The PW

A friend of mine had a day calculator. It was on her cell phone, and it could calculate how many days you've been alive, assuming you've actually been alive all of those days, and not in some sort of coma or TV trance or at work for all but two weekends of it. It was interesting to know how many days old you were, as opposed to years, which shouldn't matter anyways. Obviously since you can do such a thing on your phone, you can do it on the internet.

I am 7697 days old as of November 5th. Or approximately,

• 664,934,400 seconds
• 11,082,240 minutes
• 184,704 hours
• 1099 weeks 

I'm nearly 7700 days old. The day I turn 10000 will be much more impressive than any birthday I've had.

This is my 300th blog post. That ain't bad if I started only 1165 days ago. That is about one every four days, which slays the records of most of my friends that do this. I've got that going for me.

Carey Price is 8118 days old as of November 5th. He and I are quite similar, not in age, nor in goalie skill, nor in anything really, except that fact that we've both met Taylor Procyshen, who is 7793 days old. Carey has got a lot of heat from the media since he has become the starting goaltender in the city that puts more pressure on the starting goaltender for wins than they do on mafia men for murder. I didn't watch much of last season to see how it panned out, but with Komisarek bobbling the puck like a two-year old pushing a Fisher Price Corn-Popper, Price didn't have much of a chance.

He and I have been hit hard for not living up to what we were expected. He and I, only 421 days difference in age, were thrust into the worlds' eye and judged too harshly by onlookers. He and I have done nothing wrong. It is just an overly critical world judging the young based on previous successes, like Patrick Roy and my father, Wilf. No one can live up to them, ever. Carey and I know that, and we live with it daily.

Maybe I read into it too much, but when I tell people that I work at a discount clothing store, and no I'm not furthering my education through a university, I lose a sliver of respect. Because only the ones contributing to society through manual labour with journeyman in sight, or through higher education are truly making the world a better place. And that sucks.

Not everyone can be the Patrick Wilf of the world. Although we can all try.

Spanish Flu

He preached at me with the knowledge of a seasoned pastor.
He told me not to open the fridge when you are sweating, or you'll get the Swine.
He got angry with any nice farm that didn't have a Canadian flag flying outside of their home. He was the most patriotic person I've ever met and wasn't even born here.
He slept in the woods the night before I found him.
He was from Spain, but spoke half English and half French with a little Italian thrown in there for good measure.
He was over fifty-five years old.
He sold me a Saskatchewan flag for $20.
He told me he wanted to listen to hard rock music, something like Sum41 or Avril Lavigne, he said. But he hated Bryan Adams and Nickelback because they sold out to the USA.
He kept nodding and saying 'Yeah' or 'Oui' when the car was silent.

I picked up this man while driving to Calgary alone.  I think I remember his name as Luc. He was under six feet tall, stocky with layers of warm clothes on. He had gray and black stubble dotting his red face, graying long hair and aged spotted hands. I don't think we made eye contact once but I think he had a lazy eye.  I was tired and about to pull over for a nap just outside of Medicine Hat at about 9am, and saw him on the road with his Canada flag bandana. I figured he'd keep me awake and alive for a few hours. When he first got in the car he didn't say a word of English except for 'Ed-min-tone' when I asked him where he wanted to go. He spoke a few paragraphs in French and I laughed, assuming that it would be a long quiet trip. But it wasn't.  I think he was a professional traveler. He had been everywhere in Canada, pretty much, and most of Europe. He bought or stole things, like flags, to sell on his journeys so he could buy himself food. He slept in his sleeping bag, snow pants, boots, and Canadian Goose-down jacket, in barns and forests near the highway. He was heading to Fernie to get a seasonal job at a hotel. He easily could have been a wanted man, because when I started driving, seconds after he got in the car, he told me not to drive faster than 110km/h because there were lots of mounties on the roads and we shouldn't get pulled over.

He was the most interesting man I've ever met. And I'll never see him again. But at least I've got a Saskatchewan flag. And the relief that I'm not the most mentally deranged man in western Canada. Thanks, Luc.

Twilight Flu

I watched Twilight last night. If you don't know what Twilight is, ask any girl aged 10-16 and they'd probably tell you that it is the greatest vampire love story of our time. Or of all time, I can't recall many great vampire love stories. If you don't know what Twilight is, you could also ask any person aged 26-31 and they'd tell you that The Lost Boys is way better. And that part maybe true.

I was out of the country when this whole Twilight vampire obsession began. I wanted to watch it when I heard about it, because vampires are alright, and I think that Kristen Stewart is quite nice. Although most macho twenty-one year olds may tell you not to watch it, some male my age told me that I should. So I did. It was decent up until the baseball scene, which was probably the pivotal scene in the movie. I prefer the classic Lost Boys lines, 'Death by stereo!' or 'My own brother, a goddamn shit sucking vampire. Oh wait 'til I tell mom, buddy.'

It seems that the saga that is Twilight hit pretty hard and pretty fast. A characteristic of the society we live in. Something popular, threatening, or beautiful is discovered and soon the entire world is praising, protecting or photographing it. Think of all the fads, all the trends, all the franchises over the past ten years, and you realize the dismal situation we are in. I think of all the epidemics and pandemics since I was in grade six and I could write an entire anthology of science fiction movies. We are constantly presented with these repetitive scripts and disease to-do lists and we don't realize that we pour our money right back into them through obsession and anxiety. If you can convince the general public that something is impressive or deadly, you will get enough money to buy a tropical island and dream another one up.

A girl from work called me today, asking if I planned on getting the Swine Flu vaccine. I laughed through the telephone in her face. I thought she was joking, but apparently even people at my work are contemplating it. A staff wide vaccination. People I believed had it together mentally are even getting into it. It is making me wonder if everyone believes exactly what they hear, or if I have completely lost my mind. Neither would surprise me, nor would either delight me.

I know that Swine Flu likely exists, but the extent to which we believe it exists and how we have become to believe it exists is almost embarrassing to our species. Chances are good that I will become infected with the Swine Flu and die a slow and painful death. I would almost be happy if I did. I'd at least know that it was indeed I that had gone crazy and it wasn't everyone else that had lost their minds. Some may consider me a skeptic or even a cynic. I would definitely agree. How can I not be skeptical or cynical when I have grown up in this generation that has gotten itself nowhere and will be known for nothing more than creating franchises of movies and scaring itself into pandemics. What other options do I have?

So drink up.

Highway to Hedonism

You've got to do what you love. Up until recently I thought this meant occupationally. I thought this meant that you need to find a job and learn to love it or convince yourself that you love it. I always thought that what you loved to do would pay the bills because what you loved to do was your occupation, career. Or that there were the lucky few that had the opportunity to get a salary for what they actually loved to do, like a professional athlete or sleazy film actors.
But over the past few days and over the upcoming week I have found/ will further find what I love and I didn't decide I love it, nor did I come to love it because it offers financial stability, but it chose me. I'm on an STC bus right now and there is free WiFi. I'm somewhere between Dundurn and Davidson. The sun is rising and the enormous bus windows allow me to see for days to the East and the West.

I sat in a band's van last night for ten minutes waiting for Tom the GPS to escort us to 2480 Eastview, Saskatoon. I listened to talented people talk about their talents and then argue about candy. It felt good. The only thing that feels right is the road. And writing.

So I found what I love. And it is not what I love because of what it can give to me or what options it offers me, but just because it is what feels right.

Find what you love to do rather than what you think you could settle with for the rest of your life. The world would suck less if we did.

Yes so saddle up your horses now and keep your powder dry
Cause the truth is you won't be here long
Yeah soon your going to die
To the heart, to the heart there's no time for you to waste
You wont find your precious answers now by staying in one place
Yeah by giving up the chase

-Frank Turner, The Road

The Hall of Garbage

I have had more than one job where 'hauling garbage' could be written under the 'responsibilities' title on my resume, but instead I would probably write 'workplace housekeeping' or 'managerial duties'. For some reason hauling people's wasted fast food cups and old pairs of shoes, or smashed drywall and trampled carpet, or stale donuts and rock-hard bagels isn't highly respected in the world.

I am not embarrassed about any of these jobs. Nor am I particularly proud of any of it. Thinking about it doesn't make me want to dive into school so I can avoid any kind of garbage hauling job in the future, but it doesn't make me want to commit to a career in the garbage industry. Here's why.

I saw one of my top three favourite bands tonight, and just arrived home. It is 3:12am. I am hauling garbage but living the life. I have been hauling garbage for three years straight but have reached a point where I am one hockey game away from achieving pretty much everything I've wanted to do in my life. More or less everything I've truly wanted to see, I've seen. Everything I've wanted to do, I've done. There are still things on the 'to do' list, but I'm only one away from 'the imperative'. One away from the grand prize. And I can say I did it all through hauling garbage. That's why it's legit. That's why I'm not self-conscious of my poor jobs, or lack of 'ambition'. Because I've done what I needed to do, and didn't even have to sell my soul.


If you want a real hall of garbage just go here.

Hit on me

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.

Blog Action Day: Climate Change

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.