It's a Great Day to be Alive http://www.dennisfriesen.com It says Dennis Friesen.com. What do you think it's about? Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:36:17 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 en Not Sure I Like That Guy http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=310 http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=310#comments Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:34:49 +0000 admin http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=310 Oh, we’re off to see the Colonel, the wonderful Colonel of…? Where exactly are we? I had my suspicions but I wasn’t sure. Nobody had answered my questions about that either. Going to see the Colonel didn’t seem like a good time. I was picturing Jack Nicholson. I was going to ask him where I was. I was going to tell him to tell me the truth. And he was going to say …

Anyway, it didn’t happen quite that way. I was led into his office. It looked like a normal office. There was nothing here to tell me I was about to experience anything unusual. I mean, more unusual than I had so far. I sat down and in walked the Colonel. It wasn’t Jack Nicholson. He was more like a cross between Richard Simmons

and George Costanza.

I got a warm, friendly smile. I smiled back. He looked pleased. He looked at me a moment and then told me that my interrogation was about to begin. My smile disappeared. He smiled more.

“Don’t be a silly,” he said.

“A what?”

“A silly. It’s not like you’re thinking. We don’t do those nasty things anymore. All those mean people worked for the Bush administration. President Obama selected me himself.”

“So the American government is holding me even though I’m a Canadian citizen?”

“Aren’t you the clever one? I can see I’m going to have to be careful around you.”

“So what’s the interrogation technique? Making me listen to Obama’s speeches?”

“No. That would be against the Geneva Convention. Tell me, have you ever watched Star Trek?”

“The Original Series, The Next Generation, Babylon 5, Deep Space Nine, or Voyager?”

“Oh, no, no, no. Babylon 5 isn’t really part of the Star Trek mythos, is it?”

“It isn’t?”

The Colonel smiled again and shook his head. He got up from his desk and walked in front of me. He leaned back against his desk. He looked deep into my eyes and very seriously said, “Are you familiar with the Vulcan Mind Meld?”

“Sure, Spock even used it on the Horta.”

“Very good. And now I’m going to use it on you.”

“Wha?”

“I’m going to use the Vulcan Mind Meld technique on you. Most people don’t realize that starting in the 1960s the US government had been working with psychic researchers to find ways of spying on the Soviet Union. A Soviet spy working in the Humphrey presidential campaign in 1967 heard about the Mind Meld technique during a briefing that presidential candidates get every day. Are you with me so far?”

“Wha?”

“Good. When the White House discovered the leak, the Johnson White House communicated with Nixon campaign, got them to use their California contacts to get Gene Roddenberry from Star Trek to include the Mind Meld in an episode. This was for the purpose of discrediting the leak, to make it seem like a far-fetched, science-fiction type of idea. And it worked. Not only did the Soviet Union never start any research into Meld Melding, but Star Trek gained a great story concept. So, are you ready?”

I’m normally a little reluctant to let crazy people touch me. Even though I didn’t believe in Mind Melds, I found myself wondering if it would hurt.

“This won’t hurt a bit,” he said. “But we will both feel a little tired, like we just shared an intimate personal event.” And he smiled. I started to get out of my chair just as he reached his hands out toward my head. My chair slid back as I stood. The tall floor lamp behind the chair was knocked over. It hit the Colonel on the head, knocking him unconscious. As he fell, I tried to catch him but the rug I was standing on started to slip. I fell backward, hitting my head on the floor (Again).  Just before slipping into unconsciousness, I saw the Colonel falling. It was his lucky day. I was going to break his fall.

When I came to, the Colonel was lying on top of me with his usual smile. I didn’t need creepy just then so I started trying to slide out from underneath him without waking him up. After I had rolled him onto his side, my arm was still pinned. I debated whether or not slow or fast was the right approach. Just as I was choosing slow, his eyes opened. Slowly. With this kind of dreamy look. They focussed on me. He smiled again. “Hi. That was nice.” He raised himself up a bit and I removed my arm. I stood up.

“Do you have to go?”

“I have a choice?”

“Of course, silly. What kind of man do you think I am?”

I didn’t want to answer that. “Uh, yeah, I think I have to go.”

“Just a minute,” he sighed. “Sergeant!”

The sergeant walked in and saw the scene. At least he had the decency to look embarrassed.

“Sergeant, give this man $100, his ID and ride into town. Treat him well.”

The sergeant saluted, grabbed me by arm and moved me out of the office in a hurry. We stopped at his desk long enough for him to reach into petty cash for the $100 and grab his keys off the desk. We walked down the hall and out the door into the bright sunshine.

It was the first time I had been outdoors in almost 2 months. There were palm trees. He walked me over to the parking lot and motioned to a jeep. “Can you sit okay? Only some of the Colonel’s ‘Guests’ can’t sit so good after’.”

I practically jump into the jeep and drop onto the seat. “I’m fine, okay. Fine. Nothing happened.”

“The guy’s told me how tough you were, after the duct tape and the beard and all. Good for you, pal. That’s the attitude.”

“No. I mean it. Nothing happened.”

Then he winked at me and started the jeep.  It’s pretty noisy riding in a jeep. There was no point in continuing to protest my innocence. We passed through an American checkpoint and then a Cuban checkpoint. About 30 minutes later, (I think, they took away my watch), we got to the town of Santiago. The sergeant had pulled up in front of the police station.

“I coulda taken you to the hotel like the other guys but it wouldn’t do no good. The police here know pretty fast. You wouldn’t get the chance to spend the night, never mind leave town. Might as well drop you off here. Good luck, buddy. And your secret is safe with me.” He winked again.

Just as I was about to blow up at this guy, I felt a hand on my arm and heard somebody say “Venga con migo, señor.” I got out of the jeep. I started heading to door with the police officer when I suddenly stopped.

“Hey!”

The sergeant was still looking my way. He had my $100 in his hand. He winked one last time and hit the gas. Noisy as that jeep was, I could still hear him laughing.

 

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]]> http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?feed=rss2&p=310 Dennis Loses Control but Keeps His Pride http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=306 http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=306#comments Wed, 23 Jun 2010 06:05:02 +0000 admin http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=306 I have no idea how long I stood there, looking at that noose. I mean that. I have no idea. There’s no clock in the cell. But they did give me a noose. What kind of messed up system is that? Did some bureaucrat dream that up? Some government guy who decided that with all the nooses lying around prisons, maybe we should go green and reuse what we can’t recycle?

After a while I realized that the scenery wasn’t going to change. I sat down on my cot. It wasn’t a long walk. It took one step. There wasn’t much to look at. I stood up. I sat down. As I write this, I realize that pretty much sums up most of my days. That cell wasn’t very big but you know what they say. A small home takes less time to clean.

My normal routine was pretty simple. Several hours of boredom punctuated by interrogation. They tried asking me questions. They wanted to know when I first met the General. I told them it was like in my blog. I met him in Vegas. They didn’t believe me. I insisted. Then I got the idea that if they could ask me questions, maybe I could ask them some. Questions like WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE? WHERE AM I? WHERE’S MY MOTHER? That last one got their attention. I was a little angry and nervous. I meant lawyer but it was too late. They were smiling in that special way that told you they couldn’t wait to tell their buddies about this.

And five times a day, there was a call to prayer. I have my own ideas about religion and prayer. I think both are great ideas. But I think FIVE AM is a little too early. I mean, come on. I’m a night owl, okay? I fall asleep about 3:30. Even if I didn’t have to get up for this, it was still a disturbance. Then I just fall asleep and we do it all over again around 6:15 or so. I tried telling people I wasn’t a Muslim but that just confused them.

One morning, I confess, I snapped. I’d had enough. I started yelling. HEY YOU GUYS. YOU CUT THAT OUT RIGHT NOW! I might have said DAMN somewhere in there. Enough is enough. Well, that got instant action. A guard came to my door and opened that little window. He told me that I had to be quiet during prayer time. I asked him why I had to be quiet when that guy wasn’t being quiet. You could hear him throughout the entire building.

He said, “Don’t get smart.”

“You want me to be stupid?”

“Listen, buddy. You have to be quiet and we have ways to make it happen.”

You probably have different triggers. Mine is the word buddy. When someone uses it and they don’t mean it, it does something to my brain chemistry. All those filters that tell you not to say certain things just get shut down. You know what I mean. The filters that keep you from telling your wife that she’s putting on weight. Or that her sister looks really hot. Or telling your boss that he’s extra stupid today. I think I told the guard that his stupid wife was really hot, even though she’d put on weight. Loudly. Very loudly.

The window closed. Then the door was unlocked and four guards rushed into a cell that was crowded with one. They had a black bag, zip tie handcuffs and some duct tape. They very efficiently cuffed my hands behind my back. Then duct tape was placed over my mouth. The bag went over my head. I felt myself being lifted up. The noose went around my head. Then my feet were placed very carefully; one on my cot and the other on my toilet. I hadn’t thought before this about the strange placement of the noose. If I was careful not to move very much, I might be able to keep my balance. If I slipped, I wouldn’t have very long to think about it.

They came to get me as soon as prayer was over but it wasn’t soon enough. No, of course I didn’t die. I’m writing this, right? But you know how you have to go to the bathroom when you wake up? Yeah. I’m not sure how I did it but I did. While balancing on my cot and the toilet, I managed to get it to go down the leg that led to the toilet, keeping my cot dry. It might not seem like much to you but it was a mighty big victory for me. It had been several months since I had wet my bed and I wasn’t about to relapse now.

I heard several sounds of disgust when the guards came in. I was carefully taken down from the noose. The bag was taken off my head and the tape off my mouth. I want you to keep in mind that I have a beard. Duct tape. Beard. Duct tape. Beard. Sudden removal of duct tape. Simultaneous removal of sections of my beard. And even with tears in my eyes, I was smiling. I think that bothered them. They thought I’d be intimidated. But I was so proud that I hadn’t wet my bed that nothing could ruin it. Then I was frogmarched to the shower again. You know, the horizontal one?

After I had a chance to dry off and get into a change of clothes, the phone rang. One the guards answered it. Of course, I only heard one side of the conversation.

“Yes, he’s here…Yeah, it’s under control now…Really?…I don’t think that’s necessary, is it?…It was only one time…But…But…Yeah, but…Okay…Right away?…Okay.”

He looked at his partner and said, “The Colonel wants to see him.”

 

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]]> http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?feed=rss2&p=306 For Those Who Are Wondering… http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=296 http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=296#comments Thu, 17 Jun 2010 07:20:58 +0000 admin http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=296

For those who are wondering what’s happened to me, I wish I knew. I mean, at one level I know what happened, but at another much more important level, I have no clue whatsoever. So let’s start with what I know.

Once you know that people are following you, it’s amazing how obvious it is. It’s not like it’s easy for them to hide when you walk around in public. Just practice the basic tradecraft you see in any spy movie or read in a Tom Clancy novel. Cross the street at random moments. Stop in front of a store window. Then look in the reflection to see who crosses behind you. Walk into a large hotel and then leave by a side door.

After a week or so of this, it was like a joke. Don’t they teach these guys anything? Do they all have to wear the same dark sunglasses? It was so easy. Right up to the moment when it got hard.

They cheated. There were these two guys on the street corner. I didn’t give them a second thought. They weren’t wearing sunglasses. Guy 1 stumbles into my path. I smoothly dodge him. (My ballroom dance background comes in handy sometimes.) Unfortunately, Guy 2 was waiting for this. I felt a syringe punch into my arm. Just as I was falling down from the stupid juice in the syringe, I saw a van pull up and I got shoved inside.

At least, I think it was a van. At this point, it gets a little fuzzy cuz I was kinda trippin’ on whatever it was they gave me. It was either a van with three bad guys or I was inside a dragon with the Black Knight, Sherlock Holmes and a large talking asparagus. Like I said, my money is on it being a van. Maybe. Probably.

We eventually pulled up at the airport. I was a little worried because I didn’t know how the asparagus was going to get his gun through screening but it didn’t seem to be a problem. Sherlock got us through a different gate and some guys in black suits shoved me into a helicopter. The Black Knight was the pilot and Sherlock sat beside me. I was a little disappointed when the asparagus stayed behind. He had a friendly smile.

And it’s not my fault that I threw up on Sherlock Holmes. The Black Knight took off really fast. I don’t think I passed out at this point. I’m pretty sure it was the punch from an enraged Sherlock that put me to sleep.

I didn’t exactly wake up either. It was more like dragging myself up through layers of stupor. I woke up with the taste of 3 day old socks in my mouth. Don’t ask how I know. Different story. Judging from my pants and the condition of my bladder, I had been unconscious for about 2 days. Another different story. I just lay there waiting for my head to stop pounding. When it did, I stood up.

No. I lie. I tried to stand up. Unsuccessfully. I succeeded at falling down. I felt hot and sweaty. I later discovered that that wasn’t my fault. I looked around for the first time. I was in a cell. I pulled myself onto my feet.  I was going to pound vigorously on the door but I realized I would probably just fall down again. So I croaked out something like a yell. “Hey”, I yelled. Go ahead. You think of something more eloquent. That was it. All I had.

The guard must have been standing just outside my door. A little sliding window opened. He looked in.

“Back up,” he  barked.

“Wha?”

“Back up.”

I concentrated really hard. I wanted to be clear this time.

“Wha?”

A scowl crossed his face. He unlocked the door. Isn’t strange how you never appreciate the small details? Like how the door in a cell opens inward. Like how your legs don’t work when you first become conscious after a drug induced sleep. Like how your arms don’t really catch you when you fall backwards when that door hits you and your legs don’t work.

The medic later told me to stop whining. There weren’t many stitches. My problem is that I’m losing hair and the scar is going to be quite visible. Sigh.

Anyway, I woke up being dragged to the shower room. Not sure what happened to my clothes because they weren’t on me anymore. Except that the shower was a big hose and the water was coming at me horizontally. A shower. Kind of. I had to turn around to keep from having important bits torn off. The water pressure was pretty high. Of course, that just created a different problem. No real good solution here. I was also conscious enough to be getting pretty cranky. Peevish, even.

“You guys stop that right now!” You could hear the exclamation mark when I said it.

That produced instant results. They laughed. A lot. Then I was surprised because it seemed that they weren’t using the full water pressure before. They seemed to find this all very funny. It’s nice to meet people who enjoy their work.

They were also quite thorough. Various lotions, potions and powders were administered to make sure I was clean enough to be their prisoner. They pointed at some orange clothes on a bench. Once I was dressed, they took me to the afore mentioned medic.

Just as he was finishing, we heard a call to prayer on the speakers. All kinds of questions came to my mind and none of them found their way to my mouth. But he knew what was going on.

“You need a prayer mat?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Okay. The guard will take you back.”

I was returned to me cell. I guess I’m not the quickest guy in the world. In all this stuff, I hadn’t asked anybody WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? As the door clicked shut, I turned to look at my cell. It had the usual stuff. A cot, a toilet and a noose hanging from the ceiling.

 

 

 

 

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]]> http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?feed=rss2&p=296 Life is Getting Strange http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=294 http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=294#comments Thu, 22 Apr 2010 05:49:33 +0000 admin http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=294 I’m not usually a suspicious guy. But lately, things have been getting a little weird. It all started with my blogs about the General’s story. I know that a lot of people won’t believe them but that’s okay by me. I know what I was told. I believe everything that the General told me. If you’d been there, and seen the look in his eyes, you’d believe it too. ‘Nuff said.

But back to the weird stuff. I got home the day after I posted the third part of the General’s story and looked at my computer screen. I usually turn my computer off when I go to work. So I get in the door and I see my computer is on. “That’s odd”, I say to myself. I took off my jacket and walked over to my computer. I see that a document is open on my desktop. I have several word processor programs on my computer. The one that I never use was open. That sent shivers up my spine.

I wondered if the person who had done this was still in my home. I hadn’t checked every room. I keep my pool cues by the apartment door. I grabbed my heaviest cue and slowly pushed open the bathroom door. Nobody there. Whew. I looked into the kitchen and it, too, was clear. Double whew. The bedroom was a problem because if someone was there, they were going to get the drop on me. They were going to see me before I saw them.

I decided to pick up my cell phone and called a friend of mine. I stood in the middle of my living room a moment. I casually mentioned that I was at home, alone, just calling to see how they were. I figured that I could keep talking while I went into my bedroom. That way, if anything went wrong, my friend would know and call the police. Cell phone in one hand and pool cue in the other, I stealthily moved toward the bedroom door. I couldn’t see much from the outside. There was nothing to do but go in. Just as I stepped in, I heard a new voice on my phone. It said, “There’s nobody there, Dennis.” My bladder control was sorely tested at that point. I’m not kidding. My friend, John, had meanwhile kept on talking. I interrupted.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“You didn’t hear her?”

“Hear who?”

No help there. And since there were no bad guys under my bed, I hung up. Moments later, my cell rang again. But it wasn’t my usual ring tone. It was the 60s tune, Secret Agent Man. I answered.

“It isn’t polite to hang up in the middle of a conversation.”

European, Holland or Belgium maybe. Female. Very female. Low enough to be sexy but not so low it sounds like your grandfather.

I looked at the call display. The phone number was 000-000-0000.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“So many questions, Dennis. But I really must dash. You’re mobile isn’t secure. Just check the message I left on your computer, which isn’t very secure either, by the way.” And she hung up.

I went back to my computer. There were just a couple of sentences.

“The Bilderberg group is not involved. You’re being followed. Check the UN press releases for the next week. I’ll be in touch if and when I can .”

She was right about me having questions. Like what the heck is a Bilderberg? Followed by whom? UN Press releases? Why can’t she be in touch whenever she wants? What’s her name? Does she look as hot as she sounds?

 

]]> http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?feed=rss2&p=294 The General’s Story - part three http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=291 http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=291#comments Sat, 10 Apr 2010 07:40:36 +0000 admin http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=291 “Yep. The wife gets me to Las Vegas. I step into the bar to have a quiet drink. And who do I meet? A damn Canadian.”

I have to admit that my own thought processes were drowning in alcohol by this point. After all, I hadn’t wanted it to be too obvious that I was trying to get the General drunk. And his story was such a radically different concept that I was having a hard time getting my head around it. And there was really nothing like hard proof to any of this. So I tried a different approach.

“General, I’m not disbelieving anything you just said. You seem like a nice guy and all. So I don’t think you’d lie to a stranger just for laughs. But it seems to me that if Canada had a super jetfighter like you claim, we’d be a world superpower. Instead, you are. What’s up with that?”

The General shook his head. “You don’t understand how this works. In order for a country to project power in the world, it has to have the ability to create forward bases of some sort. America does it in a couple of ways. We have aircraft carriers, which are really small floating cities. We can move them all over the world.

“We also have forward bases like Diego Garcia where we can store supplies and from which we can deploy troops. And troops is the important factor here. Canada isn’t big enough to be able to build the requisite aircraft carriers and man them. They also don’t have the troops to man large forward bases.

“No, with Canada’s population limitation, what you now have is a fantastic defensive capability. If there was ever a serious shooting war between us, we’d probably still win with sheer weight of numbers. Massive amounts of armor would cross the border and most Canadian cities under siege or control within the first day. After all, most large Canadian cities are within 100 miles of the border.

“But what we don’t know is what bombing capabilities your planes have. We’ve never, ever seen that. That scares the bejeezus out of our planners. We just don’t know what you guys are technically capable of.”

I thought about all this for a while. I was about to say something when the General said something that convinced me.

“Listen,” he said. “Everybody thinks that we went to war in Iraq for the oil, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. If it was oil we wanted, there’s a whole lot of it a few miles of our border in Alberta. Given your small population, and therefore small army, we would normally be able to do that job in a long weekend. You’re right there and we’d have next to nothing for supply problems. Hell. Half of Alberta would be welcoming us with open arms. What do you think made the world superpower go half way around the world for oil rather than taking a few steps north?”

I asked him if he wasn’t going to get into trouble for talking about this stuff.

“Yeah, if anybody knew I’d told you. But I’m a soldier. I’m trained to handle trouble. There’s nothing I can’t…oh, crap.”

The General’s eyes were locked on the door behind me. If there was such a thing as fearful resignation, it was all over his face. I was sure I was going to see MPs or men in dark suits talking into their sleeves.

“Lawrence!”

“Yes, Martha?”

“What are you doing here? You know we have tickets to see Jersey Boys. Have you been drinking?”

“Yes, dear. I mean, no. Wait. I…”

The brave, troubled man just wilted before my eyes. Martha led him out. I finished my drink and went out into the Vegas evening a little poorer, a little drunker, and a lot more curious about things that weren’t as they seemed.

 

]]> http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?feed=rss2&p=291 The General’s Story - part two http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=289 http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=289#comments Fri, 02 Apr 2010 08:10:00 +0000 admin http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=289 “But that was 40 years ago”, I protested. I signalled to the bartender for another round. “Surely you guys have caught up by now.”

“I wish to God we had. It isn’t for a lack of trying. Our scientists have never seen one and don’t know how they work. We thought we were onto something a few years back but now I’m not so sure.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember a few years back there was a lot of fuss about jet contrails. You could see the contrails but sometimes you couldn’t see the plane that was making it. It seems that in certain atmospheric conditions, your jets leave a trail that can be seen. We started sending our own planes up into the contrails, taking samples. Sometimes they would come back with traces of selenium. We went crazy trying to figure out how selenium factors into your planes. Is it a by-product of your fuel? Is it a coating on your surface? We spent millions of dollars trying to figure this out and we’ve come up with zip.

“Some of us think this is just a sick joke that your government is playing on us. Personally, I think your planes sometimes just seed some selenium knowing that we’re looking for clues. For a couple thousand dollars a year in selenium, you’ve got us spending millions of dollars on a wild goose chase.”

The General got real quiet, like he was remembering something. A dark look was on his face when he turned to face me.

“You work for a big company?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Big shots from corporate headquarters show up and inspect stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“Me, too. Only for me, the inspection is done by the President. It was a beautiful day. Sky was clear. Sun was shining. I’d driven the President around the base and shone off all the planes. Then I drove him over to the stage. He was going to give a speech and everyone on base was supposed to be there. Four times. Four times your planes flew over my base.”

“I thought you said you never saw them. You must have seen them that day.”

He just glared at me and shook his head. Finally, he said “Just when the President began to speak, one of your planes flew over and broke the sound barrier. Remember. It was beautiful, clear day. Not a cloud. Not a plane in the sky that we can see. All of my planes were on the ground because the pilots were in the audience for the President. BOOM. The President looks at me. This wasn’t supposed to happen. So the President waits for the sound to die down. He starts to speak. BOOM. The Secret Service guys are standing around getting nervous, like they’re looking for someone to shoot. The President looks at me like he’s trying to figure out why I can’t control the pilot who’s doing that. The sound dies down and he waits. Then he waits a moment more. He starts telling a joke and BOOM. That one doesn’t fade away and BOOM. He just looks at me, turns and marches over to the car that we drove over in and has the driver take him away. Four times.”

I didn’t know what to say. I ordered another round.

“I had to get a ride back with one of my colonels. I made it into the command center and it was quiet like a church. All except one guy. He was looking down at a crossword puzzle, chuckling quietly. You may not know this but NORAD is a joint command. We have Canadians on staff at all times. Right then my vice-chief of defence was a Canadian. That was the laughing boy back there. He saw me there and said ‘How did the President like the air show?’’

“That was two weeks ago. My wife suggested that we come to Vegas to unwind. I had a lot of leave time I hadn’t been using. Sounded like a good idea. Go to Vegas. Forget everything.

To be continued

]]> http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?feed=rss2&p=289 The General’s Story http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=285 http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=285#comments Wed, 31 Mar 2010 04:21:41 +0000 admin http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=285 So there I was, sitting in the lounge at my timeshare in Las Vegas. Poker hadn’t been treating me too well so I decided to get drunk instead. It just shows how dumb I can be sometimes. The casino provides complimentary drinks if you’re gambling. I don’t drink when I play poker because I want to win. If I just knew when I was going to lose, I could drink for free. Instead I end up losing sober and then paying for my own drinks.

But that’s not the story. The story happened after I’d had a few. A few Guiness. A few scotch. You get the idea. I was sitting at the bar watching this guy. Buzz cut. Military type about 45 years old. He was drinking like he just discovered alcohol and was trying to catch up.

I’m a people person and this guy was making me curious. I like to know what’s going on, so I slide over and introduce myself. We do the usual “what do you do and where do you live” thing. Turns out he’s a general. That’s cool. I’ve never met a general before. He had mentioned that he was stationed “in Colorado”. “Academy”, I asked? He smiled and shook his head. I guessed NORAD next and he just smiled. When I told him that I was from Canada, my life changed forever.

I wasn’t sure if he was going to cry or punch me. He probably wasn’t sure himself. If he had told me his story when he was sober, I would have been sure he was pulling my leg. But drunk, there’s no way he was acting.

He starts telling me about how the goddamn Canadian Air Force was going to be the death of him. I figured he was complaining about how Canada doesn’t pull its own weight. Everybody knows we don’t have a real Air Force. But this is where his story got downright weird.

He claimed that Canada had a better air force than the US. He said it was because of this SuperJet we had. I don’t remember what the fancy name for it was. (I had been drinking). He said that Canada had absolute air supremacy day or night.

Now, I’m as patriotic as the next guy but there was no way I was going to swallow this load of… Well, it just didn’t make sense. We laugh about our air force in Canada. I told him so. He just looked at me like I was the crazy one. I said, “Convince me”.

”Have you ever heard of the Avro Arrow?”

“Sure. Lots of Canadians know that story. It’s not top secret.”

“Everybody knows what happened up to 1959. What happened after 1959 is still a secret.”

“What do you mean?”

“The US government pressured Canada to scrub the Arrow. We didn’t want anybody, not even an ally, to have a better plane than we did. We sold your country on the B.S. that the world didn’t need a fighter, it needed missiles. And we sold you guys a whole whack of missiles in those days.”

The General was slowing down his story and getting more coherent. There was only one thing to do. I ordered another round of doubles. He looked at me like he knew what I was doing. I guess he decided he didn’t care and downed his. I gave him mine and reordered.

“Go on,” I encouraged.

“You have to go back to WWII for the rest of it. There was a Canadian spymaster by the name of William Stephenson. He was a successful businessman as well. Rich. Contacts up the wazoo. Ended up getting knighted by the Brits. Even though he’d been retired by ‘59, he saw the value of the Arrow and pulled some strings privately.

“He ‘obtained’ plans for the Arrow. He didn’t work with any of the original design team. Put together his own crew with his own money. That was his way.

“It was in 1970 that things went wrong for us. During your FLQ crisis in Quebec, my government started getting worried that your guys were losing control of the country. We started doing fly-overs, kinda flying the flag, so to speak. Your government had no way to stop us and didn’t want to make a big deal about it. That’s why Trudeau hit back so hard against the terrorists. He knew the antes were going up.

“Then December 3 comes along. The Canadian government decided to send those stinking terrorists on a free trip to Cuba where they were going to be treated like heroes. We didn’t like that a bit and were doing a lot of flying over Canada that day. Canadian fighters stayed on the ground for safety.

“All of a sudden, we get radio chatter from our pilots saying that they were taking fire. They were being shot to pieces. All together over 13 of our fighters were shot down and 7 limped home with damage. Only 2 returned without getting hurt because they were told to turn around. We had some of the best pilots in the best airplanes (we thought) and we had our asses handed to us by an enemy we couldn’t even see.”

“What? You couldn’t see them?”

“Nope. Not visual. Not radar. Nothing. Not a damn thing we could do about it. Just tucked our tails between our legs and ran for home. We didn’t like it much. We threatened your government that day. But we all knew that none of your planes had left the ground. We got that much from our satellite intel.”

 

to be continued

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]]> http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?feed=rss2&p=285 I’m back. http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=278 http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=278#comments Sat, 08 Aug 2009 08:42:39 +0000 admin http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=278 Well, I’m back. I wish I had a great excuse for not updating this site. I don’t. But I do have a great reason to start back up again. Drum roll please…….

Starting August 31, a new theatre will be born in Winnipeg. It will be called The Theatre Project and will begin life at the Ellice Theatre on the corner of Ellice and Sherbrook, right across from the West End Cultural Centre. At the beginning, we’re only running on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings every week.

The films we’ll be showing will be some of the most interesting, funny and thoughtful films to screen in Winnipeg in a long time. Our focus is going to be in independent and foreign films. We hope to show a documentary in October. Also in October we’re planning to provide two nights for Winnipeg short films. If they’re interested, both the U of M and the U of W will be given the opportunity to show some of the best student shorts they have produced in the last year or so.

I’ve been saying we and us and our. That’s because this is a project undertaken by four of us. I have the pleasure of having worked with some very talented and intelligent people recently. They have seen the potential in doing something that is different and, we hope, of value to people. Bob Still has been an educator for a number of years. He has also been involved in live theatre productions both professionally and as a volunteer. Ken Wild is someone I consider a raw talent. I don’t think there are many things that Ken couldn’t do if you gave him a manual and 15 minutes to read the whole thing. John Uy may be the most self-effacing super-competent person I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. The four of us bring incredibly varied experience and perspective to this project, yet we have never (yet) felt the need to quarrel about things. Bob and I are ancient. Ken and John are not. John is software savvy. Ken has computer hardware knowledge. Bob and I simply have many years of watching films. I can help a bit on the marketing side.

You see where I’m going with this? Three great people and me. It’s going to be like Christmas all the time. We’re still firming up the choices we want to make for the first month’s films. It looks like we have a great international selection from places like Iran, Serbia, France, Mexico and Denmark.

We will be launching a website for the Project soon. I’ll keep you posted here. I’ll also be posting the names of the films we’ll be showing soon. Thanks for being patient. Hang on. It’s going to be a great ride.

]]> http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?feed=rss2&p=278 Saying Thank You http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=275 http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=275#comments Fri, 06 Feb 2009 17:22:32 +0000 admin http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=275 I don’t know about you but sometimes I feel underappreciated. In my head, I know that’s silly. Several of my coworkers are great about letting me know that I make a difference. Even when I do a small chore at home, my wife almost always says thank you. Of course, it may be that she’s shocked that I did it. ( Old joke: Why do you see Men At Work signs? Because nobody would be surprised by women at work.)

When I’m at work, there is one thing I can do if I really want to surprise someone. All I have to do is walk up to them and say two little words. “Good job”. Or “Well done”. And I don’t think that is unique to my workplace. Even the worst employee at any job isn’t screwing up for a full 8 hour shift. There will be something positive to pull out their performance. But so few people look for it.

At my workplace, I’m at the lowest level of supervision we have. There are about 84 levels of management above me and below me are the people who actually do the work. Part of my job is to make sure they are doing their job well. Unfortunately, we often turn that around. We start thinking it’s our job to spot when they aren’t doing their job well. But if I’m standing there watching my coworkers all day, I should be able to spot a couple of times when they’re doing it right. Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson, authors of The One Minute Manager, claim that it is important for a manager to look for opportunities to tell an employee that they caught him doing his job well. Especially when the employee is new, find something to praise.

We all like praise and affirmation. I heard this story from several psychology professors at university, so I think it might be true. A professor was teaching a class on behaviour modification. So the class decided to experiment on the professor. When the professor stood on the left side of the room, everyone was quiet and attentive. When he stood on the right, people would start talking, books would fall off the desks, or perhaps someone would get up and go to the washroom. By the end of the semester, the professor spent almost the entire class leaning on the left wall. When the class told him what they had done, he refused to believe it. He claimed he had always taught from that spot.

You know the old phrase “Everyone talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.” Well, this isn’t the weather. We can do something about it. Even if you aren’t in charge of something, tell someone that you caught them doing a good job. When someone does something nice, say thank you. Tell a friend or co-worker that they made your day better today. Be specific. Tell them exactly what it was. Help them to know what to repeat. They will feel better and so will you. If we all thank two extra people every day, who knows what can happen.

]]> http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?feed=rss2&p=275 Vegas Dining experience http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=271 http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=271#comments Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:53:38 +0000 admin http://www.dennisfriesen.com/?p=271 Okay. Yes, I’m still alive. I’ve been insanely chasing my poker dream and getting rejected. I’ll have to try to balance things a little bit better. Not only do I want to play poker, I have some other writing projects I want to complete, I have this blog to write… and something else. Don’t tell me. Tip of my tongue. Oh, yeah. A job. I have to go to work often enough that neither my boss nor my wife will fire me.

So I left off with a plan to talk about places where we ate in Vegas. If it sounds like I’m slamming the Excalibur again, it’s only because they deserve it. When we arrived in Vegas, it was at the end of a long travel day. We didn’t know where anything was and we were hungry. We saw the advertising for the Excalibur’s 2 for 1 buffet special. After waiting in line for over 20 minutes, we got to pay and sit down. I think it cost us $18 for the two of us. The place was busy. Anticipating a good meal, we started cruising the aisles. What a disappointment! Even though they were busy, the meat was dry and tough, as though it had been sitting under heat lamps for hours. Nothing was very flavourful. I tried the desserts. You can’t screw up a dessert, right? Wrong. The peach cobbler was not only bland, but it had the consistency of glue. At $9 each, the meal was overpriced.

The second buffet we had was at Planet Hollywood. The Spice Market Buffet cost about $29 each. Excellent service throughout the meal ensured that we had coffee as required. The assortment included Mexican, Asian, Italian, Middle Eastern and American dishes. I had the shrimp cocktail and chilled crab legs which were delicious. From the ambience to the service to food quality, all were first class.

The last buffet we tried was at the Bellagio. The price was about $27 each. As good as the Spice Market Buffet was, I enjoyed The Buffet at the Bellagio a bit more. There was a nice variety of Asian dishes to try, a separate seafood section, and Italian cuisine. But there was also Seven Spiced Lamb with a nice mint jelly. And the dessert section was excellent. They looked like they came from a specialty shop rather than a buffet.

The regular restaurants in Vegas were also quite good. After we went to see The Phantom at the Venetian, we went to Wolfgang Puck’s Postrio for a late dinner. We both tried a pizza and they were delicious. Wolfgang Puck’s restaurants are all over Vegas but they are all unique.

The night we were going to see Cirque du Soleil, we were going to go to the Harley Davidson Cafe for something barbecued. Unfortunately, it was closed for a private party. SO we wandered down the strip toward the MGM. Along the way we saw a place advertising Korean barbecue called Ginseng BBQ. What the heck. Give it a try. After some awkwardness because we had no idea what we were really ordering, we settled on a combo. The waiter lit a brazier which was built into the middle of our table. A large platter of meat was brought to our table and left there. After we stared at it for a few minutes, the waiter realized we didn’t understand. He explained in heavily accented English that normally, the customers prepare the food the way we like. But being a nice person, he quickly started putting food on the grill. He explained the various sauces which he had left us and the cold appetizers as well. Soon we got the idea and were grilling our own food and experimenting with the tastes of the sauces. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to truly enjoy it. We were pressed for time because the show was starting soon. Even though the menu says the combo is for two to four people, it really is too much food for two. And at $60, it’s a little expensive for two people as well. Good food though and worth it for a group of people.

We ended up at the House of Blues one night. This was the second time we couldn’t enjoy our first choice because it was booked for a private party. I have no idea if this is normal or not but it might make me more likely to phone ahead next time I’m in Vegas. The House of Blues has great Southern Style food. The ribs were tasty and fell off the bone. Marilyn had the Jambalaya and thought it was blah. See how smart I am! I get the good stuff. It was odd that they didn’t have blues playing on the sound system though. It was some kind of Euro-techno trash. It just didn’t fit. Oh well. Dinner, drinks and tip came to about $100.

Then it snowed in Las Vegas. For the first time, they closed the schools because of snow. They also closed the airport. So we were forced to stay an extra two days. We made the best of it by sampling a little bit more. The last memorable meal was at P.F. Chang’s at Planet Hollywood. You walk out of the high energy and rock music of the casino into a surprisingly quiet dining room. We ordered the Crab Wonton and BBQ Spare Ribs for starters. Both were great. Then came the Orange Peel Chicken and Coconut Curry Vegetables. Spicy but delicious. Some people might think spicy AND delicious. Those people don’t understand Dennis’ first rule of food. That rule is “Food should not hurt”. In spite of the heat, I really enjoyed that meal. And the price was great. The entire meal was under $40 before tip.

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