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Depositing into the Bank of Buddha

Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007

This morning I was coming into campus, late as usual. It was snowing, also as usual, and the roads were a little bit slippery, but nothing I couldn’t handle. Anyway, it was really quite typical until I pull into the parking lot.

At the Nipissing Parking lot there are a number of concrete dividers that are maybe five feet long and weigh an absolute ton. However, one of these was slightly different this morning. It had been moved several feet away, ohh and it had a car resting on it. That’s right, someone had somehow managed to get their car up on the divider. This guy had somehow got his car stuck onto the divider. The worst part for him, was that the front wheels of the car were hanging in the air. Allow my beautiful Mircosoft Paint diagram to explain:

I notice a lone guy with a cell phone staring at this car. The emphasis should be on lone. It needs to be noted that it is almost 8:30 and the parking lot is full of people like me, rushing to class. Yet nobody stopped to offer this poor guy help. Nobody stopped when they saw him crash into this divider, and nobody stopped when they saw him in that situation.

I thought about a conversation I had with my Education and Schooling professor, Jason Price, just last week. He told me privately “A lot of people here can talk the talk, but you are going to walk the walk”, I realized that I could not let him down. So off I walked.

I walked up to this complete stranger and asked him if he was ok and if he needed any help. He was not hurt but was quite torn as to what he could do. He had already called a tow truck but it was still an hour away. He and I came up with a lot of ideas such as jacking up the car and moving the divider. However, the divider is made out of solid concrete and was a wee bit too heavy for even my intense physical strength.

He tried to jack the car up but his was not tall enough, so I went and grabbed mine. It was tall enough to reach the car in it’s state of suspension, but was unable to get it off of the divider.

I realized that there wasn’t much I could to help him out at this point, especially since he had already called a tow-truck. I went to campus and bought him a coffee since he was clearly having a bad day. I figured he needed something to keep himself warm while waiting for the tow-truck. Ohhh and his girlfriend was coming with a camera to take pictures of his car and how the barriers were completely concealed by the snow, and not overly visible. I didn’t want to mess with anything so I left my jack on his car and asked him to put it in the backseat once he was finished and then I headed to class, slightly late, but happy with myself.

While there was not a lot that I could physically do for Eric (we did exchange names at some point). I would like to think that me just stopping to check on him was worth something. Even if it was to just understand that there are people out there who are willing to lend a hand, even if it is mildly inconvenient to them. I may never see Eric again, so I don’t expect him to pay me back at all, I really hope that he pays it forward actually. Maybe lends a hand to someone out there who needs it.

I am really glad that I took the time to do the right thing, and I have been feeling quite happy with myself all day about it. I can’t help but wonder about all the people who walked by. Why would you just leave someone so clearly in need by themselves? What would they want someone to do if they were in the same situation?

One of my favourite movies ever is The Boondock Saints and my favourite part is the opening scene. Connor and Murphy are sitting in a church and the priest gives the following sermon:

And I am reminded, on this holy day, of the sad story of Kitty Genovese. As you all may remember, a long time ago, almost thirty years ago, this poor soul cried out for help time and time again, but no person answered her calls. Though many saw, no one so much as called the police. They all just watched as Kitty was being stabbed to death in broad daylight. They watched as her assailant walked away. Now, we must all fear evil men. But there is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men.

Now, the characters in this movie go on a murderous rampage as a result of this. But that’s besides my point. Everyone who walked by and everyone who would walk by is giving into their own indifference. Yet I imagine everyone who walked by has gone off at some point about the perils of our modern world.

Everyone says that the world is a shitty place at one time or another. But yet, here is a tangible opportunity for people to make a positive difference. Sure it may not matter much in the grand scheme of things, but to one person it may make the world of difference.

So I hope that all of you out there reading this, my friends and family, would act the same way that I did this morning, or even go above and beyond any of my actions. Because rememeber, the next person in need just may be you.

Until next time,

G

P.S. Happy 50th post to me!!! Wow 50 posts in 3 months…I’m a lean, mean bloggin‘ machine!!!

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I Forgot How Much I Miss Some Things

Saturday, January 13th, 2007

Last night I proved just how much of a wild and crazy party animal I really am. A group of five of us had a wild and crazy night of Indiana Jones movies. That’s right, we watched a solid six hours of awesomness.

While in the middle of watching Raiders of the Lost Arc, I realized something. While I love the Indiana Jones movies, the best part of my night was the hilarious banter that was taking place. I realized that this is something that has been missing in my life since my days watching wrestling in Tower. A close group of friends with similar interests who are able to make me laugh so hard that it hurts. I’m sure none of you will get this, unless you were there, but here were some of the things that made me laugh the most:

- (after Indie drives a guy in a motorcycle off of a cliff that just appears out of nowhere)
Me: Where did that cliff come from?
Josh: Erosion.

- Our game of seeing who else was in any other “Epic Trilogies” besides just Harrison Ford. We came up with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen (who were both in X-Men, Steward was in four Star Trek Movies, and McKellen was of course Mother F’n Gandalf), ohh and Orlando Bloom upon the creation of the third Pirates. But that didn’t stop us from coming up with other hilarious ideas and ultimately lead to Angie asking why they never made a sequel to Shindler’s List.

- My constant attempts at Action Hero wit, such as “He had to be let go” when someone was dropped down a cliff, ultimately being met with silence.

- The realization that I would have much more luck with women if I just wore a cool hat and carried a whip around.

- Erica trying to drink every time that that Indie used his whip. Too bad she only had a squishie.

- Debating the effectiveness of Unionized Goons.

- Josh and I constantly drawing parallels between Indiana Jones and Star Wars, too bad nobody else got the references like we did.

- When it looked like I was going to fall asleep, I was threatened to be leg dropped, have my hand placed in warm watter or have my bra put into the freezer.

A ton more of highlights that I can’t begin to remember. But easily the highlight was the feeling of closeness I had with my friends. Sorry to sound too after-school-special here, but I haven’t felt that same level in a long time. After running around for the past several weeks (one could even argue months or even years) it was nice to feel settled again. So I just wanted to say thank you to Kim, Josh, Erica, and Angie for taking me to happy place night. I’m excited for when we finally do Star Wars or Lord of the Rings next!!!

Until next time,

G

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Only Us…

Friday, November 10th, 2006

Last night I was diligently working on some math homework that was due today. I hated that I was working. All of my friends had gone to the local Irish pub, Fionn McCool’s, sticking with the Thursday tradition. Worst of all, we are heading off to be on teaching placement for three weeks, so this would be my last chance to spend some social time with everyone for a while. After I finished the fourth of my five math journals I had an in depth conversation with myself.

I said to myself “Self, you have been focusing too much on work you should really go out. You are not only the life of the party, you are the whole f’n party. Right now, you are robbing all of your friends of some quality Glen time. How can you be so selfish?”

Well it was hard to argue with that logic, so the next thing I knew, I was on my way across town to Fionn’s.

I arrived to a chorus of cheers from my group of friends, sitting in our usual area. I met the group with a series of high-fives, but as I made my way around there was an extra hand to slap. It belonged to a forty-pluser named Greg. I didn’t really think too much of it and sat down and told everyone about how and why I decided to come out.

After a moment, Greg got up from his seat. All of a sudden, the entire group pulls in close for a huddle. They ask if they are doing the right thing or not. They decide that they are. I am really confused.

Apparently, this Greg fellow, saw one of my friends at the bar and decided to randomly buy her a pitcher of beer. He then proceeded to sit over with our group and kept buying pitchers all night long.

So, my spidey-senses began to tingle a little bit as I heard this story. But none the less, I went to the bar, grabbed a glass and poured myself a glass.

As the night went on, he kept buying us more and more beer. He did not divulge much information about himself, only that he was in North Bay for business, and that he had a bad day, but would not say why. Whenever we asked him about what he did for a living, he just casually joked it off. Also, he was not wearing a wedding ring, so take that for what you will.

At one point, Phil, one of the guys in my group insisted that he would get the next pitcher of beer. Greg was insistent on getting it himself. The two then raced to the bar. Phil came back to our table empty handed and wide eyed. He told us that Greg had a stack of $100 bills in his wallet. This guy was loaded.

All of a sudden, people didn’t feel so bad about taking his beer.

As a side note, it was at about this point that the group of us went up to help the band sing “Home for a Rest”, despite nobody really knowing the words.

The night went on, and the beer continued to flow, and words continued to slur. We attracted a large group of other Education students eager to give the free flowing river of beer a place to meander.

As Greg kept getting up to either buy some more beer, or talk to some other people, he left his coat with us. At various moments, certain people in our section contemplated walking off with it, but thought the better of it.

The drunker everyone got, the more my spidey-senses tingled. I had a bad feeling about where this was all going.

Since I was the Designated Driver, I decided to round up my car load of people (me plus three more) and get out of there. Another load of three from my group decided to posse out too. I have to all but pry a few certain people away from the bar in order to get going. We finally get out of the bar and I breath a sigh of relief, however, I relaxed too soon.

We get out into the parking lot and who should we see? Give yourself a pat on the back if you guessed Greg. Just in case some total stranger carrying thousands of dollars buying a ton of beer for a group of (mostly female) twenty-somethings wasn’t weird enough for you, here is where it gets better.

He tells us that he has a plane at the airport and wants to know if we want to go and party in New York.

I’ll give you a second to read that line again and soak it in.

In their drunken state, some people seem to think that this is a great idea. At this moment, I take some executive action. I figure my role as Designated Driver is not enough, I needed to take on the role of Designated Decider. As tempting as it is, I think the better of this crazy idea. I wrestled my friends away from this temptation and we hop in the car and drive off relieved.

Now I’ve spent the past twenty odd hours thinking about this Greg character and I have a couple of theories about him.

The most obvious one to me, is that he is a hit man. Don’t believe me? It really makes the most sense, he was in town on business (the mob brings in outsiders to do the dirty work), he was having a bad day (because he had already whacked someone), and he had a mad pile of cash (I don’t think that hit men pay taxes). For very similar reasons, there is the argument that he is either a drug dealer or a pimp. But I like hit man better, far more daring.

Also, I got thinking, and maybe he worked for some really dirty porno distributor, and this was their version of the Bang Bus. He was trying to entice some to all of us to do something very naughty so that he could get it on tape and sell it.

There is also a chance that he is some lonely dot.com millionaire who was having a really bad day and we cheered him up for a long time. Until we shot down his New York idea.

Either way, I will spend a good portion of the rest of my life wondering about Greg and his exact story. If shows up at a bar near you, try and find out for me.

Until next time,

G

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Only me…

Thursday, November 2nd, 2006

So the other day, I was sitting in my Curriculum Development and Evaluation class listening to a presentation on Behaviourism. They were talking about some of the key behaviourists, mainly Pavlov, Watson and Skinner.

Anyway, my buddy Josh is in the middle of a talk about Watson, and some people at my table pass a tiny little note over to me, it reads:

“Whenever someone says ‘Watson’ stand up and say ‘Elementary my dear Watson!’ and sit back down.

DO NOT SHOW THIS NOTE TO ANYBODY”

I ignored the fact that they disregarded the last line of the paper. I figured that they were just uncomfortable with standing up and shouting so they passed it off to the one person in class who has no inhibitions what so ever. I gladly took the paper, laughed a bit, and got ready. Since Josh was in the middle of his spiel about Watson I realized that he had said the name a good five times by that point. I felt really bad, I didn’t want to let him down, so I figured I would make up for it by being extra enthusiastic in a way that only I can.

I wait for a bit and he finally says ‘Watson’, I take the opportunity to get up and say “ELEMENTARY MY DEAR WATSON!!!!” at the top of my lungs to a chorus of laughter from the classroom. I sit back down, thinking I have somehow helped their presentation, although I wasn’t sure as to how exactly. Josh came over and pretended to slap me on the head and said ‘There, negative reinforcement’ (something that they were talking about). I didn’t quite get how that was relevant, but none the less, he was the expert here not me. He goes to repeat the line and mentions Watson once more, I stand up and bellow out my line once more. The group presenting gives me the old “What the hell are you doing?/Are you on drugs?” look that we as teachers are trying to perfect.

Then it hit me…the class that was in our room right before also did a presentation on Behaviourism, this note was from their class, not mine. The presenters really had no idea as to what I was doing. I thought that random outbursts didn’t fit with their presentations.

So as usual I:
a) try to be helpful but end up making a jackass out of myself.
b) am completely incapable of sharing the spotlight.
c) am an absolute magnet for random ass things.

Only me…

Until next time,

G

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Hallowe’en — The Hilarious Stories

Sunday, October 29th, 2006

Yes, yes, yes I realize that Hallowe’en isn’t for another two days, but lat night it was Hallowe’en out at The Wall, my campus bar. (By the way, how funny is it that the bar of my school is named after a song that says “We don’t need no education”?)

Before I begin, I need to get something out of the way. Hallowe’en is my favourite holiday of the year. No stressing out over getting gifts for people, no forced family gatherings, no celebration of materialism, no animal sacrifice, just good old fashion pagan fun. It is a chance to show of creativity, ingenuity, and finding the best deals at Value Village.

I decided that I would celebrate Pope Benedict’s least favourite day of the year by dressing as the Tooth Fairy. And here is my description of what I was wearing in a thousand words or less:

Yes, that’s me in a tutu. Those of you who know me from my most recent Kodi-summer should not be surprised by this get up, but I think that I turned a few heads here at Nipissing. I had a ton of people gawk at me, a ton of people tell me how much they loved my costume, a ton of people grab at my tutu or my ass (something I’ll talk about in a later post…), a ton of pictures taken by people I have never met, and I even had one guy in the bathroom look at me and say “Dude, you’ve got balls” to which I replied “Yeah, you can see them right now”.

Needless to say, the tutu is not designed for people of my particular height or gender. I constantly had to pull the thing up to stop showing off my nipples, and pull it down to stop any irritation to my man parts.

But, I was not the only one being daring in my choice of costume. There were some simply amazing ones out last night. A group of people in my section were MXC competitors. We had a Will Ferrell two for, as I was staring at Ron Burgundy and Robert Goulet at the same time. Speaking of Ferrell, there were a number of people out as contestants on Celebrity Jeopardy, complete with hanging cardboard signs fully decorated with their names on them (my personal favourite was “Turd Ferguson” — I hope you all get that). There was a group of about six or so people walking around with a full cardboard school bus, a hilarious group of guys wearing swim caps, carrying towels and shirts that said “Ovarian Swim Team” with pictures of sperm on them, and my personal favourite, a guy as Optimus F’n Prime. He had a full blown robot costume made out of cardboard. I wish that I had pictures, because it was that awesome.

Oh, yeah there were also a ton of girls in short skirts and high socks or fishnets…did I mention that I love Hallowe’en?

As per a usual bar night, my evening was spent on the dance floor, with the occasional breath for fresh air and socializing. Now while I was up to all of this, I was separated from my group, and well the jerks left without me. They thought that I was off getting picked up. Now, normally this would not be a problem, except that I live quite far from the bar so we were planning on splitting a cab back. And even worse, since a tutu doesn’t have pockets, a friend of mine was holding my bank card and money.

There I was, stuck at the bar, no money, no bank card, no ride and in a fucking tutu. Luckily, I bumped into my friend Shane (dressed in hilarious caveman attire) who happened to have a spare pair of pants among the pelts that he was wearing. So that had one part of my problem covered. Also, lucky for me there is something at Nipissing called the “Drunk Bus”, which is a hilarious concept really. An old guy drives a school bus from campus (which is totally isolated from the rest of the town at the top of a hill) down to the student ghetto. Before we go any further allow me to establish a few facts:

Fact the First: Last night was disgustingly busy at the bar
Fact the Second: School buses have a limited capacity
Fact the Third: Drunk people are jerks

As a result of this, the trip on the Drunk Bus was an interesting one to say the least. First off, as a result of Facts the First and Second I missed the bus twice (shades of Kriss Kross). Then, when the amount of people waiting for said bus started to grow I decided to sneak my way to the front of the throng of people, this is were Fact the Third comes into play. Once the bus arrived, all of the drunks converged around the door to and began to push and shove. I felt myself getting crushed by the weight of everyone as they all pushed forward. At this point I understood why people commit random acts of violence. With the combination of my chest being crushed and the terrible B.O. of everyone I elected to stop breathing. After I was nice and gentlemanly and let a few people in front of me, I decided to take the George Bush approach to things. Stop being diplomatic, and start acting. I ducked under a couple of people’s arms and pushed a few more out of the way and boarded the great yellow chariot.

While riding this bus I was serenaded by a group of girls singing “It’s Always Better with a Ho” (to the tune, of “A Great Big Moose”, one of my campfire specialties) which included such classy lines as “There was a girl in pink, who liked to take it in the stink”. After what seemed like an unending amount of verses to this song we arrived at the end of the line, The Lucky 13 Convenience Store.

I realize now that there is one fact that I have yet to mention. I live in North Bay. As a result, it was snowing.

So I need to walk to my friend Melissa’s place where my car is parked so I can get home. Before any of you start to gasp or worry, I had two beer all night, which had been hours before at this point. I had also had several glasses of water at the bar, and I learned that the combination of the crisp pre-winter air, the stress of not knowing where your friends are, and getting pushed around by a drunken mob does wonders to sober a person up.

Since it is snowing and so desperately cold (I think that my legs would have fallen off if not for Shane lending me his pants) I try and figure out a short cut to Melissa’s. This of course backfires and I have to wander around lost for a bit trying to find my car. I felt like I was in a bad Ashton Kutcher movie. Eventually I find it, wipe off my car and drive back through the wonderous snow.

After dropping a few people off I return home at 3am (thank the Lord for the time change, or else it would have been really late!!!). I am so tired, and hungry, and freezing that I drop my keys a good three times trying to unlock my door. I get in, change into my pajamas, and eat some left over pizza and crash for a good eight hours of well earned rest. (I didn’t even mention all of the poker and Ultimate Frisbee I had been playing all day leading up to this!!!)

When I wake up in the morning I soon discovered that in my hurry for rest and warmth I had left my keys in the door all night. Good thing I had taken my tutu off or else I could have been taken advantage of!!!

So that was my hilarious Hallowe’en Epic. Anyone out there have one that compares?

Until next time,

G

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