Balls of Rice

Category: Uncategorized

  • Creating the bean sandwich.

    If I were writing an ‘About Me’ for one more shitty social network, using the same technique as a sixth-grade exercise where you wrote your favourite food, your greatest fears and a story about what makes you special, I would say that I make an excellent, and creative sandwich. That I like to create new things in the kitchen. That it is freeing for me. Like a lie on a resume I would flower up the language to make me seem greater than I was. I’d choose a photo that captured my good side, the fuller beard, the less-gapped teeth, and use it as my profile picture. When the entire truth is, my creativity when it comes to sandwiches has been caused by nothing more than using what I’ve got. I stopped eating meat and cheese, so naturally cucumber and carrot became a sandwich staple. People call me nuts. I run out of cucumber, and the garden is producing beans, it only seems logical to make a raw green bean and carrot sandwich, no condiments. More delicious than you may ever know.

    And in continuing my fifth-grade activity I would list my greatest fears. I remember in eighth grade, when this same exercise was slightly modified into the format of a poem, I wrote one of my greatest fears being knives. In parent-teacher interviews, Mrs. Dudley lauded my creativity and comic nature. Recently, upon listening to an old song by the Weakerthans, I quickly noticed that my greatest fear was subconsciously stolen from lyricist John K. Samson. Creativity foiled once again. If I were to be honest in these fine days of the present, my greatest fears constantly renew themselves. Social situations. Forever loneliness. Death. In a repeat cycle. In grade eight my fears likely included unwanted mid-day boners and drunk high school kids.

    In sixth grade when being introduced to the newest band teacher, Mrs. Verity, we played an icebreaking game. We were to write down one thing that no one knew about us, and write it on a small piece of folded paper. She was to pick the papers out of a hat, or out of a saxophone horn or something, and guess which student wrote which original fact about themselves. I wrote, “I plan to grow a six-foot pink afro.” She didn’t guess it was me, but the students knew exactly who wrote it. Creativity proven useless once again. I can’t think of a thing that makes me special because of cynicism. Because I don’t think there is one. Out there, there’s a million WordPress sites spilling the exact same confused rhetoric, a million disillusioned kids tired of the same old bullshit, a million morons who think they have something special to say, when it’s simply not true.

    If ever it comes to the point that I become famous for making popular the bean sandwich, and people ask me how I ever came up with it, or if my bean sandwich restaurant franchise has an ‘About’ section on its corporate-run website, then I will copy and paste this, and it will spell it out for the masses, just like I was writing for my grade six teacher or creating another pseudo-personality on a soulless internet domain, that I wasn’t creative for creativity’s sake, I was creative because I had no choice. I was creative out of necessity.

  • Well-Chilled Opportunity

    One of those jobs you get when you listen to the radio all day long. One of the worst jobs you had in your life. Your boss was a dick. Your job description included nothing more than lifting. Your colleagues couldn’t say ‘carton’ without saying ‘fuckin’ or without slurring their speech. You were a professional mover for a summer. One day on the radio there was a competition. You could win a radio-station t-shirt if you can answer the following: On average a person does this twenty-two times a day. For me that could be a number of things. Smell my armpits. Take a piss. Say the word ‘insane.’ Change my mind about a serious and pressing decision.

    The answer was ‘Open the fridge door.’ Congratulations, you have now won a Swap-Shop gift card and a MIX100 t-shirt, sized XXL.

    Yesterday I opened fridge doors over one-hundred times. The fridge that fed me for nearly twenty years had died, so my father and I, equipped with a measuring tape, hereditary frugality, fridge dimensions, and an open mind to the technologies for the cold storage of food, went to blood-sucking ‘No Payments Ever’ appliance stores to find a new one. With mom’s blessing, and us calmed by ice cream and free coffee, we decided upon the cheapest model.

    Through testing and trial, through opening hundreds of fridges dozens of times each, I learned about fridges and myself. I found out that fridges with the freezer on the bottom are ergonomically superior. That most stainless steel fridges cannot swap door hinges. I had to open nearly one-hundred fridge doors to realize that two-door fridges are about as useful as two-door cars or two-legged dogs. I found which fridge fit my lifestyle by simply opening a shitload of them.

    To open the fridge door is to open the door to opportunity. A combination of sauces and vegetables cold-stored for preservation. Fridges, luxurious or not, keep your food so that you can eventually seize an opportunity and make the meal that best fits your person when you decide the time is right. When you’ve finally realize that a one-door fridge is right for you, you still have to make the decision as to what meal-time opportunity will best represent your current state of hunger.

    And in this glorious land of Canada, opportunity grows on trees. It flows from the faucet. It knocks on doors. All we have to do is withstand an eight-month winter and tip-toe over those that don’t get multiple opportunities in life and continue to support a government that instead of tiptoeing, stomps and spits to give us this chance at glory. Our several chances at glory.

    When life closes both fridge doors, you’re out of luck. Fridges don’t have windows. And when your fridge busts, you best quickly decide which meal you want to eat, because they aren’t all going to keep. They aren’t all going to wait around.

  • Dead Mice

    Dead mouse and the peanut butter and the Deadmau5 and my bedroom. The third of these is pronounced the same way as the first, don’t ask me why or how. The second of these caused the death of the first of these (via sticky mouse trap) in the stairwell of the pub while the third of these, the gimmicky electronica legend, was played in the background. The fourth of these at times has smelled like the first two of these. Then I did laundry, burned incense, turned on a fan, and it has subsided. The window of my room is not functional, making my room the dank, dark, damp dungeon, locking in the moisture and moulding the bottom of my pillowcase. My clothes hang from some rope tied to the lattice ceiling, like a prison scene from the movies. And the worst part of all, really the only bad part, is waking up twice in a night to climb two flights of stairs to take a twelve-second piss. My bladder has a small volume and is taut like a water balloon.

    When setting a mouse trap, one is often advised to set it along the wall. That is where they are said to stay, but in my rodent discoveries of the last month I haven’t found that to be true. I have found the following:
    1. live mouse in the empty garbage can at work, set free in the alleyway by Norm
    2. drowned squirrel bloated in the water-filled garbage can in the backyard
    3. dead mouse in the bathroom of the pub, discovered by a drunk man with spiked hair
    4. a mouse, alive, kicking and shrieking next to a glob of peanut butter, stuck to super sticky paper, slowly dying over the course of three days as I passed by it dozens of times to change kegs for the thirsty, horny masses.

    One survived and one I watched die. The other two died long before I knew they were even alive. Most of these deaths had been in the open, and only one of them died in a trap designed for killing. The rest died in the traps they set for themselves. Ones that looked promising from the outside, but once inside, were nothing but tin holes with not even a chance to dig their way out. The trick is to learn which holes are dead ends and which holes will lead to glory. Norm isn’t always going to be there to bail you out. No one wants to die in the dank, dark, damp rooms with one exit and only one trail to the toilet.

  • Ice Cream and Beer

    Ice cream and beer. The two finest dietary creations in history thanks to the invention of the grain mill and the ingenuity of squirting the lactic liquid from the tit of a large animal or soybean. Some have even been brave enough to mix both into one common glass, but I prefer to mix them in my stomach. When it is a good night with friends, or a lonely night with myself, the greatest down to the lamest, these two often end up conversing in my belly.

    I saw a band play on Coney Island one time, their best song was ‘We’ve Got Fireworks and Beer.’ When I am an old, fat, John Goodman look-alike, I will write the Coney Island hit, ‘We’ve Got Ice Cream and Beer. And It’s Running Down My Leg.’

    In an attempt to reach the peak of my physicality, that is, to avoid a daily case of the shits and to avoid passing out after standing up every time, I have been looking into nutritional deficiencies lately. Every day around 7pm, just after eating a supper of either dal and rice or dal-burgers on a bun, it seems like my body runs out of carbohydrates and is surviving only by feeding off of the slight amount of fat and/or protein that remains on my bones. Despite, or because of, all the ice cream and beer, I am thinning. Here are some deficiencies that might be currently affecting me:

    Iron, a common deficiency for someone that doesn’t eat the environmentally-slaying red meats. Iron can be found in lentils, spinach, molasses. I eat lentils four times a week, spinach two, so I thought I’d go out and try some molasses. The so-sweet-it’s-bitter viscous by-product I now pour into my oatmeal one tablespoon at a time, to create a coffee-coloured slurry that goes down smoother than a coffee-coloured beer. At 8am.

    Beer, a common deficiency for someone in Canada that doesn’t like spending money. Although I maybe mention it 1.3 times per blog post, I am a far step away from being addicted, unless you can be addicted to something without ever using it, because I think about it a lot. I’ve been craving an evening to cut loose, like the good old Eastview days, consisting of summer and too many skunky beer. Due to a lack of energy as highlighted above, and a lack of friends and appropriate events, the deficiency will likely continue.

    Protein, another common vegetarian problem, and another piece of nutrition that could be solved with a gulp of cow-blood. Another one of life’s problems that is easily solved with peanut butter and lentils. (Lentils and Peanut butter, the answer to the following issues: climate change, Conservative government, Instagram, tank tops, affordable housing, protein deficiencies). Almond butter may be substituted for those that like to compromise taste and tradition.

    While at the ice cream shop one day, I marvelled at the invention of the ice cream cone. Bland and dry alone, infinitely delicious when dripping with frozen cream, sugar and artificial flavouring. Why not make every disposable plate ever used into a somewhat nutritional, enriched-flour and tapioca-flour based staple food? I just solved world hunger and unnecessary paper/plastic waste in one brilliant invention. I’ll wait for and accept my Nobel Prize at Dairy Queen, Sask Drive and Elphinstone.

    Ice cream and beer. The two finest night-caps in history, thanks to the invention of hanging out and the ingenuity of gluttony. Put them together and what have you got? Two competing dragons of flavour that steal money that should be spent on properly dealing with nutritional deficiencies. But summer isn’t about deficiencies. It’s about a surplus of good, outdoor-based times.

    So pass the beer-battered Blizzard.

  • Paying for it

    I am a bad father. I can barely care for myself, what with swollen neck glands and a body dripping with sweat throughout the night. A sickness that in some capacity has been gnawing at my throat or sinuses or head seemingly for months. Swollen eyes. Semi-incontinence. Inability to properly function. All caused by selfish dashes across the countryside, hitching rides, sleeping on buses, being a stowaway on cargo planes. Buying hatchets and tarps and giant bags of sunflower seeds while neglecting my first born. My garden.

    But that isn’t the only thing I have neglected as of late. My fondness for leisure has taken away from a substantial writing project that I am currently paying money to perfect. My second literary child, one that has grown up sick and weakly and needs special and constant attention, is wheezing in the corner. I have neglected what some might call a purpose of mine, however at this point I likely wouldn’t call it that.

    I have also neglected family, friends, work.

    I have heard it suggested that a level of selfishness is an admirable thing at my age. That a person must really do what is best for them first in order to achieve goals and break barriers and find themselves. My current physical state appeals this theory. In my attempt at being a wandering soul, in my attempt at living like a twenty-three-year-old, in my attempt to make my life memorable, I have forgot about sleep and sustenance, forgot about my responsibilities that I care for.

    Like a bad, addiction-cursed parent, I haven’t even seen my child in two weeks. Through the rain and sun, the weeds and the massive dog trampling everything, I spent my time drinking beer in the hills of the far west. And now I’m paying for it.

    Was it worth it?

    Yes.

    Did I learn something?

    Yes.

    Then you did alright.

  • Farmer Vision

    When I get to the farm I feel inept. Like a child putting shoes on the wrong feet. Like a man who doesn’t know the names of the different tips of screwdrivers. Even after leaving a provincial highway, with the pops and clinks of gravel on the floorboards, I become uncertain. Unable. Unknowledgeable. Unworthy. It sure feels right, but is like walking through lava on high heels. The farm makes me see myself for the stupid, ignorant, weak city boy that I am. Farmer vision. I put my straggly hair in a pony tail and embarrassedly talk about working at a clothing store and at a nightclub. I struggle through conversation, as more facetime with screens than human beings erodes the art of conversation. Pretty well useless.

    Farms have always been a vacation location, a place to escape the city to enjoy machinery, burn chaff, ride horses, jump bales. My life has only experienced the farm without the hard work that makes the farm what it is. I envy such friends that own farms, or work on farms. Where real work is satisfying, physically and mentally.

    In the city I always at least feel adequate. Like my lifestyle is decent, progressive, acceptable. But when I get to the farm, it is exposed as childish, not important, vain, passing. The city is where people go to die. My body deteriorates because I don’t believe in working out. If I could only work a job shovelling manure or driving combine, my mind would be at ease and my body would be in tune.

    But I know the farm is in me somewhere. Grandpa left the farm and moved to the city but kept the mind of a farmer, the frugality, the work ethic, the stubbornness, and passed it on to his grandkids. So this summer I will be a city-farmer. I will plant vegetables and hope for them to grow. I will water them with rainwater and hope not to drown them. I will pick weeds and hope not to ignorantly, pick the vegetables accidentally. I will try not to fuck up, and if I do, I will fix it. Or forever resign to my fate as a useless city boy.

    I can break out of this someday. I will be a farmer someday.

  • Metro and Verb: Green and Orange Waste: Update

    If you are unimpressed by another free newspaper in Regina, three quarters of which is full of celebrity gossip, bad recipes, advertisements, and world news that you already hear about in several other mediums, then please consider doing the following.

    • Read the below letter. If you agree with it, please copy and paste it and email it to both Verb newspaper and Metro newspaper in Regina at the below email addresses. If you don’t agree with it, please let me know, or feel free to write a letter of your own expressing your thoughts on the new explosion of green and orange newspaper boxes in the city.
    • When the huge, impersonal, Associated-Press-written newspaper shrugs off several emails as negligible, which will inevitably happen, then start sending the emails daily. From each of your email addresses. Express your feelings to the workers distributing the paper. Start a Facebook page for it, since that seems to be the only way to get shit done these days.
    • After several weeks of our requests being denied, I plan to take time out of my schedule or whenever I am walking from one place to another, to pick up garbage from the streets and to promptly place it in the nearest receptacle that there is, which, based on the sparsity of garbage bins and the entire absence of recycling bins, will certainly be a green Metro bin. Although I understand that this is simply making the jobs of a few select employees more difficult, it cleans up our streets. I would invite you to do the same until either the city or the newspapers in the city provides one receptacle for every three green Metro bins, a request that I believe is very reasonable. I plan to inform both Metro and Verb of my intention to use their bins as garbage cans. Until they begin to act as responsible members of our community, they are not welcome.
    ***Since the beginning my my campaign I have only put papers I have caught blowing in the wind in the multicoloured bins throughout the city. Everyday walking downtown I see almost a dozen copies of Metro rolling down 11th Ave, and I cannot in good conscience leave them flying around. However, placing actual street garbage will deter people from taking a free paper and will eventually cause each newspaper to produce less and hopefully remove several dozen of their bins. These newspapers will never listen to me, but might react to such physical actions. Since the Metro picks up their old papers to recycle (we hope) on a daily basis, Metro bins are the obvious best receptacles for our recyclable waste, and they should be more than happy to oblige. When newspapers make their way into my city without asking, placing stacks of paper in every possible corner of the city without approval, I feel like it is my duty to let them know what a large portion of the population thinks.

    Let’s cut the bullshit. We don’t need three more advertisement-driven ‘newspapers’ to read, let alone to visually pollute our city. The very least they can do is to reduce the amount of tumour-causing bins that we see. Being barraged with paper isn’t an inevitability of being a growing city.

    To Whom it May Concern,

    Regina has recently been the target of a surge of new, free, physical newspapers and magazines. Each of these media are a good source of news, culture, art and information that is encouraging to see in a growing city, however with more print-based media comes more waste, as well as the issue of disposing of this waste properly. Regina currently does not have a city-wide recycling program, however this is to be implemented in the upcoming year.

    As one of Canada’s largest free newspapers, your commitment should be more than providing news stories, it should be to the health of the cities that you serve. The health of the global community, one which you connect through your medium, depends greatly on organizations like yours. Regina is a small city that is transitioning to become one of Canada’s strongest. Growing pains include, but are not limited to, unreliable public transit, a lack of a city-run recycling program, a housing crisis, and, as is evident anytime one walks downtown, a lack of garbage bins, but more importantly, recycling bins. As a new part of this growing city, I would challenge your organization to assist in the growing problem of litter by placing recycling and garbage bins throughout the city. Being a daily newspaper, the amount of waste is evident and although it is understandable in the first several weeks or months of distributing in a new city, such a process needs to be done more responsibly. The fabled “3 R’s”, in order, are Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, and although you may encourage the latter two, you have obviously completely missed the first and most important of the three. Your newspaper is an inevitable source of litter in the city which makes you doubly responsible to assist in the cleaning of the city and offering proper waste receptacles. I would also suggest a major review of your number of distribution boxes throughout the city, noticing that a reduction of these boxes based on foot traffic and transit locations is a necessary step, rather than saturating the city scape with unnecessary boxes full of untouched papers.

    Please consider reducing the amount of distribution boxes that you have throughout the city, or be responsible and offer proper receptacles for the waste that you are creating. One waste receptacle per three distribution boxes seems like a reasonable ratio at which to begin.

    I would ask that you please consider this as a priority if you are sincerely interested in being a part of this great and growing community. Unsightly bins and unparalleled waste is not an inevitable step in the growth of a city. Responsibility and accountability are. 

    Thank you for your time.

    Nicholas Olson

    Metro
    Regina_distribution@metronews.ca
    regina@metronews.ca

    Verb
    feedback@verbnews.com
    jlutz@verbnews.com (Office Manager)
    vpaley@verbnews.com (Marketing Manager)

  • Keeping Warm/Beating My Head Against The Wall

    I just bought a new jacket and I’ve never felt worse. I feel great physically. My upper body is dry and warm and two-tones of blue. As I tried the jacket on, debating whether or not it was worth it or really something I needed, Black Flag’s ‘My War’ played in the background. When I finally gave in, the track switched over, and as the long debate between Large or Medium, the song ‘Can’t Decide’ played.

    It is not my body that feels ill, it is my brain. I have, through years of frugality birthed into more recent years of hating consumerism, especially of new products, conditioned myself to be disgusted by retail purchases. Perfect, it could be said, for a man working retail. Handy, some may think, when you are in a record store on Record Store Day and can’t justify buying a record because it is just another twelve inches of plastic in your parent’s basement. And the debate between my frugality and my supporting a good cause begins: But it is Record Store Day, man. Do you even like music, or are you just one of those record collecting, long-haired posers? Support your local record store, you dickhead. Instead of spending my money on a circular piece of music-generating vinyl, I will pay a crooked Air Canada to fly me to a city of whimsy and loose-walleted people. Instead, I ended up buying a jacket that was on the border of necessity, that is, not a current necessity but is a potential necessity, depending on several things that may happen in my future. I could justify any purchase with that logic, from a carrot-juice maker, to an automatic machine gun, to a tube of toothpaste, to a jetpack with oxygen tank. These, based on my predictions of the next fifty years, will be essential to life. These, and a decent rain coat. It might rain next week.
    The only thing that suggested that it may be a good idea was a gift certificate that I found on the ground to the store that I work at, the store at which I already get handsome discounts. The fact that I got a jacket at the price I did, makes me feel guilty in another entirely different way. But in an attempt to justify, the debate continues: The rare, necessary and well-thought-out purchase isn’t a bad thing, is it? Yes. It is. Buying something when I know not if it is sustainable made or ethically made. It is perpetuating the mindset that I claim to be at war against.
    When I finally made the purchase, credit card inserted in the terminal, my heart convulsed, I got panicky. Too late: Approved. Pay me later at 11% interest. Queue the next track on the album, Black Flag’s ‘Beat My Head Against the Wall’.

  • Always Support the Bottom

    Always support the bottom. -Aluminum Baking Tray

    I’ll get all poetic later.

    I was washing dishes at Carmichael in Regina. If you don’t know about this place and you live in Regina, then you best become aware. Oh, how noble of you, Nic—helping the poor and publicizing it on your blog like a self-righteous asshole. That’s right, I am.
    When I was washing dishes I came across multiple clever coffee mugs in the Coffee Mug Graveyard that is the Carmichael Outreach. Here are the greatest of the great:

    • Don’t borrow off Peter to pay Paul on your birthday, Because no one likes a sore Peter.
    • The Older I Get, The Better I Get
    • Merry Christmas MOM, You’re Special
    • Neighbours by Chance, Friends by Choice
    • Pepe Tours, South American Travel Agency
    • Age-appropriate Dora ceramic coffee mugs
    • #1 Hair Stylist
    • I’m no sex addict, but we haven’t had bunnies in days.

    These all seem to date back to a similar time period when giving coffee mugs was as common as texting. A warm era of camaraderie where you would give a mug for absolutely any occasion, even if the mug made no sense, and especially if it had heavy sexual undertones. Like a reusable, practical, breakable gift card.

    Several weeks ago while at Carmichael, two local television celebrities came by to volunteer their time. I was greasy, wearing a ponytail and my trademark stained hoodie, slanging leftovers from juvenile delinquent centres into old yogurt containers. They were wearing classy female-tailored suits. They helped package and deliver food. Being television extroverts, asking questions seemed natural to them, and since I am always able to answer the questions of beautiful, young successful local women, we had a nice conversation about the city, about their early morning television schedules, and about Montreal. They asked me why I came to Carmichael on a regular basis, and I was unable to give a decent answer. I have spare time, I said. I like what they do here.

    This week, I slapped together likely fifty or more double burgers on white bakery buns with a splash of mustard and an explosion of ketchup. When I reached the bottom of the tray, through a layer of greyish-yellow fatty beef juice, I came up with the reason why I do my best to volunteer on regularly. On the aluminum tray, one that was once filled with frozen burger patties, oven-cooked to perfection, I read the above quote and title of this post. And although this one was staring at me in the face, and although lately I have been going really far, shitty-preacher far, to make connections between regular life crap and philosophical nonsense, this one I just couldn’t pass up.

    I do not use the term ‘the bottom’ as if those financially unlucky are somehow lower than those of us who can live comfortably in our wealth. I use the term ‘the bottom’ as in, those who are neglected by the rest, including government funding and policy. Supporting ‘the bottom’ means more than using a thrift store as a garage sale for our conscience, it means more than parting ways with our novelty ceramic mugs, it means more than a financial gift that we will be refunded 15% by the compassionate Canadian government. It means changing the the system in a way so that the bottom is supported by the top, and the top is supported by the bottom. A system where they are both on the same level. Where ‘the bottom’ doesn’t exist. This is possible starting with a change in mindset, change in priorities, change in spending. But if you’ve got any hilarious ceramic mugs for me to wash, we can always just start there.

    If you have an excess of food items, large plastic yogurt containers, plastic bags, clothes, money, or time please consider donating it to the Carmichael Outreach on 1925 Osler Street.

  • Grandpa


    His hands. He did more with his hands in his lifetime than most men would do in ten. The garden–each step, from dropping seeds into the earth to dishing out creamed corn onto the plate on Sunday dinner. The machinery–every lawnmower we ever owned was at one time fixed by Grandpa. There was never any doubt that he’d be able to diagnose the problem and repair it quickly. The wood–he dabbled in creativity, making wood sculptures of landscapes and birds and yard decorations, intricate as they were handsome. And the popcorn balls, which I at least always thought he made, but for all I know Grandma may have made them. Of the garage, his domain that spilt over with equipment and utensils, his hands were his greatest tools.

    I had a child-like fear of him, not a fear of discipline or fear of disappointment, but a fear of his size and strength and person. A fear that one shows one’s elder. This may have been born out of the fact that when I used to enter his house as a kid he would greet us with, ‘Oh, not you again,’ which seemed to become a running joke. It very well could have been a genuine reaction, and likely justified, because if I was around, it meant there was at least three more little shits running around his house, moving the furniture, making a mess of the basement, eating his candy, and making Grandma spend money on phonecalls to the Nintendo hotline.

    And when I remember him I try think of the things that he must have seen in his years–the droughts, and the war, and the span of technology and the changes in the places he called home. An exhausting range of years that could do nothing but yield a man of strength, which he proved to be. Towards the end, when he slowly lost the basic use of his hands, it obviously frustrated him. A life spent being useful and fixing problems with his ten fingers, and this was taken away from him. He still kept his sense of humour and his sharp mind, but at the end of the slow process of losing his dexterity, he lost one of his greatest tools. His mind was sharp as a saw blade–when we had to take family photos you could always tell that he disliked posing and getting his photo taken as much as his grandsons did, but always said something witty to motivate us to hurry up and something smart to get us to smile in the photo.

    He was well-equipped with evident tools which made him a great man. He provided his children with the tools of strength and ability that he had, and he did the same with his grandkids.

    If I end up a half as useful as Grandpa in my life, I’ll consider it well spent.