Laundry.

Winnie has brought it to my attention that laundry is something that deserves blogging recognition. Absolutely correct in my opinion. Good catch Ol' Chap.

You would think that i don't have a heck of a lot to say about laundry seeing as i only learned how to do my own laundry about a year ago. Yeah i'm useless. But i think that my lack of laundratic training in my early years only gives me more to say about it. It's because when i finally learned how to do it, it was like i was being exposed to a whole new world of wonders. Laundry is wonderful for so many reasons.

Mommy appreciates it. When i do my own laundry *this rare phenomenon only legitimately occurs once in a blue moon, and should not be quoted or expected to be continuously occurring* my mother loves it. She seems to beam with pride every time i exit the laundry room, having finished loading my laundry, as if to say "I am satisfied that my son has turned out to be not completely useless and is actually able to carry out a simple, easy task" It must be true that after all of these years, my mom's had to lower her standards so that there will actually ever be times when she can be proud of me. For instance, me doing my laundry for once.

The clothes fit nicely. Has anyone else noticed that after you wash and dry your clothes, they fit amazingly? Somewhere in the process of wearing my clothes, I manage to make them all stretchy and baggy, and they start to hang off of me like i got shrunk'ded. BUT after a quick toss in the dryer, my jeans and shirts hug my skin oohhhh so comfortably... and makes my bum look good :D

The smell. This is the single most amazing part of laundry. THE SMELL. I purposely put in something that's probably double the amount of fabric softener that you actually need into my laundry loads, JUST so that when i'm done, and the clothes are all warm and fluffy, and smelling incredible, i can just lie face up on my couch and put my newly cleaned clothes on my face, and just BREATHE amazingness. Such moments make life worth living.

So all of you should do laundry very often. Cuz it makes your butt look nice and smell good.

Utter Confusion.

DISCLAIMER: If you are easily disgusted or do not like reading about gross stuff, TURN AWAY. If not, read on and enjoy :D

The clock strikes 5 o'clock and my head snaps up. Yes, i can leave now. I pack all of my things in a jiffy like I normally do when I'm allowed to leave work because it's really nice to get home and just be lazy.

I pop in my mouth one of those heavenly chocolate mints that Sean so graciously bought me for my birthday, being careful not to bite, and just let it melt there so that it will last as long as possible. Such a small mint can make what would be 5 boring minutes into 5 minutes of pure taste-gasm.

All of a sudden i get the feeling that I'm forgetting something, but try as i might, i can't figure out just what it is. I'm frantically looking around the room trying to find whatever it is i had left behind, when suddenly it hits me. I had to pee. I always pee before I leave.

Mint still in my mouth, i skip happily along to the washroom. All is well, soon I will have an empty bladder, and will be on my way home to watch North Korea win the world cup (i wish). Little did I know the troubles that were in store for me. I entered the bathroom and chose my urinal; the farthest one from the door, you have to give yourself as much time and space to stop mid-stream and button up your pants in the event of a washroom-mugger (this rule holds unless said urinal is overflowing with questionably coloured fluids - happens more often than you'd think). I then proceeded to urinate.

First of all, shut up. Everyone urinates, there's no need to cuss me for being the one to address it. And secondly, this is a very important milestone in the story. This is because, once you've started peeing, and i know this is true for almost everyone, there are few things that will cause you to stop voluntarily (one of those things being a washroom-mugger).

This is the exact moment when the massive confusion hit me. Everyone knows that smell and taste are linked in their own awkward way. It's not quite a direct relationship, but change one, and the other responds accordingly. Not so unlike the fact that if the world was a few thousand kilometres more away from or nearer to the sun, we'd all grow gills or wings, or at least that's what I'd like to believe. Anyhow, at this moment in time, I was tasting the incredible minty goodness of my chocolate patty while simultaneously smelling the rancid stench of old musty washroom and urinal cakes.

I was so confused. On one hand, the usual unpleasantry of the washroom was a little softened because of the joy that the candy brought me. On the other, I wanted to yack because smells were entering my nostrils, making their way into my taste-buds somehow, and pervading my flavour bliss. I was forced to consider my options.

1. Stop peeing and enjoy my now tarnished mint until i finish it, at which point i would resume the urination process, but with the satisfaction of having a minty-fresh mouth.
2. Spit the mint patty into the urinal, eliminating the chaotic simultaneous clash of senses, and cutting down on the time before arriving home, but with the risk of backsplash (ew), and the horrible idea of having wasted something so precious.
   
3. Stick it out like a real man (pshh no)
4. Distract myself by humming and dancing to old cartoon theme songs.

I hadn't ever been so confused and so utterly unable to make a decision since all of the times when a new pokemon installment came out and i had to choose one of the two editions (red, silver, ruby, platinum, soul silver. Yeahbaby). Eventually though, i couldn't put off peeing any longer, i couldn't deal with the risks and waste of spitting out the patty and I am not a real man. I distracted myself with old cartoon theme songs.

My manager's face spelled confusion when he walked in on me shoulder-shimmying and singing "Beyblade" like Stevie Wonder.

rained out.

Every week so far at work has surprisingly come and gone extremely quickly. It's always friday before i know it. Which is absolutely great because my job isn't in itself anything truly exciting. I don't mind really mind the stuff that i have to do but i probably wouldn't be doing it were i not getting paid for it. So the question arises, if I am not overly enjoying myself at work, then why does the time fly? I have finally confirmed my hypothesis today.

Time passes faster for me when i'm looking forward to something. Or even if it doesn't pass faster, at least every moment of something that I'm doing is taking me just that little bit closer to whatever I'm looking forward to. For example, if someone asked me to copy and paste cells from one Excel spreadsheet to another for 8 hours in a day (yes this was actually asked of me), even though repeatedly going through the same steps (click, drag, ctrl+c, click, ctrl+v; rinse, lather, repeat) is incredibly monotonous and not surprisingly has a tranquilizing effect on me, at least every time i repeat that process, the party i'm looking forward to is a couple of seconds closer.

Today, what was helping me through the day was my soccer game. I know, it's nothing all that exciting, it's just a game, blah blah. But sports excite me for some reason, not to mention that watching the world cup games has made me feel as if i'm soccer's superman.

BUT. My excitement was quickly removed when i received an email notice saying that the game for today had been canceled because of the rain. It was barely even coming down today, and the field that i play on is almost never serviced so it's very unlikely the organizers were concerned about the wellbeing of the grass. I'm willing to bet this was a result of the Greek referee sitting on his couch and lamenting the loss of his band of brothers. No one is to disturb him when he's weeping.

All of a sudden, with nothing to look forward to, those measly two hours until the end of the day were not so measly anymore. They were now towering giants barring me from my freedom. It reminded me of nearly every episode of Yu-gi-oh. One second you have something tiny and harmless, next he calls on the power of his Millenium Puzzle which launches him from preschool striaght through the awkward teenage pubescent years and into booming-voiced late adolescence all in a matter of a few spinning scenes with shiny lights. Today someone Millenium Puzzle'd my working hours.

For some reason the end of my day just wouldn't end now because i had been robbed of excitement. I didn't do anything differently in my work, in fact i looked at the clock less often, but every minute had been painstakingly doubled. Eventually though i found a method to cope. I've become pretty decent at Spider Solitaire today...

Chapter One: A Soft-spoken Apology

(You may want to read the Prologue before reading this :D)

Chapter One: A Softspoken Apology

In a city like Toronto, it’s easy to feel like part of the crowd. But I was used to it. Having lived right in the middle of the hustle and bustle all my life, it was just another part of any ordinary day. Being greeted in the morning by the rhythmic blaring of the angry drivers’ horns rather than the relaxing chirp of a song bird was part of the routine.

I walked in sync with the business men and women around me. It felt as if everyone was headed towards the same place, and no one seemed all too pleased about it. It was obvious who was running late as they pranced in and out of the spaces in between the slower foot-commuters. The way to school was a long half-hour walk from my government-given housing east of heart of downtown. But I always managed to keep myself occupied, making the time pass much quicker.

I watched the large groups of pigeons waddling around old food scraps scattered on the sidewalk, imagining the dialogue that must be taking place between the birds, and chuckling to myself.

“Hey tough guy, if you even think about taking that half-eaten Cheeto, I’ma stuff you with it, put you on a plaque and hang you in my living room.”

“Oh shut up Steve, go fly into an inadequately cleaned window.”

“Hey, that’s not funny! That’s how ol’ Paps went…”

I was too busy contemplating whether or not I should make the pigeons have a fight to the death in my head to notice that I was walking faster than the person in front of me; I stepped on the heel of his shoe. The man whipped his head around, the stench of cigarettes following it, and stared me straight in the eyes. I stopped moving, not scared, but not wasting a second assessing what kind of person I had just pissed off. He was extremely scrawny, as if he had spent seventy percent of his life in a bed, and the oversized clothes hanging off his meager frame didn’t help the look. He was wearing a pure-white hat with a symbol on the front of some baseball team he probably knew nothing about. From under the hat, a tangle of greasy hair protruded in every direction.

“Who the hell do you think you are? Give me your wallet, you’re paying for this. Do you know how much these Nikes cost?”

“Actually… No I don’t, but I’m sure you could have gotten a bottle of shampoo or two with that money, am I right?”

I flicked his hat under the brim, winking and smiling at the same time. Half a second later I realized that I had made a mistake when my head recoiled backwards and my noise exploded with pain. Holding my face I looked up to see him grinning, apparently proud of himself for delivering a successful sucker punch.

I am not an angry person, but I do see someone punching me in the nose when I’m not expecting it as an invitation to give him my best. With a quick recovery I collected myself and hit him right back in the stomach before he could react. He bent over for a second, winded, but then he turned heel and ran. I didn’t think before following him right into the grimy graffiti filled alley just a few feet away.

When I turned the corner, he was facing me. He looked terrified now; by the look on his face you’d think he had seen a ghost. As I closed the gap between us I wondered what it was he could be so afraid of. But it soon became quite apparent as he reached into his shirt, withdrawing a shiny black object, and pressing it softly into my stomach.

He looked genuinely sorry, tears streaming down from his eyes now and falling onto his trembling hand. His finger fondled the trigger as if scared of contact with it. He could barely form the coming words.

“Gi- give me y-your wallet n-NOW!”

I didn’t know what to do. My body moved without me asking it to, reaching into my back pocket and handing him the cash I had been carrying. He snatched it from me, and looked up at the sky as if someone would tell him what to do next. When no one did, he returned his gaze to me. He looked so pathetic now, I almost felt bad for him though he was the one holding the gun. “Sorry” he said so quietly it was barely audible.

The sickening sound of my ribs collapsing reached my ears before the pain set in. I endured less than a second of the agony before collapsing to the ground. The last thing I saw was the one scuff mark on the man’s heel, tainting the shoe’s perfect white as he sprinted away.

Prologue: Wondering

So the story behind me writing this story is this; I had nothing to do at work and I decided to fill some of the time by trying i repeat TRYING to write a story. I know it might be very cliche and amateurishly written. But that's what makes it fun! Anyways, hope you enjoy. Or hate enough to keep reading :D

Prologue: Wondering

Everyone wonders at some point in time if they are someone special or even; some thing special. Is there something that I and I alone am capable of? Is there some kind of power sleeping dormant within me? Is there something that I was born to do? In these times of questioning, we let fly the imagination which we have come to instinctively suppress every day in our lives. The boundaries of reason are brought tumbling down by our longing to be something extraordinary.

But the train of thought always ends in the same way. We shrug it off as a moment of mental weakness; insecurity. Of course not… Why do I waste my time thinking about these things? But we are not the lone aspirers. We see it all the time; the washed-up artists in the big city vending their paintings in a grimy back alley, the cab driver handing over his paycheck for its value in lottery tickets, the boys at the dirt jumps, bruised and battered, filming each other attempting impossible stunts.

Everyone wonders at some point in time if they are someone special, some thing special. Where we differ is how often we wonder, and I know I’m addicted. It consumes me, pervading my mundane daily tasks, tossing aside any other loose thoughts. The more often it comes about, the more often I must force myself to send it away. The more often I send it away the more strongly it persists. I can no longer overcome my curiosity. I must know what I am meant for.

nuffin.

As of the end of tomorrow i will have completed two whole weeks of my job.

In all honesty, I could tell that for the majority of that time, the company didn't know what to do with me. Everyone else was extremely overloaded with their work and i was sitting at my desk twiddling my thumbs. I bet every one of them would have killed to fill my shoes just to get a break from it all. Ironic how i'm here now complaining about doing nothing.

When doing nothing, i always feel like i need to do something, but i have nothing to do. Do you see my dilemma? Luckily for me though i am so easily amused that i can easily fill my time; and i did. I actually sat down and wrote a story. A story about a handsome young man's struggles with his first few days at a new job which failed to occupy him, and so he wrote a story about a young man. Then when i realized that i had created an infinite loop, i pondered the universe for hours on end. I didn't really come up with anything significant except that if there really were aliens we would probably never know because they've probably been avoiding us all this time just because they know that here on earth we're the fat and mean kids in the playground.

Even though there were a lot of time in the past two weeks that i wasn't doing anything, i actually think i learned a whole lot. Most importantly though would be the 3D software that i was lucky enough to be taught. It's such a powerful software, you can model nearly any object with it; i was having the time of my life creating miniature versions of things around me; desks and monitors. Sadly when i tried to invent my own pokemon i failed miserably. But that's my new goal for the end of the summer so check back and who knows what you'll see. Isn't it great? I'm working at an engineering company and the fruits of my time spent will be a new species of pokemon.

Anyhow, today i finally got switched onto a project that will be in place pretty much until i finish my summer vacation so it seems that i actually will have a steady flow of work coming in. I guess that's good. Just for blogging about being bored, karma is going backhand me across the face. Check back in a couple of weeks to see my bitch about having too much work.