The legend of the immortal Joel Higgins

Hello faithful readers, and welcome to today's instalment of 'The Meandering Mind of Matt'.  I thought about what to talk about today and several topics came to mind. 

Was this about communism or fascism?
I can never make up my mind.

I thought briefly about dwelving into the fact political correctness is just away to eliminate words from the English language.  A tactic used in the novel 1984 known as double speak.  By eliminating words, you then give people less ability to express themselves, and eventually less ability to think for themselves.  However, I'm not in the mood to rant tonight, so sorry rant lovers!

I thought about going on about the concept of infinity, and what it truly means to have something go on forever.  How in an infinite subset there must in turn be an infinite amount of possibilities of combinations, which in turn means that we should have been killed by now by space aliens.

But no my friends, tonight I do not rant, or wax poetic about infinite probabilities and other mathematical geeky things.  Tonight I tell you a story...  A story of this man:


Joel Higgins

Suffice to say, many of you have no idea who on earth this is.  Some of my older peers may recognise this man as Edward Stratton III from the sitcom Silver Spoons.  The character he played was a lovable man child who owned a toy company and suffered from Peter Pan syndrome.  He never really wanted to grow up.  One day he found out he had a child, who in Military school had grown up considerably faster than he.  The sitcom focused on their adventures together.

Also, he drove a kick ass train around his living room.

What you don't know however, is that this man whose real name was Joel Higgins, may very well be immortal.  At the very least, he is one of four potential immortal people that walk the face of the earth to this day.



Plus, Demi Moore's boobies...
So there's that!

Please allow me to explain.  You see, when I was younger I watched this movie called The Seventh Sign.  In this movie, the main bad guy was a legendary person by the name of Cartaphilus.  Cartaphilus according to Christian legend struck Christ at the crucifixion and was cursed to wander the earth forever until revelation happened.  (The second coming of Christ).  So as the movie followed the book of Revelation pretty accurately, then if the Bible is to be believed, then Cartaphilus must still be wandering around somewhere on the earth.  As it happens it occurred to my good friend Rob and I that there was a pretty good chance that it might very well be Joel Higgins.  We realised this because it had become our ritual to watch Silver Spoons at lunch during high school, and whenever we saw Joel on the credits we both acknowledged him as the immortal Joel Higgins.  It all made sense.



Behold the immortal 4

Now, having said that, there were also 3 others that we had acknowledged may be immortal.  The first was Elvis.  I mean, the guy kept getting seen at K-Marts, and on park benches.  No way that guy was dying.  Mel Ott, the famous shortstop for the New York Giants.  He had obvious faked his death in 1958 after a hall of fame career.  Rob and I knew the truth, he lived at the end of Rob's street, and constantly had heart attacks that could never kill him.  We were sure of it.  Rounding out the 4 was Lester Elsary.  He was our grade 10 history teacher, one of the most hilariously abusive and sarcastic teacher I ever had.  Also he was rather brilliant in the field of history, and possibly my favourite teacher of all time.  A perfect cover for a man who was well over 2000 years old!  I'm pretty sure that our legend was built around the biblical Cartaphilus, and the plot of the highlander as I'm sure we talked of their legendary combat against one another, and each was sworn to kill the others on sight!  In the end, the fellow we thought was Mel Ott actually did die.  Elvis lives on.  Mr. Eslary went on to teach at other schools, and now, unless the Internet lies, makes historical models.  But Joel...  Joel is a completely different enigma.

That's right, I'm immortal bitches!

Rob and I went on a rampage trying to one up each other to find Joel Higgins memorabilia in the days before the Internet was mainstream.  I bought CD's with the Silver Spoons theme song on it.  Rob researched and found that Joel had co-written a play called 'The Fields of Ambrosia' which ran for 23 nights in London before it closed.  He had ordered a copy of the CD, and played it proudly.  (Joel actually did a lot of Broadway, and had quite the set up pipes!)  I named my pet turtle Joel Higgins, and then ordered the VHS movie "First Affair" which Joel Higgins played the starring role.   (This was before people ever really bought movies, so it was quite expensive, but well worth the look on Rob's face.)  Rob and my other friend Chris, who was begrudgingly in on the joke sang the Silver Spoons theme song as part of the best man speech at my wedding making me laugh uncontrollably, and the rest of the audience look at each other uncomfortably.  It was glorious!

A must have for anyones library.

That's when the Internet stepped things up a notch...  We both agreed that the winner would be the one who could actually get Joel Higgins to visit us.  (Spoiler alert, nobody has won so far but we are talking immortality here, so we have some time to settle the score!)  What I did do is manage to find a Silver Spoons forum where people openly talked about their love for the 80's sitcom.  I having researched the episodes was able to speak with some level of authority on it.   I spouted my opinions, glorified Joel, and slammed down others who sought to say that Rick Schroeder was the true star of the show.  Oh sure, Ricky was a cute little kid and all, but Joel was f***'n immortal!  I met on the forum a lady by the name of Judith Moose.  Judith was uncommonly knowledgeable about Joel personally.  She was writing a book on Silver Spoons, and spoke as if she spoke for him.  I often wonder how she knew him.  (I've recently found the she founded the JM Media Group and Signing Stars Publishing.)  In December 2003, she published her first book, "Together: A Sitcom Lover's Guide To Silver Spoons".  She introduced me to Joel's Official fan page to which I was the first one to post on his guest book.  I gushed about how awesome he was, and how immortal he was, and how I spent my life looking for him on there, in a way that only a deranged lunatic could.  Then in December of 2001 the ultimate thing happened...  I'm pretty sure I have Judith A. Moose to thank for it.  I received an email from Joel Higgins himself wishing me a Merry Christmas and thanking me for the kind words on his fan site.  Now it is quite possible that it was Rob playing a prank on me, but I choose to think the immortal one actually acknowledged my existence.

I will never die!

I never wrote him back which was kind of an idiot move on my part.  Life moves too fast, and I had other things to worry about, and Joel got moved to the back burner of my life.  (Who am I kidding, I got a girlfriend, and sex became way more important than chasing down the immortals.)  I never got a chance to thank Joel for the letter, or the awesome times and laughs in my life that he unknowingly created.  I never got a chance to thank Judith for actually creating that thrill for me.  I found her on facebook recently, and have attempted to add her as a friend, but I doubt she'll remember me.  So i decided to write this blog to hopefully spread the word, and who knows.  Maybe one of them will see it and know that they are appreciated.

Cheers Joel and Judith!

More controversial stuff from my brain...

This picture kicks almost too much ass

I often want to sit down and do another blog, because frankly I really do enjoy writing.  I never know what's going to end up on this page until it spills from my fingers, and then I'm off to a magic place known as...  Well I don't know what it's known as.  If I knew I guess I could go there more often.  The only thing I'm sure of is there is probably surfing unicorns there.  I actually photoshopped this picture together myself, I'm quite proud of it.  One day I wanted to see a surfing unicorn, and much to my disappointment, there was no images of surfing unicorns on Google.  So I took matters into my own hands.  Thus the surfing unicorn was born.  I still think it would be a kick ass t-shirt, and may still get around to that.

So I actually got quite a few comments on my last blog:  Atheists and Other Belief's.  Not so many written on the page itself, but people who approached me personally.  It is nice to know I'm being read, in fact it is quite a rush.  It's also pretty cool that I'm actually getting people who I don't know reading it.  All the stats show I've got lots of American readers, and some as far away as Russia and New Zealand.  (But I know my NZ friend, but still it's cool to see you here Jenn.)

Strawberry bitches!

One of the things most people asked me is what I was going to write about next, and gave me lots of ideas for controversial topics.  Political correctness, Joseph Kony, abortion, racism, and which is better:  Chocolate or Vanilla?  (The answer by the way of course is Strawberry) While I do have many opinions to share, and some are indeed against the norm.  Hell most are against the norm.  I kind of thrive on playing devils advocate...  I don't really want to be known as the controversial guy.  I'm just a guy who spits out his thoughts, and hopefully gives you a chuckle as I have low self esteem and validation for my thoughts is what I crave more than anything.  (LOOK AT ME, COMPLIMENT ME, LOVE ME!!!)  As such, I also need to please everyone so here are my short answers to the controversies. 

Political Correctness:  Full of crap and censorship of the worst kind.  To be able to tell anyone that they can't say something because they might offend someone takes away a basic human right.  They have the right to say it, and you have the right to be offended.  You don't have the right to shut someone up if you don't like what they say, but you have the right to not like it, and not listen to it.

Controversialy stolen from someone else's blog...
I gave them a thumbs up, so it's OK.

Joseph Kony:  Horrible horrible person, but as I understand it, probably just as horrible as what he's fighting against.  The Ugandan government doesn't have a stellar human rights track record either.  There is no clear solution to the issue save the Ugandan people need to make that decision of what they want and take it.

Abortion:  This ones tough...  No one has the right to tell you what to decide to do.  I don't believe that it should be used as a birth control method, but neither do I believe that a child should ever be raised by someone who can't support it.  I'd like to say that adoption would be the best solution in my opinion, but I don't have, nor do I want the right to tell you what to do.

Racism:  The only way to truly abolish racism is to deny it's existence, because in a truly racism free society, no one would look at anyone as anything more than a human.  The thought of anyone being different wouldn't exist.  However, we must acknowledge that it does exist to be able to stop acknowledging it.  Strange one. 

Chocolate vs. Vanilla?  See the above picture.

Well see there I went being all controversial again!  I really don't want to be that guy.

A broken record player which keeps playing
The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins by Leonard Nemoy.

 I want to make you laugh, and if I can't then what's the point of doing this after all.  OK, people stop asking me to write about politics.  I'd much rather write about the movie I just saw.  Thor.  It was good.  I really thought the way Loki wrestled power away from Odin and Thor was symbolic of the way Steven Harper beat the Liberals and NDP...  Damn it.  OK, that was a cheap joke, I'm better than that.  I'm like a sad clown...  A washed up satirist...  A broken down record player, just spinning the same track over and over and over.

I always thought he got a bad rap.

You know it's a funny thing, just listening to that song once makes me feel better about myself.  I mean I know Spock made a lot more money that I can ever dream of, and he's considered famous the world over.  I'll probably never achieve those levels of success, but on the other hand, I'll never have to endure the humiliation of knowing that I wrote that song.  It kind of makes me feel good about myself actually.  I'm an OK guy.  Who cares if people like me.  I can hold my head high and know that the worst contribution to music I'll ever make is a bad rendition of Wanted Dead or Alive at Karaoke. I mean I guess someone could tape it and put me on YouTube, and I could become the next Star Wars Kid or something, but I think that's pretty unlikely.

OK...  I'm good.  I'll write again, but I don't think I'll try and please you next time.  No more surfing unicorns, no more statements of political whateverness, no more needless Spock references.  I'm just going to write about what I want to write about!  Which will probably be about unicorns, politics, and maybe turtles.  But for now, I'm hungry...  I'm gonna go eat!

Seasoned with salt water, rainbows, and tears of small girls.

Atheists and other beliefs.

So recently I've been thinking a lot about what people believe in, and consequentially, what people don't believe in.  I go on YouTube and find arrogant Christians telling me what questions that I can ask Atheists to mess them up, and videos of Atheists telling me questions I can ask Christians to mess them up...  All the questions and points they made seemed to support their sides, and basically pitted science vs. faith, and ultimately made the people on the video look douchey and close minded.
But as I continued to look through my videos having a good laugh at everyone involved.  I noticed something rather interesting.  Each side was very specific.  The Christians seemed to always target the Atheists and vice versa.  Then I started to wonder to myself, where the hell are the other religions, and why aren't they represented? 

Surely there must be someone hardcore fundamentalist Christians who were making videos saying that Buddha had it all wrong, and screw the path to enlightenment, and there must be some Atheists who claim that Confucius says nothing, cause he's full of shite!  But it wasn't there.  Or at least I didn't see it.  I mean lets face it, I didn't look that hard.  If it's not in my face, why bother researching.  So I'm just going to assume that it doesn't.  At least not in great enough numbers to garner my attention.

It's probably fair to tell you that in my youth I was part of a youth group that was quite fundamentalist.  I'm not saying that I ever marched around with a "God Hates Fags" sign or anything like that, but there were those who did believe quite literally that the Bible was the word of God.  I wasn't quite worldy enough to ask if they thought the world was only 5000 years old, or if dinosaurs ever existed, or even if they thought it might be OK to kill people who didn't share their beliefs.

"Then I heard the LORD say to the other men, "Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and little children. But do not touch anyone with the mark. Begin your task right here at the Temple." So they began by killing the seventy leaders. "Defile the Temple!" the LORD commanded. "Fill its courtyards with the bodies of those you kill! Go!" So they went throughout the city and did as they were told." (Ezekiel 9:5-7 NLT)

Frankly I have read the bible since, and am pretty shocked at some of the stuff in there.  I really can't take it litereally, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have some really good points as well.  The old testament is pretty harsh, but Jesus had some really good ideas, and while I can't agree with everything the bible preaches, I can choose to listen to the relevant parts of it's philosophy.  That last quote paints a very unfair picture I know, but I think my point is proven.  I truly beleive that most Christians in their heart have good intentions, and honestly TRY and do the right thing.  Some are just misguided, as we all are at times.  The fundamentalist group that I was a part of really just wanted there to be more love in the world, and thought the best way to do that was to spread the word of Christ.  The underlying intention was quite noble.

I have since given up my "born-again" ways as I grow to understand that there is more than one way to reach whatever it is that we don't truly understand as God or god if you prefer.  I do beleive in many of the Christian ideas however.

The atheists however make the argument that you can't choose which parts of the Bible are good and bad, if you say it's God's word, then it all must be true, and then go ahead and pick holes in its stories, thusly proving that it all must be absolutely wrong.  What a pretensious load of horseshit!  Where in the world do we look at anything with one or two mistakes in it, and then decide that all its ideas must be false?  This argument ONLY holds true for people who beleive that the entire Bible is the absolute word of God unchanged over the years.  Beleive me when I tell you that this is a VERY small segment of the Christian population.  The rest of us know that it's bad to eat babies, that probably evolution is a very valid thing, and that the idea of loving your neighbour, not murdering and stealing, and doing unto others is probably not such a bad guideline to live your life by.  By no means do I agree with everything that the church has done, but that's a whole other blog.

So still though, there are people so strong minded in their beleifs about not having beliefs in a magic sky man that they feel they have to form groups, make videos, and ultimately prove a very small segment of a small population of the earth wrong.  (Albeit a sometimes very vocal small segment.)  Whilst doing this, they acknowledge that the rest of religion is wrong as well, but tend to ignore that as a whole and focus on the fundie Christians.

Perplexed, I asked one of my atheist friends, who I consider to be very smart about what she thought about why it seems that most online atheist content only attacked Christians, and were there equally vocal atheists perhaps that I wasn't aware of in other societies that I might be too unworldy to know about.  She looked thoughtfully at me, and suggested that she agreed, it was strange, and offered that other societies sometimes don't have words and phrases which are nearly so self important as ours.  For some reason it's a very ethnocentric idea that we need to define ourselves as much as we do, and indeed perhaps Atheists in other societies may not feel the need to define themselves as such because their beliefs, or lack there of, just are; and don't need a name.  Consequentially those who beleive in other religions in those societies may not feel the need to push it in other's faces as much as certain segments of our population, just because what they beleive is, and that's all they need.  I kind of like that idea.

Maybe Atheists and Christians can get along.  Maybe we need to stop worrying about "Me" and start worrying about "We".  I can't tell you what or what not to beleive anymore than I can tell you how you should feel. 

It just is.

Rainbows and Lollipops

Good morning all! 

I had fun last time I did this so I thought I'd better blog again.  I wish I had much more time in my life.  Frankly though between work, commuting, family, friends, and the little amount of sleep I get, writing blogs just isn't in the cards as much as I'd like.

I actually fancied myself a person who could write quite well. At least I can make a lot of words spill out of my fingers. I think that there is a novel in me somewhere. I've had the first sentence in my head for a while. To put it in perspective, I haven't smoked in probably 15 years, but...

Holy crap, ADD moment here, Madelyn is watching Peter Pan on the TV. They just got captured by the savage indians.  Racisim is so funny when we didn't care about it.  Ah Disney, you and your family entertainment.  Good job putting those redskins in their place. Did you know that indians have red skin because they kissed a girl and blushed, and now they all blush?

Alright, back to my point about having a novel in me...  So like I said, I haven't had a cigarettte in 15 years, so the opening line must have been around since before that.  It opens with:  "Jack pulled the matche's head slowly against the long black stip of..."

Hmmm, I'm not sure if I wanted it to be a wooden match or paper match.  If it was paper then the strip would be black.  If it was wooden, it might be red and gold.  I wonder why they use different colours for different types.   Sorry, ADD'ing again.

So where was I.  Oh yes...  "Jack pulled the matche's head slowly against the long black stip watching it briefly spark, and then explode in a bright white and orange flare on the bright read head of the match.  A whiff of sulfur permated the air..."

I used to love the smell of matched.  Maybe everyone does.  Sulfur is one of the stinkiest things, but on a match, it's enthralling.  I wonder what other horrible smelling things do smell great when burning.  Skunk comes to mind.

So back to the opening of my story.   "A whiff of sulfur permated the air as Jack put the match to the tip of his white cigarette and pulled deeply..."

You know, I still get the occasional craving for a cigarette.  Not often, and not nearly enough to ever light one up...  Just enough for my brain to say.  "You know, a cigarette would taste really good right now."

I guess that feeling never quite goes away.  If they made cigarettes that were good for you, or at least weren't that bad for you, I'd probably still smoke.  I wonder if they'll ever figure out a way to make non-addictive smokes out of brocolli.  When they do sign me up.

Oh, so back to my novel.  I really am ADDing a lot today.  Perhaps I just need a coffee to concentrate.  So where was I.   "A whiff of sulfur permated the air as Jack put the match to the tip of his white cigarette and pulled deeply and the sweet smoke gently filled his lungs taking the edge off the morning hangover.  He hadn't even been drinking that night, but..."

Wow, was I a drinker back then.  I did love me some beer!  Wow, I'm pretty bad ass.  I'm almost ashamed to admit it, I drank Bud back then.  I would probably still drink a Bud if it was all that was offered, don't get me wrong.  I'm not that much of a snob.  I'm just saying I couldn't ever see buying it otherwise.  I'm looking forward to beerfest this year mind you.  It is one of the great highlights of the beer drinking year. It was where I was introduced to Beau's Bog Water.  Still my favourite beer to this day.  It's a shame that only make it around Christmas.  I stocked up this year.  I bought Dundurn out a couple of times this year, and introduced many of my friends to it.  Most loved it.  Some didn't.  (You know who you are.)  Anyway, get yourself some Beau's of any stripe, it is delicous!

Um yeah, so my story.  I don't know why I never got past the first paragraph.  I'm pretty sure it would have been awesome.   I have to go though, Peter Pan I think is about to slap some women around.  I think I'd better turn that off.

Cheers all!
Mattie

Blogging?

Wow, I never thought that I would write a blog.  I mean what really do I have to say that would hold anyones interest accepting maybe my own, and a few close friends. True I love to write and make observations about the world, but really how egotistical of me to think that any of it was worth publishing.

I mean I'm not conceited or anything, I just have a lot of reason to be.  (Credit to Dave Burg on that one.  (Double credit to you if you know who Dave Burg is without the help of Google.))  (By the way, I really enjoy parenthesis.  I often embed them into each other.  I'm never sure however if I should use square brackets as suggested by my math teacher in grade 9.)

It always kind of a fantasy of mine that I could write an email that would go viral and my friends would forward, and then someone would eventually send it back to me with someone else having taken credit.  In a fit of irony I wrote beautiful and eloquent emails telling people that hoax emails were indeed just the 90's version of the chain letter, and that they should be ignored.  I urged my friends not to forward them, thinking that people would understand my sarcasm and beautiful wit.  That perhaps my ingenious use of reverse psychology would prevail.  I never knew if it ever got forwarded, but I never got one back.  I like to assume that its still navigating the globe and one day will return to my inbox like a prodigal son.  Maybe however they actually did some good, and people took them to heart and stopped forwarding emails that promised me true love if only I would forward their poem to 72 friends.  I certainly don't receive as many of those anymore.

I suspect that no one ever got it though, and perhaps my words sit discarded as so many 1's and 0's in an Exchange servers backup tapes somewhere.  Perhaps people took me literally.  They do that quite a bit.  Maybe the world is not ready for my meandering mind, and maybe it never will be.