In honour of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, which this year begins the evening of Oct. 3 and ends the evening of Oct. 4, and indeed in honour of atonement rituals in religions everywhere, K&K revives its yearly atonement series, begging forgiveness for past mistakes, misdeeds, egregious errors in judgment and moments of all around douchiness. Once again, we’re sorry.
• In high school there was a time when we grew our hair out, started wearing Guatemalan ponchos, listened to a lot of U2 and tried to project a culturally superior persona to our friends and classmates. We felt we had achieved a level of deepness despite being surrounded by a sea of mediocrity and meek acceptance, and we wanted everyone to know it. In addition to spouting off about our naïve politically left leanings, we also regularly claimed that Gandhi and Amadeus were our favourite movies. Our Star Wars and Indiana Jones-loving friends challenged us on this, but we maintained our deep and abiding appreciation for these more “important” and “serious” films. We may have even uttered the phrase “beautifully rendered.”
Sorry, high school friends, for falsely claiming Gandhi and Amadeus were our favourite movies, when in fact, to this day, we have only watched them once and remembered being kind of bored, and if given the choice would rather have watched Return of the Jedi or Temple of Doom in a heartbeat.
Sorry, left wing political parties, for turning a lot of future voters away from your cause because who wants to align themselves with the superficial political beliefs of a pretentious Bono wannabe in a Guatemalan poncho and Rattle and Hum poster on their bedroom wall.
• Years ago when we were a carefree, gallivanting, rough and tumble freelance journalist we wrote a story for a local paper. When we went to the publication’s office to pick up our cheque for $200, the receptionist handed us two envelopes. Both envelopes contained cheques for $200. In other words, the paper had mistakenly paid us twice for the same story. Rather than inform them of the mistake, we cashed the cheques a few weeks apart not to arouse suspicion and in all likelihood used the unexpected windfall to buy booze or eat out at a few restaurants or purchase shoes that we no longer wear, because we have a bad habit of overestimating the longevity of footwear fashion and appropriateness on account of being easily enamoured by bright colours and applying an air of “fun” to our lowly feet.
Sorry, local paper, for not fessing up and allowing you to pay us twice for the same job, and in a small way contributing to the ongoing financial challenges facing print media these days… you know what, screw it, we’re not sorry, $200 was a pittance for the time and effort we put into that story that none of the fulltime journalists wanted to write in the first place, and if you can’t keep your accounts in order, despite your high paid managers and profit hungry shareholders, then that’s on you.
