Peeves of the Pet

I can be a harsh person. I won't deny it. I'm not going to coddle you or tell you your ass doesn't look fat in those jeans, because guess what? It does. Here are the things that make me terrible: 

1. I'm not going to pretend I like your hideous sweater and I'll correct you if you make a grammatical mistake while speaking to me. Does all of that make me a bad person? If it does, then I don't want to be right... I mean good! I don't want to be good.

2. If you have attended high school in an English speaking country and if your first language is English and you either don't want to learn or don't care about the difference between "your" and "you're" then I automatically consider myself a better person than you are.

3. I believe everyone should take a good look in the mirror before leaving the house in  the morning. The question you should be asking yourself when you do this isn't "am I comfortable leaving the house like this?" but "does my dress code and way of life offend people?"

4. If you're a hipster extremist, then yes, your dress code offends me, and no, I'm not going to listen to Five Arches of Sound's new EP. Maybe I'll take a stab at it when they're mainstream.

5. That said, I'm never going to tell you to hold back on your beliefs. Even if I may not like them or agree with them, I'll just let you do your thing. Unless of course you start shoving whatever it is in my face, then I'll politely tell you to fuck off.

6. I believe umbrellas are too cumbersome.

7. I think Corn Pops should try and develop a consistent recipe because every box I get is slightly different.

8. I'm not going to judge you for eating McDonald's because I do it all the time.

9. I don't see the point of paying for new books when you can get them second-hand.

10. I don't think the last rule applies to clothes or underwear.

11. I fail to understand why all people won't switch to energy saving bulbs.

12. I hate people who talk too much because they get in the way of my talking too much.

13. Like Liz Lemon says, if you're over 30 and still wear a name tag to work, that's a deal breaker!

14. I believe I am not alone in my hatred of people who get on an escalator and stand still on the walking side. Or large groups of people who just HAVE to walk shoulder to shoulder on a sidewalk. Or people who stop in doorways to think "Do I really have to go inside? Hmm...nope, I'll just stand here while everyone else waits behind me."

15. I can't stand people who try to act like they're superior - it makes it difficult for those of us who really are.

But that's enough about me. Tell me about you.

Coming to America

I should probably apologize for being gone for so long but I won't.
Anyway, let's dive into it. I was just speaking to a friend about how I hate blogs that are like Twitter updates in prose form: "I woke up at 10 a.m., had a full English breakfast and proceeded to rummage through my ex's trash for the last tissue she used." That said, this post is going to be exactly like that.
You may or may not know that the last three months of my life had been leading up to one event – the International AIDS Conference in Washington DC. I was going there as an intern with the Museum of AIDS in Africa (www.museumofaidsinafrica.org is a website you should visit because it was designed [mostly] by yours truly) and it was going to be my first time in the United States.
Before I get into the actual conference, I'm going to give you my opinion of the United States. It was a unique experience that made me realize how much I love Canada. Here are some fun facts I learned while I was there:

1. You have to make an appointment through your embassy several months in advance if you want to get a tour of the White House.
2. People who work at American international airports either hate their jobs or are just rude.
3. Georgia Brown's serves AMAZING fried chicken.
4. Someone was stabbed in the McDonald's I visited, thankfully not while I was there.
5. Some Americans think the Capitol is the White House.
6. SOMEONE WAS STABBED IN THE MCDONALD'S I VISITED.

Maybe I'm overreacting. Perhaps people have been stabbed in the numerous McDonald's locations that I frequent in Canada. However, even if that may be the case, at least I don't have to find out about it while I'm ordering a Quarter Pounder.
So, on to the conference. It was HUGE. Walking from one end of the convention centre to the other was a perilous journey that took about seven minutes, during which you could be ambushed at every turn by people giving out invitations to prayer circles or free condoms. That said, it was also extremely educational and uplifting. It's really nice to see people band together for a specific cause like they did at the conference. Everyone was friendly and willing to talk to you for the most part. What did piss me off was the swag cruisers. You know, people at conferences who don't give a shit about what you have to say but just wanna grab all the free stuff you're giving out. It's even worse when you're not giving any free stuff out, and they walk up to you with their conference bags, stuffed full of free merchandise and blatantly ask you if you have any free things. Then when you say no, they just walk away. Seriously?

How to Maintain What's Left of Your Dignity on Facebook Part 2

First blog post of 2012 and we're going to use it to talk about Facebook...again.

We've already talked about it once before. I thought I had covered all the bases, but surprise, surprise: I was wrong. Turns out there are a lot more things people always fuck up on Facebook. Sometimes I wonder...

1. HASHTAGS: 

I've talked about this so many times I'm just tired now. I'm sure you've seen people using hashtags on Facebook. If you don't know what a hashtag is, it's the # symbol followed by letters. For example: #teamfollowback (another moronic issue we'll tackle later). Hashtags are designed to create trending topics on Twitter so once you use one, you can actually click on it and see if other people are talking about the same thing. I seek in vain to find that statement applying to Facebook. Is Facebook Twitter? Unless you're brain dead, NO it's not. Hashtags just don't work on Facebook! They do nothing. I don't know if people do it to be cool or just to piss me off but it has to end. NOW.

2. SELF-PHOTOGRAPHY... IN THE BATHROOM:

Let me put this as nicely as I can: No one wants to see your lame mirror shots. I don't care how good you think you look; you should never pose in front of a mirror, or even worse, a bathroom mirror, for a Facebook photo. If you want to take a photo of yourself, try to make it seem like someone else took it. At least that might insinuate you have real life friends. Or maybe not.

3. FAKE NAMES: 

Unless your legal name is John "Hard Ass MoFo" Smith, or Belinda Voluptuous Gucci PrincessGirl Terry, I don't want to see that shit on Facebook. This isn't Hi5 and you're not 12 years old. And if you are, you shouldn't be on Facebook in the first place. This fake name nonsense is one thing that I don't think I'll ever be able to understand. Do you have dissociative identity disorder? Is the middle part your stripper name? Who knows? All it does is make you harder to find, and we all know how much you'd love more Facebook friends. Don't you want to be more accessible to people you've only met once?

4. CHECKING IN EVERYWHERE YOU GO:

People keep moaning about the privacy issues regarding Facebook Places and check-ins when they should be moaning about the idiots who check-in wherever they've managed to stay for more than five minutes. It's even worse when it's part of the never-ending status updates: 
| "OMG driving to Taco Bell! Yay! - with Belinda Voluptuous PrincessGirl Terry at Highway 1." 
| "OMG taco night :)) - with Belinda Voluptuous Gucci PrincessGirl Terry at Taco bell." 
| "OMG finally home!! - with Belinda Voluptuous Gucci PrincessGirl Terry at Home." 
| "OMG those Tacos aren't agreeing with me - with Belinda Voluptuous Gucci PrincessGirl Terry at Toilet."

5. TAGGING FRIENDS IN PHOTOS THAT AREN'T OF THEM: 

Let's get this straight: You do realize that the photo of your new haircut is going to show up on my profile if you tag me in it, right? Ok. Then why the hell are you tagging me, fool?! Am I in the background? Am I in your hair? No. Ok, so no one looks at the random photos you post, you're desperate for some likes and comments, so you just up and tag everyone you know. Sure it guarantees I'll see your photo but it also guarantees I'll want to break a champagne bottle on your head. In other words, if I'm not in the photo, do not tag me in it.

6. CREATING A FACEBOOK PAGE FOR YOUR HOUSE/APARTMENT: 

Checking in to your own house can be bad, but checking in to your own house with it's own Facebook page that can be "Liked" is even worse. Believe it or not, I've seen people give their apartments their own Facebook pages, compete with photographs and a description. People say Facebook is for narcissists but it's rather hard to agree until you see shit like this. Unless you're trying to sell your apartment or put it on the cover of Home and Garden magazine, making a Facebook page for it is just tacky. Oh, and also stupid.

7. LANGUAGES SPOKEN:

Ok, maybe saying you can speak Klingon or Pig Latin can be funny in a "haha, look what Dave put on his profile" way. But listing your languages as British English, American English, Australian English, South African English and Canadian English is just moronic. You know there's an option for just one English, right? Sure, there may be some subtle differences but I don't think knowing the two spellings of the word 'colour' is enough to classify you as bilingual.

8. DEAR BLANK PLEASE BLANK STATUS UPDATES: 

Writing fictional letters to abstract ideas was a sign of mental instability before the explosion of Dear Blank Please Blank. Although some remain funny, they quickly lose their value when they make up 75% of your status updates. Hasn't anyone told you DBPB on Facebook is so 2010?

9. OBSSESSIVE TWITTER LINK:

This is basically the Twitter version of the hourly status update. As mentioned, Twitter is a completely different place. On Twitter it's ok to be super narcissistic and tweet every 5 minutes; after all, it's not like there's anything else to do on there. Now, thanks to the marvels of modern technology, you can actually link your Twitter to your Facebook and have tweets show up in your Timeline like little status updates. Do you see where I'm going with this? If you tweet more than twice a day, do not link your Twitter to your Facebook. Spare us. The last thing I want to do is log in to Facebook and have my News Feed saturated with 7 successive moronic tweets about how your dinner is going, complete with cliché pouts and drinks. Which brings me to... 

10. JERSEY SHORE DUCKFACE: 

Looking like a Jersey Shore reject is something only the Jersey Shore people are allowed to do, and they're still hated for it. What on earth makes you think you can pull it off? Your plucked eyebrows, fake tan, and pouty duckface lips are an affront to the entire human race. Get your shit together!

11. I'M SOOOOOOOOO DRUNK!!!

"I'm sooooooo drunk right noooowwwwww!!"
"Drunk :P"
"Getting crunk at da club!!!"

What do the above have in common? Besides being stupid, they're all supposedly being posted on Facebook on Friday and Saturday nights by people who want the world to know that they are getting shitfaced. Firstly, if you're having an awesome time, you wouldn't be thinking about updating your Facebook status. Secondly, if you were as drunk as your status claims, you wouldn't be able to post status updates because your phone would be lying in a pool of vomit (yours? your friends?) on the floor, or you would just be too inebriated to do anything besides bother people who clearly do not want to talk to you. 
In other words, you're simply bored and not drunk. The end.

I Totally Have A Blog

You probably don't know this, but I have a blog.
I know I haven't said much lately but that's just because I've been too busy and/or too lazy to care. However, I have decided it is unfair of me to ignore your frustrations any longer (and by frustrations I mean the pain and suffering I have brought upon you by not posting for more than a month). So here I am, back again.
I'll start off with a call for human cloning. If you wish to clone me, a certain hospital in Toronto is in possession of my appendix, which in turn is in possession of my DNA. That is of course unless it has been incinerated. You see, I had my appendix taken out last month. 

Pictured above: My appendix before we parted ways.

Calm down, calm down. It wasn't that big of a deal. I got a stomach ache and voila, turns out I have appendicitis. All of this was established within the space of about 3 hours. The plus side is I was well enough to walk myself over to the emergency wing at the hospital and demand someone stick his/her sterilized hand into my body to retrieve the offending piece of tissue. Unless scientists discover 40 years from now that the appendix in fact controls your ability to digest something, I'm fine. Now I have a scar that I regularly tell people was a result of an awesome fight involving samurai and katanas. No one believes me...yet.
In other news, Christmas came and went again this year with nothing more than a whimper. After being bombarded for over a month with Christmas music, imagery and subliminal advertising, I had had enough. All I wanted was for Christmas to be over and now it is! Yay! Now we can all focus on more important things like who and what we will be doing for new year's eve. I mean, I love Christmas and all but there's something about getting so drunk you forget your own name that is just slightly more appealing. I don't know; maybe it's just me. If I had more readers (I blame you for my not having enough; you could at least tell your friends to read this blog!) I'd ask you all what you did for Christmas and what you plan on doing for New Year's Eve, and maybe try and hijack your plans. But as the only people who read my blog are my friends and relatives who just check in to make sure I'm still alive, I won't bother.
Before I go any further, I would like to heap praise on one corporation that, despite robbing us blind, makes me happy all the time. Yep, you guessed it. I'm talking about Apple. 

I was having issues with my phone (carrier issues because of my carrier) that could have either been a fault of my iPhone itself (they weren't because it was my carrier's fault) or my sim card (or my fucking carrier). So yesterday, I had my sim card changed but that didn't solve any of the problems (that my carrier caused). So instead, I went to the Apple store to see if they could help. After fighting crazy Boxing Day shoppers for the last stool at the Personal Setup desk, I made an appointment at the Genius Bar and proceeded to wait for about 20 minutes. Then, like a professional ninja, an Apple employee appeared out of nowhere to tell me a Genius was ready to see me. Yes, these people are very professional (unnamed carrier, I hope you're taking notes). I explained my problem to my Genius and he laid out all the possible problems and solutions. Psych! I'm kidding. He totally didn't do any of that. He just grabbed my phone, looked at the headphone jack and the 30-pin connector then asked me if I would be cool with getting a new phone. Seriously? Like, DUH!!! So he gives me a new phone, makes me sign his iPod (yes, sign his iPod. Apparently they don't use paper any more), and sends me on my way. This whole meeting lasted less than 3 minutes.
Unfortunately, getting a new phone didn't solve the problem (that the fucking carrier was responsible for!). I wonder why... Either way, I got a new phone out of it! Thank you, Apple!
That right there ends my rant. I wish I could continue but I'm typing with my laptop on my stomach and I'm pretty sure my sperm count is lowering as we speak. I'll see you all in the New Year! Remember: don't drink and drive, don't leave your glass unattended and don't throw up on someone's expensive upholstery. The smell alone takes weeks to get rid of and you'll probably ruin the one pathetic friendship you have left. 
2012, here we come! No funny business next December though. I mean it, 2012!

The Potential Relationship & Mating Triad

Have you ever wondered why none of your relationships work out? Why you’re sad and alone? Where all those cats came from?
I was discussing relationships with a friend today (while pretending to write an art history essay) and I had an amazing epiphany – that’s a sudden realization of great truth, for those of you who haven’t seen The Simpsons Movie. I realized why it seems all relationships are doomed to fail: you can almost never get your ideal person. Now before I go any further, let me describe what I think is the perfect partner:

Your perfect partner is:

1. Good-looking (to you at least)

2. Employed

3.  A person who will never cheat

Ok, so maybe I skipped some stuff and maybe I’m being a little superficial, but hey, that’s my opinion so SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN. Either way, those are the three basic things, right? Anyway, for the sake of this blog post, we’re going to call those three qualities the Potential Relationship and Mating Triad (maybe we need a better name...). We will therefore define the Relationship Triad as the three most important qualities your potential partner must have for the relationship to work at its most basic level. So unless you’re like Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Theresa, you bloody live by the Triad.

Do we understand each other so far? Yes? Good.

So here’s my theory: from your perspective, any given person can possess either none of those qualities or a maximum of two. You will NEVER find someone with all three! Crazy, right? That means that the person you like is either: 

a) good-looking and employed BUT will cheat on you at some point, 

b) has a job and will never cheat BUT is not good-looking, and finally, 

c) is good-looking and will never cheat BUT is broke as hell. 

Guess  how the Triad can (and possibly will) apply here.

And those are just the best-case scenarios. Things could get a lot worse; for example the person may be 

a) employed BUT not good-looking and a serial cheater (trust me, it happens) or 

b) extremely faithful BUT not good-looking and not employed.

Until I conduct more in-depth research and studies, I am not at liberty to say that this applies to everyone, but it sure as hell seems to apply to me! One of my friends has this theory that the more attractive someone is, the more likely he or she is to cheat on you. At first I laughed the idea off but now looking at the Triad, it doesn’t seem as crazy as it once did. What is crazy, however, was her solution to the problem – “just, like, date, like, unattractive people duh!” Ok, I may have embellished that last quote just a little.

I’d love to know if the Triad applies to anyone else’s life. Misery does love company after all.

Big City Death

Be grateful.
Be very grateful that instead of working on one of my two essays, or my drawing project, or my typography project, I'm instead updating this blog. 
I know, I know. I've missed you too. It's been months since I last saw you! How are you? How's the foot doing? Did you get that weird rash checked out?
Seriously though, it's kind of nice to be writing for something other than school. In case you didn't know (and you probably didn't), I'm back in Canada and attending a rather prestigious art school. Now before you judge me and my decisions, I would like you to keep this image in mind: 

Does this help?

Ok, that may not have worked in my favour, but in my defence, my sticks were hung from a free-standing structure. Either way, I'm studying advertising and it's turning out to be a pretty interesting ride so far. I won't go into intricate details of how much work I have (A LOT) and which classes suck (a few) so as not to offend anyone, but I will say that I'm somehow managing to keep up.

In other news, I am now also a Toronto resident. Yes sir. Exciting as the big city life is, it can sometimes get you down - it's really hard to find a seat at Starbucks sometimes. Also, I constantly feel boxed in and don't even get me started on public transit. I thought small town Canada was weird but nothing compares to Toronto weird; but alas, that's a blog post in itself.

When shit gets real

Ah, Zambia. Gotta love it.

Oh well, it's home.

Have you ever felt like you were single-handedly fighting the entire army of the forces of stupidity? No? Well I have.

After my phone got stolen about a week ago (don’t ask), I drove to our town’s central police station to file a report. I guess I should be grateful that I managed to find the central police station seeing as how it’s located in the armpit of the city, but that’s a very small consolation.

I managed to file half the report before the officer taking down the details (Sidenote: this officer happened to be in possession of a very large and very old AK-47 rifle) asked for my phone’s IMEI number. Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t have my phone’s IMEI tattooed on my leg, so I told the officer I would be back with the information needed.

True to my word, I returned about an hour later (this time with my father), phone’s IMEI in tow and ready to nail the piece of shit who had stolen my poor baby right from under my nose. The officer who I had talked to first was no longer there. In his place were two other officers: a man and a woman who looked like they may or may not have had a combined IQ of 95.

With a deep breath, I explained that I had come in earlier to file a report and had now returned with my phone’s IMEI, a crucial piece of information needed to track my phone down. The woman officer listened to my explanation with a vacant expression before proceeding to flip through a gigantic book. After about three solid minutes of searching, she finally found my name next to an entry. At this point, she once again asked me what I had brought in. I told her it was my phone’s IMEI number.

You know what she said then? I wish I were actually talking to you right now so you could take a wild guess. Go ahead. Try and guess.

…

Before I go on, let me remind you that this is a FUCKING (supposedly) TRAINED POLICE WOMAN working at the FUCKING LARGEST POLICE STATION IN THE CITY. And you know what she says?

“There’s no space to write down the number.”

I’m sorry? I didn’t catch that. What did you just say?

“There’s no space left in the entry to write down the number.” She says this without looking up at me or my father. Instead, she’s looking at the book and speaking with a tone that says “Oh well. Tough luck assholes. There’s no space!”

My reaction: ARE YOU FUCKING SHITTING ME?!!

I honestly didn’t know what to say. Imagine you’re running late for an international flight and you jump into a cab. You’re stressed and you ask the cabby to drive you to the airport, but instead of starting the car, he says he hasn’t put his key in the ignition. In fact, his key is still in his pocket. And shit, we all know how fucking hard it is to solve that problem, right? You might as well start rescheduling your 11 a.m. meeting.

So there I am, confronted by the issue of someone stealing my phone and this bitch is talking about how there is no space in a book to write down a number, the one thing they need to recover my stolen phone. Do you understand how frustrating that is?

I was screaming profanities inside my head so vile they could melt her face off, but on the outside I asked her if she couldn’t write it down in a separate entry.

Her reply was no. Why? Because that would be a duplication of entries.

Please don’t attempt to understand, dear reader. Even I don’t want to go into all the possible solutions to this problem. I feel my IQ dropping as I write this…

Then, as if to prove her point, she tells us to come and see for ourselves that there’s no space. At this point I was ready to pass out from severe moronic interaction syndrome (MIS).

“So what do we do now?” I asked her, my eyes glazing over from the overwhelming amount of WTF I was experiencing.

Her reply? Come back tomorrow and talk to the officer who wrote down your entry. She didn’t offer any other assistance, nor did she seem like she wanted to. In her mind, she was doing us a favour by just talking to us.

That was when I lost it. Yes, dear reader. I lost it for real this time and not just in my imagination. I yelled at her and asked why in the blue fuck I had to come see a specific officer at a specific time to complete a task a five year old could do in less than a minute. Was this a brothel? Was my favourite prostitute on vacation and the new one just didn’t cut it? No, this was a police station. A police station in Zambia, true, but a police station nonetheless. The police were supposed to work as a unit (preferably trained) and it wasn’t supposed to matter who I talked to, or when I talked to them. It wasn’t any of my concern who wrote what and where, it was just supposed to fucking work.

After I had my outburst, everyone just stared at me – but they still didn’t do anything.

Although my phone was found a week later, the part of my brain that died in that dingy police station remains dead. I’m sad to say I am disgusted by the incompetence and apathy I have experience at the hands of the police. I have never had much faith in them anyway, but I thought that at least when I talked to an officer, I would be talking to a trained officer and not a high school dropout who failed at English and common sense.

If parts of this don’t make sense to you, I understand. This story has more layers than an onion and I’ve just given you the bare basics. I used to be scared of having something stolen because of its value, but now I’m just scared because I’ll have to talk to the police.