Author: Nic Olson

Since the invention of punk bands there has been the musical genius of a sound clip before a song. Well spoken words from movies or famous speeches from world geniuses and world morons. There is something that makes a song sound better when it is preceded by a well thought out sound clip. Here are some of my favourites.

I can’t hear the 20th Century Fox trumpets and snare drums without imagining seven deep guitar chugs, some high hat slaps and a Good Clean Fun song afterwards.

I likely wouldn’t know Martin Luther King’s name or what he talked about at such a young age if it weren’t for Good Riddance’s opening sound clip on Operation Phoenix. I still know this speech by heart.

They also had a hockey clip. The first forty seconds:

Several bands have used an extended version of this clip from the film Breakfast Club about becoming like your parents.

Propagandhi opens with a comedy act:

And closes with a hockey act:

I often find clips from movies that I would put in front of songs that I will never write, but have technically have written as poems. If I was in a band, I’d have some perfect sound clips. Good Riddance had dozens of them, Chomsky clips, movie clips, Mario Savio‘s speech,  all clips I still remember from the first time I heard the songs in grade five. These are the sound clips to my life. If I come up with more be sure that I will find them on YouTube and post them here. This is my life explained in three short videos.

Or here, time 1:20-1:30: ‘If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.’

And here. Or just the entire movie.

I will someday learn to play guitar and write an album of terribly written angry punk songs, but every one of them will have a sound clip to save a soul. I love them to death.

The greatest loss of my young life.

It wasn’t when I lost my second favourite hat of all time in Wascana Park. It wasn’t when the Riders lost the Grey Cup in 2009. It wasn’t when my highschool soccer team got silver in provincials. It wasn’t when my best Korean friend who lost his fingers moved back to Korea to join the army.

R.I.P. PacMan Pie.

There was a piece of aluminum foil over his face. Before revealing PacMan’s skin disease, I lifted him up in the kitchen like a trophy in excitement for the greatest piece of pie I would ever eat. Like it was the greatest victory I’d ever had. Within seconds it became the greatest loss.

It was yesterday after supper. I went for a slice of pie only to find it was completely rooted with mould. When this happens with other foods I usually cut of the odd coloured spots and fork my way around to the freshest spots, manoeuvring around once founded fuzz and living bacteria creatures. When my bread goes mouldy I cut the mould spots out and eat a sandwich with a hole through the middle. I call them ‘Flavour Windows’. I heard somewhere that even if you cut off the visible mouldy spots, you are still going to be eating the mould, because the roots reach invisibly through the food. It is like popping the heads off of dandelions to make your backyard look better. Makes sense to me.

But I didn’t eat the pie this time. I couldn’t. There were too many foreign colours. Food that is fully mouldy is beyond my iron stomach’s abilities thus far, but I am bound to beat it with practice, and living as a poor man is the best practice. Train the gag reflex not to jump with mouldy bites or strands of hair in food and I’ll be able to eat like a goat; tin cans and old tires. Lots of fibre.

I had to have someone else throw out the pie. My eyes were moistening looking at half of a pie gone to waste. I will never be able to stomach the waste of food, especially not my last pie that I toiled over for hours. Especially not my friend.

Here is a photo of a good time we had together before his death. For obvious reasons I called him PacMan.

R.I.P. PacMan Pie.

‘Resist Mandatory Inoculation.’

What makes a person compelled to spray paint this phrase on an overpass wall in St-Henri, Montreal? It was such a poor paint job that it could possibly even say,

‘Rest Man: A Tory Innovation’, or
‘Resist Men: Or you’re in jubilation’.

But I deduced the first phrase through careful speculation, i.e. walking past it four times a day for four months. What possibly could have happened, or what possibly could this person have read, for him to take time out of his busy 2a.m. weed smoking schedule, to poorly spray these very deliberate words on a wall? I am all for a good conspiracy theory, and it is a near certainty that vaccinations, especially of made up illnesses like Swine Flu, are little more than modern day mind control systems to convince people to buy Nike and drink Vitamin Water, but a phrase such as this, without explanation to the masses, just confuses and disgusts them like than a blob of phlegmy spit or any other unreadable tag on the mailbox or street sign. Spray painting a paragraph of explanation doesn’t make much sense, and maybe the author/artist wanted little more than for one or two persons to go online and read and/or write about it. If so I guess he got his wish. Chances are good that he got hit by a car while painting, and with his last ounce of strength finished his piece of social activism and that is why it is nearly unreadable. Devotion to a cause you can’t explain…

There are different kinds of activism, if that is indeed what this spray paint job is, and I obviously identify with other kinds, like sleeping naked, writing, not washing my clothes, reading quietly, buying organic, waking up early, trying to grow a beard, shopping sustainably, watching hockey, etc.  I have a hard time seeing change come from protesting. No matter how witty your sign is, how many times the cops hit you with a billy club or how sure you are that it is your right to protest in a ‘democracy’, it seems that little will change, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. Proactive and indirect protest alike, the poorly thought out overpass spray paint job is an inspiring reminder that even terribly planned and intoxicated protest matters, sometimes.

If I ever (inevitably) accidentally have kids I have yet to decide if I would inoculate them. Aside from the birth coach mumbo-jumbo and the health of a stress free birth and child free from foreign unknown bodies, vaccinations from long dead diseases seems about as necessary as teaching your kid to brush their teeth. I was injected with dead cells as a child. I remember stepping into the dark White City Community Centre hallway. I remember cotton balls and medical tape. I remember light tears and red suckers. I feel like I turned out alright, healthy, free minded. Unless that is what they want me to think…

So for the ever growing ‘Pregnant Lady Demographic’ of Balls of Rice, the ‘Rich People Traveling Demographic’ and the ‘Listen to Epidemics on the News Demographic’, please consider the words of a likely intoxicated anglophone and consider:

‘Resist Mandatory Inoculation.’ But if you don’t like that idea then at least follow this interpretation:

‘Rights 4 Men: That’s Our Nocturnal Obligation.’ Because this phrase will make just as much of a difference to the commuters that read it.

I have decided to post once a month one of my favourite photos that I’ve taken, and maybe others as well. Every month until I die. These will be without a theme, but they will probably end up being places I wish I was at.
This month: Delhi Dhaba, the best food I’ve eaten in my life, the best people I’ve met in my life, plastic chairs.

It is alarming when your brain is empty. The alarm seems louder when there is nothing to absorb its sound. I now know how the majority of the public feels. I now know how an inanimate object feels. I curl up in a ball sitting on the only soft chair for miles, head between my knees because I have nothing to do and my head can’t come up with anything to think about. It is blank. Like an empty sheet of paper, but less a dimension.

If you take a blank piece of paper and a black marker, and write every word in the dictionary on that paper, the page will become black. Blank again, but black. Maybe there is too much rotating, swirling, bubbling, marinating, stewing in my mind that it has turned a white page black. Maybe I need a shelving system for my brain, and that system is an education, or a job, or a less apathetic outlook. These mixing words could be stored neatly like an archive of all the thoughts ever thought if only they had an archivist. I need to find said archivist. I’ll post an ad on CraigsList in the Erotic section:

‘Twenty-two year old seeks Aged and Wrinkly to deal with a room full of disorganization. Must have experience in the Dewey Decimal system. Must have size 34D.’

So I root through a waist-high pile of black scribbled words on a while slab to bring you the latest version of this. And I hope, at least not for five years or so, that I don’t come off as completely crazy, but just confused, and in need of an archivist.

Accepting resumes now.

Things are looking bright…

My arm has been twitching for over 24 hours. I can’t tell if it is my muscles deteriorating to nothing, my dehydration, a nervous tick, the beginning of my mental breakdown or just my brain is sending signals to my right bicep instead of the creative part of my brain. All of them seem serious. None of them seem quite true.

When the body starts involuntarily moving in ways it never has before, it is like a coup d’etat of the body. First my arm decides it doesn’t want to follow my way, then it convinces the other arm, and they will eventually fully revolt and hold me in my room for good. Shortly after this they will meet up with my feet and convince them that my brain isn’t worth listening to anymore. Eventually my entire body will fight against my brain and overthrow it, so a new, fresh, ‘Yes We Can’ without the evil, leader/brain can lead this nation-body in a way it needs to be led. It all starts with an arm twitch.

A classmate, quarante-cinq year old Soo Ying, sat me down during afternoon break to tell me that she thinks I should drop out of French class and travel the world. She told me this in English of course. She made serious eye contact, used exaggerated hand motions, held my arm to show that she was speaking earnestly. She is conspiring with my twitching right bicep and my aching left heel. She knows.

What do most people do when certain upheavals arrive in their physicality? Prozac? Parenthood? Beer? I refuse to silence the twitch within, I acknowledge its presence and will defeat it by letting it defeat me. Twitches lead to riches.

For my birthday my Grandma and Grandpa sent me $100 of iTunes cards, and you likely knew that already. I contacted most people I know, or at least those whose music opinion I respect, asking for recommendations as to what I should buy. Check my music page to see if your recommendation has made my playlist yet. I still have some music to buy, but don’t want to rush it. I hear the new Rihanna is great though…

Along with a birthday card and the iTunes cards they sent me this note. I received similar notes from sister and mother so my first birthday away from home wasn’t as pathetic as I assumed it would be. There would be no point to be sad or miss home, because I moved here by choice. I’m not imprisoned or living oppressed, although French school feels like hell sometimes. But notes like this are pretty sweet when I daily question my purpose in being here, at least I’ve got a few people back home, who although know I’m wasting my life on hockey games and writing poetry, don’t mind and still send messages.

I’ve had an empty apartment for a week. Just me, shirtless, my computer, the neighbour Gilles every now and then, and twenty-four bagels.  There are only eleven bagels left. I have done little to no writing, aside from this, and another bad poem about the neighbourhood. I’ve done little to nothing productive, besides studying my French for a total of two hours, because a friend is going to be taking up all my study time next weekend as we watch Habs games, ride roller coasters, eat too much, go to concerts and Hindi films. It is good to know that even at my most pathetic, shirtless at 4pm eating plain bagels with no intention of productivity, playing air guitar to Continuance, my Grandma and Grandpa still like me even when I don’t like myself. I can hope anyway.

Oh, excuse me, I’ve got to go take a nap for three hours before I stream the football game and eat expiring food that isn’t mine, I can’t possibly come up with a proper ending to this post. Until next time.