Balls of Rice

Author: Nic Olson

  • Electric Dirt

    The lights are out and I have no intention of turning them back on.

    It is difficult teaching high school students about electricity. It is like trying to turn on a lightbulb when you know it is burnt out. Resistance is measured in ohms (Ω) and in how many days late their lessons are (Ls/DL). Potential Difference (voltage) is measured in Volts (V) and Time Spent Thinking About Failing Exams (t/FE).

    Between the compliment that I’d make a good teacher and that I should go into an Education program, and a veteran teacher, Mr. Leclair, picking gum off the bottom of tables saying in clear sarcasm that he ‘loves students’, I walked without a hat in the pissing rain continuing the education debate that will never end until I die. More importantly I was instantly inventing phrases that would eventually compliment these ideas about electricity. But then, with the distraction of teaching, I forgot them all.

    At one in the morning, I entered my room to a crack and a flash. When it happens, you always wonder if you flip the lightswitch too hard or with too much conviction, or how a the filament of an old incandescent bulb could really just blow like that. (Power = Energy/time) So, each day for the next two weeks, when natural light ceases to exist after 9pm, I plan to sit in the dark of my room with only the light of the street spilling past my curtain. And I will avoid going to the effort of buying a compact fluorescent bulb and straining my body on my tippy toes to screw it back in its socket simply to bring light back in the room. Often, the pop of a lightbulb is faster than the process of turning it back on. It is not always simply the flip of a switch.

    I sat down to attempt at recollecting my brilliant metaphoric hypotheses that just an hour earlier shone like beams of light in my darkly shadowed mind. So without internet, with the laptop luminescence dimmed to none, I sat in the dark to allow the thoughts to resurface. Nothing lit up. I needed milk(soy), bread(discount), beer(favourite), and red pepper(staple) so I left my cave towards the market to allow the streets, doubly bright from the reflection off of the rain soaked streets, to inspire. They succeeded in coaxing out the ideas. The electrons flow, the circuit is closed. The pop of a bulb can bring about inspiration just as quickly as a constant and steady techno beat from your roommates room can suffocate creation.

    So I have something new to write on the Exam Study sheet for the graduating science class that I tutor: Just as Current is inversely proportional to Resistance, Ideas are inversely proportional to Distractions. And just as quickly as comprehension flashes on, it can be lost with the pop and the flash of it dying out.  If I teach them that, then I don’t care if they fail and don’t graduate high school.
    Because I love students too.

  • Lyric of the Month: May 2011

    My mother suggested that this should become my new theme song. Watching London run with rifles in his jaws and knocking criminals into bodies of water as a kid really had an impact on me, I guess.
    That’s hobo style.

    There’s a voice that keeps on calling me
    Down the road is where I’ll always be

    Every stop I make, I’ll make a new friend
    Can’t stay for long, just turn around and I’m gone again

    Maybe tomorrow, I’ll want settle down
    Until tomorrow, I’ll just keep moving on

    Down this road, that never seems to end
    Where new adventure, lies just around the bend

    So if you want to join me for a while
    Just grab your hat, come travel light
    That’s hobo style

    Maybe tomorrow, I’ll want settle down
    Until tomorrow, the whole world is my home

    So if you want to join me for a while
    Just grab your hat, come travel light
    That’s hobo style

    Maybe tomorrow, I’ll want settle down
    Until tomorrow, I’ll just keep moving on

    Maybe tomorrow, I’ll want settle down
    Until tomorrow, I’ll just keep moving on

    There’s a world, that’s waiting to unfold
    A brand new tale, no one has ever told,

    We’ve journey’d far but, you know it won’t be long
    We’re almost there and we’ve paid our fare with the hobo song

    Maybe tomorrow, I’ll want settle down
    Until tomorrow, I’ll just keep moving on

    So if you want to join me for a while
    Just grab your hat, come travel light
    That’s hobo style

    Maybe tomorrow, I’ll find what I call home
    Until tomorrow, you know I’m free to roam

  • Twig Chopsticks in the Dog Shit City

    Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty.

    Dog shit. One of the four most easily distinguishable scents. The others are: cat piss, apple pie, and McDonalds. (The fifth optional scent is McDonalds apple pies dripping in cat piss.) I moved from a town where my high school often smelled of the methane gases from nearby grazing cattle, to the city that smells of the most toxic of animal faeces, that of the dog. The scent followed for blocks, spanning neighbourhoods and lasting several hours. After more than three minutes of the scent, any astute human being investigates the underside of their own footwear, and like a astute human being, I did this. I even checked my pants. It couldn’t be my own body, I just bought my first pair of new underwear in the past two years (with tennis player print, straight from Bangladesh. Best shopping find of the decade). The city is saturated with spring’s cologne of dog shit.

    New levels of personal poverty have been attained. New heights of ingenuity have reached. They go hand in hand, poverty and ingenuity (pinvenguity). It started with a coat hanger turned soap-holder for the shower, a rice bag sock drawer in the closet, a shoebox desk on the floor, bricks and 2×4’s for shelves, a flag for a curtain, an orange crate for a night stand, a milk crate for a book stand, and a dish drying mat for a shoe rug.

    But on a recent ‘Take-Out in the Park’ date, one where chopsticks were forgotten to be provided, ingenuity, laziness and poverty struck again. Creation: Twig Chopsticks.
    Step One: Look on the ground for a twig like a fork.
    Step Two: Realize that Asian food is eaten with chopsticks and that straight twigs are easier to find than fork-shaped twigs.
    Step Three: Smell to make sure there is no dog shit on the stick.
    Step Four: Eat.

    Needless to say, I was extremely proud of my innovation. And although I am not ashamed of my poverty, I am comfortable in it, thanks to my countless innovations. And although my bedroom smelled like one of the four most easily distinguishable scents when I moved in (cat piss), and when I open the window it smells like another one of the four, and although I can’t afford apple pie, and although McDonald’s paper bags decorate my street corner like fallen leaves, I have spent a year in the dream world, going to hockey games and getting paid to learn a language. Once reality strikes, I’m in for a real ass-kicking. Money in the bank.

    Oh won’t you please take me home.

  • We Must

    No living man can exist without some aim and the endeavour to attain it. A man who has lost his purpose and his hope not infrequently turns monster from misery…

    -Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
    Memoirs from the House of the Dead, p306

    I have become a charismatic preacher. I was bred for pulpit fist-slamming since I was a young Estevanite wearing turquoise pants, turquoise striped shirt and plastic necklace in which I could put my collection plate money. My first sermon was when I was in grade two, slapping the demons out of the neighbour’s dog Sandy. Then in grade nine, when I brought elderly women to tears. A real child preacher, they said. Real promise.

    And now, in everyday conversation and writing, I find myself using fire-and-brimstone phrasing. The fires of hell, the souls of sinners, the wrath of God, the tender touch of the Holy Spirit. But most of all, the ‘We Must’ phrase. We mustn’t let stupidity get hold of us. We must fight the good fight. We must search for more. We must, we must, we must.

    Certain writers and orators have the ability to express imperative ideas without using the ‘We Must’ phrasing, and these people have a definite gift. When I want to get my point across directly and bluntly, I fall upon this type of phrase, and without fail, it alienates and comes off as preachy to all. Certain literary intellectuals write entire novels to simply get a few ideas across without being preachy, and although it is far simpler to just write, ‘We must have an aim and endeavour to attain it’, Dostoevsky used brilliant detailed stories to get his ideas across.

    In editing a long piece of writing over a period of several years, certain segments become wordy, or tired, or old, and after reading and rereading the same paragraph one thousand times, the easiest thing to do is to take the idea out of the poorly written paragraph, highlight it all, press delete, and write a ‘We Must’ phrase to turn a poorly written paragraph into a poorly written, preachy, phrase. ‘We Must’ prevails.

    The executioner’s is a good life. He has money, good food, and vodka.

    -Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
    Memoirs from the House of the Dead, p240

    To demonstrate, here is a ‘We Must’ phrase for the previous quote. We must become an executioner, because an executioner has a good life. We must have money. We must eat good food. We must drink vodka.
    It is that simple. Take any sentence, turn it into a ‘We Must’ phrase, say it with conviction, slam your fist on the table or the wall next to you, and there you have it. You are a bonafide, charismatic, gospel preacher.

    We must learn to relay real ideas without using the ‘We Must’ rhetoric.

    God be with you.

  • Dear Mom,

    I know I am not as good looking as you’d hoped, and not as smart as I could have ended up being, and really, more embarrassing than anything. I remember trying to make you breakfast in bed as a kid on Mother’s Day, but ended up making dad do all the work while we watched cartoons, and then you probably did the dishes.

    And all those times that we made chore lists and cooking lists that no one ever followed, and always complaining about supper, and never saying thank you, and burping at the dinner table, and swearing too often, and getting tattoos, and listening to loud music, and not cutting my hair, and rarely bathing.

    And although at times it may seem like your kids are all screw ups, well, three of them at least, the decent qualities we have in us are because of you, and for that we all love you and think you’re pretty swell. Your patience is continually teaching me.

    My apology letter is actually a thank you letter. For putting up with me for the past twenty-two plus years,
    Thanks.

    p.s. I tried calling, I swear.

  • Worms and Rain

    The worms come out in the rain.

    An earthworm, measuring from my outstretched little finger to my outstretched thumb, at segments as thick as an expensive pen, was making its way to the gutter. A mammoth when it comes to minute beings. He and all of his miniature friends were exiling from their moist, mineral-filled, front lawn home, striving for the unknown of the asphalt. The likely outcome for them was to reach the gutter and get compressed by the weight of a parking car. The worst outcome for them was to be mutilated with sticks and sharp objects by the neighbourhood children. The best outcome was a gentle hand. However, death was nearly inevitable.

    So I grabbed the largest miniature worm and he recoiled in instinctive terror. I held his squirming body, whispered comforting motherly words to him, and placed him back on the saturated lawn, two feet away. I did my best to solve his problems by bending down and contacting him directly, to avoid his foreseeable death by car tire.

    I have been waiting over seven days, holding in the violent emotion that accompanies loss and more loss and further loss. Lifting boxes of vinyl and eating General Tao kept my mind off the facts, but when the dust settles and breaths are exhaled, my hockey team lost and my country lost greater. It is easy to alienate friends and casual readers by getting into hockey team systems and political ideologies and core beliefs, but saying nothing with the goal of not offending is akin to saying something that I disagree with. The fact that our country has fallen into four more years of leadership by a charmless snake with an ass for a hat, not only disheartens me, but frightens me. Democracy that tastes of fascism. Choosing for government selfishly, out of fear, or religious belief, or hope for affluence, is the same as stepping on the problems of others or encouraging these problems to continue to grow.

    The spring of 1996, Scott Mellanby’s hockey stick killed a rat. The next game, he proceeded to score three goals with the same stick. During the playoffs, fans showered the ice with rats, dead and alive. Playing street hockey as a kid during the same playoffs, after a heavy spring rain dried out, hundreds of crispy earthworms stuck to the driveway. I was the neighbourhood worm man, scoring hat tricks and sweeping away the wormy problems of the world in my ignorant youth.

    It is raining right now. Pretty hard. For the past three days straight. Apocalyptic symbol or just a low pressure system, either way, the worms come out in the rain. The worms of everyday problems are exposing themselves on the hard concrete of the sidewalks and we must be the people to bend down and solve them instead of tip-toeing around selfishly, or sweeping them away from the crease with our hockey sticks like unaware children.

    The rain is constant and unyielding. The problems are thus the same. Selfishness will do nothing but kick the worms into the gutters when they need to be hand-placed back on the lawn. Earthworms will forever exist but it doesn’t mean we can pretend otherwise.

  • Photo of the Month: May 2011 – Indian Election

    In the world’s largest democracy, this is how they show that they voted. A dab of ink on the middle finger, celebrities show their fans that they went through the system and at the same time have a real laugh.

    I usually do the same thing when I leave the elementary school gym.

  • Exorcism of a Constitutional Monarchy

    In less than a week, you can exercise democracy, and you can exorcise democracy.

    I watched ‘The Rite’ last week. Another Anthony Hopkins triumph; he becomes a better actor with age and gets creepier with each film. A film about exorcisms, probably the greatest of the genre, where the exorcist becomes the possessed and a nonbeliever must perform the exorcism. This is the story of the 2011 election. The fact that I vote sometimes surprises me, seeing that I don’t believe in the system or don’t really identify with any of of the power hungry leaders. At some point the system became possessed with the demons of apathy, greed, and control, and it will take those who don’t believe, the nonbelievers of democracy, to exorcise the system from the legions of demonic politicians that dominate it. This is our chance to become extreme Catholics.

    I am performing my act of exorcism by mail. I sat on the floor, wrote a name on my paper, blessed it with several New Testament verses and dropped my ballot in the big red Canada Post ballot box on the street just after I crossed myself. There are many ways to go about voting, as long as you do it and do it selflessly. It doesn’t matter who you vote for, as long as you vote informed. Exercise your right. Exorcise what’s right. We are all screwed.

    Project Democracy
    CBC Vote Compass
    CBC Canada Votes

  • Game Seven

    My hatred for Boston is equal to my love for hockey.
    In the words of a wise friend: ‘Game seven is gonna kill me one day.’
    He died later that day.

  • Game Six

    An entire year of investment comes down to a combination of socks, hat, underwear and shirt and I don’t know what else I can do. I have been saving all of my loose eyelashes, been designating all my 11:11’s. I was blessed by the Pope of Crossing Guards who ‘Bonjournée’s hundreds of exam writing students. Elliotte Friedman (above) gave me the wink and the wave on Sainte-Catherines on Easter Monday.

    I’ve done all I can do.