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.

Honk If You Love Your Kids

Parents lie.  I’m not talking about those little Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, go-to-sleep-or-Dora-will-get-cancer-like-grandma-and-die lies that they tell their kids.  I’m talking about those supersize whopper lies they tell the rest of us.

Let’s click pause for a moment — just for the disclaimer.  I like kids.  I’m of an age where pretty much anything under three feet tall is basket-full-of-puppies cute with a double shot of “Isn’t that precious?” on the side.  I think kids are wonderful little creatures, mainly because I don’t own any.  Remember this — ‘cause it’s gonna get ugly.

Talk to any parent and, before you can get to politics, religion or celebrities, they will wheel into this sunny story about how having children and raising them is the most wonderful experience since Mary Magdalene looked into the face of Jesus.  What a load of crap!  Anybody who’s ever been around children knows that kids — all kids — are self-absorbed little savages.  Turning them into adults is a full-time gauntlet of soul-eating persistence that would make Job himself learn the words to “Losing My Religion.”  And that’s just until they’re old enough to go to kindergarten.  After that, it gets even harder.  So why do parents lie about it?  They have to.  Who in their right mind would admit that their offspring are whelps of Satan?  After all, it’s mom and dad’s DNA that produced these little demons.

The problem is people (before they are parents) think that those cute little critters in the Huggies™ commercials are children.  They’re not.  I don’t know what they are — munchkins? mutants? cleaned-up leprechauns?  I’m not sure, but they’re not kids.  Kids are nasty little sticky things who leak from every orifice, make the most ungodly noises at the most inappropriate times, and have no respect for time or space or private property.  However, once the consenting adults have made this first mistake, there is no turning back.

It starts with “We’re pregnant.”  That’s the first lie.  We are not pregnant; she is.  Dad’s just along for the ride.  Eight months from now, he’s going to be lying on the sofa, drinking a beer and watching the ballgame while mommy dearest is spending her afternoon getting the hell kicked out of her bladder by Mr. Restless who’s getting tired of solitary confinement.  The only shared experience parents are having at this point is the growing apprehension that that anonymous ultrasound image has just stamped “Cancelled” on casual sex, forever.

Once babies are born, they become Mother Nature’s most efficient food processer.  These are not the cuddly-wuddly little Churchills you see swaddled-up on Facebook.  These are ravenous, cavernous creatures who never sleep for more than ten minutes at a time and can turn any amount of liquid into the most godawful semi-solids known to exist in the solar system – and that includes the sulphurous lava pits on Venus.  You might see their sleeping little cherub faces, but the parents know they didn’t go quietly.  They passed out after a half hour screaming session and a round of gluttony that would do Henry VIII proud.  But parents never mention that — and this is the second lie.  Want to prove it?  Just threaten to wake the little angel up.  You’ll never see such headlong panic short of announcing they’ve just released Charles Manson and he’s moving in next door.

Once parents get past the second lie, it just gets easier and easier.  Pretty soon, every time they open their mouths about their kids, they’re putting Pinocchio to shame.  Personally, I don’t believe anything a parent says about their children, at all – ever — even if the kid is 57 and signing the papers to put the old man away.  But if you want some serious grins, check out the affirmations moms and dads are plastering all over the Internet.  “A child is God’s perfect gift to the world”  “Nothing is as precious as a baby’s smile.”  Puh-leeze!  Why not just “Honk if you love your kids?” and get it over with.  Methinks the parents doth protest too much.

Quite frankly I don’t really blame them, though.  If I were handed a sentence of penal servitude to a ungrateful monster who had the manners of a warthog and the morals of a goat, I’d lie too.

Election 2012: How To … Not Lose

It`s an open secret that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans can win the 2012 American presidential election.  Both parties are such damaged goods that nobody beyond the diehards wants anything to do with either of them.  Unfortunately, they both can’t lose.  And remember what happened last time there was a tie?  They had to give Al Gore a Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar just to get that world class whiner to shut up about it.  Meanwhile, the pundits are all stating the obvious and pronouncing that a small percentage of undecided voters in critical swing states and a Cleveland cab driver named Rajinder Gomez will wake up November 6th and hand somebody the keys to unlimited world power.  Not since the days of “Jerry” Ford — who became king of the world on the say-so of Michigan’s 5th district and Richard Nixon — have the needs of so many been pushed around by the whims of so few.   Alas!  If it ‘twere only that simple!  It isn’t.  Thus, with victory no longer an option, how can either party not lose an unwinnable election?  I thought you’d never ask.

I’ll start with the Republicans for no other reason than back in a more civilized time, I was one.  Call it old man nostalgia, but like David Frum, I live in hope of change.  For the GOP, the road to not getting kicked to the curb in November is basically a tricycle of awareness.

First of all, they have to figure out a way to get rid of George W. Bush.  The party handlers are doing a reasonably good job of channeling Ronny Reagan over top the Bushes (pere and fils) but Dubya’s still hanging around Romney’s neck like a Flavor Flav clock.  As an elder statesman, the guy’s an albatross, and, not to mix too many metaphors, he needs to be put out to stud or something.

Next, they have to start talking serious numbers — not that gabillion trillion crap that Ryan trots out every time he’s cornered, but real, everyday down-at-the-Piggly-Wiggly dollars and cents.  Everybody knows that even Congress doesn’t understand money after it gets to a billion.  Those numbers are just too big.  What local people want to hear is what’s in it for them.  The Republicans need to tell people just exactly how much extra folding money tax cuts will put on individual pay cheques.  And for those individuals who aren’t getting pay cheques these days, the GOP needs to specifically explain how there are going to be a lot more of those available in a Republican future.

Finally, the GOP needs to stay away from the cultural wars.  Let’s be honest: Republicans aren’t cool.  Every time they try to be, it just looks lame.  If this were high school, they’d be running the Science Fair and explaining the Latvian Gambit to the Chess Club.  The third wheel on the tricycle is — Don’t Go There – if you do, Jon Stewart, SNL and the girls on The View are going to beat your brains out.  The Republicans need to acknowledge they’re nerds — full stop — and hope that, in the end, everybody remembers to Vote for Pedro.

For the Democrats, keeping the Obamas at 1600 is a Yellow Brick Road of simplicity.  The powers that be need to gather everybody — from Barack on down — and say, “Shut up!  This isn’t rocket surgery or brain science, so don’t get confused.  We have one message — period.  Don’t deviate!  ‘All Republicans are crazy old white men who talk to chairs.’”  If the Dems do this and stay away from the economy, Obama’s drone wars, the leakiest White House since Richard Nixon and foreign policy, they can’t lose.  They need to round up the usual suspects — racism, sexism and homophobia — and play Pin The Tail On The Republican with them.  (Just as an aside, whereas racism and sexism are merely totally screwed-up attitudes homophobia is an actual illness.  Well played, Gay Rights!  Well played!)  This strategy has worked for the Democrats ever since Lyndon Johnson ambushed Barry Goldwater’s presidential ambitions in 1964 with a nuclear attack on that little girl’s daisy*.  Plus, it wouldn’t hurt to throw a few hater remarks around.  For example, Michael Moore (I don’t even have a simile for this guy) has already called the 2010 Republican Congressional victories a “tsunami of hate.”  Yes, I know.  It’s a pretty broad brush (even for Mikey) but labels stick, especially if they’re repeated often enough.  (Who said that?)  The Democrats need to hammer away at just how despicable the Republicans really are…all of them…in their souls…if they even have any.  If they do that, it’s guaranteed: four more years.

As I’ve said before, this is the weirdest election ever but somebody’s got to wi..wi..wi…not lose.

*For those of you who don’t remember 1964 you can see the TV ad here.

Election 2012: Who’s Who

On a scale of one to weird, this has got to be the strangest American election ever — and I’m including 1912, when Teddy Roosevelt decided to be a Bull Moose in a china shop and handed the White House to Woodrow Wilson.  With both National Conventions now over, it’s clear that neither party is all that happy with what they have to work with.  Of course, everybody’s saying the right things and putting on those confident smiles, but I’m pretty sure the backroom boys (they’re still mostly boys) are pulling some heavy all nighters.  Even the media is starting to whine.  The problem is nobody — from the principal candidates on down to the guy fetching the coffee — has a clue what’s going on.  Here’s where we stand, and with less than two months until the American people drop the hammer, it isn’t pretty.

Nobody even knows who the candidates are!

Oddly enough, instead of Obama/Biden versus Romney/Ryan the Democrats seem to have decided to run Barack and Clinton against Mitt Romney and George W. Bush.  FYI, that’s Bill Clinton.  Hillary gave the whole convention thing a miss.  She was on an important diplomatic mission to… where?  Rarotonga, actually.  (Find that on a map!)  The media did some heavy speculating that she had contracted 2016 flu, and they made sure everybody saw her in East Timor, a diplomatically hotter spot than the Cook Islands.  America’s First Couple may be Barack and Michelle, but like it or not, in 2012, the Clintons have some serious coattails.  Husband Bill would like nothing better than to be a bigger part of history on Pennsylvania Avenue, and the only way he can do that is if Obama gets re-elected and Hillary becomes the ranking Democrat — with four years to plan.  Meanwhile, the other democratic vice president, Joe Biden, has been locked in a soundproof chamber for the duration.  The Democrats don’t want him touching anything until sometime after November 7th.  It will be interesting to see who shows up to debate Dubya on October 11th, even though George 43 is actually that black cloud hanging over Romney’s head.

On the other side of the aisle, the Republicans are playing it safe.  They’re sending in The Gipper, Ronald Reagan to gang up on Jimmy Carter – again – and if Paul Ryan can get a few kicks in from the sidelines, so be it.  Their thinking is, “We’ve got to be here anyway, and Mitt is the closest thing to a moderate we can come up with.  Let’s try and convince the American people this is 1980, and we’ve got it made!”  The beauty of this strategy is, if Mitt can pull it out of the fire, yippee ki yay; if not, the Republicans have saved their big guns, Christie, Rubio and, yes, Paul Ryan for 2016 when the Obama magic will be safely back in Chicago — where it belongs.

The simple fact is the big boys (yes, they’re mostly boys, also) in both parties don’t want to fight an election with the guys they’ve got.  What are the Democrats going to say?  In the last four years, we haven’t been able to make a dent in perhaps the biggest crisis in economic history.  In fact, we’ve kinda made it worse.  However, if you let us have at it for another four years, we’ll fix it — using those same tried and true techniques that got us this far.

On the other hand, the Republicans have got some cojones just pointing fingers.  After all, they were in charge when this economic powder keg got lit up.  What are they going to say?  We made the mess.  You guys aren’t cleaning it up fast enough.  Give us another kick at the can.

Either way, both parties would be committing suicide if they didn’t have a few tricks up their sleeves — including switching candidates.

Wednesday: How to Win an Unwinnable Election.