The Marvels of Canadian Mediocrity

This is not exclusively about my beloved Toronto Maple Leafs, but how could this topic not include them? I will dispense with them right off the bat. They haven't made the finals in 43 years, much less won a Stanley Cup.If they have any consistency at all, it's that they meander through season after season invariably to finish in the lower half of the standings or miss the playoffs altogether. Yet they are the wealthiest franchise in the game and fans flock to see them play from coast to coast. Fans like me, who marvel at their mediocrity.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the public perception of our current Prime Minister, one Stephen Harper. He has all the charisma of an undusted Buddha, a stare as vacant as the Bates motel, and an embarrassing penchant for showing up late at photo ops with International Heads of State. He makes bland seem like a verb, dresses like his Mom picked out his suits, and is forever backtracking on cock-eyed plans such as his latest thoughts regarding making the national anthem lyric more gender friendly. He truly seems like the guy plastered to the gymnasium wall at a junior high dance, awkward, ungainly, without so much as a great personality to fall back on by way of positive comment. But he is one shrewd political cat who has teetered on the brink of being ousted from governing the country on a near daily basis for years. Exactly the kind of long term mediocrity I admire.

Tim Horton's. Ah yes, good 'Ole Timmy's. A true staple of the Canadian lifestyle, they stretch the length and breadth of our great nation, ubiquitous as gas stations and now somehow as necessary. You gotta get gas, you gotta have coffee. Finding one without a lineup at the drive-thru or at the counter causes me some consternation. I immediately wonder if we are at war. Or, is there a local epidemic I am not privy to. I never feel like I am allowed any time to make my decision, although the fact that I don't utilize my lineup time to do that puzzles me every time I am greeted by the brown shirts who brusquely ask what I want and then tell me it's over there, then tilting their little superior skulls either left or right with at least one eye rolling back into their foreheads. Add bland mediocre coffee laden with sugars and laced with cream of some indeterminate mixture (cocaine, some say), sandwiches the size of a small rodent, and donuts that would make Grandma rise out of the grave with her cleaver poised to strike, and you have the Tim Horton Experience. Not great, not awful, but somewhere down the middle of the long beige road to true mediocrity.

Canadian Blogs. "Blah, blah, blah!" is how one educated friend described them to me a few days ago, and I tend to agree with her. Take this one for instance. Does anybody really give a rat's ass what I have to say about the Leafs, the PM, or Tims? Nah. It is slightly below a typing exercise in Grade Ten in terms of serious commentary, and if it reflects any truth at all, it is that I am a mediocre writer with mediocre opinions on all things mediocre.
But it reflects one perfect achievement. I am become that which I criticize...I am Mediocre, I am Canadian!!!!
Switch to the Leaf game, eh?
Pass me that double double and I'll sing you a real song!
"In all thy... your gender here... command..."