About the Aardvark

As borrowed from my Facebook profile

Interests: Karaoke, Photography, Music, Movies, Writing (check out Not Only Am I With The Band...)

Favorite Music: Aerosmith, Queen, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Genesis, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Max Webster, The Black Crowes, Rush, The Tragically Hip, Frank Zappa, Sammy Hagar (both with and without), Elton John (the older stuff, although he has been making a comeback of sorts recently), The Tubes, Pink Floyd, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (especially his killer live album "Pack Up The Plantations"), The Beatles, David Bowie ("Now Ziggy played... guitaaaaaaaaaar!!!!"), Kansas, Styx, The Eagles, Metalica, The Who, The Guess Who, Alice Cooper, Bon Jovi (guilty pleasure), U2, Jethro Tull (are we there yet?), Eric "the red" Clapton, Robert "don't call me Bob" Plant, ACDC (did anyone else see them blow The Stones off the stage at SARSSTOCK?), Cheap Trick. Hell, I'd even go so far as to say that I like Van Halen now that Eddie has got his shit together and realized the problem with the band has never been the bloody lead singers but himself.

Favorite TV Shows: Dexter, Dexter and more Dexter, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CSI: Miami, Cheers, M*A*S*H, WKRP In Cincinnati, Gene Simmons Family Jewels, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, Mythbusters, American Chopper

Favorite Movies: Dawn Of The Dead, A Few Good Men, Die Hard, Almost Famous (bootleg cut), Dazed and Confused, Silverado, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, Shaun Of The Dead, Young Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, Fight Club, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, Catch-22, King Kong (original, although the remake did it fair justice), The Usual Suspects

Favorite Books: Not Only Am I With The Band..., Salem's Lot, Lucifers Hammer, Catch-22, The Stand, Interview With A Vampire, any of the Sharpe's Rifles books, The Kama Sutra, The Stand (expanded edition), Tales Of Mystery and Imagination

Favorite Quotations: If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest or some guy on TV telling you how to do your shit, then YOU DESERVE IT. ~ Frank Zappa

Remember there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over - Frank Zappa on fundamentalism

You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer - Frank Zappa

About Me: I was going to say I'm middle aged, but who can honestly say they are middle aged. If I live to be 120 then I am just over a third of the way through my life. If I live to be 50 then I'm as good as dead.

If, on the other hand, I live to be 94, then I am, infact, middle aged.

Some people loathe getting older. Me? The only concession I will make to getting older is the aches and pains which slowly creep into my life.

Besides which, getting older certainly beats the alternative. I've never been a been a big proponent of the axiom "live fast, diie young, leave a handsome corpse". Screw that... I'll be dead, remember? What the hell should I care at that point what I look like.

So long as I'm standing on the grass looking down at it rather than vice versa, it's all good.

But seriously...

In my day I have been a labourer, I've worked in the Men's Furnishing department for a large retail chain which is no longer in business, a journalist, working for two newspapers that are no longer in business, a teacher for a computer day camp which, yes, you've guessed it, is no longer in business (shit, maybe it's always been me), a senior systems analyst, a photographer and, most recently, a published author.

Reeks of ADHD to me, what say you folks?

I am married. We have a lovely home in Scarberia, with two cats and a mortgage. Hey, living the Canadian Dream here.

A number of friends have wondered why it is that I wound up with the nickname "Aardvark" or "The Aardvark". As with most explanations after the fact, this one is very mundane.

Anyone who has been invited to one of Rhonda and my functions will note there is always some kind of reference to an aardvark somewhere there in the invitation. Aardvark tossing, come dressed as your favourite aardvark and other such nonsense.

What can I say in my defence? I've always thought the word aardvark sounded pretty cool.

One weekend oh, say 10 odd years ago, Rhonda was away visiting her mom south of the border. Which left me a bachelor for a week. On the Saturday I invited Stefan, a dear friend of mine, over for a BBQ. Just the guys.

Well, once the burgers had been sufficiently cooked we proceeded to chow down on BBQ'd hamburger patties, french fries and wine. Hell, cut me some slack here, I'm a guy. Hamburger buns? Hello... not very high on my radar.

Having disposed of eight burgers between the two of us Stefan asked if I had ever heard of an online game called Quake. Sad to say I had not. But Stef was about to put that all to rights. Having downloaded the demo it came to that point when Stefan turned to me asking what I wanted my online name to be.

Needless to say, I didn't have a clue. So Stefan, taking the bull by the horns declared that my online name should be Aardvark since I was frequently known to expound upon the whole aardvark continuum. I thought it sounded like a very sound argument and, as a result, the Aardvark was born.

My apologies to everyone who thought there was something deeper, more sinister involved, but there ya go.

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