pennies

On the news recently, right between two much more awesome stories (When i say awesome i mean in the surprising fashion, not 'wow that's so cool!' because they weren't cool stories) fell one that most other people would just shrug off, but one that most definitely caught my attention.

"Only hours ago, a child in broad daylight was grabbed by a stranger, luckily the child punched him in the jugular and made his escape"
"The government doesn't want to use pennies anymore"
"The G-8 has become the G-20 and Canada has decided to hand over large amounts of money that they don't have in order to fund security efforts, even though no one really needs security in Canada, and the result of the summit will surely only be that half of the 20 will deny the existence of global warming, while the other half will reject all action plans since all the money they have was used in order to host the summit in the first place"

I could probably talk for hours about any of these news stories but for some reason i just kept dwelling on the penny thing for days afterward. Apparently, as told to me on tv, the cost of manufacturing a single penny is; GET THIS, four cents. FOUR CENTS? Are you serious? It costs four times its worth just to manufacture it? The governement spends nearly one and a half BILLION dollars each year just making these dumb little things. Canada is always complaining about how we don't have money to spend on things that matter like health care or a better education, and they're using more than a billion a year this way?

Personally, I've always thought that pennies were a stupid idea. On any given day, come around and ask me to open up my extremely fashionable, indefinitely functionable, undoubtedly awesome red domo-kun change purse; and i could most likely show you more than 20 pennies. Each of which comes completely crusted in greening copper and a thick layer of years of scum. If you use a penny to pay for something, you probably lose even more money washing your hands of its nastiness after.

As far as i can remember, i've always treated pennies like they were garbage. If i'm bored, i throw them at friends, if my table is rocking, i stick it under the leg and leave it there. Never have i once felt the innate connection with the penny that all the people on tv said that they have.

"I don't want them to go, i'll miss them"

I bet that's a load of bs from someone who wanted to just seem compassionate on tv during their 15 seconds of fame. What they're really thinking is

"Why did i just say that? That was more blatantly untrue than the general public saying they don't like Justin Beiber."

Australia got rid of pennies a longgggg time ago, and i think they've got the right idea. It means much less fumbling, less hand grime, more government funds, and a happier population. Though i do start to wonder what Canada would be like without it. With our messed up 13% tax rate, stores would have a super difficult time making all of their bills land only on multiples of ten. Maybe we could just start doing little multi-cent favours to pay the difference. Any time you get charged, you pay up to the ten cent mark just lower than your total, and depending on how many cents you have leftover ( 1-9 ) you have to do a task with difficulty corresponding with cents owed. Maybe for a 2 cent favour someone could give the other person a sexy wink. Or for an 8 cent favour, dance to "Jump on it" for a full half minute.

Oh i could have fun with that... but seriously Canada; we don't need no damn pennies.

meat.

I love it.

My brother had a barbecue just this past weekend, which was great news for me even though i wasn't there when he had it. Why?

Leftover meat.

No one ever under-buys when they are hosting a barbecue. And this phenomenon roots itself in the need to avoid people not getting as much meat as they can possibly stuff into themselves. Such an occurrence could lead to many different kinds of disasters. I know that personally, if i go to a barbecue, i expect to be completely stuffed and heavily afflicted with the itis after. If this is not how i end up feeling (which has never happened) you could count on seeing me in the foulest of moods. I am quite sure that most other people who attend barbecues are the same. No one wants a house full of foul-mooded people, they might just end up taking their aggression out by wrestling each other and throwing each other into walls, resulting in a foot-sized hole. Oh wait, i do that when i'm in a good mood anyways.

After the barbecue, i took a glance in the fridge. About 24 hamburger patties and 4 beautiful looking steaks. Of course, we couldn't let all of this go to waste. So last night, my two brothers and i made up some half-foot tall hamburgers, with melted cheese. It's just not the same without the melted cheese. Today, we made the four steaks with peppercorn and bbq sauce, topped with caramelized garlic mushrooms and onions. I promise you, my brothers and i have never spent so much time in the kitchen, and have never put so much love and care into a meal.

It was infinitely worth it. As i now type, i am stuffed full with top quality meat and i'm struggling to keep my heavily itis inflicted eyes open. yay good day :D

scarystuff.

More vivid dreams...

It was just me and my dad, enjoying a nice saturday afternoon, taking a stroll in Diagon Alley. We walked into an old antique shop which was known for having the hip new styles for glasses (seeing glasses). It's kind of ironic that an antique shop would have "hip new styles". In real life, i've been thinking about getting a new pair of glasses so i guess that's why i spent the next hour just looking at all of the different frames that they had. Meanwhile, my dad was browsing garden gnomes. He really wanted a garden gnome for some reason... said something about "protecting the house from rabbits"

After my super long browsing session, among all of the Ray-bans, Guccis, and numerous brand names that i have never heard of, i found the one and only pair that i would ever be satisfied with. I called my dad over all excited like, and pointed them out, hoping that he would share my enthusiasm when he saw the beauty that they just emanated. There they stood, the Transformers brand glasses. The frames were the stunning blue and red that could not be mistaken as any other colours but those of Optimus Prime's body. They were complete with tiny headlights on either side of the lenses, moving on their own, probing the darkness of the shop. I felt like this pair of glasses was alive, and meant for me.

Of course my dad wouldn't let me buy them, even though they were on sale for nine Galleons a Sickle and three Knuts. Maybe he was just fearful of the power that i would possess if i had them. But i needed it. And as my dad turned his back to walk out the door, i smashed the glass cabinet with my forehead (This just shows how badass i subconsciously think i am), grabbed the glasses and booked it.

Before i even left the store though, and before i even got to enjoy my time with my new-found treasure, i was grabbed firmly by the shoulder, and stopped in my tracks. I turned around to see an old classmate from elementary school wearing a dementor's cloak, not looking all too happy. He roughly pressed the tip of a gun to my stomach, and even through my clothes i could feel the coldness of it.

I was actually really scared. And not just the kind of scared that you see yourself have in third person when you're dreaming. As soon as this happened in my dreams, i some how went from observing to experiencing. I was now in my dreaming body, feeling the gun against my stomach, and I actually felt extremely scared.

Pause.

The dream stood still here for a very long time, almost as if to test just how much fear my mind could take. I was just waiting for the pain to come, and for it to all be over with. But it didn't come. He took my glasses and left.

I woke up shaking with fear. lolwuss.

Anyone know what this means? Maybe that i need to just stop dreaming.

5k.

No, i am not talking about 5 thousand gold in World of Warcraft. I know that's what a lot of you were thinking when you read that. Oh yeah, Allan, i hate to break it to you, but all your talk about WoW, really got me interested, and now i've started up on a private server with some friends. Curse your perfected persuasion ability. I now know what it feels like to kill murlocs.

When i say 5k, i'm actually referring to five kilometres, the distance. Back in elementary school, running was my one and only love (other than sum41 and blink182, what is with rock bands and random numbers? those names probably don't even mean anything). I used to run nearly all the time, whether it was in the middle of a soccer game, for the cross country team in school, or as the anchor leg on the relay team. I'm going to stroke the ego of my elementary self and say; i was a running badass. But no more.

Since those good old days, i've fallen far from my prime. I would have no chance at being the anchor leg... anywhere, and i can barely get myself off my but to even hit a treadmill. But today, after getting quite annoyed with myself for being a lazy slob, i decided to join my brother when he went for a jog. A 5k jog.

Five kilometres really doesn't sound like that much when you say it aloud. And it definitely does not encompass the difficulty, that I, as the lazy slob i've already come to terms with being, would later have to battle with. When someone says to you in passing "Hey, i'm going for a 5k jog, do you wanna come?" I don't know about you, but i don't actually measure out how long 5k is in my head.

Yes, i know, i am rather pathetic, seeing as I am actually writing a full blog on how difficult a dumb little jog was for me. But if you know me, you know that i know i'm pathetic and find great pride in little victories. The day that i finally learned how to bake a betty crocker cake, was a turning point in my life. The day that i realized i actually had friends in high school was a turning point in my life. The day that i first slept a full night peacefully without hundreds of stuffed animals hugging me to sleep was a turning point in my life. I'm quite a simpleton.

So anyways, i managed to finish my little jog, but right now, i'm hurting quite badly. I haven't had any physical activity for an extended period of time, and my poor, aching muscles are proving that they all as annoying as the person that they compose; they're pissing me off oh so much.

Hopefully i take this as a sign that i should continue to get some exercise rather than a warning that exercise is really not all that fun, and leaves you with foot cramps.

Don't ever be like me.

parade.

A couple of days ago sean and i had a man-date :D I know you're all jealous of me.

I told him that it would only take me fifteen minutes to get to the place we were going to eat at (Hong Kong Bistro on Dundas, a small not-very-fancy place that i love to eat at), of course like usual, he made the mistake of actually listening something i said, a fatal mistake, you should never do this. I will let you down.

But this time it wasn't my fault for once! Even though I had probably only misjudged by about five minutes, i ended up being something like fifteen minutes late. Why? While i was walking to the place, i somehow managed to become engulfed in an aboriginal march against child services. Sometimes i really just wonder how i can drift off so much that i don't even realize where I am or what i'm doing. I bet you i was probably concentrating so hard on what i was going to order once i actually got there that when i finally started acknowledging the world around me, it was too late to escape the mass of people around me. So... i ended up awkwardly marching to the beat of animal skin drums, slowly making my way to where i was trying to get.

I'm really bad at trying to mix in. I always stick out like a sore thumb, and even in situations other than this one, where i was the only person not wearing a headress. But even when it's just an awkward social situation, i just emanate awkwardness. And it's not because i'm actually feeling awkward but i think i have a whole slew of maneurisms and habits that make me an overall fidgety person all the time and people just aren't used to it. It draws attention. Boo.

So anyways, after the initial blunder of making sean wait for me in a smelly corner of chinatown, it was a pretty good day because together, we performed an action which we will remember for the rest of our lives. A ritual that runs deeper than a blood pact, and which is more permanent than blood relation. We, as two individuals with a common cause, purchased starcraft 2 beta keys together. And then we looked at manga and gundams. Oh dear what an amazing day.

For some reason this guy reminds me of sean. He's incredibly talented, you wouldn't waste your time in watching each and every one of his videos. I swear he should be famous.