In my city when you’re standing on a darkened street corner in the rain and using a reciprocating saw to cut through the U lock on a bicycle secured to a parking meter… people smile at you as they walk by.

Maybe they found the saw intimidating?

Maybe they thought I would be comfortable riding a girl’s bike?

Because you are quivering with desire for a Friday afternoon recap, here are some things that happened this week:

• I bought mouse poison to deal with the mystery creature (assumed to be a mouse) that likes eating the grains out of my bag of multigrain flour, slowly making it a bag of regular flour. The poison came in large blocks that looked like poorly machined chunks of aquamarine crayon, which seemed to me less than appetizing and unlikely to be effective against presumed mice which turned their noses up at all-natural peanut butter smeared on the trigger pad of a futuristic easy-set plastic trap. I was wrong on the ‘appetizing’ front… the stole the block that I had set out on the kitchen floor and broke into the original package containing the remaining blocks to decimate the supply. The effectiveness still remains in question, as they seem to keep coming back for more.
• For all intents and purposes the single worst affair in my young life (taking the form of a years-long problem-riddled work project) came to an official if ignoble conclusion yesterday. I should be happy as clams but I am instead lost and without direction.
• I have succeeded in accidentially banishing all sources of current popular culture from my life by purchasing an iTrip Auto for to listen to mine iPod in mine car. This eliminates the extremely useful (and suprisingly often referenced) morning babble relating to current events that I receive from Maddog, Roger, Rick, Billy and Marylin during the morning drive to the office. This amputation follows on the long-past rejection of cable television (in the way an alcoholic rejects antifreeze) and the recent exchange of The Hamilton Spectator’s “Go Section” for business development paperbacks as my break-room reading during lunch.
• This morning I saw burly work crews building the manger in the city core. It felt like the day I got my Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve, paired with “You knew there was no Santa Clause, right?”. (Traumatizing, but the Castle of Greyskull was nonetheless awesome.) This yearly scene, which is the focus of many a hilarious drunken group photo, used to magically appear and to see orange-decked city workers assembling the rough-hewn logs in the midst of morning rush hour robbed my world of a pinch of fairy dust.
• I am in the market for a car-mounted camera, which I hope will drastically reduce the number of near collisions I am involved in on account of trying (and failing) to photograph some seminal or hilarious event that I happen to drive by.
• I ate 15 Ferrero Rocher, arranged in a tree-shaped box, unassisted, prior to the start of December.

I am not totally sure what The Ohio Farmer actually is (newspaper, web site, blog, lobbyist group, figment of the imagination) but I sure do appreciate their impartial coverage of current events.

I was horrified to be told over lunch that I missed the front-page headlines yesterday announcing that the eating red meat (among other joy-bringing life choices) causes cancer. I hopped on Google News attempting to find the article that presented these new scientific findings on cancer risk factors presented by the American Institute for Cancer Research and the World Cancer Research Fund. Instead I found an article on the Ohio Farmer that says, basically:

• The American Meat Institute says it’s not true, keep eating meat.
• The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association says it’s not true, keep eating meat.
• The National Pork Board says it’s not true, keep eating meat.
• Unattributed sources say cancer prevention is not as simple as cutting out one food, so keep eating meat.

Who wants a hamburger?

(P.S. Don’t Google Image Search “read meat” with SafeSearch turned off if you don’t wanna be grossed out.)

…that the world wide conspiracy to ruin my life continues unabated.

Upon returning home from the grocery store last week and after pulling out the dozen brown eggs I had purchased there in order to fulfil my desire for a breakfast burrito, I discovered* something shocking: a single white egg among the browns. ‘How could such a bizzare anomaly occur?’ I wondered puzzledly as I broke the egg that clearly did not belong into the pan along with some of the others, who obviously had not been allowing it to play in their reindeer games when the fridge lights went out.

It was only after I had consumed it that I thought a quick picture of the single white egg in a carton of brown ones would make for the perfect imagery to accompany a simply hilarious love letter regarding diversity and segregation in the egg world; or perhaps in the entire grocery sector. But woe was me for I had, as I said, eaten it.

The day was saved when I realized, much later, that there were other eggs to be had. I decided that during my next trip to the grocery store I would buy some white eggs, and just intentionally recreate the mind-boggling oddity and fraudulently pass it off as the genuine article. But when I got there, the day found itself once again unsaved. No white eggs to be found. And, let’s be honest. What are the chances, in our three-rows-of-everything-right-when-you-need-it society, of a full sized grocery store having nothing but brown eggs in the absence of a world-wide conspiracy to destroy the things I love?

And now what will I write about?

*This is a lie, as I clearly noticed the non-conforming egg in the grocery store while I was diligently open and twelve-pokeing to identify a full compliment of intact specimens in my continuing impersonation of a competent grocery shopper.

I love love love when easy things get easier. It enhances both my day-to-day productivity and my confidence that together we are bringing our society to the brink of destruction, which is just at the point where we simply aren’t able to deal with the normal, every-day complexity of life. Easy Mac comes to mind, the simple Kraft Dinner food super-simplified to three steps written on a package made to open more easily than any package in the history of packaging. But this is surely the pinnacle:

M&M Meat Shop’s frozen, microwaveable grilled cheese sandwiches

Wow. And I almost missed it.

Today is [Web-Enabled Love Letter Factory] Action Day, the day when [love letter writers] all over the world [write a love letter about] something about the environment, in a global effort to raise awareness about the most important issue facing humanity today.

Such responsibility. Hmmmm…

The environmental issue that I am most passionate about is… uh… the serious lack of ducks in urban areas. I mean, they’re pretty awesome. And you think that if everything was right with the world that there would be a lot of them about, chasing the raccoons and learning tricks and such. So obviously global warming and the Bush White House and that Canadian guy that no one seems to like are responsible for this ducklack and screwing us yet again. Luckily I had an opportunity to write this, so something can finally be done!

Oh man I feel so good about myself now. I’m gonna go find someone who’s using pesticides on their lawn and call them a bitch!