Author: Nic Olson

Q: What do you do with a new set of ideas, completely new to your bank of knowledge, deemed by some as heretical? 

The mailbox had a sticker that said, ‘No Flyers Please! Save our Trees!’ And I flipped open the tin screeching lid and dropped in the world’s worst news paper and a handful of great gift ideas on paper courtesy of Zellers and Staples.  ‘Save our Trees’, but subscribe to a daily copy of a bankrupt mainstream media’s finest journal. CanWest’s finest recycled paper. The only practical use that a newspaper has in this day and age is to clean up animal and child feces, wrapping gifts, or enclosing fried foods in foreign countries.

I kept mumbling the word Grosvenor because I put paper in early morning tin on Grosvenor Street, and the pronunciation of that word has always puzzled me.

I wanted to unplug each car I saw, to equalize everyone’s vehicle with mine, and to watch a giant South-end recession because everyone lost their jobs when they didn’t make it to work in time, because the fill-in paperboy had a vendetta against anyone with an occupation and a driveway longer than three car lengths. My bladder wanted to drizzle golden-yellow crudities on their freshly whitened driveways and untouched front yards.

Delivering newspapers at 4:30am with no sleep. Each house I searched in the dark, ankle deep in powder, for house numbers, so I could ensure the proper household got the proper information at the proper time. But my glasses kept fogging up and my face was getting cold. Realizations always occur for me when I’m tired. I realized that winter is perfect. An actual hilarious situation of slight discomfort and constant complaint. I truly love it. Then again I haven’t seen a full winter in three years.

Instead of Saskatchewan winters, I’d rather indirectly complain about other things like Gary Bettman and Christmas shoppers, and subtly express my hatred for humans through verbal expression through this blog. Complain about things that I could change, but never do, like myself and society. Because the only way I can see a stop in complaints about harsh temperatures, is by a continuation of Leader-Post distribution via car, truck and van.  Enough printing and distribution that we reach a point of total global warming and the absence of winter as we know it. I hope someday we can credit the fall of Canadian winters to the rise of CanWest Media.

I’ve been looking for something to give a temporary boost, and I wasn’t in the market for any kind of illicit substance. I wanted a boost of confidence in my view of humans. Religion hasn’t helped. Work hasn’t helped. Music hasn’t helped.

I stumbled upon 20 Something Bloggers. A sort of Facebook specifically for people who write blogs, and are in their twenties, the golden years of life, or is it the silver years, or is it even before that, the years that the rest of your life depends on.  The baby blue years of life. I only know of maybe two people under the age of 29 that consistently write blogs, so it is often discouraging reading old people talk about their families and whatnot, and worrying that everyone that reads my blog is way too mature for my lack of belief.
People who like to write, go on this forum, create a profile, join groups, talk about things, just like any other popular social networking site. I hoped that this forum would offer like-minds, also in their twenties, writing to make a difference, or writing with cynicism, or writing poorly. I haven’t found any of this yet, except poor writing.  There are groups that you can join to talk about certain common interests, and these are all actual examples:

The Shopaholic Group, for people who have the depressing urge to buy shit.
The Overflowing Closet Group, for those with too many clothes, or are about to tell their parents something really serious.
The Twitter Group, for bloggers who like to twitter. That sounds dirty.
The Coffee Addicts Group for those who drink too much of the bitter end of things.
The Pug Love Group, for people that love their face-smashed dogs.
The Teachers Group, for young exuberant minds that plan to brainwash for a living.
The I’m So Annoyed Group, for complainers.
The Fans of Hoarders on A&E, for those who like to feel good about their Shopaholic Group membership.
The Starbucks Junkies Group, for those who drink too much from the bitter end of things, but like to pay for it.
And yes, even a group for Young Breastfeeding Mothers that like to blog about near nipple experiences.

I joined the Montrealers group, because there was only one other member, and I put in a request to join the India Group, because I couldn’t find any other groups that didn’t make me shake my head.

I haven’t found exactly what I’m looking for yet, but I have learned a few things. Most people that use this site are complete morons. I thought that more twenty year olds would actually use such a forum for good, and not evil, but I again misinterpreted what social networking sites are for, even the unpopular ones. I also further learned that the actual idea of blogging is mindless and embarrassing in itself and that the word ‘blog’ gets on my nerves a little bit.

So far, this experiment of youthful proportions has failed.

But I was walking home from work today, my thighs freezing from a lack of long john, and feet sore from walking un-shovelled sidewalks, I came upon a fully scraped and shovelled section of sidewalk. It was in front of a house with the picture window uncovered. I looked in to see a woman decorating a Christmas tree and a man in a green longsleeved shirt preparing supper. I looked in, he looked at me, I nodded, he waved, I waved. And he made my day. I found temporary confidence in a wave and not a networking site. Who would have thought?

December is a time of joy. Fresh snow and the re-introduction to long johns. Specialty foods that are best served with rum, and the fresh smell of softwood pine on hardwood floor. We don’t really need to get into it because everyone loves at least one thing about this time of year. I love shinny. I also love peace and joy and goodness.

December is a time for fear and disenchantment. A time where the naturally negative have no choice but to become overly negative, seeing the masses shovel goods into steel cages with wheels, only to bring further joy to those who live the softest lives of all. Any level-headed person working retail, or any observant person that requires public interaction, knows that this time of year is the time with the least amount of good.

If a person has a belief, they can have confidence in this time of year to create a feeling of worldwide hope, with joy and love. There is nothing wrong with that. But if a person loses this belief, but doesn’t gain what the rest of the population has, i.e. greed, then where are they to go?

Today I was enjoying a classic nineties film, ‘Dude, Where’s My Car?’ today, when I was interrupted by a phone call on my friend’s cell phone. I needed to call work. Usually when this happens, when work somehow manages to hunt me down even when I don’t have a cell phone, I assume the worst. Either Travis completely lost it and ate all of the Hickory Farms pepperoni and murdered some bro that stole the multi-coloured Circas, the till is broken, or I screwed something up somehow. This was no such call. For some reason I urgently needed to know that we were beginning to listen to Christmas music at work, and I needed to plan my iPod accordingly.

I don’t understand torrenting. File sharing. I don’t even know what it is, how to do it, why to do it or what happened to Napster. But it is going to be hard to get Christmas music on my iPod without stealing it, because I sure as hell am not going to spend money on it.

I would love to try and express my feelings about human beings and consumption and brainwashing and what real hope entails, but you probably know what I’m going to say. And it is not going to do any good saying it. Its hard to talk about it when no matter what is said, it is cliche. Whether it is about the true meaning of whatever, or how we need to actually think of others and whatever. Hmm.

Let’s go play shinny!

I use a Thesaurus quite often in my writing. I don’t know if that is considered cheating, like a musician constantly referring to chords from other musicians to write new music, or like a carpenter constantly borrowing tools from his coworker, or like a stripper always borrowing her friend’s best pole move. But I do it anyways. I do it because I don’t think I’m naturally a writer, so I use words repetitively like ‘constantly’, ‘beautiful’, ‘terrible’, and ‘things’. This word, ‘things’, is probably my downfall as a human being. I catch myself using this word when I write and can’t come up with a good noun for what I’m talking about. Things like that drive me crazy. I could use that word every sentence with ease, and it tears me up. I use it without even noticing it.

I try to change things up every now and then. I would like a Thesaurus for everyday living. Like a Chicken Noodle Soul book, but of actual, practical ideas and thoughts that would benefit people in real life, not in a hokey inspired-daily-reading life.  Right now I wish I could take a life Thesaurus and find the antonym for cynical and hopeless, and place them in the paragraph of my past month. And don’t try to tell me there already is a piece of literature that can accomplish this, because the last time I checked, every book ever written is either deplorable (thesaurus citation) fiction or over opinionated non-fiction.

Whatever the antonyms for those words would be, it would help me rebound since my formal letter of life resignation. Because I still see things that I want to do, things that need to be done, but I have no motivation because I have no confidence in the human species. And I can’t see confidence gaining anytime soon without a sort of enlightenment, addictive chemical intake or severe memory loss. A thesaurus may be the only way out. A simple switch of attitudes and words to put myself back on that high road to success and off this realistic basement dwelling low.

Synonyms for ‘things’: affair, circumstance, item, everything

Antonyms for ‘cynical’: believing, hopeful, optimistic, trusting, undoubting

Antonyms for ‘hopeless’: auspicious, encouraging, expectant, promising, rosy

I could do that.

.

I punched a hole in the wall today at work. But it was a good day.
Long story short, the track of lights did indeed work, and the only adequate way to express my feelings was to punch a hole in the wall. Not fuelled by anger at all, but a sort of confused inarticulate punch. I’ve said all I could say, but I haven’t punched all I could punch.

I work with two guys. Each of them have similar outlooks on life as I do, so you know things can get pretty raw. We have all worked together for literally hundreds of hours and we are at a point where we still usually appreciate each other’s company and can make fun of customers using only eye contact or a shake of the head. But when one of us is off, rattled, negative, or even more sarcastic than usual, then things go to hell.

We talked about work today at work. We were talking with an old coworker, and he told us that he was bored at his cadillac new job, working at the North Face store in Vancouver. He texted us his apparent deadly boredom, while we three sat at the front till, slowly letting the minutes roll until we could go home and live our lives that work we work for. Our lives that work allows us to have. Another friend just emailed me and said that he wanted to quit work, because his boss was a different name for a specific female genitalia. No matter the job, no matter the pay, no matter how hot your coworkers are, work is never worth it.

There is the one in fifty that actually love what they do, and then the other forty-nine that have to make that person’s food, fold that person’s clothes, teach that person’s children, account that person’s money, do that person’s paper work, build that person’s home; only so that he or she have a chance at living life. And then we start to believe that work is only a bummer when it is a job that doesn’t require post-secondary. But even if you have perfect hours, get unreal pay, and somewhat like what you do, work is still work.

So I will move to Montreal, get a job that has absolutely nothing going for it, and wonder how and why I ever left the easiest, most enjoyable, and most relaxed job that ever existed. Then, and only then, will I have a true and pure hate for the idea of working to live, because I’ll be living the real life, and not just scamming off my parents.

I hate work more than anything, but I don’t believe in retirement. So, I guess I’m screwed.

When I was nine, in 1997, and the Roughriders lost to the Argonauts in the Grey Cup, I cried. We watched the game with a few other families at a big house in Pilot Butte, because they owned a projection screen TV. There were a few faces and plays I can remember from the game, but mostly I remember crying on the drive home.

I’ve watched too many alien movies lately.

I sat in the dentist chair on the 5th Floor of SIAST in Regina, while my sister picked at calculus buildups, d-cal something, plaque issues, orthodontic cement and probably a few popcorn kernel pieces. It felt like I was in an alien spaceship, with forty other specimens being scraped and tested, all in one big room, like a mass science experiment, as the experimenters spoke in a foreign, alien-like language. The research of the cavernous depths of a pit of gingivitis and periodontitis. I wondered how often this could be done to me in my sleep, and how often experimental technology could have been transfused into my body through my gingival mouth. All I learned is that if you brush once a day or less, never floss, and eat lots of Mini Eggs, you can still have healthy teeth, despite what my sister may say.

Pulling into Yorkton last night at 6pm, each street light had festive green mood lighting above it, and the first thing that came to mind, was that it was an alien defense mechanism developed by the Yorkton Space Agency, who cover up their actual identities by telling people that they are Shriners.

Hearing about Suzuki and Gore teaming up and I instantly think they are secretly on the classified government agency that is trying to ensure that our ozone is strong so that alien forces cannot penetrate it and kill us all. That is the real threat of global warming.

If you’ve ever questioned anything before, I can tell you right now, it is highly likely that the answer involves alien interaction of some sort. It is almost too obvious.