Jones and I are standing on the sidewalk and I am asking him about his dream from the previous night.

What was it about, Jones? 
Santa.
What was he doing?
He was bringing presents.
Did you get to open any?
Yes! There were chocolate eggs, and inside of them was apple juice!

*******************************

Rachelle: No, it’s not.

Rachelle: I’m sorry Pickle, you’re wrong.

Rachelle: It’s not the Marie Keto diet.

Rachelle: There are two different things. The Keto diet where you eat steak, and Marie Kondo, a Japanese spirit who tidies apartments when you’re sleeping.

Rachelle: It’s an easy mistake to make.

Rachelle: I don’t know how you’re expected to keep up either!

Rachelle: The world moves quickly, it really does.

Rachelle: Did you drop Jones off at daycare?

Rachelle: “Only Jones and Hulk make the rules now?”

Rachelle: He said that to you when you asked him to put on his boots?

Rachelle: OMG, that is the funniest thing I have ever heard!

Rachelle: I’m not sure I’d want to live in a world like that, either.

Rachelle: Can you imagine?

Rachelle: There would just be SO MUCH SMASHING.

Rachelle: Marie Kondo should be part of the Hulk and Jones team, quietly tidying up after they raze city after city.

Rachelle: Really?

Rachelle: How is that sexist?

Rachelle: And disrespectful to Asian culture?

Rachelle: It just is? Is that all you’ve got???

Rachelle: Look, proclaiming that you’re tolerant of everything but intolerance is not an explanation for why you think I’m sexist and racist.

Rachelle: No it isn’t.

Rachelle: It doesn’t even really make sense.

Rachelle: Yes.

Rachelle: By extension you don’t really make sense either.

Rachelle: Yes, all your friends know that.

Rachelle: For a very long time now.

Rachelle: When you really get going we call it “Murrbling,” as in, “Man alive, was Michael ever Murrbling last night!”

Rachelle: I don’t have time right now, Pickle. My hockey game is about to start.

Rachelle: Okay, I’ll pick up some Jackson Triggs on the way back, and of course I’ll come home with my shield, or on it. They don’t call me the Blonde Volcano for nothing!

Rachelle: Love you, too, and don’t let Jones and the Hulk push you around. You make the rules!

Rachelle: Yes.

Rachelle: By that I did mean I make the rules. xo

In it, I am wearing a costume that is clearly racist and offensive.

This picture was taken from a Christmas Assembly at Lisgar Collegiate in Ottawa, Ontario, and I was performing a rap as an “urban Santa.” Although I was not in black face as some have asserted, my family and I had just returned from a vacation in Hawaii and I had a very uncharacteristic tan. I am deeply apologetic for that triggering tan, the privilege that implies, and for my blatant cultural appropriation.

It is also true that I wrote, “I HAVE ALWAYS HAD A CRAZY CRUSH ON YOU!! in Marie-Therese Vitzhum’s yearbook in 1983. I am deeply embarrassed by my insensitivity to my brothers and sisters who struggle with mental illness. After finishing in the bottom third of the standings in a fantasy hockey league two years ago, I, too, fell into a depression, so I need you to know you have an ally in Michael Murray, not an enemy.

I love you.
I hear you.
And I am listening.

These past behaviours of mine are not in keeping with who I am today or the values I have fought for throughout my career as Commissioner of the Dirty Pigeon Fantasy Hockey League. I want to offer my sincerest apology, and to state my absolute commitment to living up to the expectations the Dirty Pigeon Fantasy Hockey Community set for me when you elected me Commissioner. I understand why your faith in me has been shaken, and I recognize that it will take time and serious effort to heal the damage this conduct has caused.

I am ready to do that important work.

Humbled and grateful for this teachable moment.

Your fantasy hockey Commissioner,

Michael Murray

Doug Ford, the Conservative Premier of Ontario, is known for many things.

He is the brother of Toronto’s late, fun-loving mayor Rob Ford, is the canny businessman who led Deco Labels, Flexible Packaging and Cannabis Dispensary to a top 12 business ranking in the greater Etobicoke region for three of the last five years, and is an avid hockey fan who coaches a Peewee team in Etobicoke. What follows is the speech Ford gave to his players between periods during a recent game:

*************************************************

“Great moments are born from great opportunity. And that’s what we have here, today, boys. This game sits before us like an undervalued property waiting to be bought and turned into condos by an alpha businessman! Do we have the necessary capital to make the purchase? You’re damn right we do! Do we have our mortgage rate advantageously negotiated?

I can’t hear you!

I still can’t hear you!!

I. SAID. DO! WE! HAVE! OUR! MORTGAGE! RATE! ADVANTAGEOUSLY! NEGOTIATED!

That’s better.

You’re damn right we do!!

We have the best flipping mortgage rate in the entire city!

We have all the talent and all the character we need to take this game from the Tornadoes, we just need to stop playing like a bunch of goddamn Midwives out there! You’re were playing like little girl witches out there in the first period. Sweeping your sticks about like ladies with brooms instead of chopping with them like they were axes. It’s like we’ve been cleaning up after the Tornadoes, not dominating them, and the Deco Labels, Flexible Packaging and Cannabis Dispensary Devils don’t clean up after nobody!!

Jesus H. Christ.

Defranco, please tell me I did not hear you interrupting me with a stupid question asking what a Midwife was. I will bench your skinny ass. Don’t think I won’t. I would welcome the opportunity. You just try me, Defranco. I dare you.

Yeah.

That’s what I thought.

Not so tough now, are you, you pitiful little puck bunny.

Okay, now that Midwife Defranco got his question out of his system, we can get back to strategy. Boys, I want you to think of the Tornadoes as a greenbelt that we are going to raze in order to develop. We are going to chop those little bastards down. We are going to throw their nests from their trees and shit in their brooks. We are going to show them what it feels like to be developed by the Etobicoke Deco Labels, Flexible Packaging and Cannabis Dispensary Devils! We are going to bring the full might of the free market down upon their socialist heads!

ARE WE OPEN FOR BUSINESS?

YES!

YES, WE ARE GODDAMN WELL OPEN FOR BUSINESS, NOW LET LOOSE THE HOUNDS OF WAR, BOYS, AND TAKE THIS MOMENT AND MAKE IT YOURS!!!

As many of you likely remember, Rob Ford, the late Mayor of Toronto, and I were enrolled at Carleton University in Ottawa at the same time back in the 1980’s.

We became drinking buddies then, and I got to know his family a little bit and have found myself in the entirely surprising position as being in a Book Club with Doug Ford, his older, angrier, more politically conservative brother, who was just elected Premier of Ontario.

Here is a partial transcript of the meeting of our last Book Club:

********************************************************************

Doug Ford: Okay, okay, quieten down.

Lucy: Oh, I just watched the movie and it was SO scary.

Me: Was it the original or the remake?

Doug Ford: Jesus and goddamn, put a sock in it!

Me: Sorry.

Doug Ford: I’ll make you sorry Murray. You and I, shot put field after this. No excuses, and for Christ’s sake, use a coaster! This isn’t some chicken shack, here!

Lucy: I would love it if this was a chicken shack.

Doug Ford: Goddamn Lucy, you are on warning!

And if there is one more interruption from either of you, Sweet Jesus, you don’t even want to know. Just try me. ( Several seconds pass) Yeah, you just try me. Okay, that’s what I thought.

Okay then. The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson.

Story of a businessman who saw a really, really sweet real estate deal. He takes advantage and moves his family into this great house and it turns out it’s haunted and everybody gets scared and they run away from the best investment they ever made. But why the haunting, what does that symbolize?

Lucy: It’s the story of Colonialsm. The house was built on an ancient Indian burial ground, and some white settlers arrived and did not honour this, so the haunting is symbolic of the suffering and fury and pain of our first peoples whom we’ve commodified and marginalized.

Doug Ford: I think I’m going puke.

I’ve never heard something so stupid in my entire life.

The ghosts are big government regulations that drove the businessman crazy. He made a good investment. Was doing some renos. Providing jobs for his community. But every time he goes to do something, say make a panic room or dungeon chamber, there’s some inspector pecking, pecking, pecking at him. Everywhere he turns: regulations, taxation, bureaucracy, protests, special interests. Even when he’s trying to have relations with his lady, regulations show up in the form of some spirit!

It’s exhausting. And you think it’s the ghosts who are the victims?? You got a screw loose, Lucy, a goddamn screw loose. The businessman is the victim here, harassed by the state to the point of madness, it’s a miracle that he was strong enough not to go on a mass killing spree!

Me: So you’re saying this book is a cautionary tale against big government?

Doug Ford: Slow clap for Einstein here. Yes, dammit, of course the book is a cautionary tale against government interference, and it’s as plain as this expensive gold chain around my neck.

And if you can’t see that, well, there’s nothing that can be done, you might as well move to Russia, comrade.

***************************************************

Rachelle: Are you still on for the Textile Museum at 2:00?

Rachelle: Tetanus?

Rachelle: No

Rachelle: No, I am certain there’s no such thing as a “Tetanus Museum.”

Rachelle: Well, I’m sorry you misunderstood.

Rachelle: But we have passes for the Textile Museum and we agreed to meet there in 30 minutes.

Rachelle: But you were so keen on seeing the Kimono of Itchiku Kobuta! You said that’s what you were going to name your Fantasy baseball team! What happened?

Rachelle: Really, Pickle?

Rachelle: You think it’s cultural appropriation?

Rachelle: And you don’t want to exercise your white privilege by exploiting something that was not created for the white, male gaze?

Rachelle: And in order to achieve that goal you’ve gone to The Keg Mansion, the place where everything is specially made for you, is that right?

Rachelle: Yes, yes, I know you have a gift card.

Rachelle: And yes, I know The Keg is your safe space.

Rachelle: You’ve said it many times.

Rachelle: Will you do me a favour? Just have a look around.

Rachelle: Do you see a bunch of men who more or less look like you, all eating steak and drinking wine?

Rachelle: Yes, or drinking Caesars.

Rachelle: And are they all being served by hot, young women laughing at all the jokes they’re being told through gritted, shoot-me-now teeth?

Rachelle: In the exploitation Olympics, I think that beats going to a fabric museum, don’t you?

Rachelle: Look, do you even know what false equivalency means?.

Rachelle: I thought not.

Rachelle: Oh, I see.

Rachelle: I was all wrong about Madison the server.

Rachelle: She’s different, is she?

Rachelle: Well maybe when she said that she didn’t mean funny ha-ha?

Rachelle: Okay, let’s just never mind.

Rachelle: Are you going to meet me or not?

Rachelle: Oh, your wedge salad just arrived!

Rachelle: Well obviously your hands are tied.

Rachelle: Yes.

Rachelle: That was sarcasm.

Rachelle: Because you’re being a jerk.

Rachelle: Sweet Jesus.

Rachelle: In no way am I discriminating against you for eating meat.

Rachelle: I’m a Social Justice Warrior? I’m not even sure I know what one is.

Rachelle: You’re drunk.

Rachelle: You Keg-Sized your Caesar, didn’t you?

Rachelle: Yes, I am psychic.

Rachelle: I can also detect something slurry and aggressive in all your texts.

Rachelle: It’s like you’re campaigning for something.

Rachelle: Shouting from the podium!

Rachelle: Throwing emoticons everywhere!

Rachelle: Like angry confetti.

Rachelle: Whatever.

Rachelle: Just remember that the doctor said you could only have one drink a day, okay?

Rachelle: No, don’t worry about it. It’s fine.

Rachelle: I’m going to go to the museum then have a power skating session with Pierre.

Rachelle: No, he wasn’t deported.

Rachelle: He was in Costa Rica on a spiritual retreat.

Rachelle: Very tan. And he shaved off his moustache.

Rachelle: I know it’s a dream of yours to one day grow a full beard like Pierre does so effortlessly, but it’s just not your path, Pickle.

Rachelle: Yes, yours is the path of low testosterone and patchy facial hair.

Rachelle: We all have our crosses to bear, dear.

When the girls first met Rachelle and I they declared us their “real” parents–probably due to our liberal rules regarding drugs and alcohol and my collection of hats. No matter, since then, they have relegated their actual mom to “birth mother.” They are currently off working as camp counsellors for the summer, and have requested that I write them a letter each week. Here is one:

************************************
My most cherished daughters:

It’s really hot in Toronto right now. So hot your birth mother might even consider putting on the AC. I, as you know, perish in the heat. Humidity is my enemy. I am TOTALLY racist against humidity. Not woke at all in that department.

Fuck the humidity!

I would vote for anybody who proposed building a huge wall between me and the humidity.

I really would.

Anyway, as you should, but probably don’t know, I work-out up to three hours a day.

Fact.

Not fake news!

Part of this routine includes walking ( pretty fast!) on a treadmill for 30 minutes a day. Today, on account of the heat, I took my shirt off to do this. Just as I was finishing and stepping off the treadmill, sweaty and a little bit dizzy, I spotted three young women passing by our front window.

I have to admit, I kind of froze.

Obviously, I wanted to dive out of the way and hide from sight, but startled, I guess, I made eye contact with one of them. Have you ever seen a face collapse? I don’t mean literally, like in a horror movie, but more an unmediated emotional response in the face of calamity.

This woman, the one whom I made eye contact with, had a normal, even confident resting face, but when she saw me standing there shirtless, all conscious control she had over her facial features simply vanished. It was like everything caved in and turned upside down at once—as if she had been seized by a kind of supernatural possession. She gasped and then leaned forward, resting her hands on her knees and stated to gag. One of her friends looked at me and started to desperately wave me away and out of their sight line, which of course, I dutifully did.

Really, really hate sorority girls.

Pretty sure they were from Alpha Gamma Delta.

Don’t you ever join Alpha Gamma Delta. They are the worst. Very stuck-up. And sororities are all about upholding cultural and social hierarchies. Sororities are not woke!

Thankfully, I am a middle-aged white man so the incident did nothing to diminish my mystifying confidence.

Anyhow, that is how my day started.

Soon I will clean the bathroom. Did you know that Rachelle made a chore list, laminated it and has now posted 8 copies of it throughout the apartment?

That’s more copies than there are rooms! It’s true, and you would not believe how unfair the list is!! Do you think I should be cleaning her hockey equipment and the Diaper Genie three times a week??? I swear, Rachelle thinks she’s such a big shot just because she has a job. Let me give you some fatherly advice, daughters, never, ever allow yourself to be defined by paid work. Or becoming a member of a fucking sorority.

We love you very much and ask that you please send photographs of Bigfoot and Mothman,

Your father

These are the text messages my wife sent to me the other day:

*********************************

Rachelle: How’s the pulmonary rehab going, my love?

Rachelle: Oh, I’m so glad to hear that you’re dominating the warm-up exercises!

Rachelle: Yes, you are a natural leader, it’s one hundred percent true!

Rachelle: What’s The Flower Pot?

Rachelle: I see.

Rachelle: So you sit in a chair, and then move one of your legs as if you were lifting it over a flower pot?

Rachelle: What a strange name for an exercise!

Rachelle: Well, I don’t know. Maybe something a little more macho, something like The Grizzly Stomp or The Sumo Crush.

Rachelle: I like The Grizzly Stomp, too. You should write that down and put it in the Suggestion Box.

Rachelle: You already suggested a Cosplay night! Interesting idea, Pickle, but aren’t all the other residents elderly?

Rachelle: I see, that’s good thinking on your part, you can make your oxygen tanks look like rocket packs!

Rachelle: You are very creative, it’s true, and as you say, you are the Wayne Gretzky of The Flower Pot.

Rachelle: Really? The physiotherapist asked you to lead the class yesterday?! How flattering!

Rachelle: Yes, I am sure it was a great honour that everybody else was bitterly jealous of! I’m curious, did you get to choose the music for the work-out?

Rachelle: That’s great! Who did you pick?

Rachelle: Oh.

Rachelle: Well, it just seems like an odd choice.

Rachelle: I didn’t know, Tori Amos just seems weird to me. Complicated, annoying.

Rachelle: Sorry. I am trying to encourage and support you, my love.

Rachelle: Really?

Rachelle: Right in the middle of the stretch she said you had a very small flower pot?!

Rachelle: OMG, That’s hilarious!

Rachelle: I mean nasty, just nasty.

Rachelle: 90 is old, and aging can make people mean.

Rachelle: You’re probably right, that smart-alecky Yvette lady likely had dementia.

Rachelle: Because it’s not your class, honey.

Rachelle: That’s why they wouldn’t let you “expel her from your program.”

Rachelle: Well, I’m glad you put her on notice, anyway, and sorry that everybody is now calling you The Little Flower Pot.

Rachelle: Think of it being like Dear Leader, a term of respect and fear.

Rachelle: Well of course I miss you terribly, but I’m struggling along. Even had a little party last night to fight the loneliness.

Rachelle: Probably less than 25 people, I don’t remember.

Rachelle: He might have been there, not positive.

Rachelle: Oh, you’ll get a kick out of this!

Rachelle: He brought his Porsche over the other day to take Jones for a ride, and Jones just loved it! I’ve never seen him happier! It’s astonishing Pierre doesn’t have any kids because he is just SO amazing with them!!

Rachelle: Yes, you’re amazing with Jones, too.

Rachelle: Sure Jones misses you.

Rachelle: Well, he’s still not really talking yet, so he missing you in a kind of subconscious way, I guess, but I can tell that he really does miss you!!

Rachelle: Tonight?

Rachelle: Oh, Steve needed to take somebody to the magazine awards at some fancy hotel and Jen is out of town, so I have to go as his date. Barf.

Rachelle: He was nominated in two different comedy writing categories.

Rachelle: It is a shame none of your work was nominated!

Rachelle: No, I have no idea why Steve won’t accept your Facebook friendship.

Rachelle: The world is mysterious.

Rachelle: Never mind that though, what are you up to tonight, my Little Flower Pot?

Rachelle: Fish stick night! Yum!

Rachelle: You’re my favourite fish stick, you know.

Rachelle: It’s true.

Rachelle: Don’t ever doubt that!

Rachelle: You will always be my favourite fish stick! xo

***************************************************************

Me: Oh.

Me: I didn’t know you were getting a massage.

Me: I thought you were at the Dufferin Mall trying to improve our phone plans.

Me: Sure was off with that one!

Me: Well, I hope the massage is doing the trick, anyway!

Me: Awesome. You really do deserve to have a “tender yet forceful experience that lifts you out of your body and punishes you in all the right places.”

Me: What’s the masseuses name again? Yana? Didn’t she used to be a hot Russian long jumper before some sort of sex scandal? 

Me: Pierre?

Me: He’s your masseuse?

Me: I thought he was your power skating coach.

Me: Both, eh? That’s a little weird.

Me: I see.

Me: He’s a renaissance man.

Me: I do too know what that means.

Me: It means he’s a douche.

Me: You know he lied about being in the NHL, eh?

Me: That’s something sacred, you don’t lie about stuff like that!

Me: Oh, he was in the German league then.

Me: Not. The. Same. Thing. 

Me: Like playing in Peewee.

Me: I would dominate that stupid league.

Me: Whatever.

Me: Whatever.

Me: You did what?

Me: Look, my Fantasy Baseball Stats file is private.

Me: I have no idea why you found a bunch of racy photographs of Kristen Stewart in there.

Me: Not a clue.

Me: Maybe Jones put them there.

Me: Really? That’s the stupidest thing you ever heard?

Me: Look, I’m not stupid just because I failed math a bunch of times.

Me: Or French.

Me: Or any other subject!

Me: I’m Alt-Smart.

Me: No, it’s different than being “special.”

Me: You’re being a bully.

Me: You are not a safe space!

Me: Look, look, why are we fighting? It’s Christmas!

Me: Sure.

Me: Of course I’ve been doing my Christmas shopping!

Me: I’m no rookie.

Me: Practically done.

Me: You and Pierre wanted tickets to that Pentatonix concert, right?

Me: Or was it the travelling version of The Price is Right?

Me: Maybe I’ll get you two both!

Me: Yes.

Me: Wow, that would be great!

Me: I had no idea they made Kristen Stewart sex dolls!

Me: What do you mean, “That’s not what my Internet history says?”

Me: Well, I don’t know.

Me: Must have been some mistake.

Me: Maybe the baby sitter was looking up Kristen Stewart sex dolls? How would I know!?

Me: Also, maybe my account was hacked by a Russian?

Me: Well, I’m a pretty important writer.

Me: The Russians know that if they attribute something to me it will have great influence on the public.

Me: They’re smart, the Russians.

Me: You ever see them play hockey? So very clever!

Me: I did not think that Aleppo was a type of dog food two months ago!

Me: I’m pretty keyed in to world events. Always have been.

Me: I have always stood with Syria.

Me: Sure I did.

Me: I gave away that old bathroom scale to a Syrian refugee family.

Me: Well, yes.

Me: The organizer never did come to pick it up, but that’s on her!

Me: She’s the one who doesn’t care about Syrians, not me!

Me: I care about their weight, about how they adapt to the North American diet!

Me: Don’t want them to get diabetes!

Me: Sorry?

Me: Why did I text and interrupt your massage?

Me: I don’t remember.

Me: Oh, now I remember!

Me: If the last three women on the planet were you, Kristen Stewart and Jennifer Lawrence, I would choose you.

Me: Yes, I am very sweet.

Me: I love you, too, see you soon! xoxo

In an effort to combat this, my wife Rachelle has developed a side hustle in which she combs through various stores for used children’s clothing and then sells what she finds online. I have recently become a part of her purchasing team.

What follows are the texts she sent to me while I was on a shopping mission:

**************************************

Rachelle: So, did you get those pink Sorel boots at the Value Village that you promised to pick up for me?

Rachelle: Oh.

Rachelle: I’d have thought you’d be there by now.

Rachelle: What problem?

Rachelle: Oh, I didn’t realize that taking the Queen streetcar to a destination on Queen street was “counter-intuitive,” especially considering that we used to live on that street.

Rachelle: Yes, I guess that was a lifetime ago.

Rachelle: We were very different people then, it’s true.

Rachelle: That’s right, there was no Netflix back in those days!

Rachelle: Yes, those were much more innocent times.

Rachelle: Those were the days before you fell down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole!

Rachelle: I’m sorry dear, of course I meant “Got Woke.”

Rachelle: Yes, you really are just as woke as fuck, and you’re right, the Lame-stream media can’t be trusted– it’s just too bad you still have such trouble with ordinary challenges is all.

Rachelle: Oh.

Rachelle: That’s what you want people to think.

Rachelle: I see.

Rachelle: Conceal the truth within a fog of misdirection! Just like a magician!

Rachelle: It’s amazing how successful you’ve been at making everybody believe you’re not very hygienic and unable to hold a job!

Rachelle: Oh, don’t be like that!

Rachelle: You’re still my favourite flavour of ice cream!

Rachelle: What? Something’s happening on the streetcar?

Rachelle: Bullying? Well that is serious!

Rachelle: What’s he saying to you, Pickle?

Rachelle: Well sure, it could be somebody else getting bullied, but I just figured it was part of your plan. You know, to draw fire from the weak to the strong!

Rachelle: I do know you well, Pickle!

Rachelle: So what did the guy say to you?

Rachelle: She called you a “weak-chinned twerp” because you got the last seat?

Rachelle: You’re right, it’s not your fault she’s slow.

Rachelle: You know what I think? I think she underestimated your quickness! Just like you planned!

Rachelle: But still, it’s amazing how bullies know exactly where to attack!

Rachelle: How did she know that you’re so sensitive about your weak chin?

Rachelle: Oh, good one, telling her you just had hernia surgery and needed to sit is sure to shut her up!

Rachelle: Oh, I’m sorry that it didn’t work.

Rachelle: And now she’s making fun of your “Solidarity Pin?”

Rachelle: What is a “Solidarity Pin.”

Rachelle: Oh, it’s a safety pin that signals to others that you’re a safe zone? And any persecuted group or person can take comfort under the umbrella of your entitlement, is that it?

Rachelle: So you’re kind of like an X-Man?

Rachelle: Got it.

Rachelle: Are other people wearing safety pins rushing to your aid?

Rachelle: No?

Rachelle: Well, maybe it’s your responsibility to find them?

Rachelle: Do you have your Ativan with you?

Rachelle: You better take one, honey. Maybe two.

Rachelle: Remember your breathing exercises.

Rachelle: In through the nose and then slowly out the mouth like you’re blowing out a candle.

Rachelle: Oh, Pierre, my power skating coach is trying to get through right now, so I have to go.

Remember to pick up the boots, my brave, little cloud of disinformation, and don’t let that bully scare you off your mission!