Balls of Rice

Author: Nic Olson

  • Lyrics of the Month: November 2012 – Without Love

    All in nature ends in tragedy and I was the first to finally fade away from my grandfather’s memories. How long ’til the day my memories of him finally fade away? Dissolving into gray. Is breathing just the ticking of an unwinding clock? Just counting down the time it takes for you to comprehend the sheer magnitude of every single precious breath you’ve ever wasted? I did everything I could. I bargained with the universe to take my life instead of hers. But no amount of money, drugs or tears could keep her here. What purpose did her suffering serve? Is breathing just the ticking of an unwinding clock? Just counting down the time it takes for you to comprehend the sheer magnitude of every single precious breath you’ve ever wasted? So much misery. So much indifference to so much suffering that we can become tempted by appeals to hatred. But this world ain’t nothing more than what we make of it. Revenge ain’t no solution to the inevitable pain that every single one of us must face in losing the kindred spirits in our lives. Lives so brief, so disappointing, so confusing. As Cronie slipped away I held her in my arms, reduced to “Please don’t leave me. What will I do?” But this cosmic sadness is just here to remind you that without Love, breathing is just the ticking of…

    -Propagandhi, Supporting Caste, Without Love

  • Why I Got Arrested

    There could be two ways of telling this story. I will tell both.

    1. In the year 2000, a man named Pat Fiacco was elected Mayor of Regina. I was newly twelve. We had just finished our PeeWee football season and were celebrating by going to LazerQuest—the dream of all twelve-year-olds. Getting out of the car we heard early election results from the radio: Pat Fiacco had defeated Doug Archer, who had been mayor since I was born. Mr. Thibault, driver of the car, eventual SaskParty MLA-hopeful, father of a teammate who almost broke a kid’s neck, expressed his delight with the outcome. We went inside. I shot friends with lasers. Nothing else mattered.
    I was never able to vote in a civic election in which Pat Fiacco ran for mayor. I supported his I Love Regina campaign, which seemed to rouse up civic pride in a city that has little more appeal than decent folks and short commutes. I bought the shirts, I shared the shirts, I gave the shirts as gifts.
    Eventually, as politics became more important and professional sports became more absurd, in the latter part of Pat’s mayoral career, I began to question his legitimacy as mayor. Sure, it’s a tough job. Never enough money, lots to do, boring council meetings to attend, a populace to actually care for. But the more I saw the failed developments in a city that Pat encouraged me to love, the less I could stand it. I love the city too much. I saw the stadium as inevitable and necessary. I saw it as a positive if done correctly, timely, and not at the cost of a part of the population that couldn’t find a place to live. But instead the stadium project became fishier by the day. Hurried, sketchy, reeking of illegitimate money, and mostly all presented just before or during an election. Handled worse than a sopping jock strap. Instead of his first vision—a statue of himself shadow-boxing shirtless to be placed at city hall—Pat instead opted for the quarter-billion-dollar stadium project for all of us to remember him by. So that he wouldn’t be remembered for the goofy smile, the phantom moustache, the over-moussed hair. He would be remembered for the glorious ride on which he took us, instilling unwarranted levels of civic pride in our hearts with t-shirts and an ill-gotten stadium.
    Some might say that I was arrested because Pat Fiacco was an unfit mayor.

    2. As a twenty-four-year-old who hasn’t accomplished much, the allure of political activism and vandalism drew me in like it were the aroma of a bowl of popcorn or a pretty lady’s hair. Live a little, it whispered in my ear. Don’t roll over and let them ram that stadium up your ass, it admonished. So, I somehow came up with this piece of art, tried it several times on several different materials with several different versions of moustache. Speckled. Muffled. Filtered. Full-on. The slogan came naturally (that is, poetically, with no research and based on conjecture). I came up with a route, I came up with an outfit, I didn’t wear a hat, I didn’t wear glasses, my jacket was manufactured with a hideable balaclava. The surveillance videos would lead them to anyone but myself.
    But then I ran. Paranoia got the best of me, as it usually does with poser try-hards. Civilian cars started to look a lot like cop cars. Cop cars looked a lot like jail. Jail looked like something worse than a stadium up the ass. I ran, forgetting that I’m an out of shape bum and that running gave them reason to pursue. They caught me, cuffed me, realized that I wasn’t casing cars. They asked me my name when my nose was on the concrete, breathing deeply with leaves shooting out from under my head from my heavy exhale. Andrew Gurr was the only name that came to mind, following my plan to never give my real name if I ever got arrested. Then, in my first moment of clarity of the night, I realized that a fake name would only make it worse. I was cooperative. I slept in a cell. I got fingerprinted. Mugshot. Tattoo information. Left with one charge, five times. They caught the real bad guy.
    Some might say I was arrested because I am a moron. Most would say this.

    As a football-loving PeeWee, had I been able to see Fiacco’s vision of a ‘state-of-the-art’ stadium meant to cup the balls of an already over-celebrated professional football team, I would have been ecstatic. The Riders were my idols, of course they would deserve the greatest our money had to offer, even at the cost of the city’s lower class. I would’ve celebrated with Mr. Thibault, and entered LazerQuest with a little more victory in my heart. But alas, I grew up. I grew up with the ability to prioritize. I grew up with recklessness and a mind partial to moronic errors. I grew up into the graffiti-slinging, overly-idealistic, dissenting, once-upright child that you now see before you, fresh from his second court date where the Honourable Judge amended the curfew with an order to ‘Keep the Peace.’

    Innocent no more. The stadium will be built and shortly thereafter rammed up my ass. My twelve-year-old-self congratulates you, former Mayor Fiacco. You win once again. You will forever be immortalized as the mayor that started the botched stadium project and left thousands of people out in the very real, very wintery cold. But with me, you will forever be immortalized in a stencil and five charges, under the slogan of your twelve year career: Greatest mayor ever sold.

    Does this post count as an inability to ‘Keep the Peace’? If so, lock me up.

    Calm down, Nic.

  • Who Terrifies Least

    And I’m still terrified. I am not relieved.

    Canadians who would normally condemn Stephen Harper are currently celebrating the election of a man who is little more than the sexier version of the Canadian Prime Minister. Both leaders carry a similar policy, but one of them you could potentially have a conversation with without wanting to stick cobs of corn in your earholes. Obama is a man we have seen hanging out with Jay-Z. Harper is a man that we would expect to see hanging out with a bank’s CEO, or country club golf pro like Shooter McGavin, or oil and gas investors, although we are skeptical that even these people would be able to carry on a conversation with such a potently awkward man. In Canada, as non-participants, we watch the Presidential Election as if it were the 100-metre dash. We cheer for who seems most approachable in sound bites and video clips. We cheer for those who our favourite celebrities endorse. We cheer for the most famous and recognizable face in the entire world. We cheer for the one who terrifies us the least.

    And that is the problem. The lesser of two evils, people say. My idea of democracy doesn’t line up with voting for ‘who terrifies least.’ I can understand people’s relief in the election of the lesser of two evils, however I cannot understand people’s acceptance of the situation. The two-party system is terrifying. In the only podcast worth listening to, Escape Velocity Radio, Chris Hannah levels with Americans, saying that the two-party system is, “only one party away from the Soviet Union.” There were other options (Green Party, Justice Party, etc), recognized on ballots in only some states, and not recognized at all by major media outlets. Denouncing these as non-effective is denouncing democracy.

    Sure, Nic. You read two websites about how Obama still supports the Keystone Pipeline, about how he still issues drone killings in the middle east and Africa, about how he passed the National Defence Authorization Act that allows the government to detain citizens without fair trial, and now you can’t take a minor win and leave it alone. You’ve gotta act smarter than you are.

    Yes. I do. I am hard to please.

    More and more I am learning that if you vote and do nothing else, then it is almost not worth your vote at all. Although Peter Mansbridge’s voice almost seduced me into staying upstairs on the couch, I came downstairs into my room and streamed DemocracyNow.org‘s coverage of the election. In it, Ben Jealous, President of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People said: “You don’t vote for someone to make a change,  you vote for someone who can make it easier for you to make a change. You don’t lose the responsibility of making change. We have to stay in movement mode.”

    Although the man that terrifies me the most is not the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, he is still one of the richest most powerful men in that nation. Celebrating and expecting the less terrifying man to make all the changes is irresponsible. It is still the responsibility of the citizens to ensure that change occurs. That an oppressive two-party system is shut down, that Obama’s right-leaning policies are kept in check.

    The lesser of two evils is still evil. The ‘least-worst’ is still the worst. The man who terrifies me the least still terrifies me. His manufactured image is pretty comforting. He is hard not to like; I’d go for a beer with him. But I’m still terrified for a population willing to settle, if that is actually what happened. Hell if I know.

    What Ralph Nader Is Thinking About the 2012 Election

  • The Chair Project

    Long before summer hit us with its tube-top good times, but after the snow had melted and evaporated, I found this chair. I had put in a morning volunteering at Carmichael Outreach, came out the back door to see a beat up white chair upside-down in the trash barrel, ready to be taken to the city dump to be buried with shitty diapers and half-eaten pizza pops. The bottom right rung was snapped off. The chair was unloved. Instead of letting it be disrespected, I strapped it onto the handlebars of my bicycle and rode home. On the way I picked up a garbage bag filled with recyclables to fully adopt the poverty stereotype, and rode home talking to myself and chuckling.

    After six layers of paint that I stripped with some environmentally-friendly goop and a few paint scrapers I couldn’t figure out why a person would paint such a chair in the first place, and why they decided they needed to do it five more times, from blue to yellow to white to powder blue to seafoam green to white again. The pressed-back was strangled by the paint. Painting things; walls, furniture, teeth, cars, faces, has never computed with me. A temporary, always artificial facade that hides only the truth of natural aesthetic. Truth is better than beauty. Like I’ve said since I was an obnoxious pre-teen: dyeing your hair is living a lie. Painting your chair is as good as murder. Make-up on a girl’s face is often great, but always unnecessary. But alas, I am simply a peasant with no taste.

    Regardless, my chair now sits in my basement prison as just one more thing that isn’t anywhere near as comfortable as a beanbag, just one more apparatus to hang clothes off of. I only hang clothes off of antique furniture, restored by the hands of a skilled craftsman. The project is finished, the chair is functional and I have learned nothing but the fact that seeing through to the end of a project is an infinitely difficult task for me. Must be a lack of character.

  • Heavy Hands

    It is with a heavy heart that I write this today.

    My editor often comments that my writing is heavy-handed. Does this mean that my head is heavy-brained? Or does it mean that my hands are heavy-fingered? I usually don’t know what the hell he’s talking about, so I often have to ask him several times for several explanations. Those things you pick up in University that replace colloquialisms and make you sound smarter. If he just said, “That part sucks, that part sucks marginally less,” I’d get it.

    I just finished another Vonnegut book. I have read many, remember few, and still have more to go. He has the ability to write stories about humankind without being heavy-handed. Maybe it is because he seems to use short phrases the make the narrator seem like your quirky middle-school teacher.

    Hi ho.

    So it goes.

    And so on.

    Or maybe it is because he is smart enough to convey meaning in properly-placed, simple sentences. Or maybe he was a hard worker. I think he just got lucky.

    My heavy-handedness, which I see as the inability to subtly put meaning behind fiction that I am currently experimenting with, may stem from my tendency to over-think things. Or to keep things to myself. Or to think I’m smarter than I am. But let’s not get too heavy in the hand that offers psychological analysis, here.

    Recently while in the land of milk and honey and beer and tacos and large bridges and fog, the land of the originators of the fortune cookie, I got two fortune cookies. The first read, ‘Your future is rife with mediocrity.‘ The second; ‘You are to the opposite sex what “OFF” is to mosquitoes.‘ That seems somewhat heavy-handed. Like they took their hand, gripped a brick, and hit my face with it. At least it is the first fortune cookie that ‘hit the nail on the head’ (is that a colloquialism, or an idiom? I just taught myself both words. Self-education). I am still awaiting a sum of money that a fortune cookie promised me in high school. The second San Francisco fortune was maybe the most accurate. I am sitting on a stool wearing both pants and underpants and I can still clearly see my the hairs of my upper thigh through a hole in my crotch the size of a holiday ham. I am repellant to myself most days. Fortune cookies are always heavy-handed, even more so when they are pointing out your foibles.

    I guess maybe my editor just wants me to leave my overly philosophical way of analyzing things, my overly logical way of complaining about things, to this blog which has been rife with mediocrity for over six years, and is doomed to the same fate for six years to come. Because I am not eloquent enough to mask my complaints in literary metaphors. My hand is far too heavy for that. Heavy with the weight of the thousands of souls that have been lost from reading my writing.

    You are now soulless.

    Hi ho.

  • Apologia Pro Hippy Vita Sua

    The following short letter was written in response to a ‘Street Wear’ section in Prairie Dog Magazine that highlighted how grungy I am. The letter following that is my response.

    I’ve been reading your mag for years, even though I’m a staunch conservative; many aspects of it I love. Please though, stop featuring bums in your Street Wear section. These people are mostly wannabe hippies who work low-end jobs and are recognized for doing nothing more than working in a clothing store or coffee shop. Please start featuring people who contribute to society whether through the arts, science, education, politics…something! We all have the power to make a difference!

    No Name
    Presumed Reginan

    Dear Staunch Conservative,

    I feel that you best be more forgiving of these hippies that sell you your clothing, coffee, and meals. Although should I assume that you only shop at Walmart? (If you keep voting the way I assume you do there won’t be any immigrant labour to work there, so I don’t know who you expect to run your shops and sell you food—the elderly are dying off quickly. How staunch are you, exactly?) The fact that these hippies don’t have post-secondary educations, they sleep on the floor, they don’t have cell phones, they don’t eat meat, they don’t own cars, and they work at what was recently named by Prairie Dog Voters as ‘Regina’s Best New Store’, is obvious reason to assume they contribute nothing to society. Often I am too busy smoking illicit substances (Legalize, man!), playing bongos in Vic Park, or creating my own pachouli concoction to help out my community through volunteerism, or to actively take part in politics. I’d rather just lounge on my beanbag chair next to my hookah and watch documentaries about Buddhism. I do, however, agree that the ‘Style’ section is a waste of space. I have no style, you have no style. We live in Regina, man. People just stopped frosting their tips last week. But maybe we should include a business section in which you write a column suggesting how lowly shopkeeps could do something worthwhile with their lives (business degree, violin lessons, cure cancer, run for mayor), leaving their low-end jobs for the immigrants and those on welfare. We lower class citizens would truly appreciate the guidance.

    Peace and Love.
    Your Local Wannabe Hippy,

    Nic Olson

  • Blog Action Day 2012 – The Power of We


    In my career as an eligible voter I have celebrated no victories. Not a single representative I have voted for has been elected, not a single party I have supported has won. On the contrary, they have usually lost quite successfully. I am well aware that my beliefs and values do not reflect those of the majority, Balls of Rice and my voting record reflect that quite well. This has all led me to a familiar cynical place where I have found myself many times before, for many different life issues. The Underdog Syndrome, where whenever I cheer for the underdog, they are doomed to fail. Sports, nerdy gentlemen in a bar, elections. The principle is the same, and my support seems to kill it.

    Because of my lack of success in democracy, I have been debating whether it is worth my time to vote at all, not out of apathy or resignation, but as a form of protest. Because the voting system is off, and democracy is nothing more than choosing between egotistic businessmen who are often charismatic beings, but not exceptional people who love people—the wealthy who are already in positions of power, but want greater power to create greater wealth, and yes, I have a hard time not seeing all political leaders in that way. I still do believe that one human being should not and cannot properly represent an entire population, and that it is possible for there to be order and progress with no single person in charge. I’m still stuck on this one, but until I decide, I will continue to vote.

    Then I came to understand protest. Dissent. The Occupy Movement, which many see as a futile collection of hippies, bums, and anarchists who decided to join together in several groups around the world to be able to collect welfare and charity more easily. A group of undemocratic urchins who, if they really cared about the system, would pull themselves out of the mire and contribute to society in a pragmatic, businesslike way. And this is likely why it resonated. Groups of likeminded people gathered to express their dissatisfaction with the structure of the system, the inequality and corruption. My ability to relate to such a movement likely came from my upbringing and affinity with the punk scene. Coming together in hundreds of different communities with no clear goal apart from stoking the young flames of revolt. Disapproval shown in groups of people physically gathering together. It felt right.

    Despite the overly utopian seeming title of this year’s Blog Action Day, I have grown to understand the power of groups of people that come together with dissent, goals, and hope in common. The more I see the importance of participating in politics, the more I see that this means something greater than simply voting when an election is called. Although I will likely never in my lifetime see someone I voted for in a position of power, I can rest comfortably knowing that other actions can be taken. That groups of people outside of the realm of electoral politics can change policy, and are often necessary to do so. Regardless of whether or not my vote will ever be on the winning side or not, it is evident that the solidarity between groups of people is equally as important as being politically active. A group of people with a common goal may not make an obvious difference, but it always has the power to make a significant one.

    When the cops and the courts refuse to confess the sins of the few, what is there left to do? The answer’s there right before your eyes: rise.

    –Propagandhi, Note to Self, Failed States

  • Seventeen Days of Food

    I just finished peanut butter on toast and am drinking a can of Pilsner. I can’t say that I’m glad to be home.

    Every kilometre closer to home I got, the worse the food was. I left the San Francisco apartment at 9am, unable to find a Mexican restaurant that was open, so instead I got a pretty decent deli sandwich and the hangover-fighting goodness of a coconut water. I bought three apples at the Farmer’s Market, an It’s It at the tobacco store. Upon arriving in Denver, slightly nauseous and reeling, I ordered a 12″ cheese pizza from Dominos. It was delivered to me undercooked; I ate the whole pizza. The apples were tough like biting into cowhide, and void of flavour like sucking on a brick of styrofoam. And now I am home, sipping overpriced, mediocre beer (I fully support taxing alcohol and tobacco in order to never have to learn the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, something no one could explain to me whilst in the USA), and eating dumpstered bread.

    Cover me in tacos and call me Delicious Susan.

    Still my stomach is sour and flinching from the vacation-titled reward of beer breakfasts and taco-dominated diet. But I will persevere.

    With the exception of my 5-day food-and-beer bender, the times I have eaten the best, most balanced, full meals in the past seventeen days were the times that I went grocery shopping in the dumpster. Or to mom’s house. The quality of the food differs greatly between the two, however the quantities and personal cost differ in no way. Limitless and free. I’ve been meaning to tell my mother this. That I once cooked her a meal with my girlfriend in Montreal that was composed largely of dumpster food items. Free, shared, washed, dumpster foods. For a while she had a photograph of me on the fridge, rooting around in the dumpster. Dad took the photo while they were in Montreal. It was staged, they didn’t find me like that.

    I haven’t purchased a vegetable in the last three months. Unlike my roommates, this doesn’t mean that I haven’t eaten a vegetable in the last three months. I have grown them myself. And though it looks like I’m wasting away, I am doing so in as healthy and cheap a way as possible. But through spending time with those that eat properly, and being suggested TED Talks about Mitochondria, it becomes evident that my eating is for survival, very rarely for enjoyment until I binge in a city with forty taco spots in a ten block radius, and just scrapes the surface of health. These friends, and this video, bring up the argument that food is likely the most important thing you spend your money on, and it directly affects your future, and that of the environment. But I’d rather put my nuts in the microwave and eat canned refried beans. I don’t have time otherwise. I’ve got movies to watch, screens to worship.

    One of the greats was in town just before I left, a friend with whom I always end up talking at length about food. I delivered dahl to her at the shittiest bar on earth, and she recently returned the favour recently with cookies, cheesecakes, and more. She suggested that people get offended when they are called out on their bad food habits, likely because it is something that, as supposedly responsible adults, they should know how to do properly. They should know the difference between a bag of microwave burritos, and a homegrown burrito, and when they notice their foolishness and their laziness, it is not as easy to swallow as a bite of a cheesy, warm, mushy microwave Mexican-food.

    I will likely continue to waste away, each week my pants droop further so that my shoelace belt will eventually wrap my waist twice. But it will be done in great health, with nothing purchased or found gone to waste. I will undoubtedly continue to live and eat frugally, so that I can save up and make up for my inadequate diet while I am partying in cities cooler than my own. Or maybe I will eat better, finally fill out my Medium-sized t-shirts and it will force you to ask the question that my father asked me a few weeks ago at the University lecture: “Have you ever seen an obese environmentalist?”

    I’m still waiting for the punchline. Likely about dumpster soups or eating recycled bicycle parts. Let’s hear it.

  • Lyrics of the Month: October 2012 – Good Riddance


    I’d never thought I’d reach another end
    When all I want is to be myself again
    So why so soon we were having so much fun
    Sometimes I wish I’d never learn to run

    Ask me why I’m sad I’ll say it’s not so bad
    I’ve done too much growing up today
    Excuse my bitter half
    He’s too disturbed to laugh right now
    I’ll find you when it’s done

    I wrapped regret around the chance I’d never take
    Discarded dreams for too much time awake
    Now where did it dissapear to
    Youth I fought my way out of
    And it feels like I’m running out of time

  • The Fury of the Dispossessed

    When I’m excited, I ride my bicycle very fast. After a day that lacks progress, one that sees no new knowledge or discovery, I bicycle home like a grandmother on a cruiser bike. Most days, average days, I ride home in the middle of my three gears, head up and feet wide. Today after starting a new job, and after a lecture by one of the greats, I biked home on the highest gear, bouncing on my low front tire, more excited than I’ve been in a long time to finally feel, for once in years, that I am where I am supposed to be.

    Chris Hedges, journalist and intellectual, lectured at the University of Regina. The writer that I will forever aspire to be, the thinker that I will undoubtedly never become, gave a rousing account of how we came to where we are now, stuck in an “inverted totalitarianism” where we are ruled by the faceless being of corporate capitalism. Where the cannibalization of nature exists for straight profit and greed. He spoke of how after World War I we were placed into the “psychosis of permanent war” where the masses would offer up their own slavery, and how we have now reached an age of the moral nihilist. (I am essentially just listing my notes in sentence form.) We have reached a point where food, water, air, and human beings themselves are being treated and sold as commodities and this has built a quality of self-annihilation.

    When he spoke of “sacrifice zones,” the places that were abandoned by unbridled capitalism, left in disrepair and a humiliating culture of dependency after being used and left behind because of their lack of monetary worth, I thought of Saskatchewan in fifty years. A place where natural resources are plentiful and long term thought is not. Accelerated environmental review processes that inhibit the ability for proper research and long-term preparedness have been put into place while Saskatchewan is in its infancy of exploiting these resources. I envisioned ghost towns, alien landscapes after plundering the earth and failed nature reclamation projects. I saw people abandoned by the elite that they once, for some reason, loved and trusted. I could see the future because of what has happened in other parts of North America. The current policy makers refuse or are unable to see what Hedges has shared in his latest book, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, and because of the propaganda of the elite, the people are often unable to see it either.

    One might ask how I could be so excited, riding home banging my head with a bike-lane-wide grin after a night of being pummelled with the desperately depressing truths that we find ourselves facing. All of Hedges books that I have read deal with these deflating facts, hundreds of pages of them, but always end in a short breath of hope that the elite will fall. I cycled home feeling like I’ve finally found even a small piece of a greater purpose, directly assisting those the system left behind. Feeling like I’ve found the inspiration and motivation to create, to think, to encourage others to think, and to practice dissent. Knowing that the “fury of the dispossessed” can eventually bring enough fear into those mediocre in positions of power, and will see reform because of it. “The formal systems of power are no longer capable of reform,” he said. We need acts of resistance. This excites me.

    “You can’t use the word “hope” if you don’t carry out acts of resistance…But we have a moral obligation to the world the corporate state is bequeathing to our children. We have betrayed their future. At least that generation will be able to look back on those of us, hopefully their parents, and say that they tried, even if we fail. Not to try is to be complicit in what is happening.”

    -Hedges in Katherine Norton’s article.

    Someday, as I told my father, I hope to be smart enough to be able to ask a coherent question at a lecture to a man such as Hedges. Instead, for now, I will continue to skim off of his brilliant works to make mine look greater than they are. But I’m trying, and I guess you have to try.

    For more Hedges go here, for more Balls of Rice articles that ride on the coattails of Hedges go here.