Shackle your hocks

Okay. I'm pale. I get it. But with my last name and nationality, what do you expect, really? All my life I've been the butt of pale jokes and it's likely never to stop. So I might as well embrace it and inform you of the consequences of living with this complexion.

When I was a kid, we had a swing set. I loved this swing set. I would play for hours around it; going down the slide, swinging on the swings, prancing around the supports.

Eventually even the most hyper active children wind down. After a few hours of play, my once exuberant attitude would diminish radically. But I would soldier on trying to convince myself I was still having fun.

One day exhaustion and denial got the better of me.

That's right, I fell asleep on the swing. It was in the middle of a summer day with the sun beating down on me, and I was only wearing a thin sun dress. I woke up disoriented and staggered back into the house. At first, I thought the worst part was that I fell asleep while I was playing. Kind of embarrassing. But that wasn't the worst part; the worst part was the sunburn. The sun literally burned me through my dress.

My memory of that day is hazy, due to the severe case of heat stroke I had. But I do remember that eventually bedtime rolled around and Granny wanted to get me out of my dress and into my pj's. She told me to take off my dress.

But I could not lift my arms above my head. She tried helping me get the dress off; she gave it a few valiant efforts and then decided there had to be a better course of action.

I freaked out. To me, in my delusional state, the problem was that my arms weren't working, so when Granny said she was going to get the scissors, there was only one possible outcome.

She was going to cut my arms off in order to get the dress over my head. Totally logical, I know. In the time it took her to go get the scissors and come back I was in full blown panic mode. When she came back in the room, I didn't see my nice grandmother; I saw a woman that was going to butcher me.

I started screaming "No Granny!! Please don't, please don't!!!" She didn't understand (and why would she?) so she kept coming at me with the scissors. I continued screaming, but managed to elaborate (somewhat) "No Granny!! Please don't cut my arms off!!!!".

Granny was slightly confused (for some reason), but eventually, she realized that I wasn't going to stop screaming bloody murder so she tried to use reason. She explained to me that she was going to use the scissors to cut off the dress, so I could get into my pj's. But that didn't matter, I was still panicking "I'll just sleep in my dress!!!". And so I did.

The next morning I was able to lift my arms and take off the dress. But the psychological scars lasted much longer than the sunburn. I never wanted to be sunburned again. I took drastic measures to ensure my safety.

Like wearing my winter coat every time I played on the swingset. After all, I'd rather be delirious with heat exhaustion than be sunburnt and delirious with heat exhaustion. At least I was happy.

 

 

Big thanks to JArt for being the guest artist and providing illustrations.

Wow - good thing you didn't have an outburst, huh?!

I think I can confidently say this has happened to every single one of us. And if not, then it will. At some point or another you will find yourself in a situation where you have to talk to the most socially retarded person on the planet. And it won't be easy.

From my experience, these conversations always progress through at least four stages. There is a fifth, optional, stage that you must pull out if you are absolutely required to speak to this person on a regular basis. Like, if you married them, for example.

If you can, drink your way through the stages, it'll make it that much more entertaining and much less awkward. Though be warned, sometimes drinking to this extreme is seen as 'inappropriate' or 'raging alcoholism'.

For sanity, it's best if the stages are brief, but more often than not, they're not. If you're at a party or a bus-stop, the stages will progress very quickly. If you go to school with or are related to the socially inept dweeb, the stages will drag on until you would prefer to stick shards of glass in your eyes than continue talking with them.

The first stage is introduction. Often times, you don't realize how socially retarded someone is until you make your first attempt at conversation.

You say hello and they look at you; you introduce yourself and they look at you; you ask them what their name is and their friend answers you. If you make the mistake of trying to shake their hand, they'll look at your right hand extended and then back to your face. Their facial expression will not change. If at all possible, leave the situation now. If it's important that you talk with this person, try to progress through the remaining stages quickly just so you can say "I tried".

The second stage is asking questions to try and get them to talk.

Most socially awkward people will answer your questions with one or two words and will not ask you anything in return. This makes the question-answer stage painfully boring (or maybe just painfully painful); you're going to have to get creative if you want to get anything out of them. But it likely won't work. Don't worry, you'll move onto the third stage soon enough.

The third stage is volunteering information; since they won't ask you anything, you begin providing them with the information that they should be asking for, or random facts and trivia.

I like to tell stories; it's far more entertaining (for me) than telling them about what I do for work, or how I know the person we both know. Besides, that will only work for so long; plus I think that if I tell a story about the most basic life experiences, I will show them just how easy it is and they might reciprocate, even just a little bit.

Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. When it does, it's glorious; when it doesn't, I'm sure the dud is left wondering how I yammered on for 15 minutes about buying milk. Eventually, stage three runs it's course. No matter how hard you try, you can't think of anything else to say to this person. Welcome to stage four.

The fourth stage is where you simply ignore them. Stop making eye contact, stop looking in their general direction, basically stop acknowledging their presence entirely.

This is the final stage for people that you don't need to talk to ever again. It's the best stage when dealing with random people at the bar, or on the street, because if you do it right, even you forget that they're there.

However, in most social circumstances you can't stay in this stage for very long; people will start saying that you're rude, or a bitch. These people have been in the fifth stage for so long that they've forgotten what it's like going through the first four stages with this person. Don't worry, it'll happen to you too.

The final stage is acceptance. You come to realize that this person has made it through their entire life being a social tard and nothing you do will ever be able to change that. Sometimes it's easier to just lay down and take it. Luckily, you won't have to take much, because they likely are still unable to have a conversation with you. You better learn to love awkward silences. My coping mechanism is music - I play music in my head in an attempt at convincing myself I'm having a good time. Oh, denial, you've helped me so ... ... ... wait... no, you haven't; I did it all on my own.

 

 

Big thanks to EliseArt for providing illustrations.

I'm on to you, Gorm

You know that I have to log on to my blog in order to moderate the comments that you leave and you also know that when I do this I see my site stats. Don't think I didn't notice that you press refresh 30 times every time I've posted in February. You may think that this will fool me into thinking that 30 people read my post, and therefore I should post more frequently than I did in January. But you're not fooling me. I'm on to you.

Are you pregnant?? Nope, just fat. Thanks.

I strongly encourage you to go and read this post before reading this one. Fine. You don't even have to read the whole thing. Just scroll to the last paragraph and read that. Okay?

So I'm in school and there are other people that are in my class. Weird, I know. So there's this guy that's in my class right now that's known as Chris, Mr Perfect, or simply Mr I-know-everything-about-everything. Safe to say, he's pretty smart.

My teacher didn't include last week's assignment in the note package he gave us and he had only one copy of the assignment in his binder. He needed someone to go photocopy it or email it out to the rest of the class. Being the team player that I am, I volunteered for this job and passed around a piece of paper to get everyone's email address so that I could scan it in and send it off.

I got home and scanned in the assignment and started entering email addresses into gmail... As it turns out, the Chris that's in my class, has the same name of the fellow, Chris, that writes "The Bucholz Discharge". Now I can't say for certain that Class-Chris is Cracked-Chris, but since I believe that's a fairly unique last name, I think it's safe to say that it is him.

Funny thing is, I declared my interlove for him in the post I made you go and read and it turns out that he sits behind me every week. Crazy right? What are the chances? Roughly 2%, I'd say. So anyway, I thought I'd update that post (you know, without actually updating that post):

With my luck he lives in Halifax (actually he lives in Vancouver and I know him), is married (he does have a girlfriend) and finds me repulsive (I have no defense for this). Fucker. (I stand by that remark)

I second-guessed every comma in this post

Well, I have 4 school deadlines over the next week and a half and really should be working on at least a couple of them. Instead I wrote this post. Gorm says I should always write posts when I'm procrastinating; I take that as my last post was my best work. Boo-yah! Anyway, here's the latest installment of "I'd rather do anything besides schoolwork".

I was recounting my weekend to a friend at work the other day; I was telling her about the Saturday night I'd just had. A guy I know, pretty well spent the whole night hitting on me and whispering sweet nothings in my ear. It was quite something really. Don't worry, I've known him for long enough that it wasn't creepy or anything... and I haven't known him for so long that it was creepy or anything.

Anyway, at one point he said:

Which immediately made me think:

And then that made me think about what it would actually be like to own the moon and the stars.

Not exactly something I'd turn down given the chance. Once I got to the end of that little tale, my friend burst out laughing:

Me: I know! Who says these things, right?

Her: Um... ... every guy?

Me: What?! No way!

Her: Yeah, totally. You've never had a guy say this shit to you before?

Me: No, I haven't... Have you?

Her: Tonnes of times!! Not any of your boyfriends? Not even your long-term boyfriend?

Me: No and no.

Her: Wow.

Me: I know! That's why it's so exciting!

Her: That's not what I was thinking.

Me: What were you thinking?

Her: You've dated assholes!!!

Apparently every guy that she's ever dated (or has ever wanted to date her) has said these things. She also suggested that this is what every guy says to get in a girl's pants. Not to say that that thought hadn't crossed my mind in the moment. In fact, a childhood conversation with my dad flashed before my eyes.

However, I immediately dismissed it as a possibility and allowed the sweet nothings to continue being whispered in my ear. Maybe I'm easily swindled by it because no guy has ever been (or even feigned to be) romantic like that before. Or perhaps the world is different than the moon and the stars. Not likely

Big thanks to EliseArt for providing the illustrations

There aren't any tourist shops in Surrey!

I've been a super slacker lately and for that, I apologize. But just so you know, I'm slacking in nearly every aspect of my life right now. It's actually a bit of a problem. Rather than tackle other, more important things, (like writing a 10 page report that is 3 days overdue), I'm putting together this post, so that you all have something to read on Thursday. You're welcome.

My mom is one of five kids; she's the only one who had children. Needless to say, there weren't exactly tonnes of kids running around at family reunions. It was pretty much me and my brother and a bunch of adults who drank coffee and smoked cigarettes.

My mom has two brothers that we were close to; there was an ongoing game between these brothers vying for their niece's attention. Uncle Jim would hug me good-bye and say "You're my favorite niece" and I would automatically say "You're my favorite uncle" back. At which point, Uncle Jim would then laugh in Uncle Keith's face. I'd backtrack but it was already done. Uncle Keith lured me into the same trap several times as well. Eventually, I realized... "But I'm your only niece..."

Regardless, Uncle Jim was kind of my favorite uncle, almost, purely because he had a wooden leg. I loved his wooden leg.

At first, I'm sure Uncle Jim thought it was cute, maybe even endearing, but after awhile, I'm sure he was sick of hiking up his pant leg for me to knock on his wooden leg.

I wasn't ignorant to this; even as a child, I was fully aware that this ritual tested his patience time and time again. But I also loved the wooden leg. I always wanted to knock on it. I'd sneak up and crawl under the table towards my uncle with great anticipation. I thought I was quite clever.

The trick was to figure out which leg was the fake one "without him noticing". Clearly, he always noticed me tapping his wooden leg and his real leg successively. I'd figure out which leg was which and then I start knocking hard and talking to the leg, you know, so that he was surprised when he realized I'd snuck up on him.

It pretty much ended the same way, every time, but I was still always surprised when he said I got it wrong.

I was sure that he was pulling my leg. (RDRR) I'd just have to check for myself. Naturally.

Eventually I reached an age where I no longer crawled under tables to sneak up on people and I became curious as to how Uncle Jim came to have a wooden leg.

He gave me, what I believed at the time to be, a logical explanation.

I accepted the answer and continued on my merry way.

 

Years later, I was thinking of Uncle Jim and his wooden leg and how much I loved it. I remembered crawling under the table and sneaking up on the leg, which always turned out to be his real leg and therefore, that much less exciting. I remembered asking him how he lost his leg. I also remembered the answer.

 

R.I.P Uncle Jim!

 

Big thanks to EliseArt for providing the illustrations, complete with new and improved EliseArt logo.