I put a lot of work into the garden in front of my house. Mostly by sitting on the front step every now and then, and brushing my fingernails and toe nails into the abyss of clovers and knee high grass of our 4’x4′ front yard. But conquering my weighty toenails were these flowers. Summer days can be nice, even if you work two jobs in one day.
I guess.
A lot of people say they couldn’t work at a call centre. That they couldn’t handle rude homeowners, the apparent constant yelling, the dry, dark air of a downtown office setting, and sitting aware of the clock for nine hours of your eight hour shift. I guess I understand. But the priceless responses by right wing radicals in Tennessee, Mississippi and the lisping liberals in California, and the light chuckles are well worth it. Four months ago when I told my Indian friend that I got a call centre job, he told me to get out, unless I was going to make it a career. I wasn’t going to make it a career, and currently am working on going to court with my first call centre for being a sketchy, mafia run, illegitimate, cheating business. The hearing is on July 29th. I swear to tell the whole truth. And nothing but.
These days I call people in North America, calling from the RCMP, from Marist College, calling from Harris Decima, conducting incredibly interesting surveys about nothing incredibly interesting. We perform surveys for wealthy institutions who need affirmation that they are loved by the moronic public, or for wealthy institutions who need statistics for random pathetic graduate studies. The Canadian Associate of Petroleum Producers used our services to show the naivety and neutrality of the public. Also see their advertisements being shown during World Cup soccer matches, sure to make the oil deep in your skin seep out and cry for justice.
Would you rather be a rock star, a professional athlete, the president of the USA, or an actor? Do you believe you married the right person? And the final question, after a ten minute conversation with the person, Are you male or female? Many Americans don’t know from which country their country gained independence from, but they sure know they like ribs at their 4th of July BBQs. Fat English Ribs.
There are thousands of widowed retirees out there, just waiting to have a nice conversation with a young professional and pour their opinions into the insensitive ears of human survey robots. The Old People Hotline, youth willing to talk to the experienced, for only $11/hour. Just performing my civic duty.
If you haven’t noticed yet, when an 1-800 number shows up on the caller ID, it will ring again and again if you don’t pick up and say a polite ‘No thanks.’ Or all you have to do is to answer a few light questions, probably equaling the intelligence of the sum of your conversations for the entire day. It is just a lonely agent like me, wishing someone would answer the phone so the last seven hours of the shift go by faster than 2 to every 1 seconds.
Sometimes when I’m trying to think I listen to music and perform meaningless tasks. Cook. Stare at the wall. Do dishes. Play Dr. Mario. Clean my room. Watch soap operas during commercials between soccer games. Yesterday I chose music and staring at the wall. Alvin Youngblood Hart is the man, Big Mama’s Door is the album, the empty wall across from my bed is the wall.
My computer beside me on my dusty bed, played through iTunes alphabetically, and after Alvin finished knocking on Big Mama’s Door, it was Andre’s Last Chance. Instantly I was transported to several scenes of my youth: watching shows at the Buffalo Lounge, covers of ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’, skateboarding on the driveway, the computer lab in grade seven. My first website was a school project. I was in grade seven, and the website’s purpose was to highlight new music, and concerts coming to Regina and area, which with 341 Productions operating out of my basement were usually $3 shows put on at the Buffalo Lounge. It was a Geocities page, designed on Microsoft Frontpage, and it wasn’t half bad. Each time you loaded the music page Ichthyology from Andre’s Last Chance would play. I had the shirt too. Sadly, Geocities doesn’t exist any longer, or I’d still be using that URL as opposed to this one.
If I could I would go back to that computer room in grade seven and tell myself to learn to love something. Learn to do something. Learn something. Gain a talent. Or else you’ll end up staring at a wall on a Friday night dreading your fifth first day of work this month in the morning. Grade seven is when it all begins, but in Career Education class I didn’t believe them. Rightfully so. If I could go back to that driveway with the quarter pipe I would tell the smaller me to keep skateboarding, don’t wait until you are 21 to learn to heelflip. If I could go back to the Buffalo Lounge of old I would tell myself to go to bed early and get ready to wash cars tomorrow. Because the past nine summers passed faster than 88 miles per hour. Time travels.
But life is good. And staring at that wall isn’t going to answer any of my questions.
The World Cup of Football is like the Olympics, but relevant. I could venture to say that every nation in the world has a soccer team, but not every nation in the world has a luge team (and if they do they don’t want to use Vancouver’s track, ask Georgia), not every nation in the world has a bobsleigh team (ask Jamaica), not every nation has a curling team, not every nation in the world has a Greco-Roman style wrestling team. But the World Cup, with football being the world’s most popular game, has relevance to the populace of the entire world.
I mean, chess, bridge, tug of war, bandy (apparently the fastest game on ice?), korfball, ballroom dancing, wushu, and lifesaving are all pertinent and make complete sense as potential Olympic sports, and the ever popular sports of current rotation in the Olympics such as pole vault and hammer throw, are obviously as popular worldwide as soccer, and it makes me understand why the Olympics are so important to the unity and commerciality of the world. But overwhelming sarcasm aside, the Olympics are nothing compared to what is easily the greatest sporting event that occurs every four years, the World Cup.
The idea of being devoted to a country just because you were fortunate/unfortunate enough to be birthed within its imaginary frontiers still confuses me. Being proud of culture, of natural beauty, of shared pastimes makes complete sense, but when these are lassoed together with the rope of institutionalism and turned into a certain patriotism, then that somewhat sensible pride loses all meaning. It discourages unity. Borders don’t make sense, and cheering for borders makes even less.
Patriotism contemplates the opposite of a common brotherhood.
-Mark Twain
But I know that in super events like these, the cheering isn’t for the borders, or the governments, or their policies. It isn’t for the twenty ‘leaders’ meeting in Toronto in a few days, it isn’t for the flags and their symbolic colours, it is for the beautiful game, the real Olympics, the brilliant strikes, and the magnificent saves. The cheering is for the time watching with friends, and the time where we can forget about the names of the nations we play under and the border tensions they create.
It is the beautiful game. The only borders we need worry about are the sidelines, the endlines and the 18 yard box.
I have been relying on the words of other writers, philosophers, intellectuals and musicians a lot lately, because my recent ability to display eloquence has been non-existent, and my mind has produced no ideas worth sharing that are my own, or are fresh or relevant.
Any experiment of interest in life will be carried out at your own expense. Mark it, well…
I watched The Libertine yesterday. A Johnny Depp film that I’ve been meaning to watch for the past five years. I felt that it was one of his finest performances, with a script that was actually interesting, considering it was set in 17th century Britain, which I could care less about. Johnny Depp was The Earl of Rochester named John Wilmot, who died of syphilis at the age of 33. Every man’s dream. These are some of his words.
I do not mean to upset people, Alcock, but I have to speak my mind because what is in my mind is always more interesting that what is happening in the world outside my mind…
All men would be cowards if they only had the courage.
John Malkovich as King Charles II said:
Anyone can oppose, it is fun to be against things. But there’s a time when you have to start being for things as well.
And probably the most profound, Rainn Wilson as Robert Fishman in The Rocker.
I tried growing up, OK, for twenty years. I tried it. I hated every moment of it. I’m not going back to that.
I’m not sure if it is because of exhaustion due to my body eating itself away, complete submission to the will of the world, an advanced form of slothfulness, or just a five month long writers block, but the creative part of my brain was the first to go in the wet Quebec air. Maybe my brain is waiting to unleash something ferocious. Either that or it is turning into porridge in my skull. At least I’ll have breakfast for next week..
The only way to enjoy a Stanley Cup is to do it sitting alone, hands covering your face, screaming at refs and missed chances.
Dallas beats Buffalo in ’99, when I was 11. Late summer night, kept awake by my hatred for Hasek and his Sabres. Hull scores a controversial overtime goal.
Pittsburgh beats Detroit in ’09. Doug was sleeping on the hotel bed, and I scraped my face and plugged my ears to see the vision come true.
This year. It happens again. The only thing better than watching my own team win, is watching the Philadelphia Flyers lose.
Relief.
Sports blow my mind.
I quit my job. After four hours. And I didn’t even do anything while I was there. I started getting flashbacks to my first call centre job, a job I didn’t mind doing, until I realized that I was ruining lives, endorsing liars and indirectly pushing drugs. I tried pretty hard to convince myself that this call centre would be different, although the product was the same as before, I just hoped for the sake of a paycheque that it would be different.
Like a fool I already had planned where my money would be spent; mostly groceries and Dairy Queen, but with dreams of skateboards, new shoes, my savings account, debt, and a trip home. All dashed by an idealistic moron. But I can’t even tell if I’m too weak or too strong. My values: too strict or just generally misguided.
In an e-mail my dad alliterated to me that instead of experiencing the ‘penurial pits of pathetic paid pastimes’ I should find something that is productive, for me or others. I didn’t know what penurial meant, so I looked it up, and I am still not sure if the word actually exists, but penurious does; poverty stricken or destitute. So I found something to keep me temporarily productive. Dr Mario.
But like a genius, I still have two jobs. Long story short, I didn’t call to quit the second job, and as far as I know, it is still there. In my head I ran through how the phone call would go when I called and quit the car wash job.
“Hey Mariano, how are you? Hey, sorry I won’t be able to make it to the Car Wash training on Wednesday, or to work the next weeks. Yeah, I know, I’m really sorry. Yeah. Well, what happened was, I am actually going to move back west because my dog is really sick, and I need to go see him before he dies. Yeah. Yeah, we have a really close relationship. Yeah. Dog STDs. Have you heard of Canine Gonorrhea? It exists. There were a lot of lady dogs around our place, and he was just in the prime of his life for getting tail and meeting bitches. Yeah. Well thanks anyway. I hope your new concept carwash goes really well. I wish I could wash cars in my speedo with you guys, but I can’t. Alright. Thanks again. Take care Mariano.”
And I’d fabricate an intricate number of lies to make me look less of a doucher. I ran through this phone call in my head so many times that I can’t remember if I actually had the conversation or not, so I think I still have the job, and I can be productive again. If productive means making minimum wage by washing cars in a park-ade. I often ask myself how much longer it will be until I find myself not laughing at my unfortunate situations and actually doing something about them. Maybe when I beat Dr Mario. Give it a few years.
My days of paralyzing self pity through an agonizingly enjoyable long term of unemployment are over. At possibly the worst time of year, with the summer heat and the endless hours of World Cup Soccer, I have found employment. No longer do I have the chance to sit on my roommate’s couch watching the National Spelling Bee guiltily chuckling at the luckless seventh graders who can’t even spell words with Greek to Latin to Greek to English origins. No longer will I need to dig through the kitchen trashcan in search of half loaves of bread thrown out by my roommate. But I probably still will. And no longer am I able to enjoy myself in freedom and poverty.
But not all is lost, only for a single month must I work as a slave to the man. July brings full-time French classes, this time with the advantage of government financial assistance. Can’t get much better than being paid to learn a language.
May the garbage loaf never be brought up again. Until the next Best Before date.
Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.
If the plague struck now, I might be one of the first to go. Thin and sunken, tired and malnourished. My glands would swell, my muscles would become rigid, fever would set in, then convulsions, then my eyes would set into a light infinite gaze towards the eons of space. And that would be that. I just finished a book about the plague. Entitled, ‘The Plague’, and written by Albert ‘The Plague’ Camus. Real good. Top Ten best books I’ve read, likely.
I first heard of Camus when sitting on my brother’s wooden lawn chair he made in Industrial Arts class in grade nine. Among messages like ‘I like pie. -Dave’ and influential lyrics written on the chair, there was a Camus quote, which if I remember correctly, read,
Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
The chair was really comfortable, and most of all, punk rock. The name of Camus stuck in my head until I was wandering around on the south end of Saint Laurent and noticed an old bookstore, an anarchist book store next to the creepiest and most psychedelic used clothing store. I browsed, found the Camus section, asked the bookman for his advice and bought ‘The Plague’ for a toonie.
I got two jobs in one day yesterday. I know, it is shocking even to me that I can make two employers think that I’m committed to the future, and not going to flake out on them in six to eight weeks. The power of a collared shirt and a haircut is something to be reckoned with. But the possibility of full-time French still hangs in the air like a damp Camembert odour. But life begins again, and the anti-plague serum of employment has been thrust upon me. One of the characters in the book, Tarrou, believes that all people have the plague, in that, every decision we make ‘has an indirect hand in the deaths of thousands of people’, and that it is everyone’s duty to fight against this destructive human impulse.
I have realized that we all have plague, and I have lost my peace. And today I am still trying to find it; still trying to understand all those others and not to be the mortal enemy of anyone. I only know that one must do what one can to cease being plague-stricken, and that’s the only way in which we can hope for some peace or, failing that, a decent death…
All I maintain is that there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, as far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences.
My mind eloquently portrayed through a fictional character. Now to make the decision that will kill the least amount of people, or at least, join forces with the least amount of pestilence.
To make a new compost bin, all you need is the following*:
-old food
-old pieces of wood on the side of the street that look like they could fashion a steady compost bin
-patience
*For real instructions for how to make a compost bin, go to a blog that has an actual purpose.
At my new place we have a backyard that costs each of us about twenty dollars a month for its use. There isn’t much back there, tall grass, a fence, some sort of tree, a legitimate compost bin that we aren’t allowed to use because its previous owner wants to wait for all of the food inside to fully compost so that she can take it to her new composting mansion, and a hammock that is too short for me. But each garbage day I find a new and great addition to make our house a home. Patio furniture for the self standing hammock, shelves for a compost bin, a lid for the compost bin, compost for the compost bin. Last night at SeaBass’ Birthday Bash our upstairs neighbour who pitches twenty dollars for the rights to the backyard told me that I look less like a hippy than he thought I would. I learned to compost and recycle before it was essential to the future existence of our planet, thanks mom and dad!
I could relate this all with a paragraph about the decaying of society that is contained in a small trash-fashioned box in the backyard of the universe. Or how my current life is like that compost bin, eating scraps, made of trash and slowly wilting away. But that would be forced. I’ll just let you revel in my creation that is saving the world. No big deal.
Balls of Rice 