Balls of Rice

Author: Nic Olson

  • Hazardous to Yourself

    Just read an article on clogging arteries

    Renewed subscription to my health food magazine
    Don’t wanna die young, I’m paranoid about the future
    I’m only 19 and I’m a health food connoisseur

    Right now I’m sitting in a room, I could be lying in a box if I don’t eat right

    Some people tell me what is good and bad for me
    I don’t trust anyone but health food magazine
    Mom makes me food that sucks and I refuse to eat
    Lock myself in my room, lose thirty pounds a week

    Right now I’m sitting in a room, I could be lying in a box if I don’t eat right

    Stay locked in your room all day, your warped imagination
    Stacks of books are piled high, with useless information
    Let your anxiety tell you what is good and bad for you
    Let paranoia tell you what to do
    You always say that it’s a hazard to your health
    Why don’t you put your fucking fear back on the shelf
    Because the only hazard I see, the only hazard I see
    The only hazard I see is yourself

    Signed a petition to get smokers out of here
    I got the figures on second hand smoke death rate every year
    Can’t go outside my room, you know I just can’t leave
    I’m too afraid that I will get some weird disease

    Right now I’m sitting in a room, I could be lying in a box if I don’t eat right

    My doctor tells me I’m a hypochondriac
    He claims he can help me, but he’d stab me in the back
    Been all around my room, there’s nothing good to eat
    Health magazine with ketchup is my new delicacy

    Right now I’m sitting in a room, I could be lying in a box if I don’t eat right

    Stay locked in your room all day, your warped imagination
    Stacks of books are piled high, with useless information
    Let your anxiety tell you what is good and bad for you
    Let paranoia tell you what to do
    You always say that it’s a hazard to your health
    Why don’t you put your fucking fear back on the shelf
    Because the only hazard I see is what you’re doing to your health
    The only hazard I see, the only hazard I see
    The only hazard I see is yourself


    No, I didn’t write this in Grade Two. This one might have been Grade Four…. No Use For a Name. They are the ones that wrote it, back in the days of glorious punk rifts and catchy pop choruses. Before the ‘chuggalugs’ were popular. This song in four verses, four bridges and two choruses, explains my feelings in the past seven months. Forgive the swears, no censorship here. 
    The only thing I don’t agree with in this song is the part about my mom making sucky food. We all know that Laura hasn’t cooked a sucky meal since I’ve been alive, and quite likely years and years before that. The only sucky thing my mom has done that is sucky is her first three attempts at children….

    I can’t even start to explain my hate for the paranoia that is pushed on us everyday. If we believed half of the things we read or heard about on the news, we’d all be dead anyways. It is a basic fact that everything you hear on the news is 99% crap and 1% toilet. Think about it.

    The only thing in North America that is dangerous or hazardous to us in anyway, is ourselves. If you forget to wash your apple before you eat it, I promise you’ll be ok. If you brush your teeth once a week, I promise, your teeth will still stay white. If you don’t have soap to wash your hands after dropping a giant d, you’re food won’t be contaminated. Suck it up. Don’t listen to anyone. Don’t wash your hands.

  • Airsacs

    My parents have been cleaning out our basement full of crap in hopes of selling our house someday and found piles of papers, posters and report cards that have been stockpiled for the past twenty years, for their sentimental value only.  I wrote this poem in Grade 2.


    Someone Told Me I am What I Eat

    I am what I eat! 
    Now isn’t that neat!
    But can it be
    That corn is me?
    Is a potato my heart?
    My lungs, tacos?
    Are my intestines made of seaweed?
    My shins from steak?
    Apples cannot make an airsac.
    Or any part of me I fear.
    Can someone solve this mystery
    Of how my food turns into me?

    Apparently I’ve been a writer for many years. The first time I read this, I was quite unsure whether or not I wrote it, because it was so good. Shel Silverstein good.

    I’ve been writing hits since I was in Ms. Nasty Witch’s class in second grade. Which makes me think, I am the classic English student. I work construction, I live with my parents, I am writing a book, I often share my feelings with myself via blog, I don’t shower very often. All classic signs that I’m a genuine writer. So what is this Engineering thing I’ve been considering? I’m a writer, plain and simple. A crude, boring, sarcastic writer, who actually doesn’t like writing, except for its quality of telling people how little I like certain things.

    The two hits of my writing career, one about tacos, potatoes and steak, the other…. yet to come.

  • Two Days After the Best Day Ever

    I got in my car from work, and I had icicles on my moustache. That’s right, moustache. Even though the day of work wasn’t good, and my face was colder than a she-devil’s teat, that face-cicle made up for it.

    Be sure to read my previous blog entitled, ‘Best Day Ever‘. It probably was just that, the best day ever. Regina was ridiculous. I spent a good three hours driving up Albert, as well as running in and out of traffic high-fiving and hugging hundreds of strangers. If you could get diseases from hugging, I’d have a few of the grossest ones. My hand also bruised from all the high-fives that were spread around. Rider Pride baby.
    I like winter.

  • Best Day Ever

  • The Many Kinds of Sleep

    It is 7:30pm and I am tired. Not that kind of tired where you can sit and watch TV and be content, tired. It is the kind of tired that when you want to watch TV, it is hard, because your eyes are heavy and when your team gets scored on, you are that much more irritable.  I am right around there. I’ve only been awake for thirteen and a half hours, but eight of those hours included intense physical labour and the remaining included eating rice and drinking tea. I fell asleep during a safety orientation video today at work, so maybe my lack of knowledge in safe work will lose me a finger or something cool.

    I was reading an article from the CBC website about the thousands of deaths in Bangladesh caused by a cyclone that tore through recently. In between paragraphs about a Toronto based volunteer group and the hundreds of thousands of hectares of homes destroyed, is a nice advertisement for DirectBuy, where you can buy new house and home products online for cheap.  A year ago I likely would have just glanced at the headline of this article and went off on my merry way, all heavy eyed and drowsy.  But now, since I have met people from Bangladesh, it is different. Ever since the conflicts in Burma/Myanmar began, I have kept an eye out on the news, but only for the reason that I have made five good friends from that country. Otherwise I would have tossed the news aside like a Hindu would a ham sandwich. 
    What am I to do about the situations in these foreign countries that border the place I called home early this year? I can go lay in my bed and drop my heavy eyes and not think about it again. I can go to DirectBuy online and buy myself some new kitchen cabinets. I could put what little money I have saved up for my own pleasure towards helping out three people far far away. Or I can sit here. Indirectly writing about my hate for the Western culture while I contemplate buying a new iPod, camera, PS3. All the while some of my personal friends might not even be able to find mud and bamboo for their homes.
    I guess I’ll just take care of one thing at a time. Get a good night sleep.

  • Life Advice: Listen to Tim

    I’m one of them. I can’t be. I hate that person. They keep everyone waiting for weeks, and all the people want is a piece of mind, or an opinion. How hard is that to give? But now I am just like you. I haven’t updated my blog in more than a week. Believe it or not, I have been supremely busy lately. Work, then hangouts, then supper, then hockey to watch on TV. I have literally been doing the limbo around my room in my underwear. Uncomfortable for me and for you.

    You may have noticed the new look. I figured it was time for a change. Everyone had that same layout, so I thought I’d Yang to everyone else’s Yin. It is just like me. Simple, a bit bland, doesn’t say a whole lot, smells like pee. A perfect description.

    I have been doing a lot of India related activities lately. Watching old videos, telling stories, wearing scarfs, eating rice, drinking tea, getting rowdy, filling out. All that stuff. I miss the place, and am excited to go back soon. I need a haircut, and my Hindi hairdresser is calling me.

    And to finish off the day, a mildly inappropriate link that, if you aren’t too uptight, will make you laugh. LMAO even. It is about bicycles!

  • Oh Shirt! My Ash has been dammed by a firetruck and a female dog.

    For much too long have I avoided this subject. Probably because 90% of the people that read this blog are over the age of forty. The other ten percent are unpopular young adults. Like me.

    I grew up/am growing up in a family that doesn’t use angry cursing language worse than ‘Rats!’ and ‘Phooey!’. One time I thought my dad swore, but I was only 8 years old and I thought ‘wuss’ was considered cussing. Apparently not. Since I am the age of the majority and I’m old enough to start my own family(…..) I figure I’m old enough to have my own stance on these words that have been inappropriately deemed inappropriate by our society.

    For numerous reasons, I just don’t understand the taboo that is the swear. If you are basing your decisions on the Bible (and God knows you should. Get it?) then the only swears you should not use are the ones using ‘the Lords name in vain’. I don’t think there is a verse in Deuteronomy that lists all the dirtiest English words that can’t be in a PG movie. Most of the words considered rude were ones openly used in the King James Version of the Bible. And even in songs sung in the church….. (omg!)

    I don’t know any other languages. I know about four phrases in French. (C’est la but! = It’s a goal!) and a few phrases in Mizo (Ting pui edo em? = Would you like some tea?) and like four words in Greek, but from my very limited experience, English is a wordy language. So many words for so many things, and my vocabulary obviously doesn’t surpass much besides the dreaded descriptive English words like ‘beautiful’ and ‘said’. I do know that there is like nine words for any single thing you want to describe. Out of those nine, one usually works the best. Why then, should we go throw out five or six of our best and most descriptive words in the language because some 17th Century English monk said that his porridge tasted like horse-feces and the Pope didn’t like it and cut off his head?

    Tomorrow, boldly say a swear to yourself and then quietly laugh about it alone. Read a swear graffiti-ed on the wall, and give it a thumbs up. Flip yourself off in the mirror, then flex your pecs.

    I went through this whole blog without even throwing in a swear. I did this because I know lots of people don’t appreciate these words, without even understanding why.
    All the best movies out there have about nine thousand F-bombs. Does that make it bad writing? Martin Scorsese would say no.
    Or maybe he’d say F no.

  • Waiting for something better.

    Pretty much every time I see someone, they ask what I’m doing ‘these days’. Everything is just as usual, I’m being young and handsome, with a few new things going on. I listen to a lot more music, a lot louder than before, to muffle out the frantic wedding plans being spilled out from the kitchen that torture my ears so. If my music doesn’t cut it, I go downstairs put in earplugs, turn on the stereo, the TV and the treadmill. When I still hear the neck-wrenching words through the floor, I usually leave the house, try and spend as little money as possible to balance out the hundreds of thousands that will be spent in June.
    But for real, I love weddings.

    I am working construction with PCL in Regina, doing labour. Breaking things, laying concrete, framing the roof, ripping out drywall, being the company bee-otch. I have learned many new things and enjoy it there. It beats school and beats having no money. But it doesn’t beat sleeping. Or eating pie.

    I am starting a new soccer team. CCFC, but we are Co-ed. I’ve never played with girls before, so it should be interesting…. Come watch, games on Fridays and Saturdays. ‘Cause you’ve got nothing better to do, let’s be honest.

    My first weekend as a 19 year old was one of the best I’ve had. Besides the obvious getting rowdy at all the bars and dropping numerous G’s at the casino, I basically just hung out. I got to hang out with who I needed to, when I needed to. I got to see the best band in Canada play the best set I’ve ever seen, and I loved it. I drove home Sunday night smiling and fist pumping just because I felt good. It sure was a beauty.

    Other than this, like everyone, I’m working for the weekend. Waiting for the Friday. Chillin’ hard with some bros and saving up my cash for something better. I’m excited for something better.

  • 19? Let’s retire now.

    Nineteen years have passed, and all I’ve done so far in my life is work and go to school. I need to do something about that. The only positive attribute I have had in my past years was my youth, and it is quickly slipping away from me. Soon all my positives will be no longer, and you will only see my negatives. Which are still quite admirable traits, if we are going to be frank about it.

    Eighteen years old was a good year. I got lots done. I went to university, India, Yellowknife, Vancouver, worked a few jobs. It was busy.

    Nineteen will hopefully give me this: India again, more work (bummer), university again, a wife, casino winnings, a beard, a pony tail, a bicep. Those are my goals for my twentieth year of life. We’ll see how it goes.

    What better birthday present could there have been? Carey Price. That’s all I can say.

  • The Book of the Year

    I have likely read more this year than I ever have in my life, which is, I’m guessing over ten books in one year. Sure that is less than the average illiterate eight-year-old, but for this guy, it was good. Titles in italics. Authors in parenthesis. Here goes.

    Books that weren’t as good as everyone said they were: Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom). The Case for Christ (Lee Strobel).

    Books that were a good read: Breaking Back (James Blake). Atheist Universe (David Mills). I forget the title and author, but it was an autobiography of a dude from Manipur, India.

    Books that I didn’t have to read to know they sucked: Harry Potter (some drugged up British hippy). Anything on Oprah’s Book Club (chummmmmp)

    Book of the Year: Gandhi: An Autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth. (Mohandas Gandhi) I have yet to finish this book. I am actually less than 100 pages in, but so far it is great. I have never been so excited about a book before. So excited, in fact, that I bought it. The guy is smart. Likely the smartest guy in the past… ever. His words are so filled with wisdom, that each chapter, which are usually only two or three pages long, gives me something that I get to think about for the rest of the day. I really recommend it.

    Book of Next Year?: I’m working on it. I’m about thirty pages in. It’s hard.