Yesterday, I was doing a little after-hours work on a secret project, which, fittingly, took place on the 13th floor of the client’s building. I didn’t even think most building had a 13th floor, or if they did, it was a secret floor that didn’t even have a button on the elevator panel, but was instead accessed by pressing the 12th and 14th floor buttons simultaneously.

My unlucky 13th floor experience included having the air conditioning shut off after working hours are over. Then, when I tried to wash my hands before leaving, I got only a dribble of soap out of the automatic soap dispenser, and the automatic tap wouldn’t give me any water at all. I briefly considered using the water in the toilet tank (which is clean) to rinse my soapy hands off , but when I opened the stall door, I saw that the toilet had no tank. I decided not to approach closer to investigate any further, since I thought that maybe the automatic flush mechanism had been shut down for the night too, and there might be an unwelcome surprise waiting for me in the bowl.

Then, when I got in the elevator, there weren’t any lights on, and I rode down 13 floors in pitch blackness, wondering if I’d be stuck in there overnight. Very eerie. The doors opened when I got to the bottom, thankfully, but when I tested the front doors of the building, I was locked in. Thankfully, I was able to escape through a side door.

Ken Jennings articulates something I’ve been thinking about recently concerning the infamous Obama buttons from the Texas Republican convention.

Well, this was weird. I just got back from the Danforth, where I saw the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen who had Down syndrome. She was actually sort of cute-ish by normal standards, but I could tell that she was just one extra chromosome away from being stunningly attractive. I feel funny inside now.

My first philosophy professor in my freshman year was a guy named Michael A. Fox. I don’t think he used the middle initial to distinguish himself from sitcom actor Michael J. Fox so much as to end year after year of constantly hearing speculation as to what his middle name was and how funny it would be if it started with J, as though no one had ever thought of that before. (Interestingly, Michael J. Fox’s real middle name is Andrew, but he used the middle initial J professionally because he didn’t want teen magazines running headlines like “Michael, A Fox!”) The other interesting thing about Michael A. Fox is that he was originally known as an advocate of scientific experimentation on animals. Then he did something brave: He changed his mind. After years of engaging opponents in debate, he listened hard to what they had to say and was inevitably dragged toward the conclusion that they were right, and he was wrong. It’s practically unheard of for an academic philosopher, but he courageously reversed his position, publicly repudiating his previous work and becoming an animal rights advocate and a vegetarian to boot.

George Carlin was a philosopher too. He didn’t write papers for academic journals, but he was one nonetheless because we’re all philosophers. Anyone, even a three-year-old child, who asks a philosophical question such as “Is there a God?” is to some degree a philosopher. It’s just that some engage in philosophy more deeply than others, having a deeper love of wisdom (which is, of course, what the word “philosophy” means). George Carlin was a lover of wisdom. He asked questions such as whether there was a God (”No,” he decided), and he made those questions central to his comedy.

And like my philosophy professor, Carlin had his own moment on the road to Damascus, though as a lapsed Catholic, maybe he wouldn’t have put it that way. As a kid, he wanted to be like Danny Kaye (which is not to say that he wanted to be dogged by persistent rumours of a homosexual affair with Sir Laurence Olivier). Carlin wanted to be a clean-cut, crowd-pleasing mainstream comedian, and he did just that, becoming a frequent performer and guest host on the Tonight Show. But in the late sixties, he changed his mind. He realized he wasn’t happy doing what he was doing. He grew out his hair and beard, started wearing jeans and earrings, and built a controversial new act in performances at hippie coffeehouses. He courted career suicide because he had to be true to himself, and he became a counterculture hero.

Previously, I’ve claimed not to respect Carlin a whole lot. I didn’t like that he didn’t vote, but just sat out of the political process in favour of simply looking on from the sidelines and laughing, as though he was above it all. I thought his fuck-The-Man, there-is-no-God kind of material made him seem a bit like the world’s oldest cynical teenager. I thought he relied on funny faces a little too much. And he wore a little ponytail, for God’s sake. (Well, I suppose it wasn’t for God’s sake that he wore it, but it certainly wasn’t for good taste’s.)

But I’ve been re-evaluating my opinion of Carlin, and there is a lot that I did respect about him. The man was obsessed with language, meticulously choosing each word for maximum effectiveness and eschewing euphemism in some famous routines that would have made George Orwell proud. He also showed, as Louis CK notes, an admirable commitment to perpetually discarding even well-received old material and honing new routines throughout his career. He was like a shark, ever moving, ever ready to sink his teeth into new prey. That’s much appreciated in a comedy world where Dana Carvey just released a new HBO special in which he’s still pulling out his stale impressions of George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot.

And I respect that he changed his mind. Moreover, it still annoys me that he didn’t vote, but I recognize that the love of truth that led him to address controversial issues in his act may have, from time to time, changed some other minds. In his own way, he was a part of the process, and he made a difference.

Only days before his death, It was announced that Carlin was to receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Probably because it’s awarded by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Mark Twain Prize usually goes to a performer, but that still seems a little odd to me. I’d have thought Will Rogers might have been a better namesake for the prize, since he was a humour columnist, but also a public speaker and actor. After all, while Mark Twain was a lecturer, he was primarily known as an author. Yet, the only winner of the award known primarily as a writer is playwright Neil Simon. 2005 recipient Steve Martin has written a couple of well-received books, but he’s scarcely better known as an author than he is as a banjo player (though he and Twain are both noted for favouring white suits). But Carlin used his wit to raise controversial issues and challenged the establishment in a way that would have made the author of Huckleberry Finn proud, and he’s an utterly deserving winner. (It’s worth noting that despair at the state of humanity led Carlin’s work, like Twain’s, to become increasingly dark and misanthropic in his later years. Carlin openly became a cheerleader for the eradication of the human race, echoing the themes of Twain’s black and savage The Mysterious Stranger.)

So, I’ve just put him up there with a proud George Orwell and Mark Twain. I’ll add a third: Hunter S. Thompson, who also ruthlessly tore into the political establishment. I’ve never quite forgiven Thompson for checking out just when it seemed we needed him most, in the middle of a presidency even worse than that of his despised nemesis, Richard Nixon. As a new, more hopeful political era finally seems to be dawning, I’m grateful to Carlin that he hung on this long. He was an honest man and a fine role model in a country whose current leaders are remarkable for their refusal to show the moral courage to change their minds, no matter how wrong the harsh light of reality shows them to have been (they call that flip-flopping). He was an important, dirty-mouthed voice, and we’re going to miss him.

My girlfriend thinks my dad rides a Harley, but he doesn’t. My dad rides a 1984 Yamaha Virago. What kind of terrible name is that, anyway? You know what a virago is? A bitchy woman. My dad rides a bitchy woman.

What kind of misogynists are Japanese motorcycle makers anyway? But that’s Japanese guys for you. I’ve heard that every time a new motorcycle rolls off the assembly line, fifty mechanics gather around and ejaculate all over it.

I was just watching a rerun of Saturday Night Live from when Tina Fey hosted the first show after the writers’ strike. At the end, longtime announcer Don Pardo was brought out to blow out the 90 candles on his birthday cake. He’s old. Now that Bob Hope’s gone, he’s the last NBC employee on a lifetime contract, and Pardo had already been an NBC employee for three decades before SNL came along.

In fact, Pardo was actually the on-duty announcer who first broke the news of the Kennedy assassination to the NBC audience. I like to imagine that he did it in that booming, jubilant SNL voice:

Dead, from Dallas, it’s President Kennedy!
Starring … Jackie Kennedy!
Governor John Connally!
A short film by Abraham Zapruder!
Special guest Jack Ruby!
And now, Lee … Harvey … Oswald!

Tonight, my girlfriend told me that a friend of hers went on vacation to Thailand and posted pictures of herself petting giant tigers, with one laying across her lap. I mentioned in response that I’d actually had a baby panther at my house once, which kind of blew her mind, since she’d always sort of assumed that I’d never had a baby panther at my house, or else I’d have mentioned it.

I’d simply forgotten all about it, because it was so long ago. I was a little foggy on the details, so I promised to get my mom to fill me in the next time I talked to her. On cue, my mom phoned me almost immediately after this, so here are the details:

Back in the early eighties, my mom dated a guy named Heinz. Heinz was a pretty good cartoonist who designed the buttons for Brockville’s summer festival, Riverfest, which featured a caricature of Max a Million, a black bass worth a million dollars to whatever lucky angler caught him. That was one snooty-looking fish, with his top hat and monocle; your guts just ached to catch that bourgeois little snob and fry him up.

That wasn’t his only connection to the local wildlife, though. There used to be a place called the Woodland Zoo west of Brockville when I was a kid. It’s not there now; it went bankrupt years ago. Heinz knew a guy who worked at the zoo, though. After it went bankrupt, this guy still traded in exotic animals. I wonder now if it was some kind of black market operation. This guy had a baby black panther that he was going to sell to another zoo, but before the actual sale went down, he went on vacation. Why that couldn’t wait, I don’t know. But Heinz had been around this panther cub before, and it was comfortable around him, so he drew the assignment of babysitting it.

Heinz thought it would be a good idea to bring it by the house to show us kids because, hey, we’d never had a black panther at our house before (being underprivileged children). “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” my mom says. So, they put it in the back of her car, whereupon it crawled up in the back window and resisted all attempts to dislodge it. The more they pulled on it, the more it clung to the upholstery, which got pretty torn up. Nevertheless, they did get it out eventually and showed it to us, and we were sore amazed.

When it was time to take him home, my mom didn’t want any further damage to the car, so she went over to the local butcher shop to get something for him to chew on. She went in and asked if they had any bones. She’d been in there lots of times before and was a familiar face, so the owner said, “I’ll tell you what. If you can give me a good reason you need it, I’ll give it to you for free.”

A bone couldn’t possibly cost much; they’re probably pretty much free anyway. But my mom played it his way. “Well, okay, fine,” she said. “I’ve got this panther, and he ripped the shit out of my upholstery, and I don’t want him to do it again.”

The butcher gaped at her. “Okay, you win.” She offered to bring it in and show him, but he said no thanks, that it was fine. He gave her some juicy bones, and the little panther cub happily crawled up on the floor in the back of the car and gnawed away at them as they drove him home.

The end.

My dad has had the same post office box since 1982. He lives in a small town without home delivery, so, almost every day for the last 26 years, he’s been going in to the post office to pick up his mail. For bureaucratic reasons, he had to renew it this year, at which point the clerk he’s been seeing day after day for decade after decade asked to see his photo ID.

As annoying as the rule might be, I can appreciate that it’s there for a reason, and they’re just trying to keep people from stealing your mail. A few days ago, my girlfriend sent me a card from Hong Kong. Because it was sent by registered mail and I wasn’t around when the postal carrier originally tried to deliver it, it was held for me at the post office. There are several postal outlets close to me, but the one where my mail is held is out at Coxwell and Danforth, about 2.2 kilometres east of my house, according to Google Maps. This is kind of a far walk, but it’s just close enough that on a nice day, it’s hard to justify the subway fare when I can use the exercise and vitamin D.

East of Jones Avenue, or maybe Donlands if you’re generous, the Danforth turns into a bit of a skid row, so there are nicer neighborhoods if you’re out for a stroll. I did see a marquee in the window of a bargain shop that read ELECTRONIC PERFUME, which was somewhat intriguing. (I assume it sells both electronic equipment and perfume.) But I was glad to get to the post office, where the Asian lady behind the counter promptly rejected my photo ID and withheld my mail. Canada Post has tightened up its rules regarding identification. My old, expired driver’s license wouldn’t cut it. Neither would a health card. I asked about an age of majority card, and sure, that would work, except that mine’s 15 years old. “You probably got it as soon as your birthday, said the clerk, miming me standing up straight and having my photo taken. “Looking all handsome.”

“You don’t think I’m still handsome?” I asked her. But it was no use. No amount of flirting was going to get me my mail.

So I ended up coming back the next day with my passport. I did notice a sign I’d missed the previous day reading COSMIC JANITORIAL SUPPLY; I imagine Roger Wilco, the custodian protagonist from the Space Quest series of adventure games, probably works there now. But that’s about all I appreciated about what ended up being a 10-kilometre hike to pick up my mail. It was the first hot day of the year, and the back of my shirt was soaked in sweat. I’d worn sandals and gained an enormous blister on my right heel. I had fencing practice that night, which happened to be the night that one of the coaches handpicked me to demonstrate lunges for the rest of the group, which meant repeatedly kicking my foot out, landing square on the blister on my heel, and trying to remain stoic despite the agony this caused. (He’s never seemed to think a great deal of my footwork before, so either my technique has improved or he’s just taken a shine to me since I visited his native Hong Kong recently. I think he thinks I’m dating a Chinese girl. I haven’t the heart to tell him she’s a redheaded small-town Ontario girl who’s just teaching English over there.)

So I was a little disgruntled by the time I showed the clerk my passport, even though rules are rules, and she’s just trying to keep people from stealing my mail. As she turned around to get it, I noticed that there was a little sign off to the side of the counter, against the wall. TRAINING IN PROGRESS, it said. I surreptitiously slid it off the counter and fingered it, thinking of making off with it. Then I slipped it onto the counter in front of her station, behind the screen of her terminal where it was blocked from her view. I collected my mail and left, secure in the knowledge that anyone who came in after me mistook her for a trainee.

Of course, this probably just means that people were extra-patient with her for the rest of the day and told her what a good job she was doing when she inevitably didn’t screw up. So, as revenge goes, it wasn’t very harsh, but then, since she was really just doing her job, neither was what she did to me.

I guess I’ve forgotten to tell you about the time I took a piledriver from the height of one story. Then, getting dropped on your head from that height goes a long way toward explaining memory lapses.

Remember Kyle, the kid on crutches in my neighborhood who was a real jerk, who I eventually clocked because, well, crutches or not, he was a real jerk? (Collected in Two-Fisted Tales of Peter Lynn #1) He had a big brother called Erik, who looked like an eighth-grade Viking — big, blonde, thick-necked. Erik went through this phase of making people bow to him. He’d just walk up to them and command “Bow!” If you prostrated yourself at his feet, he’d leave you be.

My friend Barry had a good approach to the situation when he was commanded to bow by this kid named Jason, who’d himself been made to bow by Erik, which is of course where he got the idea. Barry looked around, saw that no one was nearby, shrugged and bowed. Later, Erik was nearby, and Jason said, “Hey, Erik! Watch this!” Then he turned to Barry and said, “Bow!”

Barry just looked at him like he was an idiot and said, “Fuck you!” And Jason did look like an idiot.

I wasn’t as bright. When Erik commanded me to bow, I also said “No.” And that’s when I learned that Erik was no Jason. He threw me in one devastating wrestling hold after another. Each time, he’d command me to bow, and each time I’d say no. This culminated in him putting me in a piledriver and jumping down into the recently dug foundation of a nearby house under construction. Fortunately, there was a fair amount of snow on the ground to cushion my head-first landing.

That made me kind of dizzy, but I believe that when Erik commanded me to bow that time, I must have said something like, “I can’t really move, so, no.” And that was the end of that. He stalked off and never went through the trouble of trying to make me bow again. Then again, I’m not sure he made anyone else bow either. He may have just gotten bored of the entire business.

I guess this story must have made quite an impression on my mom, because she told me years later that even though I was only in grade six or so at the time, that’s when she knew I was more of a man than my father. But that’s the sort of thing divorced women say, I guess, and it may not be fair to him. Judging by the number of scars criss-crossing his dome resulting from the combination of his poor depth perception and low basement ceiling, I can confidently say that my dad can take a good blow to the head like a champ.

My girlfriend Candace finally got to see the Sex and the City movie last night. I didn’t accompany her, however — first, because she’s still in Hong Kong right now, and second, because I’m not a woman. According to the LA Times, the opening night audience for the film was 85 percent female, falling to 75 percent over the rest of the opening weekend. If Candace had had her druthers, there would have been even fewer men in attendance. “The one behind me laughed really loud at every small joke and even when something wasn’t funny,” she says. “Like when a character was crying.”

Her other complaint was that while the movie was good, the character Charlotte didn’t have a big enough storyline. Here’s where I think we could kill two birds with one stone when it comes to the DVD release: Since it’s more likely to be rented by couples, thus seeing a home audience with greater gender parity, put together a special unrated DVD edition editing the Kristen Davis sex tape into the film. Simultaneously, the women in the audience are pleased by the boost in Davis’ screen time and the men have an intriguing reason to pay attention.

Note: Though she’s clearly the most conventionally beautiful of the Sex and the City quartet, I never thought Kristen Davis had much sex appeal. She’s pretty, but she doesn’t exude sexuality. With her porcelain-doll looks, she’s just a quintessential good girl. Bad girls are sexy. (It’s like in the Bond movie Goldeneye. They’re both beautiful, but who’s sexier — Izabella Scorupco as the computer programmer who helps Bond disarm the doomsday weapon? Or Famke Janssen as the psycho henchwoman who has orgasms when she crushes men to death with her thighs?) That is, I never thought she had that much sex appeal until that video came to light. Even if it’s not really her, it still forces a critical re-evaluation of the matter. But for possibly the definitive post on the subject of Davis having no sex appeal, I direct your attention to A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago’s discussion of the Kristen Davis All-Stars as well as the Bill Simmons column referred to in that post.