number 1

it was very difficult passing up the pogues' if i should fall from grace with god but my burgeoning african readership have expressed concerns over shane's dental hygiene so the pogues have been disqualified from this year's festivities.

abridged cracker factory tale. earlier this year i had to vacate yet another office to accommodate a new hotshot employee. after a few months it was discovered that the new guy had run up a lot of personal expenses on his corporate credit card and didn't have the funds to make the cracker factory whole. i learned that the expenses on his card were vet bills to have his cat's leg amputated and other repairs to the cat. i returned to the cracker factory a few weeks ago and asked him how his cat was doing. his answer: the cat was eaten by a coyote. maybe i'm an asshole but it was really hard suppressing my laughter when he told me a coyote ate the million dollar cat.

the winner of enjoy the moment's inaugural video of the year is:

take a deep breath, enjoy the moment and say good fucking riddance to 2013!

i love you sons of bitches

number 2

i heard this song on cbc radio and it really hit home about my depressed friend, plus it has a catching chorus. it's also an appropriate song for all you generous souls that spent your brains out buying presents for everyone. my friend is sounding very bad these days. the further down he sinks into the abyss, the harder it'll be for him to climb out and he's still sinking. merry fucking christmas.

i love you sons of bitches.

number 3

the big countdown continues with enjoy the moment's number 3 ranked video. i heard this song on cbc radio. of all the crap that happened to me in 2013, tuning into cbc internet radio might have been my luckiest accident. this song caught my attention with the first few lines that might be the story of my life. who gives a shit, right?

i'm planning on telling a stellar cracker factory story on the 31st. stay tuned.

i love you sons of bitches.

the test and the gimmick

i was sorely tested this morning and i'm delighted to say that i passed the test. while shopping i came upon 400 gram bags of red and green santa ju jubes marked down to 24 cents. i picked up a bag and pinched a few through the cellophane to test the freshness and stood frozen in time for what seemed like an eternity. when i snapped out of the trance i put the little bag of temptation down and continued on my merry way. instead, i opted for a jar of roasted almonds. eating healthy is certainly more expensive than eating junk. could this be a contributing factor to the skyrocketing obesity and diabetes rates?

as i was leaving the store i had one question; was it satan or my old buddy jesus that decided to test me with the ju jubes? i don't have a clue but if i ever find out one of them has a nephew who's a dentist, i'll know which one is culpable. but who gives a shit, i passed the test.

on with the gimmick. in order to boost my readership and put a little window dressing on my year end stats i decided to go through all the videos i've posted throughout the year and post my 4 favorites starting with number 4 today and then posting the winner on a new years eve extravaganza. i selected the following song in the number 4 slot because it lifts my spirits and it was to nice to reminisce over a few dead members of the band:

please take a deep breath and enjoy the moment.

rest in peace: rick danko, richard manuel and levon helm.

i love you sons of bitches.

xmas

Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat, Please do put a penny in the old man's hat

today was my annual charity walk. being a self described anarchist i dislike organized charities and rarely contribute to the united way campaign at the cracker factory. in order to placate my conscience, i choose a more direct charitable approach preferring to eliminate the middle man and associated administrative costs. just before christmas i like to go for a walk downtown with a pocket full of money and make like santa. today i was handing out $5 bills. in the past my handouts have ranged from $1 coins to $20 bills. it was a decent but not great year for me so today it was $5 bills.

i went for a long walk to chinatown to get some tea and passed through the DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE. there are some really, really sad looking people on the streets around the downtown eastside. i had handed out about 10 bills when i came upon a man in a wheelchair with no legs. it was a fucked up old style wheelchair with no electrical motor and that really tugged at my heart strings so i walked up and gave him 5 bills ($25) even though he wasn't panhandling. it made me feel good but after i had walked a few blocks i thought; fuck, i should have given him more. then, after i had bought my tea i ran into another man in an old wheelchair holding out a baseball cap so reached into my pocket and gave him the remaining bills. probably about $100.

doing this really does give me a good feeling whereas giving a cheque to some big charity would not. i realize that most of the money i give out will be quickly squandered but who gives a fuck, i get a few moments of happiness and the recipients of my largess also get a few moments of happiness. so here's my advice, if you are in the habit of giving money to charity, why not give the money directly to the homeless and crack whores? the only downside to my method is you don't get a tax receipt. so it goes.

merry fucking christmas from the rosewater foundation. please take a deep breath and enjoy the moment.

once again, merry fucking christmas!

i love you sons of bitches!

lottery tickets

i love you sons of bitches so much i'm going to share the lottery ticket epiphany i experienced years ago. i'm a big believer in luck and realize that the two big movers and shakers in our universe are time and luck so i'm usually on the look out for something lucky. whats my email? luckyoldleo! need i say more. back to lottery tickets. there was a time when something happened to me that i recognized as being lucky, i would say to myself: "holy jumping, luck is with me, i better buy a lottery ticket." of course i didn't win the lottery but the next time i felt lucky, i'd buy a lottery ticket and of course i wouldn't win.

then one day the epiphany hit and i saw the light. jesus fuck me christ, these goddamn lottery tickets aren't capitalizing on my perceived luck, THEY'RE ENDING MY LUCKY STREAK!!!

so take a deep breath and imprint this on your brain: BUYING A LOTTERY TICKET AND NOT WINNING WILL KILL ANY RUN OF GOOD LUCK YOU'VE BEEN HAVING! i suggest scratching the back of a dog's ear or rubbing a dog's belly as excellent first steps on the road to good luck.

of course that fact that lottery tickets are basically a tax on the stupid also dissuades me from buying them.

i love you sons of bitches

only 10?

TEN THINGS CANADA DOES BETTER THAN ANYWHERE ELSE!

number 1 on the list is apologize. in case anyone hasn't been paying attention, i've been trying to teach the king to apologize for years.

number 4 is AIR! we have good clean air but if you listen to those fucknut anti oil sands people, you'd think the oil sands have turned alberta into a wasteland. fuck al gore, and to think i used to like that pompous, arrogant prick who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

number 8 is branding. the reason canadians sew maple leafs onto their backpacks when travelling is to let people know that we're not americans. most civilized countries like canadians more than americans but we look the same, talk almost the same and usually dress the same so some genius came up with the idea of plastering that maple leaf on everything. and of course most teenagers have canadian flags with a marijuana leaf replacing the maple leaf. i've still got several.

one thing we don't do very well is deliver the fucking mail. HOME DELIVERY BEING PHASED OUT, RATES INCREASING OVER 50% AND 8000 LAYOFFS. it would seem that our mail service is on a par with that sign language guy at mandela's funeral. i've been waiting for canada post to deliver the toy i bought on black friday for 2 weeks. the postal code was printed incorrectly on the label and i noticed it right away calling canada post with the tracking number but i was told they had to try and deliver it to the wrong area before they could fix the postal code. but since mail services all around the world are staffed by government workers i'm sure other countries have the same problem. so it goes.

on a more pleasant note, i was watching wrestlemania 3 last night. it was excellent, i was laughing like crazy at all the shenanigans. at one point there was a midget rasslin named little beaver and coincidentally, bob eucker had a girlfriend named little beaver. do i need to tell you what high level discussion ensued about bob and his little beaver? rasslin was excellent in the slapstick era.

i love you sons of bitches.

lucky me

neither rain nor snow nor skanks could stop the pilgrim from making a house call, and a long fucking house call at that. a not so lovely trip on the b.c. ferry system to vancouver island. i'm sad to say that the house trip was highly unsuccessful from a humanitarian point of view but highly successful from a new, used tire perspective. my new, used tires performed like real troopers. no problems in the light snow and generally shitty road conditions. of my friend i can only say this, he basically told me fuck off and i couldn't think of any reason to disagree with him. i now know how mrs frump feels.

of greater concern to me at the moment is that little son of a bitch donald.

i was bitterly disappointed in donald for not producing any flowers in the summer and it now appears certain that he's not a canadian arctic orchid that waits for the first frost and then produces the most beautiful flower in the world. i still haven't conceded that donald is a weed and my summer project was pure folly. i'm thinking of running out and buying a poinseitta to plant where donald has made his home for the past year. then i could run into the house and announce that donald has come through and saved xmas. years ago when the kids were little and i enjoyed the odd drink, this might have happened but now it seems highly unlikely. more likely is me picking up a similar looking plant in the spring and replacing donald with a more co-operative specimen.

so take a deep breath and enjoy the moment. remember, it can take a long time to become what you already are.

i love you sons of bitches.