Glory Never Fades

Every now and then I like to reminiss and think back to when I coached that underdog wheelchair basketball team. Nobody thought we'd last the whole season. But we proved them wrong. Those scrappy kids had hearts bigger than any other in the league. We made our way through the season, fought through injury, and just barely made the playoffs.
That's when the true test came. Each playoff game was a battle. But they fought hard, I simply organized the troops and they went out there and lived and died on the court. We made it to the final.
Oh I wish you all could have been there. It was no story book ending with a last second basket winning us the game. My boys, my MEN went out there and dominated the competition. They mopped the floor with the number one team.
I still remember the feeling of that cold Gatorade drenching me from the mid-back on down.

Germaphobes!

These days it seems everyone is a germaphobe. Every cleaning product out there boasts the "kills 99.9% of bacteria" label. Then there are those hand sanitizers, they kill the same, they even have anti-bacterial Kleenex!
People are now only coming in contact to 0.1% of the bacteria out there. And it's having consequences. Weak and lame consequences.
Why do you think all those kids are deathly allergic to peanuts?
How lame is that? I mean how would you feel if you could die from a snack food?
I know if I was allergic to peanuts, and someone gave me a delicious Snickers bar, and like, if I took a bite without thinking. Oh man, I would run as fast as I could straight into the woods. Then I would punch a Grizzly Bear right in the face!
That way when people asked how I died they'd be like, "wow, that's fucking awesome! Really dumb, but awesome." Compare that to the laughter that would follow after they heard a candy-bar took me down.
What's that other thing that was taking people out???
...SARS! Yeah, remember SARS? What were the symptoms? Riiight, flu-like.
You know what else has flu-like symptoms?
THE FLU!
Basically, the flu nearly stopped the world from turning. Cities shut down, people panicked, they even had a benefit concert! For the flu.
I swear it wouldn't be this way if people weren't so afraid of germs. You know what a vaccination is? They put a couple germs in you and your body builds antibodies.
That's why I like to go to the mall once a week and stand at the top of the escalator and press my tongue to the hand rail and just let it roll.
Sure I get some funny looks, but I could go to Africa and fuck every-dam-thing and come home without AIDS. I guarantee.

Commality smells like Bounce sheets.

Since I moved to Saskatoon I have always lived in apartments. I'm very antisocial so I don't ever really get to know my neighbors. I don't care to have people popping in on me to borrow a cup of sugar or a condom or, God forbid, just to visit. I enjoy my privacy and, while I will offer a greeting if I see someone in the hall, it's always non-committal and I quickly hightail it out of there before it becomes more. This tactic has a high success rate unless you are in the one place that is a majour problem with apartments: the laundry room.

There are a few places in an apartment building that are shared by the tenants but most of the time it's just a place for a nod-and-run if you see someone. The hallways and exits are prime examples, as is the mailbox area. You're always coming and going through these places, not lingering. No, the lingerers always make their way downstairs. The laundry room is an antisocial person's worst nightmare for a few simple reasons.

1) No matter what, there's always at least one weirdo in the building who you try your hardest to avoid. These people are generally the lingerers and the law of averages dictates that you'll see them in the laundry room.

2) It's an enclosed area and you need to be down there so it's not like you can just make a quick getaway with a shitty excuse.

3) People seem to feel the need to talk in the laundry room. Just because it's a common area doesn't mean we have anything in common as people. This doesn't mean that I am completely against chit chat. Far from it. I like interesting conversations but if you open with, "Doing some laundry, hey?" I can't be held responsible for whatever sarcastic reply comes out of my mouth.

I'll leave off with a story about one of the weirder laundry related things to happen to me. It occurred in my old apartment. I went downstairs to put my stuff in the dryer and in the room was one of the ladies who lived in my apartment. She was creepy. I had thought so even before this day. I'd peg her to be in her late 40's to early 50's. She looked like the kind of lady who'd put on fake leather pants, a leopard print top and lots of blue eye shadow, head out to get shit-faced, do dirty things with dirty people, then top off the evening with a 5 am breakfast at the Olympia to get the taste of cigarettes, vomit, and dirty people out of her mouth.

Did I mention that she was sitting on the dryer? Yep, just sitting there on a running dryer, all by herself. I came in, did a hello nod then quickly broke eye contact. While I proceeded to transfer my socks and undies from the washer to the dryer she proceeded to stare at me. Hard. It was a stare that was straddling the Darwinian brink before becoming a straight up leer. Needless to say I got my stuff going then quickly exited the room, leaving her to do whatever it was she was doing on that dryer. When I came back down later she was gone but I noticed something strange with my clothes: I was missing a pair of underwear! I had been given a two-set of undies. One pair was black with little white skulls and the other pair was the negative image of those. Well the white-with-black-skulls pair was gone. Both pairs had been in that washer and had gone in the dryer. One pair came out. Creepy dryer riding lady stole my underwear.

Chinese People are the Nicest People

I know that they are not all Chinese. But since I am an ignorant white-guy it's the easiest way to group ALL the people from Asian countries. And the fact that the majority of these non-Chinese Chinese people rarely correct me on their country of origin really makes me think they are nice and accepting of my ignorance.
And that is why I don't care when they talk about me behind my back. That's right, me and the other ignorant white people know that when we're walking in front of a group of Chinese people in the mall, we know they're talking about us. We don't know what they're saying exactly. It's probably something like, "Ha-ha-ha, look at that white guy. Check out his shoes. He calls those super-shiney? They aren't even a really bright citrus colour!" But they're so nice that we don't even care.
And the real kicker, the thing that makes them nicer than the rest of the other nationalities out there is their names. I know that Ricky, Tim, Jimmy, Johnny, and Steve are not typical Chinese names. But when they move to a North American country they always name their kids typical white-guy easy to pronounce names.
So a tip of the hat to Chinese people.

Potty Confusion.

Have you ever been to someones house and you have to take a wizz. Then you go to the bathroom and they've got it set up where along one wall there is the counter with the sink, then beside that the toilet, then all along that wall there is a big mirror?
Like, they actually run the mirror past the edge of the counter and carry it on all the way to the toilet!
Isn't that a bit strange?
I have a hard time believing that during the design and build process of that shitter the woman of the house said, "hey, lets run this mirror even further than it has to go. I'll never be able to see myself in it, but we should buy 3 more feet of mirror any way."
That is a move that has to be the guys decision. He's got to be thinking, "I wonder what it looks like while I'm pissing?"
I don't know how he convinced the little lady, but there it was. And I always feel awkward in this situation. You know, you take it out and then it's that strange encounter. Like running into an ex girlfriend, you try to avoid eye contact with it at all costs. Looking around the room in search of something of any interest. But it always happens. You sneak a peak down there and have to look at your member spewing piss. It's gross, I'm not proud of it, but it's hypnotic. And I always feel a little dirty after I'm done.
Seeing as how society is going further and further down the morality ladder I think it'll only be 5-10 years before I need to take a dump at this dudes house and notice a screen on the adjacent wall hooked up to a closed circuit camera.

I meant for this one to be educational.

I like reading about space. It's vast, all encompassing and mysterious. When you look up into the night sky and gaze upon billions and billions of stars twinkling above you can't help but be in awe of it's beauty and contemplate what strides we are making to break free of our home planet and see what's really out there.

Recently I was reading about a NASA space craft that was destroyed because it crashed into a dead satellite. Why did it do this? Because a sensor inside was confused and thought it was moving away from satellite instead of towards it. This craft cost $110 million to design, build and launch. $110 million down the tube because a computer couldn't tell the difference between forward and backward. It's like when old people forget whether they were coming or going to a place but on a much grander scale.

Anyway, I started thinking about our attempts to get into space and how much ingenuity and courage it took to get there. You hear all about the manned space expeditions but you don't hear much about the sacrifices it took to get to that point. I'm talking about space monkeys. In my mind I like to imagine these monkeys as brave and bold, true leaders of their species, perhaps puffing on a cigarette before happily climbing into a rocket knowing that adventure is just around the corner. In reality they were pretty much just strapped in and launched. This also conjures images of a monkey screaming while it flies upwards at 11.2 kilometres per second and, if you're not a member of PETA, this is also kind of funny.

Ham the chimp was the first higher primate (better than a monkey!) to be launched into outer space and he made it back safely. He lived to be 27 and was in a movie with Evel Knievel. He's buried in New Mexico. This is all I know about Ham and some might say that is far too much to know about a chimp's life anyway. For all of Ham's success, there's also a dark side to the monkeys in space concept. Many of these animals died during their missions. Which leads me to another thought: How friggin' intimidating would it be for an alien to fly to our planet only to be greeted by the corpses of several dead monkeys floating around in orbit? No wonder there's no conclusive evidence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. They're all avoiding us! Dead monkeys in orbit, satellite debris floating around like car parts spread out on a trailer park lawn, an atmosphere that's depleted and steadily growing dirtier by the minute... we are the white trash of the galaxy. All we need now are some giant speakers at the poles blaring out Whitesnake's greatest hits and perhaps the holographic projection of a monster truck rally on the surface of the moon.

MARCH

ITS MARCH