Winter is the new Summer

Holy distended ball-sack batman! What the hell do you mean the first snowfall of the year was at the ass-end of December? Fuck you winter boots, nobody loves you because you are useless and take up prime real estate by the heater.for nothing!

In other news I have been day-dreaming the hell out of life in general the past few days because apparently that's what I do with my free time now. Sit quietly.

Oh and I keep hearing about how Riverside Park has some kind of Christmas lights festival going on and I never really care about the shit that goes on there. Unless I somehow end up making plans to go participate in the shit that goes on there.

So let's back up a bit here. Here in my hometown there's a giant ass field/park/grounds type place called Riverside Park. There may be a river nearby, I've never really noticed. This is where all types of big community events and family friendly junk happen like fireworks on Canada Day, Ribfest and a bunch of other crap. I actually never started attending any of these events until I was in my 20's despite living here pretty much my whole life. (some days I tend to forget the 2 years in Peterborough or that summer in Parry Sound cause in the long run being in either place didn't really affect my life so much)

However this last summer I was pretty much there all the damn time. Willing or not, cause my family is like that sometimes, but mostly I had fun. So while my mind was wandering this week I came up with this:

At riverside park some days they let people rent paddle boats and muck about on the tiny stream that we somehow call a bloody river. I've always wanted to rent one...and then raise a tiny pirate flag and ram/board the other boats. I think that would be an awesome afternoon, even if I'd never actually do it cause being arrested would suck big time, it's lots of fun to think about.

Death Approaches

For example:

You're playing Dad with your 2 kids and give in to the begging and pleading that is bound to happen when they think they could be having more fun then they are currently having if only you would break out the wallet and rent them a paddle boat, never mind the 60 bucks you already dropped on funny tasting hot dogs and ice cream. But hey, it'll keep em quiet for 10 minutes and that's worth all the hot dogs in the park at this point. "How did Mommy get out of this?" you idly wonder as you wander over to the funny little "dock".

You fiddle with the mandatory life jackets (why are there life jackets when the water is 2 feet deep! Really you call this a river? A river?! I'm going to take a bigger piss after I pawn the kids off on Mommy for the evening and have a couple beers to erase this memory) and get your whiny little crew into the boat.

You derp around for a while wondering if you can get through this day without dropping yet another 40 bucks on ice cream, then you notice another paddle boat coming right in your direction. On board is a dude who yells out "some thing's wrong I think it's broken". Well dammit now you have to get out of the way of this jackass. The wife will kill you if little Timmy's new backpack gets wet. Shit. Why didn't we leave that thing on the dock, it's not like the pre-teen employees are going to take a power rangers backpack full of carrot sticks.

Then the jackass in the boat gets closer and closer. You notice a malicious gleam in his eye. Wait? Eye? As in just one? Didn't he have 2 like 20 seconds ago? What's with the eye patch?  Where did THAT come from? Your heart grows cold. You look down at little Timmy and his backpack. Shit. Your wife is going to kill you. You look again and now you see a terribly drawn skull and crossbones flag in the hands of hear the laughing of a lunatic. The othger boat gently rocks up against yours and he shouts "Prepare to be boarded yarr!"

You then get in the water and chase down his stupid fucking paddle boat. The water is only 2 feet deep. River my ass. While you're throttling this poor lunatic for messing with your day you realize that this is much more eventful and entertaining than you thought. Johnson at the office is never going to believe this.

Annnnnd end scene.

This is the shit I'd like to inspire one day.

That's me. I'm never going to be allowed to have kids. But if I do they are going to have stories to tell by golly.


Spammy

So...we meet again.

So brain, we meet again. I'd like to know math again, but I refuse to give up drinking so we need to come to some sort of compromise on that. Also some sleep would be nice. And that thing we do where we get caught checking out women? Cut down on that.

I saw a job post for a laser operator on kijiji this week and thought "holy crap this is the job for me"! Hell I already make laser noises at cats on a regular basis and half of all the posters I own are Star Wars ones. This shit should be right up my alley, except for one thing: all my real life experience with lasers is imaginary, so I doubt I'd be as good with a real one. But hell if there's one thing I'm good at it's daydreaming. Some days I want to feel like a terminator with a laser gun, is that too much to ask?

The best weekend of the summer by far and away was the Heavy TO heavy metal concert festival that I went to. Some of my all time favorite bands played some of my all time favorite songs. I'm not going to lie, I cried. Twice. I even learned some things:

1) I inadvertently called concert merchandise "band swag". This irritates the hell out of some people. (So I kept doing it)

2) Apparently metal really is all ages. There were strollers. (kids had on industrial grade ear protection though, go responsible parents!) Hell, a pair of 10 years olds got dragged on stage by the lead singer of Five Finger Death Punch and headbanged better than most of the crowd.

3) I can get starstruck. I would have never thought. We hung out in the Jager tent area when Killswitch Engage was signing autographs. The group of us hung out there for an hour. I stared and then tried to play it off like I wasn't staring. I even thought about getting in the huge line-up, but if I actually got up to a band I've loved for 10 years I'm pretty sure I would have fainted. Oh and they played a killer set.

4) It seems as though I can get the best night of sleep I've had all damn year on a single tiny blowup mattress in the corner of a damp tent. Even trains passing right by the campgrounds didn't even phase me. I slept like a happy, slightly drunk, wet, tired baby. (which may be the best band name ever..imagine: " WEEEE AREEEE THE DRUNK! TIRED! BAAAABBBIIIIEEEESSSSS!")

5) Starting a fire with wet wood only requires one thing. Bug spray. Of course said bug spray may disappear off into the night and 6 people might spend the next day looking for it and not being able to find the stuff. Thank you bug spray... wherever you are.

My hands were stuck like that for days!

I moved out of the house I've been living in the past 2 years. And even though it wasn't going to be the same with almost of people I like not going to be living there this year, I still didn't have an easy time of it. The new place does have it's perks and I think I'll be just fine, I'm still going to miss the place. But my happiness there was more about the people I was with and I'm damn sure not going to stop seeing them just because we all don't live together anymore.

I was talking to a dude at the comic book store who is so pumped for another world war that I'm pretty sure he's going to offer to start one himself if there isn't one by Christmas. Which is absolutely ridiculous. Everyone knows that the next "world war" is going to be the computer/machine/matrix uprising.

That's where all those laser operators are going to come in real handy.

That's me. Free time is for the weak! Tomorrow, pillows!

Sam

Don't play with your food based toys.

My Star Wars Mr. Potato Head dolls don't do much. Well not as much as I want them to. Which I think kinda makes me sound like an uncompromising son of a bitch since I just declared "I want my inanimate objects to do more than inanimate objects normally do". I kinda wish they went on adventures and such, especially since my mom brought back a bag of junk lying around my parents house and I found Optimus Prime's legs.

And then I thought, well Sam, why don't you just MAKE them do shit.

I know it sounds like I'm pulling small scale super-villainy shit here but hear me out. Maybe I finally get a camera and take pictures of my Mr. Potato Head Dolls doing stuff and make up stories. I'd post all that stuff here, or maybe in yet another blog. I think that might be fun, and since fun stuff is what drags me through my work week. I am liking the idea. Plus the opportunity for puns is pretty much endless. Win/win.

I think I might be a genius

But then again I might not be as I keep losing shit all over the place the last few weeks. Keys? Niagara Falls. Phone? In a cab? Keys? In my room. Book? Front entrance at work. A few weeks ago I switched up which pocket I put stuff in and it pretty much ruined my damn life.

The people need to know that Kate is Awesome. She never reads this but she's sitting on a couch across the room from me and made a request.

So I've been pretty busy the last few weeks, I went to Niagara Falls with my brother to see my Dad for his Birthday. I went to Toronto for Bird's goodbye party... don't really want to get into that. I had a great time but I still don't want her to leave. I'm bad at goodbyes. We've had an old friend/roommate kicking around and visiting. Ahh Brad and his hobo bukkake. It's pretty awesome to see him get into random arguments about pretty much whatever the subject is at the time. Of course this is in between the huge amount of stuff happening at work. Blargh.

That's me. Maybe I could make a new job running a blog about Star Wars Mr. Potato Head doll antics? That would be great. It would be an awesome thing to tell people: "What do you do?" "Oh I take pictures of toys and put them on the internet for money."

Spammy

Well that was something.

So apparently this weekend I had an unconscious desire to embarrass myself. I mean I knew I was going to get trashed, but not "pass out on a couch in the middle of the party and and then pick a bed get rolled off said bed and almost kick a bunch of people in the face while I'm sleeping in the middle of a bedroom floor" trashed. Somehow I did manage to snag a pillow though.

Nice move, drunken Sam, nice move.

Seeing Bird and Aubz, who I haven't seen in months, and motherfucking Chotchy who I haven't seen in a year, was great! And I am a big fan of randomly wandering Toronto. I'm looking forward to the pictures.

Alas I've had an all day hangover. Blargh. But my own damn fault. But still. Blargh.

Know what makes me feel better? I mean besides the awesome weekend catching up with people, making fun of emotional speeches, a Lt. Commander Worf action figure and more booze than is reasonable for a person to consume?

The realization that I can always tell if a movie doesn't use real dinosaurs.

The one on the left, totally fake. The one on the right is real, but only a stunt fill-in so he isn't credited.

So I really really really want to leave Guelph and move away somewhere. I want to so bad it's only a little bit funny. Getting up and leaving and doing some goddamn adventuring, maybe meeting strangers in a hostel and later escaping them in mad dash in a strange city in an attempt to keep my kidneys and my slightly used (but pretty damn important) liver in a terror fueled adrenaline rush in a story nobody would ever believe.

You know, fun.

But I can't. And it pisses me off so much. Fuck you, life. Apartment hunting blows.

In the meantime there are some changes happening at work....but I'm not going to get my hopes up that things will get any better. I just can't leave. I wish it was for a good reason, like superpowers, but it's not. It's cause I don't like being fucking broke. I have to get this damn student loan paid off. At that point, when I'm not giving away most of a paycheck every month to the government, I can just take off. But that's going to be like another year, year and a half. So fuck that shit. I just have to work less overtime. Except that if I work more overtime that's more money to pay off my osap. It's a vicious cycle.

Damn it all. I want to plane ride somewhere!

However I do still get to be me though, and that's okay.

Bwaahahahahahah, it's funny if you saw the movie.

I just have to be happy when I'm not at work. So weekends. Probably for the best if less passing out is involved in the future. But just as many friends.

And hey, maybe this way I can finally get a cat. Or 2! And have them fight over my affections like I'm some sort of twisted ruler of the universe!

That's me. I'm sorry life, maybe we can try to fulfill our hopes and dreams next year?

Sam

Why am I still surprised?

You know, if I did more thinking with my penis I'd probably be less worried about being happy. And that ladies and gentleman, is why we don't talk much anymore. But everyone seems to be interested in my failures in dating so here we go.

Went of a Plenty of Fish date recently. Went to a slightly new-ish crepe place downtown. The real food crepes are not that good, the dessert food crepes are probably what the word wonderful tastes like.

My date is a master's student at the U of G and working in a lab full time on campus, she also lives by herself and has a tendency to babble. None of which is a deal breaker. However her "chaperone" (her word, not mine) was a tad over the top. She brought a stuffed Teddy Bear along to make sure I was acting like a gentleman. At first, man I thought it was cute and quirky and awesome. But as lunch progressed she kinda kept trying to include the damn thing in conversation.

Now when I'm home alone I talk to myself all the damn time. I carry on conversations with myself, especially when I have a lot on my mind (like recently), But I am not one for carrying on conversations with inanimate objects, it's mostly a conversation with myself.

So I didn't really mind at first. I thought she was kinda just kidding around or being playful, maybe a tool to help get over some social anxiety. Cool, good for her online dating and getting out of the house. Then she started expecting me to answer questions the bear was asking.

Questions I did not hear.

Ever had a date get offended because you didn't include her slightly imaginary friend in a conversation about music? It was a first for me. Also, she was into the White Stripes and Billy Talent. Yuck.

So yeah. Needless to say, the chaperone didn't approve of me. Stupid bear.

Too bad. She was pretty cute.

That's me. I was listening to the Ninja Turtles theme and watching "The Watchman" while I put this together. I don’t know if that changes anything, but it happened.

Well, the places we're still allowed to go.

Help me Obi-Wan!

So. I am in the midst of a dilemma. Shitty thing is even with a few days off work and lots of lying in bed listening to music wondering how practical it would be to paint something funny on my ceiling, I'm still trying to figure it out. I find that trying to figure shit it pretty much IS the story of my life, but that's okay since that's probably the same for most people. I  always figure something out, but getting there kinda blows some days. Gah! Thoughts! Feelings! Some days I wish I was a robot, but that ship has pretty much sailed so I'll stick with this this whole "human" thing...for now.

The only thing he could never do was love. Also, windsurfing.

So I've been pretty miserable at work the past little while. Nothing all that new, really but crummy enough that I'd been fantasizing a bit about not working there anymore. Maybe giving another shot at  something different like I was trying to do a few years back. Of course back then I ended up going back to school and that was a slight turning point in my life and one of the best decisions I ever made. But lately? Travel and adventure and new sound pretty badass.

Then I get a visit from Lysee, and she's been trying to convince me to move out to Vancouver ever since she went and did it. And I am definitely tempted. Then talking to Jay he starts going on about when he went and worked in Lake Louise and Banff. That sounded pretty awesome too. Mom mentions my almost successful attempt at working on a cruise line. So I started investigating and there are some definite opportunities to go places and do stuff. I am a fan of doing stuff.

But then I start asking around work about maybe doing a leave of absence type thingy, but it was made pretty damn clear that they don't really want me to leave. In a good way. And I am a big fan of all the money they give me, if not for work they make me do to earn it sometimes.

So. Problem. This isn't a nice all at once thing, this has been taking place over the last couple weeks.

So now I feel like this:

Pretty great way to get out of sharing. Take that kindergarten!

Now I'm at the point where I need help figuring out what I want to do. This is sorta leading into the whole "what do you want to do with your life" thing I never really bothered to figure out yet since I sorta decided just to wing it, not make plans, and see what happens. Except I did kinda make plans. Sorta. There were rough guidelines happening. Star Wars nook.

I've been starting to ask around for advice and what's been happening has been mostly predictable. The people with families and responsibilities and grown-up lives are all giving "stay and make money and start investing in your future" type of advice. All the irresponsible people that I like drinking with are all "go live out of a backpack for the next 2 years". And I think both of these ideas sound good.

It'd be so much easier to decide if I had kids, a wife, a mortgage, a car, a girlfriend, something. But I don't. If I stay it's more likely that these things will happen. But do I even want these things? But I also don't want to regret not making the slightly irresponsible choices while I have the opportunity.

Taking some advice from Kate I borrowed a giant white board and started a Go/Stay list. It got pretty full. Then after a while I drew 2 stick figures watching a monster eating another stick figure because thinking is hard.

And tonight I can't sleep. So there's that too.

But I have decided that if I stay I've got to make some changes in my life. And if I go, well that's a big change in and of itself, so I'd probably be content with that.

Unless I get eated by something. I hope it's a dinosaur!

I'm just sorta feeling like I'm standing on a big mountain and I need to pick which side to go down. I wish somebody would just kick me over one of the fucking edges already. It's not nearly as clear cut a choice as I'm making it out to be, but it damn well feels like it.

No idea what I'm going to do. But I do know I'm going to do something. That counts right? I still have time to worry, which is both nice and not nice at the same time. Deadline looks an awful lot like August at the moment.

Blargh! 

That's me. Oh and in between all this shit there were some dating fails, and a joke so blasphemous that I might be going to hell. Oh how I did laugh. Good times.

Spammy Von Awesome

Just call me Pops

So in a weird turn of either coincidence or because of the bandannas I started wearing at work to keep the sweat from pouring down my face all day I have been asked by pretty much everybody I work with if I'm married or have kids. For the record I have neither.

And seriously, this guy? With kids and a wife?

If you look hard you can see the camera. If you look harder you can see my friends asking me if I'm worried about picking up herpes from the bus shelter.

Quack! This pose really shows off the creepy hair necklace I finally got rid of just recently. I need to clean my bulletin board more often.

Apparently it's tradition to steal cutlery from somebody on their birthday. Not that that was going to stop me. I like cake.

 Although according to my junk mail folder there are tons of singles in my area waiting to hook-up, and hot sexy Russian babes who want a Canadian husband. I'm not quite convinced.

However I apparently look like a family man. Was that a fat joke? Also I should apparently have a house and a mortgage and a car and pets cause that's what people with full time jobs have. I also go out on the weekends but dancing in a club is also apparently weird for people my age. I didn't think 26 was too old to get smashed with your friends and scream your heart out to songs you can't even recognize when you're sober.

Well fuck that shit. I look how I look and I have no wife or kids, I don't have a mortgage or a car and I like to get trashed with my friends at bars and check out hot girls who are out my league as well as walk up to band members who just killed a live set and try to buy them a drink. I'm pretty damn okay with that.

I try to live life how it makes sense for me, and you know what? I'm still a mature responsible adult most of the time. I'm excited about buying furniture for the apartment I'm planning on having in the fall. There's a lady at the bank who I talk to about investments and taxes and fiscal planning and other made-up words.

Although let's be honest here, there were plans for a Star Wars nook. Now the idea has been expanded since I saw some cool lord of the rings mugs and awesome Wolverine book ends. Currently I'm trying to "fiscally plan" that shit to match the living room set I have my eye on at Leon's.

As for the wife/relationship bit, well if it happens then it happens. A few weeks ago I saw this awesome list of cool ideas for a date. I'm actually doing the Plenty of Fish thing again in an attempt to actually try some of them.

And kids? Well I'd have to expand the nook. But they can't play with the toys. The toys are mine.

That's me. Sorry ladies, if you want to know the date ideas you have to ask me out. Fresh underpants, a first aid kit and the ability to have an open mind while creating what might be an great Batman story later on are also good ideas.

Spammy