Category: Uncategorized

Jerms the Body /
Mr. Olson the Professor /
The Oldest Man I Know

The winner receives a blog devoted to their name. Although the prize may not be very good, and most people would likely rather not win, it is the prize I decided, and it is the prize that will be given. The 1111th comment, however, will indeed receive an actual prize, if that day ever comes.

Jeremy Alan Olson has been my brother for nearly 22 years. He is the one in the photo who isn’t a woman over forty, or a man with his hand on his hips. He is the one flipping you off. He has taught me about good music, tennis and hockey and ping-pong, told me to never smoke cigarettes, and later gave me my first RedMan chewing tobacco, taught me about humility and pride, coached me in football, was my counsellor at camp, and he called me obese for the first twelve years of my life. We were walking in downtown Toronto when I was maybe nine years old, and there was a delivery van with the name ‘Fat Angel Bistro’ on the side. He told me that this must be owned by me, and poked me in the stomach, although he didn’t even know what a bistro was, and had to ask dad. Our relationship has been based on insulting comedy, testicle hits and competition since then. I still regularly beat him in ping pong, crokinole, MarioKart and especially Super Baseball 1.000. The rivalry lives.

Big brothers always have the tendency to be assholes, and I likely hated Jeremy up until he left for boarding school in grade eleven, but these days he’s alright. Now, seeing him only a few times a year, I often wish that he didn’t live in Canada’s worst city and lived closer to wherever I am at the moment. He’s got a legitimate job as a science genius and worked hard for it, and I respect this a lot. Good blogs aren’t for feelings or sentimentality, but he’s an alright brother, taught me exactly how to be an alright brother, and is the greatest nearly thirty year-old that I know.

Last summer we came to Montreal to watch Rogers Cup tennis. After a perfect week of food, sports, music and walking, he told me that I should move to Montreal, date this girl, and go to hockey games. So I did. I guess he’s pretty wise after all.

Thanks Jerms. If I grow up to be as old as you, I hope to be half as cool, rich, bearded, level-headed and decent as yourself. Here’s to my oldest brother, the 1000th contributor to this fair forum. Feel free to slander the winner via my blog. If the 1111th comment is slander of Jerms, you get a double prize.

Love you, brother.

When I was in grade seven, a punk rock tour called SnoJam came through town for the fifth or sixth or seventh time. I don’t even remember who was on the bill, ask someone older, but it was big news.  Big news on a Tuesday night, and not all grade sevens get the privilege of weeknight shows, or the privilege of living in the city, so sneaking out would even be an option. So I didn’t go. That’s why I don’t remember who was on the bill. I was later left admiring the photos my brother took from the show of Davey Havok, and of Pete from Sick of it All, and I still remember these like I was there. But I wasn’t.

Later that year in art class we were learning how to paint old Chinese style flowers complete with a wise proverb. Mr. Ochitwa taught us how to use the brush naturally to make the flowers with watercolours, and how to write each letter of the English alphabet, Chinese style, so we could neatly write down our wisdom for the years. He gave us a list of ancient Chinese proverbs we could use, or he encouraged us to think of our own. I painted several flowers, all intertwined, with many thorns and painted the words, ‘Don’t be a prick in the roses.’ It was grade seven, I was different, really into Sick of it All, still angry, puberty-free, and the words seemed perfect for the project. I finished the painting, ran it by the peaceful and spiritual Mr. Ochitwa, but he wasn’t feeling it. He said something along the lines of how it didn’t flow with the general idea of serenity for the painting, or something wise like that. He was incredible. So I painted another, used a silly three-thousand year old Chinese Proverb, probably got a B- on it, and kept the other painting for myself.

Until yesterday, I hadn’t got to see Sick of it All. They’ve been touring for more years than I’ve been alive, and that still blows my mind. And although our education system has depleted to the point where people don’t know the shape of a circle, because anyone who knows the shape of a circle should know how to enjoy a circle pit, it was a good to finally see them. I still feel like I’m in grade 7, not only when I’m watching bands from my time spent then, or thinking all about the good times I had pre-armpit hair, but each and every day. The only difference now is that I can’t afford shows that I go to, whereas before I somehow could afford shows I couldn’t go to. I stood at the show with a heartburn that would rival a 50 year old man in a touring punk band, but I felt like I was twelve, what with all the middle-aged men in the crowd. My physical ailments make me feel half a century old. My music enjoyment and everything else makes me feel like I’m 14. I feel old, but I’m not. My body is confused. Just as much as my mind.

Michael Scott: “What do you call a buttload of lawyers driving off a cliff?”

Lawyer: “A good start. And I believe it’s ‘busload.’”

Michael Scott: “Yeah, a bunch of rich lawyers took the bus. [To Jan] Where’d you find this guy?”

I have been in a war since February. It is only now I realize why people told me to stay out of it. But I haven’t. I have been in an actual serious legal issue since a month after I moved here, and I brought it on myself. I have refrained from speaking about it on the internet for obvious reasons, and will continue to do that, until I write a book about it, finally exposing the world for the pile of shit that it is. If ever you have the choice to partake in the legal system in anyway, avoid it. For the good of your health, the world, your children, your time, your sanity. Avoid it.

The truth is obvious. The sooner we realize that we are all being passed around, used as ingredients in a recipe by the higher powers, the sooner we can make a play against it, and actually be the free people we think we are. I am inevitably going to come out from this entire situation more knowledgable than before, but at a definite cost.

I try to love people until I meet an actual lawyer. Scum of the earth.
I think I love children until I spend more than ten minutes with one.
I think I want a dog until I step in its shit.
I think I want to make a difference until I get there. I can’t even tell if I am doing the right thing anymore. When that happens, it is probably best to just bow out. But in this situation, I feel like that would do more harm than good.

Let’s see what happens. Here’s to hoping I live to tell the tale.

Every war waged, only kings emerge unscathed.
-Propagandhi, Name and Address Withheld

Over four years of being one of the internet’s most relevant web pages, there have been hundreds of comments from friends, the odd stranger, and the semi-often spam robot. We are nearing 1000 reader comments.

Blogging is a needy habit. I basically sit here and keep my eyes tied to the graph given by WordPress. Every climb, my triumphant days.  Every fall, my depression. Below twenty in a day constitutes for a depressing day. Above forty is acceptable. Above sixty is great. The day I had the most viewers, 138, was the day I wrote about a cat, and what I should name it. I have found that when I talk about things that have absolutely no worth in the world, like the names of cats, photos of football, and words about urinals, more people visit my site than ever before. My readership is very highbrow.

I’ve always wanted to post something and ask/demand that whoever read it would leave a comment, just to see who actually read it, not just skimmed it. Just like on exams in highschool when teachers would put something tricky in the instructions, like, ‘If you’ve read this, put a +1 in the top right corner of this page, and you will get 1 bonus mark!’ because usually no one read the instructions. I could make a good teacher after all.

The 1000th comment will receive a prize of my choice, at the time of my choice. I assure you, this is no small deal. You will be immortalized. The 1111th comment, a bit further down the road, will receive an actual prize of my choice, and by the time that rolls around, the prize might actually be ready.

If you’ve stuck with me, I congratulate you. It can only go up from here. We hope.

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.