Why Cowboys' Tent?

This event took place back in 2004.  It was a horrific, terrifying event, which is why it has taken this long for me to write about it.  Why should you keep reading if this is such a terrifying story?  Because I had to look up the politically correct term for midget in order to write this, the correct term is little people.


It was the day of my company’s Stampede work party.  We were well fed, well liquored and then set loose in the Cowboys’ Tent.  For those of you unfamiliar with the Cowboys’ Tent during Stampede, its where everyone wants to go, and no one knows why.  It's 10,000 people massive, it's hot, it stinks like sweaty ass, and has the nastiest portable shitters you have ever seen.  The place is filled with old business men, with hot, dumb, and young girls on each arm.  Many of these HDY girls end up being unable to come back to the tent the following year as they are looking after a 3 month old that was conceived in the portable shitters that very night.  This was the underside of Stampede, of course we had to be there.

My friend Alexis and I went there early to make sure our group would have a spot, potentially even a table.  Unfortunately, Alexis is one of those classic beauties that drunk guys try to grope and sober guys stare at being creepy, so Cowboys during Stampede is a living hell.  To help curb the drunken groping, we stood back to back.  She guarded her boobs, and if a dude tried to feel her ass, they would get a handful of my junk instead.  A horrifying prospect for all involved.

The amount of hand talking Alexis performs is directly proportional to the amount of alcohol she has consumed.  Since our friends were running late, Alexis’ hands were flying all over the place.  Not the best when you are trying to shield your boobs from gropey douche bags.

While Alexis was telling me some riveting story, I can’t recall what it was about, I could tell her hands were moving all around by the amount her back was moving and pushing up against me.  It must have been an amazing story.  What I do remember is the desperate sound of panic in her voice when she blurted out “Oh My GAWD!”

Thinking a groper guy got past her flying hand defence, I started to spin around to see what was going on.  At that instance, my life slowed down, it decided that something so horrific was about to happen that I needed my life in slow motion giving me every opportunity to change the outcome.

In order to make a single pivot step around someone you are standing back to back with, you have to swing your lead leg high and far around.  This gives you that element of surprise as you seem to magically appear in front of the person you were just behind.  I began my pivot step, lifting my left leg high.  I started the swing.  I noticed a red straw cowboy hat, the one with the white trim and the whistle, typically worn by little kids.

The red hat appeared to be floating across the room at waist level, like someone had thrown it as a frisbee.  Except it wasn’t spinning, there was an anger and intention to its movement.  The hat was trying to escape.

My knee crashed directly into the fleshy underside of the hat, sending it flipping backwards.  A splotchy face appeared under the hat.  It too, was starting to flip backwards.  The red string that held the whistle began to tighten around the nose, straining to keep the hat from escaping.  The hat jerked to a stop as the whistle slid up into the left nostril.  Time seemed to stop at this point. The hat tethered to the nose by this whistle laden string.  The face pulled back, eyes squished shut, nose pulled off to the side, and drool flying out of the mouth, similar to the close up picture of a boxer right after taking a punch to the cheek.

Time began to move again, and quickly was running at normal speed.  The face from under the hat stared up at me, and had a Medusa effect, I froze.  I was unable to move, standing there, mid turn, knee in the air, and mouth gaping open in shock.  The hat was restored to its proper place and it vanished into the crowd.

In the distance I could hear Alexis.  Her voice was still seemed strained.  It continued to get louder until her voice saved me from the Medusa curse.  My thoughts came back, my mind began to race, and started piecing together what had just happened.  It appeared as though I had just kneed a little kid in the face.  But that didn't make any sense.  I was in the Cowboys’ Tent during Stampede.  How was a little kid in there.  My mind rewound the event and began again.  The Medusa face, that didn't belong to a little kid, it belonged to someone much older, yet still very short.  I just kneed a little person in the face!!  Their Medusa face...Medusa was a woman.  I just kneed a female little person in the face!!

My world came crashing down.  At that moment I was the biggest asshole known to man.  I looked around for the red hat hoping I could at least apologize and buy her a drink.  The red hat was nowhere to be found.

Alexis’ voice snapped me out of my apologetic trance.  She was still visibly agitated.  Maybe it was being in slow motion for so long, I know some people can’t handle the time changes very well.

I confronted Alexis trying to calm her down.  She was so excited she was stammering.  There is no way this was related to a gropey cowboy, this was something different.  Her story began when we were still standing back to back and she was telling me that forgettable story.  Her hands were getting into it, flying all over the place, right up until she smacked a person in the face.

She didn't see this person as the back of her hand landed square on this person’s cheek.  She didn't this person because it was a little person. A female little person, wearing a red cowboy hat with a whistle.

No More Crazy Stuff?

You may have noticed that I have not written about my crazy life in some time now.  Part is due to the fact that I no longer have a boss with a drinking talent.  You may recall that I challenged his talent at least 4 times a week which prevented me from going home until the early morning.  In fact, during that time I’m not entirely sure how much of my life was real or just night terrors.

The other reason for the lack of stories is because I moved to Priddis...it is boring here.  When I say boring, I really mean it is fantastic.  You can see the stars at night; I mean all of them not just the twelve that you see in the city.  We have random animals in the yard...deer, coyotes, and the neighbour’s dogs.  There is local pub where the farmers have a well deserved morning beer.  It really does remind me of where I grew up...is that a good thing?

Currently my neighbour has setup a fake deer in his yard to practice bow hunting.  The deer looks surprisingly real, except for the arrows sticking out of its chest.  I’m fine with this; in fact I am planning on practicing my defensive driving skills by driving full speed across their lawn while the neighbour launches the fake deer directly in my path.  Hopefully I will absolutely destroy this fake animal, you see I hate how the fake deer is setup.  If an arrow misses the deer, it will fly towards the fence and into my yard.  Thankfully my house isn’t directly behind the target but coincidentally the area of the lawn that is in the path of the arrow has not been mowed in some time.

A wild weekend of partying out here means that we had a friend or two over and watched a movie while having some drinks.  Wild times.  Considering when I lived downtown for two years I used to take my life in my hands walking home late at night, this is...well it is boring.  To stay safe during those downtown years I would always wear a dark hoodie on my drunken stroll home.  It is the safest you will ever be while downtown.  If you are dressed like a skater punk everyone leaves you alone.  Normal people figure you are going to try to bum a smoke or randomly stab them.  Thugs leave you alone as you probably have common friends or dealers.  The juiced up steroid monkeys that love picking fights at the end of the night, leave you alone as they feel a skater punk is below them and not worth a good haymaker.  Trust me on this, in fact think back to a time you were downtown late at night...you were having a food from Tubby Dogs...some skater punks walked in and ordered the Tubby with Chili...It scared you didn't it?  Or if you are a roid monkey you thought “so not worth my time” then went back in for another Jagerbomb didn't you?

I am getting off topic back to Priddis...there was a bear in the dump a while ago, that was exciting.  Well not for me, I wasn’t there, but for the dump guy, I’m sure it was more eventful that the usual quota of skunks he finds each morning.

A few weeks ago I was out for my run after work.  It was a warm evening, very sunny, and late enough to cast long shadows that play tricks on your eyes.  The grass in the ditches was as tall me.  Is the county that lazy that the grass can grow to 6 feet tall before they get around to trimming it?  At most I let my lawn get to a foot, reminds me of the saying “a peach is tasty but never as good as a nectarine”.  Classic.

I digress; back to the run.  According to my GPS I was on km 2.5 of my 4 km out and back run.  I broke though the shadows into the nice warm sunshine.  My eyes were still adjusting to the brightness when a black bear popped his head up out of the ditch 30 feet ahead of me.  Obviously the dump was closed.

My first thought was how cute his little round ears were, sticking out of his fluffy face.  I’m not sure why that was my first thought.  Maybe it was a survival instinct to help keep me calm.  The bear stood there frozen for a split second as if thinking how strange I looked not having little round ears sticking out of my head.  I managed to use my mind powers to slow time to a crawl, allowing me enough time to fully comprehend the situation and make some decisions on what to do next.

During this altered state of time my mind was making wonderful realizations: my heart had yet to make a full beat since spotting the bear, I was a still 1.5 km from the house, I had started to run faster, the bear was between me and the house, I had started to run faster towards the bear.  Time swooshed back to full speed.  What!?!  I had sped up running towards the bear? Why?

The bear was also confused.  Why I had started to run faster towards him.  He decided it was a race and took off at full speed towards the trees.  Had the finish line been the trees he would have kicked my ass, but little did he know the finish line was at my house.  Stupid bear. 

Shortly after the bear disappeared into the trees, I heard a low pitched booming.  The noise was rhythmic and strong enough that I could feel it resonate throughout my entire body.  I turned around worried the bear had a friend desperately trying to place second in the race to the trees.  Nothing, except the long dark shadows.  I immediately remembered The Blair Witch Project...why am I thinking about a crappy horror movie while a second ago it sounded like a bear was bearing down on me (ooo did you get that one?).

The booming sound followed me as I got closer to the house.  By this time some of the adrenaline had wore off and at last I quit thinking about how cute the bear's little round ears were.  With my senses back to normal I discovered the booming sound was my heart in overload, which by the way propelled me to my fastest 1.5 km time ever.  It was still really slow, so I am not posting it.

Looking back I can’t help but wonder what is wrong with my flight or fight response?  Why was my first reaction to notice the cuteness of the creature that was about to maul me?  Or for that matter, why did some B rated movie come to mind, how is that going to help?  The people in that movie had the worst escape plan ever, walking in circles until the witch gets you, oh come on.  How is such a terrible plot line going to help me out of this situation?  The best I can come up with is that my flight or fight response was telling me to run around in circles with the cute bear.  Probably not the best plan.

At the very least, my flight or fight should have learned from past experience and told me to put on a hoodie, put the hood up, and casually stroll by everyone while minding my own business.  That way everything would have been fine.

Originally written Sept 2010...touched up and reposted cause its awesome.

Stampede Nerd Report 2012

The 100 year anniversary of the Calgary Stampede happened earlier this July, and I’m happy to say that I got to attend many private parties and even one full day of the rodeo. Stampede means more than rodeo and mini donuts, it means it’s time for my Annual Stampede Nerd Report.

Originally these reports gave you tips on how to deal with the nerds during Stampede. It turns out I’m a bit a lazy and I write these reports after the fact almost every year. Or I don’t write one at all for 5 years.  Anyways enjoy…

This year the big change is the nerds are back downtown.  Shit!!

In my last nerd report I mentioned how they were all shipped out of downtown, and none were able to find their way back for Stampede events. This year it’s obvious that the recession is over in Calgary as all the nerds are back downtown in the fancy offices. This nerdy impact on downtown is a potential argument in favour of recessions.

With the nerds back for Stampede, my “Nerds Prevent Hoes” theory was validated. There was a dramatic decrease in both the foreign and domestic hoe population at all Stampede events. Thanks nerds for doing what you do best...creeping on the hoes until they leave.

Once the hoes were scared away from the Stampede events the nerds turn their creepers to the girls with normal levels of self esteem.  Lucky for us the nerds are not powerful enough to creep them out, and the nerds actually left Stampede early.  I’m extremely happy to report that we had a close to hoe-less and nerdless Stampede this year!!  Perfect for the 100 year anniversary.

There is a dark side of this story.  Everyone knows that nerds and jocks form a strange equilibrium in the natural environment.  Every now and then an event occurs that upsets this equilibrium allowing one of the groups to get the upper hand.  This year that event was Stampede.

With the nerdherders (jocks) at all the parties, the outcast nerds were able to form into large unchecked groups or herds.  These herds of nerds only know fear…fear of the nerdherders.  Without the nerdherders their fears had no focus.  Quickly the fear shifted.  It shifted to the Zombie Apocalypse!  Really we should have seen this coming.

Eye witness reports indicate that nerds and their asthma inhalers have been seen outside, even in the sun.  This is real people, I personally have spotted a helpdesk employee with a tan.  Ultimate Frisbee leagues around the city are overflowing with awkward pale skinned nerds skipping along the field.

A recent news article in the Calgary Metro outlines how nerds are training in parkour and archery.  Both require balance, skill, and most importantly muscles.  This is proof that nerds are getting stronger.  However the real threat is nerds might be building up their self esteem!!

Nerds with strength and self esteem will completely mess up the nerd to nerdherder balance.  Currently we are okay with people like Mark Z. (Facebook guy) having a billion dollars while he is under 30 because we know deep down we can kick his ass.  What if Mark is also taking parkour and archery lessons?  If that happens we will no longer be able to kick his ass to the curb because he will Spiderman his way up a building while flinging arrows at you.  The nerds will get the upper hand.

When that happens, I will be hoping for the Zombie Apocalypse.  I am pretty pumped to become a zombie and chase down these parkour nerds. It will be a great challenge. Zombieland might turn out to be pretty accurate with the fatties being the first to go.  We can only hope that second is the parkour nerds.

An oldie but a goodie - Annual Calgary Stampede Nerd Report - 2007

This year for the Annual Calgary Stampede Nerd Report, I have been having a harder than normal time trying to come up with a topic. This is due to the massive shortages of nerds this Stampede thus far.

Over the past 2 years many companies with large nerd populations have been shipping the nerd divisions off to the NE corner of Calgary. It has been a very successful migration. Unlike dogs, nerds lack the ability to find their way home if dropped off in a new remote location. A lone nerd would parish under such conditions, as they would be too scared to seek out new restaurants and ways to get home.

To solve this problem, you need to ship entire divisions of nerds all at once. Large groups of nerds are extremely overconfident of their abilities and tend to be quite aggressive in new surroundings as they all believe they are ninjas. By having entire corporate Calgary ship all nerds to the same part of the city, a new social structure is currently being developed. They are trying to find out which one is the top ninja.

One must not forget that the NE is also filled with immigrants, and various factory workers. Nerds will quickly learn to take advantage of new immigrants with poor English skills and no concept of how our social structure works. The factory workers will have at least dealt with nerds though work, and are going to fight back. This may lead to blood shed, mainly the nerds. Nerds have very thin skin due to lack of physical activity, and most tend to have some sort of bleeding disorder. It will be messy.

What does any of this have to do with the Stampede Nerd Report? Well, at first I thought it would have only positive affects on Stampede, but I was wrong, so very wrong. Drunk nerds, tend to become very creepy toward girls, all girls. But there is one type of girl that drunken nerds like to creep on the most, HOES. I think this obsession with hoes is because when a girl is easy to catch by anyone, the nerds consider themselves to be anyone, and think they have a chance. Also hoe costumes tend to show cleavage, something nerds normally only see on the internet.

With the massive drunk nerd shortage there is no one left to creep out the hoes. This problem is only made worse by the large number of “wanna be player” dudes, that live at home but pretend to make good money. They seem to extra like the hoes, and spend tons of money on them, making more hoes show up. It’s like a dead gopher on the road attracting flies.

I started to notice about a week before Stampede there were big groups of hoes (I believe they are called murders, just like crows). These murders of hoes have continued to get bigger and more aggressive. Last Thursday, before Stampede really got going, I noticed people getting heavily harassed by random hoes at the primer party I was at. I of course was also getting heavily bothered by the hoes, but then again, I’m damn sexy so it was expected. I did have to burn my shirt after the event as too many hoes brushed up against it. The shirt screamed while burning.

Thankfully the rains came and helped force some the hoes to go back into their underground lairs. If the rains let up, then I’m worried that we will have only one chance against the murders of hoes. To create an elite team of nerd creepers and fill then full of vodka slimes and Smirnoff Ice, and give them full access to all Stampede parties.

I never thought I would see the day where nerds are needed to save Stampede. As Stampede stands right now, it really does need some elite nerds to balance out the terrible sight of hoes and the wanna be players. I’ve already had to burn one shirt ruined by the hoes touch, and seen too many guys in white track pants and Stampede just started.