Author: Nic Olson

It should not be used without serious caution and consideration, as some of the side effects can not only be serious, but affect you for the rest of your life.

I found this quote in my draft section of my blog. Every now and then, like this month, I somehow write a blog every other day, and they are almost acceptable as decent. The times like this, I save bits and pieces in different drafts, so I can think about them, elaborate on them, and avoid forgetting all the potential one-liners from days before. So today I found this quote in my drafts. And it is dated from today. And I don’t have the slightest clue where it came from. It may have come from my brain or some other source, or what it even has to do with. I don’t remember if I had a clever idea to go along with this obscure quote about spiritual condoms or something.

I had a dream last night that I looked out my window and saw huge fighter jets flying from the horizon towards the apartment, and once they got close I saw them release warheads of some sort. No one else was watching, so I knocked everyone to the ground behind the wall and covered our heads while our building was torn to shreds. We survived. The next thing I remember was being one of the few people alive in a war dead world.

Lately I have been waking up at 6:30am to read, write and have a bowl of Cream of Wheat, so I don’t feel so tired all day from oversleeping. Also to be so much of a waste of life. It is possible in my dazed, wheat-cream preparation that I typed some random words from my war dream the night before.

I quickly became worried that I stole this sentence from another writer and I wouldn’t be able to properly credit them for their disclaimer genius. And that was basically the case. I just googled the entire phrase, highly doubtful that it would yield any true success, but the quote in its entirety was found. The quote is from this. I now recall skimming this brilliantly written sentence from a pop-up, copying and pasting it into my drafts and running off to school.

I never used the stuff, but my brothers did. I just remember swollen, dry, red faces that were not naturally hormonal. I feel that mostly anything a pregnant woman shouldn’t ingest, is something that even the impregnable should likely avoid as much as possible, whether it be caffeine, smokes, those Bolthouse Fruit Drinks, or microwaved products. People used to tell me in my hayday of acne that I should go to the doctor to seek a product for it, and although I wasn’t offended and could have been, I usually just quietly mocked myself about how ugly I was, and rejected their idea. Nowadays there are commercials that advertise help for old users of Accutane, that they could contact a specific lawyer to try and collect huge dollars from Accutane for making them suicidal. I regret not trying it now. Not for the clear skin, but for the settlement cheque.

I can’t even tell if this ‘warning’ is for positive life outcomes, like ‘It will drastically improve your life with a less greasy face!’ or for the inevitable deadly ‘depression’ it causes. With a disclaimer like that, you know it is definitely a product worth taking. I think this quote should be the new tagline for my blog. Seems to explain it all perfectly. Besides ‘Balls of Rice’, there are few products in the world that could have such positive, lifelong side effects. Commit your life to ‘Balls of Rice’ and you it will seriously affect you for the rest of your life. It is in  your best interests.

Just don’t commit suicide because of it.

Who designed the majority of public washrooms in the world? It was either men with no shame, women, the blind, or someone with a huge johnson.

The urinals in my school are of the older variety. The full length ones that go from your belly button all the way down to your feet. Urinal engineers seemed to have changed to the shorter ones once they realized you are basically peeing on your feet directly with the full length ones, instead of having just medium quantities of pee splashback like in the urinals of today. The urinals are self flushing, the version before the motion sensors, where a large basin above all five urinals will rinse them out every ten minutes or so. Each urinal is spaced about 3 inches apart from each other, and with the flat outer part of the frame of the urinal, there may be 6 inches. When the breaktime bell rings at least ten percent of the 250 students in the school go to the only bathroom and release their morning coffees. Each time I go, three of the five urinals are being used, leaving the two even numbered urinals open. Shoulder to shoulder I force my way in between two men peeing, whip it out, and go for it all.

Even if I am standing beside a complete stranger, my Phillipino friend Tito from class, my brother, or the Dalai Lama. Even if my bladder is full to the brim of the litre of water I drank in one hour, even if I close my eyes, take a deep breath, think of all that is good and holy in the world, I can’t pee. Stage fright. Even if I look at the ceiling, look down, stare at one spot on the wall in front of me(I still remember the design in the paint and brick at my old elementary school at the urinal, where the paint created a close-eyed smiley face), or push with all my might. Even if I hide myself between both hands, behind my unzipped pants, angled towards the corner if that is an option, hide it with books, step back a foot and let it out for all to see, let a few drops out prematurely on my way to the stage, if I am standing next to someone, unless there is a barrier between us, the once pleading liquids become drier than the undersack of a camel.

Maybe it doesn’t have to do with size (I’ve learned to accept that), or being shy (I’ve learned to get over that), or prostate problems (I need to check on that), but I think it is simply a subconscious block where I don’t want to let someone watch me pee on porcelain. Porcelain is meant for the faces of dolls or for serving your food upon. If I am going to desecrate something made of porcelain, I’d prefer to do it alone. It is like peeing in a porcelain mug and serving it to friends. Add some colour, caffeine and sweetener and you’ve got the morning drink of millions of Canadians. So what am I so afraid of?

My goal today for school is not to learn more verbs, or fully understand when to use imparfait, or even get better in my speaking, but it is to pee with conviction, determination and power in front of dozens of men, all over an expensive porcelain urinal. I believe.

I have written more in the past two weeks than I have in the past 4 months. And I’ve liked it. Poems, blogs, chapters, essays. It has finally felt organic, and when it hasn’t, I have written anyway, because that is what you are supposed to do, I think.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY (AdviceToWriters)

I blast my brain with starvation, the single beer, other writings, and sports events. After writing half of a book and ending up hating most of it, I started to wonder why. I wanted a reason of why I consistently wrote dribble, but kept writing anyways. I edited heavily the first ten chapters, to a point where I basically rewrote them all, pressing the forever healing ‘delete’ button with my right pinky several times. Still working on it. Still deleting things. After this I decided that I needed to read more. A very wise editor once told me that in order to become a semi decent writer, I needed to read a lot. So somewhere in this head of mine I decided that I wanted to spend twice as much time reading as I did on writing. Recently, even when reading a decent amount, I have found that if that were the case, I would only write for about twenty minutes in a day, or I would be reading four 6 hours a day. Neither seemed logical.

I am still working on the ratio, trying to perfect it by reading books that would influence my writing positively, or famous writers with similar styles and ideas. Then at the end of it all I try to figure out who I think I am kidding. And through my own self-discouragement I write some more. Dribble.

I am at 34,543 words. A perfect palindrome of undoubtedly sketchy writing. I googled how long the average book was. Most obviously legitimate websites said that, for example Harry Potter books had 200 000 words, good books had at least 60 000, and a few of my shorter favourites had 80 000. I am halfway to a good book, and I’ve taken it just about as far as I can. I remember having to write 1000 word essays in History 30 and thinking that was a lot…

6 months is my goal, and the real, three year old, untitled project number one might be done. Here’s to hoping.

After feeling like I was eleven years old again last night, riding the metro home I tried to think of the 10 best concerts I’ve seen in my life. And although most of them wouldn’t make anyone’s top 100 list, and likely no one cares at all, I wanted to do it anyway. In no particular order:

1. Good Riddance, Death By Stereo. Riddell Centre, Regina, 2001.
2. Means Final Show. Riddell Centre, Regina, 2008.
3. Greg MacPherson. Casa Del Popolo, Montreal, 2010.
4. Millencolin. Club Soda, Montreal, last night, 2010.
5. Layaway Plan Final Show. Riddell Centre, Regina, 2001?
6. Only Crime. The Exchange, Regina, 2008
7. Propagandhi. Regina, Saskatoon, Calgary, 2009.

Honourable Mentions
-Corb Lund. Saskatoon, The Odeon, 2009.
-Comeback Kid, With Honor, Every New Day. The Exchange, Regina, 2003?
-Chuck Ragan and Tim Barry. L’Esco, Montreal, 2010
-Means, Life in Your Way. Viaduct, Spokane, 2008
-AFI, Poison the Well. Doris Knight Hall, Regina, 2003?
-Good Riddance, Choke. Riddell. Regina. 2002?
-Raised Fist. Riddel. Regina.  2004?

I can’t remember anymore. Help me out.

I could only make it to 7. The last 3 spots were impossible to fill once I started thinking about it, and I likely missed a lot.

If you are someone who has been to more than 10 concerts, I’d encourage you to make a similar list. Then post it on here so I can see what it looks like and see what I missed.

No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful. If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.

-Kurt Vonnegut, A Man without a Country

Eight months and a day. I surprised myself too.

I moved to Montreal eight months ago yesterday, and I am just as surprised as you that I haven’t crawled back to my parent’s basement floor in Regina, or that I am not living on the street making clever cardboard signs asking for money downtown Montreal. Neither is far off, I’ll tell you now. Suprised. Pleasantly surprised.

I email my high school teacher every now and then because she is awesome. In her last email she sent me a few sentences about how she was proud of me for my Level 2 French grade which I had to tell her about, about her family successes, being one of the more ‘successful’ families I can think of, and she sent me a link to her daughter’s website. The website was basically a portfolio which highlighted her journalism career so far, videos, awards, cirriculum vitae, etc. She had worked for several news channels doing reporting and anchor work, and is now overseas furthering her resume’s already extensive reach. While scrolling through her long list of academic achievements, scholarships and journalism awards I found a section from high school awards which highlighted her graduation year in 2005, making her a single year older than I.

I don’t rely on pieces of exaggerated paper to tell me what I haven’t done in my life so far, but I will let a website tell me. Panic or worry aren’t verbs I would select when describing myself in basically any situation, unless I’m holding a rifle in the middle of a city while the cops pull up, but the vision of what I could have done in this period of time that I have done nothing got me contemplating. As I sit here shirtless on a Saturday morning, buying scores of Habs tickets with my Unemployment rates for my ‘job’, it doesn’t look like I’m going to be getting out of it anytime soon. At least not until the end of the 10-11 season and the end of my intensive language courses. My 69 year old neighbour, Gilles, gave me some truly helpful resume, and handshake tips, as well as the tip that you can bullshit your way through most any job in the world, so I feel like I will be doing well in any position, even if I’m trying to find a job when I am 69.

Downtown on a Friday night is never where I want to be. The douchebag level of anywhere public in the world at that time is multiplied by a thousand times and misted down with all kinds of body sprays. The first weekend since all of societies finest, the students, have arrived, and they are running the town with their parents cash flow. I talked with a few semi-decent human being students, semi-decent because I honestly couldn’t tell, but it got me trying to decide if it is a shame that so many morons are in the education system, or if that is who it was designed for. Still can’t tell. One girl told me she was trying to decide what she was going to do for her life when I realized I haven’t used that phrasing in a long time, and for good reason. Life isn’t there for us to sit around trying to decide what to do for the rest of it, or what your purpose is, or what to do next. Life is just there to live, and the meaning of life is little more than existence, love, and sharing it all with others.

I don’t tell people that I’m trying to figure out what to do with my life anymore, because I’m not, because it doesn’t matter, and because I feel like I’ve got a good idea as to what is going on. Somedays.

A man lost his wallet twenty-five years ago. Someone returns it to him today and it is worth $25,000 more than it was when he lost it. What happened?

This is what we do in French class. Vocab building based on hypothetical situations, ones that are difficult enough in English, but necessary in French for some reason. I decided that the man either lost his wallet inside a high interest back account with a $100 bill inside. Or that the wallet was an extremely expensive gift from the 1940’s and when he finally found it, it was a 25 grand antique. The first classmate who gave his explanation, two language levels above myself, decided that he had a slip of paper in the wallet with four names autographed on it. The Beatles. And twenty-five years later it was worth $25,000. Jie Liu, my Chinese friend sitting in front of me got flustered as the bell rang that someone would even consider a piece of trash like that worth that much money. ‘Their music is terrible,’ he said in broken English with a broken French accent, ‘They only have one good song!’

I don’t know if it is even legal to put opinion up on the internet anymore, especially when it comes to one of the worlds most famous and popular and overrated bands, and I’m not even sure if I have done the same before. Walking home from school I saw two terribly dressed twenty-something year old girls walking to the metro wearing shirts that read, ‘The Beatles’. They were both terribly dressed in separately terrible ways, but both wore the same shirt. I couldn’t mistake it as coincidence; I had no choice but to write about it. My opinion differs very little from Jie Liu’s, except that I feel they wrote a few decent songs, mostly the ones that they did when they started into heavy drugs and stopped singing about ‘Love 8 Days A Week’ and ‘Yesterday’. I probably just lost a lot of respect from a lot of really dignified people, and I know the opinion of a 21 year old skid from Saskatchewan has little weight for anyone, but I felt compelled to tell you this.  McCartney is a tool. Shining Time Station was alright.

I’ll get back to licking peanut butter from a butter knife, reading about NHL contract extensions, and listening to Behemoth now. Sorry.

You are jealous.

‘Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone.’

Four years before I was born, this book happened. I know it was actually written in 1948 or around that year, but it might as well have been from the eighties. I haven’t read anything smarter, more relevant, from front to back, in a long time.

‘Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.’

George Orwell continues to establish himself as my absolute favourite writer. Each book, essay, even sentence of his that I read, awakes a new amazement in the English language. We read ‘Animal Farm’ in high school, I’ve read a few more of his books and essays since. His style, his ideas, his story telling ability, are all something I want to be able to grasp someday, or even a portion of it, in my own writing.

This book is an slightly exaggerated picture which describes a world so backwards that one might just be able to see it happen in our lifetime. Although we are not far off, with screens on every corner of every house, monitoring through social networking sites and the cameras on cell phones. ‘The Associated Press’ touting wars as if the enemy has always stayed the same and the home government is never anything but glorious. Brainwash, torture, the lower class, history books altered. We are not far off. We’ve got to shake ourselves out of it, be strong enough to notice what is happening, and hold ourselves up to the inevitable future of pain and suffering.

So I’ve thrown down a handful of quotes of your reading pleasure. These are just a handful of the pages I underlined in red pen throughout my read. Read this book, even if you have already.

‘The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent…

The social atmosphere is that of a besieged city, where the possession of a lump of horseflesh makes the difference between wealth and poverty. And at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival. War, it will be seen, not only accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be quite as simple to waste the surplus labour of the world by building temples and pyramids,  by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them.’       -George Orwell

I’ve been planning a ‘colon cleanse’ for sometime now. I’m not sure if it will actually be cleaning my colon out, or exactly what it will be cleaning, but all I know is that my body needs it. A full summer of toting around tourists, eating greasy poutines, slippery smoked meats, a few cheap beer, cow ball and intestine soup, and the occasional tri-weekly pizza slice can take a toll on a young man, and his daily bathroom therapy sessions. My guts have been screaming for a wallpaper remodelling. For a trip to the inner body, high-pressure waterslides.  For a green, environmentally friendly switch from the Hummer to the bicycle. For a shit cleaning.

So here I am. Day One of hopefully a full week of my raw fruit and vegetable cleanse. Never in my life have I challenged my diet like this, except when I tried eating an entire ham to gain ten pounds in a week. I researched this very gingerly, meaning I read one webpage probably with Adult Friend Finder ads on the side, but I can’t imagine, well balanced and planned out, that it could be a bad thing. Sure without rice, bread, pizza, dal or chick peas I might pass out everyday by noon, just as long as when I am sleeping my colon revamps itself. Here’s to hoping my colon doesn’t revamp itself all over my shorts while laying in bed. Yesterday I had a sandwich in a cabbage leaf (below). Today I had a banana, kiwi, spinach, prune juice cocktail (below, further). For lunch, the possibilities are endless, but they end at the combinations of ten different items I bought. Watermelon Cabbage salad? Red Pepper and Banana dipped in guacamole? I’m out of ideas…

(If you haven’t noticed on each of my past 426 posts of Balls of Rice’s four year existence, I usually attempt to tie together the things going on in my everyday to the things going on in my brain. It is usually a failed attempt, or so forced, that nullifies everything I wrote previous. But I continue to do it, and I will do it again.)

How does one cleanse their brain? Is it the same process of ingesting only natural, fresh, essential sustenance? The things I would consider natural and essential when it comes to mental sustenance are probably far from it, and the things that others would recommend I would decline as irrelevant.  I could turn off my computer, my iPod, my table fan, my metro pass, my camera for a week and see what happens, but I doubt that this would fully emancipate the years of greasy poutine-filth that has settled itself so deep into my mind. I don’t think a week long therapy could clean the grease bound, cholesterol ridden caverns of my mind. I don’t think much could, besides a memory eraser.

In my infinite negativity I instantly question the point of cleansing bodies, minds, ‘souls’ because they are just going to get clogged up or bogged down with cheese curds anyways. Similar to my theories of bathing. But if we aren’t a people constantly looking for full renewal and restitution, through cleanses or conversations or investigating, then we aren’t worth much after all.

Day One.