The Cheeseblog

The wine. Jumping Courtney on a bender, Dad’s wine is good this year.

Thursday, of course, was New Wine and Chestnuts Day, also known as St. Somebody Or Other Day. It’s the day when Italians deem the new wine “ready” for tasting. My parents have already been into the wine. The first bottle they drank was to make sure it would be OK for us on St. SOOD. The other 7 bottles? Well, they don’t have to make excuses. They’re my parents.

First, though, we had to make the traditional St. SOOD Trip to Ikea to buy Bookshelves. We went with Birch Billy Bookshelves and three Benno CD Towers. Kickass! Saint Aardvark has assembled them all while I have been glued to Guy Across the Street’s TV.

(Right now, GATS is watching THREE channels at once. There are several guys over drinking beer. One of them is wearing a green and white striped tuque with a pompom. Damn! I thought GATS was a shut-in, or an invalid, or a sad 70s relic who came into some money and got conned by a Future Shop salesman into spending it on a home theatre system so he could watch Apocalypse Now: Redux and smoke copious dope for the forseeable forever. How do you have a party in an apartment that small with a TV that big which is now showing Family Guy? Yet one dude is still hanging out in the kitchen, waiting for the kitchen party to come to him, I guess.)

Anyway. Bookshelves: up. Yummy.

Wine:

(those are the chestnuts, actually. If you store them in sand, they don’t go rotten. It’s TRUE!)

Usually my Dad’s wine, on its first go, tastes of, um, potential. You drink it because it’s wine and you eat the chestnuts and you get way too full and then you go to sleep and wait a few months until the wine tastes SuperGood! For months my parents have been saying, the new wine! It’s fantastic! But I didn’t believe them.

Until Thursday.

So good, my parents debated who would be a better US president: John Kerry or Hilary Clinton.

So good we ran a block and a half to catch our bus home, me carrying the carpet underlay and the orange wire basket, Saint Aardvark with his packsack full of last year’s wine.

So good, ER made me cry.

If I could afford to buy the world a Coke, I would ask if maybe I should offer the world some of this wine instead. It’s that good.

This is a fairly accurate representation of how far the building across the street is from my study’s window.
(the orange blob in the lower left is somebody’s television.)

This is how well my camera, which isn’t nearly as good as my eyes, picks up what the television in question is showing. The TV is as large as the window! We are watching Oprah! Today on Oprah, Kirstie Alley!

Dear Sir/Madam across the street,

Unless you are in my apartment with me watching your television (and I know you are not), YOU ARE SITTING TOO CLOSE.

Saint Aardvark wants to get a universal remote. Oprah looks pretty today. Kirstie got her house decorated, I think. I have to go.

The rat bastard who keeps spamming my comments offered this wisdom today:

“If one man offers you democracy and another offers you a bag of grain, at what stage of starvation will you prefer the grain to the vote?”

It’s nicely put. Now: off to New Wine and Chestnuts Day. Pictures sure to follow.

I learned today that it would be more work to fire me than it is to keep me here, eating bonbons, being a smartass and speaking deplorable French.
So walk with me a while as I sit on hold, in the magic land of Two Songs Played Over and Over again Possibly for as Long As One Hour.

I’ve been put on hold a number of times in my long, lustry life. On hold, I have heard muzak Beatles, really loud classical music, constant ads for the company I’m calling, news radio, and once, a really eerie silence with the faint echo of the receptionist trying to figure out how to use the phone. I’ve been that receptionist, so I didn’t mind.

But this particular company appears to actually hate itself so much that it is trying to passive-aggressively enable me (or anyone else who might be unfortunate enough to call) to go blindly to WalMart, buy and license a powerful rifle – that I would then have to learn how to shoot but it would be worth it – and take it on a quirky little road trip in a stolen SUV straight to their head office. There I would stand in their bland courtyard and scream every obscenity that came to mind and then I would find the person in charge of the hold music (and the person responsible for the severe understaffedness that results in me having to listen to said hold music for as long as I can stand it until I have to give up and do something else for a while) and I would shove the rifle up his or her nose and then tickle him or her to death because I’m not really a violent person but I think the torture I currently feel is similar to being tickled for 20 minutes straight.

Minute 17. Have now heard Hold Song A. 7 times. Have heard Hold Song B. 4 times. Have heard man who apologizes for the wait in English with a French accent 8 times.

Wonder: if I had chosen the French option 17 minutes ago, would I hear this message in French with an English accent? Would I recognize an English accent? Suddenly wonder if the French option has different music and this is all an elaborate joke on Anglos! Almost hang up but remember that I will not be able to communicate to my desired level of efficacy if I am speaking French. Even though I think I am quite good at French.

Sigh.

Drink more water.

Sigh.

Write verses 7 and 8 for Hold Song A. Adjust chorus.

You see, Hold Song A is a wistful tune of 2 minutes in length. It begins with a hopeful set of keyboard chords and then goes right into a steady saxophone with a little fake jazz guitar keyboard in the background. It’s impossible to describe in writing but I could sing it for you. Would you like me to sing it for you? Verses 1 – 7 are pretty tight but 8 needs work.

It’s like David Foster is trapped in my head and I can’t…shake…him….out.

Co-worker asks why I am shaking like an epileptic on a cocaine binge.

Hold Song B. is a little dose of ragtime to offset all that fucking saxophone.

Hold Song A.

Hold Song B.

Hold Song A.

At the 20 minute mark, I prepare to hang up because 20 is my limit. And then: She Answers!
We speak.
She says “Bear with me a moment,” and I cringe.

Hold Song B.

Hold Song A.

Hold Song A.

Hold Song B.

And now I can’t hang up because we’ve spoken. That’s how they get you, right there. That’s how they get you.

It is the first result from a google image search for Gordon Campbell:
Christina and her cat (I’m assuming.)