Dear Patrick (Number 1)

Dear Patrick,

I’m not sure who, at which point in your life, taught you that walking into someone’s office while they're in mid-sentence (on the phone or with a guest) and proceed to wordlessly bend down next to them and try to lift them out of their chair to try and ‘fireman carry’ them into the hallway. Don’t get me wrong, I love the look of triumph on your face when you succeed, and I love even more the look of sadness when you fail, it’s just that sometimes it’s inappropriate to lift people up. Also, why do you whisper encouragement to yourself?

Further to the lifting issue, I’m going to have to ask you to please stop playing the game ‘Black King, White Queen’ with the chess sets in my office. You’ve now broken  both black kings (not going to accuse you of transferring your race issues onto my chess pieces...I’m going to, for my own sake, say it’s coincidence) and have made no attempt to repair them; looking at them helplessly, then at me with shame hoping I’ll either forget or forgive you... I will do neither by the way... praying the manager of operations will sweep in with the right kind of glue (from his OM utility belt?...which is just cigarettes, whiskey, and anger) and he has yet to.

Finally, please stop awkwardly asking to borrow a ‘twensky’. Say the word twenty. Also you don’t need to explain what it’s for. It always hurts your case. Also justifying your reasoning further hurts your case. When saying you’re taking out a new Polish immigrant (“straight off the bizzoat”) of 16 years old... The look of disgust and pity on the faces of your contemporaries at the office isn’t an invitation to offer justification, it’s just genuine expression of those feelings. Also stating “Well my 19 year old girlfriend has aged terribly” is so horrifying words fail me.

In conclusion, I applaud you on your lifestyle choices in so far as they provide us all with an endless supply of stories and feeling better about ourselves by comparison. Shine on you crazy diamond.

Sincerely,

Newsy

I took all his money, then his soul.

As I anger walk through the crowded train station to avoid the -20 degree wind, I begin to wonder... are these people staring at me because of my phenomenal mutton chops, or because I look so intense and (I think) handsome? I chuckle as I say out loud ‘both!’ so boisterously a nearby mother pulls her noticeably startled child away in the opposite direction.

Having recently removed a rather nasty curse, and everyone back to normal, I’m in an understandably good mood. I bought soup on my way to work, and decided to dust off my smoulder for the soup lady. As she poured soup into her lap, I’m just going to call it a win and high-five myself. The weather is improving, the cloud of misfortune is lifted and I resume training today.

Training is a party. Fortunately I don’t have to start from scratch like last time. Garbage bag sauna suits under sweatshirts and suicide worthy training sessions. But such is the price when you spend years in a hazy not caring about anything daze. Now I get to train like a normal person. Well pretty aggressive training comparatively, but still normal. I plan on dropping to 200 even, 5% body fat (By June 1...Bank on it). Currently 218, no idea the BF%. I drop to 199/200 I get to fight in a better weight class, which is good, cause as much fun as fighting a guy who is 6’8 310 lbs is (and it’s a hoot) I’m somewhat less inclined to lose teeth and break my nose these days.

I bring up fighting as while out celebrating a friend’s admittance to a phd program last week, he got a wee bit inebriated and decided to shout horrific things at the gathering of out of town drunkards on their hotel balcony who promptly came down to settle matters. He was slightly less brave with them standing directly behind him, silent and gesturing aggressively. His associate, who had also been yelling having left moments before their arrival, my friend and co-worker anger ball loud and angry but unable to be hit in the head due to many concussions and danger of death and his lovely wife Diane... somehow angry at me for allowing this situation to arise... it seemed pretty clear that if there was to be a fight, it would pretty much be me against the four of them, which means me focussing on the biggest asshole there, and hurling myself so aggressively at him that the others would presume me insane and run away. It’s my go to in a situation like that, and yes it has happened before. Not since I was like 19 though. I am a grown up now! I should not have to defend drunk adults from other drunk adults. But the situation never arose, and we all just awkwardly walked away. So back to training it is.

Also on Friday, after winning every penny from all participants in our traditional weekly poker game (part of that tradition is me winning every time) being flustered and certain of his eventual victory, one associate, I’ll name Mat, wagered his very soul. Which I won. My CTO mentioned ‘you know they won’t want to come back if every week you win all their physical and metaphysical goods’. You are right sir, but now I got another soul. I’m thinking of a new division of Awesome Inc.

Yessir... Got cursed... For realz.

So turns out I was cursed. Literally cursed. Someone felt so strongly that they actually implemented a full-on, ancient curse to ruin me. Now I know what you’re thinking imaginary reader, that there’s no such thing as a curse. Now I’m not saying ‘up yours buddy, there totally is’ I’m just going to say that if this curse, placed on me at the end of August, was intended to actually ruin my life as much as is possible throughout it’s duration, then mission accomplished. If it was a nonsense thing, then I pissed off God something fierce.

Anywhoo, cursed. Not the first time either. But I solved the problem a little over a week ago and I’m back to kicking ass and chewing bubble gum. Seriously like night and day. Coincidence? Probably. Does it matter? Not at all. But seriously how messed up is that? How many people can honestly say they’ve been cursed. Several times. I’m weirdly proud, but concerned at the same time. Also, to what extent did this curse impact others and their interactions with me? Regardless super psyched I’m rocking it pretty hard now.

As I pace back and forth in superman pyjama bottoms eating a cookie and listening to a game of thrones audiobook while researching ancient middle-eastern mysticism and curse protection, I am forced to ask myself; could I rock any harder? I respond no to myself while laughing maniacally. With this weird curse business seen to, I have been refocusing efforts to conquer the world. I’m a little sad to say that I have to be more vigilant in curse protection... and occult warfare altogether.

So let that be a lesson to you all... when you’re going through Hell, keep going... and there’s a chance you may have been cursed.

Back to Basics

Now I know I’ve gotten away from my normal ‘how fucked up was my day?!?’ blog posts that made me famous to dozens of Canadians, a pile of Americans, and for some reason a bunch of people from Russia, Ukraine and Germany (dunka). I think that’s mostly cause I got sidetracked by a few personal things, a few professional things, a few unbelievable things, but fear not diligent readers! I’m back with a classic tale of I want to anger bang every employee of Bell/Videotron/whatever person decided to put this voodoo curse on me. At this point actually I’m fairly convinced there’s at least a dozen curses on me. Either that, or this, my 28^th year, is my trial year. I use the term trial year to describe the notion that this year is in fact trying to break me. I know this. I’ve accepted this. And you know what world? Imma fuck you up. I’ll take your surprise 23k lawyer bill. I’ll take the stalker. I’ll take the horrifying betrayal of loved ones. I’ll take the Habs for some reason slitting their wrists in the bathtub this ENTIRE GODDAMNED SEASON (I also believe my personal fortunes are directly related to how well the Habs are doing... seriously, I charted it out. It’s unreal how directly parallel it runs.) I’ll take the constant bills and late payments and delays. I’ll take the cold that won’t seem to leave me, the hydro bill, the riot tax, the constant jaywalking stings outside my office. I’ll take it all. I’ll take it and I’ll remember every goddamned second of it as I destroy you, world. I mean that in the positive ‘bring it on’ sort of way, not the terrifying ‘some men just want to watch the world burn’ sort of way. I’m all positive. SO FUCKING POSITIVE!!!!!!! (My jaw clenched so tight just then I think my already broken wisdom teeth just turned to powder)

Slight digression. Anyhoo, as I was saying. Fuck Bell. Right in it’s stupid face. I don’t even have the energy to write out the line by line phone call I had with the most infuriating customer service representative I’ve ever encountered. I am actually angered out. I have no more anger in me. Or to be more precise I have so much anger, that it’s taking an intermission while I chuckle at this cursed nonsense. ‘There’s no supervisor.’ ... ‘There’s no supervisor.... in the middle of the day... on a Wednesday... at all of bell.... not one person above your station... this is what you’re telling me?’... ‘yes, I’m it.’... That actually happened. Also she gave me her name and employee number to start the fucking conversation. Why in God’s name would you give that information if you were going to be so unhelpful? I will see you on a boat back to Kingston before I sleep, Bell-harpy. I vow it.

MANANA!

I have a nephew. He is 1½ years old. He loves the movie cars and toy story. His favourite thing to say is ‘Oh No!’ while pointing randomly. He refuses to stop moving even for a moment, even when sleeping. He likes to share, and when doing something wrong and getting caught, will continue to do said wrong thing, only much more slowly while maintaining eye contact as if him moving slowly will prevent you from seeing the wrong action. It’s the Jurassic Park approach to wrong doing. He also seems magnetically drawn to danger. He will make a B-Line straight to unattended stairs, will run towards the edge of tables, and I’m fairly sure if he found a pair of scissors or butterknife, would dive head and metal first into an electrical socket. My mother refers to this behaviour as ‘full of beans’. I disagree. This behaviour is more of a ‘full of deathwish’. I think it’s because he giggles all the time while doing it, and if you’re paying attention its pretty easy to stop him from climbing into the mouth of a grizzly or sucking on a blowtorch or something. But that’s the thing IT ONLY TAKES A SECOND! On a plane a few months ago I had him on the seat next to me, he purposely knocked his toy to the floor and the split second I took to grab it, he dove head first off the chair. The stewardesses looked at me as if I were horrible and neglectful and the old lady across the aisle mumbled ‘gotta watch em every second’... thanks old lady. I have Evil Kineval as a nephew. Watch him every second? He’s this fucking close to setting up flaming rings to jump through on his buzz lightyear bigwheel.

I love the little guy more than anything, but I am always relieved when I hand him back to his parents. I’m cautious, but easily distracted by shiny things. I can’t wait till he’s a bit older and I can be the uncle that has advice on usefull things like fighting and... not liking authority?... Alright, I may not be the greatest uncle, but my love is unconditional and my desire to help is genuine. Let the others teach him not to cut electrical wires, diving head first off the roof is bad, and that fire burns. Once he has a basic grasp of how to stay alive on his own, then i’ll get to shine.

Although I am concerned that my brother in law has weird views about bullies. Him being a teacher, and apparently never having been picked on a child, seems to have the whole ‘tell an adult and talk about feelings’ approach to bullies. I disagree. Now as Evil Kineval is his son, not mine, I will of course defer to his school of thought on the subject, but if lil evil comes up to me and says ‘Dad told me to tell a teacher, but it’s not helping, the bully’s going to beat me up after school.’ I’m probably going to teach him how to fight. Fortunately my sister got into more fights as a kid than I did, and will probably teach him to fight long before I get to. Which is definitely to his benefit. She’s terrifying when angry.

I also have the honour of being his Godfather, so I get to instruct him on all matters theological. I am very excited by this prospect. He’s going to be the only kid who can speak latin, greek and Hebrew, can name every ecumenical council, and can perfectly articulate which Hagiography is his favourite and why Protestantism is fundamentally flawed (It is). If he grows up to be an Atheist, Johova’s Witness, Mormon or Buddhist, I will be fine with it so long as he can explain in perfect detail why he’s making that decision. No nephew/godson of mine is going to be spouting off about organised religion being bad without being able to pinpoint EXACTLY why he believes so with absurd accuracy. I may disagree or think he’s wrong, but by God he will be BRILLIANTLY wrong. If he’s anything like me he’ll be quoting Aquinas to his first grade teacher. Knowing him, he’ll be able to do it while juggling knives and chainsaws.

Also, being unable to pronounce my name correctly, I have been dubbed uncle manana. There is great debate as to what it is closer to. Man, Nana, Banana, a combination of all three? Regardless, my family’s tradition is that the person will be called whatever the first grandchild calls them. So I will now forever be uncle manana. I’m alright with that.

Don’t pee in the water.

We had thought this was a normal jungle village, as these people seemed pretty jungle-y. Turns out that was not the case. These people were the aristocrats of the jungle world. We later had the opportunity to flee danger by stumbling into a different village, much further into the hell that is the jungle. We stopped dead in our tracks, as the few people standing in view stared at us like we were aliens. According to our guide Pepe, they had never seen white people before. Frankly I tend to believe him as when my sister took a picture with her camera and showed the ominous old lady the screen, she shrieked like she had seen the devil and ran. The entire village swarmed out to meet the chaos as they listened to the old lady shout and point. She then angrily pointed at the camera, and my sister a little worriedly took a picture of one of the men. He saw the screen and shouted in surprise and excitement. They all cheered (for reasons known only to them). He motioned for her to do it again, and she did, as he posed in a ‘I’m throwing this spear at my village friend here’ sort of way. The others swarmed in to see, but the subject of the picture was having none of it while knocking them over and tossing them all aside to get to the screen.

Long village jungle story short, a tiny boy (I named lil’ Pepe) in that village would NOT stop following me. It was creepy. He was like a friggin jungle-ninja. Ultimately, in the hut of the medicine man, he finally came up to me and pointed at my bandana. I took it off and handed it to him to SHOW him. He bolted like there was a giant spider chasing him (there could very well have been. I could have been a Spider contorted to look like Newsy. To eat Newsy). I sort of just stared as I realised that bandana was now gone forever. So I hope it served you well lil’ Pepe. But still... fuck you thief. I’d have given it if you had asked. Pfft. He’s probably been eaten by a spider by now anyways. And then that spider eaten by a spider. And that one eaten by a puma.

Did you know there’s a kind of fish... a little teeny tiny fish that is attracted to urine and will swim up your urethra if you pee anywhere near it, hook into your flesh, and the only way to get rid of it is to amputate? Neither did we. As Pepe mimed ‘hook onto the inside of your penis’ we could not tell for sure what he was trying to say to us. We all just nodded as he seemed to desperately want to impart this piece of information. Then I said ‘so... DON’T pee in the river?...’ and he nodded emphatically. To which my brother in law, clearly upset by this responded ‘can I stand next to the river and pee into it?’... ‘Why would you possibly want to do that?’... ‘I don’t know. Can I pee into a cup and throw it in the river?’ ... ‘Knock yourself out.’

As we waded through the waist deep water, trying to figure out if there are urethral muscles we could clench to make sure we didn’t get any unexpected visitors, I noticed the eerily calm jungle surrounding the water. It seemed to be unnatural. I dismissed the calm (cause fuck you jungle that's why) as I was planning on being eaten by a spider any moment anyways, and we came to the base of a waterfall. I don’t mean a little cute waterfall, I mean a big ass fucking waterfall. Like a fall and you’re dead 100 times before you hit the rocks below, waterfall. As Pepe scampered up the wet rocks in his bare feet and tiny hands, my sister, brother in law and I all looked at each other and without having to confer, I shouted (irritated) at Pepe, ‘Yo Pepe! None of us seem to posses your apparent ability to scale wet rocks unaided... lil’ help?’ ... the response came swiftly; a rope came flying down to us. I don’t recall how we all got to the top of that godforsaken waterfall, but we did. And we were both, elated that we laughed in the face of death yet again, and also furious that we had to do such a thing in the first place... yet again.

That is where the jungle adventure ends. We were there for another day, but after the waterfall I can not remember a thing until the airport. The weird thing is neither of the others can remember anything either. I’m just going to go ahead and presume I was drugged and gang raped by pumas and spiders. And spiders pretending to be pumas. To eat pumas. That’s the least upsetting option really.

Suddenly I’m startled awake at the airport by a horde of children trying to take my shoes off. They get one as I say ‘Why are you taking these terrible jungle drenched shoes?’ they laughed and scampered away with only the one of my shoes. As I sat up and shook my head a soldier holding an assault rifle nudged me and said in rapid Spanish something along the lines of ‘you look retarded with only one shoe and I am hungry’ (My Spanish wasn’t great then) to which I stared blankly at him and responded loudly ‘My roommate is in the army in Canada... So we’re like... cousins or something.’ His icy glare was enough of a conversation for me as my plane was called to board after my 32 hour Ecuadorian airport adventure without a dollar in my pocket. The airport, I later learned, was shut down immediately following my flight as there was military unrest, and mine was the last flight out.

I managed to smuggle a cocoa bean fruit out of the jungle and bring it back to Canada. Every single border agent seemed not to care at all that I had it. They seemed to feel nothing but pity for me and just kept waving me through. Which in hindsight was a dangerous decision as it could have been a spider contorted to look like a cocoa bean fruit... to eat... I don't know, let's say oompa loompas.

I arrived home in Canada to my mother excitedly waving as she ran to hug me. My father asking ‘where’s your luggage?’ and my mother immediately following up with ‘and where is your neck pouch?’ I just looked at them. One shoe gone. No luggage. Dirty. Exhausted. Bleeding from several wounds. Clothes literally torn all over the place. And I just replied. ‘Actually Mom, the neck pouch wasn’t overly helpful. So I put it in the luggage. And Dad, the jungle people stole my luggage. It’s theirs now, but don’t worry. They have already been eaten by Spiders, so it’s OK. Justice was done. Jungle justice. Let’s just go home.’ Oddly they didn’t really follow up with too many questions.

In the final chapter of the jungle tale, Jungle diseases and you... See a fucking doctor.

The Police are your friends. Except traffic cops.

As my court date for a jaywalking violation resulting in a 37 dollar ticket approaches, I am struck by a few thoughts. Although I am consumed with hate for the one remaining officer who issued the ticket at the jaywalking sting outside of my office, I refuse to get into the nonsensical cop bashing that goes on all the time.

In my years as a PI/Security Guard/’Bat-Themed Vigilante’ I learned a thing or two about police. I learned three key things people should always remember; one, the thing police hate more than anything is having their time wasted. Do not involve them in stupid things you can solve yourself, do not make situations where they are already involved worse for them or more complicated. Two, the thing they hate ALMOST as much as having their time wasted is being lied to or having details omitted when speaking to someone (If you get caught in a lie or key omission, it will work out badly for you). Tell them the truth, do not omit anything that could be significant, keep it brief, and let them do their job. Three, they are almost always nice guys. I use the qualifier of almost as traffic cops are dicks. But something to bear in mind, they have to be dicks. They have to be dicks cause we’re all assholes when it comes to traffic violations. I get it, I’m the worst offender there is. I already got the jaywalking asshole traffic cop’s partner removed for *censored*. Seriously. I don’t feel bad cause it’s a traffic cop, and cause fuck you for wasting tax money on a jaywalking sting, but that’s the exact attitude everyone has, so they have no recourse BUT to be dicks. So I forgive them, but will make them cry if necessary... This fight has to happen.

Anyhoo, Traffic cops aside, regular officers are pretty cool guys. I say guys as 90% are men. The female cops all tend to gravitate to traffic or desk jobs. They may start out doing normal patrols, but they usually go back to traffic. Not sure why. I met a few really bad ass female officers and they scared the pants off of me. But they went back to traffic. Regardless, the guys are usually a bit older, and although genuinely want to help people out are weary of having their time wasted by ungrateful weird people who complain about weird things. ‘Really? The guys down the hall from you stole the bathroom key you forgot in the bathroom?’ ... ‘Really? There’s a man standing in front of your store looking across the street?’ ... ‘Really? The car across the street has been there for two days you say? But now it’s gone?’... ‘And this happened... a week ago... I see.’. You would be amazed at what they have to hear and deal with. I used to hear from them all the time as a PI/Security guard. Less so in my current position although it does on occasion happen. I have dealt with many officers and have yet to meet one who was unpleasant and who wasn’t honestly trying to help. Again, except traffic cops. Fuck those guys.

Like the two cops who had to visit my parents house because a neighbour complained that he didn’t trust my dog because he ‘was too clever and opening car doors’. Now Sam the wonderdog did have a habit of trying to steal cars, but the cops initially were rightly irritated to have to show up for that. The third time they thought it was hysterical as Sam seemed to have drawn a crowd of onlookers applauding his ingenuity at escaping the yard and then getting into a locked car (you don’t become a movie stunt dog by being slow).

Today I heard an actual discussion about how it was disgraceful that a police officer was stabbed in action saving people from a knife wielding assailant who was shot while fleeing the attack. The people were angry that the cop killed the knife wielding man headed towards a crowd of people. It’s the same assholes that pick fights with cops and then pull out camera phones to record the results. The same assholes that throw things at cops when they’re in a crowd of a hundred and the cops are in a group of 10. The cops aren’t the decision makers. They are just men and women doing a thankless and difficult job. Except the traffic cops. Those guys can jump up their own asses and die. But I digress.