Monday, March 4, 2013

Canada. Winter. Snow. Cope.

If this surprises you, you better be a brand new immigrant from Thailand. 
     I always marvel at the reaction to a day like yesterday in Southern Alberta. It's March and it snows. People freak. They rant, they rave, they curse as they shovel mounds of accumulation that didn't have the good sense to come down as rain.
     Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter go buck-nucking-futs with images of "the view from my window this morning, swell" or "the view from my car this morning, great" or "the view of people digging out their cars, gotta love Canada." Angsty declarations of how horribly unfair the world is abound. One in every twenty of your friends quips about how much they miss it (NOT!) and post the view from the beach they're currently sitting on somewhere . . . and yet the only thing they're surfing is the Internet.
     S'Canada. It snows here.
     Suck it the hell up.
     Every year I spend the winter listening to people gripe about a season that takes up half of our year and 99% of our cultural identity. 
     "Getting pretty sick of winter," he says just after Thanksgiving.
     "This is nuts," she says, scraping her windshield.
     "I can't believe this," he opines, when it snows in a month that is winter, spring, or fall in a country that is not straddling the equator.
     You can't believe that we got a blizzard in March? That it can happen in April, May, or even June? Huh. Where'd I put that Willy Wonka meme . . .
     Listen, I'm sorry that your ancestors figured this was a better place to live than wherever they came from. If the Bering Land Bridge Theory is accurate, every single person on this continent is in the same boat. It might just be time for you to deal with the fact that you live where winter is, and it doesn't pay attention to dates. I'm a believer in climate change, and for a decade we've seen later, more temperate falls, winters that hold on longer, wilder storms, more snow. It happens. Stop treating snow like it's a four letter word, stop whining for six straight months, stop shopping for real estate in Victoria. 
     This country gets winter. We also have free health care, great education, a sparse population, and relatively little pollution. I'm in such a good mood today that I'll even ignore a long commentary about how our various Conservative governments are hell-bent on undoing all of the above.
     It's time for you to embrace winter.
     I'm sorry your car got stuck. Build a snowman.
     I'm sorry you have to shovel again. It's great exercise. Afterwards, why don't you get bundled up and go for a walk in that haunting winter evening light. It's like therapy. 
     I'm sorry the highway is a mess. Slow down.
     I'm sorry that snow covers everything. Have you noticed any cockroaches, packs of wild dogs, or mounds of maggoty-garbage? No? That's because winter is Nature's broom. 
     Having lived and traveled in many places where they don't get winter, I have a great appreciation for the good it does. Hell, if nothing else than for the euphoria of springtime.
     It's time to stop wishing for an earthquake to hit your friends in Vancouver. It's time to stop blowing $3000 you don't have on a week in Mexico. 
     It's time for you to see the good in winter, you Canuck knucklehead. 
     Snowboard, cross country ski, snowshoe, build a fire. Hell, pick a snowball fight with that irritating neighbor's kid. Stop and look at the savage beauty around you for a second. Your landscape changes from the top down. Frequently. Try to view this as remarkable rather than just getting on your knees and praying to the Chinook gods--if you are so blessed.
     Stop spending six months whining, moaning, and cocooning yourself on your couch, surrounded by chips, chocolate, and reality TV. Stop only exercising when you can wear shorts outdoors.
     Winter is special. It can be very giving, and wondrously harsh. That's a hell of a lot more fun than the status quo. 
     Just think about how great your life is going to be once you stop spending six months pining for the other six. 

Friday, March 1, 2013

About (about) a decade with (basically) no TV.


                I watched the Oscars on Sunday. No, this isn’t some post-awards rant. I didn’t have any favourites (with the exception of Christoph Waltz in Django). I wasn’t cheering or betting. I just really like it as a show. One of America’s biggest, most wasteful self-loves and the absolute zenith of what’s wrong with art and yet, and yet, I have always been captivated by it. I think I’ve seen every Oscars telecast for the past fifteen years or so. Rarely miss a second of it, even when they’re (and they usually are) predictable and dull.
                I like watching hockey, CFL football, some NFL, and smatterings of other sports. Winter Olympics. I watch it, but unless it’s playoffs or my Habs or Riders, I usually am busy working on something else, reading a book, something. Not often able to sit through an entire sporting event, save the playoffs again. Still, I can’t tell you the last time in the past twenty years I’ve missed the Stanley Cup being awarded.
                I used to have shows. Like most folks, I grew up watching whatever was on. Sitcoms, and cop or lawyer dramas. Danger Bay. I watched a fair amount of TV as a kid. I was raised on The Simpsons. I recall that just before I left Canada I was hooked on this teaching show called Boston Public. That would’ve been about a decade ago.
                Like most folks again, I probably felt guilty about the amount of TV I watched. There was a lot of crap, and there was a lot better I could’ve been doing. Great form of procrastination. But even despite the gruelling work of university, I was able to get in my fair share of the boob tube.
                Then, about a decade ago, I moved to Asia for a bit. Needless to say, North American prime-time TV was hardly as prevalent there. The major shows were hard to track down. Some of the big reality shows of the time were on, and lots of reruns. Had trouble finding my precious Simpsons, and forget about Rick Mercer or 22 Minutes. This was 2002, so there wasn’t a lot of online TV. I remembered there being an overabundance of Sex and the City and Two Guys and a Girl reruns. Big events like the Oscars and hockey playoffs were still miraculously available. Mostly there were just a lot of movies for the English-speaking public.
                My time there came and went, and I basically fell out of any sort of a TV routine. Got my news from the Internet, saw movies, read a lot as I always have.
                When I moved back to Canada, I just had better stuff to do. For a decade now, I’ve been functioning pretty much TV-free. I watch some sports, some news (though most comes from Internet or radio), and the odd event like the Oscars. Really, that’s one of the only events like that I see. Not the Grammys, not even the Junos. And some of that watching is half-hearted at best. Most evenings that don’t involve me doing my job after my kids go to bed involve reading and writing. Running. Playing guitar. 
I don’t miss out on water-cooler discussions of the latest antics of The Walking Dead because I don’t have a water cooler job and also because it just seems so long a commitment to get excited about a zombie show once a week. Got better things to do. I’m thankful that Game of Thrones is available for download and only ten episodes per season, so I can watch it all in about four weekend evenings with my wife.
                My laptop clock says it’s 8:02pm. I have no idea what’s on right now. The only show schedules I’m aware of the  are, say, Grey’s Anatomy, which I know keeps my wife up late on Thursdays. I’ve never seen an episode.
                I think it’s fitting that I got out of watching pretty much anything on TV around the same time the reality TV craze got swinging, because that’s a low ebb for even the most brainless medium we have access to.
                I didn’t quit watching TV to make some sort of a stand. I’m very happy that I don’t, but I’m not lording it over anyone. Unless you watch the Bachelorette or shows about people bidding or storage lockers or Texans hunting pigs. Then I am, because you’re an idiot.
                No, my point is that I cut TV out of my life and really didn’t notice. Freed up a whole bunch more time, I guess. Have more to my routine than sitting on my ass watching sex jokes. I’d get rid of the physical device itself altogether but, as I said, I like some of the above.
                I hear people talking about Netflix and Apple TV or whatever the latest thing is. Complicated cable packages geared to you as a person. When I say I’m not interested in such stuff I’m often viewed as behind the times, like an analog monkey trying to still run with rabbit ears. Fact is, I just don’t care.
                Woke up the other morning and realized, “Huh, been ten years since I cared about TV.”
                Just got better things to do.