It is time for you to stop peeing on my shoes I have often complained here about the condition of public washrooms. Usually, however, I do not propose any solutions to such problems. This time is different, a piece of wood and a couple of L-brakets.

Sometimes the urinals in public washrooms are separated by pieces of wood, meant to shield unsuspecting people from adjacent, prying eyes (presumably). I think that this should be a lot more common because 1) this isn’t something that would cost a lot or take a lot of time to implement and 2) I am tired of having my shoes peed on. Yes, thats right.

I they would just put up those damn partitions this wouldn’t happen. Believe me, it was severe damper on my day today (along with a physics midterm) – and I was too shocked to say anything at the time. I will spare you the details.

I can understand when some drunken jackass has poor aim in a bar or something, but at school this seems somewhat out of place, and it pissed me off.

I don’t know exactly why it is, but I am getting increasingly frustrated with people in general. There are people that clearly think that they are the most important (especially when driving their cars – which I see every day). One guy in my calculus class this morning hung his legs over the seat next to me, and proceeded to listen to his walkman. This was sort of tolerable until he found a song he obviously liked, and subsequently “cranked” his walkman. This was clearly intolerable to many of the people around him, and someone finally pointed out that he might want to turn it down. Being the most important person in the class, he was understandably offended at the suggestion, and ignored it. I guess I will ultimately go nuts if I don’t figure out a way to ignore such things, like other people I have known, but this is something that I am finding hard to do. Crazy here I come!

This past week has been hard.

First thing that happened this week was that my grandmother died. I have lost my greatest fan. After the funeral I went to a party. This is what is technically referred to as emotional whiplash (EW).

This was a “I’m so happy you are finally moving away party”. The title was unofficial. The next day I helped my friends load their moving truck, and the following day drove 12 hours to Prince George. I now have a greater appreciation for how large BC is, and how much the Lower Mainland around Vancouver really is (visually) a nice place to live. Prince George is nice too, but some of the areas in between are rather desert-like, and not something that I am used to. I don’t think that I am a fan of bald mountains.

It is interesting to note the difference between physical and mental exhaustion. When your muscles hurt and you are physically exhausted, your brain may be working just fine. Mental exhaustion is different – your brain doesn’t work, but your body may. I think that attempting to roll a bookcase up the lawn instead of the sidewalk (stupidly) was an indication that mental exhaustion was an issue. Lets not even mention getting tables through doors. Then, suddenly, everything became funny and I didn’t care anymore. A good place to be.

Right now, I am mentally AND physically exhausted. A bad place to be.

12 hours in a vehicle isn’t as bad as I expected, which largely has to do with the company, excluding “that darned cat”. Getting back from Prince George was very easy, if you ignore the fact that when I land in a plane it feels like someone is stabbing knives into my ears, especially when the pilot makes like he is landing on an aircraft carrier. I flew on WestJet Airlines, cheap, efficient, and capable of a sense of humor:

“We have arrived in Vancouver because we gave pilot Phil too much coffee. If you’ve had our coffee you know what we mean!

You will find an in flight magazine in the seat ahead of you, next to the spilled soft drinks and abandoned cookies from the previous flight”.

Personally I liked this humor of the flight attendants, but not everyone did. The guy next to me didn’t (more on him later, he is an entry all of his own).

Well, apparently I an NOT dying, contrary to how I felt last night. I am still “alive”, allegedly.

The other day while driving to school I saw an interesting snapshot into other peoples lives. There is a park up the hill from where I live in Coquitlam where there are usually a number of taxi cabs parked. Why, I am not sure, but it is likely a place near where much business comes their way. I can only guess. The point, however, is not that the cabs were there on this particular day, but what was occurring “around” them. There were two young children, approximately 8 – 10 years of age. One boy, one girl. Their parents (presumably) were waving their hands and arms in the air at them. Words were audibly being screamed. The children were screaming back, and gesturing with inappropriate fingers. This may not seem remarkable, and indeed it might not have been with the exception of one point that I haven’t mentioned yet. The children were standing on the roof of one of the taxis. Hmmm…

At the point when I was driving by, the taxi driver (of the car in question) got out of his cab, and started waving his hands and yelling as well. I presume that this was not merely an imitation of the parents who were doing the same, but was also an effort, presumably, to get the little brats off the roof of his taxi. We can’t blame him there can we?

There was a small crowd gathered (8-10 people), mostly seniors who I often see walking in the area at that time of the morning. Apparently the pursuit of exercise can wait while an engaging melodrama unfolds upon the roof of a taxi. Since there was a crowd already present, it seems likely that there was some sort of spectacle in motion for long enough to collect about 10 people who were wandering by on foot. There were four vehicles in this particular parking area : the afflicted taxi, another taxi, and two vehicles that were not very well parked – parked at weird angles and one blocking in the “afflicted” taxi. Perhaps the parents arriving to remove their demon spawn from the roof of a car? I don’t know. In fact, I don’t know much of anything about what happened here, as it was merely something that I noticed as I drove by. The more and more I thought about it on the way to school, the more I wanted to know what was happening. Sadly, that won’t occur, and I can only dwell on the facts that I have already outlined. Damn.

Whenever friends or family get sick my usual response, albeit a silent one, is to reflect that I never get sick myself. I don’t get the type of cold that a lot of people do. At worst, I usually get the type of illness that can usually be attributed to a mild case of food poisoning – the 3 hour flu. This usually ends quickly, cumulating in a dizzying waterfall from hell, and positive feedback loop of gastric chemoreceptors locked in the “on” position . Then suddenly the world becomes sane again (relatively).

So when I rewired my parents television sets (they have three – and two VCR’s) and therefore delved into the land of 15 year old dust. Layers so thick that you need a pressure washer to dust it properly. Look behind YOUR television, what you find there is often a landscape of unspeakable horror. So this is what I found on Sunday, and the allergic reaction that I had to it seemed something that was not altogether unexpected. However, I didn’t really understand why my throat was so sore. I attributed it to an allergic reaction and nothing more. The next day I visited CatLand^TM, and the allergic reactions (broke the world record for sneezes in one day…) there were not unexpected as well, though were of a severity that brought notice from others.

It was all downhill from there.

The recently unprecedented : I am sick (and no longer just in the mental sense). I don’t remember being like this, having a cold, since somewhere in the middle of high school. That would be about 10 years ago. It wasn’t something that I missed. Now I am bearing the full onslaught of a viral tidal wave. The room spins, my head is full of bad things, my chest feels like a bus is parked on it. I can only imagine how much fun it is to sit near me in lecture, leaking and venting in the way that I am.

My current theory is that allergic reactions left the door open for the gleeful cold virus to come dropping in, unannounced. It then proceeded to scamper up the hallways of my body, filling every room with its vile presence. I guess I picked it up while sniffing and vulnerable from the people inhabiting CatLand^TM, but l prefer to blame my parents instead, as we all should.

I once read an article where the author chronicles all of the things that happened to them when they were sick. I remember them saying something like : “my body was so sore that I could feel each and every air molecule strike my body, and even my hair hurt”! I am not yet at this stage, and hopefully won’t reach it anytime soon. I often wonder why we claim to be ready to appreciate breathing clearly when we are sick, only to once again take it for granted when we are healthy again. I look forward to it.

I am writing this part a little later on…. is it possible to have the flu and a cold at the same time? I guess it probably is, because my cold symptoms are still here, yet the fever and dizziness are starting to invade me. Oh man, its going to be a fun night! I can only imagine what the inevitable conclusion of nausea is like when you have a head that is crammed full of swelling and all kinds of bad body fluids. Either I am on a really large elevator, or my balance is coming all undone. It’s not exactly a good feeling knowing that everything is about to get worse and there is nothing you can do about it. Lecture will be really fun tomorrow morning. Wish me luck.

One way to notice that you have hair that is too long is to hear people say cryptic things like: “Your hair is too long”! This happened a few weeks ago, but I sort of ignored it. Then I was driving on the freeway out to Langley, and I closed the sunroof because it was getting a little too much like a wind tunnel in my car. I have an electric sunroof, and I managed to close in on my hair. Needless to say, this was a little confusing initially, but once I had figured out what the hell was going on, I opened the sunroof. I sort of made up my mind at that point that my hair was too long, and got it hacked much shorter a while later. Why didn’t anybody tell me?

The other incident with my car last week was slightly more violent and destructive. I was traveling at about 60, and noticed that the car ahead of me had swerved into the other lane. Suddenly I saw this bird intent upon collision with my windshield. I was unable to avoid it, but it quickly made itself clear that it wasn’t a bird, it was a rock about the size of a baseball. This quickly got my attention. The car behind me immediately began honking, likely struck similar to the car ahead of me.

You know when you drive over a newly paved stretch of road and you get that agitated gravel sound on the underside of your car? This is what happened at that moment as well, except the road was not newly paved, and the source of my attacker was this big arrogantly blue dump truck. So I got mad. I u-turned immediately, which is not really my custom. I was angry, and intent upon getting some sort of license plate or truck company name so that I could have someone to yell at over the phone later on.

This obviously wasn’t the sort of case where I was going to confront the driver, I was merely going to get the license plate and company name. I never got the chance for either. First of all, driving behind this guy was like attempting to catch up to a hailstorm (and sounded something similar). I had to drive so far behind him that I couldn’t read anything off of his truck. When he stopped at a light, I tried to drive on the shoulder to read his plates, but it was one of those trucks that was so covered in crud that I couldn’t read a damn thing. I couldn’t get through the light at the same time as him either because there was a cop coming the other way and I didn’t really feel like running the light at that point in time (lights and sirens don’t end the day well). Out of options, I waited at the light and never caught up to him again.

What really pisses me off here is that I likely have to buy a new windshield for my car. A baseball sized rock traveling at approx. 60 in the opposite direction of my 60 wields some serious impact on a pane of glass. What is most surprising here is that while the igneous projectile left a sizable blemish in my window, none of the damage penetrated far enough through the glass to create any sort of disfigurement on the inside. Of course, that won’t console me when I am paying $200 for a new windshield (which actually costs 950, but insurance covers some of it). OF course, this isn’t money that I have.

Maybe its time to rethink that whole strategy I’ve got about never entering the lottery?

Some people can say that they have never had a near death experience. I am not sure what exactly defines such an occurrence, but It probably has to be something that comes in direct conflict with your body. For example, surviving a car crash that nearly kills you, leaving you recuperating in the hospital for quite some time would probably qualify. What about having a gun pointed at your head? This has happened to me, but I don’t really think of it in the context of a near death experience, just something that really quite sucked at the time. Had I been shot and nearly fatally “killed” I would probably be singing a different tune. Actually, I’m not singing at all right now, but you get the gist of my suggestion.

My question here is if you have to be actually injured in order to have a near death experience. What if you were on an airplane that was about to crash because the pilot had become incapacitated? Just at the last moment you were saved because Ted, the novice pilot in seat 13D stumbled to the front and landed the thing, saving everyone. Would this be a near death experience? The Microshaft flight simulator just saved the day. Again!

Let me digress for a minute from my point (debatable that it even exists). What is with the term near miss anyway (thinking of wayward planes…)? In order to miss, things don’t collide. So nearly missing would be colliding, but just barely (probably still significant at 30,000 feet though…). If two planes don’t collide, but come close to each other, everyone terms it a “near” miss. What kind of crazy language to we have anyway?

Back to our irregularly scheduled programming….

There was this “event” that happened to me many years ago. I will not bore you with the exact date and time. I was in south Langley in my car, driving around, aimlessly, as I customarily did before I had to worry about such things as rent, and actually paying for my own “food”. I decided to stop at Aldergrove “*Lake”, but had to park on the road quite some distance away (it was busy). I was walking and realized I had locked my keys in my car, went back and got them (I have spares stashed about my body because, well, this happed a lot, and still does). After I was on my way again, a flatbed truck rounded the corner, and a negligently secured toilet flung (flushed?) itself from the truck bed, landing about 5 feet in front of me, and smashing into a billion pieces (as these things tend to do…). Needless to say, I was startled. You can’t say that nothing good ever came of locking my keys in the car.

Maybe you have never seen your life flash before your eyes, never felt really close to death, felt the cold sweat fight its way to the surface of your skin, or seem past life experiences flash before your eyes like so many vacation slides. So I am guessing that you have never been an unwilling participant in a “near miss” with a airborne toilet. Still, would this be properly categorized as a near death experience? I wasn’t physically hurt, but one can imagine the carnage and mutilation that could come at the “hands” of a airborne toilet. A toilet (and it wasn’t one of those new “low flow” ones) weighs, well I don’t know how much a toilet weighs… but one can imagine it isn’t something you would want to land upon you when it is commanding a high velocity.

I have, among other things, been told that I think too much. Maybe they are right. I don’t think so, but an argument could be made that I think about the wrong things.

* Ah yes, the asterisk. Aldergrove “Lake” is a bit of a misnomer as well. Its actually a cement lined hole in the ground that is filled with water in order to have young children and silly adults swim in it and obtain bacterial infections. One year they drained the thing and found an entire cow in the bottom. Apparently, cows cant swim. Bummer.

Recently the price of going to a movie went up 1 dollar. That means that at a big theatre you now have to pay 11 dollars for an evening movie, and 7 for a matinee. This caused a small media stir when it occurred. Everyone was going on and on…. “how can we afford this now”?…. “that means that a movie really costs 20 bucks to see because of the popcorn and drink prices!”…. etc. Now what is the big deal here? I didn’t hear much complaining and bellyaching when the price was still 10 dollars, so does an extra dollar really make such a difference so that we all scream and cry foul? Personally, I may feel unaffected by this apparent travesty because I generally attend matinees. You see, I actually prefer to sit in a near empty theatre, though I do miss out on the fun of having people kick the back of my seat, chat to fellow idiots on their cell phones, or wave laser pointers with reckless abandon whenever “naughty bits” grace the screen. I also don’t buy things to eat at a movie theatre. If I am in a popcorn mood, I will eat that which hasn’t been cooked with motor oil or whatever the hell they use there. I have only purchased food in a theatre when in the company of others who… well… made it necessary (I am stupid, but not so stupid as to fight THAT one…). So what is my point? Do I even have a point? If you are going to put that much effort into complaining, you might as well complain about something that is important. A movie is simply not something that should be taken all that seriously, and if you really cannot afford to pay the extra dollar, rent the damn thing when it comes out on video the next week anyway!

I remember a number of years ago when I went to the UBC library in order to study. I couldn’t find what I needed at SFU’s library, and went to the UBC biomedical library instead. After studying/researching there, I went into the student union building and got something to eat. I was only there for an hour, but I had three complete strangers come up to me and strike up a conversation. I was completely blown away by this. While this sort of friendliness was not uncommon at my College, at SFU it has never happened outside of a classroom (and frequently not there either…). I have to wonder if I should have gone to UBC, and I also wonder if my reasons for not doing so were significant enough to have missed out on the experience. At the time, I had ignored ample warnings from those who had attended both SFU and UBC before, and all mentioned that I shouldn’t go to SFU. Too late now, although it is nice to not have to take a bus to my next class.

Today I heard one (of the many) theories as to why CementLand^TM is the way that it is, and why the people who trudge through its dreary interiors are the way that they are. If you are ever on a public transit bus, you may notice the flooring that they have there. Ugly, demoralizing, and non-slippery. There is a certain set of rules for acceptable behaviour on a transit bus that I have observed in my brief time that I had to ride them (1 year). Look straight ahead, avoid eye contact, and don’t talk to strangers. This is not something that you could get from, say, being on a bus for a measly week or something. It takes TIME to fully appreciate the transit experience. CementLand^TM has the exact same flooring throughout much of it. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that peoples behaviour is much the same. I have noticed that this is almost everyone’s experience at CementLand^TM, with the exception of the computer science department, which sort of contains a whole different breed of people anyway. If you think I am bitter, you should talk to the grad students. They went to a nice place to get their first degree, then they realize where they are for their Masters…

From what I understand, San Francisco has passed some sort of law to make it illegal to discriminate against fat people, the horizontally challenged…. whatever. Apparently, the whole thing began when some sort of weight loss company had a billboard with something similar to the following :

“When the aliens come, they will eat the fat ones first!”

Personally, I think that I would find this funny even if I was fat. However, I am not fat. Naturally, as with ANYTHING these days, someone took offense to this. The great interest group monster reared its ugly head once again, and now we have a law against fat discrimination in San Francisco. I am not saying that we should discriminate against fat people, but is this something that will be abused? There are jobs that “fat” people cannot do, it is just the way that it is. Does this law mean that we will start having “fat” people doing anything they want, just because firing them from such jobs would be discriminatory. What are they going to get? Fat strippers? There is always the slippery slope. Grab your toboggans.

Just one more thing. Isn’t it time people learned that lights that don’t work make the intersection a four way stop? I had to sit behind some idiot who refused to go through the intersection, even when many people had already honked, and ultimately passed them. So I waited, I honked, I waited some more. I gestured (with all my fingers). They waved, they pointed at the light, they gestured (with one finger). So I passed them. I suppose it will soon be illegal to discriminate against the stupid too.

Well, today was BIG GARBAGE DAY in Coquitlam. Obviously, an exciting event to those like myself, with nothing to do but note the mundane and frustrating around me. Actually I was surprised the amount of stuff that the garage people (or refuse engineers) wouldn’t take away. A lot of it is still left at the curb. The whole city is beginning to look like a shithole, with all the garbage at the curb. If its not bad enough that “we” throw out so much stuff, I have to wade through it everyday, look at it when I drive by, and avoid what the little high school snots have thrown all over the road. I guess I am just getting intolerant in my “old” age.

DON’T take cold beverages for granted!

Mistake Number 1 Yesterday I had the mad decision to eat some of the food that they serve at CementLand^TM. I think the correct terminology for what I consumed was LeadBread^TM and a SandMuffin^TM. Ah…. but what for a beverage…? What was interesting is not the fact that I went for the iced tea (which I seem to have a high affinity for during the last 8 months), but the fact that it was delivered to me from the dispenser HOT! HOT! I couldn’t believe it. The cup started to get warm, and I had that brief thought process that I get when sometimes I cannot distinguish between hot and cold. No, it was definitely hot, I decided. Too hot to hold onto the cup, actually. I thought, maybe they just are serving the ICED tea HOT right now. After all, this is CementLand^TM, where everything is a little “different”. There is no real reason for it, that’s just the way it is (the school motto). So I tested the Root Beer. Also hot. In fact, hotter than the ICED tea. Strange.

Mistake Number 2 So I called over someone working at this particular cafeteria and asked about the HOT ICED TEA.

Why is it hot? Last week it was ICE cold, but now its hot. Why?

-Shrug-

Do you know where I can get COLD ICED tea?

-Shrug-

Mistake Number 3 So I explained to her that its called ICED TEA for a reason. Its supposed to be COLD!!! Yes, I know that some people drink tea that is hot, but this is called ICED TEA for a reason. So she told me to add ice to it. What? Am I supposed to water down 1 inch of drink with 6 inches of ice just so I can get cold ICED TEA? I don’t think so. Not for $1.50 for a thimble full, anyway.

Then she got combative. Why is whenever I actually stand up to this kind of thing I manage to get the employee that is *this* close to snapping. She should work at the RoyalBlank. I’m even polite when I ask these question. I was just asking.

What followed was an act of complete cowardice on my part. After a brief confrontation, I actually bought the HOT ICED TEA. I figured, well, some people drink hot tea, and I happen to like hot tea, so maybe this won’t be so bad.

Mistake Number 4 I drank the HOT ICED TEA. Let me tell you, its not very good. I like normal hot tea, but this was just not a beverage that lends itself to heat.

I should have had the steaming Root Beer Instead.

I have always thought that you can figure out a lot about people by their garbage. This is not to say that I dig through other peoples garbage just to find out things about them. Why dig through garbage when you can tap phone calls, look in windows, and follow people to work? Well, so I have heard and read. This week has the exciting distinction of containing “Big garbage day” in Coquitlam, which, loosely translated, means you can haul whatever junk you want to get rid of to the curb and let the neighbors and salvage artists pick through it for a whole week before the garbage people come by to pick it up. Now I know why there were so many yard sales on the weekend (more on that particular brand of human travesty later). So if you need new furniture, say a new couch, you know where you can get a nice, used, slightly stained one. I saw a number of these today. One of them, on the side of the road, had this dog sitting on it. I presume it was his couch before it was carted to the curb, and damn if he wasn’t going to get as much use out of it before it was gone forever. I also saw a horribly stained mattress. I don’t want to know the story there. However, I did see a fantastically disfigured barbecue. The whole lid of it had melted away, and half of the wood portion of the side counter part had been burned. I DO want to know the story there. Suffice to say, it probably gave the neighbors something to talk about – and then again when the steaks finally fell from their blast induced low orbit to eventually come down into their pool, strangely enough, on the pool party day. Nothing spoils a pool party like a steak in the water.

As I mentioned, I noticed many “garage/yard/buy my junk and add it to yours” sales this weekend. The people upstairs had one, and so did many people on the road up the hill. The strange thing was, I noticed five yard sales, but the only signs for them were the ones directly in front of their houses. Why? Later on I saw this guy walking up the hill, with everyone’s yard sale signs in under one arm, and his colorful/neon signs under the other. The bastard was taking down everyone else’s signs and putting up his instead! I should have grabbed his stapler and ….. I should have run over him right then and there, so that he wouldn’t spread his genetic disposition onto progeny that would follow his lead. This kind of thing is genetic, as is the “yard sale” gene (ysg-10), and I should know, I am *this* close to a biology degree. I think this would have been virtually justifiable homicide, but I doubt the courts would agree. Perhaps I will raise this in my “Law and Psychology” class this semester.