Balls of Rice

Author: Nic Olson

  • Pissing on that refugee’s soon-to-be grave.

    With this last bit of news I am officially ashamed to be from this country. Not since I was maybe ten, when I dressed up for Halloween as the made-up superhero, the Canada Kid, where I wore a Canadian flag as a cape, along with a red toque, red tights and a red t-shirt, would I say I was patriotic. Supporting Olympic athletes, thanks to the corporate encouragement from Maple-flavoured Wheaties, and free Esso collectable cups, was one of my greatest passions. I would draw pictures of the Canadian Olympic logo, dream of the distant lands of Nagano, and talk about getting a tattoo on my ass that said, ‘Made in Canada’. I could’ve ended up like this.

    But thanks to years of cynicism, informative reading, thrashy music, I haven’t.

    And thanks to years of governments ruling the country as if it was a coloured piece of land on a board game, I haven’t.

    There is maybe nothing else a government could do to embarrass me more (I am currently, and constantly, knocking on wood). The environmental-raping side of Bill C-38 makes ‘sense’ in a twisted, soulless, no-foresight kind of way. But this, sweet Lord, this makes me feel like I just ran over a family of immigrants in my car, which was maybe what they were going for. I feel like I was at the driver’s seat. I feel responsible. I can no longer make this political banter poetic or ambiguous. I can no longer dance around my views to avoid this as an idiot-styled opinion blog. We reduce our foreign aid for those billions that don’t live here, but taking away funding for the hundreds of thousands that barely made it here, and only did so to save their own lives, is, put lightly, misdirected. If put truthfully, it is selfish. It is inhumane and uncivilized.

    I can only imagine how many fabled jobs this will create, as if job creation were the cure to the illnesses of our likely already employed refugees. Hard work cures all. Hard work makes you forget your ills. Hard work leaves no time to go to the doctor. Hard work kills. Hard work reduces the amount of refugees. The Omnibus is now departing, and the Omnibus now makes sense.

    Here is to the creation of jobs, the trump card used in every possible governmental situation to make cuts sound reasonable. Those temporary, resource and location-based, earth-pillaging jobs. I can’t wait to get one.

    On that Halloween as the Canada Kid, in between houses where we scavenged processed sweets from wealthy extra-suburban families, I found my bladder full of carbonated beverages. I stopped at a group of bushes, my cape blowing heroically behind me until a new gust sent it back my way, intercepting my stream of warm, patriotically-digested sodapop. I pissed all over it. A fortunate bit of foreshadowing as to what I wish I could do now if I had a flag on ground level, or if my rainbow of piss could reach the height of a flagpole.

    I would gladly piss all over this place now. And on the many symbols that represent it. As it has already pissed all over us. Several times over the past year.

    Read more here.

  • Paying for it

    I am a bad father. I can barely care for myself, what with swollen neck glands and a body dripping with sweat throughout the night. A sickness that in some capacity has been gnawing at my throat or sinuses or head seemingly for months. Swollen eyes. Semi-incontinence. Inability to properly function. All caused by selfish dashes across the countryside, hitching rides, sleeping on buses, being a stowaway on cargo planes. Buying hatchets and tarps and giant bags of sunflower seeds while neglecting my first born. My garden.

    But that isn’t the only thing I have neglected as of late. My fondness for leisure has taken away from a substantial writing project that I am currently paying money to perfect. My second literary child, one that has grown up sick and weakly and needs special and constant attention, is wheezing in the corner. I have neglected what some might call a purpose of mine, however at this point I likely wouldn’t call it that.

    I have also neglected family, friends, work.

    I have heard it suggested that a level of selfishness is an admirable thing at my age. That a person must really do what is best for them first in order to achieve goals and break barriers and find themselves. My current physical state appeals this theory. In my attempt at being a wandering soul, in my attempt at living like a twenty-three-year-old, in my attempt to make my life memorable, I have forgot about sleep and sustenance, forgot about my responsibilities that I care for.

    Like a bad, addiction-cursed parent, I haven’t even seen my child in two weeks. Through the rain and sun, the weeds and the massive dog trampling everything, I spent my time drinking beer in the hills of the far west. And now I’m paying for it.

    Was it worth it?

    Yes.

    Did I learn something?

    Yes.

    Then you did alright.

  • QC

    This write-up recently appeared in QC newspaper’s Read My Book column, complete with glamour shot by Noel Wendt. 

    If I was conducting an interview with myself, I would start with this: “Why do you sleep on the floor?” As eloquently as a garborator I would respond with a series of self-deprecating jokes, grunts and shrugs. Either that or I’d be unable to answer at all. If I were to reply on paper, I would write this: Aside from the obvious spinal-health benefits that a hardwood floor offers a curved back, aside from the fact that I’ve never had quite enough money to purchase my own bed, aside from the fact that not owning furniture makes it much easier to constantly move from basement to basement and city to city; aside from all of these, I honestly cannot say why I sleep on the floor. I guess it just feels right. The room I rent in my friend’s basement in the Cathedral Village is furnished with a functional, arguably clean mattress left behind from the previous renter, yet my sleeping space, like a well-domesticated hound, is on the floor at the foot of the bed.

    To continue my self-conducted interview, I may ask this question: “Why did you decide to write a book?” I would ask myself this question because it is one that I’ve been asked often. And because I don’t really know. I could say that I didn’t choose to write a book, but the book chose me. Or I could say that writing a book was always one of my dreams. These would be lies. Again, like the floor question, I have no good reason. Written in an Eastview basement, on a train in India, in a park in Montreal, To Call Them To Wander was more of a hobby, a time-pass as they say in India, or a challenge. I wrote this book so that when I inevitably get old and sleep in a bed with a wife and a well-domesticated hound or child on the floor at the foot of the bed, that I will have a guideline, a series of essays, of how to live life simply, subversively and with youthful wisdom. I wrote it because it felt right.

    To Call Them To Wander is available at Norwood (2401-11th Avenue) as well as online at http://www.ballsofrice.wordpress.com/tocallthemtowander.

  • Growing up into a regular douchebag.

    I was recently told to ‘grow the fuck up.’ It was an internet voice that suggested this to me, however the tone of the phrase, lacking capitalization and proper grammar, was quite scathing. Along with personal attacks on the low readership and comment tally on my blog, I was truly taken aback and offended. The internet, after all, is where anyone can write whatever they want about anything, and then be forced to write a formal apology via Twitter. God bless it.

    Since writing a chapter about growing up for ‘To Call Them To Wander‘ several years ago, I have discovered nothing new. Still I do not see the appeal or necessity of such an action, nor do I believe that having more people ‘grown up’ in our world will be what pulls us from the muck. I have a hard time thinking otherwise; the people who tell you to grow up must just be the ones who hold contempt for those that enjoy life. Growing up to them, I can only guess, means being able to accept a governmental shit storm in stride, to amass incredible debt with the accumulation of objects, and to not speak about something you believe in.

    Reprimands aside, I am statistically part of that age group where people are expected to begin their ascent into maturity and adulthood. That quarter-century mark, which I have yet to reach, hits people as if it were the tender hand of Mother Nature slowly ushering them towards erectile dysfunction or menopause. And it strikes fear. It incites comparisons with our parents based on calendars. It triggers worry about priorities and education and careers. And all because we have been told since we were old enough to be in school, that growing up is good, inevitable, and essential, but we weren’t told what it meant to grow up, nor what the point would even be. Every culture has indicators of adulthood. Rites of passage. Ours must be internet related. Either that or the loss of passion and the acceptance of apathy.

    Responsibility is inevitable with age, and is an admirable thing to take on. Homeownership, marriage, planting a garden, buying a dog, or painting interior walls can be considered commendable things (with the exception of painting walls, in my opinion) that symbolize adulthood. The not-so-admirable parts of growing up—the close-mindedness, the sloth, the justification, however, seem to root deeper by the birthday. And it is these that I plan to leave aside, that is, if I could ever be considered a ‘grown up.’

    I was also recently called a ‘douchebag,’ a word commonly reserved for males that seemingly lack brains. Again, internet name-calling that I likely deserved for encouraging people to put dog shit in newspaper bins and being another opinionated ass-clown with a blog. Based on recent internet advice, I best grow up into a man that is comfortable calling strangers names through the guise of the internet. It’s the only thing I can think to do. Nay, it is the only thing a true adult would do.

    I am twenty-three and three-quarter years old.

  • Film2: Other



  • Film2: People

  • Pro-Protest

    Giving a shit is not easy. This is made obvious when you begin to do so. It is exhausting and abrasive. It is uncomfortably hot and smells bad. It is judged unfairly and looked upon as naive or unnecessary.

    But it is necessary.

    Apathy sets in quite easily when you live in comfort. When your meals are covered and you have clothes and can afford salad spinners and a fridge full of beer. Apathy is easy when you are not directly affected.

    The only thing close to rioting that I ever witnessed had to do with hockey. Giving a shit about hockey is easy. You sit on your couch or in the stands and stress about something completely out of your hands. When you realize that a sports loss isn’t everything that ever mattered and that you are still breathing and the earth is still in existence, you go home and eat a nice meal and go to bed. Easy.

    The peoples’ right to protest is the peoples’ right to disagree. When this is taken, so is one of the main tenets of democracy. Canada’s West often does not understand the motivations of Quebecois protesters. They are seen as the troublemakers causing unnecessary violence. Socialists spoiled with low tuition, cheap booze and thirty flavours of real poutine. They should learn to live with it, like we do, especially when our oil and potash are paying for their province’s existence. These opinions make it seem as if we have been beaten down and embarrassed enough to accept our ‘fate’ of high tuition, cuts to the arts, a resource raped land and expensive liquor, as if it is something that we had no control over. Considering the fact that post secondary education can and should be free, we have been conditioned to accept the ‘inevitability’ of incredible debt. Like a well-trained child at the supper table, we eat what we are told and we don’t ask why. When the government won’t listen to the reason of the people, we should begin to question the purpose, worth and effectiveness of such a system of leaders with nothing more than financial agendas. The people shouldn’t simply learn to live with the decisions of the lawmakers that they elected. They shouldn’t have to put up with the decisions of the ruling elite. The people are why they exist. The lawmakers need to properly represent the people.

    One hundred days and half a million people. A battle for accessible education turned into a battle for equality. Students joined by the general public in their dislike of how the government has been handling the tuition debate, highlighted by an agreement in the undemocratic quality of new anti-protest bills. Breaking laws which are made to stifle the population is not an irresponsible action. Challenging those in power through protest and defiance should not be looked upon as counterproductive or disruptive, but needs to be understood as a necessary sign of democracy, thought and human progression.

    The more we care about the issues that affect others more than ourselves, the more we put thought, effort, time, and support into these issues, the better humans we will be, the better cities and towns we will live in, and the better, more equal, more human world we will have. Our future greatly depends on how much we give a shit.

    “Acts of resistance are moral acts. They take place because people of conscience understand the moral, rather than the practical, imperative of rebellion. They should be carried out not because they are effective, but because they are right. Those who begin these acts are always few. They are dismissed by those in the liberal class, who hide their cowardice behind their cynicism. Resistance, however marginal, affirms the sanctity of individual life in a world awash in death. It is the supreme act of faith, the highest form of spirituality.”

    -Chris Hedges, Death of the Liberal Class, Chapter 6, p205

    Check CUTV for coverage on the protests in Montreal.

    For English translations of French articles: translatingtheprintempserable.tumblr.com/

  • Farmer Vision

    When I get to the farm I feel inept. Like a child putting shoes on the wrong feet. Like a man who doesn’t know the names of the different tips of screwdrivers. Even after leaving a provincial highway, with the pops and clinks of gravel on the floorboards, I become uncertain. Unable. Unknowledgeable. Unworthy. It sure feels right, but is like walking through lava on high heels. The farm makes me see myself for the stupid, ignorant, weak city boy that I am. Farmer vision. I put my straggly hair in a pony tail and embarrassedly talk about working at a clothing store and at a nightclub. I struggle through conversation, as more facetime with screens than human beings erodes the art of conversation. Pretty well useless.

    Farms have always been a vacation location, a place to escape the city to enjoy machinery, burn chaff, ride horses, jump bales. My life has only experienced the farm without the hard work that makes the farm what it is. I envy such friends that own farms, or work on farms. Where real work is satisfying, physically and mentally.

    In the city I always at least feel adequate. Like my lifestyle is decent, progressive, acceptable. But when I get to the farm, it is exposed as childish, not important, vain, passing. The city is where people go to die. My body deteriorates because I don’t believe in working out. If I could only work a job shovelling manure or driving combine, my mind would be at ease and my body would be in tune.

    But I know the farm is in me somewhere. Grandpa left the farm and moved to the city but kept the mind of a farmer, the frugality, the work ethic, the stubbornness, and passed it on to his grandkids. So this summer I will be a city-farmer. I will plant vegetables and hope for them to grow. I will water them with rainwater and hope not to drown them. I will pick weeds and hope not to ignorantly, pick the vegetables accidentally. I will try not to fuck up, and if I do, I will fix it. Or forever resign to my fate as a useless city boy.

    I can break out of this someday. I will be a farmer someday.

  • Metro and Verb: Green and Orange Waste: Update

    If you are unimpressed by another free newspaper in Regina, three quarters of which is full of celebrity gossip, bad recipes, advertisements, and world news that you already hear about in several other mediums, then please consider doing the following.

    • Read the below letter. If you agree with it, please copy and paste it and email it to both Verb newspaper and Metro newspaper in Regina at the below email addresses. If you don’t agree with it, please let me know, or feel free to write a letter of your own expressing your thoughts on the new explosion of green and orange newspaper boxes in the city.
    • When the huge, impersonal, Associated-Press-written newspaper shrugs off several emails as negligible, which will inevitably happen, then start sending the emails daily. From each of your email addresses. Express your feelings to the workers distributing the paper. Start a Facebook page for it, since that seems to be the only way to get shit done these days.
    • After several weeks of our requests being denied, I plan to take time out of my schedule or whenever I am walking from one place to another, to pick up garbage from the streets and to promptly place it in the nearest receptacle that there is, which, based on the sparsity of garbage bins and the entire absence of recycling bins, will certainly be a green Metro bin. Although I understand that this is simply making the jobs of a few select employees more difficult, it cleans up our streets. I would invite you to do the same until either the city or the newspapers in the city provides one receptacle for every three green Metro bins, a request that I believe is very reasonable. I plan to inform both Metro and Verb of my intention to use their bins as garbage cans. Until they begin to act as responsible members of our community, they are not welcome.
    ***Since the beginning my my campaign I have only put papers I have caught blowing in the wind in the multicoloured bins throughout the city. Everyday walking downtown I see almost a dozen copies of Metro rolling down 11th Ave, and I cannot in good conscience leave them flying around. However, placing actual street garbage will deter people from taking a free paper and will eventually cause each newspaper to produce less and hopefully remove several dozen of their bins. These newspapers will never listen to me, but might react to such physical actions. Since the Metro picks up their old papers to recycle (we hope) on a daily basis, Metro bins are the obvious best receptacles for our recyclable waste, and they should be more than happy to oblige. When newspapers make their way into my city without asking, placing stacks of paper in every possible corner of the city without approval, I feel like it is my duty to let them know what a large portion of the population thinks.

    Let’s cut the bullshit. We don’t need three more advertisement-driven ‘newspapers’ to read, let alone to visually pollute our city. The very least they can do is to reduce the amount of tumour-causing bins that we see. Being barraged with paper isn’t an inevitability of being a growing city.

    To Whom it May Concern,

    Regina has recently been the target of a surge of new, free, physical newspapers and magazines. Each of these media are a good source of news, culture, art and information that is encouraging to see in a growing city, however with more print-based media comes more waste, as well as the issue of disposing of this waste properly. Regina currently does not have a city-wide recycling program, however this is to be implemented in the upcoming year.

    As one of Canada’s largest free newspapers, your commitment should be more than providing news stories, it should be to the health of the cities that you serve. The health of the global community, one which you connect through your medium, depends greatly on organizations like yours. Regina is a small city that is transitioning to become one of Canada’s strongest. Growing pains include, but are not limited to, unreliable public transit, a lack of a city-run recycling program, a housing crisis, and, as is evident anytime one walks downtown, a lack of garbage bins, but more importantly, recycling bins. As a new part of this growing city, I would challenge your organization to assist in the growing problem of litter by placing recycling and garbage bins throughout the city. Being a daily newspaper, the amount of waste is evident and although it is understandable in the first several weeks or months of distributing in a new city, such a process needs to be done more responsibly. The fabled “3 R’s”, in order, are Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, and although you may encourage the latter two, you have obviously completely missed the first and most important of the three. Your newspaper is an inevitable source of litter in the city which makes you doubly responsible to assist in the cleaning of the city and offering proper waste receptacles. I would also suggest a major review of your number of distribution boxes throughout the city, noticing that a reduction of these boxes based on foot traffic and transit locations is a necessary step, rather than saturating the city scape with unnecessary boxes full of untouched papers.

    Please consider reducing the amount of distribution boxes that you have throughout the city, or be responsible and offer proper receptacles for the waste that you are creating. One waste receptacle per three distribution boxes seems like a reasonable ratio at which to begin.

    I would ask that you please consider this as a priority if you are sincerely interested in being a part of this great and growing community. Unsightly bins and unparalleled waste is not an inevitable step in the growth of a city. Responsibility and accountability are. 

    Thank you for your time.

    Nicholas Olson

    Metro
    Regina_distribution@metronews.ca
    regina@metronews.ca

    Verb
    feedback@verbnews.com
    jlutz@verbnews.com (Office Manager)
    vpaley@verbnews.com (Marketing Manager)

  • The Age of the Beast

    They wouldn’t accept my blood. The proper receptacle, the Canadian Blood Services, would not take my blood that I was willingly offering. I am a strapping young lad, if I do say so myself. Although I may not be able to squat three hundred pounds, although I may sweat after climbing two sets of stairs to take a five-second piss, although my hygiene leaves something to be desired, I am a regular limber and nimble Hulk Hogan. And all because I entered the land of Mexico for a brief two weeks. Somehow, according to Heath Canada, malaria-ridden mosquitos inhabit the Mexican states that neighbour the United States, but they dare not cross the border, likely because of ‘up the ass’ border treatment and the ‘you look like a threat’ Immigration Agents of Arizona. They are all a threat. Mosquitos I mean…

    And although the professionals didn’t want my tainted, tattooed, malarial, gold-infused blood, someone else is constantly trying to suck it from me. The recent rise in vampire popularity is entirely caused by the fact that people can relate getting sucked dry by lifeless, immortal, unstoppable beings. The bloodsuckers, the bastards, stare directly into the souls and habits of the weak individual, taking from them the pieces that make them warm-blooded animals. Take away the arts, take away supporting other human beings, take away hockey, take away the environment. This bloodsucking beast, a multi-headed, sharp-clawed collection of a profit-first government and profit-first corporations, takes what it wants. We are in the age of the beast.

    Although it may seem dramatic to describe policy makers as evil, as in, lacking any good or regard for others, I will stick to it. There must be good there, it is just hidden behind blood-stained teeth and human-digesting stomach acids. Deep below the five serpent heads, past the sickly heart pumping the vitriol, possibly wrapped in the bowels, strangled and without light.

    A friend eloquently told me this: We all have basic needs. The reason that we are here, where we are, is heavily based on wants. It is those people that perpetuate the mentality of wants that need to be controlled. That is, the bloodsuckers need to be controlled. Our blood, what makes us human, what makes us good, is being sucked dry. It is being is being frozen. Becoming sludge. We can revive our crumbling culture, we can offer a blood transfusion, by controlling those who need to be controlled. Those who perpetuate the mentality that profit, fast profit, matters more than our health and our education and our culture and our neighbours.

    Don’t become lethargic because they have sucked you dry. Your blood is all you’ve really got.

    (Balls of Rice 666th post)