Wednesday, January 17

Discontent

Fuck winter. Seriously, right in it's freezing fucking ass, fuck winter. There I said it.

Do you have any idea how cold my kitchen and bathroom floors get in the winter? Since the depanneur I happen to live above doesn't keep their heating on overnight, my floors approach temperatures of somewhere around negative eleventy billion on a nightly basis. I'm scared to walk around with wet feet for fear of getting frozen to the floor. The only semi-comfortable thing to do these days is huddle in my bed with a blanket over my head, silently wishing that global warming would just hurry its ass up and come warm my grinchy little heart up just a tiny bit. I don't care if the human race gets eliminated, I don't care if I drown in my own sweat, I don't care if Montreal is obliterated by a tidal wave as the glaciers melt at an alarming rate, just make it be fucking summer again. Somebody, please. I fucking hate winter.

Wednesday, August 2

Boo hoo

My cousin's nagging me about how long it's been since I even looked at my blog so I guess now's a good time to write something. And he wants it to be creative. Which I guess means he wants me to pull something out of my ass at random and write about it.

Have you ever noticed how few depressed black people there are? Are there even any? If you know any depressed black people let me know because I'm this close to classifying Blackus Depressus as an extinct species. It probably has a lot to do with how few black people I know compared to white people, but I still think it's odd that none of them have ever been the depressed type. And I don't even mean seriously depressed, when's the last time you saw a black person crying? Yeah, that's what I thought. But in all seriousness, white people are probably just worse at hiding their emotions or something.

Don't get me started on white people (too late). White people are some of the whiniest fuckers on this planet. Boo hoo, I work in a dead-end job. Boo hoo, I have a sunburn. Boo hoo, Jacob doesn't blog anymore. Shut the fuck up. I'm way too busy being miserable over my dead-end job to blog for your entertainment. You know who you are.

On the subject of jobs: I'm a cook now. I make 9.50 an hour. I work the evening shift which means my days basically consist of a work-sleep-work-sleep cycle. Yes, I am miserable. No, I don't want to talk about it.

Thursday, May 4

Yo Quiero Drugs

So there I am watching the Daily Show and out of nowhere I hear that Mexico is about to legalize possession of small amounts of drugs. And by drugs of course, I mean the ones that you know are bad for you, but you do them anyway because you like how they make you feel when you're on them. You know the ones I mean. I was all like, "Drugs? Legal? What the fuck!? Sign me up!" and so forth, but before I could even pack my sombrero it turns out the Mexican president decided not to sign the bill after all, due mainly to pressure from the United States. So not only is he a pussy for backing down, he's also an asshole for getting everyone's hopes up in the first place.

The biggest complaint coming from the US was that such a move would have "increased drug tourism". There's already a decent amount of drug tourism between Mexico and the United States (cheap tequila, anyone?), but I guess nobody gives a shit due to the double standard society in general has towards drugs and alcohol. They even call it "drugs and alcohol" as if alcohol wasn't already a drug. Anyway, here's an example of the amount of drugs people would be legally allowed to possess:
  • Up to 5 grams of marijuana
  • Up to 25 milligrams of heroin
  • Up to 5 grams of opium
  • Up to 500 milligrams of cocaine
  • Up to 200 milligrams of MDMA or MDA (ecstasy and a similar chemical compound)
  • Up to .015 milligrams of LSD (good luck weighing that out)
  • Up to a gram of mescaline
  • Up to a kilogram of peyote
  • Small amounts of some lesser-known drugs I'm not going to bother listing.
This basically means that someone heading out for a night on the town with just enough drugs for themselves to use could do so without fear of getting busted by "the man". In fact, most of those drugs are commonly purchased in amounts larger than what would have been made legal. Not to mention that the bill would not have made the sale of these drugs legal, only possession. So you still can't legally sell or buy them, but you won't get in shitloads of trouble for getting caught with laughable amounts of them on you.

I believe this would have allowed the cops in Mexico to waste less time arresting people for smoking a joint or two and spend more time on cracking down on the cartels that run the drug trade in their country. I don't know much about the cartels but they're apparently a pretty big problem down there. Of course, we might never get to see the effects (both positive and negative) this kind of legislation would have brought on a country since that fucking pansy Fox decided to back down on it. I think it would have been interesting to at least TRY a new approach towards illegal drug use, since prohibition failed with alcohol so long ago and is now proving itself ineffective towards other drugs. I would have liked to see if Mexico would erupt into a frenzy of rampant crime, unemployment and violence, like what I've been led to believe would happen in a country without an oppressive drug policy. For the meantime, you can always try to bribe Mexican police if you get caught with drugs. I've heard that has a pretty high success rate.

Personally, I think I'll just stick to not acting like a total fucking retard when I do drugs. This plan seems to be working so far; I do an above-average amount of drugs, yet the only time I've ever had any sort of encounter with the police was over domestic dispute issues caused almost entirely by alcohol, the LEGAL recreational drug. Go figure.

I'd like to mention one more time that the president of Mexico is a jerk. Fuck you, gringo. For like ten minutes Mexico was the coolest country on the planet and you had to go and ruin it.

Friday, February 17

Dear d34dpuppy:

I'm not dead, dude. I'm hibernating. I don't know where you happen to live but over here it's fucking FREEZING outside, so I spend most of my time curled into a fetal position desperately trying to conserve enough body heat to last till spring. Since you refuse to let sleeping streaks lie, I might as well give you some sort of an update.

The non-disclosure agreement I signed prevents me from getting into the details, but I can tell you that my job isn't as awesome as it used to be. I'm now testing a game with so little actual gameplay in it that if gameplay were white people the game would be called Harlem. I don't think my vocabulary contains enough adjectives to describe how boring this so-called game gets sometimes. It's still the best job I've ever had but it's not ahead by as much as it used to be.

I've been watching a lot more tv lately. So much, in fact, that the last thing I expected to happen has happened.

I found a commercial I kind of sort of like. Most commercials make me want to drop a brick on somebody's fucking head so badly that I might have to avoid watching them alone because I don't want to accidentally take my rage out on myself. Fuck, I hate commercials. Except for this one commercial for something called McCain Smooth-eez. There's this kid sitting on the floor building a model or something and his parent walks into the room and accidentally steps on it. The face the kid makes looking up at his parent for a split seconds gets me every time, man. Every time. He just looks so... crushed. I couldn't give two shits about McCain, or Smooth-eez, or any combination of the two, but that kid actor gets props for cheering me up when I need it.

The sentence you're currently reading is about to sum up absolutely everything I know about the winter olympics going on in Torino, Italy, in which Canada has 8 medals as of right now. This impressive wealth of knowledge comes from glancing at newspaper headlines, and not much else. In conclusion, winter olympics = boring.

Guess what, I just looked it up and Canada has 11 medals right now, not 8. So there you go. Like I said, boring.

Tuesday, January 3

wasting some time at work

  • 2 hours of sleep
  • No breakfast
  • Painful cough and stuffy head
  • Room full of computers and video game consoles raising temperature to crazy, untolerable levels
It's fucking hot in here and I'm starving. My eyes are starting to hurt and I can't stop coughing. I think I may have given the guy in front of me whatever disease my friend gave me. My feet hurt. Back, too. Did I mention it's hot in here? Christ. If this place can afford to pay me to play games they should be able to splurge on some air conditioning. Yeah, I'm aware it's January. This place is like an oven with all the electronics in here.

Other than that, though, it's all good. My food just got here so I'm gonna go do whatever it is people usually do with their food. I think it might involve some form of eating.

Sunday, December 25

Merry Non-Denominational Winter Holiday

Apparently there's somewhat of a hissyfit being thrown by certain fundamentalists over the war being waged against their annual celebration of Jesus' birth, also known as Christmas. Seeing as how Jesus died for the sins of humanity and went to live with his old man in heaven about two thousand years ago, these people are taking it upon themselves to ensure that his name will forever be used to sell decorations and toys.

Someone explain something to me. First, Jesus was all like "Get that commercialism shit out of this temple or I'll flip out and cast you out myself." and people seemed to think that was a good idea. The house of God is no place for consumerism and capitalism. This part makes sense to me. Don't mix people's faith with consumerism, as it will most likely end up in the exploitation of the masses.

Somewhere between then and now, it became tradition to celebrate this man's birth by buying eachother presents. This, in and of itself, isn't too bad. Christianity (to the best of my knowledge) puts a lot of emphasis on giving to those in need, so I can see how the gift-giving part of this holiday still falls within Jesus' teachings. Spend time and money on others, to make them happy. Of course, the gifts don't necessarily go to those in need, but those who are important to us, so there's already some discrepancy. Reasonable, though, seeing as how buying presents for our loved ones is hard enough. Imagine trying to please total strangers.

I have absolutely no clue how Santa Claus began to tie into all of this, but I like to think that he was created to let non-Christians get in on the fun. Don't practice the same religion? No problem, just invent a fat man in a red suit to keep the kids entertained, and buy eachother presents all the same. Everybody's happy.

Now, the confusion kicks in when I hear people claiming that not celebrating this holiday is equal to waging a war against it. There is a war being waged against a religious holiday, but the biggest complaint I keep hearing is that the phrase "Happy Holidays" is slowly replacing "Merry Christmas". There are people boycotting stores because they use "Happy Holidays" in their commercials. People actually think those two words are going to destroy the foundation of their solemn tradition.

Hey, dumbasses. First, your messiah tries to seperate materialism and religion. Then, over the next two thousand years, materialism becomes a large part of your biggest religious holiday. After realizing that even Jesus Christ himself couldn't take the materialism out of religion, people begin to try to take the religion out of materialism instead. It seems to me that if I were a Christian, I'd be happy to see companies removing my savior's name from their commercials. Why not let others buy eachother gifts and spread good will and all that crap without using religion to sell stuff? Wait, what am I thinking. Instead of letting people do whatever they want during the holidays, why don't you get offended if people don't use the correct terminology to express good will. While you're at it, why not fight to get your messiah's name used to sell as many different products as possible? We all know how happy Jesus would be to come back to Earth and see that his birthday is celebrated by lining up in crowded stores and comparing gifts. He'd also like to see people acting like crybabies because "Happy Holidays" doesn't acknowledge him. We all know how much Jesus hated it when the house of God began to resemble a bazaar, so why not boycott the companies who refuse to associate Christ's name with the annual explosion of consumerism that Christmas has become these days?

The above refers to a very select group of people, though. Otherwise, I don't celebrate Christmas because I never got into it that much. I don't really have much of an explanation besides the religious aspect not applying to me at all and the traditional side of it not having much appeal to me.

I also never understood the hatred for socks. The few lackluster Christmases I remember involve receiving yet another book or board game or toy while my socks resemble swiss cheese at a firing range. Just a few good pairs of socks that could last me more than a month would have probably improved my opinion of Christmas in general substantially.

Note: I realize a lot of this particular blog is probably based on assumptions about Christianity and Christians in general, and probably doesn't apply to 99% of the people out there. In fact I'm pretty much talking out of my ass most of the time because the truth is I have absolutely no idea of the real origins of Christmas, both the religious version and the traditional version. I guess you could say I'm ranting about things that don't concern me at all. Furthermore, I'm a greedy bastard who doesn't enjoy spending large amounts of money on loved ones. This may bias my opinion in some way. Also, Christmas sucks.

Wednesday, December 14

You're jealous.

So this company called Babel Media is going to be paying me eleven dollars an hour to play videogames all day then tell them what went wrong while I was playing said videogames. Eleven dollars an hour to PLAY GAMES and WRITE STUFF. And if I happen to do more than forty hours a week of playing games and writing stuff, my overtime hours are worth sixteen bucks an hour.

They're going to pay me to play videogames and write stuff down! Little do they know that's what I usually do for FREE!

This new job only starts on Monday so in the meantime here's a little story about my current job as a market research interviewer. In case you can't figure it out, my job involves dialing phone numbers and asking people if they want to spare ten minutes to answer some mind-numbingly repetitive and redundant market research questions.

I called this one number the other night and start off with our oh-so-convincing intro paragraph. "Yes good evening, my name is Jacob and I'm calling from Impact Research concerning a market research study. I'd like to know if you have about ten minutes to answer some market research questions with me over the phone at this time." Rather than the usual "I thought I told you guys last week I don't care for market research, stop calling this number", the guy on the other end of the line starts with "Well I'm sort of busy right now but if you give me your home number I'll call you later and we can talk for a bit."

This was the first time somebody had tried to mess with me, and I was sort of proud that it was coming from a Montreal number. Just goes to show how much better we are than you (assuming you don't live in Montreal. If you do, keep on rocking, friend). So of course I'm not going to sit there and stammer like someone who's not from Montreal, I'm going to mess around just as much with this guy as he's trying to mess with me.

"Well man I'd love to give you my number and all but I don't see what good it would do seeing as how the computer I need to take your answers down with is in the office and not at home. If you want I can just write your number down and call it from home and we can talk all you want though." This must be just as good as him getting my number and calling me, right? I mean, I already have his phone number so why not just call him myself if he wants to talk so badly?

He must not have thought this was a good idea because he once again insisted I give him my number. You see, not only do I sort of not have a phone number (the phone in the house is my cousin's cell phone) but I didn't expect him to call me anyway. So I told him, "Actually, I'm homeless and didn't want to admit it if I didn't have to. That's why I'm working this terrible job. Can we call you back at another time though?"

He either didn't feel sorry for me at all or realized I was quite obviously joking, because he then told me "Oh, you're homeless? Sucks. Anyway I'm actually only robbing this house so don't call back because I won't be here." So this guy thinks he's a comedian or something.

I tell him: "Okay well if you're robbing the place can you leave at least one phone so that when I call back the owners will have a phone to answer?" The last thing I heard before I hung up was him going "NO DAMMIT DON'T CALL BACK!"

But that's all in the past especially seeing how I'm about to start getting paid to play games and write stuff.

Monday, November 28

Check this out



This is the door in my bedroom.

This is where the magic happens.

My dresser doesn't fit in this new room, so I had to make due with the space I had.

And this is the back wall.

I'd type up something interesting here but I'm sort of in a rush to get to bed so good night.

Oh, and I'm aware of the various spots where I fucked up. I'll fix them soon.

Friday, November 4

Eric

Saturday night. So there I am sitting on the 207, right? On my way to a friend's house for a party. I'm sitting towards the back of the bus and I vaguely notice a black guy get on the bus and sit in the back, but just out of my sight. Ten minutes later the guy decides he wants to get to know me better and comes and sits next to me.

Okay, stop. Now I know I said "next to" me but it was really more of a combination of "next to" and "on top of". His left leg was pressed firmly against mine and he was leaning in towards me. I immediately look him right in the eye to see if he's trying to get my attention or something. So after three seconds of direct eye contact without him saying anything and still pressing his leg against me, I take it upon myself to inquire into his intentions.

"What the fuck are you doing?" What can I say, I like to get to the point.

He stares directly at me for another second or two before managing to mumble out, "Uh, wait, you're not a girl?" HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM!

I take a moment to ponder the infinitely complex question this African-American stranger has put forth to me. After a few moments of intense calculation and reasoning the best answer I can come up with is "Ummm, no." This answer seemed to arouse my new friend, as the next thing I see him doing is flicking his tongue at me. Okay, things are getting fucking creepy now. I guess my vacant/confused stare triggered something in this guy's head that something about the situation wasn't right, because he then went about trying to double-check everything we've went over so far.

"Are you sure?" Fucking Christ. Yeah, buddy, I'm sure. I mean, I was a guy last time I checked but who knows what's changed since then so let me just stick my hand down my pants and make sure just for you. It's around this point I start to figure things out and ask the first relevant question of the night. "Are you like really drunk or something?" He shakes his head no. "Did you take something?" He shakes his head yes. PROGRESS! Now you might think after being asked if you've taken something, you might just figure it out to tell the person what it was. But no, I had to ask him. "What did you take?" Finally it fucking comes out that this guy is tripping on mushrooms. I politely inform him that he should have told me that from the beginning as it would have made for an overall less awkward situation. Then I realize that he thought I was a girl at first and was trying to hit on me, so he's either lying about being on mushrooms or he's tripping pretty fucking hard. He was also still pressing up against me and he did look sort of out of it so I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

During the course of the bus ride I got his name and e-mail address so I can talk to him online and see if he remembers any of it. Eric also invited me to his house for his mom's cooking somewhere along the way. I declined.

Anyway the 207 brings us to Fairview Terminus where I have to go take another bus to get to my friend's house. I sit on a planter to wait for the bus and lo and behold Eric comes to wait at the same spot. As I'm sitting down he stands in front of me and presses his kneecaps against mine and leans in towards me. Of course in any other situation, an older guy who I just met actively pursuing physical contact would scare the shit out of me, but who knows what the fuck goes through your head when you're tripping so I let him have his fun. He does this for about a minute before getting bored and sitting down in between me and this girl who's talking on her cell phone while waiting for the bus.

Seeing as how I only met him minutes ago I don't really pay him much attention while he's sitting next to me. He's no longer hitting on me or touching me so I take advantage of the situation by zoning out and staring into space like I often do while waiting for the bus. That is, until I hear the girl who was sitting on the other side of Eric asking, "Excuse me? Hello? Were you talking to me? What did you just say?" I look over and surprise surprise Eric is staring directly into her eyes mumbling something about "hi what's your name your lips are real shiny".

For a split second I thought of letting her deal with him on her own. I could chose to pretend to not know him, do absolutely nothing and eavesdrop on what I am sure is going to be the most hilariously awkward conversation I've ever eavesdropped on. Of course this master plan is ruined when I remember that Eric was just pushing up against me right next to this girl. She must think we are here together and will probably either end up asking me what's going on with my friend anyway.

Actually, about my "friend". You might be wondering exactly how he was acting. I mean, he was obviously acting weird enough for me to notice something was up but I had the benefit of being mistaken for a girl as a red flag. It's not the first time it's happened, mind you, but when he sat down right fucking next to me and looked me in the face and asked me "Are you sure?" it kind of clicked in my head. Other than that, though, the first thing you'd notice about him was the way he'd stare vacantly while talking. He wasn't violent or jumpy or hyper or anything like that, but rather too mellow and relaxed to take seriously. Oh, and he also had a tendency to lean in towards you just a little too close for comfort. He was able to answer questions without going on rants about the cosmic intergalactic uniqueness of our entity that is linked by all living beings and blah blah blah so there was very little indication that he was intoxicated, let alone on a hallucinogen. By the way he had told me he took "three big caps" of mushrooms at an afterhours near Berri-UQAM metro. We were now at Fairview Terminus and he was by himself the entire time. He also told me he was 26. Make of that what you will.

After a short staring contest with Eric, the girl looks at me as if to say "what the hell is going on please save me with your gigantic, rippling muscles" so I explain the situation as best I can. "Don't look at me, I just met him five minutes ago. He said he was on mushrooms." Well what do you know, she doesn't really believe me so I have to spend the next five minutes telling the first half of this story five minutes after it happened. Eric fills in the gaps in my story by staring and nodding in agreement. The girl tells us she's done mushrooms before and can sort of understand so she was pretty cool with it. Anyway Eric leaves to go take his bus and the girl tells me that she had seen us pushing our legs together so she figured we were a couple. Then, upon closer inspection we're both guys so she figures we're gay. Then Eric decides to start hitting on her so she figured we were swingers or something. Once I told her he was on mushrooms she thought we were playing a joke on her. And I think I forgot to mention that while Eric was there she was explaining the situation to her boyfriend who was on the phone as I was explaining it to her.

I then proceeded to go to the party and tell this story several times over the course of the night. Now I never have to tell it again.

Thursday, October 20

blah blah blah

Yes, I'm still alive. Yeah, I'm aware I've barely been blogging. It's not that I'm lazy, it's just that all this procrastinating I've been doing lately is really getting in the way of, well, pretty much everything else I've been doing lately. Make of that what you will.

First things first, I quit my job at the shithole. Oops, I mean dollarstore. This decision was primarily based on two specific facts:

Fact 1: I'm moving soon and don't feel like taking the metro every day to work. I'd much rather find another job somewhere closer to where I'm going to be staying.

Fact 2: I was working at the fucking dollarstore.

And the restaurant I was washing dishes at on the weekend is closing until springtime, which puts me into the "unemployed" demographic once again. I saved up what will hopefully be enough money to last me until I get another job, but this time the pressure is on because I actually have rent to pay now. At the moment I'm sort of in between two addresses, but once I get a truck to haul all my stuff over there, I'm going to be living with my cousin near the Plateau in Montréal. For those of you unfamiliar with the Plateau, it's like downtown and a rich residential area fucked and the Plateau popped out, only with more hippies and a big fucking mountain right in the middle.

Anyway, painting my room is taking much longer than I had expected (this is mainly due to previously mentioned chronic procrastination) but once it's done I'll finally be out of this sketchy neighborhood and in a somewhat sketchier neighborhood. Oh well. No amount of sketchiness is going to stop me from getting out of this goddamn house.

Well that's enough blabbing about me for a while. I'd like to blab about something else for a bit. For example: What the FUCK is up with all these hurricanes? It's like every time I turn on the news another expert is shitting their pants over the next storm that's going to whoop the Gulf Coast's proverbial ass. First, Katrina comes and destroys New Orleans like it was some kind of five-year-old's sandcastle I smashed at the beach last summer. Then, Mother Nature gives America just enough time to blame Michael Brown before hurricane Rita comes out of fucking nowhere and pulls the same shit again. And now there's Wilma, showing up late to the party but making up for it by being the strongest one so far.

Now I know this is a horrible tragedy for most of the people affected by it, and to laugh at them during their moment of need would be pointlessly rubbing their faces in it. But I also know I'd be a liar if I said I didn't snicker when I first heard New Orleans had been turned into Atlantis. I mean, it's no secret that I don't care much for America. Note that I said America, and not Americans. America is a country, Americans are just human beings that had the misfortune of being born in America. So when America gets put in its place by something that nobody has any control over, I'm happy.

About a week or two after Katrina hit I was watching TV and a commercial comes on raising money for hurricane victims. No big deal, just a concerned organization trying to help out those who need it. Then somebody had to run their mouth and include something in the commercial about "together, we can prove human nature is stronger than Mother Nature". Oh really? I was under the impression that the people who thought that in the first place are the ones that now need rescuing from their rooftops after Mother Nature coughed in their general direction. If human nature is stronger then why isn't there a hurricane death toll? Where are all the organizations trying to raise money for hurricanes damaged by American buildings? That's right, there are none because Mother Nature could kick humanity's ass without even trying. They should have just said "human nature is stronger than God" as long as they were going to start claiming superiority over fictional characters that represent the unexplained and unpredictable.

Speaking of unpredictable, I predict another terrorist attack in the states sometime before Bush's presidency ends. With the country spending tons of money left and right trying to rebuild a city on this side of the world and trying to finish a liberation/war/constitution/democracy/etc on the other side, the terrorists would have to be pretty ignorant to not realize this would be a great time to strike. Since I know someone out there will misinterpret what they just read as me condoning and/or inciting terrorism, I'd like to point out that from a terrorist's point of view, it would make sense to attack soon. Not to mention that Bush is less liked every day, meaning any retaliation to an attack would be highly criticized and most likely somewhat lackluster due to lack of two crucial elements: public support and good old bling-bling.

I feel sort of like an idiot ranting about things that don't concern my country at all, but can you really blame me? If I was to write about all the exciting things that happen in Canada... well then I wouldn't be writing about very much now would I? Oh yeah, I went there. The closest Canada has had to a disaster lately is a plane going off the runway in Toronto, and nobody even died. Not even one old fart who couldn't handle the suspense and croaked of heart failure. Nothing. Canada is so boring we have to watch other country's news and get outraged because our own news puts us to sleep.

Okay well I'm getting tired of typing now so I'm gonna go somewhere else for a while.