The Blog is Dead, Sorta.

I said the blog wasn't dead and I'm a filthy liar. The blog is dead dead.

Hear me out: I had full intentions of keeping it up when I got home, but after a few entries I realized that a blog created and nurtured based around the idea of me being in Palawan wouldn't work if I wasn't actually in Palawan. It seems much more obvious now than it did then.

So, to the 3-5 people still checking this page (Bless your hearts) I've decided to start a brand new blog. How exciting!

What will you find on this blog? I haven't hammered that out yet. What I do know is that I want to start writing bits and pieces again. I like writing and I like telling stories and I've done neither for far too long.

In the next few weeks or so I'll have a new page all ready to go. I'll post a link from this page and hopefully a few people will see it.

Woo.

The Blog Isn't Dead Yet

I know I said that the next post would have chicken intestine and fetus ingestion, but the camera is all the way upstairs. In my current state of shameful laziness upstairs and the moon are psychologically equidistant from my bloated carcass. As such, "This Week in Disgust" will have to wait.

The search for a job/career has begun. I've scoured the government websites, Workopolis, JobBank, and other similar sites. While there are a lot of jobs that I am technically qualified for, none are particularly appealing. Scientific research on Sable Island doesn't exactly raise my blood pressure. If I were to conduct scientific research for six months on a treeless horse-infested scrap of land, I'd end up spending most of my time figuring out a way to not go insane and kill my coworkers. When this inevitably failed I'd devote the remaining time to concocting a triple murder-suicide scheme that would leave Sherlock Holmes scratching his head and profiling the horses. I'm talking about a plan so devious and perfect that they'd have to fly in Angela Landsbury. I don't know if she's dead or not, and I'm too lazy to Google it. If she turns out to be dead I guess they could just watch the first few seasons of Murder She Wrote and take notes.

Sable Island is out but I'll be scanning the websites regularly for any interesting or highly paid positions (ie. astronaut) and continue to write about it.

I realize that I haven't been posting very much and I plan to remedy this. It's not that I've been overly busy, but rather that I've just been spending time seeing the people and doing the things that I couldn't for the past six months (Read: Rock Band). Unsurprisingly, there hasn't been much of a need for adjustment to life on this side of the world. I have lived here the past 27 years, so there's really not much to get used to. With that being said, here are three needless complaints.

1) It's fucking cold!

I'm positive there's been a time in my life when I have been colder, absolutely certain. I can conjure up memories of freezing my ass off in the woods, but not the actual feelings of being cold, so these reminiscences have been altogether useless in preparing me for this frozen, barren, lifeless wasteland. Five below isn't even that cold. I know this. But, my body and brain do not give one iota of a shit about what I know and what I feel.

Complete and total cognitive dissonance.

Also, I have uncovered some foolish conspiracy to make me cold and keep me cold. Has it become socially unsavory, a faux-pas if you will, to turn a thermostat to the right? I was always under the impression that buildings were supposed to protect and shelter you from the elements, not faithfully simulate them in the (dis)comfort of your own home. All I’m going to say is this: When the folks come home one day and see me warming my hands by the smoldering black gutted remnants of the tool shed they aren’t getting an explanation, just a small shrug and a “My Hands Were Tied” look.

2) Rock Band

In between looking for a job and getting shamefully drunk I’ve managed to sink an unreasonable amount of time into Rock Band, usually with Andy and Sweetapple acting as enablers. I can see myself noticeably improving on drums, and, like anything I suppose, this motivates me to further improve. It’s a vicious, wonderful cycle. In fact, I’ll go above saying that I’m good on (fake plastic) drums now. I’ll boldly say that I’m fucking great. When someone calls you an “idiot savant” you know you’re doing something right. I think I realized the true gravity of my situation last night when I belted out “Roxanne” and “Mr. Brightside”...on vocals. That’s the equivalent of getting high by smoking a teabag in a receipt. In an uncharacteristic display of self-control and discipline, I plan to go a week without turning it on. The cocaine-heroin dust hybrid released into the atmosphere and up my nose upon striking the drumhead with the drumstick will remain safely sealed in the device. I expect withdrawal symptoms and pangs of regret.

Pathetic.

3) $8.00 for McDonald’s is Outrageous

I don’t have much to elaborate on here. Money goes farther in the Philippines. This is directly correlated with the fact that: a) I was getting paid in Canadian currency, b) The Philippines is a poor country, and c) as a result of (b), the Filipino Peso is a joke. I could get a Big Mac meal with all the trimmings for a cool three Filipino Fun Bux. This is no longer possible. Logic aside, McDonald’s is a shitty restaurant with shitty food for shitty people. The natural progression here would be to assume the prices are also shitty, and that would be correct. Fuck you Ronald. Fuck you Grimace and Mayor McCheese and Birdie and the Nugget Buddies and all those other clowns. I could swallow your prices with a smile on my face and grease on my lip in the Philippines, but no more.

I’ve grown as a person.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned!

I'm Home

I’m back in Newfoundland and loving it.

I’ve been home for two days now and have not had a chance to do anything much. Dad had his operation yesterday and I’m happy to report that everything went smoothly. He’ll need to stay in the hospital for a few days but should be fine to get half (fully) loaded with us within the week. I saw him yesterday and he looked and sounded great, cracking jokes and giving us the finger.

My sleep schedule is still completely messed up. Traveling for over 29 hours and then having to wake up at 5:30 am yesterday certainly didn’t help any. Yesterday afternoon my body finally threw its hands up in the air and screamed for mercy. I crashed around 6:00 pm and woke up around 4:00 am. I anticipate many yawns in my future; yawns and narcoleptic episodes. I apologize to those who I was supposed to see yesterday.

I don’t miss the Philippines yet, but I do have one more story to tell. The night before I left, a friend (Jonah) bought some Filipino delicacies for me to try: isaw and balut. Isaw is barbecued chicken intestines and balut is boiled chicken fetus. I took a video of both of us trying it for the first time and will upload it to this blog shortly. In short, the isaw was actually pretty good while the balut cannot be qualified as food. I cannot imagine the circumstances surrounding the conception of balut as a food item. The first person who decided to allow a chicken fetus to grow for 18 weeks, and then boil for 5 minutes, is a monster. Not only does it taste terrible, it’s tasteless. The video will sum it up nicely.

I haven’t decided what I’m going to do about the blog yet. I may keep it, I may retire it, or I may retire this one and start another. I haven’t decided yet. If anyone has any suggestions I’d love to hear them.

Well that's it for this entry. I'll upload the video shortly.

More Wrestling Dialogue/ Don't Shit Your Pants

If you haven't already, read the previous post before this one, as this might not make a lot of sense otherwise. Well, it probably won't make a lot of sense anyway. I really enjoy recounting these exchanges.

Peter: “For someone who says they don’t follow wrestling, you sure seem to know a lot”.

Me: “Nah, you just pick this stuff up. Hey look, some Irish guy is throwing around a midget. Finlay, eh? He’s beating some guy with a shalaleigh!?”

Peter: “Midgets are funny”.

Me: “Midgets are funny. Remember when Doink and Jerry “The King” Lawlor had a rivalry going on? Those were some good midget fights man. Doink and Lawlor were having a match when Doink’s sidekick midget, Dink, came out and started causing all sorts of shit. Lawlor didn’t much like that, so next time he decided to have a little bit of insurance himself. They ended up getting three midgets each. Doink had Dink and...hmmmmm...well I can’t remember. Let’s go with Pink and Stink...*chuckle chuckle*

Peter: “Heh heh, good one mate.”

Me: “Heh, yeah. Lawlor had Cheesy, Sleazy, and Greasy. When all was said and done there was a huge midget brawl. Midgets were flying all over the place. I’m pretty sure everyone got hurt. It’s not important who won. The point is....uh....

Peter: “Midgets are funny”.

Me: “Exactly”.

Also, here is a link to my vote for "Game of the Year".

Are you the shit king? I am.

Schlobberknocker!!!!

The days are winding down now. The next few days are going to be a blur (when I decide to get out of bed anyway) as I jazz around town snapping last minute photos, picking up some gifts I’ve had my eye on, and desperately trying to bribe Emmer’s Military Supply to sell me part of the official police (‘Pulis’) uniform. The shirt is ugly as shit, and I think I want it more because the clerk said I couldn’t have it, but I’m not giving up. My lifelong dream of being a ‘Crooked Filipino Sergeant’ for Halloween will become a reality.

In other news Andrew and I presented our preliminary report findings to university members in the Aborlan WPU campus yesterday. We were told a van would be waiting for us at the WPU Santa Monica gate at 7:00 am, so I got up at 6:00 am to shower and dress. A few students from WPU were also presenting their papers, but everyone was speaking in Tagalog, so we never really got the chance to introduce ourselves or talk to anyone. It was a pretty uneventful trip overall, however one thing of note happened:

On the way to Aborlan (about a 1.5 hour drive from Santa Monica) the driver popped in a Bon Jovi cassette (yes a cassette) that had all of their most popular stuff on it. The van was deathly silent except for the wince inducing squawkings of Jon Bomb Jovi. Then “I’ll Be There for You” began and three of the four Filipino students began squawking right along. I was sandwiched in the middle, dressed to kill, with a crooning student to my left, Andrew falling asleep on me to my right, and two students crooning in the back. I sat there thinking about how this must look to anyone outside and realized that, except for the white guy in the suit, it would have been pretty typical. After I figured this out I didn’t give it much thought when the exact same thing happened on the way home a few hours later.

In other other news, I’ve come to accept that I’m a closet wrestling fan. The comedy channel here is Jack TV and, for whatever reason, they constantly play WWE wrestling. They play vintage WWF matches, WWE RAW, WWE SmackDown, ECW, and TNA. Peter loves watching it, so whenever he’s in the room, which is 90% of the time, if wrestling is on we are watching it. He’s not a huge diehard fan, but apparently I am. I can better express my meaning through paraphrased dialogue and hyperbole:

Peter: “Hey mate! Wrestling’s on. Wanna wotch it?”

Me: “Uhm, yeah sure”.

Peter: “Oi! Do you watch wrestling in Newfinland?”

Me: “Nah, not really. I mean, I watched it when I was a kid, but I was never a diehard fan or anything”.

Peter: “Vegemite.”

Me: “Uh huh”.

*Some old match with Hulk Hogan, ‘Superfly’ Jimmy Snooka, Mr. T (?), some other dirtbags, and special guest referee, Muhammad Ali begins. I couldn’t make this up.*

Me: “Why the hell is Mr. T wrestling Hulk Hogan? Is that Muhammad Ali as a referee? This is insane”.

Peter: “It’s classic mate!”

Me: “Nah, classic was when Jake "The Snake" Roberts had his snake murdered in the ring by Earthquake”.

Peter: “Huh?”

Me: “Yeah man, it was crazy. Well, it would have been if there was an actual snake in the bag when Earthquake sat his fat ass on it, which there wasn’t, but I’m getting off-base. Earthquake was this huge wrestler who had a feud with Jake the Snake. Jake used to pull out this bag with a snake in it as some retarded finishing move. I guess the snake would inject venom and kill his opponents or something, I dunno. Anyway, earthquake had enough of Jake’s shit and after beating the crap out of him he took the bag with the snake in it, danced around the ring a little bit, and did a big fat elbow-drop to the bag, presumably destroying the snake and Jake’s psyche.”

Peter: “Who’s Earthquake? Also, dijiridoo”.

Me: “Earthquake was originally made out to look like an audience member. Dino Bravo, wanting to show everyone how strong he was, decided to do a push up with the fat ass on his back. Next week, bam, Earthquake came out in his gigantic one piece wrestling suit”.

Peter: “Roight”.

Monster

The weeks rolled on and we began to watch more and more wrestling. I would always contend that I wasn’t a wrestling fan and then educate him on 15 years of WWF history.

Peter: “Shit, Triple H is fawking huge”.

Me: “He wasn’t always that big. He started off as Hunter Hearst Hemsly and his shtick was that he was some prissy noble or duke or some shit. He was normal looking back then. I think he had China as his manager/bodyguard. She has a penis now”.

Peter: “Oi?”

Me “Yes man. See....holy shit look! Shawn Michaels! I thought he broke his goddamn neck years ago. Wow, he’s huge too”.

Peter: “I thought you never wotched wrestling?”

Me: “I didn’t. Shawn Michaels used to be a part of the tag-team group ‘The Rockers’. The other dude was Marty Genetti. I remember they had a huge falling out. I think Michaels kicked Genettit through a plate glass window on Brutus ‘The Barber’ Beefcake’s show. Also, 'Sexy Boy' is the best intro music ever”.

Peter: “I’m not even going to ask what that means”.

Me: “Yeah, you shouldn’t”.

Peter: “Well, I’m off to feed the dingos with Paul Hogan”.

Me: “Keep it real”.

I think this picture sums up why they were called 'The Rockers'

So, I think that sums it just about up. I’m a closet wrestling fan. This makes me stoked, as Jordan, Davis, myself, and others have planned some drunken wrestling PPV nights.

Another reason on my medium-sized list of reasons I can't wait to come home.

NOTE: I need a proofreader. I edited this post at least six [ed. make that seven] times now. I'm accepting resumes.

4 Realz

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm sort of a nerd. And by 'sort of' I mean 'complete and utter'. I'm not a socially inept nerd, but don't let that fool you. I'm straight up geek to the core. But fuck it. 'Geek' is the new 'cool' and 'cool' is the new 'blasé'. As such, this five month hiatus away from most mass media has been killer. The lack of movies has been the easiest to swallow, but I definitely miss going to the theater. Nothing beats spending $20 on nachos and coke. My musical cravings have been mostly satisfied thanks to iTunes and Mastercard. Well, they were until my iPod decided to brick itself. Some would say "the fun machine took a shit and died". I would say I agree. Apple's getting a phone call.

However, the biggest media craving that cannot be satisfied is my love of video games. More specifically, I miss Rock Band. The fact that I'm devoting an entire post should tell you something since I usually talk about interesting experiences, questionable foods, giddy homosexuals and the occasional suicidal child. For those of you that aren't familiar with Rock Band allow me to elaborate. Rock Band is a video game that simulates the experience of playing in a ..... rock band. The game supports up to four players, each playing a different instrument: guitar, bass, drums, and vocals. If the player is playing the guitar or bass part, colored notes travel down the screen and the player responds by holding down the corresponding color on the neck of the guitar peripheral and strumming the strum bar. If the player is drumming, he or she must simply strike the drum pad of corresponding color and use the foot peddle to play straight bass notes. Singers sing. It sounds pretty straightforward, and is, but can get very complicated on the 'expert' setting. Playing the guitar and bass portions are a pretty exaggerated fascimile of actual guitar, but the drum portion is actually fairly similar to the motions a real drummer would go through.

In short, I miss the (pardon the language) fucking shit out of drumming in a fake rock band. Is this the only reason I'm a huge nerd? No.

Does it help? Absolutely.

Do I care? Not even a little.

I mean, it's the perfect goddamn game. It mixes my love of video games with my love of music. I'm not fighting level fifteen super cobras in World of Wizards. I'm melting faces and winning the hearts of millions of (imaginary) fans. What could be more fun? I don't think one person has ever not fantasied about playing in a rock band or at least being a singer. If you say you haven't I'm going to go ahead and call you liar. So let's leave it there.

Before I left I was getting to be quite the little drummer boy. Having no previous experience in drums makes me feel proud when I crank out a 5-star performance of Metallica's "Enter Sandman". To put it in perspective allow me to show you a video of what I plan to be able to do in a few weeks.



Epic.

Yup, sirs and madams, in a few short weeks I'll be home and melting imaginary faces with my real buddies and getting real drunk on real beer.

Fucking stoked?

For real.

Che: Part II

Whenever I am in the same room as Che my blood pressure dramatically increases. I’m still a huge fan of the little rascal, but she’s ridiculously accident prone and is constantly falling down and beating herself up. For example, during Tems’ funeral she broke free and ran down the church aisle and out through the door, swerving and swaying like a tiny lunatic drunk. Mom bolted after her. They returned about five minutes later with considerably more facial bruising that before. In her continuing quest to outrun herself she succeeded and took a nasty tumble in the church parking lot. She scraped her face below her eye, above her eyebrow, and part of her chest. In short, she’s a menace to herself.

Today I decided to eat the rest of the pineapple I bought a few days ago. On the way to the third floor I heard the familiar “Baahhbb!”, baby for “Yo”. Che came running from her mother’s lap and gave me the universal pick-me-up motion. I refused:

“Che, I can’t help but notice that you’re a pretty terrible walker. I mean, look at your face. I think it’s high time you read the operator’s manual for those legs. Tell you what though, I’ll give you a hand.”

“Bahh Gabbo.”

“Don’t mention it.”

So, with that being said, she walked me to the third floor with one unbelievably small paw wrapped around my index finger. After I chopped up way too much pineapple for one person, and after Che finished covertly stealing someone’s boiled rice (grain by grain) I washed the knife and she put the lid back on the pot, a few guilty grains still stuck to her corner of her mouth. I didn’t trust her walking down the stairs so I picked her up and balanced her in one arm while I cradled my plate of pineapple in the other. When we got to the bottom I ate my pineapple while Che finished her face rice.

The biggest blood pressure spike came later that afternoon while Peter and I were watching The Simpsons. Che was running around the house, trying to scale the stairs to the third floor. She made her way to the middle landing before anyone had noticed where she was. It was then I looked up and saw that the middle landing window was wide open and at the perfect level for a shaky baby to take a fatal tumble through. I just gaped, wide-eyed as she walked around, not knowing what to say or do. Luckily mom noticed her and ran to close the window and scoop up her child. Now, whenever I’m in that room I’m going to be constantly looking in that direction for suicidal babies. Thanks a lot Che!

On a brighter note, today Che learned how to dance. Some Christina Aguilera video came on TV and I started absently tapping my foot. Che decided that tapping a foot was for people who didn't have any style and proceeded to dance:

Christina spouted nonsense (Some days I'm a super bitch. Up to my old tricks. But it won't last forever") and Che stomped around the house like a miniature rhino. It was adorable.

I said it before and I'll say it again:

I'm really going to miss that kid.