By G.D. Maxwell
Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m stressed out. Way out.
According to new Health Canada guidelines currently under development, my stress level is nudging the point where I’m apt to go out and steal a nice gold chain with an obscure, Polynesian-looking, totemic doodad hanging from it. Personally, I don’t think I have the chest hair or the tan to pull off that kind of jewelry. I either have to throttle back into relatively stress-free Costume Jewelry Alert or take on another few short deadline writing projects and work my way up to nicking a Rolex.
What, you ask, could I possibly be stressed out about? Fair enough. Outwardly, I appear calm to those around me. Almost comatose in fact.
But stress is a self-inflicted wound and there are any number of reasons I might be feeling more stress than usual. For example, this very minute Gary Lewis and the Playboys’ Who Wants to Buy This Diamond Ring , a thoroughly nauseating pop confection from the 1960s, is rolling around the conscious part of my brain, stuck there like a skipping vinyl album laying waste to vital synapses. I’m wondering how I’ll be able to work it into this column and keep a straight face. Guess it wasn’t that hard after all.
I could be stressed because it’s early Wednesday morning, I’ve been out four nights in a row – a personal record – and just woke up from an unsettling dream in which my Perfect Partner finally decided I was too boring and left me for an itchy-footed Englishman who cashed in his Orthodontic Trust Fund and set off on an around the world jaunt, having decided travel was more important than straight teeth.
To make matters worse, Zippy the Dog had, in the same dream, developed some sort of lower-body paralysis and was reduced to locomoting across the floor using what can best be described as the Flopping Fish Technique which, admittedly was hilarious if you could overlook the heartbreaking implications of his disability, but was made all the worse by his own sense of black humour: he wanted to change his name from Zippy the Dog to Flipper. I suspect last night’s salmon dinner had something to do with that.
It could be the new regime of Microphone Ostracism being bandied around the local council table that’s got me fantasizing about bright, shiny beads. Let’s see if I have the rules of the game straight. If one councillor’s rambling, stream-of-consciousness comments begin to wander too far off point – or too far from what everyone’s agreed to in the closed-door sessions those of us who aren’t councillors are barred from attending – the other councillors can express their dissatisfaction by bending their microphones down toward the table. Four bent mikes automatically ends the discussion.
Well, it has a certain elegance, admittedly. Still, I’m more an Old Testament, stand up and turn your backs to the miscreant, shunner kind of guy. More animation. Given the councillor who often seems off point is (a) the only one there who actually gets the point, and (b) got the most votes in the last election and therefore just may more accurately represent the will-o’-da-people, I’m kinda thinking this infantile and thoroughly undemocratic gesture might blow up in someone’s face. Can’t wait.
It may very well be the disturbing research I’ve been digging into lately involving an incompetent – and grossly overpaid – consultant, a contract with just a whiff of nepotism to it, an attempt to spin what was clearly a project-related consultant’s fee into general staff overhead, and… well, shouldn’t give it all away just yet.
Maybe it’s the irony of our new conference centre that’s stressing me. I was really thirsty at last night’s Photographer’s Search. I really didn’t want more alcohol in my bloodstream. I really hate the wasteful, unsustainable practice of buying little plastic bottles of water in a town where the water coming out of the tap is probably purer and certainly better tasting than what’s in the bottle – tourists can be forgiven; locals should know better. But now I find that after spending $12.5 MILLION DOLLARS renovating the place, the morons didn’t even put the drinking fountain back! Under exactly which system condition did that decision fall?
Each and every one of those things are adding incrementally to my stress. The very fact of enumerating them has added to my stress and moved it into the Wondering How Tight the Security System is at Birk’s category.
But what’s really, really got me stressed – okay, curious would be a better word – is why Hugh Smythe has summoned the press to a meeting later today. Could it be to announce something as innocuous as the plans to summer groom Peak to Creek, a distressing development which would certainly zoom my Stress-o’-Meter if they hadn’t decided to at least leave the other westside runs unmolested?
Could it be the formal announcement of the expanded, upper Garbanzo bike park? Could Hugh be moving even higher up into the Execusphere and laying waste to my fantasy that he and I at least have in common the fact we’d both gone about as far as we could in Intrawest?
Or has Joe once and for all put to rest the speculation he’s selling out to Disney by selling out to Disney? If it’s that, you probably haven’t even read this far in Pique and are now being administered to by paramedics about to lay on the paddles and shock your sorry butt back to life.
Whatever. I ain’t re-writin’ this thing later today. It’s not like I’m expected to do news.
If I was, I wouldn’t be pondering the imponderable a week after it happened. In a country known for pioneering stress research and amusing board games, I’m deep into developing a new blend of the disciplines. The working title is Friends of Svend and it’s sort of a Trivial Pursuit meets self-help, stress measurement/reduction, everything is beautiful kind of thing.
The goal of the game will be to come up with any acceptable rationale for what snapped in the Head of Svend last week and why the press can’t bring themselves to say he stole an expensive ring, instead employing softer euphemisms like ‘pocketed’ and ‘pilfered’.
Extra points are awarded for any plausible excuse that will allow Svend to re-enter the New Democratic Party after stealing a $50,000 diamond ring. This ain’t Jean Valjean doin’ the smash-&-grab on a loaf of bread to feed his starvin’ family we’re talking about.
I’ve always admired Svend as the loose cannon I’d be if I was willing to put up with a job that came with real stress. But if the criminal justice system hopes to proceed with any credibility – assuming it has any left – they’d better charge him. Let the court mete out mercy and justice; that’s its job. If stress is a mitigating defense, so be it. But if it is, you’d better watch out. I’m really feeling stressed.
