Is that a lobster in your pants or are you just happy to see me?

I can't believe it has been over a full month since my last blog entry, time flies when you ignore your blog duties. Rest assured I have not been wasting this past month laying comatose on my couch watching infomercials, although I wouldn't mind getting a ShamWOW or a SlapChop (give me one of those Grate-y buggers too)...I have been traveling a lot this last little bit and I have created an internet talk radio show with The Joe Long Show (you can listen to the right). The travelling consisted of a last minute trip to Cuba and one quickly planned trip back home to the East Coast. I'm back in the TDot but my head is spinning from all the miles I have put on. Even though I have been far from my loyal readers, you have never been far from my thoughts...and after driving solo 14 hours each way, there were many thoughts.

So what was it like to be home? Well it is always a culture shock. People assume it was so hard for me to move to Toronto from Fredericton because of the culture shock, but I truly find it more difficult going from here back home. That is likely because when I go home I spend the majority of my time in the small town I grew up in. I'm talking about a town with a population of 1700 people that most of the time seems like less than 100 people. Priorities are just a little different there. Based on my observations it is normal to spend a good portion of the day making sure you can identify every single person in the town. This baffles me since 90% of the people I see on any given day are strangers and I really don't care who they are. I like being relatively anonymous and not having anyone care what I'm doing. Even though I moved away from my hometown when I was 18 for school, my mom assumes I know every single person there still. I didn't know half the people there when I lived there nor did I care. Anyways, constantly needing to know who people are is not part of my makeup.

One other thing I found out about my hometown is that there is a huge increase in the amount of shoplifting happening. My brother told me a bunch of stories about people stealing tons of stuff from the local grocery store. That is bad enough on its own but when he told me what people are actually stealing, that took the level of ridiculousness up a few notches. Apparently the store would cook lobsters then wrap and sell them individually. One guy came along and cleaned out the entire display (about 6 lobsters), except one. How did the guy steal them you ask? Oh yeah he put them down his pants. So this guy has cellophane wrapped lobsters stuffed down his pants and he walks out of the store. How's that for ballsy? The owner of the grocery store was so sure of who stole the lobster that he took the one remaining lobster, drove to the thief's house, knocked on his door and told him he might as well have that one since he had the rest of them. 

Ridiculous. As ridiculous as it is, the next one is ever stranger. A different guy went into the same grocery store and decided to steal a package of boneless, skinless chicken breast by taking it out of the package and stuffing it down his pants. Oh yeah and that guy was my old high school English teacher. It's bad enough if you steal it while it is still in the package, but taking it out of the package and putting raw chicken down your pants? Let's hope that is not the Colonel's secret for 11 herbs and spices, or the way Popeye's marinates it's chicken for 12 hours. I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. How is that for a Lysol commercial idea?

I will make an attempt to increase the blog entries going forth and remember it is not a good idea to light cop cars on fire and smash windows. It may be fun, but it is never a good idea.