I JUST FOUND THIS NOTE TO MYSELF FROM A DAY IN THE RECENT PAST

KID, I AM AGLOW with love of everything. Like the shot of confidence was the reagent that cleared the water instantly, and suddenly it’s not just the possibilities and the goals that are thrilling, but even the process that looked muddy and plodding and terrifying yesterday seems like best possible thing about it all. Even the terrifying parts are now obviously delightful. That I can be terrified! Yes! And so I went for my walk but man I started running and running and it was just me and the swans and the blue sky sunshine and the first leaves of autumn and I just swore that I would bring joy unto the world in great heaping blasts and tiny steady droplets and everything in between, and I remembered that the good is as real as the evil and I knew that this was always true and so on.

* * *

PIRACY

If the record companies are so concerned about rightful ownership of music, then why didn’t they issue Mango Pudding Blues free CDs of all of the stupid vinyl records that we bought before there were compact discs? Why didn’t they offer to replace our wonky old cassettes with digital copies? We have, ourselves, been in the hapless position of buying the same stupid Brian Eno and David Byrne record in three different formats over the years. Tommy Mottala’s children are still wearing shoes that we paid for when we bought our second copy of Midnight Oil’s Diesel and Dust. Clive Davis’ grandchildren are choking on their chataubriand with laughter over the number of times we bought the same stinkin’ Elvis record. We recall, in fact, reading the trade publications in the early days of CDs, when record company executives were openly slavering over the prospects of the baby boomers replacing their complete fucking Eagles library in the new and coincidentally more expensive digital format.

Now, we at Mango Pudding Blues do not believe that the compact disc was a conspiracy hatched by greedy record companies, because that would credit them with more guile than they ever had. Buy when the wind brought that fall down, they were appallingly eager to lap up the profits. It has been wryly amusing these past couple of years to hear these cutthroat thieves wailing over how we’re pickin’ their pockets.

So if we have downloaded an mp3 or burned a cd or two (and here, mind you, we are speaking hypothetically and admitting nothing), we feel nothing for the dinosaur crybabies who robbed us in the past and would rob us still if only they could figure out how. If that makes us pirates, then we say, “Arrr matey!”

No, we at Mango Pudding Blues have been calling for years for music by subscription, wherein we pay a monthly fee and get all the music we want. It’s the only way that makes sense.

Anyway, our real problem, the thing that got us thinking about all this, is our hand-baked CDs in those new slimline cases that don’t really support labeled spines. As their number increases, we foresee enormous frustrations in trying to browse our collection. With no spines, they all look alike. We are concerned about this, and we blame the music industry.

* * *

INFLUENZA

In the past few years we at Mango Pudding Blues have always been eager to get our flu shot. Oh sure, we heard that there were risks, but we were staunch supporters of better living through chemistry. We were cheerleaders for man’s scientific mastery of the biological universe. We were thrilled not to get sick.

This year, however, we are vacillating. We are on the fence regarding the flu shot. Perhaps indicative of a creeping conservativism, we are now weighing the odds and scratching our head. It didn’t help that the Globe ran a front page story the other day about a guy who was paralyzed for nearly a year as a direct result of his flu shot. And so we are running complex actuarial calculations to determine what to do.

* * *

HAUNTED

I misspent my youth working in record stores. From age 18, when I left high school after an academically unimpressive run, to age 26, when I finally got squeezed out for general laziness and incompetence, I worked for low wages and free promotional records and tapes and cds in the shopping mall record chain outlets of Calgary, Alberta.

I don’t entirely regret it. I learned more about music than I otherwise would have, particularly the commercial music made between 1983 and 1991. I learned, perhaps, more about dealing with people than I might have had I worked in an office with the same five people all those years. I learned the basics of retail business and retail management, which I have found to be generally applicable everywhere. I learned, naturally, a lot about myself and what I like and dislike in the workplace. And, of course, I had some mall kid kind of fun, working in big cheesy glittery buildings with hundreds of other middle-class drifters like me. All of them were hungry for experience. Hungry for things to start happening to them. Some of them were fun. Some of them were fabulously good-looking.

Douglas Coupland, in a novel somewhere, notes that you would never let an 18-year-old make a major life choice for you, and yet we all had to make those kinds of choices when we were 18. I still cringe, when I think back, to the paucity of imagination that kept me there so long. I was unable to move in a direction that I couldn’t envision, and I couldn’t envision what I couldn’t physically see. So I thought the only jobs were those I could see people perform; Retailers, restaurant workers, cops, doctors and mailmen. I literally couldn’t imagine anything else. Journalist? Graphic designer? Impossible. I think I’m like that still. Until somebody takes my hand and shows me the way, I’m stuck with the options I’m familiar with.

A favorite anecdote; I read once of an ex-con in the care of his daughter. He was fresh outta the big house after a long stretch, and unable to walk through doorways without permission. He was so conditioned to waiting for the screws to open doors that he just couldn’t do it unless she said it was okay. I am that guy.

And I am haunted even now, more than ten years later, by a recurring dream in which I am once again managing a record store. In which I am once again confronted by various problems. In which I am always think that this time I can lick them, but as I begin to go about it, my heart feels the sinking certainty that I will be, once again, overwhelmed.

Last night, it was the computerized inventory system that was on the fritz. At least my dreamworld evolves. Back in my day, we didn’t even have computers.

Have I told you all this before?

* * *

NOT AGAIN

Longtime readers will know that we at Mango Pudding Blues are prone to rage against winter. This year will be no different. In fact, we feel that we have been soft on winter in the past. We feel that we have, out of our general good-naturedness, given winter a few too many breaks. This year, we will not yield in our loathing of winter.

Winter arrived here, unexpectedly, on Sunday. Ottawa is covered in a thick blanket of snow that already looks dirty and depressing. In the past years, we have had enough warning that we have managed to work up mental defense strategies against winter. This year, no. It blew in, and we are very upset about it.

In the meantime, we are warming our hands on the glow of the growing (but oh-so-exclusive) list of readers who have written in to ensure their seat in the upcoming Mango 3.0. Listen, our life here is in shambles, so we have not had time to write back to each and every one. But suffice to say, those who have written in up to now have all passed the background check and have been granted membership. As for the rest of you, imagine how you’ll feel the day you hit that bookmark and pull up a black blank page. Your heart will sink and you will hear, in your head, your superego say, “Shit. He wasn’t kidding.”

* * *