I have been having strange dreams lately. The simulated events that my subconscious can manufacture sometimes fool me as to their dubious levels of reality come morning. It remains the strangest feeling to wake up with memories of things you never saw, never experienced, never consciously desired… and to be confused about their reality. When I was a child I used to have recurring nightmares and learned to control them. I could change outcomes, and steer the dream into what I wanted it to be. As an adult my dreams have occasionally become about things much scarier than monsters, and I wish I could again control their outcomes. At any rate, dreaming is an interesting experience when it opens you up to new possibilities, or to merely wake up and go “wow – THAT was weird!”. I see no reason why sleep should not be a productive time as well. So I have begun, when I do not have to work the next day and nights of good sleep are not necessary, to induce dreamy nights intentionally. Sometimes when I eat too much candy before going to bed I am able to indulge in one of my most reliable and well practiced of hobbies : insomnia. However, that is becoming more and more rare, and it is a night of strange dreams that has begun to take over as the result of overindulgence in the refined sugar brand of sin. So I’ve done this on purpose. It is not difficult really, consuming candy is my one true addiction, and the yield of such a surreal result while asleep only makes it easier. I am enjoying the ride.
There seems to be much debate lately over recess. You know, the 15 minute break you get in elementary school so that you can go run around in a field or something? Recess. You know, the 15 minute break the teachers get so that they can go and smoke and microwave stale burritos in the staff room? Well, the powers that be are thinking of canceling it. Why? To eliminate bullying. Really? ELIMINATE it? I don’t know how it works these days, but when I was in school recess was a time where I was at least in control of my own destiny when it came to bullies. You know, you could run away or something. Trapped in a desk was where probably the worst of it happened. Should we cancel class?Have any of these knee jerk reactionaries thought about LUNCH hour? Nah… no bullying goes on there does it? I was bullied a lot in elementary school. It was a pretty miserable experience. However, no matter how much bullying goes on during recess, I cannot fathom why people think that its demise could spell the end of bullying. I think it is good, to a point, that kids are bullied (my public hanging is scheduled for next week). Its kind of the way the world sometimes works. The sooner you learn how to deal with it, and I was a slow learner, the better. Naturally I’m not saying we should encourage bullying, quite the opposite. Why don’t we find a way to ease the situation without calling upon meaningless solutions that pander to the loudest public mouths that don’t know what they are talking about? The only way you will eliminate bullying in school is to have all the children locked up in separate cells where they have no contact with others. We’ll call it the Harlow type of schooling before we throw in the towel. Of course, then the kids will just be bullied at the mall, at work later in life, or by their siblings (or in MY high school — the teachers). I guess the only real way to eliminate bullying is to wipe out the whole human race. Maybe we should consider that – it would be a solution to many problems…
I was at JobLandTM the other day and someone asked me if I was planning on going to school. “Oh, I’ve already graduated” I said. “No…..are you going to post-secondary”? I pointed out that I already had a degree from CementLand. “Oh – you don’t look old enough to have gone to University yet!” Not only am I old enough, but I graduated from high school NINE years ago! Geez! Still, its not a bad thing that his happens… the thing with the age I mean. It might have sucked when I was 18, I really don’t’ remember, but looking younger than I am isn’t something I see as bad. If this carries on and I look 30 when I’m 40, well, then I’m thinking that it is a good thing…. uh right?In another incident of age related shenanigans, I was at a local grocery store buying some stuff. The lady behind the counter said, and this is a direct quote: “I’ll bet you are glad there is only one more week of school!”. I looked confused, apparently. The initial question was followed up by: “Which high school do you go to?”. I only managed the feeble reply of: “Uh…. I graduated from University over a year ago…”. She looked confused. I then helpfully pointed out that I graduated from high school almost 10 years ago. She looked embarrassed. I just kind of went numb from the idea that someone could think that I was still in high school. Then, in what was to be the real kicker as well as a real stupid comment, she said: “At least after all that hard work you have a high paying job now eh?”. Yeah, right. SHE makes more than I do. Fuck.
I suggested in my last entry that I would talk about the situation with the mice in my suite. They invaded full force this time. I’d last heard them in the walls in December, but the situation seemed to have remedied itself at that time. Then, around March I started hearing things in the walls again. So I talked to the landlords, who were as unconcerned as usual. They put poison (an idea I dislike even still…) in the places they could reach. Some of it was put above my shower, most of which fell on me when I shifted the roof of it by accident. Showering with rat poison, a new experience. Then it all went away and I thought the problem was once again over. One morning I got up, put my feet over the edge of my bed, and felt something slide right between my toes. I looked down. A dead mouse right between my big toe and my “index” toe. This was no way to start a morning.Another discussion with the landlords. “What do you want US to do about it?”….So I assaulted the holes in the walls with duct tape. Wouldn’t keep them out, but I’d know when and where there were any incursions.
So at the end of May I moved out. Unbelievable the amount of mouse shit I found under my furniture. An even sadder ending to the story is that I moved back into my parents house, a move that is sure to drive me back to drinking after a 5 year absence (which wasn’t due to any particular problems with it…). Most of the reasons for me moving was due to the financial constraints of my student loan payments, and the fact that my job sucks. I remember when 1100 a month seemed like a lot….
I love driving my car but driving for 2 hours a day to get to work (used to be 20 minutes) is kind of getting me down.
So lets talk a minute about keywords. I occasionally check out how people are getting to my site. Some are from sites of people I know, but most are from search engines. Since my site contains mostly text, the most bizarre (and some not so) combinations of words that people search for lead them to me. Sometimes these combinations make sense – like those searching for “daily rant” or something. Frequently, these don’t make sense. Like “fat car rant”. Huh? I had a spike in the hits recently, and so I looked at my keyword hits in order to find out why (other than those people who like to “read” the papers for BISC 307). One combination really “caught” my eye – not that hits are unwelcome, but it seemed strange since these weren’t words I thought I’d included anywhere. When I went to altavista.com and searched for the keywords “caught masturbating” – …. there were15, 230 results, by MY site was number 5 on the list! It has since lost it’s dubious high ranking. This was confusing at the time largely due to the fact that I hadn’t remembered writing anything on this topic at any point. For a while there I got around 5 or 6 hits extra per day. Now they have tapered off. It eventually occurred to me that I had written about this on my site, about one of the horror stories at JobLandTM. I should point out that I was not involved in that particular incident. With one notable exception (during that whole craze with the Molson Canadian rant commercial) I have yet to write an entry merely to include keywords for search engines to pick up. Maybe I should…..?We now return you to the year 2002, already in progress on a planet near you…..