes especially first love and even more so when that first love takes place in a dream between a boy and an appliance that doesn't usually have thoughts or feelings or sentience in almost any one else's fantasies or at least not ones that I've been exposed to and yes, I've been meaning to expose myself to a wider-variety of fantasies, but I've been busy" (I was saying that ALL the time - which was tough - it took a few days to write it, a few more days to rehearse and then a few more days of work with an acting coach I hired to help with the delivery). In the end, my parents "cured" me by tricking me into thinking we were going on vacation to Mexico and instead they trapped me inside a large garbage bag (not a big surprise as that was how we left the house on a daily basis until I was 15), threw me in the trunk (I started to get a little suspicious at this point as my mother only put things in the trunk that needed to see a therapist - me, her friend Hilda...and that's about it to this point), and brought me to this amazing doctor who not only helped me get over my love of escaping to a dream to be with a freezer but also paid me to defrost her freezer repeatedly over a period of 6 months sort of like a desentization exercise that worked, but only too well as I started dreaming constantly about defrosting freezers at my therapist home for little to no financial gain but with a new-found mental clarity that really did wonders for my job performance, if I do say so myself.

...desks: I am sitting at a desk right now and spend a good portion of my day sitting in front of them. Therefore, you would think I had a particular affinity towards them considering my proximity. You could not be further from the truth and I have to question why you are spending any time thinking about this. It just seems odd and a bit worrisome - what goes on between the desks in my life and me is my business and not yours. That's right - it is my failing, struggling, about-to-go-bankrupt-causing-me-to-sell-my-collection-of-rare-stamp-albums-that-are-completely-empty-of-stamps-but-the-albums-wow-those-amazing-albums business of me sitting behind a desk (I am a bit confused where to sit - behind the desk? in front of the desk? under the desk? and that confusion could be a major part of the problem with the business in both the first place and every place after that as well). Why I thought anyone would pay me money to solely sit at a desk I don't know. I think it comes from my childhood when the sound on the TV was broken and I used to watch this show where a bunch of people worked in an office and spent most of their time sitting at desks and, since I couldn't hear anything, and was distracted with my game where the Barbies enslave the action figures and force them to forge for wild vegetables while also operating a fully functional organic dairy farm, I figured that all these characters did for work was sit behind a desk and get paid. Oh, how I fantasized that one day I could do that too and I tried and aside from a few donations from friends who were looking for creative ways to write-off medium amounts of money for tax purposes (they tried to say that giving me money for my business was akin to donating money to charity in that I was clearly in need of some help and that it felt like giving money to charity) I made nothing because, as I came to realize over time, why would I. I was just sitting at a desk and pushing papers around and typing aimlessly on the keyboard (you can keep your snide and derisive comments about how that is essentially all I am doing right now as I write this to yourself, unless they are well written and then please send them my way as I love a good snippet of snide and derisive non-fiction from time to time unless it is about me, but if it is well written as surmised, then I am willing to make an exception especially if you consider donating to my charity...I mean business. It sort of falls in a gray area) day-after-day and wondering when the money would start pouring in (I don't quite understand how owners pay employees - I think based on the expression, that money is somehow poured possibly from an extra-large pitcher of sorts or possibly pouring is an analogy that I am feigning understanding of mostly to increase my usage of the word feigning and, if it is only an analogy, then in that case I hope you are enjoying my pouring these words into your brain while also pouring some tea into my mouth and contemplating pouring myself into bed early tonight as I am tired (let's hope I'm not so tired that I pour the wrong thing into the wrong place or else it will be quite hard to explain to my wife why the pillows smell of tea and my blog is in my mouth and I am attempting to act out a scene where I pour my whole body onto your brain which should be a comedy but might play more as a melodrama.

...elections: Elections are a shiny example of the wonderful democratic society in which we live and they make me as proud as shiny examples of wonderful things ever do, but I just can't shake the negative feelings and sour after-tastes that elections always bring and leave me with. I guess it all started with the time I ran for student council president. I thought I had put together an air-tight campaign complete with a detailed advertising campaign complete with colourful posters; late-night, campy public access television ads; and easily-memorizable and catchy slogans. I was running on a platform of progressive and aggressive change that was carved from a singular oak tree that used to stand in my neighbour's yard. In my now-infamous election speech I promised more palatable school lunches that addressed not only our nutritional needs but also satisfied as many of our five senses as was affordable under a limited budget, a weekly, no-holds-barred, take-no-or-as-few-victims-as-possible Q & A with the principal where the real questions could be asked and the truth would be revealed despite how much the truth could potentially damage reputations and school mascots, a much-needed fresh coat of paint that would give the school the illusion of two dimensions, and a highly-calculated and incremental increase in school spirit (as too much all at once can cause nausea.) Of course, I lost. My adversary was an attractive young man who not only could barely string three words together but considered himself lucky when those three words just happened to actually make sense when spoken together. No, he didn't win based on eloquence, he won because he looked good in a tight shirt (in a moment of desperation while campaigning I too went down "the tight shirt road" and only ended up scaring and disgustingly fellow classmates and teachers alike), had an award-winning smile with a set of dimples I briefly contemplated having bronzed and had a unique charm that was hard to put a finger on as it was confounding how it actually worked (my money was on some form of incidental hypnotism). As much as I wanted to believe that the best candidate should win, I just had to face that I could add my name to an infinite list of those well-meaning, better candidates who came up short in a popularity contest and, while annoyed, I also found a way to respect my opponent mostly as a result of an evening of chocolate long johns. In the end, the school didn't get the president that would have run the council in the most fiscally responsible way, but instead they got the one they needed at this point in time: an overly-attractive (verging on an embarrassment of riches), caveman-like (he lived briefly I a cave for reasons that have never become obvious to anyone), and tight-shirt wearing president who inspired all of us in ways that were both unpredictable and often dangerous both internally and psychologically. But it is true what they say, we should be so happy we have the right and power to choose our elected officials and that a dictatorship would always be infinitely worse unless I was the dictator. I know it is controversial to say, but I am supremely confident that I would be a spectacularly benevolent dictator who would not knowingly abuse my power and would not only allow my subjects the freedom of expression and to gather but they would also have a strictly enforced casual Friday once a month.

...dew: Say what now? Dew? You mean the moisture in the morning? How do I state my opinion on that? I mean I know I am attempting to be your go-to guy for opinions on a wide variety of topics and I don't want you to leave empty "handed", but dew? Who is choosing these topics anyhow? Now, if the person typing it in just got distracted and forgot to finish the topic, then it could make sense, because who has an opinion on dew? Maybe they were in the midst of typing Dewer's and wanted me to give my opinion on a particular brand of whiskey, which would be hard to do as I am very light drinker and much of my writing on Dewer's would be illegally copied from a variety of websites, making the opinions not transparently not my own. And, if I did drink copious amounts of whiskey, I wouldn't want to admit that as I am attempting to be a role model to the youth of today and whiskey drinking - no offense to the people are into it - I mean, kudos to you - but being really into Dewer's would be bad for my image and my public persona as someone who is squeaky clean (despite my often unshaven look and the fact that most of the squeaking is coming from my new pair of sneakers that are super loud and make it really hard to sneak up on anyone which I don't usually do and am not really a fan of - just saying that it eliminates that even as an option and I love having as many options possible available to me all of the time including, but not limited to, sneaking up on people with the intent of offering them a smoothie, the ability to purchase stocks and bonds while giving the appearance that I belong on the trading floor (probably need to have the floor repainted first so that we don't clash), and attending community pottery classes even though I am like a bull in a china shop or at least I dress like one. Maybe the topic-choosers got cut off on the way to typing Dewey and they wanted me to give a 5000-expose on the man behind the Dewey Decimal System which I understand was quite controversial at the time and it somehow beat out the significantly more popular, yet totally numerically random, Hayfield System that was more abstract and relied on the book searcher's ability to "sense" where the book was. People were very against the exacting precision of Dewey and his system and only gave in when the library closed for the long weekend and everyone went home after realizing that what everyone thought was Hayfield was just an old coat tossed on a pile of books placed in a very poorly lit corner of the library. I also thought they could have been typing DeWo, which is our group's nickname for our buddy Derek Wolters who is one crazy dude that I am happy to share my unabridged opinions on but I'd like to keep them off the record because, as I said, he is one crazy dude and in the off chance that he can not only read, but find a way to search the internet and find this blog and this specific piece of writing and either skim or scroll down to this point, then I just can't take that chance. He is all sorts of bonkers - like one time he literally tried to lick the hair of my head. He licked and licked and was actually able to remove a few strands of hair and only gave up because his imaginary phone rang reminding him of his real dentist appointment. This left us all quite confused and wondered if at some point later on his fake dentist would give him a real phone call just to keep things balanced. Anyways, let's just assume "dew" was the actual topic. Like am I supposed to be "for" or "against" it or arguing that it is either great and beneficial or dark and defiant? I am all for assigning human emotions, personality traits and motivations to inanimate objects and I will continue doing that despite the public outcry - it is also highly possible they are crying about something else. Maybe it isn't dew - I mean if lots of people are aimlessly crying and running around to and fro, maybe just maybe that explains why my grass is so wet. I will say that I strongly dislike tossing on my flip flops to water the arden in the morning and getting my feet soaked with dew and I also can't stand going for a run on the field and having my running shoes provide next to no resistance to the very wet grass. I also can't stand how in the morning my totally wet car gives my young, innocent children (I'd say they wouldn't hurt a fly, but that would be wrong on at least 10 occasions - they have a thing for hurting flies and that is probably worth looking into further, just not right now unless I am able to connect it somehow to dew and believe me I am up for the challenge, but am electing not to as it has been so long since I have elected not to do something and it feels like a good moment to do that) the hopes and dreams that it rained last night. They get so cutely excited about the possibility of splashing in puddles and making dams and when we get outside to clear skies and notice that it is only the grossly misleading dew that is almost mocking my adorable, spirited children who actually have a thing for harming many small insects - they aren't just focussed on flies. I'm sorry dew - I just think that making fun, teasing and almost bullying these cute, almost-harmless young ones is totally wrong. Well, look at me, I do have an opinion after all - and I can't believe some of you doubted me.

...exponents: Exponents seem pretty cool at first glance - they are numbers that help other numbers get really big really quickly and that is called exponential growth, which is also pretty cool except when it occurs on my back and then I hate it especially when it itches. Regularly, numbers go up so slowly that those of us who are busy just can't be bothered to hang around and wait for them to "get big already". I mean they are so slow - why can't they just multiply or add faster!?!?! But, exponents on the other hand, they don't have that problem. They aren't hanging out and waiting for anyone and they don't need your help. They are getting big and they are getting big now! You fall asleep and they are all like BOOM! Look at us, we are big now! Now, I respect their ability to grow at rates that we usually link with viruses or bacteria and I am happy for them and everything, but do they need to grow so quickly? Can't they slow down and enjoy the weather? Maybe have a latte? And I may give them a break if I knew why they wanted to be so big? What is their motive? And what are they not telling us? I mean the possibilities are endless as is their destination! I mean, as far as I can tell, they just go and go and go and never stop. Doesn't that bother you? It certainly is freaking me out a fair amount and am I the only one who believe that a law should be passed to put limits on them and how far they can go? They may seem nice and friendly and subservient now, but we have all seen the science fiction movies where the seemingly harmless robots enslave us all! What I have learned from those movies is that something that is harmful today may turn around and try to eliminate me and everyone I know and love tomorrow and that we should treat those robots well all the time, because even though it appears they don't have a grasp or access on human emotions, they seem to be listening and learning all the time and they leap at the first chance to use that poor treatment against us. Now, I know that exponents aren't the same as robots, but shouldn't we treat them well, just in case they somehow become sentient? I don't know about you, but I don't want to have to be constantly looking over my shoulder wondering when the previously-harmless superscript number will leap out of the shadows and try to rip my face off. I do treat numbers well and I'm not completely sure how I wouldn't, but I probably should spend more time trying to see things from their perspective. Not too much time as that would be fairly odd, but some time - I can probably spare a few minutes here and there. Another thing - I wonder how they feel about being reduced to superscript and whether they would prefer to be really big - maybe twice the size of the base number. I mean who is doing the heavy lifting here? The base number just sits there, looking pretty, batting their eye lashes and the exponent is making things happen and working up a bit of a sweat. The least we could is give them a larger spot on the marquee or at least use a fancy font. I guess what I'm really saying is that my own relationship with exponents is complicated and has been that way for a very long time. I have tried to embrace them (usually when no one else is around), but I just can't forgive and forget that easily. I hope I can reach a point where I not only feel like I'm able to look them in the eyes (it is also hard to locate their eyes at the best of times), shake their hands (also a problem) and just have a fun, numerical time like good old friends, but I'm not there yet. I'm only human and they are only numbers, and small ones at that, and we should be close, but we are worlds apart.