Oh the weather out side is weather…

Ah, we all love a good Paul Rudd being a stoned surfer dude. But as I sing that song experiencing my first December in the south, I can’t help but realize that Christmas is coming up. The hustling and the bustling of shopping and decoration, the crisp mornings and early creeping nights. It seems like time is slipping away between our fingers as the light snuff its self out over these beautiful blue ridge mountains every late afternoon. But each early night brings us closer to another morning, and eventually, that morning will be Christmas.

Christmas, or any holiday you might hold dear to you for religious or seasonal reasons usually mean the sharing of gifts. Everyone loves a gift, even if its just a package from UPS, a mystery box filled with something brings joy to our hearts, but not every gift is a mystery box filled with hopes and dreams of what is captured inside. Today I heard a commercial about buying gift cards as the ultimate solution to your gift purchasing task this holiday and as I listened to it, I started to get irritated… gift cards… gift cards… what a thoughtless gift. The commercial backed up my thought by offering a question to a random shopper: ‘How many nieces and nephews do you have?’ and proceeded to pitch the idea of a gift card. Well sure, unless you’re super close to your nieces and nephews a gift card to a major retailer of their appropriate age and interest may be fine, but then the commercial continues the queries by postulating: ‘How many siblings do you have?’…

Ok, stop.

If you care at all about your siblings, mother, father or any relative or friend in the manner that they deserve to be shown appreciation, a gift card should be your last resort.

Two reasons a gift card could be given to them as a last resort:

1) They’re rich and have everything. The thought doesn’t even count here because they’re already thinking about one person, and that’s them, because they’re rich and quite possibly arrogant with that fact.

2) They’re the hardest person to find that perfect gift on your list. One day they like collecting old dolls the next day they’re getting their nipples pierced.

Gift cards pretty much say “Hey I think you go here, so instead of going to the store and figuring out something that you might like and  show that I really do consider your presence a present in my life, I just picked out a colorful card with the name of said shop and threw a $50 worth of credit on it.”

Thanks? NO THANKS!

The best gifts I have ever gotten are the ones that I never thought about owning or having, but got because someone knew me and knew what I liked and got it for me. One of those things was a wide strapped leather bracelet. Nothing fancy or expensive, but it looked cool with what I was wearing at the time and it meant the world to me.

This year I’m getting my roommate a mid-cooking utensil holder. He always gets out a plate to put his cooking utensils on while crafting a meal so I’m going to find a really neat utensil holder that would fit his motif. He doesn’t need it but it is something he would use and really appreciate.

Gift cards have no real ‘value’ monetarily or emotionally. Sure they say “$50″  on them, but its stuck to that one store. What if you don’t want, or need to go there, or rather have the $50 to pay your bills? You’re screwed. You have to figure out what to buy, and its never enough to get what you want, or too much and have enough left over that you’ll have to go back and spend money out of your pocket to cover the extra charge. So was it really a gift? No, it was a device to make you spend more money.

That has to be the reason why everyone is pushing gift cards more and more and more. They force you to consume! Even if you find something that is like $1 or $2 more than the value of the card, you’re still paying for the ‘gift’ they ‘gave’ you. Or later you’re paying to finish buying the ‘gift’ they gave you with another purchase.

Exceptions: There is an addition exception to the first two, and I think this is where gift cards started: Places involving food or beverage.

My sister used to spend over $100 a week at very popular and trendy coffee shop. So, since I knew she goes there all the time and spent butt loads of money in a time she needed to save every dime, I gave her a thoughtful card, a small present and a gift card charged with $30 or so (enough that would get her through one week) for Christmas. She loved it. It was something she needed, and helped her save money.

So unless you have a loved one that always go to a certain golf course, restaurant, coffee shop, or is a drug addict and will just use any cash to buy more drugs, don’t give the gift card, give a gift.

It really isn’t the value that matters, it’s that you took the time to think about them and what they would enjoy, that’s what people mean when they say ‘ Its the thought that counts’. The thought is the start to the execution: The time spent towards thinking of them and what they would most appreciate.

So for all of my loved ones out there, I swear to Betsy, if I get a gift card for anywhere but a grocery store (cause I need to eat, and my mom used to give me Giant Eagle cards that could be used for gas or food) then I’ll give it right back, and just take a hug instead.

[NOTE: This blog is for entertainment purposes only, the writer is not recommending or condoning drug use. For those who read this blog often you already know this, for those who don't, enjoy.]

After reading this topic, if the first thing that pops into your head is, ‘you’re right Smacky’ then you’ve done crystal meth.

Yes, because you already know the benefits of crystal meth and the plague of online gaming.

Benefit of Meth #1: You get a lot of shit done. I don’t just mean, like you accomplish your day of chores and errands, but you get a LOT OF SHIT DONE. You clean your house, the neighbor’s house, clean the car, make and freeze dinners for a week for your family, read the entire internet and then decide what you should do the in the next hour cause you just started smoking meth about 59min ago and already accomplished so much.

Failure of Online Gaming #1: You get nothing done. I don’t mean, just like, puting off doing the dishes and going to the bank tomorrow, because that’s unrealistic. If it wasn’t because your sucked in lazy ass got hungry and you had to move (unless you’re a smart lazy ass and put a mini fridge by your computer) then you’d only leave your WoW or whatever to much down on some (I’m sure they’re healthy…) snacks. which brings me to point #2.

Benefit of Meth #2: You will never be fat. You can’t be fat, but because you’re too busy doing everything anything else in the world to worry about anything like eating. And in the end helps you find more time because with no food in the tummy, you rarely have to make stops and waste more time on the toilet, and we all know toilets are just glorified seats that if you have a laptop, can be turned into another place for online gaming.

Failure of Online Gaming #2: You will get fat. You won’t just be fat, but because your diet is of strictly Mountain Dew and Cheetos you’ll be the worst kind fat, a sweaty cheesy fat. Sure, you eat Lean Pockets because your mom decided that you needed to lose some weight and the wireless internet just helped her read about gardening tips outside on her laptop while you stowed yourself in a dark little room looking for some magic treasure wondering with one hand where that 2 lt of Mountain Dew went to as your inhale an entire two pack of Lean Pockets and mumble loudly to your mom that she better get to the store for more, oh and a few dozen frozen pizzas too.

Benefit of Meth #3: Time will no longer matter. In fact, it might just be an inconvenience that its dark outside, but only for a few moments till you snap back to the task at hand. What task? I’m not sure, you might already be solving the world’s energy crisis because you’ve done pretty much everything else around the neighbourhood, and surrounding towns.

Failure of Online Gaming #3: Time always matters. You have to be in a certain place at a certain time or you have a time limit, whatever it is, this will take over the fact that you should have made time to go to work, or at least call in sick, because you fat lazy dumb ass, if you don’t even call in sick to work, they’ll eventually fire you and without MONEY (which you can make on meth by doing all the jobs people who don’t want to do like rake leaves, shovel snow, crush cars with your bare hands) you will eventually lose your online membership due to lack of funds.

Benefit of Meth #4: You will win at everything forever. If we all remember “Power Thirst” it claimed to contain crystal meth and eventually just said it was crystal meth, and in the video, it said you would win at everything forever. Which brings me to my Failure of Online Gaming #4.

Failure of Online gaming #4: You can’t always win! No matter how hard you try, you can’t and you won’t. In fact, one online game, WoW, THERE IS NO WAY TO BEAT THE GAME, hence, you will always fail at everything forever.

… I think this is enough for now, if I haven’t suede you over by now, it’s because you were only reading this between battles or meet ups or matches, or whatever and forgot this blog existed because your mother brought you those pizzas your ordered with another keg of Mountain Dew Gamer Fuel.

Disgusting.

However, if you combine gaming, and I stress gaming, and crystal meth, you can, yes, i mean this, win at everything forever, cause all games have an end, just not online ones. And hell, if you are on meth, you’ll eventually run out of shit to do, so might as well play a few video games, but don’t think you can combine online games and meth, because the online ones are much more addictive, and soon you’ll forget meth ever existed, and then where will you be?

I refer you to my first point.

If anyone is really following this blog then they know I have a pretty active mind. It either pours like the cute bartender on .25 cent beers at your local college pub, or is somewhere on Mars wondering how it got there, as I’m left absent-minded on Earth.

Over the years I’ve had some pretty good rants, fantasies, thoughts of chance and even some pretty good plots probably taken abstractly from my childhood watching The Young and the Restless, or other cliche’ shows over the years, however, I find this special exert of my life to be one of the most extraordinary.

As it has been said before, my friend from the weber-nets and I are in constant chat, at least six hours a day are spent discussing everything from women to the proper entrance to a performance review meeting at your place of work, and how spiking a desk lamp will immediately grab their attention of how psyched you are to be there today.

But for reasons of some ass-jerk who couldn’t write code to save the human race or a tape worm who’s telling him exactly what to write, this friend has been absent to my chats lately. So, before I packed up my things to end my day, I transcribed a short tale, which can be seen here:

The financial system is fucked.

From the government bail outs to your local run of the mill bank. Everyone is out to take your money and they don’t care how they do it.

I had called US Bank twice to get my automatic payments in order and they couldn’t even remember to correctly get my eff’n new address and information right!

What the hell.

The way I see it, mattress stuffing money would be better than trusting these ‘banks’ to watch our funds.

Oh, US Bank has a great racket going. They take automatic payments from the wrong account, over draft the account, charge you $35 for over drafting, THEN, THEN… $8 a day on top of that until you pay your way out of the deficit they put you in. Nice.

Here’s my word to all of you out there with major bank accounts in these tough economic times, read the news.

No, not Fox, or MSNBC, but BBC America. Or just the BBC. They tell it the way it is without bias and will keep you informed which institution is going to eff ya in the A or going to help you get back on your feet.

These days I don’t know many people who can just loose $8 a day because of some error on their part.

Watch your finances like they were your children, because these vultures are hovering from the moment they shake your hand and say “welcome to X bank” . They don’t care about you, they care about their ends, and which means they’ll do what they can to stick it in your end.

Its been a while. A long while.

This isn’t the first for me… You just get droughts or maybe sometimes life gets to heavy to even to talk about, or so heavy that you don’t know what to talk about, so instead you pick up a bottle, a needle, a joint… whatever gets you off this plane and into another frame of mind.

I picked up the bottle. It wasn’t a mistake, it was the signal that I had to leave.

As I watched myself drowning in a the last drink of a glass I couldn’t face myself without a wince of pain. What happened to me…

A little less than a month from the end of my first twenty five, here I was, an engineer, hucking hot dogs and greens fees for his sister, who was so amazing to me that I… I can’t tell you how proud of her I am. She’s been through a lot too, and she’s far from a dummy. But she had problems too, big problems. Now here I am, after a summer of working weekends for her for extra cash and my parents begging me to just come home and lick my wounds after being unemployed for over five months, that I say ‘Only if my sis gives me more hours…’ She couldn’t afford it, the course couldn’t, she knew it, but because she has (and I can only imagine it only growing bigger) an enormous heart and knew I needed a break. She gave me the hours at the cost of her payroll and because of that, I went home.

I wasn’t happy.

But now as I look back I still am grateful of what she gave me, she gave me the last insight that I needed to take charge.

Getting drunk cause I could, cause I would, cause, fuck. What the hell am I going to do?

It got worse. Much worse.

I couldn’t function without having a few drinks before work. I needed it. I needed to light up the show. Otherwise I’d be a drone of absence. I’d be ten feet from you, but three thousand miles away, wondering where it all went wrong.

Where did it go wrong? Was it me? Was it the economy? The Government?

Its easy to put blame on anything else but even harder to take matters in your own hands.

Sure, it was great to get that check for unemployment every week. More money than I needed,  but not what I needed.

I wanted to work. I don’t want to get my money. I want to earn my money.

Only problems is that in our economy the jobs that I could get were falling $100-$150 less a week at a forty hour week job than what I was getting for sitting on my ass, watching GSN (Game Show Network).

Yeah, I had fun. I had great friends. They took me in, I cleaned their house, they let me live for free, and trust me, they really appreciated someone as neat as me… They had dust bunnies larger than the actual bunnies they kept as pets.

I had already been rafting twice that year and the last time I went my friend told me he might have a job for me, nothing much, but its a foot in.

As I’m looking at the bottom of this glass, wishing the last of the late Sunday hackers would just leave so I could close, grab a six pack and walk down the hill to my folk’s home where a buffet of food would be waiting for me and the usual Sunday cartoons with my dad would conspire (if he was awake, and I always wish he would be… we never connected, but the older I get… the more he lets me into his life, I realize, we’re not that different).

I know the answer.

I can’t do this anymore. All I’ve gained in these passing months other than pity are 20lbs.

I called my friend, I got the interview and I got the job. Sure, its four states away from my home. Sure, I’m throwing my hat into the wind, a part-time job that I’m still over qualified for, but will keep my brain active and not complacent withe beverage in my hand. I get the job.

I pack whatever I can into my car and say ‘Goodbye’.

Never what happened next could I have imagined, praise.

“Go” they say, with hope in their eyes.

They, the ones that love me, give me well wishes as I depart for the farthest distance ever from everything and everyone I called home.

To a shot in the dark.

To a generosity from one of the best people I have ever met and has ever been a friend to me.

I had lost a lot in the last six months. My job. My home. My kids (ferrets). My sobriety… but I haven’t lost my friends and family. At when I was right at the brink, I got the push I needed to end this chapter.

To end the First Twenty Five.

Then I turned twenty six…

I wonder whats next.

Who will live for us?

Our parents? Our friends? Our wives? Our… lovers?

What keeps you where you are? A job? A house? A cat? A mortgage?

We are the masters of our own destiny. Or.. are we?

I’ve talked often about the feelings of control. Is our past the architect of the blue prints of our future? Are our thoughts and feelings nothing more than the creation of our past experiences?

Do you hate your life?

Do you want something more?

Do you have the power to control it?

Yes.

Yes and yes and YES AGAIN.

Maybe we have our feelings to guide us, but only we control our own bodies to MOVE us.

Put yourself in the place you are now, but then again, I guess you are already there.

Are you… Happy?

Are you… Content?

Is all that is there in this world? To be happy? To be content?

Do you want to settle? Do you want everything to just be ‘Okay’ ?

Will you reach forward for a dream, a hope, a long shot and smirk if it fails and remark ‘at least I tried’ ?

I’ll try. No. I’ll do.

Failing is another form of learning. Hopefully we learn the hardest failures from others and won’t repeat their mistakes, their torn up blue prints. Their.. misfortunes.

But will we look to their victories? Will we seize their triumphs? Will we see another who was with out a chance that reached the stars and think ‘I can do that’ ?

Another day, another way, another chance to be what you want to be.

Hate your job? Quit.

Hate your house? Sell it.

Hate where you are right now as you read this? … go pee and come back, finish my rant.

THEN MOVE!

Take a walk! Go for a run! Pick up your effin’ trailer and just drive till you’re tired!

I can’t tell you how to live. Your parents showed you a life that they lived. Only you can make the story that you will call your life.

Will you look back and say ‘Boy… I wish I would have…’

Or say what I want to say as I welt away.. ‘I remember when…’ and before I tell the story,I’ll smirk… the smirk of a boy who stole a cookie from the cookie jar… cause that’s what I’m doing… I’m stealing from life’s cookie jar.

So many of us fall into the stereotype of the order of life: Go to school, go to college, get a girl/boyfriend, graduate, get a job, get married, have a family…

Some don’t do it in that exact order. I’ve known people that get married before they graduate, but most are immediately after they graduate.

Why do they want to get married so young, with so much debt? Not all will graduate with thousands and thousands of dollars of debt but most will.

Are they so in love that they can not be away from each other and a ring is the only way to stay connected? Will looking at that band bring back the feelings of how they feel about each other even when they’re away? Is it because they can’t live with out each other that makes them want to have a formal commitment to another? Do the words “I do” mean the same thing as “I won’t leave you” ?

A man I once worked with said that he was a bonified bachelor. There was no woman who could tame him. He was rough to the bone and ate nails for breakfast… until he met his wife. He told me that when he saw her, he knew that she was the one. I joked by saying “Finally found someone you could live with, huh?” and he slyly smiled with his retort

“You can live with just about anyone… but its about finding the person you can’t live without.”

Words to live by.

But here and now at this young age people get married with nothing to their name but a hope and a dream, the American Dream. One to start a family and build a life full of memories good and bad. To take vacations and watch their kids grow. But where does it start? In a parents basement, with just enough money to pay the bills? Driving a $500 salvage back and forth to work? Is it all worth it when you come home to that beautiful face that you’ve made a formal commitment?

Is a love built between two people when the times are the best or the times that are worse? When you have nothing but the socks on your feet and a bowl of Ramen for dinner do we build the bonds that will strengthen our love? Because we have each other, do we desire anything more? Will riches make our love grow? Or is it when times are the worst that we realize all that we have and all that we need is right there in front of us?

When we look back at our lives in our latest years will we smile upon the most fruitful times or the toughest? Is that when we felt our love was the strongest? Is it because we suffered together make us closer forever?

To quote from Snow Patrol “…but I can barely see your face in front of mine… and it is knowing you that are there that makes me fine…”

I lost my cd’s, twice. Over 400 disc’s have been stolen.

But before I get into that, yes, I’ve been late on a post. I’m sorry. If anyone reads this regularly or knows me, you’ve know I’ve been in a bad place. Not dangerous, just not… me.

But that’s where this comes in to play. I found a piece of myself that I had lost. If anyone has gathered much from my other posts, then you know how I feel. I’m an emotional being, I’d be lost if I wasn’t thriving on music, emotion, thought…

Friday night I traveled back. Like an fading dream into the dawn of a new day I fought for the thought and I was born into a time I almost forgot. I Youtube’d every track I could remember, desperately feeding on a childhood lost in song and heartbreak. One spent on long nights working alone. Raking the courses sand traps, cleaning up the lushes left over drippings and scraps after a day basking in the sun of glutton.

Alone. I listened.

Alone. I molded.

Alone. I cried.

Were these borrowed feelings? Were these thoughts that I adopted my own because I didn’t have any to call mine? Love. Regret. Sorrow. Fear…

But when I heard these songs again recently I interpreted them differently. I give you, “The Old Apartment”

(Lyrics by Barenaked Ladies, interpretations by the Frog)

“Broke into the old apartment
This is where we used to live
Broken glass, broke and hungry
Broken hearts and broken bones
This is where we used to live

Why did you paint the walls?
Why did you clean the floor?
Why did you plaster over the hole I punched in the door?
This is where we used to live
Why did you keep the mousetrap?
Why did you keep the dishrack?
these things used to be mine
I guess they still are, I want them back

Broke into the old apartment
Forty-two stairs from the street
Crooked landing, crooked landlord
Narrow laneway filled with crooks
This is where we used to live

Why did they pave the lawn?
why did they change the locks?
Why did I have to break it, I only came here to talk
This is where we used to live

How is the neighbour downstairs?
How is her temper this year?
I turned up your TV and stomped on the floor just for fun
I know we don’t live here anymore
We bought an old house on the Danforth
She loves me and her body keeps me warm
I’m happy here
But this is where we used to live

Broke into the old apartment
Tore the phone out of the wall
Only memories, fading memories
Blending into dull tableaux

I want them back”
—I take this as my life revisited after I changed. I used to be a sad body of emptiness. I would be alone for weeks, wishing for another to come and be my lover. Now reopening these feelings are like reopening the doors of their old apartment. My broken life that once was, where did I leave it? Alone and just starting on my own in my adolescence I was but nothing among millions. Here now, in the future I’ve out grown the desperation of being down and out and always a buck short but shine on. When one door closes I break open a wall.

Who are we without our experiences? Where would be without a childhood, good or bad? Like those times I’ve left behind for greener pastures (or so I think) we are nothing more than what we were molded from once before.

I didn’t mean to break into these emotions, I only came here to talk.

Have you forgotten where you came from? Have you lost your memories… fading memories… I want them back.

Besides, this is where I used to live.

I want them back.

I want them back…

So it wasn’t an actual request, but I always post in my IM status bar when I get a new blog up. The old status from yesterday was up and my buddy, who recently started reading my post asked if I had another one up. I didn’t, but figured I could make up something. I could go somewhere with nothing. Its basically how my life works anyways.

He had some good points on my blogs however. I was really excited that he actually read them. He’s one of the few people in my life that I hold dear and close and we actually get each other. In a very weird way. Here’s the catch though: I’ve only recently met him in person twice.

That’s right. One of my closest friends has been in my life since we were maybe fourteen or fifteen years old and we had only recently met each other. Hell, I think it was two years ago when he officially visited me. I was working at Philips I believe and staying back at home at my parents place. Then it was decided we had to finally meet. Him, a young strapping lad (what the hell does that mean anyways? Strapping? Does that mean he wears suspenders? I have not a clue. I could use Ubiquity to define the word, but I’m in the middle of something here. My fingers don’t like to stop when they get going. Side bar: I only use the first finger of my right hand and my full left hand to type. Pretty odd huh? I think its a hybrid of my old hunt and peck routine and a actual typing class I took in the twelfth grade. Not sure, but I still can type around 80 or 90 words a minute. Maybe more. My biggest downfall is spelling, or if you ask my current boss, grammar is my biggest downfall. Wow, got way off track there)

So yeah, this dude and I pretty much share everything together. There are no holds barred. (what the hell does that even mean? How do you hold a bar, or bar a hold.. whatever)

I’ve told him things about my life I have never told another single person. Ever. I’m dead serious. We share such intricate parts of our lives together and yet have never met. We thought it was quite the Internet phenomenon that two people could make such an impact on another and be so close yet so far to them.

We thought about going public, having a study done on us. Its weird though, cause I talk to him for around six hours a day. A day! So if  there comes a day when he won’t be in, or I the same, we warn each other. I actually worry. He worries. We text each other on our phones to make sure the other is alright. I mean, this is a serious friendship public, yet our only physical relationship was reduced to a total of I think six days out of the past ten or eleven years.

Isn’t that amazing?

It makes you think what really defines anything physical in the world. We exchange our inner most thoughts and feelings through 0’s and 1’s that travel through the Internets magical tubes (thanks Al Gore) and yet that’s all there is required to hold what we have so dear.

In case you are wondering, we are a very straight pair. He and I respectfully have significant others that contain legitimate lady parts. Seriously. Haven’t you read this blog about my heart ache and woe of the ‘fairer’ of the sexes? Well… doesn’t that seem straight enough?

But here we are, two people hundreds of miles away yet our conversations strike deep to our inner selves. Arising feelings of happiness, sadness, and even… security.

I suppose the real magic is that no matter what happens in our lives, as long as we have the tubes we can never be separated. This bond we share is so new to the world, but look at what is has created. Its made two strangers two best friends.

The ironical part of the Internet, and what has been discussed widely among the blogosphere is the irony in the technology we hold. We become more and more entangled in each others lives through Facespace and Mybook, but more detached in the physical sense.

I think our relationship is the exception. Our distance and lack of physical proximity never had foothold of the relationship we harbor. In fact, its kind of weird when we are right next to each other. It wears off after a little bit. We realize we don’t have a keyboard and our mouths can do more than actually laugh when one of us cracks the other up.

So there you go man. I told you I could take nothing and make it into a 814 word post. 816. Do numbers count? 819. Done. 820.

After speaking with an ex and trying to figure out why I am never happy in relationships I decided that I would take my usual jabber jawing from the IM window and bring it over to my neglected blog. My poor blog.

I ended up leaving her, a second time because I didn’t have the feelings I thought I should, or would have in a relationship, one that actually was ‘right’ if there is such thing. A final touch of a reason to go back to school and finish my degree at ONU was because another girl I was smitten for was attending there. I later realized it was a large mistake in personal judgment.

I was an idiot I thought I saw something that wasn’t there, and I didn’t know if what I had with the girl I was leaving was anything more than just a casual friendship. Like I said, I was and am still looking for something probably that I will never find.