Day 59: The Beheading

Poor dude came back to his home in Lebanon to find out he was going to jail for Witchcraft. First of all, Witchcraft is bad? Someone should have let me know, because I was considering a trip to Beirut to see my pregnant friend/get a new stamp on the old passport (got to use it up before it expires next year, I thought that was a rule) and I don't think you can refund plane tickets because your worried about losing your head (I have some pretty firm opinions on freedom of thought and religion which might lead someone still living in the dark ages to believe that I am something of an anti-christ or an anti-mohammed. Which I'm not, I'm sure both JC and Mo were pretty cool dudes, maybe they even had dreads, who knows. I wouldn't have minded meeting them back in the day, I wouldn't have missed that concert, if that's your concern.). Valid concern the losing-your-head thing, but you know how the airlines are about refunds.

Yes, the dude is going to be beheaded for supposedly practising Witchcraft (maybe he just didn't feel like putting pants on when he got the munchies in the middle of the night going down to the kitchen. People really should mind their peeping, naked people always look strange in the middle of the night, like on Whyte Ave. Great example, I used to think my old cat looked like a monkey, sneaking around my room at night). By the way, isn't beheading a little old school? When Christianity adopted mason-like rituals into their services way back when, I guess some dudes lost their heads then, too? Only fair. Turn the clocks back to the days of Stonehenge, omigod, the heads MUST have been rolling then, right? Well, no doubt things were a little more tribal back in the day and the heads rolled for little more than a tree and a rock, but man, modern day Lebanon? I guess I just expected more out of them. Do you think Israel would behead one of their own for nighttime nakedness? We should ask Lebanon, see what they say. I really don't know, I'm just making stuff up now. Don't be pissed off, I love both countries equally. Except for the beheading a witch thing. I'm really not into that, I thought that ended a few years ago now. And what if the blade isn't sharpened properly? Like a butter knife?

So, I guess Beirut is crossed off my list of places to work or visit for the time being. It was a little easier not to chew gum in Singapore. But to keep my mouth shut, that is not possible. There is always a good chance that random stuff will leak out of my mouth. Just a few drinks, and I would have been talking up Wicca like it was the new Christianity. I would have been famous, though. But really dead 48 hours later.

Brings me to my thought of the day. Why can't people accept new or different? It blows me away that we are all living on the same earth but have this constant need to control the sheep and demonize the dogs with our ill-conceived notions of what is right. Metaphorically speaking, of course (I know, it's difficult to tell with me). You can't even walk into a prospective job without having to deal with their visual image of the "right" fit. No point in having credentials at all. You want to be a truck driver, grow a foot, mess up the hair, swear a little, get a few extra minutes at the tanning bed and grow your butt a couple of inches. You might want to slap a penis on while you're at it because they're not listening to a word you say after the door swings open. So, I tell stories, children's bible stories. I like to kill off Davie and Goliath in the end usually. And answer questions with numbers. Nobody is listening.

Is there ANYBODY out there listening?????

Day 58: Going Big or Going Home

You're probably well aware already that I change my mind like I change my underwear. I'm a pretty good smelling woman, so that's at least everyday for your information. I decided after waking up from my 11-hour unemployment slumber this morning that I'm going to go big or bust. And what is the biggest thing I can think of for Alberta? Trucks. Big ass, transport trailer trucks. You don't even have to know how to spell your name. That's my dream job. I'm telling you right now, my university degree and college diplomas are currently useless. I'm done. I'm not writing them off completely yet, but the thought of going back to work in an office, or inside a flight dispatching fish bowl, or even inside period, would be devastating to me. I spent my twenties working outdoors, nearly dying of pneumonia, warming up by the equipment exhaust, and freezing my tongue to anything I licked (I lick alot, it's a strange habit). And I loved every second of it. When your inside, you get closer to people, and people aren't really that interesting or even nice. And they certainly don't smell all that good. Outside, you put your headset on and tune the world out. Except when the engines are running, it's a good idea to look up then, poor little M. found that out the hard way one time (don't worry, I saved him).

Yeah, I'm going back to basics for now, but not without the big bucks. Truck driving in Alberta is the biggest money machine out there, and I'm going to the ATM to cash in. With a little help from UI. Finally figured out what they're good for. Yup, truck driving is going to pay for my real passions in life. Just wish I knew what those passions were...And if I'm going home, what better souvenir than a truck license?!

PS. Homeless dude in the laundramat - don't bring your lunch in with you next time, it freaking stinks. The smell reminded me of my living room last year during the Fringe Festival. That was not pretty.

Day 57: Beating a Horse. The Dead One.

Every six months or so I ceremoniously apply to Westjet for an apprenticeship position. I've been doing this for eight years now. I still do this for Air Canada as well, although Air Canada seems to always be in financial trouble so I never expect them to call me back. However, you would think that after eight years of nothing, absolute NOTHING, 1000+ resumes sent out for AME apprenticeship, that I would have stopped beating the horse by now. The dead one. At what moment are you supposed to realize there is no hope for you and your diploma? At what point do you stop going to school to upgrade with 2 or 3 degrees and decorate them with other various certificates? When do people start to realize that if your Uncle Father or Auntie Mom doesn't get you in, there's a good chance your resume went straight to the shredder? Two months after being fired and a mental breakdown later, that's when.

The mental breakdown happened this weekend. I am strangely okay. Nothing like going to Red Deer for a night to make you feel better about living in Edmonton. But now it's Monday, and jobhunting has never been more crucial (I think I'll go do my laundry first, I'm down to my Hello Kitty underwear again...) but what am I to do, throw away my past credentials and start fresh, whatever fresh is at 35? Or continue on down the path of insanity and start fighting for bottle collecting territory? What to do...

I'm going to do laundry, that's what I'm going to do. No more thinking. New resume, new direction tomorrow. I'm thinking Starbucks might not be such a bad job anymore.

Day 56: My Fire Exit is a Back Draft

There are some things in life you just can't change and then there are things that are everchanging. Number one, you can't change yourself. Life made you the way you are, you'd have to go back to your three-year-old self and then head out on the open road to a new life in order to be someone different. Skipping town as a three-year-old is a difficult thing to do, trust me, but bus fare is cheap. I must say, though, the things a three-year-old had to do for a dime way back when...Washing dishes at Mrs. S's house for two hours, isn't that like child slavery? Anyway, we adapt to some situations and even sometimes our personalities are affected by that adaptation, but we'll always be us. Take us, or leave us, but do not stand there and expect us to change.

When you first get hired on at a job or even first start dating someone, you'd think that they would know all this, or at least figure it out in the three-month probationary period. But they don't. They wait until you've got nothing else lined up and slam you with a, "You know, you're just not the right fit." or "You're just not up to our level." or "You're going to have to put your pants on if we're going out for dinner.". Those are some pretty high expectations, considering you were up to their level upon hiring and you've never considered pants an important part of your wardrobe before. The bar has just been set to the next level of mundane, expectations have changed, and nobody has bothered to let you know.

Changed expectations are never reasonable, either. What snapped in their head to make them decide that you're no longer good enough? Or were you just some oddity to begin with to shake things up and then get thrown away? Or are they too lazy and scared to deal with the innovations and excitement that come out of using a back draft as a fire exit? People say they want innovation and different, but what they really want in the end is a robot employee or cookie-cutter girlfriend/boyfriend. This is "safe". F***ing redundant and bland, but "safe" for them.

However, "Safe" doesn't allow a company or a person to adapt to a world and society that IS changing. How many times do our taxpaying dollars have to be used to save GM or Air Canada from bankruptcy protection? I'm figuring forever, because these corporations aren't going to change. Not everyone wants a F***ing truck, okay? And Air Canada, Airbuses suck ass, yet you keep buying them. What did Boeing ever do to you except offer good, affordable, WORKING planes? Ah, yes, that's right, Brain Mulroney and the corruption of the 80s happened.

The way I figure it, the golfers at the top won't let anyone in except for mini-mes; They're just to lazy and coddled to deal with different and channel it into a profit. It's the same with relationships. We are rewarded in society when we maintain a certain standard which has been dictated to us through the media. Capitalism is our world order, buy buy buy, buy baby clothes, buy family cars, buy a family house, we'll lend you the money at a premium, but just don't stop buying. An indebted society is also a controllable one for a government. Don't want any more social movements happening without government orchestration, screw the 60s and those damn hippies. Lets knock this country back into the 50s. Whatever. Something will snap. Nothing like a good revolution, couldn't be worse than Whyte's crack corner on a Saturday night.

In the end, everyone needs to start enjoying people for who they are and start taking some risks. Have some fun. Dive head first into something, the water is deeper than you think. And if you don't start accepting people for who they are and enjoying the idiosyncrasies and using those idiosyncrasies to your advantage instead of expecting them to morph into something they're not, then you've got nothing but divorce and bankruptcy and sadness in your future. Good luck with that.

Day 55: Need to Know Basis

There's information that needs be shared. And then there's information that should NOT be shared. Myself, I like to keep myself on a need to know basis; there's alot of information out there that I REALLY don't want to know. Like why some guy stopped calling me two months ago. I got the hint after a couple of weeks, thanks. No need to email me any explanations. You were already forgotten. On top of it, lame apologies are just that - lame. Your an a**hole. Move on. Get over yourself. Period. Your not redeeming yourself with statements like, "You'll find a guy who appreciates you someday.". Of course I will, I'm not the a**hole. I like people for who they are and even more for what makes them unique. I enjoy every moment of people I choose to be with. What leaves a bad taste in my mouth in the end (which to me was about two months ago) is someone trying to make a pie out of cake mix. I'm not a pie. I'm 100%, sweet delicious cake. You either like cake and the funky icing on top or you don't. I won't judge. And you shouldn't, either. One thing is for sure for me now, nobody is ever going to make me put my pants on for the pizza delivery guy again. And the icing is staying on, too.

Heyyyyyyyy. There. I'm done. I'm back. It's still a beautiful weekend and life is sweet. Because, well, I'm alive. Bunnies not even required. What does this have to do with unemployment? Hah, good question. I'll think about that... Okay. ALOT. I'm also a veteran of bad jobs. Breaking up (lack of a better phrase, we weren't even really together) is alot like getting fired. I think it's always decent of the company to let you know that they are firing you and let you know that showing up for work the next day wouldn't be such a great idea. Information you don't want to hear, though, is that the door codes have been changed and the premises are being monitored by security to make sure you stay away. That just stings, man. I don't even remember how to make it past the traffic circle to get there. People assume too much about me.

Lastly, after you've been fired or dumped (lack of a better phrase), you really don't need to be re-fired or re-dumped. I can just imagine my ex-boss calling me tomorrow and saying, "By the way, I'm just calling to remind you that you're fired. Do you want to do lunch?". Yeah, no, thanks dude, and I hope you still have security guarding the premises because that just makes me feel a little crazy. But then I'd have to remember how to get there. And I can't. Once again, I will forget everything that happened in the last 48 hours very shortly. It's my 48-hour rule. So if I don't set fire to anything tonight, it's definitely never going to happen. Sleep tight.

Day 54: Sacred Bunnies

Whenever I have a bad day, I think bunnies. A good bunny is almost as good as a quaalude. Better, actually. You can drink wine and watch bunnies. Quaaludes don't mix so well with alcohol. Although Roman Polanski might disagree. But bunnies are my sanity. Except that time when MW ran over the cute little white one at work. Really, MW, how fast were you driving in the parking lot? Karma, dude, that's such bad karma. Anyways, I'm thinking bunnies today. Not for me, I have no stress in my life, but for someone else a little more deserving. For other people a little more deserving of the sacred bunny remedy.

In Alberta, the bunnies are big enough to crush you and steal your car AND your purse all at the same time. But somehow still as soothing as the cute little white ones in Ontario. Just don't make eye contact, is all. Albertan bunnies are like the Albertan people out here, cute in the winter with their fluffy winter coats. But when the winter coats come off...things are missing. Body parts. Extremities. Eyeballs. And you realize about then that it wasn't the winter coats that made them look big. They ARE big. Not so cute. I guess the oil patch, -50C temperatures, and harmone injected cows kind of take that genetic band and stretches it to its limits and then lobs off a piece. However, looks are deceiving. I'm getting kind of attached to the gentle giantness of it all. I like my Albertan bunnies.

Anyway, trying to get to the point here, it's hard though. I was going to go out and chase bunnies last night at 2am. Normally I chase bunnies and take pictures of them when I'm stressed. But the roommate stopped me, said I didn't have a flash on my phone camera. He's right. I don't. So I had all my friends forward me bunny pictures from their cell phones this morning. Why? I forget now. There was supposed to have been a moral to this story...

Oh yeah, I remember now. I've recently discovered how easy I've had it all these years, hey, I'm no superhero. In fact, I'm the opposite. I'm like, super idiot. Most of my bad situations have been brought on by myself. Besides my dad's illnesses and passing away, the only scary super-stress moments in my life were 1. When I smoked all that weed in grade 9 and fell down the ravine into the golf course and got picked up by the cops (that wasn't the scary part. I almost missed curfew that night, facing my mom late and stoned would have been the end of life as I knew it), 2. Being arrested in Mexico (and then my Scottish father discovering bargaining at the worst moment ever, but it worked), 3. Nearly getting arrested in Taiwan (no scooter license, apparently I speak pretty good Russian when I need to though), 4. The run-in with the Mexican army (wrong beach, oops), 5. The little CJ I was on going to Mexico one year via Atlanta catching fire (you'd think they would have let us off the plane while they were putting out the fire, though, I was actually just pissed off at that one), 5. E-landing in YMX back in 1990 (nowhere to refuel over the Atlantic, I guess, but you'd think they would have brought enough fuel along for the ride in the first place), 6. Yellow cab dude (I won't get into details except that I refused to go to Madrid and that backpack was really heavy), 7. My dad taking the wrong pass in the alps with a standard transmission (afraid of Swiss people and heights to this day).

That's about it. The rest of the time, I hide my head in the sand or run away. I don't have the passion to go out there and save people's lives for a living. And if someone told me tomorrow that my dating life for the next two months was a committed relationship to an oncologist, I'd be really stupidly pissed off. Like, yelling at strangers from my window kind of pissed off-ness. I don't have passion. I don't have peace. But there are people out there with all of that. They enjoy their jobs helping people. They are at peace with the fact that they, not some other deserving bastard, got nailed with cancer. I think it's time I start finding passion and peace myself, but outside of Margueritaville this time. Then when I finally do get a good reason to be a little stressed out, I can deserve the sacred bunny remedy myself. In the meantime, I'm giving away my bunny remedy to the superheros out there. Thanks for making it real for me this week. I think I might actually have my life under control for once.

Day 53: To Eat or Not to Eat

Wow. Another 48-hour day. I really need to get a watch. And a calendar. A job would help, too. Well, I can't remember much from the past two days. I'm just going to call it "writer's block". By the way, the "stop drinking" initiative didn't work out too well after I decided to cook the other day. The end result was really quite gross/can't even describe so I decided to just stop eating instead. It would be easier that way. So, I still needed substance and I cracked open a beer. It was just all downhill from there.

I went to Costco today, got lost four times, bought nine boxes of Mac and Cheese, because that's what you do when you go to Costco. The Mac and Cheese thing, I mean. The getting lost thing is just my thing. Add a traffic circle into the mix, and I'm totally screwed. Highway construction, I'll never make it. Going to West Edmonton Mall area, I might as well just bring a sleeping bag because I'm sleeping on the side of the road. Wave to me if your driving by sometime. Anyhow, if I do end up eating again, it's Mac and Cheese all the way. I figure I've got enough Mac and Cheese to sustain life for a month.

Today I discovered that a Job Fair at the unemployment office actually means recruiting for slave labour at Tim Horton's. Not that there's anything wrong with working at Tim Horton's, I'd rather be working there than at my last place of work without a doubt. You don't have to worry whether or not the pilot's know where they're going and you get tipped for getting them their coffee instead of a long-winded description of their pulled groin muscle. However, I think I'd be taking a paycut from my unemployment check, which I got the other day. Yeay, I can pay rent!!! Good times.

Oh man, I'm eating again, I just had cake. Dammit. No beer for me tonight. My office fat is reforming into a beer belly, drastic measures have to be taken. Maybe I'll just switch to vodka. In fact, I think vodka is the answer to everyone's problems. We should all drink more vodka.