Author: Nic Olson
-
Sleepy Time Me
I am at a sleepy time in my life. My sleeping patterns resemble those of recovering drug addicts and unemployed video-game enthusiasts. I sleep away my spare time to thrust myself into a subconscious entertainment that no one but me can witness, full of Muppets and fight scenes, made intriguing by long, survival-driven plots or political and humanitarian undertones. Sleeping until 10:30, living in a yawn-burdened semi-reality during the day, highlighted by a nap in late afternoon or early evening, and always capped off pleasantly by laying on my side on the frosty hardwood floor. Sleep is my guilty pleasure, taking away from my already minimal amounts of hard work and productivity.
Often I fall into the trap of television and internet, especially when living in a home with the perks of entertainment and nourishment, the tools that aim to stifle creativity. I find myself tired and mentally lazy, sitting in front of a television watching the unwatchable until ten minutes later I snap out of it and try for an activity that doesn’t make me feel guilty. I often try this activity, writing or reading or pool or baking or cooking, and end up laying on the couch, staring upwards, hoping for a Muppet to sweep me away into better realities. I can’t write, so I sleep.
And when I read, I find a piece of writing that makes me choke on my unpreparedness. Unprepared to read something that perfect. (“And love, as we all know,” the Kilraine fortune called after him, “makes the world go ‘round.” As in Vonnegut’s short story, Money Talks, where a woman’s $12-million fortune tells a man what makes the world go ’round.) Something I wish so badly that I had written which should motivate me to want to create until I come up with a something that I could deem as worthwhile, but usually motivates me to cursing my own artless endeavours and to lay back down on the couch for a nap to make me forget that I have devoted my past several years to a craft that is impossible to be pleased with. Creation of anything is the gateway to guaranteed insecurity. Sleep is the cure.
-
A Monopoly on Stupidity
I was walking downtown today feeling pretty good about myself: carrying a dictionary and thesaurus that I got for free, looking at my mitts that I patched up myself, walking towards the bus stop. I was surprised seeing the hoards of people in downtown Regina as if it were pretending to be a real city, slowly forgetting its roots as a hub of agriculture and becoming a home of oil-fueled development. Mid thought, a man in a blue jacket with a large video camera on his shoulder approached me.
“Do you support Prime Minister Harper’s proposal to end the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly?” he asked.
I instinctively said no. (I mean, it is Harper.)
“Why?” he asked.
I had no idea. I sat there trying to come up with an answer for a minute, stuttering like an ass, staring into the void of Scarth Street with the large cyclops on the shoulder of the man with the blue jacket, shooting a beam of heat directly into my mind. My brain an old lawnmower, I kept pulling the cord and the motor kept coughing and sputtering with no results. He then asked what I thought about MPs changing parties while in office. I gave half of an answer, still reeling from my complete lack of knowledge on the Wheat Board. It was shameful.I walked away and two minutes later came up with a semi-decent response that would’ve at least given the impression that I was able to speak, although perhaps not eloquently or well-informed. And as much as my inability to answer was due to my lack of knowledge of the topic, I feel that part of it was due to my lack of social ability. I did not even have the capacity to suggest or admit that I didn’t know enough about the topic to properly answer the question, instead I got stuck in my stubbornness and general distrust of sinister Prime Minister Harper. It wasn’t the first time this week, or even today, where I was unable to express myself in even the simplest banter or conversation. Most people improve upon their social ineptitudes but I recently have only been deteriorating. Maybe it is from living alone for the past three days.
I have since come home, had a two-hour nap to stifle my embarrassment, and began to read about some of the many things that I don’t know. The Canadian Wheat Board and Harper’s intentions with it. I have learned that I don’t know as much as I think I do, and I see this as something important to realize on a regular basis. It keeps you humble. I also learned that I would rather form an opinion on the Wheat Board from talking to people that it affects directly, instead of from reading articles written by people living in Ottawa. I learned that the Canadian Wheat Board was created by Parliament and Harper’s attempt to end the ‘monopoly’ seems more like an attempt to privatize the industry.
Afterwards, walking down 11th Ave, the brisk wind of humility slapped me in the face. I wished the man with the camera would have gone to an actual rural community to petition people that knew things about the Wheat Board, like it was his fault that I was uninformed on a current event of this country. I wished he would ask me a question on the provincial election, or Regina’s housing crisis, or the political situation in Burma, or about the Keystone pipeline, or Vonnegut short stories, or a good sandwich place, or where to buy Levi’s in Regina, or about something that I knew anything about, but I still likely would’ve froze like an unwrapped pound of ground beef in the deep-freeze. I wished that I had answered the phone last week when there was a recording calling every number in Saskatchewan telling why I should support the Canadian Wheat Board. I wish I hadn’t had a monopoly on stupidity and awkwardness today, and now, I almost wish that I hadn’t told you about it.
Good thing no one watches CPAC.
-
11/11/11 11:11
This blog was posted at 11:11 on November 11, 2011.
Once every one hundred years this simple minute passes (11/11/11 11:11) and rolls on the same as any other minute that ever existed. I consider 11:11 my daily time to brood on the future, as if once a day I was drawn to my rug for the call to prayer, and like a prayer, the energy that I exude is positive and harming no one. Today, however, seems more weighty, like the pure rarity of this moment will ensure my 11:11 wish is to come true, no matter how grand or obscure.
We give meaning to certain days in a year because of events that occurred in the past. This day, November 11, 2011 is recognized in several countries as Remembrance Day, where we think of war, not in order to glamourize it, but rather to realize why we do not want to be a part of it, now or in the future. A day that we remember people like my grandpa who travelled by boat across the Atlantic to unknown lands. The day is important, however the minute of 11:11 during this day is important for no reason other than it will not occur again for one hundred years.
At this exact moment (11/11/11 11:11) I am not sitting on a couch, writing more nonsense to share with you. These words were scheduled to display at the exact time. During the moment this is displayed I will be sitting somewhere quietly listening to a song of hope, waiting for the stars to pass the cloudy sky in the exact way, waiting for the snowflakes to be settled just so, waiting for the exact moment where all the minds in the city are in motion, and I will make a wish for the ages. At the time of writing, I was sitting in deep deliberation as to what my one wish in one hundred years could be, as if a magic genie popped out of a one hundred year-old bottle of enchanted beer to the one loser on earth who will put in a specific effort to make a wish on the one minute in one hundred years that means as little as the one before and the one after. I’m trying to decide if I will be doing something specific during the minute, as if it were my own sort of celebration, leaving my old self of indecision and selfishness behind with a DQ Blizzard or a Boreal Beer or cup of chai. Or if I should be listening to my favourite song during the entire minute. Should my wish be to never have another reason for the creation of a Remembrance Day, that is, to wish for world peace? Should I wish more selfishly, for a quick and painless end of my neurosis? For direction in a lifelong trip of wrong turns? Better posture? Relationship clarity? A Stanley Cup? An end to a long lasting loneliness?
It becomes redundant to celebrate every day or every week as an event. Like when the month of November is simultaneously Alzheimers Month, AIDS Month, Lung Cancer Month and Epilepsy Awareness Month. The Sweet Potato Awareness Months, the National Flag Days, the International Fig Weeks, the Plan Your Epitaph Days make it hard to take serious any day with a title. And to recognize a single moment in time because it will not occur for another 100 years does not acknowledge the moment just before and the moment directly after, which will never occur again either. But to live every moment greatly, whether it be numerically interesting or not, can be difficult when the first thing that comes to your mind when you wake up are words cursing the light of day, and then when you lay back down to sleep it feels like you had just woken up, although it was eighteen hours ago.
It seems to me that it is important to live as though one single moment is no more important than any other. If you don’t do this, you value most of your moments less than they are worth. It is, however, healthy and recommended that you routinely take a moment to briefly ponder the past, look forward to the future, and to be comfortable in the exact moment of the present. This is that moment, and I am doing so. Right now.
11/11/11 11:11
-
Lyric of the Month: November 2011 – Good Clean Fun
This is a new revolution we’re building a
brand-new society. It’s about time we find a
solution and not let it slip away. It’s time that
we all work together, this little thing we call
unity has the power to make it all better, and that
is why today, we’ll all be on the streets saving
the scene from the forces of evil. Side by side,
living our dreams, all the positive people .We’ll
fight our way through the frustration overcome
negativity, to us it is not a temptation, because
that is not our way. All that is needed to start
this is a healthy dose of positivity. We’ve found
our way through all the darkness, and on this brand
new day, we’ll all be on the streets saving the
scene from the forces off evil. Side by side,
living our dreams, all the positive people.–Good Clean Fun, On the streets…
-
Old Costumes
My past is haunted.
The places I once frequented have become places of evil. The old Western dorms in which I raised hell as a youth have returned to the den of sin that they were when I was there, the difference is that now the patrons are forced to worship the god of money. The old WOT Outlet has become a retailer of foreign-made costumes and costume accessories, open one month of the year selling lead-based products to exhibitionists and children. Whether it is just coincidence, or whether the empty vacuum of my soul sucked the decency out of each place, I do not know. But capitalizing on the holiday of the devil is maybe the most evil thing there is to do. Or do two evils make a holy? Ask the Tim Horton’s inside of the Walmart.
Returning to a familiar place, one expects things to stay relatively the same. I got back, I told myself to make things different. To avoid falling back into the habits that I decided to leave behind in the first place. To not slip back into the hole of unclimbable negativity. I decided that upon arriving back to Regina (which made me feel like I had failed, not because of Regina, but because no one moves here by choice), that things would need to be different. Starting fresh in a new city is common, but starting fresh in an old city is more rare, I didn’t want to let comfort and my selfish being let me return to the mindset that I purposefully left almost two years ago. My attitude, my leisure activities, my transportation habits would have to change
I am feeling haunted by these old ghosts. Watching television that I don’t even like to reward myself for the twenty hours a week of hard labour or the three hours every two days of writing that I invest. Zombieing out to Dr Mario and digital Scrabble. I am trying to learn the balance of leisure and entertainment because when I’m not working on something with purpose, I feel like I am falling back into that haunted place that I so badly want to avoid.
Human progression occurs. Human failure occurs more often. Halloween weekend is the time that we get to fantasize about who we wish we could be and dress up like them. Or dress up like a complete douchers or sluts. Pretty well everyone has one costume that they’ve used several times in the past and that they keep for back up, in case they can’t come up with anything better. Easy back up plans. A cowboy: plaid shirt, cowboy hat. Hunter: plaid shirt, gun. Hockey referee: dad’s ref jersey, hockey helmet. It is always easy to be the cowboy that we were last year, but this year I want to progress to something new.
A cowboy rockstar. A referee astronaut. A slutty lumberjack princess.
-
Wilf’s Life Advice
My father has given me two pieces of life advice that I can remember. He likely only gave two because he knew that I wouldn’t be able to remember much more than one and a half of them. If you count his furrowed brow every time I do something he disapproves of, or his head tilted back to let out a sinister laugh every time I do something stupid, then he has given me four pieces of advice.
The first, and likely most important, is crokinole advice. Probably the best crokinole advice. If you follow this advice, you will more than likely win at crokinole, and if you win at crokinole, then you win at life. Always keep your shooter. If the crokinole board was the board of life, each flick towards the centre would be an attempt at happiness. A shot towards the centre isn’t always the best choice. It is important to make all your shots ones that last more than just a fleeting moment. Taking shots without thinking of the repercussions is the sure way to losing in one round.
The second is financial advice. I was posing questions one day as to what I should do with the minimal amount of money I have to put into savings, for the hypothetical period of time that I may be able to retire. I wanted a simple explanation of RRSPs and TSFAs and several other foreign abbreviations of financial diseases that have taken the lives of so many brave investors. I aired my discomfort with RRSPs and investing in companies that I didn’t agree with and making money by doing absolutely nothing and how this seems like a sure fire way to ruin someone else’s life. I brought up my confusion with TSFAs and their merits, and he then went on to further encourage my financial brain disease by telling me that TSFAs can be invested in RRSPs or something stupid. I cashed in at this point, slouched even further in my chair, and Wilf could see it on my face. To close the discussion he went on to say that the most important thing to know is something that I have already figured out. That is, to live below your means. He later emailed me this article on the difference between RRSPs and TSFAs, which dumbs it down to the level of a third-grader/a college drop-out/a minimum-wage worker. But I can dumb it down even further: If your bank account was a crokinole board, then your means would be the amount of buttons you start with (12), and in order to live below your means, you would want to have something significant left over, whether it is a twenty on the side of the board, or a mean stack of fifteens stuck in between the posts, i.e. always keep your shooter.
So I guess my dad just gave me one piece of advice that spanned financial crises and crokinole crises simultaneously. I will instinctively combine the two into one piece of super advice that I will give to the unfortunate soul that becomes my son, who is as hypothetical as my retirement.
Always live below your shooter.
-
Entitlement
I think I just realized something about myself that most people likely already knew before. I am getting to know myself better, and the relationship between myself and myself could have started out better.
I’m an arrogant prick.
When I was in the Southern United States I learned about Texas. About how it was once a Republic of its own and how this has bred a group of people, an entire state, that has some sort of extra Texan pride that no one else can understand. A sort of nationalism within a nationalism. Can’t get much worse. But after a while I felt like I could understand where they were coming from. I could care less that I’m Canadian, really, not to say that I don’t understand my luck to live in a place like this, but I am happier telling people that I’m from Saskatchewan, if they know where it is. It seemed to me that people from Saskatchewan held a stronger pride in their province than those from anywhere else, except maybe Alberta. People from elsewhere in Canada would be comfortable enough saying that they were from Canada, while those from Saskatchewan might want to ad an asterisk, or the world’s new asterisk, #Saskatchewan.
While on the road I would start telling people I’m from Canada. This would satisfy ninety percent of people who asked where I was from. The other ten percent would ask where in Canada, and I would say Saskatchewan to avoid the looming gynaecological city discussions, and ninety percent of this ten percent would smile and ask if it was near Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver. I would respond that it was somewhere in the middle of Toronto and Vancouver, a significant gap to be sure, but easier than trying to explain the location of a province with the population equal to a single block in their city. The final one percent that knew Saskatchewan asked what city, then I would tell them, and then maybe even mention where I was born and where I lived most of my childhood. Start broad, end specific.
I have had similar feelings surrounding my birth month. I always had this impression that people born in October had some sort of connection to one another, that we had some aura about us that no one else did, and that coming out of the womb into the chilled air with the smell of decaying leaves in our lungs, that we somehow meant something more than someone born in the meaningless month of July. I recently realized that this feeling was just born in me, thinking that I am greater than the rest of the population because I and several other friends were born within the same fictitious set of thirty one days, as if the Gregorian calendar knew something about us that others never could understand.
I think similar things have developed in my immediate family. I have heard reference to ‘The Olson Vibe’ in the past, which has always worried me when I hear about it. Someone once described it to me as, ‘a certain coolness’, but others, more blunt, have described it as, ‘basically thinking you are better than everyone else.’ At times I notice an instance that people may consider to be part of this ‘vibe’, and I sincerely hope that it is nothing more than an introversion mixed with a timidity and an anti-conformism. I hope that it isn’t an arrogance or vanity. We are just quiet and sometimes seem rude.
The word entitlement has found it’s way into my vocabulary lately. I use it negatively about people that feel they deserve something when I feel that they do not. Then I realize that I subconsciously think that I deserve a certain treatment, that I am entitled to be shown respect, when I do not. I always felt like I was worth more because I was born in between imaginary lines on a map, in an imaginary month on a calendar, into an imaginary system ruled by paternal surnames. My birthright.
Now I am working on meekness and humility. I am learning that although it is nice that I’m from Saskatchewan, that I was born in the month of October as an Olson, that it doesn’t mean a damned thing, and it doesn’t make me any taller than the man next to me born in Manitoba in the month of July as a Falloon.
I am entitled to an old man spitting a mixture of hot coffee and phlegm in my face. Filtered through his rotting teeth.
Or at least I’m not entitled to anything more or less than my neighbour. Maybe thats it.
Balls of Rice 