Author: Nic Olson

I embedded an invisible gadget on my blog that allows me to see who is looking at my page, where they are from, how long they looked at it, how they found my page, how they left my page, what internet service provider, operating system and browser they were using, what resolution they looked with, what search engine best highlights my blog, and gives me a world map with the location of each view. A glorified hit counter.
All through the beauty of IP addresses. I think there is a website that shows you how to block your IP address, if you are creeped out that I am watching you. I actually can’t see who is looking, but I can see from which city, and I can make an educated guess as to whom is reading this from Brooklyn, NY. (just some lonely art student).

Most of the page views are from people using Google or Yahoo or Bing to look up things that I have jokingly posted about, like ‘The Meaning of Del Potro‘ or photos of Novak Djokovic (which I stole from someone else’s blog) or people wishing to learn about how to make ‘rice balls’. They think this blog is a credible source of any useful information, they come to it for less than five seconds and leave angry and disappointed.

For some reason I started to take this blog system a bit more serious. I have realized that a handful of people have used this medium to become famous, as with YouTube, Myspace or some nudey website, and thought that I might have a chance. With my nudes, that is. I have since withdrawn that hope, still write often, and use my blog as a hopeful home of sharing ideas, music and poor writing. I am still committed, just not expecting.

For a while I considered Monetizing my blog, which means adding content relevant advertisements that pay me every time someone browses them, or that is what I’ve understood. I considered it quite heavily. But selling out isn’t cool, just ask Green Day. My blog is pure and unadulterated.

Just thought you’d like to know how noble I am. Keep mindlessly viewing this blog. It brings up my morale and boosts self esteem. Make it your home page and force yourself to look at it daily. Then send me what your IP address is so I can make a note of it.

I bought a new winter coat today. My old one was OK, a bit small, and behind the trendy times by about five years, so I bought a crisp new one from my store for fifty percent what you would have paid for it, unless I gave you The Discount. This is the first full winter I have mentally committed to staying in Canada for, in a few years, so I decided a new addition to the winter wear family of mine was an alright idea. Plus my mom said she’d pay for it as a birthday present. Hells yeah.

I know nearly nothing about climate change. It seems to me that it was once called Global Warming until someone realized that half of the world is actually getting colder, and the climate is changing in more than one direction. I’ve heard people argue about climate change. Some people deny it’s existence, some people swear the Al Gore is God, but for this topic, I have no strong opinion. Sure I believe in climate change. Sure I make a slight conscious effort to avoid contributing to it, but I don’t talk about it everyday as if it were a pressing issue in my life, and maybe it is people like me that are killing the future by melting the polar ice caps and glaciers.

If I ever convince a girl to have kids with me, my kids are going to have a pretty ruined world to salvage, even more ruined than the one my parents gave me. But even with that baby-daddy mentality, I’m not sold. It is hard for me to believe that a blog, or 11,000 of them even could change people’s minds enough to give future people a world that isn’t frozen, or toasted, or covered in water, or whatever the apocalypse says will happen. But I guess we can try.

Today I saw a commercial, which probably cost a few million of our dollars to produce, about elder abuse. Now, I am sure that elder abuse is a real problem, and it is actually quite depressing to think about, but when was the last time you remember a federal government ad about climate change? Probably Paul Martin’s One Tonne Challenge via Rick Mercer. And to think that no one liked the Liberals. Mother Earth did. Jean Chretien and was Mother Earth’s mistress.

I joined the Blog Action Day list because there are probably millions of ineffective blogs in the world, and this list is a few people that hope theirs can make a difference.
Take the bus. Cut the lawn with scissors. Snowblow the driveway with a shovel. Walk.

Good luck. The future is just flying by the seed of my pants. Our kids are screwed.

This summer a friend was packing her things into boxes to move from her one bedroom apartment back into her parents home. She likes to read and I would consider her one of most well read people I know. She had a huge bookshelf of books and invited me to sift through a few of her extras that she didn’t think she wanted any longer. I took maybe ten books, mostly titles I’ve never heard of by some authors I have heard of. Orwell, Dostoyevsky, David Suzuki, Mowat, Tolstoy and others. I just grabbed stuff to make me look smart and studious, mostly. We sat around eating chicken fingers and blueberries talking about these books and our drunk friends in the room and next door.

I took ‘Keep the Aspidistra Flying’ by Orwell. I read it this past month and it became my favourite piece of fiction of all time.

Tonight I picked up a book that I don’t even remember taking by an author named J. Krishnamurti, who was born in India, so he’s obviously a genius. It is called ‘Think on These Things’. Non-Fiction. It is a man answering questions from students, presumably in a university setting. His ideas on education, knowledge, intelligence, freedom, love, life, ambitions, society, are the totally different from anything I’ve ever heard. I don’t even know what to say, really, so I’ll just give you a short quote from what I’ve read. It might be ramblings of a hippie, but he’s saying what I’m thinking, and every sentence is smart.

“Surely, education has no meaning unless it helps you to understand the vast expanse of life with all its subtleties, with its extraordinary beauty, its sorrows and joys. You may earn degrees, you may have a series of letters after your name and land a very good job; but then what? What is the point of it all if in the process your mind becomes dull, weary, stupid? So, while you are young, must you not seek to find what life is all about? And is it not the true function of education to cultivate in you the intelligence which will try to find the answer to all these problems? Do you know what intelligence is? It is the capacity, surely, to think freely, without fear, without a formula, so that you begin to discover for yourself what is real, what is true, but if you are frightened you will never be intelligent. Any form of ambition, spiritual or mundane, breeds anxiety, fear; therefore ambition does not help to bring about a mind that is clear, simple, direct and hence intelligent.”

So, thanks Anna. Best night of chicken fingers in my life.

This is my last week’s To Do list written on the ‘Notes’ application on my iPod.

– Corb Tix
– Library
– Write
– Character Outlines
– Find a boy who will kiss me, I am still trying to find who I am.

Now, I didn’t write the last one. At least, I didn’t write it in my right mind. I might have been really tired one day when the honesty came seeping out of me. But I don’t think that happened. For some reason, when I read this I read it in the voice of Ricky Tiefenbach, because it reads like something he would say to me. But whomever wrote it, has got me pegged. The latter part anyways…

It has been snowing recently. When the snow first appeared, I let a large smile slip as I pretended to curse the early winter like everyone else. While I do think that it is off when the yellow leaves fall onto already frozen earth and already whitened grass, I enjoy the winter, possibly because I missed four months of it last year ‘trying to find who I am’ in a foreign country. I recently found out a part of who I am, the fact that I do indeed like winter. I’m finding.
In the past year I found out that I am briefs and not boxers. I have been slowly finding out that I can listen to the music I want without worrying about getting hassled by anyone. I found out that I can make decisions if I am making decisions about things I want to. I am finding out more of what I dislike more than what I like, so eventually that’s got to leave me somewhere.
But there are still a few major things that I am yet to find out, or still finding out. And I guess that is why I am here. And I guess that is why I am doing what I am doing.

Oh, and keep an eye out for a boy that will kiss me, that ought to help things.

I haven’t purchased used clothing in a while. Maybe my style has somewhat matured since my days of only wearing ripped up blue work pants and light jackets of many colours. I also work at a clothing store where new clothes cost very little for employees. I had a bag of old jeans and tees I once wore often but where none the more, and I took this bag to the Salvation Army. I decided to take a closer look at the products in the old store and saw little of real value. Old work jackets with the names Hank and Gerry on them. Suit coats of heavy and dusty tweed sulking over the black plastic hangers, the same hangers that uphold the overpriced brandname non-musty clothing of my store. I found a pair of jeans that looked worn enough to be cheap but new enough to be worn by me. I tried them on as I do with every $5.99 pair of jeans that I like. They fit well; not too tight, nor too long, nor very expensive. I purchased them from an exuberant cashier and thereafter drove to soccer practice.

I tried the jeans on later that night, to wear them in and get my own personal leg musk woven into their threads. I was sitting on the couch reading when my inner thigh felt a burning. I repositioned my crossed legs off of the ottoman and spread them apart, feet on the ground. The burning persisted. I stripped down and finished the chapter in my bikini briefs. I tried to wear them to work the next day but the burning continued and while standing near the door, a draft caught me off guard when I noticed two large worn spots in the crotch area. I hope the jeans previous owner did not have issues with rashes so strong that they burned out the crotches of pants faster than freshman chlamydia. I have opted to wash these jeans before further use.

Not always, but often, I worry about catching a disease from a toilet seat. When I have a persistent itch, I hope that taking that restroom break at Walkers in Saskatoon didn’t permanently give me an itch. That is worrisome business. I was never worried about getting a worm or parasite as much as I was worried getting VD from the soap dispenser at the public swimming pool, and although acquiring a parasite from drinking straight pond water in a city village in India might be more dangerous than having my junk an inch away from stained mildewed porcelain.

I have also discovered a new body wide itch I get when I am performing some sort of physical activity. After I wash my face and skateboard to work, I get an uncomfortable itch of my face and body, and especially head of hair. It feels like what I’d think an allergy would be like, although I don’t believe allergies exist I think allergies are just an overactive Complaining Gland. The irritation subsides quickly after I stop complaining and think about something else.

The itches have subsided, the burning has stopped. The life of a bachelor.

The only thing that Canada has that I need, began today. This is the first winter in three years that I am planning on being in Canada for an entire NHL season. Here it is.

Canadiens:
– the new guys under 6feet are truly exciting to watch. I was skeptical, but it looks promising.
– a super hungover Carey Price could probably skate a lap around the rink in his full gear faster than Hal Gill could on his best day. And Price’s hands are better too.
– Carey Price is going to prove the entire hockey media wrong with a GAA of .999%.
– Spacek really looks like Dan Ackroyd.

NHL:
– after the Penguins won the Cup, on that same day I said that I thought Washington was going to win it this year, that is, if Montreal somehow doesn’t.
– Sundin retired. Good news. Until he pulls a Forsberg and decides to play for New York in March.
– Calgary’s retro jerseys are perfect.
– TSN has only gotten worse. Laviolette and McTavish? Just keep picking up the garbage I guess. Their analysts can analyze my hate for their segments and stolen music.
– Bettman is the death of hockey.
– Komisarek has no soul.

I had to let that all out. No one cares what I think about anything hockey, but it is pretty much all I’ve got going for me right now.

I just got up to get a glass of water. I noticed four of the five clocks around me and one of them said 11:11. I put some lotion on my tattoo and I saw the microwave clock was 11:11 while the first clock flipped to 11:12. I sat back down to the computer and the iMac said it was 11:11, while the first clock blinked to 11:13 and the second to 11:12. I make a wish when I see it is 11:11. But you can’t make more than one wish at one 11:11, so you’ve got to go with the first one you made. I wished pretty seriously this time, almost yelling in my head to the wishing gods that grant 11:11 wishes, wish chips, wishing star wishes and the like.

I had the day off. I didn’t do really anything. I had the plan for a productive day, but that didn’t really turn out. I have been sitting in front of the blank computer screen for the past hour listening to new jams waiting for something to come from the back of my head and out of my fingers to show up as black pixels on any white canvas I had, to prove to myself that the day wasn’t an entire waste. I originally wanted to contribute to my book, but I usually like to have semi-decipherable thoughts on that canvas, and use this one for other ideas. Like this one. I laid on my back for a total of five hours today, reading, watching, thinking, listening, eating and not much intellectual activity occurred. I tried to brainstorm writing ideas, ways to change the world, potential career paths, friends to call up, places to travel, ways to spend the money I don’t have, and I came up empty on all of those. Days off can be brutal.

When we are in a mental state where we do not want to be, looking to where we could go seems even more foreboding than it does when we are where we want to be. All that is visible is the pile of self loathing and pity that you yourself lay in. And what can you do about this? Drink? Schmooze? Rage? Nothing, is the only thing I can seem to do. And nothing I will do.

But I am trying to live a more optimistic and positive life. So this is it: I had a dream that Scotty Bowman and I went skateboarding together and he ate it hard. That was cool. The future could he bright of I allow myself to get there. Hockey starts tomorrow.

If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be? This blog introduction is so cliche it hurts.

Someone asked this question to a few friends and I while we were on a short road trip. I remember that everyone answered either poverty, war, or cancer. Except me. I was tired of their uninspired mainstream media answers, so I said I would change that feeling you get when you wear your socks to bed. When your leg and foot hair hurts. The same feeling that you get from painful hat hair, wearing long johns for too long, or in the female perspective when your head hurts from a long day of pony tailing. That was my answer, and I stuck to it. The creator of the question was not impressed that I didn’t want to change poverty, war or cancer, but that I wanted to change something so frivolous like a worldwide human annoyance: hair pain caused by long worn items of clothing. And that was it.

Rethinking the question a few years later and little has changed. I still hate that feeling you get when you wear your socks to bed. Where your ankle strands are screaming out for freedom from a cotton elastic prison. I would change it if I could, and it still might be the first thing I would ever change. I would be known for freeing the ringlets from oppression. My name would forever be known for providing the liberty of the hair follicle.
I never had the mental capacity to understand poverty, war or cancer. Usually when these topics are discussed, it is about how badly we need to rid the world of them. These three terrible murderers that the world has had since the beginning of man and that we would be perfect without. I think understand all this, but they have become mere concepts and little else. A world free of poverty or war isn’t even slightly viable if money still exists, and the elimination of cancer could happen even without a number with nine zeros behind it.

If I could change one thing in the world, after chronic hair pain, I would abolish money of any kind. I would rid the world of even the concept of money. I remember in elementary school, I once proposed this idea to a friend, a world without money. And he said it was impossible. He said that a world without money was not plausible where we are today. I disagreed and afterward likely went to the tire maze and peed in the murky puddles beneath. I was an intellectual.
I still hold true to this opinion. The abolition of money is no crazier a thought than the abolition of poverty or war, and would take a lot less research than the abolition of cancer. Eradicating poverty or war is an impossible thought if you consider the greed of mankind. Eradicating the idea of money would mean ridding the world of greed, and therefore poverty and war. Simple.

If I lived in village where every family provided one service or one product and these were given away freely, not traded for other products or services, but given away without question, it would work out ideally. If no one decided that providing their service was more difficult than that of their neighbours, and people got what they needed, content with no more and no less, it would work out. In theory.

I almost believe that if you disagree with me, you are a slave to the money-god. Tonight I finished the book ‘Keep the Aspidistra Flying’ by George Orwell. Protagonist Gordon Comstock constantly talked about money worship, to a point where it was a strain to read the conversations he had with friends. He was a lower class man by choice, working in a cheap book store when he could just as easily have worked for an advertising agency and write advertisements for the man. His wealthier friend was a proclaimed socialist, but Gordon didn’t believe in socialism. He just didn’t want to live for money. He lived a wretched two years in semi-poverty where he constantly spoke of how he could never sell out to the money-god but attributed all his woes to his entire lack of money. Then, he knocked up his girlfriend, got married, got the advertising job to support his new family, and they lived happily ever after…
The entire time I knew Gordon Comstock, I related with him deeply. I felt as though the story was written about my mind half of the time. How he described his job, his cynicism and his overall mindset. I guess I should get a real job. Thanks George. But Gordon never did propose a world without money.

Regardless of how George Orwell’s fictional British character’s life panned out, I firmly believe that life would be perfect if the concept of money had never entered the world. Sarcasm aside, I plead with you to prove me wrong. Sarcasm not aside, I would love to believe that money was actually important, it would give my conscience a real break. Prove my naivety so that I can understand the truths of this world and get a job at an advertising firm, writing jingles for breakfast crisps.

Open forum.

Cause I can’t stand feeling nothing
I can’t stand feeling old
I can’t stand standing for nothing
When standing up is all I know

So why waste another day
Turning our backs and walking away
I want to feel everything
And I want to grow in every way