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.

Independence Day — 2015

statue-of-libertyHappy Independence Day, America.  Today, 239 years ago you told King George III to take a hike and it seems to have worked out pretty well for you.  Here are the answers to yesterday’s trivia questions.

1 — How many states are there in the United States of America?  (Hint: it isn’t 50)

There are actually only 46 states — Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts are Commonwealths

2 — How many presidents were born in Kentucky?

Two — Abraham Lincoln, as everybody knows, and Jefferson Davis, who was President of the Confederate States of America at around the same time.

3 — Legally, the president of the United States must be born in the United States.  However, there is no legal requirement that he (or she) must live, die or be buried there.  So, how many ex-presidents (note the plural) are not buried in the United States?  And which ones are they?

There are four ex-presidents who are not buried in the United States.  They are Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.

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HAPPY 4TH OF JULY

4th Of July: Trivia and More

independenceTomorrow is the 4th of July, Independence Day in America.  Here are a few things you might not know about the Land of Milk and Money.

There are more New Yorker Magazine subscribers outside the city of New York than in it, and a lot of them are from that wannabe poser, L.A.

There are 2.2 million farms in America.  However, at its peak of popularity, over 26 million Americans played Zynga’s Farmville every day.  Think about it!  America is so OMG rich that tons more people can play at being farmers than actually have to work on farms.

From space, the brightest thing on Earth is Las Vegas, Nevada which is also the most watched place on Earth with more CCTV cameras per capita than any other city — including Moscow, London and Beijing.

Atheists in America are in big trouble.  According to the legal basis of their system, the Declaration of Independence, Americans are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” notably “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Therefore, strictly speaking, if you don’t believe in God, those legal rights do not exist.

Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber are the same guy — and he might be a Canadian!

miley

If all the Kardashian sisters were laid end to end on YouTube, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.

The larger seller of retail women’s clothing in America is Mattel.  Man, that Barbie’s got it all!

America is very oddly shaped.  Reno, Nevada is actually further west than Los Angeles, California; Detroit, Michigan is north of Windsor, Ontario, Canada and Buffalo, New York is further east than Fort Lauderdale, Florida which is on the Atlantic Ocean.

And finally, three trivia questions guaranteed to win you drinks at the 4th of July Barbecue.  As always, the honor system applies — no Google.  I’ll give you the answers tomorrow on a special Independence Day post.  Good Luck!

1 — How many states are there in the United States of America?  (Hint: it isn’t 50)

2 — How many presidents were born in Kentucky?

3 — Legally, the president of the United States must be born in the United States.  However, there is no legal requirement that he (or she) must live, die or be buried there.  So, how many ex-presidents (note the plural) are not buried in the United States?  And which ones are they?

Barbeque: The Last Macho

cavemanIt’s an unfortunate truth, but barbeque is the last allowable macho in North America.  It’s the one remaining place where any man still capable of gripping a pair of tongs can fulfill his genetic imperative without fear of pissing somebody off.   Ever since sensitive became the new orange, masculine has been fighting a losing battle for its very existence and the backyard barbeque is the Alamo.  It’s a sad commentary, but if the eulogy for the manly art of being a man ever comes, it’s going to be written in hotdogs and hamburger patties.  You’ve come a long way, buddy!

Personally, I’m not a barbeque kinda guy.  It almost makes me weep to see a beautiful cut of meat thrown into a crematorium, flipped around, pushed around and slathered with bottled brown something that looks and tasted like mesquite flavoured mud.  Cows aren’t exactly noble beasts, but they do deserve better than that.  Besides, trying to saw my way through shoe leather with a plastic knife, while balancing a paper plate that insists on sliding the potato salad into my crotch, is not my idea of a good time.  Give me tables, chairs, china and candlelight anytime.

However, barbeque isn’t actually about food.  It’s about the need men have to shape their environment, harness fire to do their bidding and manipulate tools.  It was born in the primeval when ability and accomplishment accounted for something — namely, survival.  Like it or not, a big part of how we got here depended on male strength and aggression that let our species eat better than the species who were trying to eat us.  And even though we no longer value linear thinking, for 40 some millennia, it served us well.

Today, in general, ordinary men don’t see that kind of action.  They watch it on television.  Male aggression is frowned upon, and the emotional strength which accompanies it is considered a debilitating weakness.  Vulnerability is the watchword—which, ironically, in the great pissing contest of history, would have got us all killed.

Thus, men, now useless for killing the food and dragging it home, have been relegated to the summer patio where, at least, they’re encouraged to cook it.  And they do this with all the masculine genetic programming at their disposal: secret strategies, methodical planning and specialized tools.  It’s amazing how the slightest sniff of barbeque coals can turn the most oh-so-sensitive man into a Cro-Magnon, brandishing his weapons and bragging on the quality of his feast.  “Me. Meat. You. Eat.”  And it’s perfectly acceptable because, here in the 21st century, it’s the only place left where ordinary men are allowed to be men.  It might not be the hunt, but it’s the next best thing.