My undergraduate thesis is due in two days.

I played hockey growing up. In the small city I’m from hockey is huge. One block west of my childhood home exists two outdoor rinks. One and a half blocks to the east are another two rinks. In Thunder Bay, outdoor (and indoor) hockey rinks are everywhere, and they are always in use. Before coming to London and exploring a few other cities a little, it was my misconception that this was the norm for Canada. At the NHL level Thunder Bay is probably over represented. Currently, Steve Rucchin, Anaheim’s captain is probably the most recognizable player. There are quite a few other less renown players too.

With the exception of one year, I didn’t play at the elite level, I played tier-two. Still, I was pretty good. I was one of only a handful of kids who attended hockey camp during the summers and as a result I probably developed more skill. I was always one of the best skaters on my team. I enjoyed playing the most during my first few years as a center, lots of fun and freedom. It got less fun when a coach converted me into a defenseman. Defenseman rarely score. Playing defense slowly and surely soured my love for league play. I didn’t complain much though. My reward was three consecutive “Most Sportsman Like Player” awards. At the NHL level that trophy is named the Lady Bing. You can’t really brag about perennially winning the Lady Bing.

I was undersized. (My dad was a short kid who grew a huge amount during late high school to a respectable 5’11. I followed a similar pattern, only making it to 5’10 though. I blame it on my horrible high school eating patterns.) Anyway, small is not good for defensemen. Height isn’t critical in hockey like in basketball but it helps with leverage. The few times I attempted to stand someone up at the blue line, I would usually just get run over.

In grade eight my defense partner was a huge overdeveloped gorilla man-child. A huge kid. He must have been close to six feet and 250 pounds. A total monster. He was slow as molasses too, the worst skater in existence. I remember how hilarious it was when he moved to hit someone, his target would cower in fear as this giant mass of humanity approached, but he took so long to actually get there and had so little momentum the hit was always so weak and pathetic. The coach’s logic of pairing me with him was that I could skate and would be able to get back quickly to cover for his fat lumbering ass. His not so secret weapon was an absolutely booming shot. So whenever I took a point shot (admittedly not my strong point) everyone would get pissed and chastise me because they wanted the monster taking all the shots. That was it, I wasn’t having fun any more. I quit in grade nine.

So I didn’t play for a year. I still played outdoor pickup games for fun though. In grade eleven I was somehow coerced into becoming an organizer for unofficial, unauthorized games. I would collect ten to fifteen dollars from 10 to 20 kids and then would rent ice for an hour at one of the city arenas. Any profit was gladly given to me for this task and dealing with the rink rats. Those informal high school games were a lot of fun. I haven’t played at all since coming to university, just a few sporadic recreational skates. Maybe if I find myself in a somewhat stable position this fall, I’ll look into finding a beer league to join. And I’m not playing defense.

Look, my esthetician, Peter made it on to CBC.

2025 me here: I have no idea what the hell I was referring too.

I ate six consecutive donuts upon awaking this late afternoon. Why six? Well in Ontario there is a peculiar tax rule that specifies that if you buy donuts individually they are taxed at 15% but if you buy six, then they are tax free. Tim Hortons also gives you a deal for a half dozen. So yeah, I buy six. All sour cream glazed today. It’s late and I’m still not hungry. Ever since I devoured them the thought of eating absolutely anything is sickening. This is my new diet idea. The six donut breakfast.

So there I was, in my now messy apartment still in pajamas at 5pm. Bloated with an incredible amount of sugar and fat, feeling pretty low. I’ve been knocked around so much this week. It rained tonight. I enjoyed the thirty-five minute walk to work. Usually I listen to audio books while I march. I finished a lecture series on existentialism this way. Lately it has been near middle east mythology. Today though, I just put on random music to sift through my jumbled, dark, brooding thoughts. In addition to academia, here are five current reasons for unhappiness (1) I stay with Merle because she represents a safety net. I don’t know if I love her. She will make the rest of my life miserable if I stay with her. It has to end soon. (2) I hate how lazy I am. (3)  I miss old friends and my dead cat. (4)  I’m not happy with the way things are headed. Things would be my life. (5) I miss playing hockey. I wish I never quit.

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it before but most of my classes are graduate level that I’ve been let into with special permission. If my thesis and marks were better I’d consider pleading my case for a masters degree. Stress is mounting now though. Surprise obstacles are popping up, I’m getting my ass kicked in wonderfully unexpected ways. I’m a little piece of coal being crushed in Christopher Reeve’s hand. Sometimes I revel in the adversity. I feel that no matter what and how much shit gets thrown at me, I’ll find a way to deal with it. A mental swagger that continues to get me into trouble.

A favorite movie of mine at about age six was Beyond Thunderdome. As a result my grandpa bestowed the nickname, Mad Max upon me. Sometimes he would throw in “from the Thunderbum” and I would fly into a six year old rage. Also, my favorite wrestler was Jake the Snake. From that comes another familial nickname that has had more stick.

This post is just like my thesis. A mess of poorly explained, incomplete and unconnected thoughts.

No one remembers The Simpson’s, Season two? Bart the Daredevil? Truck-A-Saurus? Well, when Homer jumped Springfield Gorge on Bart’s skateboard, he did yell, “I’m going to make it!” but he didn’t have quite enough momentum, fell short and bounced down the rocky slope in a painfully hilarious scene. (And to top it off with a comedy cherry, as his ambulance sped away, it crashed into a tree, the gurney fell out the back and Homer went down the slope again.)

Well ever since I posted that Homer on the skateboard picture I have been dealt a string of demoralizing blows, most but not all, school related. I’m not even going to write about it. I’m just exhausted and fried and not feeling good about anything right now. Just about the only positive thing going for me is that I’m not sick like half the people constantly sharing my airspace. (Coming soon: my sick post)

The other night I couldn’t bare to start that cockadoodie databases assignment at midnight so I relaxed a little in pajamas and my bowl chair watching TV. Misery came on and it was good. I had two glasses of red wine while I watched Annie Wilkes torture poor Paul Sheldon.

I wore green today, it took minimal effort so I decided to cooperate with society. It was an olive green T-Shirt underneath a forest green sweater with spiffy brown corduroy cargo pants. A fine simulation of a pine tree.

I’m tired of whiny indie rock. No patience exists for it right now. So I’ve been binging on dance techno and caffeine. I like Red Bull better than the Sobe’s Adrenaline Rush. Sobe’s is a buck cheaper though so it’s a tough call when I buy. They both have 80mg of caffeine and need to stop getting drunk by me. The below album had a remix of my favorite 80s song, Toto – Africa. I think that was the highlight of my whole lousy week. It wasn’t even anything special.

2025 me here: No idea what the song remix referred to above was. Maybe best of bootie? Were they making those back in 2005?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111

No. No. NoooooO!!!

Well, today was a futile exercise. I spent every waking hour furiously working on a databases assignment. And I just lost the whole fucking thing. Belgium man. Belgium. I had made so much progress. I had allocated this day for it and was determined to get it in. I had to get it in. There is so much else to do. Since it was databases it was mostly huge amounts of data massaging and number crunching and rearranging. I had created and modified twenty or so text files, set up perfectly with all the information I needed to work with. I had written myself help files and compiled command lists. Everything was going so well. During a break, I had even written what I thought was a pretty good Xanga post that was very different in tone than this sucky baby rant. dfgoai;jdgaoi;gjasr;ligjair;ljibv;ojd

So you’re probably saying to yourself, “Well serves him right for not saving,”, right? Well I did save. Repeatedly, compulsively, like crazy, a non stop gangsta party of data backup, an orgy fest of saving. The problem is that since I was in a computer lab on campus, I’m only allocated a certain amount of profile space for working on that computer. Since I was over my profile allocation when the machine spazzed, when it started back up it just deleted everything.

I trudged despondently up to the third floor computer science department help desk which they cutely call the Input/Output counter to see if I could recover my output. I brought the on duty Chinese grad student down with me to check out my blank frozen blue screen. He was most unhelpful but I think he was genuinely concerned. That made me feel a little better so I tried to elicit even more sympathy by saying things like, “That was about ten hours of work I lost.”, “It was due today and now I have nothing.”, “I’m so tired.”, “Hold me.”

I think I actually did make him feel terrible, he kept running his hands through his hair, and touching his face while he stammered and tried to throw out helpful information to console me. He said he felt very badly that he couldn’t solve my problem. He stuck around while I packed up and put my jacket on. He stood frozen in the hallway staring at me as I left. I have a feeling he’ll be thinking about it for the rest of his shift tonight anyway. I don’t feel guilty though. He’s not going to be the one staying up all night redoing something he just spent all day working on. It’s one thing to loaf around and procrastinate but it’s a whole other realm of dejection when you kill yourself all day for nothing.

It’s now the last 31 days of my 22 year scholastic career. April 15th at 5:00pm, mark it on the calendar, I’m done like dough. Today after I did some frightened progress assessment to see where
I’m at, I’ve decided things actually aren’t that bad. I just passed the halfway point on my thesis and I have nine more days to finish it up. Other assignments and obligations are going ok too. I’m going to make it!

Now that I’m starting to actually believe that I’ll make it through, the relief I’m getting a taste of is heavily tainted with melancholy. It’s stemming from the realization that I’ll finally be moving on. I haven’t been feeling great lately. Another cold, quiet Sunday evening spent mostly alone has amplified the effect. I talked with a friend for a while but it was empty, unfulfilling conversation.

On Saturday, I finished an anime series I’ve been gradually watching over the past few months, Kino’s Travels. I highly recommend it, it was beautiful and introspective, one of my favorites.

Eating soup in a computer lab on campus. It’s very delicious. Today’s Grad club special, carrot something. It looks like orangish-yellow porridge. Actually it looks like cat vomit. Not so delicious now. I bought it along with red Powerade and a stale donut. Brain dead and sluggish. Last night’s half-of-a-sleeping pill lingers. I’m eating in here and not in the bar because I feel and look like shit today. I’m wearing a big ugly, grey and beige sweater, my hair is a total haphazard mess and my stubble is at a very unflattering phase. Been eating terrible lately. I should fix that. It will fix my mood too I bet. Why do I feel like such a slug when I should be in a frenzy to meet deadlines? So far this post is sufficiently hum drum, matching my mood quite well. Maybe the cure to my funk is as simple as some caffeine and music. Curtis Mayfield wasn’t getting the job done earlier. I need something more upbeat. All right. Yawn yawn yawn. Twenty more minutes left on my self-allocated break. Let’s see. A Procrastination exercise, My top five movie moments that come to mind right now:

(1) Return Of The Living Dead. About 5 minutes in. Frank and Freddie are down in the basement of the medical supply warehouse and checking out the military canisters. Freddie says, “Hey Frank these don’t leak do they?” Frank retorts, “Hell no! These were made by the US army!” Then he slaps one, it starts leaking and that cool as hell 80s techno punk music comes on as the display case on the canister cracks and the zombie face starts melting and goes all liquidy and the scene follows the smoke and shit as it cycles through the building.

(2) The treetop scene from The Sword in the Stone where Merlin and the boy are chipmunks and are being harassed by the females. Or the moat scene where they’re fish and learning how to swim and there’s that huge pike. Or the wizard battle. That was a good movie.

(3) The conclusion of Seven.

(4) Another pretty obscure one from an 80s horror movie, House, a scene that has Norm from Cheers playing a fat neighbor of this writer who’s living in a haunted house while trying to write a book. The writer knows that at the same time every night this monster comes down his chimney to do bad stuff. So he invites Norm over for beers and aid under the guise of catching and killing a rabid raccoon that comes out of his chimney every night. So he sets a mildly drunk and skeptical Norm up with this giant harpoon and gives him safety glasses and they camp out in front of the chimney watching the clock tick down to monster time. Just take my word for it, it’s a good one. An excellent mix of suspense and comedy.

(5) High Fidelity. When the Zen guru played by Tim Robbins comes into the record store to tell John Cusak’s character to stop stalking him and his estranged girlfriend and the sequence of possible courses of action that are subsequently cycled through in his mind. Especially the last one where he’s helped out by Jack Black and the passivist, mellow employee to team up to beat the shit out of the guru. When the skinny guy rips the air conditioner out of the wall I totally lose it.

In the most exciting news I have, my rental office has a fancy new system for accepting payments!

The two rent ladies and one rent man know me well since I’ve been seeing them monthly for most of the last five years. (Before that, in a failed experiment, I lived off-campus. There was also a dorm year. If you’re doing math, I’ll confirm that yes, I’ve been in undergraduate for seven years.)

So, anyway, I paid with my debit card and rent man, let’s call him Ralph, brought out a stamp. This was a radical new departure from the old name/apartment number pen based system. So, accordingly, I let out an enthusiastic, impressed, “Oooooooh! A stamp!!” Ralph chuckled a little and then used my debit receipt to deftly dispense with some hardcore stamping action. He then asked my student number. My student number? This caused my world to started spinning, so many changes, so quickly! I told him. He asked again. And I told him again.

“That can’t be right”, said Ralph. “Oh, it’s right”, said me. “Student numbers can’t start with that combination of digits.” said Ralph.

So, with devilish glee, I whipped out my student card and plunked it down in front of a seriously skeptical Ralph. Now, the thing with my student card is that it is truly old school. I got it way back in 1998. That year was the very last time the University used a 7 digit student number system. It went to 9, the next year. The picture is black and white, fuzzy and grainy, the colours are old and faded. Well, basically it just looks like a piece of shit. Especially when compared to the new fancy holographic, laser, 3-D deals they have now.

So, I threw that bad boy down on the desk, and Ralph was truly amazed. He picked up that card and it was like he had rediscovered an old lover, long since departed. His eyes widened as he fondled and examined it.  He laughed deeply and genuinely, he seemingly couldn’t believe it. He told me they had made those type of cards for only one year before changing everything and informed me that if I stopped by the registrars office they would give me a brand new fancy card, free of charge. He advised against it though. As he put it, “That one’s a rare classic.” And thus concludes my exciting rent story!

The conference room at my workplace is formal and spacious. The walls are covered with dark paneled wood. There is a chandelier and an enclosed bar area. The back is completely windowed and looks out into a neat, enclosed gated courtyard in a quiet residential neighborhood. It’s in this room that I am located four out of seven nights a week at approximately 4:00am. Usually, slouching down in a soft decadent burgundy chair with my legs up on another, shrouded dimly by the courtyard lamps that sparsely light the room. Tonight I put on earmuff headphones and listened to music. I loosened my black tie and played 38 Special. Then The Evens. Then Built Like Alaska. Then Elliot Smith. Then I felt thoroughly tranquilized and nostalgic. I miss the friends I’ve left back home. I miss the friends that have left me here. I am awake at 4:19am way too often. I spend too much time at computer screens.

When my dad was a little younger than myself he had a job that I’ve been fantasizing about often. Male Gigolo! He loved it. And man, how I would love to be paid to…, and of course I am joking. He was a boat captain in the Northwest Territories for chartered fishing trips. I always picture Great Bear lake when I think about it but it was probably elsewhere. He did it in the summer straight out of high school and I picture him young with big curly late seventies hair and appropriate stylin’ retro clothes. The boat would be a comfortable twenty footer maybe. He would have a smoke or cigar protruding out his mouth (cigars work really well to keep mosquitoes away, next time I go fishing I’m bringing some sweet smelling ones.). Maybe he would have his feet up while he trolled, with a warm summer wind gently blowing. He would say to the Americans fishing from his boat, “You know, those plastic toy lures are great and all, but why don’t you give a spinner and a minnow a try.” And then the image of him is replaced by me and I smugly chuckle as they start catching big fat walleye like crazy after changing lures. I would point out a moose swimming through the reeds and eagles scanning the water from high up on evergreens… And then I snap back to reality where I am shackled to my thesis and assignments and exams and crummy job and tiny student apartment.

Don’t panic. Don’t panic Don’t panic. I wish I could behave as rationally as I tell myself I should. The challenges I have to deal with until the end of March at the moment seem insurmountable. I am attempting to keep moving forward and hoping for the best. Right now though, I feel like I have to reach the summit of Everest in a couple of hours. The magnitude of my thesis project that is due in a scant 19 days is PhD worthy. I don’t know why I chose it for my lousy undergrad project. Breathe.

Everyone probably feels similar to some extent about something I suppose. Even after March there will still be challenges. I need to continue taking time to pause, break and do something enjoyable.

As a consequence of this advice, I have been reading a lot more lately. Breaks where I just ruminate over how much trouble I’m in are not groovy. Reading works well to take me out of the whole general mish mash for a while and then I can start relatively fresh. I’ve done less reading during my University years, telling myself that I didn’t have time for it. This is a fallacy, I’m working harder now than ever.

Anyway, I am almost finished Mostly Harmless, the fifth and final book of the Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. It’s a series I started way back in my first year of University at the recommendation of my roommate. I’ve held back on finishing it off though because of what he told me back in firs-year when we shared a little tiny room together, “Yeah, the books are great, funny, etc, etc. But don’t bother reading the final one in the series.” “Why not?” “Because Douglas Adams never intended there to be five books. He was pressured into it and intentionally wrote the fifth one so badly to discourage any one bugging him to do any more.”

And since my roommate was just about the coolest person I knew, I took the advice to heart. Until last week. Now, I’m finding out that book five actually might be my favorite of the series (although it has been a few years since I’ve read the first three and don’t remember them too well.). I’ve laughed out loud probably a dozen times, something I don’t remember doing at all while reading book four, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish. I guess he probably perceived the book differently because he usually only read while stoned.

The first book is being released as a movie next month, it should be fun. So much of the humor comes from the ridiculous and colourful language Adams uses to describe settings and character action though. It’s definitely worth a read.

The movie trailer.