Clean as a whistle...

It's been well over 3 days since I've smoked a joint. That's the longest I've went in about 5 years. No kidding. Not bragging. It's sincerely statistical.

And I could honestly care less.

If you wanna get off da dope b'y, move to Korea.

I still can't think very well though, and I didn't get any taller.

Losing count...

I have started my PG-13 rated Korean Blog. I'll still be posting on this blog but probably not as frequent. Here's the link.

http://www.soldmyseoul.blogspot.com/

I'd appreciate it if this blog is never mentioned on my Korean blog if you leave comments.

Second-hand suicide...

This post is mainly for my non-smoking readers. I'm not sure if I know anyone who doesn't smoke but if I do, this is for you.

Here in Canada we have graphic warnings on our packs of smokes that force you to see the devastating effects of smoking. According to CNN, these warnings are actually working and cause people to think about how gross they are for being a smoker.

Well, this post is not intended to be another smoking rant (although it’ll likely end up that way), but it is smoking that has lead me to this post. You see, there is one warning that has a graph illustrating cause of death. Smoking is the longest bar on this graph, but it is the second bar that always intrigues me.


Suicide is the second highest killer on this graph, killing 3900 Canadians a year. Suicide is a bigger killer than car accidents!

I want to know if the suicide rate has increased or decreased since these labels were printed on my pack of smokes. I bet it has increased because some people are not proud of being a smoker. I fall into this category every once in a while if I am around a bunch of non-smoking wussies and I really wanna fire one up but feel awkward about doing it. In those types of situations, I often feel like killing myself because I want a smoke soooo bad but I don't want my company to see the rotten gums on my pack.

Thankfully, I can never find any rope and I stopped carrying a gun shortly after high school.

If smoking wasn't frowned upon, I wouldn't have this suicidal tendency. And if my pack of cigs didn't have a picture of a cancerous lung on the front, I would not be ashamed to whip them out.

Let's try to save some lives here by trying to make Health Canada lighten up a little and first, chill out on the labels, and secondly, DECREASE THE PRICE OF SMOKES BECAUSE THEY ARE CRAZY FREAKIN' EXPENSIVE NOW.

I bet a lot of smokers commit suicide because they spent their whole welfare check on smokes and can't afford to get any Christmas gifts for their kids. Once you buy some booze and play the ATM's for a few hours, there ain't much left to that welfare check. About enough to buy some smokes, and that's all.


I’m sure this guy knows exactly what I’m talking about.

12-Volt came back the very next day...

I was making lunch yesterday and I heard 12-Volt (that's the name I gave to the cat I found next to the battery of our Rav 4) outside somewhere. I went to check it out and found her outside my fence, in between another fence, in the middle of a thorn bush, in the graveyard next door (on the pic below, there is another fence behind the white fence and that big bush is the thorn bush).


This cat sure picks her spots.

I climbed the fence into the graveyard, snatched the cat, and walked to the gate but it wouldn't open. I guess families can't visit their deceased loved ones if they're in that section of the g-yard. Maybe it's for disowned family members, or criminals, or Protestants. Who knows?

I dropped the cat on the other side of the fence, hopped over as quickly as I could (and just to let you know, I can hop a fence with the best of 'em) and as soon as I hit the ground, 12-Volt calmly walked under the fence to the other side.

This pissed me off and I guess she sensed it so she came back to my side. I took her back to my yard and gave her some supper. She didn't like the box I kept her in too much so I just let her go again at her own volition.

I woke up today and my dad said that the cat was up on the patio this morning but when I went out there was no sign of her. But sure enough, at supper time she began to make her patented moans and I went out and got her from the fence and fed her.

I'm hoping she doesn't come back tomorrow because she probably doesn't realize the the SPCA will be open tomorrow. I don't know if kittens are popular down there, but I do know that they will put her "to sleep" if no one takes her. I have a soft spot for cats and I don't want this to happen. I might not bring her to the SPCA and hope that my dad and bro take care of her. This is not a likely scenario, but it's worth a shot.

If I was staying in Newfoundland (or maybe even Canada) I would keep 12-Volt myself. She's quite cute and has an easy going personality. But I'm off to Korea in less than 36 hours so hopefully someone else in the neighborhood finds her before then and decides to keep her.

Now that I think of it, I don't even know if she's a her.

Either way, I think the name 12-Volt suits both males and females.

Don't you?

No, I am not retarded...

I found a cat yesterday. It’s only a kitten.

I came home Thursday at 5AM drunk. Went to bed and heard this weird noise coming from outside so I shut my window. I went to The Spud (hangover food) the next day to get something to eat. I drove the Rav 4. I heard the same weird noise from the night before at The Spud. It didn’t sound like a bird but that’s the only thing I could think that would make such a noise. Maybe Deer Lake had a few new breeds hanging around this summer?

I got home and told dad and Ryan about the noise and they looked at me like I was retarded.

Later in the day dad went to clean out the Rav and shortly after he began he shouted out to me. I went out to see what he wanted and he was pointing at the Rav. I was confused, but then I heard the noise coming from under the hood. We opened it up and there was a little kitten in this little space about half the size of a shoebox.

The cat was frightened and defensive, as it should be after driving around in the Rav with Ryan all night (I just asked Ryan where he went in the Rav and he said he was driving up the steepest hills he could find testing out the Rav's off-road capabilities... behind Langers/Colemans).

I couldn't get it out so I went over and to my neighbour (who is a babe) to see if she had a can of tuna. She did and with it we managed to get the cat to come out.

Now I'm stuck with this kitten and don't know what to do with it. The SPCA ain't opened until Monday. My neighbour wanted to take it up to Airport Avenue and "set it free" but I don't like that idea. She said she's done that before! But cats are probably my favorite animal so I just can't do that. If it was a dog, I wouldn't care.

I woke up this morning, went to the box and the kitten was still there. I ran to the store to pick up some food but when I got back it was gone. But I can still hear its faint cries when the wind calms down for a moment.

She’ll be back.

Your mom's probably right...

I've been spending a fair bit of time in Corner Brook lately. A couple of my old "univerisity buddies" from the suburb of Pasadena are down there living the dream getting drunk and drawing the pogey. I envy them.

Vocals
We usually end up jamming there most of the time and the b'ys have a band started called "The No Goods." They can be found on myspace.com, which is a piece of shit and not working at the moment so I can't link them here. As my buddy Chucky said, "Those guys are the essense of punk" and it's true.

Bass

The name came from Bessy's (bass player) mother, who said that Bessy and his friends (the other band members) are a bunch of "no goods." She might be right, but she don't listen to punk rock.



Drums
How can you go wrong with songs titled "I Hate Vacuum Cleaners," "Pogey Check," and "I Hate Peas." It's way better than a song name such as "I Don't Cry" or some bullshit like that.

Guitar

Reunited with the facts...

I spent the last week with my family. The Healey family had a reunion and because my paternal grandmother was a Healey, all of the Ball family was in attendance. My body is not designed to drink seven nights in a row, but thankfully I was 3.5 hours back (Alberta Time) so I managed to be the last family member to leave the bar just about every night. By the end of it I just couldn't get drunk and last night I was actually craving a beer, but I didn't let myself have one. Instead, I caught up with some old friends.

Today, I found out where I'll be teaching in Seoul, but I still don't know exactly where I'll be living. The school is called Namcheon Elementary School and it's located at 53 Macheon-Dong, Songpa-gu. The "gu" is my city district and the "dong" is the neighborhood within the district. If anyone knows anything about this place lemme know. All I've been able find out came from Wikipedia and it says Songpa-gu is a fancy, ritzy part of town and it is home to the world's largest indoor amusement park, called Lotte World.


I recently learned how Wikipedia works from my good friend Stephen Colbert. The general public can put anything they want on this "encyclopedia" and if enough people agree, it gets a place on the site. So really it’s the encyclopedia of public opinion where facts can be overruled by popular opinion. Stephen's currently on a mission to triple the population of elephants in Africa by simply saying that this is happening. The scientists say their numbers are greatly declining, but if Mr. Colbert can get enough people to agree that their population has actually tripled, he will have done a great duty to Africa and its elephants.

He calls this "Wikiality" and that seems much better than what scientists refer to as "Reality." Scientists are such a bore.

In an earlier post, I referenced a few pages from Wikipedia and now that I know exactly how it works, I'm relieved that I didn't take information from some site with wack facts. I used the truth.

And last but not least, I'm gonna post a link to my other blog at Myspace. I strictly plan on talking about music here and giving vague reviews of some of my favorite music that most people have probably never heard of.

Also, when I get to Korea I'm gonna start a PG-13 blog about my travels and experiences in Asia. I'm gonna give this link to my parents, grandparents, previous co-workers, etc. so I'm gonna keep it clean. I dunno what'll happen to this site once I begin the new one.

I'll probably just keep this blog for stories about the multitude of prostitutes I'm gonna be spending my nights with. And whatever other weird shit I do that I don't wanna share with my Nan and Pop.

I forgot...

I never did do a post about my second night in Banff. Very similar to the first night in the alcohol/idiot department but there were a few differences.

The bar was advertising $4.50 shots of Jägermeister and I was buying them up. The bartender eventually told me that this wasn't even a special. $4.50 is the regular price. Then she realized I was from Newfoundland and I realized she was from Nova Scotia and everything changed. As soon as we knew we were on the same team (The East Coast Team), the Jägermeister shots suddenly became free. I'd go to the bar to get a beer and I'd order two shots with the beer, a shot for me and a shot for her. This procedure went on for the rest of the evening and I think she was getting a bit tipsy by the end of it. I was tipsy at the beginning of it.

Once again the bar was packed with a wide range of people and the good times were never in short supply. Some people came up to me like they knew me, but I had no idea who they were. I was so drunk the night before that I couldn't remember any of them and this seemed to make perfect sense to them because nearly all of them came to comment about me extreme alcohol abuse. It was almost like they were congratulating me for making it to the bar again.

I managed to stay on my feet the whole night and never "passed out" into the stage all night long! Left the bar and I didn't get any tickets either!! Then I got back to the band house and hung out with Joe and Mim for a bit. They went inside (no non-band members were allowed in the house) and I went to their van, which was my suite for the evening.

I couldn't sleep because there was too much noise out front. I got outta the van, lit a smoke, and went to see what was happening. To my delight, there was a sidewalk party going on made up of BC chicks and Frenchies from Quebec. There were only two girls and about half a dozen French guys, and one Newfy: Moi. The girls were hot and, well, the guys were French, so as usual, I was the coolest dude in the vacinity.

The girls had a 26er each and the Frenchys wouldn't shoot any of it with them. Being the hero that I am, I managed to help these desperate girls empty the bottles, and we all ended up in a parked car drinking more booze. Luckily, I had a front seat all to myself because the Frenchys seemed a bit crowded there in the back. We went to the car because none of us had a place to bring our little party. The girls were staying at some place where they couldn't have people in, and so were the French guys, and yeah, I was staying in a van. Thank god for the sidewalk.

The car party was actually quite dumb and one of the girls looked at me and wanted to go so we did. We ended up at a pizza place and then in a back alley drunkenly making out. Then we both realized that this was as far as it was going because I was living in a van and she couldn't take me home with her either. We were both so wasted by this point that we just kinda accepted our fate and went separately "home" to pass out. Turns out she was only staying two houses down from me. If I bumped into her today I don't think I would even recognize her, and the same goes for her. I think that's just how shit works in Banff.

I woke up the next morning feeling darn good for the amount of torture I put my body through the night before. I walked out to the front of the house and there was glass smashed on the sidewalk and two empty 26ers sitting by the fence.

This confirmed that the night was not an illusion and I didn't dream the events of the last night of my alcoholiday.