Balls of Rice

  • Apathy is Contagious

    Apathy is an undercover leader. When you first saw it, you were revolted by it. Its lazy gut poking out of its stained t-shirt, soaking in the selfish UV waves of a television screen, hand cupping testicles, focusing on its next step for personal survival. Its breath was like fish and cheese puffs.

    You avoided it at all costs. Avoided being near it, avoided even thinking of it. Then, after a few drinks, your friend introduced you at the pub. You shared a few beer and found that you related to it on many levels. It hated the government as a youth. It didn’t like conversations with strangers. It figured recycling was a load of crock. It wasn’t as disgusting as you remembered it being—it had neat hair, was sharp-dressed, smelled like Old Spice. It was someone you could hang around with occasionally, still hold onto your own interests and passions, and not have to worry about what your friends thought.

    After meeting Apathy you continued on your path of work. You tormented yourself with productivity to the point that you couldn’t sit comfortably at home on a day off without feeling like you were wasting time. Your energy was depleted, your enthusiasm was spent. People and their oddities and selfishness made you want to be alone at all times. You had a difficult time finding joy in anything because it took you away from work. Work is your life and you do it until you hate it. Then you need a beer.

    Apathy is persuasive. Always there to say, “I told you so.”

    You invited Apathy home once or twice after work. You just wanted the company. Someone to vent to. Apathy brought the beer. It told you about a great documentary on Netflix, about a great place to order take-out. It remained intelligent—talked knowledgeably of current events and how it found they weren’t worth running your life. It threw a blanket over you, unbuttoned your pants for you, turned up the volume. It was helpful. It helped you forget about your exhausting life trying to make a difference in some pathetic way.

    The next day, when you woke up on the couch in your stained ill-fitting t-shirt, Apathy came over without asking, booze on its breath, stinking of cigarettes, tired from a long night of coercing people at the watering hole. Apathy is an alcoholic. Its face was dark and lined and it pushed you over on the couch, ate a cheeseburger hotdog, and scowled at you. You were again revolted. You felt how you originally did. But now you were on the couch, under a blanket, runny nose, no energy, and you figured you’d deal with it later. You had gotten sick.

    Apathy is contagious. Apathy begins to set in like a hot fever. It makes your body ache until you lay down and think about nothing. Do nothing.

    Apathy is heavy. It sits on top of you, and even when you return to your thoughts of passion and productivity that once made you feel alive, you can’t seem to push yourself off your stomach when it is sitting cross-legged on your back.

    Apathy frightens. It tells you that you can’t have balance. You can’t have passions and ideals and hobbies while being happy, relaxed. It tells you that if you aren’t wailing on the castle doors, rallying the troops, changing policy, protesting wars, then you’re useless. And if you are doing these things, then you are a delirious.

    In the near future when Apathy has its foot on your neck, about to heave and permanently end thought, you will remember people. People who once drove you to madness, who drove you into the arms of Apathy, but people who made life worth living. People who, with their idiosyncrasies, more often disappointed than amazed. But when they amazed, work and Apathy and survival and food disappeared. People gave you conviction, and conviction is communal. Conviction is strong. Conviction is communicable. The sharp pressure of Apathy’s foot will release, and Apathy will walk away to rekindle its love affair with your neighbour. And you will remember the one reason that we live, the one reason that life continues, is caring for and surrounding yourself, with people.

  • Cheap Attempts at Warping History

    I mean, he was a nice man. Well-mannered. He shook my hand. He was… punctual.

    But he didn’t smile. Once. Even when I broke out my witticisms and self-depracation. Just cold, straight eyes of someone who was deeply offended but didn’t want to give his offender the satisfaction of knowing it. A man trained in the language of confusion and conditioned in the attitude of smugness couldn’t let an uneducated, idealistic brat have that victory. He is obligated to believe he is right, just as I often think I’m right. The difference is that he is in a position where he has no choice but to convey certainty, so much so that he begins to believe it himself, blinded by a pride that does not allow him to admit mistakes, to admit there is potentially a better, more effective way of doing things. I will gladly admit my faults, my ignorance, my wrongs in the overwhelmingly frequency in which they arise. He seemed light in his chair, not willing to let his muscles relax either because of something long, hard, and conservative lodged up there, or because of an impatience and unwillingness to stick around. Waste of his time.

    Democracy is a faultless system when you are an affluent white male sitting in the golden velvety chair in the middle of the room.

    That night Buffy Sainte-Marie put things into perspective during a talk at the FSIN. This too shall pass, she guided. She consolled that these people are just politicians, they do what they do. They do what they do from being bullied from who is on top of them. We must express ourselves regardless. Like a canoe that is tipping, we must balance their acts of selfishness and greed with acts of selflessness and sharing. Their acts of exclusion and individualism with acts of inclusion and community. Their arrogance with modesty, humility.

    I did something wrong. Legally and perhaps morally, depending on who you ask. I can admit this, I can apologize for this. My actions did nothing. They did not prompt intelligent thought as I wished they would. They prompted two days of social networking guffaws and condemnations. But for myself, it was a step. It was a step that led me to several meetings I would have not had otherwise. A step towards peaceful dissent. A stone stepped over in the path.

    The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts do the same in their degree, down to a stone stepped over in the path or a breath caught at sight of a pretty girl or a fingernail nicked in the garden soil.

    -Steinbeck, East of Eden, Chapter 4.1, p33

  • Report: Disillusionment on a steady incline

    In a recent report of the psychological state of Nicholas Olson’s being, disillusionment has shown a heavy thrust upwards to a near 100% rate. Recent events, including government policy concerned only with the bottom line, simultaneous workplace battles that dichotimize populations from unhealthy materialism to unhealthy addiction, and daily interactions with a selfish, thoughtless, over-emotional, arrogant human race have increased this particular man’s cynicisms exponentially, with a plummeting rate of hope in humankind. Similar trends have been noticed in the past five consecutive years, documented through countless unofficial Balls of Rice reports, however this report is especially significant because of recent serious attempts at bucking negativity, increasing leisure time, and focusing on making a tangible, but simple, difference in day to day life, all of which have proven failures.

    When asked how his day went, Olson replied, “Oh.. fuck.” When asked to comment, Olson replied, “How do you live happily in such a mess of human beings metaphorically and physically tugging at their genitals in order to improve solely their own lot?” For obvious reasons, reporters declined to ask further questions.

    Direct causes for the rate increase include the growing gap between upper and lower classes in ‘developed’ nations noted locally through irresponsible housing policy, environmental neglect and purposeful ignorance in environmental issues in order to expediate financial dividends, as well as general selfishness, arrogance, and impatience of human beings, especially in that of the male in question.

    There has been no noticeable correlation between the frequency of ‘disillusionment reports’ released on Balls of Rice, and the rate of disillusionment, however many outsiders wonder whether Balls of Rice reports are the cause or the cure of the current high rate.

    *Rates of disillusionment are measured in the following formula: # of migraines multiplied by degrees of apathy added to hours of exhuastion divided by ‘shits given squared’.

  • Hit first, talk after.

    Gilles and the Anchor

    The first thing I did when I arrived in Montreal was have a beer with Gilles. Gilles is a 71-year-old Quebecois legend, capable of the mightiest string of French and English curse words. We share a stick and poke tattoo. His knee has deteriorated over the years, but his stubbornness to go to the doctor for it has not, so he calls the depanneur to get beer delivered to the third floor apartment that he rarely leaves anymore. He has gained weight because of his reduced mobility and his steady beer-calorie intake, and he has also grown a goatee. Whether the goatee was inspired by the gained weight remains unknown.

    The doorbell rings, Gilles sticks his head out the hallway and buzzes the delivery man up. He hauls two thin plastic bags up the interior flight of stairs—two Molson Dry 7.1% Quebecois beer in each bag, massive 40 ounce bottles that could kill a man with either the weight of the glass or the liquid they contain. Gilles tips the man, who also brought him lottery tickets, grabs me a glass from the freezer, and joins me seated at the table.

    “Cheers, man.” I take a few glugs of the gold liquid, frosty and malty, leaving warm breath like a shot of whisky. He takes the massive bottle in two hands, lifts it as thought it was a baby bottle, and drinks half of it without tears forming in his eyes, without putting the bottle down, without looking anywhere but the ceiling as the bottle tips back almost upside-down. I leave his apartment at 1900h, drunk and giddy, chewing on the dozens of stories he offered up after almost two years of being apart. His first tricycle. The drug bust across the street. His broad array of jobs. Expo67. The making of war weapons at the RCA building across the way. His homemade 360 degree rotation security camera. Homemade photographic darkrooms. Stolen/borrowed bicycles from the bike shop. Many repeat stories I’ve heard several times, some new ones that further surprise me.

    In many ways he is the opposite of myself and he may know this. Forward and talkative as opposed to passive and reserved. He tells stories that demonstrate this. Of recent fights in a bar, then the next day, seeing the men he fought walking down the street. Gilles grabbed a steel pipe from the ditch, ready to swing with force. “Not across the head, but the shoulder.” To break the clavicle, I deduced.

    I don’t desire to be him but I can learn from him, as a young person should learn from anyone in their golden years. A friend described him as a know-it-all. There is maybe no better person to learn from, than one who knows everything. This last week he taught me that it is important to learn something new everyday. To try something you’ve never tried before. The internet assists him with this. He finds something he has never seen before and replicates it, improves it, has fun with it. Homemade tattoo gun. Musical laser visualizer. Video camera weight balance. He’s worried about getting Alzheimers, he said, so he keeps his brain busy. He was always good at building things, so he continues to do this. Then he taught me the following.

    “You’ve gotta hit first and talk after, Nic. That’s what you gotta do.” The exact opposite of what I know, and advice I won’t soon put into direct practice. There are many people I would love to hit with a steel pipe across the collarbone and then never talk to again. Talking acheives nothing with most people, but an elbow to the nose would often start a riveting conversation. In regards to self, his adage may better fit. I overthink, and Gilles is just another person that, in his own way, is telling me to do the opposite. To follow instinct. To avoid the untameable gusts of thought that occur in an overstimulated, overexerted brain. To just fucking go for it. Consequences be damned. Regret nothing.

    Gilles and I spent three or four hours in two Saint-Henri museums on a Sunday afternoon. In a pom-pom toque, brandishing a cane, he pointed out places he recognized, like the once great Église Saint-Henri, the All Girl Catholic school nearby, the 15-cent store. Several times he told me that he knew more than either of the available guides, and in this case, he may have been right. Gilles has had no time to think of the past negatively. He learned. He once quit his well-paying job to work for three months at Expo67. He got several dates with Miss World. In every story he tells me, as I nod and sip bière-forte, I can see that he didn’t overthink. He either put not enough, or just the right amount of thought in, and he regrets nothing.

    Oh, to be seventy-one.

  • Living on the Street Hockey

    Gretzky, Wendel Clark, Jazzy Darren shine at Carmichael World Cup of Hockey

    On Saturday, February 23rd, 2013 we had a shinny game in the back parking lot of Carmichael Outreach. Twenty people showed up, the game was heated, the old men beat the young kids 10-8. The One-Block-Off-Broad-Street Bullies warmed the Penalty Box when they were tired. Ken Dryden passed out after the first period. I haven’t had so much fun at work or otherwise in a very long time.

    Darren and Gretzky

    Downtown BackdropThe MVPDuchene, Wendel Clark, etcPenalty Box for the Osler Street BulliesGame On

  • Getaway Bag

    I have begun to pack my getaway bag. Thus far, the three items it carries are a flashlight, several feet of chain, some boot laces. The flashlight was a workplace perk. The chain was purchased in Kalaymyo, Myanmar, in preparation for a long train ride from Kolkata to Bangalore. The poorly manufactured chain of an industry-weak nation ended up being breakable by hand, however, so a thicker grade was found in Kolkata. The bootlaces were free from Red Wing Shoes. They mailed them to my home. These three objects rest in the top pouch of my 90 litre backpack which is perched atop the wooden shelf/fouton frame in my large basement bedroom. The backpack droops and sags, sad with lack of use. Over a year of relaxation—straps loosened, zippers unzipped.

    I still have plans for my bag before it is forgotten. Before it is handed over to the next line of restless, pissed off youth.

    Two more friends recently emigrated from the prairies to the promised land of the west. The night they left I sat at my desk and looked over at my bag. The getaway feels good. Christ, I miss it. But, oh, I have only known it as a coward. Instead of dealing with problems, leaving town has seemed preferable. I am in a several year attempt to never do that again. To slowly build my relational maturity and experience levels to the point where fleeing isn’t cowardly, but rather wise, thoughtful, with no loose ends.

    I have purposefully attempted to live the past several years so that I could leave with twenty-four hours notice. I still do this with no current plans to leave. It is a freeing feeling, I tell myself, to own less. Nothing in my bedroom, save a crokinole board and borrowed books, is worth worrying about. But the longer you stay somewhere, the harder it is to get-up and go. The Regina side-road rut is legendary. I am consciously building the knowledge of travel necessities, and as the unknown time becomes closer, I will gradually fill the bag with these valuable, life-necessary provisions. When the bag is packed, instead of being weighed down and over-comfortable in the city, I will be prepared and calmly eager.

    I bought a rain jacket months ago, prematurely expecting to move to a city with heavy rain, but instead will be invaluable in a well-packed bag. I purchased boots in the fall, already looking to the summer when they would guide me along the shoulders of asphalt highways. I plan to attain a good-quality utility knife. My hatchet will find its way home. A blank notebook will have pages anticipating the sloppy script from a dull, stolen pencil. I will have discovered a back-up hat for when my current staple disintegrates. My bag will be packed. I will be fully prepared. I will have tied-up loose ends.

    My getaway bag will slowly fill into a well-equipped, well-planned, travel bag, one that preparedly leaves, but runs from nothing.

  • Entitled to Poverty

    “I’m called crazy a lotta times already. It don’t bother me.

    My wife says, ‘Leon, you gotta expect it.’ She says, ‘People never understand a man who wants something more outa life than just money.’

    People think you gotta be one of two things: either you’re a shark or you gotta lay back and let the sharks eatcha alive—this is the world. Me, I’m the kinda guy’s gotta go out and wrestle with the sharks. Why? I dunno. This is crazy? Okay.”

    -Richard Yates, A Wrestler with Sharks, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness

    I have never done drugs. I have had very brief moments of controllable levels of alcoholism. I have lived in a life of love and unending comfort. And I curse myself for it. I curse my parents, though with thankful undertones. If I hadn’t been brought up in comfort, I’d know what people mean when they say addiction is a cave, where every step towards its mouth is also a step towards vulnerability’s gnawing teeth of open air and light. I’d know what they meant when they tell me about being dope sick, being shunned by lifelong friends. Instead, I’m that fucking ignorant suburban kid who got arrested once for being too much of a goddamn square to know how to spraypaint a wall in secret, who nods and says ‘it’s hard’, when I actually haven’t the slightest goddamn clue.

    After one of my cynical, over-tired rants about people who own Mercedes-Benz vehicles, my father asked me where the line is when wealth becomes acceptable. Mom wisely, fairly, replied, as I was walking out the door to get my dad to drive me to the pub, that each person must decide this line themselves. As I shut the door, I told her that everyone sucks at determining where wealth is acceptable, so maybe I should decide for them. The makings of a true communist dictator. We all smiled and soaked in the exaggerated version of my disgruntlement. Dad drove me to the pub. I brought my cynicisms to my boss on Monday morning. She said that she doesn’t think wealth is bad. Wealth is a dirty word to me. It is entitlement. Entitlement based on good decisions and investments, hard work, responsibility. Entitlement is based on the belief of personal ownership when really nothing in this world is wholly ours. Therefore entitlement is greed and arrogance. Entitlement in any form is unattractive and abrasive. Wealth is not unacceptable, but it must be responsible, sustainable, frugal, generous, moderate, fair.

    My recent public speaking engagement revolved around my travels, my writing, my work, and punk rock. I spoke to a group of twenty seniors who likely relate punk music to Elvis. I told them that it took me quitting university, going to India three times, travelling North America with the musically-inclined, writing a sorry excuse for a book, to finally find a place where I felt like I was supposed to be. And it has never been harder. I also told them that we all fit in in the same way, by an obligation to help those in need, in whatever means we can. However, it is not, and will never be, enough.

    Ann Livingston is a true wrestler of sharks. A co-founder of VANDU, she helped establish the first safe-injection site in North America as an act of civil disobedience, done before it was made legal by the government. She suggests that the obligation to save lives is always greater than the obligation to obey the law. This seems like common sense. Similarily, the obligation to help others is greater than the obligation to obtain wealth. This may (or may not) be widely agreed upon, but not widely practiced. I know that I am lucky to have the job I do. They could’ve hired another graduate student, straight off of the uninformed teat that is institutionalized education, who would be more able than I to write government grants and better know the system in which people must play to find comfort and peace. And there wouldn’t have been anything wrong with that. I am lucky to have a job that has a direct impact, and though it may seem otherwise, I do not give myself credit over others for it. I often do the opposite.

    It is important not to be the shark. There are enough of them. It is equally important to not allow the shark to ‘eatcha alive’. If each one of us decided to poke the shark, to throw a rock at the shark in the pool of water that it circles hungrily, the problems that I am unable to relate to would change substantially. We would leave our entitlements and privilege behind. We wouldn’t have to curse our parents for loving us.

    I love you, mom and dad.

    However, it is not, and will never be, enough.

    Why? I dunno. This is crazy? Okay.

  • Best Before

    The year and a half has passed since you have returned. Thus, like a sour carton of cow’s milk, your Best Before date has also passed. Nearly a year in the same house, over a year in the same city. You haven’t done this since highschool, and your allergic reaction is anxiety, rage, uselessness, sloth, booze. This time you have the adulthood-weight of the first job in your life that you wanted to be in. The timing was poor and the circumstances were worse, but hey, you got the job! Well, actually, you got the part-time consellation-prize of a job. Not that anyone told you this (especially your university, your high school teacher, your job fair) but you’ve learnt that the right job does not indeed create happiness. Nor does money. Nor does happiness. That’s right. Happiness does not create happiness. The only thing that does is flakiness and temporary relationships. At least in your life.

    You have set personal deadlines for your book. You have set personal timelines for fleeing. The former is far too early, the latter is far too far away. But they are appropriate, because you selected these dates in a moment of clarity. What kind of character can’t hold up personal deadlines, anyway? I guess the kind of character that cannot live in the same place for more than nine months, and the same character that cannot hold a relationship for more than the same amount of time.

    Those activities that you do to save yourself from insanity (writing a book, casual drinking, frugality) end up as a contributing factor. Friends that you spend time with can’t do much to remedy your issues. Holidays can’t come soon enough. There isn’t enough angry or sappy music to play in one evening—the Descendents only wrote so much music.

    Your instinct is to flee. A damaging, selfish, immature instinct, but one you have perfected without even knowing that you practiced it. Now you try to combat your instinct by sticking around for ‘a year minimum’ to prove to yourself that you are an able decision-maker and even-keeled human.

    As a reponse to all this you are drinking boxed wine playing crokinole alone in the living room at 1am. The only depressing part of that sentence is that many have never played crokinole before.

  • Wrestlemania: Mystique vs. Mick Foley

    I’m losing my mystique. Perhaps mystique is not the proper word—it reminds me of a flamboyant 1990’s wrestler or WNBA diva. But the mystery. The mystery of a man that doesn’t say much. If I don’t have that, what’ve I got? The ladies mentally whisper: nothing.

    Not that I’m a greatly mysterious man. I write down everything embarrassing about myself and post it on the internet. That is maybe mysteriously narcissistic. But in my mind, maybe falsely, there is still mystery. I spend most time alone, don’t go out often, am usually quiet. I will usually say my word only if necessary and only if conflict will be avoided.

    This past Sunday, at crokinole practice with Wilf, I left no one guessing. The last time things got this heated at the dinner table was likely when I was eight years old and said, “Thanks for Jeremy’s big hairy butt” in a prayer. This time I began as a tired observer with no intentions of contributing to the civil conversation. Then I figured I’d take civil and evolve it into civil-yet-indignant, probably offensive rants about gay marriage and closemindedness. The rage spilt over into another issue, topics related to my new workplace and the unending cynicisms that have arisen from my short time there.

    I’d beat cynicism a while ago, I’d thought. I had it in the bag. But a Christmas hangover and a frustrating Friday crept up on me, the cynicism resurfacing like an overflowing septic tank floaty on the basement floor. I finally found a job that I believe in (whatever the hell that means) and the cost is pessimism at an all-time high. The things at work that get me enraged aren’t the threats-uttered or the feces spread on the floor, but rather the nice old ladies dropping off donations of clothing in the back alley. The people who drive Mercedes SUVs and give us their husband’s old golf shoes and cross-country skis so that they can justify purchasing thousands of dollars of shit that in five years they will donate to the poor. I create non-existant scenarios in my head, coldly judging people that support, in any way, an organization that supports the homeless. All the while, fully knowing that I am unfairly judging them. And on Sunday this barked out of me in several brief, animated tirades. I said excitedly in ten minutes what I have a hard time properly expressing on paper calmly with hours at my disposal. And when I finished, I felt stupid. Partially because it was ineloquent. Partially because I was getting upset for no reason. Partially because I was essentially cursing out grandmothers that support feeding and clothing the homeless. But mostly because I said so damn much in such a short amount of time. I became an angry Mick Foley wearing a Mankind mask, raging about humankind.

    Mystique has imploded. This guy is a real prick, the ladies will say.

    I blame my loss of mystique on working at Carmichael Outreach. I can’t decide if it is dealing with the burdensome, the awkward, or the exhausting that has broken me down to where I am unable to keep my mouth shut. Or maybe it is my new found interest in the perpetually depressing world of local politics that boils up stadium-fuelled rants. Or just me, gradually becoming an opinionated pissant with no self-control.

    I have been scheduled for a public-speaking engagement. The last time I did this was my valedictorian speech, or maybe an ill-researched, uncertain, pitiable sermon since then. My old best friend’s dad ran into my potentially-gloating parents in the supermarket. Nic wrote a book. Nic works with poor people. So I am now a motivational speaker, trying to sell books and charitable tax-refundable donations while not offending old baptists in Balgonie. No damn clue what I’ll say, but when I form it, if it is suitable, you will see it here.

    But this is what I mean. Two years ago if a man from my childhood asked me if I do ‘public speaking’, I’d laugh and say, “Uhh, you don’t want that. Ask one of the Roughriders,” but this time I laughed and said, “No, but I could.” Mystique gone. He asked if I need to be paid, meaning he expects something decent. I told him I am only ever paid in food. I’ve sold out.

    Instead of semi-yelling at no one in particular at the dinner table, I need to better utilize this forum. An audience-less, editted version of my anger. The perfect filter.

    I felt ill when I laid in bed at the end of Sunday. Not the headcold that Glitters Buffet gave me, not the two beers and Beyonce half-time show headache I got, but just ill at the inability to properly control myself to think before I spoke, potentially offending, potentially saying something I don’t even believe, potentially looking like a stupid politician. Being someone that regularly talks too much is one of my worst fears, and I was that guy for a day this week.

    I’d rather be unknown in silence than well-known in speech. Right now I am poor at both of them.

  • Lyrics of the Month: February 2013 – The State Lottery

    Now the real prospects for authentic democracy depend on something else. They depend on how the people in the rich and priveliged societies learn some other lessons. For example the lessons that are being taught right now like the Mayans in Chiapas, Mexico. They are among the most impoverished and oppressed sectors in the continent. But unlike us they retain a vibrant tradition of liberty and democracy. A tradition that we’ve allowed to slip out of our hands or has been stolen from us. And unless people here in the rich and privileged society, unless they can recapture and revitalize that tradition, the prospects for democracy are indeed dim.

    Does it seem strange to you? The confetti. The balloons. The mile-wide grins and the victory dance to welcome in the heir to a state of (utter and complete) disrepair? Because it sure seems strange to me: they’re acting like they won the fucking lottery! I mean, shouldn’t they feel terror at the task that lies ahead: to feed and house the people that this system’s left for dead. And could I have hit the nail much harder on the head? It’s profits before lives. They are motivated by greed. First they taught us to depend on their nation-states to mend our tired minds, our broken bones, our bleeding limbs.

    But now they’ve sold off all the splints and contracted out the tourniquets and if we jump through hoops then we might just survive. Is this what we deserve? To scrub the palace floors? To fight amongst ourselves? As we scramble for the crumbs they spit out, frothing at the mouth about the scapegoats that they’ve chosen for us. With every racist pointed finger I can hear the goose-steps getting closer. They no longer represent us so is it not our obligation to confront this tyranny?

    -Propagandhi, Less Talk More Rock, The State Lottery

    Quote by Noam Chomsky
    Dedicated to all High Profile Victims of Graffiti in Regina, promising Housing Summits, but providing Stadium Summits instead

Is this your new site? Log in to activate admin features and dismiss this message
Log In