Stop Being A Baby

I'm allergic to destiny.

Alright, so here are the things that have been keeping me from speaking to you:

• I began working at Mark's Work Wear House (I'm the model for the bib overalls)
• I began a comedy room with my protege/mentor Dave Burke
• I took da missus home to meet everybody (and help her understand what terms like 'da missus' mean. 
• I began eating bananas for the first time since I was about four years old. 

I hated bib overalls when I was a kid. I have no idea why.
Mom used to dress me in them and I'd cry and cry.
I guess that even during my pre-school days I had a strong sense of wardrobe.
An instinct that had little or nothing to do with bib overalls.
I can't concentrate here.
I'm at some dive that plays a lot of old-timey music.
Which is fine and all, but I can't write while I listen to that in one ear-
"Oh girl, I want to be with you all of the time.
All day and all of the night."
While I try to listen to my new Cinderella band in my other ear.
Which sounds nothing like this antiquated stuff.
It sounds much more, well, awful, I suppose.
But what can I say?
I love the sound of awful sometimes.
I have listened to this album end-to-end more than most.
While jammed up in that van ride to Sydney, I listened to it and nothing else for the entire trip.
The album's only 33 minutes long.
They're called Future of the Left and they really jangle my chimes.

I was feeding Rowan.
There are pictures that my mother and her friends would find adorable that I might upload...someday.
I fed her some kiwi with a spoon, and I just sort of flung banana corners at her (think Trivial Pursuit pie pieces).
While I was feeding her, I figured "Well, if she's eating them..." and began helping myself to some.
"Like stealing banana from a baby!"
Tasted alright.
I always liked banana-flavoured things.
I just never ate bananas.
I guess I do now.
All because of her.
Babies are miraculously powerful entities.
No wonder people spend so much money on them.
It's so strange to me, showering gifts on babies.
It's sort of like...I don't know what it's like.
It seems like the parents and aunts and uncles and stuff are trying to appease the baby.
They're bringing the frankincense. They're bringing the myrrh.
Meanwhile, the child would just as soon gnaw on the end of a stapler.
"Do you think the baby liked it?" they say on the way to their cars.
"Does this please you, baby?"
I don't even really understand clothing them.
But that's probably because I'm not much of a caregiver.
Anyway.
I believe in giving to children.
Personally, I'd just wait until they have the mental capacity to appreciate it.
The mental capacity to not poop themselves.
Yet, they do have this ability to transfix one's attention.
They can elicit change without saying anything (intelligible).
I see these babies that have to do with me, and it's only then that I can say:
"Oh, I was as they are. I get it now.
They weren't just photographs.
They were me. Once."

Bit of a Stretch

Written on the road thru Cape Breton, Saturday, November 24:

We just pulled over the shuttle (minivan) for all of us to have a bit of a stretch.
Like all of you with your body issues, I've considered yoga, sure.
Though I've no preoccupation with being muscular (duh), I'm keen on being lithe.
But who has the time these days?
Not me.
I don't know what I've been doing, but I've been busy.
A dog has approximately ten times the amount of smell receptors that a human has.
Despite this, they're still prone to mishaps like eating a portion of a scented candle.
"Well, it smelled like food."
A good reason to keep them away from the heavy duty cleaners (lemon-scented).
One day the missus was so excited to hug me, she threw an unpeeled banana into a nearby garbage can.
These and other fruits to come!
Accidentally insulted a Vietnamese woman last night.
You can't refer to a race as 'they' any more.
Any race. Any they.
Like, "They invented the rocket," or "They eat hamster."
In this society I bide my time and wait to see what other perfectly legitimate language is eventually "Not cool, man."
I'd rather be a nobody than some internet sensation.
One day you're a slob, the next 14 million people are talking about you, the next you're hanging yourself in your bathroom.
My dad says shit, too, y'know. All our dads say shit.
Whose phrases will you parrot when he passes on?
I know, I know.
I'm just jealous cause people are reading his blog.
I'm going to make one that's called, "The Vocabulary of Mike."
It'll involve all of the words that dad has made up over the years and subsequently eased into his vernacular.
Like 'squez' (squeeze) and 'matt-rass' (mattress).
These days, most of us aren't as interesting as our parents.
I don't know how to end this post positively.
I'll write something more affable after I manage to shower.

Get Reality

Written whilst shuttling, Saturday, November 24:

It's sort of like a confessional, but I have no idea how many priests are on the other side of the fly screen.

I'm in a van and the van it moves. 
I'm doing jokes in Membertou tonight, so long as this guy keeps us on the road 'til Sydney.
Initially, after reading the ghoulish details of The Greyhound Bus Beheading, I decided that perhaps you shouldn't read such things while in transit yourself.
Ultimately, I've decided that you just shouldn't read about this sort of shit period.
Do you know the story?
By all means, read about it here!
Just goes to show you that reality is a matter of perception.
It's my perception that shapes what it is that I believe to be true.
For instance, my perception tells me that I'm tolerable, that green is green, and that every human is annoying sometimes.
His perception created a reality in which he was fighting a force of evil (quite effectively, I would say).
"He's crazy" is the easy answer.
Easy because it's true, probably, I know.
But who's to say what's what about something so cosmic?
You?
Me?
We're hardly qualified.
If you hear it and see it, doesn't that make it real?
Again, the easy answer is "Yeah, but..."
The much more complicated answer is the one that must go unanswered.
Philosophy majors!
Where are you guys?
Get to work on what counts as reality while those of us with jobs trudge on through the alternative.
I was a philosophy minor, which is why I have a part-time job.
Marching once more with the work force, I have yet another occupation that I'm grossly overqualified for (on paper, anyway).
Refusing to apply myself, I've returned to the social charade that names itself 'retail'.
Folding pants for the first three days, I think, "I can ride this out."
By the fourth shift, I hate every person who enters the store.
It must be this way.
As a (relatively) joyless hermit this past while, I had forgotten how truly awful everybody is when they're buying stuff.
Holding the two-pack of T-Max socks aloft, some makeup-riddled banshee yells:
"Do you have any more of these?!"
When you witness it firsthand, you can only shrug.
Are you for real, lady? What barn were you raised in?
That's the first thought that came into my head:
What barn did you come from?
You're 40-something and this is how you ask a stranger a question?
I'm ten 10 feet away and I'm ringing through jackals who at least have the decency to stand in line.
Follow some sort of order, why don't you?
What is unfair about retail is that you're not allowed to answer questions with questions.
"Do you only eat things that you first club to death?
The socks, by the way, are ten degree to your right.
Try not to choke on them."
Such anger.
It's weirdly nice in a way, though.
Items to browse for.
Discounts to wield.
Co-workers to adult with.
Staff is laid back.
Should work out so long as I don't encounter too many forces of evil by Christmas.

Growing Pains

I have had dreams. Dreams of the Children's Dystopia.
This isn't a society in which things are really sad for children, mind you.
As it stands now I would say that children have things going pretty well for them.
And that will only exacerbate itself.
No way I'm using that word properly. Exacerbate? Anyone know what that means?
Where's our dictionary guy? Did we hire one of those yet?
Anyway.
I'm talking about a society in which children rule everything.
There have certainly been science fiction books and films on this very topic, but I don't know any of their titles.
Besides, fiction is all well and good, but it'll seem much more real when 14-year-old cops are shaking you down for chocolate bars and loose change.
It's going to happen, man.
Kids are fucking running this place.
And, of course, there can only be one reason why this is the case:
We're letting them.
There are no parents. Everyone's trying to be their child's friend.
I've hinted at this several times, but it's gone too far. Hinting is a waste of time.
I have to get the message out.
Kids have already fucked the education system.
That's a branch of government. They've overthrown it and now control it.
If you will, a demonstration:

Little Asshole Tina: [throwing her bookbag where she pleases] I hate Mr. Person!
He expects us to write down our homework and then do it!
Asshole Tina Senior: Well, you have to put up with Mr. Person because he has tenure.
Little Asshole Tina: Isn't there any way to get a new teacher?
Asshole Tina Senior: No my little angel, I'm afraid not. Unless, of course, he sexually harassed you.
Little Asshole Tina: [brightening] Well, he rubs my back funny when he shows me math stuff.
He also runs his hand along my thigh sometimes.
Asshole Tina Senior: Oh yeah? We'll see about that!

A year later, Mr. Person has a job shoveling up dead seagulls at the dump.
They don't even do homework any more.
Homework has been taken out of schools because (wait for it) the kids won't do it.
In a school system where kids run everything, what do you suppose their first rule would be?
"No More Homework."
Check.
Sure, if the kids ran everything, they'd have sodas in the vending machines instead of bamboo shoots, but they'll rememedy that when they have tenure.
This is all coming about because of this asshole kid I saw on Sunday.
He was this little heffer who sort of reminded me of that fat kid in all the movies.
Fewer freckles, but that same sort of confidence, y'know?
This fat kid confidence that you can't figure out, so you just take it as being endearing.
As I'm walking by, I (make a point to) hold eye contact with this kid.
He holds my stare without a flinch.
I look away for a second and look back, and his gaze is waiting for me.
Undaunted.
I can drive. I can buy beer. I had been doing drugs recently.
I'm an adult (as far as he can tell, anyway).
None of this phases him.
I look away, and once more I look back, over my shoulder this time.
He's looking me dead in the pupil, and he lazily licks an ice cream he's holding while he does it.
It was fucking weird. It was legitimately unsettling.
Kids have no respect for adults now, which means they have no fear, which means we have no control.
Why don't they respect us?
Well, I would think, and I'm actually quoting Ferris Beuller here, that it's because "you can't respect someone who's kissing your ass."
In Stalinist Russia, children ratted out adult neighbors for crimes uncommitted, and those adults were sent to the gulags.
That's a labour camp.
Worked to death. Literally.
All on the whim of someone who doesn't realize that you should never take a radio into a swimming pool.
Stalin's kids sent adults to death because someone allowed them to.
You think Ice Cream cone would have any trouble sending one of us to the slaughter?
I don't think so.
I've had dreams, y'know.
I say we put them all on harnesses and keep them there til they learn to say 'please'. 

edit: I don't have enough battery to proof-read this right now.