NOTE: Premises, premises. I’m sure you know this one. I e-mail my buddy “Neelix.” I tell him what’s currently bugging me about culture, pop and the other kinds. Yadda yadda yadda. On with the show.

Hey Neelix!

Before we begin our correspondence, I’d like to take a moment to complain about one of my other friends. You know who I’m talking about. Arlo. I mean, he is worse than you when it comes to responding to my e-mails. About two weeks ago, I knew that his semester at Augustana would be winding down, so I sent him an e-mail just asking him how it’s going. And, in his true fashion, he never responded. For all I know, he died and I missed the funeral or something. He has just ceased to exist to me. So, if you happen to run into Arlo, could you just get him to put a brief message in my guestbook or something, so I know he’s still alive? Thanks.

Anyway, on to my current obsession. I’m currently pouring over the multitude of facts that are available on the Internet about one of my favorite toys growing up, Masters Of The Universe. Of course, to many kids it was just known as He-Man. He-Man rocked! I’ll never forget the very first He-Man toys I got. For Christmas 1982, I got Skeletor, Faker (the evil robotic duplicate of He-Man), and Point Dread & the Talon Fighter. That was just so cool! But, my favorite memory of these toys has to be about a month later. I had come home from school. Mom had cleaned my room. And there, on top of my dresser, she had placed Point Dread, with the Talon Fighter on its perch. In the Talon Fighter was Skeletor at the controls, and Faker in the co-pilot’s seat. It just looked so much like that Golden Idol in the beginning of Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Very cool.

You know, more so than with G.I. Joe, Transformers, or M.A.S.K., it’s Masters Of The Universe where I remember exactly when and where I got each and every toy I had. My absolute favorite one has to be my seventh birthday. Or was it my eighth? But it was my birthday. That year, my birthday happened to fall on a Saturday, so I was naturally up before everyone else to watch my cartoons. I tiptoed out of my room, so as not to wake my brother. I tiptoed past my parents’ bedroom, so I wouldn’t wake them up. I tiptoed through the kitchen. I turned, entered the living room, and came face-to-face with…Castle Greyskull. I had spent so much energy into being quiet that seeing this was a complete shock. I yelped in terror, turned around, and did a tiptoe sprint back to my room where I hid under my covers. I stayed there for about half an hour. Then I heard some rustling from my parents’ room. I poked my head out the door, and saw that my Dad had gotten up. He motioned for me to follow him, and we walked hand-in-hand into the living room. I didn’t just get Castle Greyskull, I also got Battle Armor He-Man, Battle Armor Skeletor, and Mekaneck. And how’s this for a sequel? That Christmas, my uncles failed to talk to each other, so I didn’t get one, but two, Snake Mountains. One uncle took his back. He never got me a replacement gift, though.

I also remember that last Masters Of The Universe toys I got. My last vehicle was Blaster Hawk. My godmother gave that to me for Christmas 1987. Because the disks it shot flew so far, my mother decreed I could only play with it outside. That also ensured I lost the disks faster. The last figure I got was Snout Spout. Remember him? He was the guy with an elephant head, and he shot water out of his trunk. But anyway, my parents’ had returned from my Great Opa’s funeral in Regina. My siblings and I didn’t go because it was May, and my parents weren’t going to pull us out of school for a week. So, when they returned that Friday night, my brother got a Billy Idol tape, and I got Snout Spout. This would have been, what, 1987 as well.

But what distresses me the most is how my love of Masters Of The Universe ended. It was summer of 1988. My interests had fully turned towards Transformers and G.I. Joe, so I decided to sell all my Masters Of The Universe at a garage sale. It all sold. So now, I have none left. Since I simply outgrew my G.I. Joe and Transformers, all that stuff is still lying around. But I have no Masters Of The Universe for me to play with when I get nostalgic. I’ll probably wind up buying Skeletor for $95 on eBay or something like that.

Oh, and for the record, these were all my heroes: Battle Armor He-Man, Prince Adam, Mekaneck, Man-E-Faces, Moss Man, Roboto, and Snout Spout. My villains: Skeletor, Battle Armor Skeletor, Dragon Blaster Skeletor, Faker, and Spikor. I was always distressed at how my villains were outnumbered. But I digress. My birthday’s coming, so if you’ve got $95 to blow at eBay….

But let us turn our attention to something more grown up: Disney animated movies! My sister borrowed Peter Pan and The Jungle Book from one of her friends recently. As I was watching them, it dawned on me. One of the recurring themes in all Disney animated films is the loss of innocense. In Peter Pan, just take a look at Wendy. She willingly goes off to NeverNeverLand with Peter Pan because her father orders her to “grow up.” So, she runs off in a desperate bid to hang on to her youth, and thus innocense. But, at the end, she learns that we must all grow up, and thus willingly kills her innocense. Then, in The Jungle Book, it ends with Mowgli and that girl going off to live together in that village. So, that makes the entire movie one last innocent romp before Mowgli decides to grow up, and enter the human (i.e. adult) world. Loss of innocense all over again. Then, there’s Snow White. Accepting that apple caused her loss of innocense. The Lion King and the death of Simba’s father. The death of Bambi’s mom! Need I say more?

Actually, this analysis frightens me. Reading up on the film American Psycho, apparently the lead character (and the titular psycho) dissects brainless pop songs the way I just analyzed these Disney films. So, does this make me a Canadian Psycho? Like what someone wrote on a message board: “Should we be more worried about the grown men who rent 14 hours worth of porn, or 14 hours worth of Disney cartoons?”

One last thing before I go. I don’t know if you heard, by Bob Homme just died. He will forever be remembered by legions of Canadians as the Friendly Giant. He was 81, and suffering from a long bout of prostate cancer. Actually, there were a lot of interesting facts about him in the paper. Like that other Canadian icon, Mr. Dressup, he was an American. He started The Friendly Giant in 1953 as a radio show in his home state of Wisconsin. CBC brought it to Canada, and TV, in the late 1950’s, and it had a lengthy run until 1985, when CBC pulled the plug. For a long time, the show shared a sound-stage with that other Canadian institution, The National. Bob Homme was not just the show’s star, but the (only) writer, creator, and owner of the show. He would tape 3 shows a day. He even ad-libbed most episodes! Oh, and he got the Order of Canada in 1998.

Bob Homme also had a passion for jazz and swing music, and he spent his retirement years wandering the streets of his hometown of Grafton, Ontario with his clarinet, giving impromptu concerts at the inns and restaurants. So, from now on, look up! Look waaaaaaaaaaay up, because that’s where the Friendly Giant will forever be.

And that’s all! Time to return to my newest obsession: looking for an Intelevision emulator so I can play my favorite Intelevision game of all time: Utopia. Wish me luck!

Mark

So I’m now a card-carrying member of the Alberta Liberal party. Not only that, but I’m the treasurer of the Alberta Liberal Stony Plain constituency. How, you may ask, did this monumental achievement come about? How has one who has traditionally been so neutral in politics arrive at this? Well, it all starts with a boy and a dream. Actually, it just starts with a girl. But what a girl!

14 years ago, my sister reached the ripe old age of 6, and was primed to start the first grade. Now, with all of her kids in school, my mother was starting to feel bored around the house. Face it, there are only so many times you can vacuum the rug. This was the late 80’s, and daytime television had yet to reach the highs it currently experiences. So mom had nothing to do. Fortunately for her, elections were right around the corner, and opportunity was knocking. The school needed a new board trustee, and my mother stepped up to the plate. The campaign was long and vigorous, but she was soon elected to the board of 15 members.

For three years, she served the school with trust and honor. She was unique for a politician. She chose a path of openness and honesty, and people responded to that. Soon, the year of 1989 was upon us, and she was up for re-election. There was another candidate, but he was trounced. And once again, my mother served the board. 1992, and again she was up for election. But, things had changed. By now, the Klein government had taken charge, and education cutbacks were in full swing. The board was downsized from 15 trustees to 7. By sheer luck, and a good resume, mom was appointed to the interim board. When that election rolled around in 1992, and with the re-drawn boundaries, my mother was running in what was the geographically-largest constituency. And she got in by acclimation.

1995. Again, she got in by acclimation. And, she became the board chair. A slightly larger salary, and an office. I think this would be a good time to mention that the Parkland School Division #70 School Board is the lowest-paid school board in the Province of Alberta. It’s also the most effective. Mom’s got the statistics to back that up somewhere around here. But I digress. The present day is coming up.

1998. At long last, my mother had some competition! Some upper-middle class snob wanted to put in a bus line so he could send his kid to a “better” school. So, he ran against my mom. The fall of 1998 also saw my disastrous campaign for VP External at Augustana University. That was fun. Every night, we would call each other up and bounce campaign strategies off of each other. We even used the same slogan. She was “a parent who cares,” I was “a student who cares.” She won by a landslide. I lost by a landslide. This makes me wonder about the next generation of voters, and how the good old approach of getting out there and campaigning your ass off appears to be giving way to the “Rob Nichols Approach:” sit on your ass and let others do the work. But again, I digress.

And now we have arrived in the year 2000. Around January was when the phone calls began. The last provincial election was in 1997, so we are now entering the period where Ralph Klein can call an election any minute now. So, the Liberals are getting their troops in place. The Alberta Liberal Party started calling our house at all hours of the day. They needed a candidate for this area, and since my mother is so well known and loved through her school board activities, she was their first choice. With this Bill 11 crap going forward, the Liberals think that they can form the next government, and with this area being a traditional Tory stronghold, they needed someone with the presence to go toe-to-toe with our longtime Tory MLA. So they started calling Mom.

At first, Mom was a bit apprehensive to start pursing the nomination. There’s currently a big scandal going on in the school board concerning French Immersion, and she’s just about had it with politics. But we, her family, knew she had the right stuff to go for it. And so we started telling her that she should go for it. Word soon got leaked to the public that she was being wooed by the Liberals, and she was overwhelmed with public support to go for it. So, when the Liberals called again, she said yes.

With that done, the president of the Liberal Constituency, whom I shall refer to now and forever in these columns as “Retired Farmer Guy,” started calling. It was time to put in place the board of directors for the 2000 Stony Plain Liberal Constituency. Since my Dad has this job-thing that keeps him busy, and my sister has shown no political aspirations whatsoever, Mom asked me to be the Treasurer; just so there would be someone she knows on the board. And to her, I said those words that have gotten me in so much trouble in the past: “Sure! Why not? Sounds like fun!” So, back on April 18, the Stony Plain Liberal Constituency had their annual general meeting, I became Treasurer, and Mom announced that she would be seeking the Liberal nomination.

The date my mother is currently worried about is May 29. That’s the big Liberal convention where she runs for the Liberal nomination. Only members of the Liberal party can vote. And so I bought a membership in the Alberta Liberals.

And that’s whey I’m now a card-carrying member of the Alberta Liberal Party. I know, I’m sure you were hoping that it would be for some noble purpose, like showing my opposition to Bill 11, protesting the years of education cuts that Klein has made, or just because this province’s provincial park program is going down the tubes. Nope. I did for one simple reason. To show my mother that I’m behind her. And if this results in me being roped into a volunteer position for the next few years, that always looks good on a resume.

It’s time for my true selfishness to show. It should be mentioned that I’m not doing this to completely support my mother. Oh no! She has also let it slip several times in the past that I would be an ideal Executive Assistant for her, should she get elected. So another reason as to why I’m doing all this is in the hopes that, after the next election, I’ll be the Executive Assistant to the MLA, and on my way to a fine political career myself. God, I’m a bastard!

The Federation will not interfere in the development of an alien culture.
— Starfleet General Order 1, a.k.a. the Prime Directive

This is something that’s been brewing in me for a while now, and I’ve just got to let it out. I really don’t like my sister’s boyfriend. I think he’s scum. I think my sister can do better. And I don’t know why she wastes her time with him. My problem is, I don’t dare express these feelings.

Let me give you a brief history of their relationship. It all started way back in the summer of ’97. My sister had a summer job pumping gas. He came in one day to fill up. He asked her out. They went out. They started dating. They became an item. It wasn’t long before she was back in school. He doesn’t go to school, being the same age as myself. My family and I soon started finding him a bit odd. Firstly, he refused to ever go to my sister’s school and meet her friends. In fact, he wanted her to quit hanging out with them altogether. Soon, he wanted her to quit the basketball team. He felt that a basketball uniform was too revealing. It was here that I wanted to say something, but I soon got my wrist slapped for that. More on that later.

So, they continued dating. If you consider him inviting my sister over every Saturday night to watch movies with his 3 buddies to be dating. He seemed somewhat controlling in my sister’s life. Whenever my sister spent a day with her friends, he had to hide it from him or face the consequences. In the summer of ’98, when my sister wanted to get a summer job, that sparked off another fight with him. You know, a good ol’ “no woman of mine is going to work” kind of argument. But, she won that one, and got a job. When my sister wanted to backpack across Europe this summer, that was another battle. He did not want her doing that. But she went. She called him everyday, but she went.

At this point, you are probably wondering why he didn’t go to Europe with my sister. Well, he believes that there is no reason ever to leave Entwistle. He thinks we’ve got it all here! That, and he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t like to stray too far from his family. He was in therapy for a while, and his therapist recommended that he should move out of his parents’ house. So, he moved into a shack right behind his parents’ house. His parents finally bought him a house here in town, and that’s where he lives. Oh, and he quit therapy after two weeks because he thought he was feeling better.

Actually, he’s had quite a weird relationship with doctors. When he and my sister first started dating, he was an apprenticing millwright. But, it was hard work for him, and he was constantly complaining of back problems. Every two weeks, he was visiting a doctor in Edmonton to see about these back problems. Soon, we started looking at his schedule. These back problems tended to flare up around every payday. He would call in sick around every payday. And his doctor’s office was located rather close to West Edmonton Mall. Now, I may be jumping to conclusions, but it makes you wonder. Oh, he’s not an apprenticing millwright anymore. Now he works for his dad.

This leads into another one of his frequent complaints: weird family things. For example, my family likes to get together at Thanksgiving and have a big turkey dinner. He calls that a “weird family thing.” When we were kids growing up, we would occasionally go into the city for a day, have dinner in a fancy restaurant, and go see a movie. When he found out about that, he branded it a “weird family thing.” So let me get this straight. He works for his dad, only moved out when his parents bought him a house, thinks the sun rises and sets by command of his mother, but when my brother & his family come up for the weekend, it’s a “weird family thing.” I think there’s a flaw in his logic.

Speaking of flawed logic, he was home schooled. Enough said.

Even more so than me, he is highly susceptible to fads. But, we carry this weakness to different extremes. For example, I’m currently into Pokémon. This drives me to watch the cartoon, and read a few websites. When he was into mountain biking, he had to run out and spend $5000 on a new bike, which spent most of the summer forgotten in our garage. When he hits a hobby, he spends a lot of money, and he’s into it short-term. And, this has encouraged my sister to spend lavishly on him. Back in January, my sister spent a few thousand dollars on a ski trip for his birthday.

And that brings us to present day. Shortly after they returned from that trip, they broke up. For about the last year, they were fighting a lot, and during this ski trip, they finally decided to end it. I was ecstatic. At long last, it was over! A week later, she was hanging out with him. She was spending a lot of time over at his house. I finally asked her what was going on. She said that they broke up on good terms, and that they managed to remain friends, and it’s not her fault if I can’t understand that. Well, for friends, they sure fight a lot. I don’t think I ever made my friends cry as much as he makes her cry. Since the time they’ve been spending together has continuously grown, I’m assuming that they are back together. And still, I can’t say anything.

Why have I been silent all this time? It’s like this. Way back in the fall of ’97, when they were first dating, and he started laying down the you-can’t-hang-out-with-your-old-friends act, both myself and my parents started voicing our concerns. We were quite vocal. When I came home from college for Christmas, my parents pulled me aside. Apparently, all of our concerns (and my open hatred) were having kind of a Romeo and Juliet effect. The more we disagreed with her, the more she was shutting us out. And my parents wanted her home for Christmas. So, they told me to keep my mouth shut, and we hoped that soon she would see he was wrong for her and dump him. And I’ve been silent ever since. For 2.5 years, I’ve been silent. I never expected the consequence of this. Not only has my dislike for him just been brewing for 2.5 years, but my silence has made him like me. He likes me. Not only does it make my blood boil when looks at me and says “Hey, buddy,” but it makes me feel like the most duplicitous two-faced bastard on the face of the planet. And all because, 2.5 years ago, my parents laid down the prime directive.

Non-interference. It’s a bitch. From day 1, about 75% of their calls to each other have resulted in her breaking down in tears. Now, I’ve never been in a relationship, but I’m sure that one of the requirements of being a good boyfriend is not making your girlfriend cry on a weekly basis. I just don’t know how my sister puts up with it. My sister has begun openly considering going to NAIT in the fall and taking photography. I wonder what kind of toll that will have on their relationship.

Through the time that the Prime Directive has been in effect in Starfleet, a precedent has been set. The whole key is involvement. It just basically states that you will not get involved. But, precedent states that when one of the parties turns to you and asks for help, you are no longer involved. The Prime Directive no longer applies. And for years, I’ve been wondering if I should interpret my sister’s tears as a call for help. I want to help her. I just don’t know how.

Who out there has seen The Shawshank Redemption? One of the finer films ever made. Anyway, in the film there’s this character whose name escapes me at the moment. He was sent to prison when he was just a kid, and spent his whole life there. In his 70’s, he finally makes parole, and gets himself a fine job bagging groceries. But, it’s not long before he hangs himself. When word gets back to his friends still in prison, they speculate as to why he killed himself. The best explanation they come up with is that when you are in prison for so long, the walls become security. You become used to the rigid order day in and day out, and when you are finally freed, the lack of order gets to you, and you’d do anything to get it back. The prisoners of Shawshank Prison called that “being institutionalized.”

Shortly after I saw The Shawshank Redemption, I went back to Augustana to visit some old friends. There, I began to see how college life can be like a prison. You get up, march off to the cafeteria for breakfast, the off to your regimented classes for the morning, until lunch time rolls around. Then, the same thing happens for the afternoon. After supper, you’ve got your free time, which is generally spent in your dorm room studying. As much as people want to get rid of that order and head out into the real world, they know how scary it is out there. That’s where you get the people who take seven years for a three year program. All they look forward to is getting out.

And now, I find myself in a fine job bagging groceries.

Close to a year’s worth of job hunting, and this is all I get. Bagging groceries. And part time to boot. It’s not so bad. Instead of spending my afternoons watching Jerry Springer and Batman: The Animated Series, I spend it making sure bread doesn’t squished at the bottom of a shopping cart. And, since I’m on my feet for 5 hours out of the day now, I think I’ve begun to lose weight. I’ll be back to my old slim self in no time (although, I haven’t been my old slim self since I was 9). But at least I’m making $6.25 an hour. I’ll be rolling in it come June, when it’s time to start paying my student loans.

And the people I work with are OK. There’s my boss. She seems to be a delightful person. I’ve only been working for about two weeks now, but she strikes me as being one of these people who would rather be your friend than your boss. I’ve never understood that kind of managerial style, because it hurts more when you screw up and your boss comes down on you. Actually, what has me afraid is, now that I’ve been working for a couple weeks, she actually looked over my resume. Word is once again getting out that I have a B.Sc. Last time I had a job and my co-workers found out I was going for a B.Sc., I was turned into Mr. Wizard. I have no desire to be Mr. Wizard again.

Besides my boss, I have two groups of co-workers. First, we have “the elders.” Since I usually work afternoon shifts, these are the people I tend to be working with most of the time. They are a group of grandmotherly ladies, who are just killing time until the C.P.P. kicks in. They are nice, and tend to be tolerant with a new guy like me, just learning the ropes. The second group I have dubbed “the punk-ass teenagers.” These are high schoolers who are doing this as their after-school jobs. They tend to come in around 3 or 4 o’clock, just as my shift is ending. The female punk-ass teenagers seem to be nice enough, but its the men who make my spider-sense tingle. Like every bully who ever beat the crap out of me, they tend to look down their nose at me. I think that they’re just pre-occupied with sizing up the new rooster in the henhouse. Oh, to have raging hormones again!

But if this job is giving me one thing, it’s an appreciation for the life of a super-hero. Very often, it’ll get quite busy, and all 5 tills will be open. One bagger between 5 tills. Oh, how is one supposed to assess where one is needed? Do I go to the till where there are 9 people lined up with baskets? Or the one where there are two full carts? Just when I’ve settled in, I’ll here that cry from a cashier: “Mark! This person needs help out to his/her car!” So, I’ve got to drop everything and help that person out to their car. I come back in, and once again my dilemma begins. Which till gets a bagger, and which doesn’t? Which mother will be stuck bagging her own groceries? Who will live, and who will die? How does Superman do it?

This, in a nutshell, is my job. Whee. Once again, I find myself longing for order. How much so? Well, my sister was looking at her post-secondary options a month or so ago, and left the NAIT calendar lying around. I picked it, and flipped through it. I stopped on, of all things, broadcasting courses. Once again, I briefly flirted with the idea of becoming the Scarecrow professionally. Should I do it? Should I once again become a dark avenger of the airwaves, only this time do it for money? Doesn’t that make me a sell-out?

I feel that this is good for me. Someone once said that before you know who you are, you must first know who you are not. I’m sure a few months of doing something I don’t want to do will help me decide what I want to do a whole lot quicker. Near the end of The Shawshank Redemption, we find Red, one of our main characters, in the exact same situation. A lifer, in his 70’s, finally out on parole. He finds himself in the noble profession of bagging groceries. And, if the irony isn’t enough, he’s living in the exact same place where his friend hanged himself. For a moment, Red ponders going down the same path that his friend went down. But then he remembers that his friend Andy, who escaped a few years earlier, hid a message for him. Red seeks out this message, and finds that it’s an invitation, inviting him to join Andy in Mexico. So, Red boards a bus, and heads to Mexico. As life progresses, I hope I can be like Red. Freedom shouldn’t be a curse. If I don’t like bagging groceries, I can do something else, and I’ve already begun formulating “the plan.” There’s one thing I know for sure, and that is that bagging groceries is only a beginning.