Colder than '21.

This isn't anything people don't already know. It has been crazy cold the last little while. The kind of cold where it doesn't make any sense to go do anything outside. The kind of cold where people stop fighting, there were eleven straight days of no murders in NY, serious. That happened. People in some small towns have had forty years straight of no murders, but NY went 11 days, and it was a story.

"Woa. Did you know that nobody has killed anybody else in the last couple hundred hours?"

"JESUS. It's gotta be cold out there."

Type of cold that every dog under ten pounds just hates your guts for showing them this trash. 

"This?! We're out in this?! Do you think I'm a snow leopard?! I'm a damn terrier! A TERRIER! You take me out and leave the cat in? I see how this trash works."

It's cold enough that they've started telling us that it's the coldest it's been in eighty years, or a hundred years, or a thousand years. Cold enough that it's breaking records from times when this kind of cold must have just MURDERED people. 

"Alright, well, we need wood for a fire, or we're all gonna die. But to get wood, we have to go outside, where we will all die."

"... So, do we die in here together, or die one by one out there trying to get wood?"

"Good question. I was thinking that some of us could stay here and die, and the rest of us could probably die trying to get wood?"

"Hey, if you guys go out, can you get some peppermint?"

"Gary! This is serious!"

It's interesting to me that when it does get this cold, or when it's so hot it's breaking records, people will say that it's because of global warming. 

"This is happening because we are burning too many fossil fuels! We're destroying the earth with our garbage! It hasn't been this bad since the '20's."

What in the hell was going on in the '20's? What terrible villain was burning oil and driving cars at the rate we are today?

"Muah hahhahahah! I know how I'll take over the planet! I'll all of the four hundred cars at the same time!"

"Mr. Villain, no!"

"That's MISTER Mr. Villain to you! Just try to stop me! I'm driving this one around and starting all the others I see! It'll take a couple of weeks because this thing is not that fast and can't corner well bu... NONE of that matter! Get ready for extreme heat and cold!"

It's cold enough that you bundle up. That's it. just do it. But there are some among us who seem to be immune to this cold. Who seem to not be affected by the frigid temperatures and offensive winds. They seem to be immune because while the rest of us are hunched over, breathing directly into the ground while wearing everything we own, this animals are walking around with their jackets wide open. 

"You guys are cold? Crazy. I was gonna hit the beach. Anybody in?"

This is not the time for vanity. This is not the time to just wear a scarf and act as if you are not cold. You KNOW you are cold. You know it! Even if you are from some frozen tundra where EVERY single day is a thousand degrees below, and you grew up under water that was constantly having ice poured into it, you KNOW you are cold.

"Oh this? This is nothing. It used to get colder than this in my ice bed at the bottom of 'Snow Death' mountain."

No. You are cold. Just stop it and zip your coat up. I saw a guy the other night walking in a t-shirt. I've never wanted to fight someone more. Just crack this dude in the head. Get a jacket! There's no excuse for this. Get some gloves! Or put socks on your hands! Get a boot! Where socks for god sake! Get serious. There isn't too much more of this left, but for this short amount of time, JESUS, put a sweater on. 

Twitter @nathanmacintosh

Don't lean your seat back on a plane or bus.

We get it, you deserve to be in first class. You're not supposed to be back here with these commoners. These peasants. You're a king! A queen! They must have made a mistake with your ticket.

“Economy class? No, no, no, no. That's not right. I mean, I know I BOOKED an economy class ticket, but that's not where I'm supposed to be. Look at me! I'm gorgeous! I have a leather jacket on! My hair is done! I'm reading a People Magazine! This can't be! Well, if I HAVE to sit back here, I'll ACT as if I'm in first class. Seat, like Fat Joe says, lean back!”

Look, we ALL wish we were up there. We all see the perks as we kick our bags through the section to the back of this tube. Your own armrest. Drinks the entire flight. Not having to put your knees in the seat pocket in front of you.

“Umm, this may sound strange, but I found knee caps in this pouch?”

“Hmmm. Must have been from the last person who flew in that seat. They did drag themselves out of here by their arms screaming and crying the whole way. Do you want me to throw them out so you can place yours there? Or do you want to hand me your knees and place them in the overhead bin?”

We ALL want more room, but guess what - in economy, we don't have it.We are in the back of this plane, smashed together like the luggage we are sitting above. And like that luggage underneath, for christ sake we have to work together on this flight. So DO NOT lean your seat back.

When you lean your seat back, you are saying to the person behind you, 'Hey, dirt bag, do I care that your legs already don't fit? Do I care at all that my chair is your table, and when I lean it back your bagel and coffee could pour into your lap? No. No I don't. So suck me, bud. Here comes that crotch coffee!'

To continue to be a good person on this planet, we all have to understand that we are all flying through the sky TOGETHER. Unless you own a plane or you're Richard Branson or a new music artist who thinks the money will never stop, you are flying with other people. And with that, we have to do what is good for everyone. You leaning your seat back helps you. It helps you and slowly kills the people behind you. If you're driving in a two door car in the front seat and someone has to get in the back, what would a human being do? The human being in the front seat would say, 'Hey person in the back seat, do you need some more room?' What would a horrible monster of a person do? Just jam their seat back, ask no questions, and ignore the screams of pain from the person in the back seat.

“What? Your legs are bleeding? Man, this song sure is great, huh? Woooooo!”

Leaning your seat back makes everyone have to lean their seat back. You give them no option. If you lean yours back and the person behind you doesn't, then they are going to be taking a bite of your seat.

“Would you like a complimentary snack, sir?”

“Nope. All good. I really have a hunk of this leather going right now. Hopefully this guy leans back farther so I can get a bite of his seat belt. Mmm hmmm, this seat is good. What year is this? '86?”

And in all seriousness, is leaning it back helping you in anyway? So you get another degree of arch in your back. Good. Comfortable now, huh? Just like your bed at home. Just like your favourite chair.

“I can't wait to get home and relax. I'm gonna lean my Lazy Boy back a sweet and sexy two centimetres. Upright is so uncomfortable. Scarily close to upright is where the real action is. THAT'S how you really relax. Right near the edge of upright.”

We want to lean our seats back because we can. It's part of the package. We paid for these seats and lord knows were not getting that much from it. I'm sure soon they'll even charge you to do that.

“Excuse me. Something seems to be wrong with my seat. It won't lean back.”

“Oh, you just have to insert your credit card here and then follow the prompts to...”

“Wait, my credit card?”

“Yes, sir. It's $3.99 to put your seat back. Next year we're going to be charging $5 for passengers to be allowed to put their feet on the floor.”

I get it. So, if you can't adhere to this rule, and have to lean your seat back, at LEAST look behind you first. Don't just lean it back without looking. Do you just throw yourself out of your drive way without glancing in the mirror?

“All right. The car is warmed up. I have GOT to get to the grocery store RIGHT NOW, so no need for the mirror. Just put this in reverse and punch it! ...All right. Only hit one dog. And it wasn't my fault because I didn't see it!”

There is a person behind you! Check to see what the hell they are doing before you just throw your head back. You could be crushing a laptop screen! You could be throwing eggs into their chest! You could be jamming eyeliner into their eye! It will not kill you to turn around. Even to ask. Bet nine times out of ten people will say that it's cool, even though it's taken up their space.

“Yo, you care if I put my seat back in your face, leaving you with only a couple of inches to breath and generally move, so that I can be slightly more comfortable and you can be infinitely less comfortable?'

“....Sure, no problem.”

twitter @nathanmacintosh

Video game generation.

I have had a lot of video game systems since I was a kid. Atari, original Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Nintendo 64, Original Playstation, Playstation 2, and now the Playstation 3. Thinking now about getting the PS4. All started on the Atari. Atari! Holding sticks in my hand playing some game that was supposed to be set in space, but was a couple of dots shooting dots at other dots. Or a game where you are a soldier, and you control a dot that shoots dots at other soldier dots. I'm now an adult, and I'm supposed to not play video games. They take up time, people get addicted and play them until they can't blink. But, I'm not giving them up. I don't play them nearly as much as I have at points in my life, but I'm still playing them. I'm in the generation that video games were completely made for. These were made for me! It would almost be the same as people who were kids when the Wright Brothers invented the plane just refused to go on.

"Naw, I'm not doing it. I'm grown up, for god sake. I'll walk."

Since I've been playing them for so long, some of the best memories I have come from video games.  Anyone who played video games in the 90's got caught up for a long, long time with Goldeneye. Goldeneye is pretty much the Breaking Bad of video games. You HAD to play it. EVERYone was playing it. This was THE game. I could talk for awhile about all the times I played this game with a bunch of people, so much fun. But, I'll tell a stranger story. In junior high, in which class I can't remember, there was a guy who used to pick on me. Nothing crazy. He would just chirp me and make fun of  me for doing my work and junk. I was a really quiet kid, who did all of his work. BIG wiener in Junior High where everyone was talking about drugs and sex.

"Yeah, man. Smoked some weed this weekend and got a handjob."

"Oh, cool.... Did you finish your Social Studies project?"

"Get outta my face, cuz."

One day in class, this bully was telling someone that he couldn't get one of the cheat codes in Goldeneye. That it was impossible. To get the cheat codes in Goldeneye, you had to unlock them by beating levels under certain time limits on certain difficulties. This one, which I'm pretty sure gave you invisibility, was beating a level where you start with no gun, in under a minute and twenty seconds, on the hardest difficulty. 

"It's impossible, man. Impossible. No way anyone can do that."

Well, I had done that shit. Why? Video games don't beat me. So, I said that I beat it.

"No way. You didn't beat that."

"I did."

"Alright. Come to my house and beat it. And if you're lying? You're fucked."

This isn't what I was hoping for. I just had to tell these people I'd beat it. But now, I'm in a situation. Refuse to go to this guys house, maybe get hurt. GO to his house, don't beat it, maybe get hurt. So, I went. The whole way he's talking trash. Saying that I can't do it and he's gonna mess me up. Get there, and start playing. That cheat code isn't the easiest thing in the world to get, so it took a couple tries, with him sitting beside me. Chirping me.

"You better beat it, man. You better do it."

Then, I beat it.

"Yooooooo! You beat it! That's insane."

After that, me and that guy were friends for the next 6 years straight. 

One Christmas a couple of years ago, my brother brought a Nintendo Wii to our moms house. On it he had a few Super Nintendo games downloaded. One was Contra 3: The Alien Wars. We used to own this game when we were kids. It was pretty hard. For no reason at all, my brother said, 'I bet you can't beat it on hard.'  Like I said, video games don't beat me. So I said, let's do it. Put the game on hard. Man. Got killed a thousand times. But I sat in this room for about four- five hours playing this thing. Getting closer each time. My brother would come in and out, poking his head in.

"Did you beat it?"

"God dammit! Jesus! Get out!"

Took me forever to beat this thing. But finally did it. The last level of this game on hard is insane. The entire screen is just things being thrown at you. There's a big brain blob thing for a final boss that had all these different attacks. I beat it. Put the controller down. But on hard, this thing comes back. Picked the controller back up quick, and beat it again. Told my brother to come see. All that happens when you beat this game is a general comes on the screen, and gives you a thumbs up. That's it? I stopped aliens from taking over earth! You can't give me a house? Or a million dollars? Or say I don't have to pay tax anymore? Just a thumbs up. Wow. My Contra dude will be able to use that to buy groceries. 

Grand Theft Autos have always been amazing. The first one, at the time, was nuts. Steal cars and shoot stuff? Even though it was a kind of ugly, top down game, it was amazing. Myself and my brother at the time used to talk about how great it would be if there was a third person version. 

"Imagine if they made one of these like Mario 64? Like if Mario could get a gun and rob these toadstools of their cars?"

The first time I ever saw the Nintendo 64, I lost my mind. 3D Mario game? Are you insane? He can swim and punch? Craziest thing I'd seen up to then. Loved that system. Got it one year for Christmas, and played it all day. Then, a game called Turok: Dinosaur Hunter came out. This game you were a Native American dude named Turok, who had ridiculous guns and shot dinosaurs. Serious. I don't know what the hell this was about, but it was great. Rented this game, and played it forever. Like, stopped going to school that week forever. Grade 7 I think it was. A friend of mine used to come to my house every morning, and we'd walk to school together. This whole week, he'd come by, and I'd say I wasn't coming. One day he came, it was snowing and freezing outside.

"Come on, man. Come to school. You're missing a ton of stuff."

I looked at him, wearing a scarf and boots, behind him just blowing snow and freezing cold. I turned around, looked at my warm room and Turok holding some kind of ray gun, and just slowly closed the door in his face. I loved that game. 

When I was in grade four/ five, my brother was in grade two/three, every Friday, when our mom would come pick us up from school, she would take us to Blockbuster to rent a game for the weekend. Those trips were great. Me and my brother looking at games, trying to find stuff that was either two players, or something that we could go back and forth on. Most times we agreed on stuff, but I always liked racing games. He hated them. 

"Let's get this."

"It's a racing game. That's so stupid. Same thing over and over."

"You guys better pick something quick! I'm renting The Fugitive and want to get home to watch Melrose Place!" 

"One sec!"

We argued sometimes, but mostly me and my brother would agree. Get a game and play it for the weekend. Or sometimes, rent a game, and just hate it. Play it for about an hour, then come out to the living room where our mom would be watching Melrose Place or whatever else the 90's had.

"What are you guys doing? You're not playing that game?"

"It's terrible. We can't."

"I paid money for the game! Go play it right now before I take the system!"

When our mom would spend money on a game, we had to play it. Sometimes, this SUCKED, but still, video games are great, and I won't stop playing them. 

Twitter @nathanmacintosh