Balls of Rice

Author: Nic Olson

  • Creating the bean sandwich.

    If I were writing an ‘About Me’ for one more shitty social network, using the same technique as a sixth-grade exercise where you wrote your favourite food, your greatest fears and a story about what makes you special, I would say that I make an excellent, and creative sandwich. That I like to create new things in the kitchen. That it is freeing for me. Like a lie on a resume I would flower up the language to make me seem greater than I was. I’d choose a photo that captured my good side, the fuller beard, the less-gapped teeth, and use it as my profile picture. When the entire truth is, my creativity when it comes to sandwiches has been caused by nothing more than using what I’ve got. I stopped eating meat and cheese, so naturally cucumber and carrot became a sandwich staple. People call me nuts. I run out of cucumber, and the garden is producing beans, it only seems logical to make a raw green bean and carrot sandwich, no condiments. More delicious than you may ever know.

    And in continuing my fifth-grade activity I would list my greatest fears. I remember in eighth grade, when this same exercise was slightly modified into the format of a poem, I wrote one of my greatest fears being knives. In parent-teacher interviews, Mrs. Dudley lauded my creativity and comic nature. Recently, upon listening to an old song by the Weakerthans, I quickly noticed that my greatest fear was subconsciously stolen from lyricist John K. Samson. Creativity foiled once again. If I were to be honest in these fine days of the present, my greatest fears constantly renew themselves. Social situations. Forever loneliness. Death. In a repeat cycle. In grade eight my fears likely included unwanted mid-day boners and drunk high school kids.

    In sixth grade when being introduced to the newest band teacher, Mrs. Verity, we played an icebreaking game. We were to write down one thing that no one knew about us, and write it on a small piece of folded paper. She was to pick the papers out of a hat, or out of a saxophone horn or something, and guess which student wrote which original fact about themselves. I wrote, “I plan to grow a six-foot pink afro.” She didn’t guess it was me, but the students knew exactly who wrote it. Creativity proven useless once again. I can’t think of a thing that makes me special because of cynicism. Because I don’t think there is one. Out there, there’s a million WordPress sites spilling the exact same confused rhetoric, a million disillusioned kids tired of the same old bullshit, a million morons who think they have something special to say, when it’s simply not true.

    If ever it comes to the point that I become famous for making popular the bean sandwich, and people ask me how I ever came up with it, or if my bean sandwich restaurant franchise has an ‘About’ section on its corporate-run website, then I will copy and paste this, and it will spell it out for the masses, just like I was writing for my grade six teacher or creating another pseudo-personality on a soulless internet domain, that I wasn’t creative for creativity’s sake, I was creative because I had no choice. I was creative out of necessity.

  • North Weyburn


  • 501folks

  • Well-Chilled Opportunity

    One of those jobs you get when you listen to the radio all day long. One of the worst jobs you had in your life. Your boss was a dick. Your job description included nothing more than lifting. Your colleagues couldn’t say ‘carton’ without saying ‘fuckin’ or without slurring their speech. You were a professional mover for a summer. One day on the radio there was a competition. You could win a radio-station t-shirt if you can answer the following: On average a person does this twenty-two times a day. For me that could be a number of things. Smell my armpits. Take a piss. Say the word ‘insane.’ Change my mind about a serious and pressing decision.

    The answer was ‘Open the fridge door.’ Congratulations, you have now won a Swap-Shop gift card and a MIX100 t-shirt, sized XXL.

    Yesterday I opened fridge doors over one-hundred times. The fridge that fed me for nearly twenty years had died, so my father and I, equipped with a measuring tape, hereditary frugality, fridge dimensions, and an open mind to the technologies for the cold storage of food, went to blood-sucking ‘No Payments Ever’ appliance stores to find a new one. With mom’s blessing, and us calmed by ice cream and free coffee, we decided upon the cheapest model.

    Through testing and trial, through opening hundreds of fridges dozens of times each, I learned about fridges and myself. I found out that fridges with the freezer on the bottom are ergonomically superior. That most stainless steel fridges cannot swap door hinges. I had to open nearly one-hundred fridge doors to realize that two-door fridges are about as useful as two-door cars or two-legged dogs. I found which fridge fit my lifestyle by simply opening a shitload of them.

    To open the fridge door is to open the door to opportunity. A combination of sauces and vegetables cold-stored for preservation. Fridges, luxurious or not, keep your food so that you can eventually seize an opportunity and make the meal that best fits your person when you decide the time is right. When you’ve finally realize that a one-door fridge is right for you, you still have to make the decision as to what meal-time opportunity will best represent your current state of hunger.

    And in this glorious land of Canada, opportunity grows on trees. It flows from the faucet. It knocks on doors. All we have to do is withstand an eight-month winter and tip-toe over those that don’t get multiple opportunities in life and continue to support a government that instead of tiptoeing, stomps and spits to give us this chance at glory. Our several chances at glory.

    When life closes both fridge doors, you’re out of luck. Fridges don’t have windows. And when your fridge busts, you best quickly decide which meal you want to eat, because they aren’t all going to keep. They aren’t all going to wait around.

  • Dead Mice

    Dead mouse and the peanut butter and the Deadmau5 and my bedroom. The third of these is pronounced the same way as the first, don’t ask me why or how. The second of these caused the death of the first of these (via sticky mouse trap) in the stairwell of the pub while the third of these, the gimmicky electronica legend, was played in the background. The fourth of these at times has smelled like the first two of these. Then I did laundry, burned incense, turned on a fan, and it has subsided. The window of my room is not functional, making my room the dank, dark, damp dungeon, locking in the moisture and moulding the bottom of my pillowcase. My clothes hang from some rope tied to the lattice ceiling, like a prison scene from the movies. And the worst part of all, really the only bad part, is waking up twice in a night to climb two flights of stairs to take a twelve-second piss. My bladder has a small volume and is taut like a water balloon.

    When setting a mouse trap, one is often advised to set it along the wall. That is where they are said to stay, but in my rodent discoveries of the last month I haven’t found that to be true. I have found the following:
    1. live mouse in the empty garbage can at work, set free in the alleyway by Norm
    2. drowned squirrel bloated in the water-filled garbage can in the backyard
    3. dead mouse in the bathroom of the pub, discovered by a drunk man with spiked hair
    4. a mouse, alive, kicking and shrieking next to a glob of peanut butter, stuck to super sticky paper, slowly dying over the course of three days as I passed by it dozens of times to change kegs for the thirsty, horny masses.

    One survived and one I watched die. The other two died long before I knew they were even alive. Most of these deaths had been in the open, and only one of them died in a trap designed for killing. The rest died in the traps they set for themselves. Ones that looked promising from the outside, but once inside, were nothing but tin holes with not even a chance to dig their way out. The trick is to learn which holes are dead ends and which holes will lead to glory. Norm isn’t always going to be there to bail you out. No one wants to die in the dank, dark, damp rooms with one exit and only one trail to the toilet.

  • Ice Cream and Beer

    Ice cream and beer. The two finest dietary creations in history thanks to the invention of the grain mill and the ingenuity of squirting the lactic liquid from the tit of a large animal or soybean. Some have even been brave enough to mix both into one common glass, but I prefer to mix them in my stomach. When it is a good night with friends, or a lonely night with myself, the greatest down to the lamest, these two often end up conversing in my belly.

    I saw a band play on Coney Island one time, their best song was ‘We’ve Got Fireworks and Beer.’ When I am an old, fat, John Goodman look-alike, I will write the Coney Island hit, ‘We’ve Got Ice Cream and Beer. And It’s Running Down My Leg.’

    In an attempt to reach the peak of my physicality, that is, to avoid a daily case of the shits and to avoid passing out after standing up every time, I have been looking into nutritional deficiencies lately. Every day around 7pm, just after eating a supper of either dal and rice or dal-burgers on a bun, it seems like my body runs out of carbohydrates and is surviving only by feeding off of the slight amount of fat and/or protein that remains on my bones. Despite, or because of, all the ice cream and beer, I am thinning. Here are some deficiencies that might be currently affecting me:

    Iron, a common deficiency for someone that doesn’t eat the environmentally-slaying red meats. Iron can be found in lentils, spinach, molasses. I eat lentils four times a week, spinach two, so I thought I’d go out and try some molasses. The so-sweet-it’s-bitter viscous by-product I now pour into my oatmeal one tablespoon at a time, to create a coffee-coloured slurry that goes down smoother than a coffee-coloured beer. At 8am.

    Beer, a common deficiency for someone in Canada that doesn’t like spending money. Although I maybe mention it 1.3 times per blog post, I am a far step away from being addicted, unless you can be addicted to something without ever using it, because I think about it a lot. I’ve been craving an evening to cut loose, like the good old Eastview days, consisting of summer and too many skunky beer. Due to a lack of energy as highlighted above, and a lack of friends and appropriate events, the deficiency will likely continue.

    Protein, another common vegetarian problem, and another piece of nutrition that could be solved with a gulp of cow-blood. Another one of life’s problems that is easily solved with peanut butter and lentils. (Lentils and Peanut butter, the answer to the following issues: climate change, Conservative government, Instagram, tank tops, affordable housing, protein deficiencies). Almond butter may be substituted for those that like to compromise taste and tradition.

    While at the ice cream shop one day, I marvelled at the invention of the ice cream cone. Bland and dry alone, infinitely delicious when dripping with frozen cream, sugar and artificial flavouring. Why not make every disposable plate ever used into a somewhat nutritional, enriched-flour and tapioca-flour based staple food? I just solved world hunger and unnecessary paper/plastic waste in one brilliant invention. I’ll wait for and accept my Nobel Prize at Dairy Queen, Sask Drive and Elphinstone.

    Ice cream and beer. The two finest night-caps in history, thanks to the invention of hanging out and the ingenuity of gluttony. Put them together and what have you got? Two competing dragons of flavour that steal money that should be spent on properly dealing with nutritional deficiencies. But summer isn’t about deficiencies. It’s about a surplus of good, outdoor-based times.

    So pass the beer-battered Blizzard.

  • Lyrics of the Month: July 2012 – Descendents


    I wanna be stereotyped
    I wanna be classified
    I wanna be a clone
    I want a suburban home
    Suburban home
    Suburban home
    Suburban home
    I wanna be masochistic
    I wanna be a statistic
    I wanna be a clone
    I want a suburban home
    Suburban home
    Suburban home
    Suburban home
    I don’t want no hippie pad
    I want a house just
    Like mom and dad
    I wanna be stereotyped
    I wanna be classified
    I wanna be masochistic
    I wanna be a statistic
    I wanna be a clone
    I want a suburban home
    Suburban home
    Suburban home
    Suburban home

    Descendents, Milo Goes to College, Suburban Home

  • The Deadlifts of Success

    My person has been threatened. By another person that is greater, more successful, wittier than I. I mean, a clever writer that also enjoys spending time on the floor? Goddamn. Talk about identity theft, man. If only I had been lucky enough to get a useless arts degree and have to move home to my parents’ farm, where hilarious, pathetic, obstacle-surpassing events could have occurred. I got dealt a shit hand in the world of semi-original writers of essays.

    My roommate Bryce, the one who spends his days doing ‘dead-lifts’ (whatever the hell those are), weighing his turkey bacon, the household vegetable, down to the gram, and bench-pressing pizza pops, a very motivated and determined man, told me that the best thing we can all do is to give up. Several times in a day, even. If this is what a soon-to-be provincial record-holder says, then what on earth would an unmotivated wiener like me do? He would agree, of course.

    Once we hit seven billion, I knew it was over. The chances of being an original, one-of-a-kind individual when there are that many people in the world are slim. Not-worth-putting-a-dollar-on-it slim. There is someone out there that looks a lot like you, only with smaller ears and a nicer gum line. There is someone out there with your exact mannerisms, only far easier to tolerate and definitely more charming. There is someone out there that wrote what you wrote only with bigger words, less swears and more marketable jokes. So you might as well give up. So says Bryce, my personal trainer in the game of life.

    My dad gave me a copy of The Globe and Mail, “a newspaper with decent writing”, he said as he looked at the copy of the Leader Post in our mailbox. Compared to our local publications I would tend to agree with him. However, compared to real, actual, impartial, worthwhile writing, I would disagree. Regardless, there was a section on CanLit, he told me, and being a potential part of the CanLit scene, albeit an unestablished, unimportant, mostly inutile one, I figured I’d look it over. One of the ‘up-and-comers’ (a term I loathe) that the article mentioned, Iain Reid, author of ‘One Bird’s Choice‘, seemed like that one-or-two-out-of-seven-billion successful versions of myself. Published as opposed to self-published. Writing a second book in the shadow of success and already under contract, instead of writing a second book already planning on how much money I will lose in self-publishing again. Looking good with short hair instead of like a fresh-out-of-juvie gang member. And I guess I’m jealous. Of his accolades. Of his ability. Of his newspaper-worthiness.

    But I don’t want to give up. I write because I enjoy it, at least that is I tell myself when I am editing/staring at the wall trying to distinguish between the off-putting odours arising from my body. I do it because, although I cannot make everything happen that I want to happen in life, despite what real life-coaches and the successful tell you, I can make it happen on paper. (Only the successful tell you that you can do anything you put your mind to, when I bet most of them just got really fucking lucky.) The day I discovered that writing can be absolutely anything, that it doesn’t have to be done to please a teacher, that it doesn’t have to be real, logical, simple, or formatted, was maybe the day that instead of giving up on writing, I gave up on writing for others.

    And I’ve finally learned exactly what my life-teacher meant. That I should give up so much, that I give up on giving up. I’ve given up on mostly everything I’ve started, so why not try giving up on that. Goddamn Bryce, you genius.

  • Lyric of the Month: June 2012 – Fugazi

    These are our demands:
    We want control of our bodies.
    Decisions will now be ours.
    You can carry out your noble actions,
    We will carry our noble scars.
    Reclamation.
    No one here is asking,
    No one here is asking,
    But there is a question of trust.
    You will do what looks good to you on paper,
    We will do what we must.
    Return, return, return.
    Carry my body

    -Fugazi, Steady Diet of Nothing, Reclamation

  • Nobody reads.

    Nobody reads anymore.

    My book, in my mind, is written for the ultimate casual reader. Short chapters. Easy topics. Non-fiction. Penis jokes. Swears. I may start counting the number of people that have told me that they haven’t finished my book. It is large. I’m guessing half of those I sold. And I don’t blame the readers as much as I blame the writer, I can think of thirty-thousand things I’d rather read and I’d suggest you read instead, however the inability to finish a book written by a child who pretends to be adult, strikes me. Makes me sad in both the ‘yeah, I can’t write‘ kind of way, and also the ‘yeah, people can’t read‘ kind of way.

    I am in a current struggle editing stories. The phase I dread more than anything. The one that reminds me of why I hated English in school, and why I quit. One person who would think they could see the goddamn rings of Jupiter, a person that I asked to help, and is helping greatly. Stories are difficult enough, and when I write them in hopes that they are suitable for people that don’t like to read, I must do something even greater. Appeal to those that don’t care while making it interesting for those that do. A daunting task even for a practiced wordsmith. I’m hooped. But it was Vonnegut who told me to write for one person.

    “If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”

    Vonnegut said, “Nobody reads anymore” when describing a book I’ve never read. I don’t have the balls to say that phrase with authority. I’m not well-read enough. Later on in his introduction he says that a short story, “because of its physiological and psychological effects on a human being, is more closely related to Buddhist styles of meditation than it is to any other form of narrative entertainment.” Nobody reads because nobody has to. Entertainment has technologically surpassed it. Digitally we are limited to reading infinitesimal posts and our attention span suffers for it. Nobody reads because nobody can bring themselves to sit down for a minute and meditate like a Buddhist.

    Vonnegut’s first rule of Creative Writing states that a story should be written so that the reader will not think their time had been wasted. I guess that is where my first book went wrong, and so far, every story I’ve ever written, or anything I’ve ever done. Wasting time in a creative manner is no better than wasting time in a destructive manner. I guess I’m searching out the place where wasting time becomes being productive. Wasting my time and yours. I guess I’m searching the person who decides that.

    I hope I’m not that person.