It will come as no surprise to those who know me, even casually, that I am not the person to approach for fashion advice. I think the last time I gave any fashion advice was in university when I told my friend Stan, before we went into class, that he should zip up his fly (I realize that this might not count as fashion advice, but I think we can all agree that it was good advice).

It’s not that I can’t dress myself, I can, but understanding fashion means understanding (or caring) about trends and also having some colour sense. I do know the basic colours – red, green, black, yellow, blue (are there more?) – but with fashion those colours aren’t enough, not even close. For example just this week I was talking to a friend (yes I have more than one friend) and she told me that her soccer team was considering cyan for their uniform. I could have pretended that I had the faintest idea what she was talking about but I couldn’t even try. Cyan, really? I’m still struggling with taupe.

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I realize I may be coming a bit late to the discussion but I recently became aware that there is a presidential election going on south of the border. I suppose I should have known about it earlier but it’s been a pretty busy time. There’s the Blue Jays of course, and then there was that European soccer tournament earlier this summer that I followed quite closely (though for the life of me I can’t remember who won). And then of course there is the Brangelina split which has occupied a lot of my time as I’m sure it did yours.

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Now that September is here it’s time to get serious about baseball; the playoffs are around the corner and the Toronto Blue Jays are in the thick of it. For people who allow sports to occupy some or all of their waking hours, this means it’s a fun time (and now you’re wondering – fun or serious which is it? – OK, it’s serious in the sense that any fun diversion can be a serious thing – that makes sense to me which admittedly is setting a pretty low bar).

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Sorry to report that we are rant-less today as Jonathan is in Australia, or at a cottage – cannot remember which. John-Marc Hamilton suggested I give it a try, and more precisely he said this:

“You start by mentioning the recent heat wave, then go on to discuss how hot weather affects instruments and the performers, how bright lights make your head sweat and your hands stick to the guitar while performing, segue into a selfless promo for the band’s next gig, then end with a joke about all the hot air it takes to work the bagpipes. See, easy.”
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We are regularly told that we are all unique. We are like snowflakes in that no human being is exactly the same as another (and how do we know that about snowflakes anyway, wouldn’t they melt when you got them to the lab?). The exceptions of course are identical twins or triplets or quadruplets etc., who are exactly the same and are therefore great subjects for medical testing and horror films.

But is that really true; is there no one who looks just like us? When I was in university there was a guy that I saw occasionally at a pub and he looked just like me, and he held his beer just the way I did and he slouched against the wall holding his beer just like I did. The Germans have a word for this – doppelgänger – meaning someone who isn’t a twin but looks just like you (and so since we have words for this too why are we using a German word anyway, especially one with that annoying umlaut over the ‘a.’)

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