Dec. 1: Middle of nowhere, car breaks down, no mobile reception, small abandoned barn where I have to seek shelter for the night on New Year's Eve

 Now if that isn't a tall order for my first note-a-day this month, I don't know what is. Yeah, that's a lot to take in.

But guess what? As soon as Tara MacDonald gave me this title, my mind instantly went to the 1969 James Bond movie, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which is definitely the most referenced movie in the history of note-a-day. OHMSS is my favourite Bond movie and my favourite Christmas movie to boot. Who knows? It may even be my favourite movie of all time. The ending is one of the very best in the history of the cinema. I will definitely watch it this month. Eeeeee!

See... pretty much everything Tara mentions in her title ACTUALLY HAPPENS IN THE MOVIE! Here's a brief rundown:

Shortly after Christmas, James Bond escapes from Piz Gloria, a mountaintop fortress in the Alps that is also the headquarters of Blofeld, a mega-villain who is bent on world domination. After skiing down the mountain, he meets up with Tracy, the daughter of the head of a European crime syndicate called the Union Corps. Tracy is played by Diana Rigg, who looked like this:

So anyway, 007 and Tracy are outrunning Blofeld and his henchman. Somehow they wind up in a stock car race on pure ice (Tracy does the driving; take that Wonder Woman) and then they get away and they are in the middle of nowhere and the car breaks down (because of a snowstorm) and there is no mobile reception ('cause it's 1969) and they come across a small abandoned barn (which isn't really abandoned because there are horses in it) and they stay the night there. I am unclear if it's New Year's Eve but it is definitely between Christmas and New Year's Eve so that is close enough.

All this to say that OHMSS is the best Christmas movie ever and the people who think it's not as good as Die Hard are complete dunderheads and you should not listen to them and, in fact, you should throw oatmeal at them when they pretend that their cinematic opinions are better than mine.

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But if the above scenario were to happen to me, I'd probably be cool with it, especially if I was all by my lonesome. Since it's New Year's Eve, it would probably be cold. I would rather be stuck in a barn in the winter than the summer. Here are some reasons for that:

1. No hay fever.

2. No serial killers or undead zombies walking around outside.

3. Property owners less likely to come poking around to see what the hubbub is about.

4. I could pretend I'm James Bond.

About the only bad thing that would happen would be that I might freeze to death. I could stop this from happening by keeping a warm blanket in my car. I vow to put a warm blanket in my car. Now I won't freeze to death.

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The thing about no mobile reception is a reality in several parts of Glengarry, which is where I live. However, a group called the Eastern Ontario Regional Network is investing millions of dollars to (a) improve cell phone access and (b) improve high-speed Internet throughout the region, which extends from the Quebec border to Peterborough. All of this would have sounded like science fiction in 1969. Back then, Q-branch had installed a cell phone in James Bond's car and the thing was so big it took up half the dashboard.

Today's James Bond is super high tech. This is good and bad. None of the Bond girls are nearly as pretty as Diana Rigg. This is definitely bad. Or good. It depends on your perspective.

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I am not allowed to burn down the barn. James Bond didn't burn down the barn, although the bad guys found his car the day after. James and Tracy weren't there. They had gone skiing.

You know, I question the wisdom of that. If bad guys were chasing me because they wanted to kill me, I don't think I would stick around the area. I definitely wouldn't go skiing. Movie characters rarely make rational decisions. In this way, they are kind of like real life people.

In real life, I don't think I would be driving by myself on New Year's Eve anyway. Maybe I would be 10 years ago, but not now that I am in my late 40s. I think the last time I was driving by myself on New Year's Eve was 2014. I know this because I had spent the entire year doing note-a-day every single day and I was racing home so I could get the final note done before December 31 turned into January 1. I have been busy every New Year's Eve since. Mostly I was either (a) doing magic shows or (b) helping Kelsey celebrate her birthday. Kelsey was born on January 1. I was born on January 3. We are Capricorns. Capricorns are the best people ever.  Diana Rigg was not a Capricorn. She was a Cancer. She died in September. Her death made me sad. George Lazenby, who played James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, was also not a Capricorn. He was a Virgo. None of the James Bond actors were Capricorns. This is a bad thing.

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I am assuming that it is pitch dark in the barn and I am huddling under my blanket. I cannot call out on my cell phone but I can play games on it (maybe) but I won't do that because in the morning, I will try to walk somewhere where the reception will be better. So I will put the cell phone on my body so my body heat will keep it warm and the battery won't die. I probably won't sleep a lot so I will stay up all night thinking.

I will likely think about:

- Stupid things that I did in junior high school.

- What I will write about in my newspaper column next week.

- That my dad was right when he said bacon and eggs is a perfect meal anytime of day (and wouldn't a plate of bacon and eggs taste great right now? Rye toast to dip in the egg yolk. Sunny side up.)

- Stupid things that I did in high school.

- Why the Gospel of Mark commands believers to go out into the world and preach the gospel to "all creatures." That confused me when I was a kid and I wondered if I also had to tell cockroaches, mountain goats, and my dog about Jesus Christ. As a more mature person, I believe that the writer of Mark was employing hyperbole to stress the importance of the message, but it made for some messed up human-doggie encounters when I was eight.

- GREAT IDEAS FOR STORIES BUT I DON'T HAVE A PEN AND PAPER TO WRITE THEM DOWN SO I WILL FORGET ABOUT THEM BY TOMORROW!!!

- The Calgary Flames' chances of winning the Stanley Cup this year (probably slim.)

- That time in 1993 when I was working as pizza delivery person and as I was driving home after a long day's work, these two teenaged girls flagged me down. They said they had just hitch hiked here from Vancouver and desperately needed to get to their friend's house in the south part of the city but had no idea how to get there. I offered to give them a ride and I told them that I had a leftover pizza and they grabbed it and devoured it in about five minutes flat. It was a yucky pizza (it had anchovies) and one of them asked me if they could smoke a joint in my car and I told her no and both of them sulked for the entire ride down to the friend's house and when they got out of the car, they didn't even thank me. I wonder whatever happened to them. My prediction is that one of them is married, has two kids, and teaches grade 4 at a public school in Edmonton. The other one is divorced and works at Staples.

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Another thing I will think about is the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, who wrote a book called The Essence of Christianity. In it, he argued that Christianity was nothing but wish fulfillment. He said that believers don't want to live in a godless universe, so they imagine that God exists and project that longing through the lens of the Bible. This idea was rebutted several years later by another German philosopher named Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann, who pointed out that just because someone longs for something to be true doesn't mean that it isn't true. The example he used was that if a person is experiencing a night of suffering and desperately longs for morning to come, that doesn't mean that morning won't come.

But lying in this blanket in this abandoned barn while it's -30 and howling wind and snow outside, it kinda feels like morning is going to take its sweet assed time.

And maybe now I can get some sleep.

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