Forward
Some time in early 2008, I began writing a massive blog that I intended to post on Pedestrian-X, a failed website that was suppose to be content focused, but veered way off track with tons of diary-style entries. This, in a sense, is a large diary, written from an autobiographical standpoint. However, its intention is to publish many of the major stories several members of this blog tell on a frequent basis and to have them all organized into one single article.
The blog's production halted abruptly after chapter 14 (“Oysters and Negative 'R'”) when I had thought that I had run out of material to write and I abandoned publication because I felt it wasn't a worthwhile read overall. Years later, in November of 2011, I would go on to publish the unfinished and unedited material on this blog for nostalgia sake. However, while re-reading it and going through the spelling errors, I remembered enough material that would basically double the content. The blog went on to receive periodical updates and edits, up until this one, which I consider the finished product. 'Just something to keep in mind if you notice a dramatic change in writing style about half way through.
Be warned: There is a lot of name-dropping in this blog, which often involves the vilification and name calling of various people we've met in the past. Though in some cases it's just us (aka me) being petty, most of the people I'm making fun of in these writings, in my eyes, have wronged me, or my friends, first, and everything I have to say about said subjects, I ensure you, is completely true, if not a tad exaggerated. But I must restate: Sometimes it's for petty reasons... like, really petty. Us who have visited Yagsalvania tend to be decadent and depraved, after all.
Enter the survival horror...
1 NCO
NCO is a major place of employment in our hometown of Sarnia, Ontario. It's a call centre that houses several companies. I don't know the purpose of most of them, because we all worked for the Geek Squad: An over-priced technical support and computer repair group that takes the money of idiot American trash that, most of the time, don't even know what service they burned $200.00+ for. NCO, for anyone who's been there for more than six months, is known for it's corrupt and inept management crew, and consistent addition of illogical rules (again I can only vouch for its Geek Squad division), as if man is still trying to figure out how to run a call centre after forty years. They pay slightly above minimum wage, but raises are only $0.25 per year. It almost wouldn't be worth working there if their benefits package wasn't actually pretty good. I'd say that it's an okay place to work, if you're cool with living paycheck to paycheck, but job security is only an illusion there. If management randomly discovers it can replace you without a fight, you'll be gone before the year is done. I quit there before they had the chance to boot me out, and my original intention was to write a giant exposé on my corrupt, cocaine addicted bosses, but I was so relieved to finally stop working there, that my butthurt quickly healed, thus I lost the inspiration to write until now, albeit on a different subject.
NCO is where Logan, Howard and I (LBC) met Ryan and Parsons (Team X-Treme). Of course, several different people made up each of the two groups, but the five of us were the main members of both, which is probably why we merged so quickly. Sitting at a desk and making calls can get really boring fast, so us sitting nearby each other and chatting was the best way to prevent going insane. Among the many talks that were had over the years working there, much of the terminology discussed here was invented.
2 The Duke
The Duke is perhaps the first inside joke I was let in on after meeting Ryan and Parsons at NCO. The terminology behind the Duke started between the two when they were watching the movie "Escape from New York". In the movie, the main character, Snake Plissken, is released from prison to hunt down a man known as "The Duke" who kidnapped the president. At one point, the character Cabbie explains to Snake who the Duke is, and says the memorable line, "Nobody gets to meet the Duke. You meet him once and then you're dead!" Parsons suggested that "meeting the Duke" sounded like slang for taking a shit, and obviously the joke was a big hit from then on.
Later, Ryan and Parsons made the connection that actor John Wayne's nickname was "The Duke", and they applied the term to him, so that, metaphorically, when someone is taking a shit, John Wayne is coming over to meet them; it kind of makes John Wayne out to be the Santa Claus of busting a douce.
The Duke is known for going about a somewhat large array of activities when someone meets him. For example, the Duke might have a lot to say at the time, which implies you just took a really huge dump. Several of these activities expanded on the joke even further, some sucked and went absolutely nowhere (the infamous "The Duke came in with a helmet on, riding in his rubber dingy" is a perfect example).
The Duke was a pretty much an obscure inside joke kept between us, until the Duke became Wanted, after which, he gained a significant amount of popularity among the workers of NCO. That all started because Ryan, Parsons, and, occasionally, myself had a tendency to write "MEET THE DUKE" on the walls of bathroom stalls at NCO, and sometimes in the public washrooms of other buildings. For the longest time, nothing came from writing on the stalls of the bathrooms, until I wrote something mocking the security that works at NCO. That actually pissed off one of the security officers, and a few days later, Wanted posters with a photo of "MEET THE DUKE" were posted in front of the security office, and all over the men's bathrooms. The Wanted posters were a complete joke, as different parts of different signings were cropped together and given the old Paintbrush Tool to highlight the letters. I'm hoping that the posters were just a scare tactic, as they advised anyone with information to call Sarnia Police, or the Crime Stoppers hotline. I immediately stole one of the posters, both to hide it, and to mark that achievement in the Duke's history. For a while, Ryan and I kept mention of the Duke on the down-low, to prevent us from being narc'ed on, but soon enough it became obvious that the rest of the people we worked with, including our supervisors, only found humor in it, and the Duke came back ten times more popular. One of the Wanted posters now resides on one of my bedroom walls. As for NCO security's search for the vandals... Logan lied and blamed a former employee named Cody for tagging the walls. unquestioned, Logan was given a $20.00 reward, and the search was called off.
3 Paul Hogan
Paul Hogan is another allegory that represents poo that is named after an actor. He's pretty easy to explain; he's the evil nemesis of The Duke, and when you take a shit that is painful, or otherwise just unpleasant, metaphorically, you just met Paul Hogan. Meeting the Duke is a necessity in life that everyone does, but no one purposely wants to meet Paul Hogan, so he usually has to employ different forms of trickery to lure people to him. Usually the scenario is while you walk up to the Duke to meet him, you discover that it's only a cardboard cutout of the Duke, which blows over and reveals Paul Hogan hiding behind it, but by then, it's too late. Paul Hogan is usually characterized by his crazed stare, and the large hunting knife that he always holds in his teeth. One must be extremely cautious if they accidentally come across Paul Hogan, as some people, like Elvis Presley, have died meeting him.
Me inventing the term for Paul Hogan was about as accidental as it is meeting him. Throughout my friendship with Ryan, he's asked me to draw the Duke for him a few times. One day, I was drawing up a comic strip with that had to Duke in it, but I ended up messing up the Duke's face and cowboy hat, which made him look more like Paul Hogan somehow. Not long after that, I left to use the bathroom where I ended up having one of the worst shits of my life. After, I staggered back to my desk and proclaimed to Ryan that the situation I had just endured should be applied to Paul Hogan, and not the Duke. Much like it was with the Duke, the joke was a big hit, however, since no one ever wants to meet Paul Hogan, he hasn't gained much popularity since.
4 Iraqi Desert Spider
The Iraqi Desert Spider (otherwise known as the Camel Spider, or Sun Spider) is the most wicked creature on the planet Earth. Legend has it, that the Iraqi Desert Spider can outrun any man in the desert, and that they can quickly leap and disembowel a living camel, hence its name. Just looking at any picture of one shows how manacing they are. Their species' order is 'Solifugae', which, to me, sounds Satanic, and suggests that this type of spider, which is really more scorpian-like in appearance, was birthed in the fires of Hell.
In our group, Ryan is the guy who's afraid of spiders, so it was him who enlightened us on what the Iraqi Desert Spider is, and its possible demonic origins. Several conversations have led to stories of the Iraqi Desert Spider. We believe it to be invinsible, immune to all forms of attack that man knows, be it a simple stick, or a nuclear bomb. Not only can they outrun humans, but they can at least match a military humvee in a race, and it is believed they may be responsible for several casualties during the Gulf War and the US Invasion of Iraq in 2003. The explosive impact of an Iraqi Desert Spider slamming into a vehicle is comparable to that of an IED, so it's hard to distinguish what vehicles are destroyed by bombs and what ones are destroyed by the Iraqi Desert Spider.
5 The Upper Decker
The Upper Decker is something that amazes me, both because it's actually not that well known, and because the act alone is quite a feat. For those who don't know, an "upper decker" is when someone defecates into the upper tank of a toilet. This is a nice prank to pull for a few reasons. First, the smell is an obvious factor; second, usually after flushing, the bowl will stir the upper decker around inside the tank, causing more of a stinky mess than before, and lastly, and most importantly, no prank is effective unless the person knows about it, but after the flush, besides the mess it leaves inside the tank, when the bowl refills, it will be filled with haggard brown water, and that person will then know they are a victim of an upper decker.
As far as me and my friends go, this tradition started with Parsons, the oldest in the group. I suppose the act of an upper decker was common knowledge for him, and he passed the knowledge onto Ryan while they were watching baseball after someone scored a home run that flew into the upper deck of the stadium. I sort of knew of the upper decker beforehand, but it wasn't until I became friends with Ryan until it became a big thing.
A few upper deckers have been left by us. The first recorded, and best known upper decker was left by Ryan at a Pizza Pizza. I believe it was after a night of drinking at the bar across the bar named "Puck Around" (which I'll go on about later). Drinking can lead a man to do many things; Ryan has been jerked around and given the wrong order dozens of times by Pizza Pizza, so it probably isn't that surprising that drinking would have influenced him to leave an upper decker there that night. Unknowing of what Ryan was up to in the men's washroom, I think I was ordering myself a serving of barbeque wings. Soon enough, Ryan crept out from the washroom area with a mischievous smirk on his face. By then, I knew something was up, and I was at least 50% sure what it was. Sure enough, as we walked out of the store, he informed me how he had left an upper decker, but also sprinkled mustard and pepper on it, and deemed it as the "Mexian Baseball".
How does one name an upper decker? You might ask. Actually, it isn't that complicated. Usually the routine is to pick a country, then apply a fitting noun (or sometimes a verb) after it. Anyway. what makes that upper decker so infamous is because after another night of drinking, a year and a half later, I went to leave an upper decker in the same toilet, and Ryan's focilized, yellow-spotted turd was still in there; I immediately ran out of the Pizza place, as I couldn't contain my laughter. Chances are, it still exists to this day. Ryan also left an upper decker in Puck Around, and I've left one at a Chinese buffet known as "The Canton", but neither of those stories are especially funny.
And, yes, I know three chapters of this have been about feces so far, and I'm sorry, but unless you want to stop here, you're going to have to deal with it... speaking of which...
6 The Smell
The story of The Smell is a brief one, but it's going to be the greatest story Logan, Ryan, and I will tell until our deaths. The reason why we call it THE Smell and not just A Smell is because it is the single worst smell that has ever been produced on this planet. Here's how it went down:
During the warmer seasons, Logan, Ryan and I somewhat frequently take walks down to the general store a block away from Ryan's appartment for snacks. Well, walking there was just like any other trip to the store, except that there was a pile of garbage lying in the parking lot infront of the store. Worth noting, was this old fridge lying in the middle of the garbage pile that, for reasons unknown, was completely black on the inside; it, above everything else in that pile, was the most suspicious looking.
We went inside the store and got what we were after; we left the store, with Ryan and Logan continuing a discussion about something (they forget what, but we wish we could remember just to have a 100% full account of the event), when we encountered The Smell. Simulatneously, all three of us gagged and coughed in disgust. Seconds after, The Smell had passed, and our coughing had changed to roars of laugher over the how immediate and well-timed all of out reactions were. Then, Logan's nose made a farting noise... it is believed that it was actually Logan's nose trying to give The Smell back. More laughter ensued on the walk back to appartment, but despite how funny it might have seemed at the time, The Smell has cursed us all for the rest of our lives.
Another thing worth noting is that we passed someone just before we came across The Smell. It was this kid, he looked about sixteen and seemed to be in some sort of trance. As we were standing infront of the store, he shambled past us, and, no word of a lie, shot up heroin through his winter coat no more than seven feet from where we were standing. We teased about his seemlingly drunken state right behind his back, but he didn't even seem to notice us. I wouldn't be surprised if he overdosed and died that night. We speculate that he, too, encountered The Smell before we did, after which a syringe full of heroin materialized in the palm of his hand, and he instantly turned into a hopeless junkie.
The thing about The Smell is, is that none of us can come close to describing what it smelt like. Ryan has since admitted that he came across a rotting corpse when he was younger, and he added that even the stench that it produced came nowhere near what The Smell was. The best we can come up with, is if we were to rate it in a scale of smelliness from 1 to 10, The Smell is, at least, a 15. No one has, and no one ever will encounter a smell as bad as what we endured, and if anyone feels like they can duplicate it, or create something worse, I believe we would all be willing to put our lives on the line and judge.
7 Dark Fields
Dark Fields is a suspence-horror film that Ryan had a major part in. As far as plot goes...? A Killer with an axe kills some frightened teenagers; it's a very straight forward slasher flick. However, unlike most slasher movies, producer Mark McNab wanted it to have a PG-13 rating, and appeal to a wide US audience, so the best things about slasher flicks were taken out, and the performances were made to be over the top and predicable.
Dark Fields, originally shot in 2002 under the title "Farmer Brown", almost faded into obscurity entirely, to a point where Ryan himself just about forgot that it existed. After that I'm not sure what came first, but it was either one of two things:
1. Ryan was browsing through movies at a local video and music store, when he came across the case for Dark Fields. Intrigued by the movie's cover art, he went on to read the credits, where he noticed his name and the names of everyone he acted with.
2. The scenario I remember was that he came across it accidentally while Googling at work one night. I was working at the desk beside him, when he started going on about how he just found out about how this film he was in got picked up by a major studio. We would later find out it was bought by Lionsgate: The world's leading independant film studio, best known for buying crap like Dark Fields... but also known for the Saw series, as well.
Yep, Dark Fields is a real movie, alright. You can check imdb.com and look for yourself. At first, Ryan was rather irked, thinking his friend and boss, Mark, owed him money that was promised if the movie was bought. A couple of months later, Mark found Ryan and gave him the scoop on the whole situation, letting him know that, as of 2007, the movie had only broke even.
Nowadays, Dark Fields has a small amount of fame. The movie rental chain "Roger's Video" rents it out to the public, and I hear it's aired semi-often on indepentant film stations. The great thing about this movie is... well, definitely not the movie itself, but the people it lures into its own message board on imdb.com, who, off the bat, you can tell they know nothing about making movies. Nine times out of ten, someone will storm into the Dark Fields forum raving about how everybody in it had only the acting abilities of grade schoolers. This goes against the fact that much of the cast are award winning stage actors throughout all of Canada, and also suggests that the person making such accusations couldn't spot overacting if it bit them in the ass. But it's fun always putting these stupid people in their place, actually, it might be my favourite thing to do on the Internet. Who doesn't like shooting fish in a barrel?
I can cover all the basics, but you'd have to ask Ryan for all the inside details that actually make the movie enjoyable. One of our great future plans is to get him to release another edition (probably a YouTube video type of deal) with actor commentary regarding all the crazy stories about what happened on the set.
8 James Randi
As a skeptic in a world that still mostly believes in god and magic, I think it's safe to say James Randi is an inspiration to us all. The man can't get enough credit, but I don't want to be on his nuts too much, so let me get the gist of it out. James Randi is a famous magician and scientific skeptic, both supporting the magical entertainment community and debunking the illusionists who claim to actually have special powers. Founded in 1996, the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) sponsors a prize of $1,000,000.00 US to anyone who can demonstrate evidence of any paranormal or supernatural ability or event, though the award is being forfeited as of March 6, 2010, since the world's more famous claimants refuse to apply, but also because no one has come close to winning, ever.
Ryan, Logan and I all came to know about Randi while watching an episode of "Penn & Teller: Bullshit!" some time in early 2007. Ryan later researched into him more when reading about his conflicts with Uri Geller and Peter Popoff, and told us more about the man. Since then, we've all kept a close eye on his career, his newsletters, and his website (randi.org). In the last year, I've gone from somewhat agnostic and mildly skeptic, to more of a full-on skeptic and atheist. Some might see that as a bad thing, but I'm personally a happier person knowing that more of the things that surround me are explainable. I also feel that I must explain that even though I'm a skeptic, I completely respect anyone's choice in religion (excluding Scientology), and if anyone can prove that their god, or gods, exists, I'll be quick to convert. I guess that also makes me fickle, but I like playing for the winning team.
9 Jeff Rick
Also known as the dumbest person in the world. A long time ago, the idea of writing an entire book about this man was proposed, because, believe me, it would take that many words to cover all the stupidity this man took part in. Unfortunately, time has made yours truly forget about some of the idiotic things this man has done, apart for the exceptional acts of idiocy that none of us will be able to forget. Much like The Smell, we would be willing to judge if anyone knows someone more stupid than this man, mainly because of our fascination with how scummy and pathetic a man can be.
Where do I start... When we met him, he was about 36, living with his mother, working with us at NCO. This waste of skin actually reproduced, and his daughter lived with his ex-wife elsewhere. Despite the fact that he was a grown man, his mom cashed his paychecks and gave him a daily allowance of five dollars of his own money to spend, which really only led to him being more pathetic than anything. I didn't keep track of his habits, but those who did reported that he'd smoke between one and two packs of cigarettes a day, which is extra ridiculous because he rarely bought his own, instead borrowing from co-workers and never returning the favor. Anyway, that's just the basic rundown, now for some of the major factors that account for the infantile intelligence of the man. Some parts are going to be brief, but despite size, each one is equally worth reading.
Despite smoking, he had a lot of severe habits that were both drug related and not drug related. A big non-drug habit was his consumption of "Chews" gum, or gum in general; he was virtually always chewing gum! Of course, he was about as smart as a barn yard animal, so he ate it like one, chewing with his mouth wide open, slapping his lips up and down... you could hear him eating it from a good fifty feet away sometimes. And when I say eating, I mean he really ate the gum. Sure, swallowing gum normally doesn't affect your digestion like all those old wives tales said they did, but this is a person whose main diet consisted of pounds and pounds of gum. Up until I met Jeff, I didn't know what could happen from that, but once all that gum has ran its course, he would stop working and be in the bathroom taking a shit for (no joke) an hour and a half, afterwards, being all out of breath and dripping sweat, like he just finished a thirteen round boxing match.
Oh boy, did he have a lot of drug habits. One thing he was big on was popping pills. Some people like Valium, others like Percocets, Jeff had no preference whatsoever. He'd go to his dealer and buy what I'm guessing was a party bag full of random pills (be it muscle relaxers, pain killers, heart pills, male enhancement medicine, female hormones, animal heartworm medication, Tic Tacs) and just pop as many as he wanted, whenever he felt like it. I think he had one form of medication that was prescribed to him for depression; chances are those had no effect with all the other crap he had in his system. I don't know why he would just spend all that money of an random assortment of pills, when he could have just bought some red kryptonite.
You better believe Jeff was a coke head. Yes, this man loved himself some cocaine. I never personally saw him do it, but people who hung around him more did, and reported that he did it on a rather frequent basis. Much like pills, he just did it whenever he felt like it, including during work. Ryan claims to have seen cocaine residue on the toilet paper dispensers at work, roughly after Jeff has left the bathroom. Sometimes, at work, when Jeff would go missing for an hour, and he wasn't in the bathroom, our supervisors would send some of us to go looking for him, and we would find him sleeping in his car after doing a nice big line of coke. If he didn't pass out from doing the stuff, he'd come back and all red-eyed, hyper, and obviously stoned. If my bosses weren't all sorting coke themselves, and buying it off of him, I have no idea how he would have kept working there as long as he did. I guess the best story about his cocaine abuse happened at Ryan and Parson's appartment. He was there, and he asked Ryan if it'd be alright if he did some coke in his bathroom. Ryan, totally not being alright with it, said, "Fuck no". I don't know why this would have been a better idea, but Ryan allowed Jeff to do it, as long as he did it on the appartment balcony. That night, there happened to be a wind storm, and Jeff went out there with an old piece of plywood to cut lines on. Unsurprisingly, it was a matter of moments until Jeff made an attempt to sort coke in a wind storm, which resulted in all of it blowing away. I hear Jeff was really pissed about it, but it's completely his fault considering he could have just not asked to do the coke in Ryan's bathroom, and he probably would have been none the wiser, anyway, and that's just one of at least a dozen scenarios which would of led to him not losing his drugs.
You'd think that his fifteen year head start on us would have made him somewhat wiser, but he still managed to be a complete social shutout. This man had practically no dignity for himself, at all! While the Pussycat Dolls single "Don't Cha" was popular on radio stations, he would sing it aloud at work, and also get into heated debates with people like Ryan that the Pussycat Dolls were a legitimately good pop group, only based on the fact that they were popular. Somehow in 35 years, Jeff had no idea what the slang meaning for the word "facial" meant. One day, Parsons let him in on the word's alternate meaning, and Jeff actually went up to girls, at work, shamelessly suggesting that they should take a facial. I don't know how he stumbled across this one, but Jeff also learned about the song "In My Country There Is A Problem", which is featured in a Borat skit on "Da Ali G Show". You probably know the song; it's the one where Sacha Baron Cohen's character hollers, "Throw the Jew down the well / So my country can be free!". That's exactly what Jeff did; he hollered the words to that song, in front of hundreds of people at work. Again, not sure how he didn't get fired at the time. One last quick shot at Jeff: While watching movies at Ryan and Parson's place, he actually requested that either of them give him a blanket to hide under, because the film scared him. The film in question was "Idle Hands"... a comedy.
Alas, Jeff finally got what he desevered, and he was fired from NCO. Another side effect for his cocaine use was that he was often making a snorting sound that was sometimes three times louder than the sound of him chewing gum. My knowledge in cocaine is only based around movies, so I don't know why addicts continue to snort their nostrils when they're not doing coke, but it was an obvious sign that he had been doing a lot of it, and anyone who worked near him and didn't know would have to have been stupid. Fortunately for mankind, I'm pretty sure everyone knew, including this guy we called 'Bechard', who was this innocent eighteen-year-old kid who seemed to know very little about drugs to begin with. Bechard playfully asked, "Oooh, been doing the coke again, eh, buddy?!" and Jeff lost it, barking back, "If you say anything like that to me again, I'll fucking punch your head off," enforcing his threat with a, "and don't think I'm kidding, either!" Bechard was visibly shaken and frightened by Jeff's words, and I think that sight was the last straw for Ryan, whose rage towards Jeff had been growing exponentially by then. Ryan later walked over to Bechard and told him that if he filed an HR complaint on Jeff, that he would back him up on it. Immediately, Bechard went to our supervisor, who I'm pretty sure heard Jeff, too, who took him down to the human resources department. I think Jeff was cluing in on his own demise by the time Bechard got back, turning to him and, in the friendliest tone he could talk in, said, "You... you know I was just kidding, right? Eh, buddy...?" Bechard ignored him; we all ignored him, and watched as he was called into the HR office, and never seen at work again.
Jeff's interactions with Ryan, Logan, Parsons, and I were very limited from that point on. He desperately tried to keep hanging around Ryan and Parsons, but they absolutely hated his guts, and it wasn't long until Parsons got a call from him on his cell phone, and he bluntly just told him to fuck off and die. Since then, there haven't been many interactions with him in public. Somewhat recently, like a year after Ryan stopped hanging around him, he ran into Jeff at Roger's Video, where Jeff then started busting out sobbing, awkwardly opening up to Ryan about how his friend Steve just died, but besides that, there isn't much else to report. Last we heard, he was doing some temp work for a security company around town. Doing lines of coke and falling asleep during the graveyard shift as a security officer must be pretty easy.
What a freaking character... and to think that's just the tip of the iceberg. If only I could remember everything.
10 Puck Around
Puck Around is a not so cleverly named bar that's near the homes of Ryan, Logan and Howard. Due to geographical convenience, it's the main bar we all go to. More of a liquor man, I wasn't huge on drinking beer, but because of the high cost of drinks and shots, I learned to adapt, and now I've aquired a taste for it. We started going to Puck Around on occasion sort of out nowhere. I think it was mostly because Ryan had become more accustomed to drinking in bar when he was younger, and he began feeling nostalgic when considering how Logan and I have a habit of just getting drunk and playing video games most of the time. He's also used me with the intention of luring in chicks for him, but I guess I'm not as good looking as my friends think I am, plus a lot of homos tend to flock there... 'don't know why.
Puck Around is both one of the best, and one of the worst bars in Sarnia. It has a nice atmosphere, not many scumbags hang around the place, good food, (again) geographical convenience, but it also has some of the characteristics of a scummy biker bar. The men's bathroom is always trashed, but that's a given in any place that serves alcohol. Really, when I hint towards the place sometimes being scummy, I'm talking about one of our experiences there. I forget the occasion, if there was any, but Logan, Ryan, I, and some others (I forget who) were sitting in the booth in the back corner of the bar. I was feeling a little ill that night; I had a really bad cough that week, which would sometimes cause me to dry heave if it went on long enough. I was only two beers in, when everyone else went outside to have a smoke. As the only friend who doesn't smoke, I stayed inside and guarded the booth. So, there I was, sitting there, sipping my third beer, waiting for everyone to come back, when I felt a cough coming on. With my luck, it was one of those bad coughs that had been causing me to dry heave throughout the week. Logan was just walking in the door when I realized I was doomed and sprayed puke all over the booth table, the seats, my coat, and a little on myself; it was the biggest mess, ever. Seeing the expression on Logan's face, I panicked and rushed over to the booth beside us to try and escape the scene. After everyone came back and saw the vomit everywhere, I explained to everyone that it was because I was already feeling sick prior to going to the bar, and I think everyone understood. I was still embarrassed, considering how we were in a bar and all, and everyone there would assume that I was lightweight, but I got even more anxious when one of the waitresses came up to our new booth. There's no way anyone could have missed the lake of puke beside us, so I know she saw it. Regardless, she still smiled and asked, "So, what can I get you guys?" We ordered another pitcher, and carried on drinking for hours like nothing had happened. The whole vomiting incident has led us to believe we can almost get away with anything at Puck Around, at this point.
Puck Around also used to have a really awesome jukebox. It had a giant collection of songs, but the best part was, if it didn't have the song you wanted on its harddrive, you could do a search for it on the company's Internet database, which had just about anything. Upon discovering this, Logan, Ryan and I went on a jukebox playing spree. First, I started off with normal music, like Nirvana, Tool, A Perfect Circle, Sound Garden, The Ramones... but then we started getting buzzed and thought it'd be funny to play some obscure and obnoxious music that everyone would have to listen to. Indeed, it was funny as hell, as we played Aqua, B-52's, King Diamond, Vengaboys, and the seventeen minute version of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", which we played twice in a row. By about midnight, we had cleared an almost full bar to all but three people. We got the dirtiest god damn looks from the bartender, and she ended up turning to volume way down on the PA system before we were through. After that night, Puck Around removed the awesome jukebox, and replaced it with a piece of shit jukebox that mostly has top 40's garbage on it. We haven't been to Puck Around much since the newer, shittier jukebox has been installed.
11 Bar Marathon '07
There was a time before I quit working at NCO, where I lived on Indian Road with roommates Howard, Leah, and some faggot we call Captain Down Syndrome, or "Dumont" for short. The place was a dump, but it had all the best places within walking distance of it. Many of these places were bars. On the street adjacent from us, Exmouth, there are five bars all on one block: Thirsty's Roadhouse, La Cantina, Cravin's, Fat Moe's, and The Lazy Duck. After getting settled into my new place, I brought up the idea that we (Me, Ryan, Logan) should go on a bar marathon one night, and that week the plan was a go.
We started with the closest bar, Thirsty's Roadhouse. When I was a kid, I had an alcoholic neighbour who went to Thirsty's often, and it gave me the impression that the place was a shithole, but it's actually more of a resturant there, than anything. We decided we'd have dinner there and get something in our stomachs to absorb the copious amounts of alcohol we were about to consume. We didn't stay there long, as the place was super expensive. It cost me $13.00 for a burger, fries, and a beer! While we were there, we had some cougar of a waitress who was overly friendly in an attempt to get a good tip, and some old drunk who came up to us to talk about Rush and Disturbed-- what a weird combo.
La Cantina was second. This is where we started to seriously drink. While we were there, we ordered maybe two pitchers, and two rounds of Jagbombs (Jagermeister and Redbull). Between drinking, Ryan and I played a game of pool. It was the worst game of pool ever played, as it took us probably a half hour to finish, and we shot balls off the table about a million times; it kind of pissed me off, because I own a pool table and I had been practicing a lot at the time. It also happened to be Karaoke Night at La Cantina that night. I wanted to sing Metallica's cover of "Whiskey in the Jar" but I don't do a good Hetfield impression. Ryan ended up singing to "Loveshack" by the B-52's, and we left for another bar.
We skipped Cravin's that night, and went to Fat Moe's next. Ryan knows one of the bouncers who work there, who we call Coleman. If you don't know Coleman, just think about Brucie from Grand Theft Auto IV, and you have a good idea... *chuckles* Anyway, Coleman was working there that night, so we planned to make Fat Moe's our main drinking HQ for the night, since we'd be able to get as drunk as we wanted and not get kicked out. Despite the heroic amount of beer we drank there, nothing much happened at first. Logan went and hung out with a guitar player who was performing there that night, but that was about it. Eventually, we got bored, and went to The Lazy Duck to do some clubbing, or some shit.
Like any other place that attempts to be a club, there was a cover charge of three dollars that we had to pay, thankfully I had the change on me. We got in there, and the place was packed with people. I absolutely hate clubs and dancing, but I was pretty drunk by then, so I went along with it. Ryan ordered us all two rounds of Jagbombs, and we did a little bit of dancing. I went to take a piss in their shitty two toilet washroom (again, only attempting to be a club), and when I came back Ryan was talking to one of the bouncers. Apparently the bouncer was telling him to get the hell out, because he was "acting" too drunk. Personally, I think the bouncers that night were homophobes and didn't take kindly to Ryan's Versace overshirt. By the way, this all happened over the course of ten minutes. We gathered Logan and stomped out of that place, pissed out of out minds. We headed for a store across the street and called a cab, but while we were waiting, we came across these two indian chicks that I had known throughout all of grade and high school. We've run into them a couple times, and they always just hang around us to get free booze, but whatever, we ended up calling off our taxi and went with them back to Fat Moe's.
We sat at one of the tables outside this time. More of the usual: Beer, Jagbombs, blah, blah, blah... The night starts to become a blur here. Coleman tells us Logan looked like he was the most drunk that night, but that was bullshit, considering how, besides being more merry, he wasn't really showing any other signs of drunkeness. One time, we got this waitress that was a bitch who purposely dropped a glass as she was serving us, and made us pay for it. I bet they make a lot of money that way, but if it ever happens again, I'm calling bullshit, because who hands a drunk person their drink, instead of just placing it on the table for them? So, anyway, we (blur) and then we (blur) and then we called another cab and actually went to our homes this time.
Moral: The Lazy Duck is a piece of shit that will never be a real club, no matter how hard it tries to be one, and Puck Around is the best bar in town, though La Cantina is pretty badass, too. Thanks for the $140.00 in Jagbombs, Ryan.
12 Yagsalvania
Two stories about drinking... May as well keep the ball rolling. Yagsalvania is reported to be somewhere in the Southeast, near Yee-haw County. At this time, it is run by Mayor / Lord Quaitar. It is the party capital of the world, yet maintains a rather small population, due to how difficult it is for the average man to get there. To get to Yagsalvania, one must obtain an official map to Yagsalvania, and drink at least twenty shots of Jagermeister in one night.
Blah, this is getting confusing, so I'll just give the straight answer. Yagsalvania is just about the most awesome drinking competition ever. First, I draw the official map, which is really just a chart for keeping track of shots. The chart, titled "Yagsalvania", contains the participants' names, a shot count to twenty (written in Roman numerals), the Jagermeister logo, and the mayor's signature at the bottom, allowing entry into his town.
Yagsalvania is about drinking twenty shots of Jagermeister in one night. Since it's a rather difficult feat to perform, many people play it as an endurance competition, to see if they can actually make it to twenty shots. Some more seasoned vets (Which is really only me and Logan) will race to see who can get to twenty shots first. Racing, in theory, seems easy enought to do, but pacing is a key factor in winning, as drinking too fast will cause one to get too drunk, and possibly become sick. According to the rules, if someone vomits while playing, they go back three shots, and if someone happens to shit themself, they go back five shots. Logan has won every race to Yagsalvania so far. Officially, I'm the only other one that's finished the trip to Yagsalvania every time, though, unofficially, there is speculation that I may have cheated during the first competition.
The date of the first trip to Yagsalvania is unknown. All of us were amateurs regarding going there, and I don't think anyone really remembers it. If I were to take a rough guess, I'd place it around April 2007. The second was on my 20th. birthday, and many pictures marking the occasion were taken. Yagsalvania III happened about a year after the first one, in April 2008.
Yagsalvania II marked the birth, and death of Mr. Killme: A small figurine that I moulded out of Play-Doh. Mr. Killme was set on fire, exposed to chemicals, soaked in red hair dye and lighter fluid, and then set on fire one last time. It was pretty gruesome. Yagsalvania was also the first time we made weed vodka. Footage of Logan drinking the weed vodka can be seen on my YouTube account. Despite that I gave the ingredients the recommended two weeks to settle, the weed vodka tasted terrible, and was quickly put away in Ryan's freezer. During Yagsalvania II, Leah thought she could beat Logan, Ryan and I to Yagsalvania, downing sixteen shots within about two hours, but then she got too drunk and it was suggested she should take a break, learning an important lesson about pacing.
Yagsalvania III was less eventful, as Ryan dropped out of the competition, and only Leah was available to substitute. Early in, Leah tried to fight me, disturbing nearby locals, which has gotten her suspended from taking part in any official Yagsalvania trips until further notice. Leah was disqualified, so it was a race between me and Logan. A lot of the night was based around playing Earth Defence Force 2017, and watching Fight Club and The Crow. Any other details from that night are unclear, as it was a quick race to Yagsalvania, and we weren't able to focus on much else.
Another important fact about Yagsalvania is the decoration of the map. Coverage of the map ranges from people's signatures, to random graffiti, to just scribbles. The first map was just covered in scribbles. The second map was the most decorative, with notes about no one helping me if I puked, drawings of faces, drawings of stick people, a drawing of a happy-looking oyster, and various insults by people's names. On the second map, I also drew my cartoon avatar, Coopersville. In the Coopersville drawing, he has a speech bubble next to him that says, "Yay-salvania!". He has reappeared in all other maps afterwards, though his speech is shorted to just "Yay!".
There are also maps to Mini-Yagsalvania available. To get to Mini-Yagsalvania, one just has to take ten shots of Jag', instead of twenty. As of this time, there is no official canon behind Mini-Yagsalvania, and it's just considered practice, for when you don't have enough Jagermeister to drink twenty shots.
There is no official date set for Yagsalvania IV, but I'm afraid of when it does happen, as I don't think I can handle as much Jag' as I used to.
13 July Beach Party
The first July beach party, which was in 2007, was only suppose to be a normal hangout night, but due to its awesomeness, it had been changed to a planned annual event. Originally planned to be a going away party for Laura, the now annual July beach party is located on the private beach at Logan's cottage in Blue Point. I don't think anyone had high expectation for it at first, but the series of events that marked the occasion had made it memorable for all time.
First off, let's not kid ourselves, we all got really, really drunk that night, but we had to prepare first. For the party, I brought with me a tent that my parents have used for camping for years now; I think it's the very same one we used while camping in Niagara Falls when I was seven years old. It was also the first time I had ever pitched a tent, so that combined with how I was setting the bastard up on sand (pikes don't stay in sand very well), it took me like an hour to get the whole thing set up. Afterwards, being very frustrated, I began drinking immediately, at like 5:00pm. Some time in late June, Ryan had aquired a king's random in fireworks (I'll get into the details later). Most of the afternoon was spent setting off hundreds of bottle rockets and M-80's. One bottle rocket veered off course, turned around and hit me right in the ass, and the night pretty much hit it off from there.
The weed vodka that was rejected on my twentieth birthday made a big comeback that night. After it had around two months to settle, instead of two weeks, it became less strong and actually kind of tangy; it also messed me and Ryan up in ways we've never been before-- Ryan honestly claims it gave him superhuman-like endurance that night. As it stands right now, weed vodka is to be a staple of future July beach parties. (Editors Note: It hasn't made a reappearance since.)
Another thing to note about that night were the amount of injuries Ryan and I sustained throughout the night. Logan and Laura kind of ditched us early, leaving to go back to his cottage at like 10:30pm, which left Ryan and me alone and drunk on the St. Clair coast. With our intentions to camp right there on the beach, hours' worth of firewood was necessary. We didn't collect enough throughout the day, which left us stumbling around the beach in almost complete darkness looking for logs and other driftwood. Most of the wood in the area was splintered and embedded into the sand, which caused mutliple gashes on my feet and hands, but Ryan got the worst of it. Laura was drinking some sort of coolers that required a bottle opener, but we lacked one. Ryan volunteered to open them, using the edge of a rock to try and pop them open. During one of his attempts, he hauled off on the bottle and shattered part of the neck, cutting up his hand. Alcohol also thins the blood, so the wound from the glass bled a good one before getting sand in it. While we were collecting more firewood in the dark, Ryan came across a giant uprooted tree stump, which he tried to bring back to the wood pile. On the way there, he tripped and fell backwards, dropping the sixty pound tree stump directly on his chest. Apparently he tried calling out for me for the next ten minutes, but was unable to because he couldn't catch his breath. He credits the weed vodka for surviving the tree stump incident.
Collecting small sticks and splintered wood wasn't good enough to keep our fire going throughout the night, so as Ryan and I were collecting wood, we started travelling farther and father along to beach trying to find larger stuff to burn. At the time, I don't know what was going through my mind, but I swear I found a wooden skid to use as firewood. Thinking back, I don't know why I didn't question how I had just come across a wooden skid on a beach, but I guess at the time, I was just grateful to find something that wasn't a twig. The supposed wooden skid was the end of our worries when it came to finding wood, as it kept burning for the rest of the night. The thing was, after the beer goggles wore off, if became apparent that this skid was actually a small improvised boat dock that Logan's cottage neigbour had made for his canoe. While Ryan and I were cleaning up the beach the next morning, that neighbour was down there, and he was trying to hint to us that we were assholes for setting his little dock on fire, but we didn't fully catch on for another hour or two. Looking back on it, it's probably the funniest thing about the night.
The end of the beach party actually went tits up, because at about 3:00am, it started to rain heavily, and it was then that I discovered that my tent wasn't waterproof anymore. I guess I must have passed out in the sand next to our fire, because when I came to, it was already raining and Ryan was sleeping almost face first in an inch of water inside the tent. Reluctant to get up at first, I eventually got Ryan to walk back to Logan's cottage with me. Thankfully, he left the front door unlocked, and I went inside to cottage to crash on the couch, while Ryan slept in Logan's car.
Having to clean up the mess on the beach with the little sleep and massive hangover I had actually didn't make the beach party worth it, for me, but for future July beach parties, we plan to ditch the camping idea and just sleep in the cottage, so it will be better from here on.
14 Oysters and Negative "R"
Talk of oysters and things missing an "R" come up quite often in our day-to-day lingo. Both originated from Ryan and Logan's admiration for the show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" and one of its characters, Carl. Oysters are what we, Carl, and a lot of people throughout the world, call loogies. "-R" is a little more complicated. It comes from a line that Carl says in ATHF, where he points out that the word "shirt" spells "shit" if you take out the R, so when we refer to something "missing the R" or "without the R part", we're really calling it shit. The most famous use (or lack there of) of the letter 'R' is in the title for the movie "Alien vs. Predator: Requiem", which, when abbreviated, is "AVP-R", which is very fitting, because it's the shittiest movie I've ever seen.
Oysters are perhaps the most popular with Ryan, as he tends to hock them a lot. He has stories upon stories about how he's spit out mouthfuls of oysters before, and the sounds they make when they hit pavement. Using oysters as an allegory for spit is also a fairly common joke we make, too. There was the happy oyster that was drawn on the second Yagsalvania chart, and I've drawn metaphorical comic strips, at NCO, depicting oyster farms, and a man 'hocking' an oyster at a pawn shop.
15 Fireworks
Fireworks are a staple Summer activity for any of us, especially Ryan. At least one night per summer is dedicated to setting off fireworks, though Canadian laws usually restrict us to relatively boring Peony, Roman Candle and Lady Finger types; however, one summer Ryan acquired a large box of the more fun/powerful varieties while visiting family in the US. His bounty covered many genres of fireworks, but the most plentiful of them all were M-80's and Bottle Rockets, which he literally had hundreds of. The summer of 2007 would see and hear many nights of firework-related jackassery. Ryan had so many bottle rockets and M-80's, that they were usually the answer to our boredom on many nights. Sometimes we went out several nights in a row blowing up M-80's across the neighbourhood, and though the police came looking for us a couple times, were never caught.
One of the first memorable events, I wasn't around for. Most of the nights we'd go out blowing up fireworks would go on until 2-3AM, and most of the time it was also in the park Logan and Ryan lived near-- a park which is surrounded by hundreds of houses along its perimeter. During one sunny afternoon, Logan and Ryan were in that park doing 'the usual' when an old lady gradually made her way to them. She asked if they were the guys making all the noise in the middle of the night, to which they blatantly lied with, "No." It was pretty obvious they were the individuals in question, but it's not likely anyone could actually pinpoint the identities of the two, three, or sometimes four shadowy figures lurking around the entire park each night. A simple denial of guilt was all that was needed to stop this woman dead in her tracks. She had probably practised an entire tirade to shame them with, but since they wouldn't admit to anything she had absolutely nothing. She might have prodded more into their possible involvement, but having not being present, I wouldn't know. Sooner or later, she was sent packing back to her home only to be tormented by our pollution of noise on the many nights ahead.
A few weeks later, we were still in that park doing the same thing. Apart from a disgruntled elderly woman, no one else had dared to speak up against our shameless violation of noise laws, which we would sometimes break for two hours in the same spot before we'd get bored and leave. But on this night, we were visited by a gang of concerned onlookers. This was at about 3:00AM, and we were completing our night with a display of bottle rockets. Logan seemed overly enthusiastic about staying up even later and continuing with the fireworks, but I was getting really tired and nodding off on some playground equipment nearby, when off in the distance we heard several men holler, "Who the fuck is setting off fireworks out here?!" More curses came from a park entranceway east of us, as we planned our next move. Logan, readying a small hunting knife he always kept on him, seemed the most willing to fight; Ryan, being a tad more nervous than the rest of us, seemed more inclined towards flight; me, being too tired for either, continued laying on the play equipment in hopes that we would be capable of diffusing the situation. Soon, four silhouettes stepped out of the darkness to reveal the identities of Logan's neighbour-friend and his drunk companions. "You the one setting off those fireworks, buddy?" asked one of the boys. Logan and I knew we were out of the woods at this point, but Ryan, having never met there guys before, was still cautious. "Yeah, you want some?" Ryan bargained, and they were delighted to take him up on his offer. Being drunk, they were far more entertaining to sit back and watch for the remainder of the night, as they broke the tails off of the bottle rockets, sending them careening off into unpredictable paths. One of them came up with the good idea of launching one from between his butt cheeks and he screamed as the sparks nearly cauterized his anus. Eventually we were out of shit to blow up and both parties walked, staggered, or crawled back our respective places of rest.
There was the aforementioned beach party incident that resulted in a bottle rocket shooting me in the ass. Logan tells the story as if I carelessly ran in the path of the bottle rocket. My excuse is that bottle rockets hardly fly in a straight line, especially when they're fired cocked to their side in the sand, and that I was expecting it to catch wind and fly over me as I hit the dirt. Nevertheless, I can now admit running left or right is by far the better course of action to take in the future.
Nearing the end of summer, having developed troll's remorse, and also fearing that Sherwood Village was at its wits' end, I was often bitchy and hesitant towards the notion of setting off anymore fireworks in the park at night. Logan now worked the graveyard shift at NCO, leaving Ryan and I alone to try and come up with fun by ourselves. Both of us enjoy "The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!" as much as the next 90's-starved young adult, but drinking Jag and watching reruns just wasn't stacking up to the amount of action we had become accustomed to over the last few months. Like some kind of addicts, we could think of no better solution to our boredom but to go out and set off fireworks yet again, but we couldn't do so in the park anymore. Considering the liquor we had with us, I instead suggested that we go on a Drunk Walk (I just got my idea for the next chapter) across town and that we stop to take shots and fire off bottle rockets / M-80's at various landmarks on our trip. We did start our drunk walk in the park however, where we did set off a fire cracker or two for old time's sake. I think my suspicions about the park residents being at their wits' end were confirmed, because by the time we reached Pizza Pizza (about two blocks away), we could hear police sirens. With the fear of prosecution put into us, we hid inside said pizza parlour for the next half hour while we also enjoyed a late night snack. By then, we felt the heat had died down enough for us to walk the streets safety once again, though we stuck mostly to the Howard Watson Trail (a nature path that runs away from most streets) from then on. Along the path we walked, stopping to slam back Jagermeister on the benches near the YMCA, halting to throw M-80's at the frogs in the creek by Harvey's Bingo, and slowing down to fire bottle rockets aimlessly into the trees behind Home Hardware. Much like Sherwood Park, there are the occasional houses that surround the Howard Watson Trail, and from those houses more complaints to the police were made. At that point in the night, we were just passing the part of the path that crosses Exmouth St., which is basically the section of the trail the leaves town. From that point on, we'd practically be out of ear shot of any of Sarnia's resting inhabitants, and thus out of the police's hair. Before we continued ahead, I spotted a garbage bin illuminated by a street lamp. Reminded of a leftover cup of pudding from my work lunch, I came to realize this bin was the perfect arena for our next stunt. I asked Ryan for an M-80 and I stuffed it as far into the pudding as I could without burying the fuse. We lit it and took a few large steps back before it exploded, sending caramel pudding flying thirty feet into the air. We shared a laugh while examining the shredded pudding cup and the rorschach painting it splattered across the surrounding area, then continued on our way down the path. It was no more than thirty seconds later when we looked back and saw a police cruiser drive by the area where we just blew up the pudding. We had just crossed into the darkness of a trail, invisible to the naked eye; we were literally one step ahead of the cops. Had we lingered to laugh at the pudding slightly longer, we would have probably spent the rest of the night in the drunk tank; there would have been no talking our way out of it like when Ryan stole the number 2 off a Pizza Pizza sign (not a long enough story to write about). The sight was considerably sobering for us. Though we knew we'd easily be escaping the cops by going further up the path, we were suddenly reminded of the fact of how foolish we were being nonetheless. The overpass we were about to approach on the path is rumoured to house gangs, hobos, and junkies at night (as evidenced by its copious amounts of graffiti). We didn't want to get mugged, and we were realizing it was now 4:00AM with an hour long walk back home. Slightly deflated, we decided to call it a night from that point. Ryan and I retraced our steps back down the path, finishing off whatever Jag we had left, and parted ways at the fork in the road between his house and mine. Though we set off across town only as a measure towards avoiding the police, the drunk walk across the trail was an unintentional conquest of the whole town in a campaign to piss off everybody with the setting off of fireworks. Throughout the summer, we disturbed the parks around Sherwood, and the beaches of Blue Point, but in that one night, our faggotry managed to reach from one end of the city to the other (albeit a very thin part of the city). Ryan still had a shitload of fireworks left over at this point, and they would last until the following summer, and even after that point he'd still find the odd bottle rocket under the couch or something, but the drunk walk, more or less, became the epitome of our firework adventures.
16 Drunk Walk
Drunk Walks are a tradition I practised before my initiation into the LBC. To put it simply, it just involves walking around town and drinking, but the actual tradition itself is more ritualistic than that. My friend Danny and I were the ones who began doing this back in 2005. Being eighteen, we were slightly below the legal drinking age, which hindered our ability to acceptably drink in our own homes, at least in our minds. Because of this, we took to the streets instead, but to help curb the possibility of being caught by law enforcement, we carefully charted out a route of side roads, parks, and back alleys that would take us on a tour across town while also keeping out of plain sight. This is a highly preferred activity on some occasions, as it takes the participants away from the distractions of television, music, and general noise and allows for some fresh air, (relatively) clear thinking, and genuine male bonding. To be honest the route isn't that carefully planned out, and it changes depending on who's participating, but there are some crucial landmarks which are always almost visited.
The first and most important landmark is the Wooden... Thing in the park beside Queen Elizabeth II Elementary School. This was often the very first spot Danny and I would take our initial sips of liquor both because of geological convenience and historical significance. QEII Elementary is where Danny and I went to (at least some of) grade school. From grade 4 to grade 8, most of the play equipment was torn down on the part of the field we were allowed to be on during recess. All that remained was one slide and the "wooden thing." The school faculty cried lack of budget for our deprivation of play equipment, but coincidentally new equipment was built the year after my grade 8 graduation. We weren't even allowed to make full use out of the baseball diamond and soccer field we had, so the "wooden thing," through circumstance, became sort of a hang out spot for THE ZONE. The "wooden thing" has been vandalized and partially destroyed (not always by us) a few times in the last sixteen years, but it's always been repaired, implying it also holds some significance to the school. What significance is unknown to me at this time. Regardless, we occasionally expel our childhood boredom and frustrations on it when visited during drunk walks. Back when Danny and I were light weights (and drank harsh crap such as Fireball), it wasn't uncommon to puke on and around the "wooden thing." It is also home of some "MEET THE DUKE" graffiti.
The second crucial landmark is the Howard Watson Trail. This trail is usually the location of long bike rides during summer days, but is the occasional home of drunk walks during the night. Despite our constant fear of being attacked, it's generally isolated and dead after dark and I don't recall ever running into anyone on the trail while on it. Perhaps the most memorable event that took place on the trail, apart from Ryan and I setting off fireworks all over it, was when Kyle, BJ (two co-workers from NCO) and I downed an entire fifth of Fireball while only walking down a small portion of the trail (maybe about two blocks in length) on our way to BJ's house.
Landmark #3 is the area around the Canton Chinese Buffet and K106.3 radio station. Both of these areas are regarded as one landmark since they are right next to each other. The Canton serves as a landmark because one night Danny and I climbed onto its roof to drink a gross, cheap liqueur known as Alpenbitter, and we chased it down with green Jolly Rancher soda, which we discovered only enhances Alpenbitter's terrible flavour. I think I talked Logan into climbing on to the roof many weeks later in an attempt to get him over his fear of heights, but I don't remember if I actually got him to go up there before the Canton people got wise to us and took down the ladder at the back of the plaza. With the Canton no longer a place or interest, we began visiting the radio station more frequently. The radio station actually makes a few good attempts at preventing drunks from visiting their property. The area is well lit and they play their radio music outside (a tactic that is employed to discourage loiterers, as I would later learn in law school). These tactics, however do nothing to people willing to confront them out of spite, and I have left a pool of vomit or two at their back doorstep to let them know.
The final quintessential landmark for most drunk walks is the hill outside of Lambton College. At the top of said hill lies a large slab of concrete. It's a good spot to wind down after a night of heavy drinking, enjoy a last couple shots, and engage in all varieties of philosophical conversation.
There are some other minor landmarks, like the "wooden thing" outside of Home Depot, behind the Lambton College residential building, Sherwood Park, and behind Punk Around, but none of them hold a great deal of significance at this time.
Drunk walks have also been known to take place while under the influence of hallucinogens, but since no time is required to sit down and take shots of liquor, the ritual of visiting landmarks is absent.
17 C.O.P.S., Other Old Cartoons, and MST3K
Watching old cartoons is an obsession of ours. We'll watch just about anything, good or bad, made in the last century. I'm not sure if this is when it happened, but I remember this hobby forming around the time I bought both volumes of the "Super Mario Bros. Super Show!" on DVD. Of the many cartoons I watched as a child, this one probably warms my heart the most. Heck, I used to get up at 4:00am to watch it on YTV when I was a kid! I think Ryan and Logan both have a special place for it somewhere as well, as we all watched the series in its entirety (and re-watched some of it) after a couple of weeks. Once we had our fill of Mario, we hit up YouTube trying to find other childhood cartoons we liked... Skeleton Warriors, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Madballs, Dungeons & Dragons, and eventually C.O.P.S., which Ryan would later go on to purchase the DVD collection of.
C.O.P.S. (short for Central Organization of Police Specialists) was a cartoon series and comic book based on the Hasbro toy line called "C.O.P.S. N' Crooks" and was, in fact, the last television series produced solely for the sake of pushing toy sales due to some dumb law that was passed (I don't know how stuff like Mighty Max and Beyblades got away with it; I'm just regurgitating what I've been told before). It's your standard late 80s-early 90s style of children's cartoon featuring outrageous characters, ADD inducing action, and cheap outsourced animation. Oh, and it also was one of those cartoons which would provide some sort of post-episode public service announcement ("Kids, don't flash your cash!"), which is something I always get a kick out of. I can't speak for everyone, but the thing that makes C.O.P.S. stand out over the other generic 80's cartoons are the characters Big Boss and Dr. Badvibes. The chemistry between the two, with Big Boss' Edward G. Robinson-style rantings demanding Dr. Badvibes come up with bigger and better schemes / machines / whatever is so hilarious that it itself became a meme which personified the entire series for us. Even now, years later, mock arguments break out between Big Boss and Dr. Badvibes (voiced by Ryan and I), or when all words fail, a simple "Nyaaah!" is enough to lighten the mood.
Ryan soon took to collecting cheap movie collections. You know, those '13 Films in One!' box sets you'll see in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart? First it was martial arts collections, then is was cowboy movie collections, and before long he got his hands on a few ten dollar cartoon collections containing like a thousand cartoons combined. Of all the collections, the cartoons are probably my favourite, perhaps because of the variety of content. In this collection you have some classics, some forgotten gems, some quirky films that are now retrospectively funny, the hilariously racist cartoons, and some that were just plain shit. It was fun getting inebriated and going through a big chunk of these cartoons, giving our colourful commentary on the way. Then we started to realize the shit that was coming out of our mouths in response to what we were watching was also pretty damn funny, which is kind of a coincidence since Ryan was also beginning to get back into Mystery Science Theater 3000 again.
If you don't know what MST3K is... well, you're just going to have to look up the Wikipedia article yourself, because you're dumb as hell for not knowing and I'm not going to spend an extra paragraph trying to explain it. Having come to the realization that what we were doing was pretty much "riffing" everything we watched, bringing my new video camera over and recording ourselves just seemed like a logical idea. We recorded ourselves riffing a good few cartoons, the most notable being "John Henry and the Inky-Poo". Based on the epic American folk tale, we found that this particular cartoon depicts the legend, John Henry, needlessly dying for the sole purpose of winning a pissing contest with a machine. Also worth noting is the beady-eyed, big-lipped depiction of black people. Users, however, were pissed when we put that video up on YouTube. It also caught the eye of Ray Pointer: some nobody animator who drew a few hand cells for Tom & Jerry and Dora The Explorer and now sells reproductions on eBay for like $10 a pop. Okay, by following that link you can see I'm exaggerating, but I didn't think someone in "the business" would actually be so petty as to track our videos down on YouTube and go on a multi-post tirade in my comments section. You can tell he told some of his buddies and sent them after us, too. Go out and buy the thing for five bucks at BestBuy and upload it yourself, niggas! Also learn what MST3K and a riff is, so you know not to click it when you see the title! Anyway, our John Henry riff is actually the second hit when you search the cartoon on Google and it's funny as feck knowing that our video is the only version out there and that all these people are being directed to it. Actually, I do feel kind of bad that no one can find the original, unedited version after seeing how much it meant to so many people, and I thought about uploading it, but Ryan lost the DVD, so what can you do?
"John Henry and the Inky-Poo" wasn't the only riff people hated. Actually, all of our riffs receive more negative feedback than good. I'm not sure if it's because people can't read "MST3K Tribute" in all the titles; because we're not as funny as we think we are; or because of the terrible production quality, but since my ego disrupts my ability to believe that there might be a possibility that I'm not a talented comedian, I'm going to assume it's a combination of the latter and the former. After pretty much just receiving hate for all those videos, I more or less put the kibosh on any future riffs until we work out a system that allows for better film and voice recording quality, instead of sounding like a couple of stoned dudes recording their TV, which some commenters have pointed out. In the mean time, we've stuck to regular YouTube videos of doing stupid Jackass shit, and dissing Loose Change 9/11.
18 Crying Guy & Tardo The Pizza Delivery Guy
You'd think we gave these generic nicknames to people for legal reasons, but it's a combination of us being cowardly and using them to talk shit about people while they're in the same room, and because we're too self-absorbed to actually remember the names of anyone who isn't any benefit to us in the short term. Actually, I can only speak for Logan and myself on that one. Ryan's just bad at matching names and faces. Danny's pretty good with names usually.
During our then-weekly visits to Puck Around, it wasn't uncommon to see the official bar slut Naughtya (her real name isn't too far from that, phonetically) and her boyfriend / baby's daddy Brian. Logan and Naughtya dated back in grade 9 when he was still a virgin, and it stayed that way as she broke up with him two weeks later to follow her calling of fucking everyone else in high school (and not me). Years later, she managed to only pop out one kid, who she would abandon just about every Thursday so that she could come to Puck Around to drink on her boyfriend's tab and harass us. I have nothing against most sluts, including her, as she would sometimes order rounds of drinks for us, which was awesome on those low pay periods, but it didn't stop us from having a little fun seeing how far she'd still go with other guys, aka us. Logan, perhaps seeking to slay old dragons, would sometimes insinuate taking her out back, or at least try to negotiate a threesome with her and her boyfriend. This was sometimes while her boyfriend was in the bar, mind you. During open mic night one Sunday, Brian was up on the stage playing loud enough for Logan to talk her into showing us her tits. We were in a booth, so Brain was none the wiser.
None of us got as far as actually banging her (through lack of trying on Ryan and my part), but these shenanigans continued on for years, into as far as 2009. By then, Logan had moved away to Alberta and Ryan and I were left to our lonesome in the bar most nights. This somehow seemed to pique Naughtya's interests, as she took this opportunity to add me on Facebook, while also openly hitting on Ryan. On yet another open mic Sunday, Ryan and I were there, though I don't know why. I had quit NCO for going on two years by then and hadn't had another job since, and he was laid off more-or-less after Geek Squad collapsed like the sham that it was. We maybe scraped together enough cash for three pitchers, but then our saviour Naughtya came by. Being the only other two people around our age there that night, she decided to buy us a couple rounds and entertain us while her boyfriend performed his set of Neil Young and Pink Floyd covers. She had obviously been there since around late noon, as she was visibly more drunk and slutty than she usually puts on at 9:00pm. Though he made no effort to put her on, she continued to hit on Ryan, until one of her boyfriend's songs concluded, and the bar fell into complete silence as she was still yelling sweet nothings across our table. The situation was too surreal to actually happen outside of a sitcom, but there it was, and there we were, in it. We all recoiled from each other. Naughtya stuttered for a moment before managing to muster out, "Oh... Sorry, honey! Tee hee!" Pretty much immediately after, she gathered her coat and went home. We awkwardly finished our drinks and did the same, but not before getting to enjoy Brian's rendition of "Comfortably Numb." Upon closer inspection, I could see two tears run down his face and glimmer in the reflection of the stage lights. He has been known as "Crying Guy" ever since.
Apparently bad vibes had been brewing up to that point, because it wasn't long until Naughtya and Crying Guy broke up. Sometimes we'd see Crying Guy in the bar playing more crappy music, but Naughtya pretty much vanished from the scene. I followed her activities via Facebook. She went on to date some other guy, and she got knocked up again. Her and her new man lasted maybe a month, but I think she took the whole pregnancy thing as an opportunity to stay away from bars for a while. Probably a good idea. I deleted her from my friends list. 'Haven't heard from her since.
Anyway, back in 2006, Ryan and Parson's apartment was a common venture (and yes I'd use that word literally on some nights) after our visits to Puck Around. The common routine basically involved ordering pizza and watching Videodrome. Actually, being drunk wasn't that common of an excuse to order pizza, because we did it all the time. We were basically the fucking Ninja Turtles! We used to order from Pizza Pizza a lot, but they were eventually retired after they refused to do anymore deliveries because we sent back dozens of orders. I hated their pizzas anyway, and voted on Domino's instead. Domino's was pretty cool for a while, especially because they were one of a few chains that would deliver NCO, but then they hired a new delivery guy who we nicknamed "Tardo."
Tardo is by far the worst delivery person we had ever encountered. I make no exaggeration when I claim that he messed up just about every delivery he made to us, which is saying a lot, because they sent him to us almost all the time. I'm just going to summarize a few things about him, as a story about a mentally challenged pizza delivery guy doesn't quite warrant earning the longest chapter.
- He was often late. It didn't matter what day or time is was, you could usually expect Tardo one or two hours after the order was made.
- Sometimes he didn't show up at all. At first we thought that maybe he was having trouble getting into the apartment building / NCO, but even when we'd take time to actually stand outside and wait for him, he still wasn't anywhere to be seen.
- Sometimes he'd show up in places we didn't tell him where to go. Once, when ordering from NCO, Ryan and I had to wait three hours until we got our pizza. This process actually involved us having to order the same pizza thrice, until a security guard came looking for us asking about a pizza guy wandering around in the parking lot. Tardo complained about being told to deliver to the back entrance... The receipt on the box, written in a bold, angry hand, stated "FRONT."
- He couldn't work the wireless debit machine very well. Sometimes he'd refuse to bring the debit machine with him. We rarely paid with cash, so we'd just send him back to get it.
- He stole our pizza, as one time we got one with a whole piece missing.
- When we actually did pay with cash, he couldn't handle the basic math. It wasn't too bad, as he'd usually only shortchange us by a few cents, but sometimes he'd take off with five or ten bucks before we noticed.
It got to a point where it was just painful to order from Domino's, knowing we'd probably have to deal with Tardo. I couldn't look him in his googly eyes anymore, and on some nights neither could Ryan or Logan, so we'd knock on Parson's bedroom door and beg him to pay for the pizza for us. Once Logan and I lost our jobs, the constant pizza orders stopped, and thus did our encounters with Tardo. Ryan, who still remained at NCO, albeit in another division, met an ex-Domino's employee who used to know Tardo, and informed him that Tardo had passed away at some point in 2008. Even to this day, I'm too stubborn to feel any compassion for a dead delivery guy who inconvenienced me from stuffing my face with pizza sooner than later.
19 Joke Liquors
We drink a lot. Well, actually "a lot" is relative. We probably don't drink as much as your mom and dad; our mayor, or a judge. Still, I'd put us somewhere between James Rolfe and a frat boy. Regardless, when you drink as much as us, you start to dabble here and there between different brands of alcohol to try and entertain the possibility of acquiring new tastes. Sometimes we find a hidden gem (Polish honey liqueur, for example), though more often than not, we encounter just plain mediocrity, if not much worse. By now, we've encountered enough of what we call the "joke liquors" that we now have a decent collection of stories that surround them.
RED CAP: The stories of this beer go back way before I met Ryan. Back then, him and his former roommate, Parsons, used to party quite a lot. Red Cap was once advertised as "the beer that doesn't give you hangovers," though Ryan tells of a story when he and Parsons bought a two-four of the stuff and suffered three days of the worst hangover they've ever experienced. Years later, during the days of the first Yagsalvanias, Ryan's warnings, like most of the things he tells me not to do, only encouraged me to take on the brew out of arrogance and spite. I bought a 12-pack for myself a couple of times, and didn't have any problems, but this was when it was packaged in classic Canadian "stubby" bottles and was branded as a "premium" beer. Now, it's a discount beer ($15.95 for a 12-pack, not bad) that's packaged in long-necked bottles. I've recently tried the new Red Cap, during my 24th. birthday, and to prolong this paragraph with descriptions of my stool the next morning would only give you nightmares. I wouldn't recommend it, even as a joke, if you plan on keeping your intestines for long.
BACARDI 151: Once I became the age to legally purchase alcohol, I started off fairly extreme. At first, just about the only hard liquor I could handle was Fireball, which some found to be shocking. In my opinion, the taste of hot cinnamon was pretty great compared to the array of other common flavours that varied between rotting fruit and licking a barrel. Since all other liquors, to me, tasted like burning garbage water anyway, I reckoned I'd be able to handle taking shots from one of the strongest rums available in the province, weighing in at 75.5%. It was extreme stuff, but it didn't really get an unusual reaction out of me, apart from maybe puking. Other people were more interesting. Howard claimed that he went blind after having two shots of it. A single shot, for Leah, induced a coughing fit resulting in her having to remove her bra until she was able to breathe again. This became the first joke liquor of the LBC. It sat in Logan's liquor collection for a few months, where we'd try to dare newcomers into trying it. Not many were up to the task, so it dwindled away between Logan and I psyching ourselves up into drinking it from time to time. For years, there's been discussions about trying a Yagsalvania style of drinking game involving 151, referred to as "Cruising Interstate 151," but I guess we haven't found ourselves to be worthy... yet.
"THE JAMAICAN RUM": The specific brand of rum isn't certain, though it's probably Wray & Nephew Overproof White Rum. Logan's mom and stepfather brought this stuff back to Canada after a trip to Jamaica (duh). At 63%, it's not as strong as 151, but it's still pretty tough. Despite this, it is the worst liquor I've ever tasted. And it's not even because it's strong, because it doesn't taste strong; it's its flavour. I would best describe "The Jamaican Rum" as what I think week-old sweat wringed out of a jock strap would taste like. Much like the 151, a bottle of this stuff lasted for months, maybe six or seven in this case, before it was finished, and then Logan bought it again for laughs. By that point, handling joke liquors had become something of a ritual where Logan and I would drink until we had the courage to try stuff like this. Sometimes the courage didn't come soon enough, as I could sometimes just sit there quivering before a shot of Jamaican Rum for ten minutes until barely forcing it down my throat. We did have one friend though, Liz, who despite being pretty girly, downed shots of it without even flinching. Woman still seeking empowerment should do so with acts such as these, as individuals such as Liz draw more awe through these amazing and fearless feats in simpler ways that most men can relate to.
WEED VODKA: Not the same weed vodka from my 20th. birthday, mind you, but a different batch we made a year later. I don't remember the occasion it was mixed for, but more effort was put into it than last time. This new patch was given two months to settle before we even first reopened it, which worked great the last time we did it, but this time something went horribly wrong. It was either due to using the wrong brand of vodka (Smirnoff, which is shit to begin with), or a kink in the straining process, the result being a concoction most foul. The weed inside had turned brown, and it tasted like dandelions. I think we strained out at least some of the chopped up bud, but chunks of it still remained afterwards, and it was just a really gross and awkward feeling having those chunks land on the back of your tongue after slamming back a shot. There are no funny stories about this bottle of weed vodka giving people super powers or anything like that, just a trial of tears. Our friend Tyson, who's sworn off cannabis for years, was able to down shots of it no problem, though.
SKITTLES VODKA: There are several variants to the Skittles Vodka recipe, but the one I follow is a fifth of Absolute and a bag of Skittles minus all the green ones. Urban myth states that adding the Skittles, while omitting the lime flavoured ones, somehow increases the alcohol content of the vodka. I imagine most people just try it for the taste (which isn't as great as you might think, by the way). I was confronted with this myth and stories of people who have tried it back in 2005 during some of my earliest days of drinking. I was told about a friend of Logan's named Cameron who drank some once, and all it did was make him retarded (not in the usual drunken way) and spending most of the night filling a bucket with his puke. Again, faced with horror stories and fair warnings, I decided to test this myth on myself. I don't remember puking on the night that I first tried it, but I basically turned into a zombie early on in the night. Logan and a few others were watching "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" while I blankly stared at the screen, drooling on Logan's bed, phasing in and out of consciousness (though in my defence, that was probably a symptom of how boring that film is). I've made it one more time recently, in 2011, so that Tina may experience it. We still suffered some minor penalties to INT after drinking it, but I think my current skepticism towards the 'increased alcohol value' myth allowed me to overcome most of its side-effects.
DOMINICAN RESORT BAR: On January 2008, Logan and I went on a trip to the Dominican Republic. The resort we stayed at was brilliant, huge, and all inclusive. There was only one draw back: They cheaped out on the booze. Apart from Presidente beer and Brugal rum, all of the other all inclusive liquors were nameless brand stuff. Laying closer to sea level, it was very difficult to get a buzz going on just beer. After having nine or ten beers, Logan and I would get desperate and order up shots to try and get things started for once. I hate rum normally, so I didn't get to experience shots of Brugal, but I did try the whisky and vodka. The whisky tasted like coffee grounds-- so bad that I only tried one shot during my entire week there. The vodka I had a few times, but it tasted like rubbing alcohol mixed with "The Jamaican Rum." I don't know what the fuck they use to make liquor in the Caribbean, but if it isn't the ingredients' fault, they really need to stop filtering their stuff through old gym socks.
ALPENBITTER: I mentioned Alpenbitter's "terrible flavour" in the Drunk Walk chapter, but there was actually a time when some of us liked it. Back in mid 2008 or so, I discovered it while shopping around for cheap liquor. Too broke to buy Jagermeister, I picked up Alpenbitter instead, since its very name describes that it was a bitter. Some agree and some disagree, but I thought it used to taste a lot like actual Jag, except this stuff had the benefits of being around $8.00 cheaper and 5% more alcoholic. For a while, Logan and I drank it fairly frequently, and it got its own Yagsalvania-themed drinking game about going to a town called Yagton. It seemed like Alpenbitter was going to replace Jagermeister completely, but one day, everything changed. My guess is that the brewing company changed the recipe or the standards in which it was made, because the flavour changed overnight some time in early 2009. Now, whenever I drink it, all I taste is soapy dish water. I've tried various cocktails to try and compensate for this shame (their website suggests mixing with orange juice; I would highly recommend against it), but nothing works. If you mix it with something, the Alpenbitter just takes over the flavour; instead of just being a man and doing shots of it, you'll just end up having to force a whole glass of it down. It isn't a joke liquor in the classic sense, where Logan or I keep it hidden away to gross newcomers out, but because it's a joke compared to its previous self, which had so much potential.
20 Greenies
There isn't much explanation behind what a greenie is. It's a penny that's oxidized to the point where the penny has become green. Sometimes it'll get to the point where the penny will start to turn black, in which case it's referred to as a "blackie." I'm not known to be especially mysophobic (stories of me eating floor food and ten year old Halloween candy considered) but there's just something unsettling about greenies. Perhaps its a combination of the penny's lack of worth on top of the visible corrosion and grime; perhaps it's just because we just hyperbolize everything to the point of fantasy. Yeah, it's likely the latter, but fuck you. There is also a brand of dog and cat treats called Greenies, which we found pretty funny when we discovered it.
The classification of the greenie came about in the days when Ryan used to keep a change pile in one of the corners of his old apartment. It's already been established that most of us value debit over paper money, so it should come to no surprise that coins were merely something to be thrown away in some corner to pile up until one cloudy day when beer money needs to be scrapped together. And there in the corner that change would sit for who knows how long. Eventually, Ryan would go looking for small change to buy an energy drink or something only to discover the green piles of rust staining the rugs in his apartment. Other coins can be subject to the oxidization process, but pennies seem to be the most susceptible. In some extreme cases, greenies will become nothing more than unrecognizable disks of green and black zinc.
While I was working at NCO, I built something of a "greenie factory." It was a juice bottle containing a handful of pennies swimming in a brew of fruit punch, Joker energy drink, coffee, salt, sugar, 7UP, Pepsi, Smarties, Nerds, Runts, pencil shavings, and opened battery cells. After a while, a thick film began to build at the top of the liquid, which I image would be the blood of the greenie, and when shaken, it would dissolve and turn the concoction back into a sickly brown colour. The lid of the bottle was firmly tightened and sealed with masking tape, and was clearly labelled as "Poison!" and "Do Not Drink!" but these warnings weren't obvious for the typical knuckle dragger you'd usually see working at Geek Squad. Near Ryan and my cubicle worked a guy we called "Ratstachio" (the reasons for this nickname must be obvious, and no I don't remember his real name). Ratstachio had, what I would best describe as, a fetish for eating batteries (and reading softcore hentai at his desk, but that's fairly normal by comparison). The guy would seriously chew on batteries throughout long portions of his shifts, and sometimes the batteries would break and he'd go home sick. Well, one day after my weekend away from work, I came back to find my greenie factory missing. After some minor investigation, I was told that Ratstachio had unsealed it and drank from it. He became sick from it soon afterward and the supervisor had to throw it out. Ratstachio wouldn't be seen for the next four days, plus however long he was gone during my weekend off.
I'd give Ratstachio his own chapter but it'd just be variants of the same story basically. The kid really fucking loved batteries. One time Ryan called him out on it, and he denied everything.
21 Yagsalvania V
I know there's been a part about Yagsalvania already, but a few things happened in the years following Yagsalvania III. Actually, Yagsalvania IV wasn't very memorable (or I just blacked out during the entire thing), but it did mark a new tradition: electing a new mayor. Yagsalvanias happen about once a year, and in accordance with that, we started voting for new candidates during every next one. The electorial process is pretty simple: whoever gets to Yagsalvania first names the new mayor. Lord Quaitar was mayor for the first three Yagsalvanias, and on Yagsalvania IV, Logan won and dubbed Nathan Explosion as the next mayor.
Yagsalvania... Yagsalvania... Is the word beginning to lose meaning yet?
Yagsalvania V took place during the January of 2010. Those were dark times. The LBC was suffering worse than it ever had, as Logan had moved to Alberta to become a snowboarder and hotel groundskeeper. I took to hanging out with Danny a lot, who was renting his own apartment at the time, though he had recently gone through a rough breakup. We both ignored our problems with copious amounts of alcohol, which led to some extreme nights. We'd shoot BB guns off inside; we'd throw dangerous shit off his balcony (my favourite being a seven gallon jar of pickles); we'd have airsoft fights around the building; and we'd destroy his neighbour's apartment that he was house sitting. Of course, this all leads up to the fact that Yagsalvania V went down there as well.
We managed to get Ryan to come over to the apartment a lot which led to ideas of a new Yagsalvania brewing. Danny had never taken part in it before, so it seemed like a solid plan. Therefore, on one weekend, we bought our bottles of Jag and it was on. The “Yagsalvania map” had a change in format. Before, I'd write down Roman numerals going from 1 to 20, and players would just circle what shot they were at. On the new map, the shots were represented by circles, lined up in sets of ten, and after successfully completing a shot, the player could put a checkmark in it, or a smiley face, or a swastika-- whatever.
The night started off pretty normal. We played rounds of Unreal Tournament III, and watched episodes of Madballs and Today's Special. Danny and I baked nachos with shredded cheese, beef, and tomatoes (something I need to start making more now that I think about it-- delicious!) After we all got to about the ten shot mark, the wackiness began to set in. Dancing to Yakety Sax (from Benny Hill) was still as popular among us as ever, and there was some moments in the nights where we had some serious hoedowns. Danny decided that around now was a good time to inform us that his bearded lizard, Esteban, was all out of food, and he sent us to the grocery store to buy some special kind of lettuce. Well, skip to our drunk asses trying tell the difference between the right kind of bagged lettuce Danny needed and the wrong stuff in a slightly different looking package, which is what we got. Obviously when we got back Danny informed us that we fucked up, and a considerably heated argument started up over Danny insisting that what we got would kill his lizard, and me insisting that lettuce is lettuce (I really hate walking more than I have to when I'm drinking, unless it's a Drunk Walk). Danny feeding the lizard poison was non-negotiable and we ended up all having to go back to the store again. Ryan also took the time to get more energy drinks (for Jagbombs), which he paid for in nickels and dimes (making a clerk count ludicrous amounts of change is extra funny when you're drunk-- try it sometime).
Having to schlep around must have put Ryan in a spiteful mood, because apart from tormenting that clerk with his change, his also made up a new rule: All shots must be witnessed by at least one of the other participants before they are recorded on the map. A fair rule, but Ryan went nuts with it. Basically every shot Danny and I took for the rest of that night, he tried calling shenanigans on. I had Danny's back for most of the shots he took, and visa-versa, so the rule kind of just ended up backfiring in Ryan's face, as Danny and I would just begin denying the shots he took, whether on purpose or not. Regardless, every shot taken after that ten shot mark became a huge event. Someone would start shushing the other players, and demand they drop everything so that they could witness a shot being taken. Later in the night, I was at about seventeen shots, with Danny and Ryan about five behind me. There, I sat and kept a comfortable lead while I attempted to maintain my pacing and take a break for a while. We passed some time by giving Ryan a tour of Danny's neighbour's apartment. Said apartment is pretty gross, as its owner is a hoarder who still owns expired canned food from the early 90's, among other things. I snapped a pic of his bathroom floor, which was littered in dust, hair, grime, and used razors. I also took photographs of his dildo collection that he once shared with his daughter (some of which we'd later throw off his balcony and claim as missing on the office bulletin board), but I must have deleted it. One of the ancient food items the guy hoarded a lot of was Kool-Aid. I describe it as ancient because the man still had packets of the ORIGINAL Kool-Aid, and also other flavours they no longer sell. Having had run out of chaser, we stole his entire collection and risked fatal diarrhea after we mixed up a couple of batches (some packets couldn't be used to make Kool-Aid because the mixture had solidified into giant crack rocks).
PS: We turned out fine. I don't think Kool-Aid has an expiry date as long as you avoid the packets that have mutated.
We returned to Danny's apartment where I had realized that I hadn't been paying enough attention to the Yagsalvania map, as Danny and I were now tied. Panicked, I slammed back my next three shots and claimed the only victory not held by Logan. The original plan for the night actually involved Logan playing along with us via webcam, but it didn't end up happening. I think it was because of a last minute technical difficulty; however in retrospect it was a pretty bad idea, because I, at least, didn't want to be stuck keeping on eye on Logan's webcam to see when he'd be ready to take a shot. Plus, he would have beat me, and, well, fuck that. As the winner of Yagsalvania V, I elected Steve French as the new mayor, named after a character in the only episode of Trailer Park Boys I ever liked.
There was a Yagsalvania VI during June of that year for my 22nd birthday, and Logan was back! I don't want to talk much about that particular Yagsalvania, because I don't remember most of it, and what I was told was pretty embarrassing. There was a song I remember one of my uncles singing one time, which simply goes “Hoola! Hoola!” Well, after taking a pee on my backyard fence, I began singing it, though through slurred tongue it sounded more like “Eula! Eula!” and since then eula-eula has become something of a meme, sometimes chanted while chugging a their beer or taking shots of hard liquor. I didn't win Yagsalvania VI, as Logan returned with a vengeance and won by a huge landslide. There have been a couple non-official Yagsalvanias, but I haven't won those either. Though I've since broken records for most shots of Jag in one night (didn't black out either), I'm a teetotaler, and it's just something I've begun to accept. Maybe I'll beat Logan fair and square some day, but I wouldn't count on it.
22 New Years 2010
New Years is a very serious tradition in the LBC. January 1st is Logan's birthday, so every year, there's a big party at Logan's parent's house on New Years Eve. I've attended them all from 2006 until now, even though we're all twenty-four or older, and getting fitshaced with Logan's mom and puking everywhere is getting a little awkward now. However, as mentioned above, Logan was in Alberta for half of 2009 and 2010, so somehow all of us had to make due without. Ryan and I toyed with the idea of talking Logan's mom into still having a party at her house, but it wouldn't have been the same regardless.
Sorry for fucking with the timeline, but New Years Eve was actually a few days before Yagsalvania V. Danny and I were already getting pretty good at killing sobriety in his apartment, but Yag 5 considered, we didn't want to have NYE there and then have Yagsalvania V feel like a repeat, plus Danny, Ryan, and I aren't as likable as Logan so it probably would have just been the three of us alone, which is not how New Years works, dammit! So what else was there to do? Well, I had never gone bar hopping on New Years, and it was feeling pretty appealing at this point, especially because girls seem to get extra slutty on the holidays and I wanted to hook up. Thankfully, the boys were down with it.
The idea was to hit several of the bars along Exmouth, like we did during the '07 Bar Marathon, but the first bar we went to, La Cantina (which has since closed and been replaced by a bar called “Lizards”), felt cozy and we stayed there for the duration of the night. The night followed the usual pattern of starting off tame, with us sitting at a table and shooting the shit, then later drifting off into the wacky zone, but we'll get there in a little bit. First, let me tell you about about the second hottest girl I've ever seen in person. She had huge, near-perfect tits; the classic hourglass figure; sparkling, doey hazel eyes; plump dick-sucking lips covered in an off-pink gloss-- decent face and hair in general... OH, and she was talking to me! Now before you brush this off like I was rocking the beer goggles, let me tell you that I already knew this chick from one of my classes at Lambton College, so eat shit. Danny and Ryan hung out on the bar's balcony for a bit while her (what was her name... what was her NAME?!) and I did some catching up as talked about school. She became worried about ignoring her friends at the pool table, so she said she'd be right back, and she walked off just as Ryan and Danny walked back in with... another girl.
This person was about the polar opposite of the beauty I was just talking to. She was a 300lb., obnoxious, gap-toothed, loudmouth bitch. She said her name was Taneshaa, and she seemed to fall in love me at first sight. Now, sometimes when I tell this story, I like to pull a Momento and explain parts of it backwards to try and emulate how confused I was by this girl's behaviour, but this time I'm going to just lay it out there: Taneshaa was robo-tripping the entire night. Why that seems obvious now isn't really pertinent at this moment, but keep it in mind. So where was I...?
Oh right, this beast had fallen in love with me, and right from the moment we shook hands, she was in full flirt mode (I believe at one moment, she boldly stated “I want to fuck you”). I, having standards, and still clinging to the hope that she didn't scare away the hottie I was just with (she did...), I tried to be as unappealing and dismissive as I could. Once, I went up to order Jagbombs for Ryan and I (some guy actually bought them for me because he thought I looked like The Undertaker), and when I came back she cooed, “Oooh, one for me?” so instead of handing Ryan his drink, I went, “Nope!” strongly clutching both Jagbombs and chugging them in front of her. I kept shooting her hints, and she wasn't getting them. She lingered the whole night, and sadly I had to endure while I attempted to get wasted as a means of tolerating her. I was really grumpy about the hot chick being gone the whole time, but I did my best to hide it and not spoil the New Years spirit.
Danny and Ryan seemed to be pleased with her though, as my pleas to migrate to a new bar failed, but at least they were treating her like a barely-legal (I think she was 18 at the time) piece of meat. They didn't even buy her any drinks. No one did. I saw her drink a couple beers, but in hindsight, it was obvious she was stealing them off of other tables. Please understand that this was all over the space of like four hours, yet this person who was twice my size was acting two times as drunk than I was... hmmm, I wonder why, right?
The ball dropped and waiters came around with free servings of champagne and french fries. Taneshaa, after kissing Ryan and Danny, turned to me and insisted I was next. I was reluctant, but the last thing I wanted was Jabba the Hutt serving me to the Rancor for telling her to fuck off, which would have probably completely spoiled the mood. It was unpleasant to say the least. I didn't want to be kissing this calf; I'd seriously rather give my mother tongue than do it again. I have to emphasize the amount of rage I was bottling up to save face in front of my friends. I'm getting angry again just thinking about it!
Welp, New Years happened and we were there to see it. Staying in that bar any longer just seemed like a waste of money at that point (okay, we were all just broke), so we prepared to make our leave. Danny got it in his head that he wanted to bang this chick, and Ryan, for some reason, was going along with it. They began trying to talk me into a foursome (she practically accepted without them asking); I agreed just so we could get the fuck out of there as soon as possible. We were looking at an eight block walk back to Danny's apartment, because, well... you try getting a taxi at 1:00am on January 1st. It was like ten below out, windy as shit, and it sucked. Lucky for me, my memory is a little fuzzy around that time, so I don't have to relive the discomfort of it in my mind. A few blocks out of the bar, we passed a police woman on the other side of the street. She must have seen us three guys helping a drunk girl walk across town and put two-and-two together, as she called out...
“Hey!”
“...Hey!!”
“...HEY!!"
The officer's shouts fell on deaf ears. I was probably too drunk to even notice, but Danny and Ryan thought it was the best idea to just ignore the cop and hope she went away... and with our incredible luck, that's exactly what she did!
My memory conveniently kicks back in as we stepped into Danny's apartment. I was soaked, freezing, and wondering what the hell I was going to do the rest of the night... There's no way I could stand hanging around this Taneshaa person without any more booze, I had no clothes to change into, and it was too cold to immediately go back outside to walk home. I then remembered seeing a mickey of white rum in the girl's purse. When I'm drunk and still find myself in a bad mood, my stomach becomes a bottomless pit and I drink anything I can get my hands on (especially when I need to justify spending $80 at the bar, and barely feel close to blacking out). Meanwhile, things seemed to be going nicely between Taneshaa and the guys. They sat on either side of her as she began tearing off parts of her fishnet stockings in some lame form of striptease. I asked about the rum in her purse and she told me I could help myself, so I went into the kitchen to mix up a jug of the ancient Kool-Aid (Danny and I had taken a couple packets for ourselves before we later broke down and stole the entire collection during Yagsalvania V).
While I was stirring up the Kool-Aid, Taneshaa came in all wide-eyed. “They'retryingtoripoffmyclothesandgetmetotakeashowerwiththemIdon'tknowwhat'sgoingoooonnnn!” she blathered. I just looked at her like she was retarded while she sputtered out more jibberish for a minute, then peeked out of the kitchen and asked, “...what did you do to this girl?” thinking they must have done something really piggish to freak her out so suddenly. But no, for some mysterious reason, her mood swung into reverse, going from horny to petrified. She hid behind me, accusing Ryan and Danny of trying to rape her, or something, as they did they best to explain to her what had been going on the entire night, as if she hadn't been there (and for good reason). Have you ever been drunk and found yourself in a situation so weird/scary/hostile that you practically sobered up instantly? This was one of those situations, and it was worse for me than only feeling “kind of” drunk a few minutes earlier. Things had officially gone from bad to totally fucked up, and I didn't know what to do at that point, but I had to get out of it somehow, preferably by getting more drunk in the process. So, I started tying my boots, and without thinking, I said to Taneshaa, “I'm leaving. If you don't want to be left with these guys, you can come with me. I have a guest room you can stay in at my house.” Even then she seemed reluctant, as if she was weighing the pros and cons of either being raped by two perverts, or being murdered by me for ruining my New Years celebration (how ridiculous and far from the truth, eh? Hahahaha!). She eventually chose to come with me, and I had to endure her bitching about the cold and my rapist friends on another six block walk back to my house.
I didn't know what the fuck I was thinking by even welcoming her to come with me, but I knew I didn't want her coming onto me again, so I continued to act as unappealing as I knew how. I bragged to her about my action figure collection (which was impressive back then, before I gave most of them away), and I began telling her about Logan and my ex-girlfriend, and how much I missed them. Acting pathetic seemed to take enough effect-- she wasn't giving me the “I want to fuck you” eyes anymore, so I moved in and bluntly asked for the rum in her purse. She appeared to be a little insulted by my rudeness, but she perhaps felt obligated to at least give me a few drinks after I had “saved her.” We listened to some Judas Priest and the Bacardi White hit the back of my throat as my memory faded out for good this time. From there, I went to hide in the bathroom for whatever reason (I like taking showers when I'm really drunk, so I assume that). I never got around to showing Taneshaa where that guest room is, so when I didn't come out of the bathroom, she went to sleep in my brother's vacant bedroom.
I ended up back in my bedroom at some point, because I vaguely remember Taneshaa coming in and saying, “Yourdadsgivingmearidehomebye,” and leaving before I passed out again. When I woke up the next day, my mom seemed none too impressed. Not only was she ashamed that I passed out in the shower, and invited a stranger to sleep in my brother's bedroom, but apparently she also “went to the bathroom” in one of my brother's dresser drawers (I never confirmed if it was #1 or #2). So I felt like a complete lowlife for a good part of my day for abusing my parents trust like that, and thus I hid in my room and tried my best to nurse the hangover until supper was ready. When I came down to eat, my mother spoke up again, “So your dad gave that girl a ride home, and on the way she told him how you were at Danny's apartment and that he and Ryan were trying to force her to take her clothes off and stuff-- and that you took her home to get her away from them? I mean, I'm not happy that you were so drunk... but I guess... I'm proud of you.” I sort of had to throw my friends under the bus, but I was off the hook.
Despite that I have a lot of bad things to say about Taneshaa, she apparently had a lot of good things to say about me. So, in a way I am a complete lowlife, but fuck you Taneshaa, you were still the worst New Years ever.
23 Camping, Puke Bird, and No Homo
I wouldn't categorize myself or any of my friends as outdoorsmen per se, but many of us love camping. We're also procrastinators, so despite all the other hijinks we got into over the last six years, we never went on a camping trip even though we always wanted to (beach parties don't count). But all of that was going to change in 2011. That year, we actually got some shit done, like when Danny, Logan, and I finally got to see GWAR live.
The thing that really got us to light a fire under our asses was Danny's mom and step-dad breaking up. It was a pretty nasty process which left Danny's step-dad kicked out of his own house for a few months. The old man did a pretty good job fucking Danny up while he was growing up, thus him and I kind of wreaked havoc on the house until it was time to move out. After we had our way, Danny said I could have anything I wanted in the basement. Among some of the delicious loot I took from his hoarder ex-step-dad was a bunch of old camping equipment. There was marshmallow skewers, gas lanterns, cans of camping fuel, an emergency survival kit, and a portable toilet. Apart from the tent and food, we basically had everything we'd need for a camping adventure. So a time and place was planned, and then we prepared. I hit up Canadian Tire and a liquor store to acquire any extra supplies.
- Stolen camping shit: check.
- Headlamp: check.
- Cheap cooking pot: check.
- Food (mostly sausages, chips, baked beans, energy bars, ramen noodles, pudding, and pop): check
- Eating utensils: check.
- Gameboy: check
- Beer: check
- Jagermeister: fuck yes.
We were there for two days and two nights. The first night was suppose to be the more tame night, so I saved the Jagermeister for later and stuck with my beer. At first, we were a little iffy about drinking in the park, because I wasn't sure if their policies had changed since I was fourteen and my family would camp there. We, however, were never hassled, but instead greeted several times by the park's seasonal visitors who would frequently drive around in large convoys of golf carts. This display of boring old people doing their best to pass the time in their golf carts brought back an old inside joke: Fred and Martha.
Fred and Martha are two characters Ryan came up with. They're usually a mechanism we use to mock those who are conservative, elderly, and out of touch with today's society. Fred has a Maine accent and suppressed gay tendencies, while Martha is his generic old wife with the best old woman impersonation we can manage. On both nights we were there, Ryan and I eventually degraded to speaking exclusively in our impressions of Fred and Martha as we poked fun at the debacle of all of us getting drunk, being loud, breaking shit, burning shit, blowing up shit, and keeping our elderly neighbours awake. We weren't trying to be obvious about the fact that we were making fun of two neighbours specifically, but one of them (the man, so I guess "Fred") got pretty mad about it. Ryan caught him yelling about us to his wife at one point while he was throwing a piss, "I can hear them talking about me... I won't fucking stand for it!" Suffice to say, the old man never confronted us. No one confronted us. The whole trip was a non-confrontational, drunken, rip-roarin' good time (for us).
Despite trying to take it easy on the first night, Anthony brought out the tequila and started handing it around, and you know what they say about having beer before liquor. I came to hung over in Logan's car maybe around 10:30am, about four or five hours earlier than I'd normally like to. I couldn't continue to sleep off the hangover on account of it being the beginning of August and at least 100°F in the back of the Stratus with the windows open. Mike went a little overboard that night as well. At one point in the night he just disappeared. We didn't really think nothing of it, assuming he went to take a piss. Our alcohol-addled minds continued to think nothing of it for about another half-hour until one of us remembered that he was still missing and that we should maybe start worrying. We called out to him with no reply. A slightly longer-than-necessary search yielded the discovery of a drunk Mike trying to regain his bearings in the darkest corner of our lot, sitting near a large pile of puke. On his way there, he left a second pile of puke right beside the rear door of Logan's car.
Back to the next morning, I had eventually given up on sleep and grumpily wiggled my way out of Logan's car, only to be reminded of the puke pile now saturating my feet. The day was not starting off well. I walked over to the smouldering campfire, dragging my feet along the way to clean them as best as I could. I sat in one of the free lawn chairs with everyone else, as they were already awake, and I tried to think of how I could best remedy my hangover symptoms so that didn't spend half of my camping trip in agony. All the heat and sweating wasn't helping the dehydration. I decided that I'd at least fix that by having a shower. The only problem was that the showers were on the complete opposite side of the conservation area. Oh well, I just had to man up and walk all the way there. The walk really took it out of me. It was only like a kilometre from our lot, but I was already running on empty. Slowly but surely I shambled to the shower room door... only to find it locked, which was about when I proceeded to curse the name of every god I could immediately think of. There was no way I could walk back to the campsite; I thought I was going to die. I wandered around the building in hopes to find a vending machine, a hose, or something, when lo and behold, there were more shower rooms! I tried the other doors and when I found one unlocked, it was some of the about the most relieved I had ever felt in my life. With whatever energy I could still generate, I locked myself in the room, got undressed, and laid on the floor underneath the shower head while my tired body soaked in whatever water it could. Thankfully I didn't get any warts on my ass.
So there I laid in the shower for like an hour, until I figured it was worthwhile to make the longish walk back to camp. I still felt like shit, but I was at least capable of facing the day by then. I didn't want to even look at my bottle of Jagermeister until at least 9:00pm, so I spent a good part of the day resting in a lawn chair by the fire pit. For whatever reason, I drew my attention over to Mike's puke puddle and noticed a bird picking at the various semi-digested food bits. I chuckled and pointed over to the bird, and Ryan replied, "Yeah, that bird's been here, like, all morning eating Mike's puke." No one was able to identify what type of bird it was. It was just some small, ugly, boring, grey bird, and all it did the entire day was fly back and forth collecting bits of Mike's puke. It was obviously the same bird coming back every time; we didn't see any other birds like it anywhere else in the park. Without any proper name to call it by, we dubbed it to be The Puke Bird. We were probably just really bored and nutty from sitting in the sun all day, but it was super funny watching it come back time and time again to feast on more vomit. You'd think there would be plenty of berries, bugs, seeds... hell, bird feeders throughout the whole park, but no, Puke Bird loves to eat only puke.
Night came and I still felt pretty rough. Everyone began drinking, but I was reluctant. I knew the only way to escape my hangover out there was to fight fire with fire and get some booze into me, but I was afraid I might hurl the second the Jag' touched my tongue. After what was probably an hour, I had sized up the bottle enough to crack it open and take my first shot. It was a little unpleasant, but I got the hang of it after a few more swigs. The alcohol was running through our veins again as we soaked the fire pit in camping fuel to get the flames going again. This was our last night, so it was anything goes. Ryan started pouring the remaining camping fluid into empty plastic bottles and left them to sit for a few hours while the fumes inside expanded. 3:00am came around and we decided it was time to set those babies off. One by one, Ryan tossed them into the bonfire, some popping into large fireballs lighting up the forest several lots over. We made fun of Fred and Martha some more, loudly played NanoTek Warrior, and blasted GWAR, Dropkick Murphys, The Ramones, and ICP until at least five in the morning. Apart from all of that, we also said "no homo" and "pause" a lot.
I don't think I need to explain "no homo" to you. Yeah, yeah... it was funny, and then it became unfunny, but then The Boondocks had to make an episode about it and it became funny again. Ever since that episode aired, it wasn't uncommon for Logan, Ryan, and I to utter "no homo" after saying certain things, but on that night, with us five dudes all sitting together around a fire eating practically nothing but sausage all weekend, we ran that joke into the ground. I mean it, we ran that joke into the ground, in every sense of the term, in two nights. Sure, we go through a lot of inside jokes. After so many years, we don't joke about The Duke, The Smell, or greenies as much or as enthusiastically as we used to. But during that camping trip "no homo" was said a few thousand times. We killed it; it jumped the shark; it no longer held any meaning. Eventually most sentences were followed with "no homo" out of paranoia that some drunk asshole might call "pause" at the slightest implication of homosexuality. Even before the night was over, it wasn't close to being funny anymore. Calling "pause" on somebody drew nothing but ire. Since the camping trip, we don't really speak of it anymore. I'm pretty sure Logan made it quite clear that if he ever hears Ryan or I say "no homo" again, someone's getting punched in the dick...
... No homo.
But yeah, we were jerks. I stole all of my ice from the park office, and we left our giant pile of empties sitting in the lot upon departing. We assumed the park staff wouldn't mind cashing the bottles in, but after all the other bullshit we caused, I'm not sure they would have understood our intentions. I don't think we've officially been banned from the park, but next time we'll probably book our lot under a different name, just to be safe.
24 The Final Chapter-- NCO Part II: Cokehead Boogaloo
The first chapter of this giant blog concerning NCO is different now from the version I initially wrote back in 2008. Once I began creating new drafts and adding more chapters, I edited down and changed the context of certain parts because I was a little worried about the legal repercussions of what I had to say about my employment there. That's still a concern, but if you live in my town and have been reading the news, you'd know that as of March 2012, NCO is taking its ball and outsourcing its services to Puerto Rico, screwing over thousands of people like they screwed over me, all at once. Yup, my town's basically done for, at least until another telemarketing company comes in that is willing to fill in NCO's shoes. In the mean time, the town's unemployment rate is about to jump to around 14%, maybe higher. So, I think a lot of people are beginning to hop on the “fuck NCO” train, and wouldn't mind coming across this article of mine some day.
NCO is where it all of this started and that's where it's all going to end (probably).
I'm sure my disdain towards the company was made apparent in the first chapter, and I'm still pretty mad after not working there for like five years, but I'm still going to censor myself to an extent. I'm keeping all references to other employees on a single name basis-- just cuz. My story is partly a legitimate case of getting fucked combined with elements of me being a self-entitled nerdy brat, and though I somewhat deserved what I got, keep in mind that a lot of people before and after me got shafted much harder than I was, while people more deserving than me were given management positions. Here it goes.
I began working there around February 2006 after my friends Logan and Howard got hired and insisted I apply, if not at least so they would receive a bonus for referring me. Working side-by-side with some of my best friends sounded like a sweet ride, so I quit my job stocking shelves at Zellers (a shittier job, believe it or not) and got on board. I was started off with a computer aptitude test, which in hindsight was a waste of time considering they already hired 65+ year old men and women who had hardly touched a computer until working there. Compared to them I passed with flying colours, and from there I was accepted into their two week paid training. We were told that we were Wave 8 of their recruits, though we would find out a year later that we were actually Wave 9. A first in many fuck ups, I'm sure. In training, our instructor, Barb, encouraged us with stories of how Americans love spending money on useless (not her words) technical services, citing allegories of customers offering up their credit card information before they were even given an estimate. This turned out to be completely true... unless they were Mexican-Americans, African-Americans, Dutch-Americans, Arab-Americans, Native Americans, or American Natives. The hell with it, no one was ever happy to pay $130.00 or more to the Geek Squad when I talked to them. On the plus side, there was that benefits package, and Logan signed me as one of the beneficiaries to his $20,000 life insurance plan. The guy never died though-- WTF NCO?
My first position where was in their “Mission Control” division. More plainly put, I was on the team that customers called for service. Having people call me only to get mad after I gave them a $500.00 estimate wore on me pretty fast, and I was ready to quit after about three days. Perhaps management saw me quickly fading, because on the day I was considering not coming back, one of my general managers, Doom, called Logan and I to his office, where he offered us positions on the new Dispatch team. Dispatch was... exactly what it sounds like: we dispatched technicians to do work for customers who had already paid through their local Best Buy. This eliminated the whole sales aspect from Mission Control, so I gladly signed up. Dispatch is where I spent the remaining 18 months of my employment there.
Dispatch was actually a really easy place to work, and I enjoyed my time there... for like three months. As I said earlier, the company I worked for seemed to still be working out of the kinks of telemarketing, despite the profession existing for several decades. When we started, we were given a minimum goal of fourteen calls per hour, which was fine up until a barrage or new procedures, rules, and technical difficulties were introduced. The servers we ran our scheduling software on was junk; it would literally go down for hours at a time every week. When that happened, well, at first they just sent us home, which was pretty cool. But after some months, NCO decided it didn't want to be cool anymore and forced us to work through the problems. They told us to keep our work notes in WordPad, and to submit them later once the servers were back up. And when were we suppose to do that? In between the fourteen calls per hour we were already suppose to make, during out breaks, or perhaps after we were off the clock and no longer getting paid? Yes, that's exactly what we were expected to do apparently. More procedures got added, like whenever a client didn't answer their phone, we'd have to call back a second time, and if they still didn't answer, we'd have to fill out a physical form (despite us not being allowed to keep pens at our desks) detailing who we called, how many times we called, and how many ring tones we left before we hung up. More stuff like this encumbered our calls per hour, but I'm not going to bore you with the picky details, especially since it goes beyond the limits of my non-disclosure agreement.
My first supervisor on dispatch was Jenn. She was a major cokehead like several of the people in positions above me, but at least the neglect of her duties gave off the impression that she was nice. Every once in a while, she'd disappear for an hour to do a drug run, leaving us unsupervised. It was a nice treat, and allowed us to do some things we weren't normally allowed, like using MSN Messenger and surfing non-company websites. Her shift also ended an hour before the rest of the team's, so basically the last hour of our shifts was fun time. We generally screwed around and did nothing productive for that hour. As long as our overall calls per hour came to at least fourteen at the end of the day, we were sort of allowed to. This is probably where the entitlement issues I developed came from. Jenn eventually got knocked up, but that didn't curb her coke habit. Even twelve weeks into her term, my colleagues reported seeing her at parties, snorting rails openly. Jenn was fired not long after. You'd think that maybe the higher management probably did it in light of the drugs, but I wouldn't at all be surprised if it was just because they're too cheap to pay someone on maternity leave. She later went on to have that baby (which was her second). I don't know how things were for the little guy, but I expect the worst after our newspaper recently reported that forty babies born in our hospitals in 2011 suffered from drug withdrawl, which is up 20% from the year before. Yeah, things really aren't looking good for this town it seems.
Doom, one of our general managers that I mentioned earlier, called Ryan into his office to buy coke. I don't know what gave him the impression that Ryan was a drug dealer-- maybe it was his generally anemic punk rocker look, but Doom was pretty embarrassed once finding out that he neither sold cocaine, nor knew anyone remotely connected to the distribution of it. Maybe it was because of dirt like this that Ryan was able to work there longer than Logan and me.
Of course, drug abuse wasn't restricted to those in management. We had our fair share of cokeheads just in dispatch alone. Obviously we had Jeff Rick, who loves himself tons of cocaine and fistfuls of random pills, but that guy already has his own chapter. The other notable user on our team was Darcy. Even though Darcy was a very talkative person on the job, she appeared to be somewhat reclusive outside of work. I don't recall anyone ever seeing her do hard drugs... but she had to be on something. She was like 25, but she looked a decade older on some days. Her hair was always greasy, matted, and semi-dreaded (not as a fashion statement); she generally had this look about her reminiscent of a six-year-old who's been playing in the dirt all day, which sometimes wasn't all that far off from her behaviour on certain shifts. She threw a tantrum one night over the (understandably) unfair procedure of having to save our notes in WordPad and risk our CPH later while catching up with them. The situation plateaued when she charged face first into a door, breaking her nose, after which she left the building crying. She came back to work the next day in a seemingly sadder state than the one she was in the night before. If one was to look over to her cubicle to investigate her continuous quiet sobbing, they would have also noticed she was soaking wet from head to toe, which was particularly alarming because it was 80°F outside without a cloud in the sky, and had been that way for a good part of the week. After a while, in the middle of a conversation she was having with another employee, she spoke up, “I showered today with my clothes on,” at that second, she seemed to become aware of her own insanity, then continued, “I... I don't know why I showered with my clothes on?” after which she broke down into more (slightly louder) sobbing. It wasn't long before she was led out of the room by someone from human resources. I think Darcy would later make a couple appearances during parties at Parsons' apartment, but she wasn't seen at NCO after that particular incident.
Hiring junkies wasn't NCO's only problem, it was also high schoolers. They used to have a policy about not hiring anyone under the age of eighteen, but later on Geek Squad was seeing new employees as young as sixteen who were still in school. I can't complain about the few cases of sexy jailbait they brought in, but for the most part it was a horrible idea. After a few waves of recruits, the place was filled with kids who generally had no work ethic. Some also brought with them silly high school antics such as bullying. At one point, NCO hired this one kid (I think his name was... Jake?) who just decided one day that he didn't like Ryan, so he would toss spit balls and such Ryan's way while he was trying to make calls. Ryan's not the type of guy who's just going to take shit from some nobody, but what could he do? Some old guy named Greg tried sorting out some punks a few days prior and he was fired on the spot. Well, though it wasn't the most satisfying option, Ryan went to HR about it and the Jake kid did the walk of shame into his mom's car by the end of the day.
Anyway, this is all speculation on my part, but it was probably the growing number of teenaged employees that contributed the most to the decline in job security. They had all these kids filing in who'd only stay for for a month or two before quitting, and NCO (or Geek Squad, I couldn't really tell who was really calling the shots at this point) got it in their heads that it'd be cheaper to just keep new people coming and going before their probation periods ended and they started receiving benefits. But it wasn't good enough to just exploit the newbies in this new plan of theirs; they wanted to cut out the dead wood as well to make room for more kids, and thus the jobs of people like Ryan, Logan, and me were at stake.
They went after me first. Set in my old ways, I refused to give into the new routines they were trying to place for everyone. They used to be fairly lenient about taking breaks, letting you be away from your desk practically as long as you wanted as long as you took yourself off the clock. Well, that rule changed. If you wanted/needed to take yourself off the clock to do something, it could only be for a total of ten minutes throughout the day. I think you were also suppose to tell your supervisor where you were going, but I never did that. If you were late for your shift, or came back from a break even ten seconds too late, they started writing you up for it. Hey, I can't help how long it takes for me to drop a douce! They got super strict about the rules, and unless you were some brown noser who worked his way into management's good graces over the last year, this is what they used to take you out of the equation.
The final nail in the coffin was when I took a leave of absence around February 2007. There's three ways you can get time off while working at NCO.
- Vacation Time: You got two weeks paid vacation per year.
- E-Days: These were your sick days you could take off if you called in before your shift. You got ten per year.
- Leave Of Absence: If for some reason you had to leave for an extended period of time, you could apply for one of these and probably still have your job back when you returned.
You could go on a leave of absence and it wouldn't affect your e-days. It was in February 2007 that I had four wisdom teeth removed, and my dentist said I'd need to take about ten days off to heal. So, I applied for my leave of absence and off I went to surgery. Ten days later, I came back, and as far as I knew, everything was normal... or at least I thought it was until I tried taking an e-day. I'm guessing I was hung over one day and I tried to call in sick, but when I did, the operator told me I had no more e-days remaining. On my leave of absence, they used up my e-days even though they said they wouldn't! Not only did I need to go into work hung over that day, but I my “career” there was altogether fucked. Again, this was in February... my available e-days were replenished in January. That means I was no longer able to miss a single day of work for the rest of the year without getting written up. Hell, I wasn't even allowed to be ten seconds late from a break. It was obvious what was going to happen to me at this point: they were just going to chip away at me with write-ups for being slightly late every so often until I eventually got served the old pink slip. It was fucking bullshit. A couple months went by, and enough write-ups piled that one of the GM's, Neil, called me to his office. He questioned me about my punctuality, as if human beings are never late for anything, and I bitched about how I was lied to about the conditions of my leave of absence. He shamed me a little bit about being late a little more, then added, “...And about your leave of absence: We'll find a way to take care of that,” which to me, was implying that he'd set the record straight on my available e-days. That never happened.
I came to accept the pickle I was in: I was given the raw deal by management and no one in the company cared. I spent the last month or two blatantly cheating at my job. I'd just dial whatever number I had to call, let it ring twice, hang up, and record that no one answered. Even if someone did answer in that two rings, I still hung up and recorded otherwise. Sometimes, when I had the patience, I'd still try and help the clients, but Best Buy is so terrible with handling their scheduling that appointments were completely backed up. Try telling someone that just bought a new computer or home theatre that we can't come out to set it up for them for another three months after they paid $500.00 for the service (this is by no means an exaggeration)-- obviously they'd get pissed out of their minds every time... and that's about when I'd hang up. I actually called this woman who claimed to be some ambassador living in New York, and she totally lost her shit when I gave her an appointment three months away for a $1500.00 service. She took my full name, my badge number, whatever she could, and said she'd be suing me personally. Well lady, it's five years later, but I'm right here (PS: suck it).
Cheating didn't particularly make my job easier. By that time, they were so tight with the rules, that our phone calls were being monitored for hours throughout the day. Usually, I'd just avoid making calls and go on break while my supervisor monitored the lines, but that stopped working when they opened up a new office solely for monitoring the calls on all teams. Howard got on the monitoring team, and it was him who ratted me out. It's because of weaselly acts such as those that we don't post on Pedestian-X anymore. After I got caught cheating on my calls like three times in the same week, I got sent down to HR to try and explain myself. Once more I tried to explain how I was screwed over on my leave of absence, but not even the stooges in HR gave a fuck. They gave me the option to either quit, or to go on indefinite suspension pending an investigation into my cheating. I chose to quit, as I felt it was the most dignified way out-- not by their actions, but mine. It's harder to collect employment insurance when you quit your job, but as I would later find out, when they put you on indefinite suspension, they have a nasty habit of never actually firing you, simply making it impossible to apply for employment insurance at all. Our friend Anthony (the guy we went camping with) just got off his indefinite suspension after like two years and numerous court dates. They actually gave him his job back-- not that it matters now that they are leaving the country. I never claimed employment insurance anyway, but that's just because I'm a beta with a misplaced sense of pride.
Ryan lasted longer in there, but not by much. Geek Squad actually shut down a few months after I “quit” (no surprise). Logan was laid off at that point and Ryan was sent to a new division. But even still, NCO didn't seem to be fairing to well any longer and Ryan was laid off not long after that. By 2008, we were all unemployed. From there, Logan went off to Alberta to be a snowboarder, Ryan went off to med school to become a pharmacist, and I went off to law school to get into private security. It's now five years later, and despite being a college grad, no one will hire me. I used to rent my own place, but now I live with my parents again; I'm a pretty big sponge in general. It feels pretty fuckin' terrible, and as hard as I search for a new job, it's feels impossible. Five years later and NCO is screwing with me again, hiking unemployment up to 14%. For every job I apply to, regardless of my qualifications, there are at least 600 resumes in that stack of papers applying for the same position. It isn't fair, and the more I think about my options, the more skipping town... hell, skipping the province seems like the most viable solution.
Impending doom, impending doom, impending doom...
Epilogue
That's just about all there is to write about, or at least that's all there is right now. I'm sure that before the month is through, I'll have like five more ideas for new chapters. But I think this has gone on long enough. If I do come up with any decent topics, I'll just try to incorporate them into separate blogs. Don't be sad, if it makes you feel any better, you can still look forward to all the butthurt this will generate from all those people I spoke ill of. This whole thing is about 27,000 words. I'd challenge Ryan to try and beat that, but if he ever writes an episode of PIT this long, I promise that I'll never read it.
Where am I going from here? I mean as a person. Well, the job situation isn't completely abysmal. When I hit twenty-five, I have a promising prospect in driving for a limousine company. It probably won't allow me to get a new place, but at least it'll be a start. All I'm looking for at this point is some decent scratch that I can buy new clothes and some gas money with... and Jag. Speaking of, we're about due for a new Yagsalvania. Maybe in about April Yagsalvania VII will happen. I'd look out for a new blog on it then. I'm also working on a series of short stories for this blog, but it's in the really early stages, so I'm not going to get any hype going for it apart from mentioning it. Thanks for reading, especially if you're new to this blog. Don't hesitate to leave a comments and questions, be they positive or negative. You don't have to worry about hurting my feelings; if you read the chapter about my YouTube channel, you know I can deal with hate. Logan, on the other hand, is a bit of a softy, so go easy on him. Other that that...? GG.
3 comments:
Forward was good.
I'll get back to you about the rest.
All awesome man, don't know what else to say really. It has a style that really fits the situations, keep up the good work.
Flash backs.
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