Author: wdfyfe

Before WD called himself a writer, he worked at a number of different jobs from stacking lumber to interior design. He studied English at UBC and creative writing at ASU where one of his teachers, Rita Dove, taught him the importance of the tale. He has written for radio, magazines and newspapers, but never television. He’s published both fiction and nonfiction in Great Britain and the US. He reads French passably and speaks enough Spanish to get from A to B and find the toilet. He has interviewed John Cleese, Peter Ustinov, Margaret Drabble, Kenneth Branagh and enough other famous people to make him a hopeless name dropper. His not-so-secret passions are history and trivia, and he has never lost a game of Trivial Pursuit — although he did come 4th one drunken Quiz Night at the Uxbridge in Notting Hill. He lives on the Pacific Ocean, although, not close enough to see, so he spends his days looking at a computer screen. It’s a wonderful life and he has only one regret: he can’t type faster.

The War On Dirt

dirtWe are literally cleaning ourselves to death.  Go to any household in the 1st World and you will find a cornucopia of chemical weapons worthy of Saddam Hussein in his heyday.  We’ve got antibacterial sprays, wipes, soaps, foams and a multitude of cleansers — all there to keep us safe from an evil array of nameless germs we’re convinced are waiting to ambush us.  And these aren’t even the dangerous ones like typhus, smallpox or cholera.  No — we’ve gone to all this trouble to try and fight off a runny nose.  (Good luck on that one, BTW)  But the question is does it do any good?  Nope!  In fact, ask any epidemiologist and she’ll tell you all we’re doing is helping Mother Nature cull the herd.  Plus, if we keep this stupidity up, we’re going to get ourselves in some serious trouble.  It isn’t a very complicated process, so here’s the Twitter version.

Antibacterial anything might be effective in the short term and, as the advertisement says, “kills 97% of all germs on contact.”  Yeah, that’s pretty cool!  But what about the other 3% who survived the attack?  Those tough little bastards are still hanging out, waiting for the all-clear signal to mutate and breed.  And guess what?  You just gave them a vaccination.  Suddenly, the next generation of wiggly little uglies aren’t all that worried about the active ingredient in Lysol™ (or anything else, for that matter.)  Now — clean your kitchen counter once a day for a year.  You’ve certainly killed off billions and billions of germs, no doubt — the weakest ones.  Unfortunately, what you have left is a strain of bacteria that’s had 365 cracks at the Immunity Challenge, and they’ve won every one of them.  Basically, you’ve bred a race of ass-kicking bacteria that’s sittin’ there, drinkin’ bleach as if it were red wine.  It simple genetics, folks.

I’m not saying we should go medieval on the world and revert to the dirt of past eras.  That’s just icky.  However, if we don’t lighten up on the chemical warfare, one of these days Mr. and Mrs. Bacteria are going to bring the kids over to play, and they’re not going to knock on the front door; they’re going to kick it in.

Reality TV — The Cameraman

camermanAs I’ve said many times, even though I don’t watch it, I have no philosophical bitch with Reality TV.  It’s TV, so, as the man said “Here we are now: entertain us.”  And presumably, it does.  But have you ever wondered about the cameraman? (Yes, I realize sometimes they’re women, but we all know what we’re talking about.)  He’s the guy who has to do everything the Reality Star does — with one hand holding a camera.  This is nothing special if you’re Keeping up With the Kardashians but in the wild and woolly world of Reality TV, I imagine some gigs are tougher than others.

Ice Road Truckers – The camera follows a group of truck drivers in northern Canada and Alaska — in winter.  I’ve been to northern Canada, and the place is so full of nothing even Google doesn’t go there.  Calling it “tedious” is wildly optimistic.  The cameraman’s job is to film somebody driving a truck, hour after hour, through this white wasteland — on the off chance that something will go wrong.  That anything will go wrong.  Please, God!  Break something!  At kilometre 300, he can’t feel his bum anymore.  At kilometre 600, he’s convinced he’s trapped in The Matrix, and by kilometre 1000, he’s praying for a polar bear to come and eat him.  Nowhere in the history of entertainment has one person so completely wished for disaster to befall another human being than on the set of Ice Road Truckers.

Swamp People — The camera follows a group of ‘hunters” who find and kill alligators.  What possible enticement would convince anybody to go and film that?
Wanted:  Experienced camera person to travel to a disease-invested swamp, get into an itty-bitty boat with a couple of hillbillies, and film them attacking gigantic piss-off alligators.  Good balance an asset.  Lack of imagination a plus.  Malaria, typhus, cholera, hepatitis A, B and C, yellow fever and rabies shots required.  Preference given to orphans and idiots and anybody who hasn’t seen the movie Deliverance.

And the granddaddy of them all:

Deadliest Catch — The camera follows crab fishermen in the Bering Sea — in January.  Commercial fishing is one of the most dangerous occupations on the planet.  People die doing this stuff — frequently — when they’re holding on with both hands.  Imagine standing in the middle of an iceberg-cold ocean, pointing a camera at a 10 metre wave that’s about to drown you, the stupid little boat you’re standing on, and anyone else not smart enough to be on dry land.  What would you be thinking?  “Wow, those four years of film school are really going to pay off now!”

So, even though I don’t watch it, I tip my hat to Reality TV — if only for the person working the camera.  I’d pay money to eyeball that guy.

How Are You Feeling Today?

medicalIn the privacy of our own minds, we’re all hypochondriacs.  Every unusual bump, bruise, ache or pain is a self-diagnosed alarm of our impending doom.  “Death be not proud: I see you there!”  This isn’t weird; it’s perfectly natural.  We all do it because our bodies are such marvellously integrated organisms that when they’re not working perfectly, our brain goes on Red Alert and wants to know why.  We unexpectedly become aware of all the rhythms of our heart, lungs, liver etc. that normally chug along unnoticed while we’re doing other things — like watching TV or reading incredibly interesting blogs.  It’s much the same as being aware of your tongue.  Suddenly, there’s this huge thing in your mouth and you don’t know what to do with it; where to put it, how to keep it from roaming around restlessly or licking your lips.  (You just licked your lips, didn’t you?)

The reason we’re not normally aware of our tongue, or our fingertips or our clavicle (whatever that is) 24/7 is that it would drive us nuts. The brain knows this and shoves all our everyday bodily functions back into the subconscious until they’re needed.  That’s why people don’t remember pain.

Pain is that incredible device that tells us something’s wrong.  We feel it, but it’s primeval.  When we accidentally discover the bread knife is sharp, our brain doesn’t analyze the situation the way it would a beautiful sunset.  We just loudmouth an obscenity (or something less verbal) and drop the knife.  Like breathing, it’s an automatic response.  But, here’s the magic.  After a band-aid and a couple of days, we forget what slicing a finger open feels like — the actual feel of it.  The brain has pushed that nasty business back into our subconscious to protect us.  Otherwise, we’d spend our entire lives howling in remembered pain.

But here’s the other cool bit — and the reason we’re all closet hypochondriacs.  Even though the brain protects us from being consciously overwhelmed by pain, it also subconsciously remembers what pain can and will do to us. So, yeah, at 3 in the morning, chances are good that stomach ache is just the bean burrito we ate at midnight.  However, our friend the brain has to make sure it’s not kidney stones, a ruptured spleen or a burst appendix.  Therefore, it starts chirping away like a canary in a mineshaft.  The trick is we need to remember, it’s 3 in the morning: Google and WebMD are just going to make it worse.