post semester stuff

It's interesting that often my blogs are manifesting themselves around the same time that there are kids running around outside my bedroom door, and I've slept insufficiently.

Semester 3 is done.

Intense few months that was, but really, really hard to quantify for some reason. I tell everybody that I've been busy; that I've been struggled to get the massive amounts of work done, thus killing my social life (although killing a social life in Ottawa is like hanging a rapist, it does more good than harm). People ask me, "What have you been doing?" and I struggle to describe it to them.

"Stuff." I say, "Lots of stuff."

And there has been stuff between other stuff:

I was voted by my classmates both Grumpiest Old Fart, and Radio King. The latter is either based my age-like seniority or my skills. Maybe both. In my acceptance speech for the former I thanked everybody by saying, "Fuck the lot of you."

In terms of the classes themselves the things I sucked at, I really sucked at. Particularly sales. I squeaked by in the course barely, unable to stomach the endless waves of sychophantic double-speak from a sales professor who had spent a lifetime in sales.

The course culminated in a role-play where I had to pitch advertising to her. She was meant to be a car dealership. The most frightening thing about this exam- and ultimately, her -was how deeply she believed in her own little fantasy dealership, to the point where she was actually selling cars in her head up until the point of my exam.

She also couldn't see the difference between 'Where you see yourself in the future' and 'Where you want to be in the future'. If you can't see the difference either you should probably be in sales.

So that class didn't go to well.

Another course I took was Podcasting. It eventually mutated into Marketing. Not that anybody in the class noticed the change, as the program took place in the computer lab. As a result most people were surfing the net for three hours every Friday. Some of us became obsessed with the game Scorched Earth in which you launch missiles into the air to try to blow up other missile launchers on other computers. It sounds inane and stupid, and it is. It is also is very addictive. Often the simplest most banal things are.

At the awards ceremony (In which I won the Grumpiest Old Fart award and Radio King) a guy puked so hard he hemorrhaged his eyeballs. I asked him the following day, "How do you puke so hard you hemorrhage your eyeballs?" He started citing statistical evidence of it's occurrence, but I didn't hear most of it because I walked out of the room. I have a feeling he may go through the rest of his life with people only hearing the first bit of what he says. Not a great talent if you want to be in radio.

I can't say that I left the party without pie on my face. I did find myself slow-dancing with a blow-up doll. There was a logical reason for this, but if i try to explain it to you you'll probably leave the room after hearing the first bit.

Over the past few months I've become mildly obsesses with a show called House. I'm not a television watcher (lacking cable) but when it was pointed out to me by a few people that i reminded them of the lead character I had to see it. The lead character in question is an embittered, snarky diagnostician who goes through the show deconstructing people in a brutally honest, yet sarcastic, way. He is a total asshole, and only the censorship laws keep the other characters from saying it. In every episode he's called an asshole in some new and creative way. I'm waiting for them to recycle calling him and asshole without actually calling him an asshole but they haven't yet. I'm drawn to the series because it's so well written.

I've also blagged my way into a club claiming to be this guy:

His name is Alex Rios and he is an outfielder for the Toronto Blue Jays. I don't see the similarity but my fellow hooligan Phil seems convinced of it. When he tells others this they seem convinced of it as well. Without ever seeing the guy before I managed to get past the line at a bar and be personally greeted by it's owner...Even though the Jays played that same day...In Atlanta...Apparently the guy new enough about baseball to be able to make the association, but not enough about geography to perceive the bullshit.

Also I'm not sure if this is a step up, or down from being told I look like this guy:

Which I used to get a lot of.

The toss-up between looking like a baseball dude than can't string a coherent sentence together or the sleazebag from Titanic is a tricky one.

And, I can't exactly identify when the switch from Rios to Zane happened, but I suspect my increasing weight has something to do with it. I know that when I arrived in Canada a year and a bit ago I weighed 157. I now weigh 210.

Living in North America does that to you. Thankfully about a year ago I had the foresight to start a heavy cycle of exercises to battle my body going pear-shaped (It just occurred to me that that's what the expression means; I keep using it to describe clusterfucks (which is what you eat that causes your body to go pear-shaped)).

Other things that have not occurred is getting a girlfriend and leaving Ottawa.

I've given up on the girlfriend thing. It just ain't going to happen. Either women here are a mess, or I am. The beauty of it is I don't really care either way. Most of my friend's have been whipped into a domestic shape by their relationships, and it's kind of a pear-shape...No that doesn't work; rather a potato shape... Fuck it, they've become sedentary.

As far as leaving Ottawa goes, I'm coiled like a spring, getting tighter and tighter wound every day. I'm on the home-stretch, I can feel it. One last semester of school and then I can go. I've been compiling a list of Non-North American English-language radio stations around the globe to apply to. I know where I'd like to go, but it will be tricky getting there without some hard experience in the real industry. Although, I must say, this program at Algonquin College is probably about as close to it as possible.

In the mean time I'll just have to deal with my cabin-fever by heading to Florida with some friends for the New Year. It'll be a road-trip starting from Chicago and ending in Corkscrew FL(Yes We Can) with two couples and me.

As usual there is excited email-type plan-making between all the participants (two couples, and me). Suggestions about timing, where to go, what to do. I have always been a "The Best Plan is No Plan" kind of guy, but I couldn't resist getting caught up in the excitement:

My Thoughts:

-Just to clarify, Terra, I'm arriving on Saturday the 27th at 13hr to O'Hare. Depending on what time you decide to meet me I'll head into the Chicago suburbs to attack mailboxes with baseball bats. BONUS: You get to try to find me based on the trail. DIFFICULTY: I will be in the back of a pick-up truck and the driver will be hopped up on gin so the trail will be erratic.

-I would be interested in Nashville purely from a "Heartland of Rock-N Roll" point of view; check out Sun studios, the whiteification of the delta blues, fondle Robert Johnson, etc. BONUS: You get to see me fondle a dead blues guy. DIFFICULTY: I would like to get to large bodies of water and sun poste haste, so if this ties up too much time, we may have to bend the time and space continuum

-The last time I was in Savannah I hated everyone I was with, and they hated me. In keeping with consistency we all will have to generate a solid tangible mass of hatred towards each other. I can facilitate this by repeatedly flicking you in the ear, and you can call me a Vegetarian. BONUS: Due to the untimely hospitalization of Chantz's mom Chantz and Steph will likely be in Savannah if/when we go. DIFFICULTY: Chantz's mom is hospitalized.

-I want to lay on the beach and do NOTHING short of allowing my heart to beat once every few minutes. I would like to maximize the time doing this. Disney and Six Flags were designed by Nazis, and goose-stepping sounds suspiciously like doing something to me. However if something weird comes up; like people wanting to wrestle possums, or Fleetwood Mac is in town, i'll increase me heart rate for activity. BONUS: I will require the bare minimum to survive, simply a bedpan, beer, and someone to stuff some cheese in my mouth occasionally. DIFFICULTY: Cheese makes me fart.

-Trev, as you well know, I am able to sleep in the car. With five people taking shifts all-nighters of transit are well within our means. However, when i'm driving I like to listen to the German electro-group Scooter at maximum volume. I like to loop the part when they go "ABFAHRT!!! Yeaaaah! LOUDER!!! ... Yess! Abfahrt!!! Abfahrt!" which, as it turns out, they've already looped for my convenience...FOR THE WHOLE GODDAMNED SONG.

-If you want to see Chantz in Savannah, it's probably best to go before. It's not really a huge deal for me to hang around and sightsee. I have, after all, read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. And keep in mind, they shoot people that look like me in these places. BONUS: You get to see an actual historical lynching. DIFFICULTY: you'll have to explain it to my parents.

-arin

What followed was a stunned and awkward silence from all other participants in the conversation thread. I'll bet they're starting to dread insisting that I go. And well they should; It will be a total clusterfuck. And pear-shaped.

Which is fine by me.