Yesterday I wrote a sentence in my previous post that made my wife cringe. She thought that mentioning that snowmobiles and liquor were higher priorities than spaying and neutering your pets was a tad bit racist. While I can see where she is coming from, I’d like to quickly mention that not all people on the reserve are irresponsible with their pets. I know that there are some downright awesome owners of animals out here on the rez, it’s just that there are also terrible pet owners and they are easier to spot. Since I’ve got a soft spot for animals it makes it a little more difficult for me to process the behaviour of some folks and resentment builds. Glad that we could get that ugliness behind us and move on to bigger and better things….like dancing!

I cannot dance. In the few times where I have ever attempted to dance with any sincerity I have regretted it within seconds. From my youngest years to the extremely current there is not a situation where dancing has seemed like the right thing to do. Maybe it’s the fact that I haven’t touched any mind-altering herb, pill, tab, fungus, powder, crystal, or gel (do they make drugs in gel form?) and have only been drunk a small handful of times that has kept my state of mind firm enough that moving around to music has never been a fathomable idea.

I can’t watch people dance either. Seeing someone else dance can make me feel uncomfortable enough to avert my eyes until the gesticulations cease. It doesn’t help that I normally feel embarrassment for others during awkward situations, but even situations where dancing is appropriate fill me with unease. The only exception are those crazy break-dancing people whose moves look impossible and nonhuman. I guess if a person is dancing in a way that looks abnormal and really difficult I’m okay with it, but if it’s casual dancing or professional dancing performances I am out.

There were exactly two classes in elementary school where they attempted to teach us stupid kids how to dance. The dancing class took place in our school’s gymnasium, taking the class of 10-11 year olds and attempting to make them feel comfortable putting a hand around the waist of the opposite sex. The school went with the old waltzing/foxtrot routines and I cannot remember a more awkward group of kids in elementary school beyond any school dance the teachers were insane enough to attempt. There is a good chance that the dancing lessons were stopped after a kid went home with a story of a little hand dropping too low and grabbing some ass. There’s always one creepy perv in every class, no matter the age.

I can remember when I was a was a little gaffer there was an older gentleman in the neighbourhood that enjoyed having kids come over and spend time with him. For the kid there was the promise of candy and stories about how things were back when our parents were little like we were and the old man got some companionship out of the deal. He’d always tell us how great dancing used to be when he was a young man and even taught a handful of us how to waltz. Does this sound as creepy as it feels to type out? I was never molested, unless I’m blocking it out. What kind of society do we live in where a old man of no relation to you teaches you how to dance and you’re meant to feel like it was inappropriate? Unless it really was overstepping on his part and I should have alerted an adult. I am conflicted about this.

There are too many dogs in my backyard. The lady that we share backyards with has brought her two dogs with her and one of them is currently in heat. This has turned the entire neighbourhood into puss-hound crazies. Let me explain to you why this is:

On a smalltown reserve there is little money for people to spend on getting their pets fixed when you can spend it on snowmobiles and liquor, so the grand majority of dogs here are full-ballin’ it and ready to get all up in it. Usually for whatever reason the dogs are given free reign to go wherever they want, with only their nose and groin to guide them. You would think this would lead to a great deal of dogs everywhere and you would be right…unless people in the area kill off female dogs when they go into heat. That’s right folks, when a female dog goes into heat the male dogs go insane so someone goes out and shoots the female that made the mistake of being an animal (me=RAGE).

Since this little terrier that the neighbour nurse owns is a beloved pet it is not culled, but that leads to nightly insanity in the form of constant barking and howling all around the neighbourhood and me watching an amazing feat of prowess and skill.

One of my dogs, Lily, likes to run around all over the place and make me go insane with worry. She will find any opening in a fence and within seconds will be nowhere to be seen until hours later. Seeing as fence security is essential to ensure she isn’t shot, ran over, or eaten by wildlife, the appearance of some random dog in our backyard causes me to investigate how the shit he got in my impregnable defensive perimeter. Using my enhanced stealth training that I picked up from being in St John’s Ambulance in high school, I monitor the intruder to find his clever exit point. The black lab is startled by me since his nose is able to pick up on the smell of Snapple Peach Iced Tea and sadness, he books it to the fence and jumps straight up at it. The dog’s front paws grip the top rungs of the chain link while he smoothly walks his hind legs up the fence, stepping from rung to rung like a ladder. once all four paws are at the top of the fence the lab does a superman dive out of the yard and into the front of our compound and to freedom. This is a truly amazing feat and one that my dog Lily (thank everything that is good in this world) is unable to accomplish.

Rez dogs have got moves, son. They got full on moves.

I’ve been sitting around in my house today watching inches upon inches of snow fall outside. There’s got to be over a foot of it added to the old crunchy stuff we’ve had since last snowfall 2 weeks ago. I am so happy that my dogs only want to go outside every 2 hours for about 5 minutes before coming back on and drenching everything in the living room. The ass of my pants hasn’t been this wet since the last time it snowed.
     Did I ever say that I was a substitute teacher one time? I was. It was in this little town that the principal learned through the grapevine that I wasn’t functionally retarded and kept asking my wife to call him and come work at the school. So what if I only have a year of university? I guess being able to read, didn’t think that Budweiser is a food group, and have never hit a woman or child before (that can be proven. Domestic abuse ninja!).
     So I go in to meet with the principal and they hire me on the spot, with my days consisting of 90 minutes of woodwork with the grades 8-10 despite a very limited experience with wood beyond my own (I’ve sanded that shit down to a polished nub…figuratively speaking). After about a week of that I’m officially subbing for the kindergarten-grade 4 kids off and on. Things are going pretty good for a bit, if not frustrating because in this small town there is not much in the way of expectations for these kids. It was babysitting in its most basic sense, with the main difference being that the older kids were the ones that had to be babysat the most. Like I said, things were going pretty well up till the day that would get me fired.
     The classes are split into three groups with the grades being a catch-all for three or four years of school. I’m with the K-4 class this day and I really enjoy the kids, even the insane younger ones that have no sense of boundary or rules since they’ve been growing up in madhouses with poor, drunk, redneck parents (no judgement here. This is fact, bros.). There is this one kid who is in grade four and all the younger kids think he is the coolest kid ever, let’s call him Rudy. Naturally, Rudy is a shithead. Rudy is mean to certain kids incessantly, has other kids bully in his stead so he can’t be blamed for it. He’s like a little mob boss and it is a terrible thing to watch happen. We’re playing in gym class and this kid’s team starts losing so he starts cheating. Hard. He’s blatantly breaking rules and roughing other kids up when he thinks I’m not looking. Naturally, I decide to give him a timeout. That’s what you do, right? Well this was a bad idea, which I would come to find out later.
     The next afternoon I get called in to talk to the principal about “something”, but I figure it’s nothing except for maybe a medal for being so damned righteous to the max all the time. As it turns out though, Rudy went home that night and spun the most amazing web of lies I have ever heard directed toward me.

Here’s a short list of things I was accused of:

I was throwing balls at the kid’s faces and junk in gym (I cannot aim or throw anything worth shit, so if I was able to hit anyone that precisely I would count it as a victory)
Said “I am going to kill you” to him
Referred to penises multiple times
Chased everyone around threateningly
Asked a kid “Were you born in a barn and raised by pigs?”
There were some other accusations, but I forgot them

     I may have forgotten to mention, but the kid’s mom is an alcoholic/teacher’s aide at the school whom I was supposed to be taking over for while she was out of town later that week. Important? Only if I am awesome and therefore a threat to her job. Anyhowser, the kid says all this shit, the parents flip out and want me dead and since the mom works at the school and the kid is the popular sociopath in class, things don’t get investigated as much as I get shit-canned by phone a few days later saying that it is temporary while they investigate. It’s been about 8 months now with no call, so I’m pretty sure that I am gonna get no call back.
     The thing about the whole fiasco is that I could care less about ever working there again. I’m not a teacher by trade, my wife is the money-maker, and I am inherently lazy. My problem is that some people in this small-ass town think that this shit it true. My blood boils at the thought of how easy it was to get fired and reviled over lies. Guh.
     So, how was your day at work?

     The reality that my wife and I live in the middle of a thriving ecosystem only hits us every few weeks, but there are times where the close proximity to dangerous things is made abundantly clear.
     Last year this area had one hell of a mild winter, with the summer coming extremely late and sticking around only long enough to bend over to pick something up and getting everyone all excited before taking off again. Because of the late summer and spring, the hibernating grizzly bears slept in late and woke up real hungry. Being told that there is a bear about two blocks from your home is chilling out on a preschool’s lawn gorging itself on free-range cow is a pretty big surprise. A bigger surprise is that the community response is to ignore it and it will eventually head west for spawning salmon after it is good and full. A 1200 lb murder-beast camping out in your neighbourhood? Don’t worry about him, he’s just building up his killing-machine energy so he can tromp through town all casual-like.
     This leads me to the genuinely frightening bearsperience that followed shortly after. News circulates that there is another grizzly chilling out near the landfill outside of town, which is not really too new or interesting when it comes to a lazy bear looking for easy chow. What was new information is that some dumb dumb took a shot at it with a deer rifle and the bear didn’t die. Not even close. It became a very angry rage-bear that hates people and need to lick its wounds and hang out near the landfill longer than it normally would. Waiting.
     Fast forward to about a week later. My wife wants to go for a walk outside our place and back near a little pond that we like to take the dogs to. I, being lazy, suggest that we do not go walking because of the angry wounded death bringer in the woods. I am assured that this bear is no longer around and since my wife is always right and easier to agree with that argue with I decide to go out on this walk. Fast forward to about 3/4 of the way to the pond when our one rez dog, Morrissey, takes off into the woods (completely normal for him, he likes to scout ahead). About 30 seconds pass and then we hear this ungodly guttural noise followed by Morrissey bursting out of the woods and booking it down the path back to our home. I don’t think I ever hustled like we did. We didn’t run, since I figured that would trigger that prey-drive thing that makes predators want to chase things that run away like their life depends on it, but we speed-walked like we were rocking fanny-packs and a general lack of self-awareness. It was a bit tense, but I guess whatever Morrissey pissed off decided not to pursue us. Lucky, since it sounded really big.
     So we get inside our house and the missus is telling me about how scared she is when she drops this gem, “Yeah, that was really stupid of us. Especially since I am on my period”. WHAT? Bears smell a menstrual woman and their claws get all twitchy and flesh-rendy! She knows this too, since I repeatedly bring it up because I think that it’s hilarious that bears hate menses. I always imagine a bear just drawing doodles of periods and scratching them out in intense hatred. After a mandatory “You are an insane person” conversation, we went on our day.
     Later that night we get a knock on the door by a wild mushroom picker trying to sell some morels or pines or whatever mushrooms he found (Yeah, we have mushroom pickers out here). My wife mentions the whole roaring creature thing from earlier and the guy severely chastises her. From what he says, all of the mushroom guys are avoiding that entire area because the rage-bear is still living large in that area and even with their rifles and ATVs they’d rather not end up anywhere near him. Goodtimes all around, my wife almost got me mauled by a bear because she wanted some fresh air. Bears.

When I exited my garage with for the express purpose of running my wife some drugs from the house to her work so she wouldn’t vomit all over her patients (morning sickness…probably my child), I noticed the strangest thing in our driveway. In what I can only imagine was one of our “adopted” rez dog’s best scores ever, a full animal’s spinal cord was laid out in full view. Now, I can’t tell exactly what kind of animal spine it is, but I’m leaning to it being a large deer or a small moose. What I can tell you is that the spine runs from hips to the back of the head and that eating it gives the dogs gas that lingers and accumulates in the house. I have never been witness to such a fart-cloud in all of my life.

Anonymous asked: I'D LIKE TO KNOW WHO IS THE WET-BON?

Ooh, good question! There are two different schools of thought on this one and I’d like to cover both before I give you my opinion.

1) Cancer Carl. Cancer Carl is one of the most dynamic people in Kitchener, Ontario and also one of the most horrifying. Carl has built a reputation on being the most aggressively tumor-ridden person to ever manage a Tim Hortons. Watching Carl (or more specifically Carl’s tumors) maneuver the Tim Hortons and successfully serve customer after customer would be impressive on its own, but with the added assistance of what seem to be independently-operating tumors, Cancer Carl truly is one of the new wonders of the world. As much physical prowess as the Wet-Bon demands, Cancer Carl could a top contender.

2) Half-Inch. Every knows about the origins of Half -Inch. Half-Inch’s rise to fame goes without saying but for the sake of any small section of the populace that is unaware I will quickly cover the basics. an fetus survives a poorly-aimed pellet gun shot and escapes the womb to become one of the smallest and most successful cat burglars the 21st century has ever seen. I am sure that his small size plays a part in his master thievery, but it must also be said that he is a master of hacking and knows Krav Maga or whatever that is.

     So, which one of the two do I believe is Wet-Bon? Neither. I think that Wet-Bon is a manifestation created by the dreams of an autistic angel.

Anonymous asked: HAVE YOU EVEN TRADE A MUD MOTOR?

Uh, yeah! Who do you think you’re talking to, Anonymous? I’ve been even trading mud motors before it was talked about with hushed tones in back alleys.
     You may not know this, but there was a time not too long ago when it was taboo to try anything even remotely like even trading with a mud motor. The mud motor was an institution among “mud-butts” (that’s what the community would call themselves) and the idea of manipulating the motor in any was was met with derision. It wasn’t until the up-and-coming mud-butt Manny Slapfast showed up at the track with a rudimentary even trade configuration and broke records for cup holders, fog lights, and girth, that the idea of even trading was considered as a necessary evolution in the sport.

Oh hi! I’ve been hiding out for the past few weeks with the weakest internet south of the North Pole. I’ve also been out of (small) town for a few weeks with the missus. Did we visit Fort MacMurray, the home of Canada’s oilsands? Was it a shit-town that sprung up out of nowhere and is filled with monies? Were there ravens the size of hatchbacks? YES. The birds were huge and super-intelligent. I saw a small group of ravens (a murder!!) opening garbage bags and feasting on BBQ ribs outside of a Montana’s Steakhouse. It could have been condensation since it is cold as corpse-balls up in Northern Alberta, but I’m pretty sure one of the birds was smoking. Every store or building in Fort MacMurray has this trail of icy mud-sludge tracked in from the outside, since the ground beneath the snow was all gooey clay. The continuous applications of this mud from customers feet made for a completely saturated entrance mat and aisles that looked like the floors has been smeared with diseased diarrhea. The floor looked like it would give one diphtheria if one was unfortunate enough to trip and fall. So we got back to the small town that we are currently residing and the funniest thing happened: I missed it here. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I like it here (far from it), but I was so happy to know that I had no more traveling to do and got to use my own bed for sleep. Once I get into a larger center and have my own bed there? Heaven can’t be much better than that.

     I may have mentioned this before, but my Wife and I are taking this year to save up money to get a down payment for a home by her taking a job in the middle of nowhere, BC. The population is sitting at about 750 people with about half of that being a First Nations population and the other half being white ranchers and recluses. We’re actually living in a house (rent free) on a First Nations reserve about 2 miles out of “town” and the next decent-sized center is a 3 hour drive away.

     I tell you this, because it is important to note that there is NOTHING here. We’ve got 3 small general stores and 2 tiny diners that serve the same burger, ham sandwich, fries, selections and that’s it. We’ve got satellite T.V. when the weather is decent and the internet (as slow as it is) most of the time, although streaming and downloads are are very restricted. A good example of the internet situation is when there is a Youtube link to a video. I have to decide if I really want to give a 2 minute video 10 minutes to load while limiting any other browsing during that time. Even if I do give it the time needed to load the video, there is still a very good chance that the video will just time out and I just wasted my time trying to load a video of someone falling over or an animal doing someone ridiculous. This is a rough situation to be sure, but I make do because I am an amazing human and I am willing to sacrifice and also I am humble. I’m likely the humblest person that ever lived or ever will.

     The subject of the post is not, “My internet is terribly slow” though, is it? There are times where not even the internet’s usual speed, akin to a small child waist-deep in snow walking to school, is too much to ask. There are times when the internet is down altogether. I call this the dark times.

    I cannot describe in words what it is like to have that one last tenuous string to the outside world dispassionately cut. It hurts, like a cold pain in your heart that I am sure others have felt when an icon has dies, like Elvis or Madonna (She’s dead right? The lady with the British accent was her understudy or something?).
    
     When I am removed from the internet I realize that I am just a semi-dorky guy, living in the bush with a bunch of men that believe I am the gayest fag who ever queered because I own a sweater and some loafers. The women are similarly unimpressed by my immaculate hands, lacking the scabby knuckles that come from absolutely DESTROYING my wife’s face when she sasses me. What I’m trying to say is that I fit in here about as well as a cannibal at a vegan potluck, where even the things that I could eat probably taste all stringy and mealy like old apples.

     I am a fan of the internet and I don’t want it to go away ever, at least until I get back to a place with human beings that understand that eating a curry does not make me an alien creature, or that adults can enjoy themselves without being blind-drunk. See you soon diversity, and if not, then hopefully this satellite connection holds.

     Coffee-Stained Bingo Cards!

    

     Since my heart is working overtime because it just can’t handle operating at normal capacity, I’ve been issued a number of different tests to figure out why. The grand majority of the tests included either taking my blood, or having me pee in a little cup and then spill my own pee all over my hands trying to get the pee into a few tiny vials. There is, however, one test sprung on me that has a homework portion and I would like to share that with you now.

     I was at the tail-end of giving some lab techs a generous portion of my bodily fluids in Williams Lake recently. I had 5 vials of blood taken from me (which was really quite fun to watch until the blood stopped pumping into the vial because the tech poked through the other side of my vein) and had to go sort out the urine situation on my own in their bathroom. The event of placing the urine into tiny little vials made me feel like some kind of mad doctor, but since I was instructed the night before to fast until my appointment my hands were extremely shaky due to low blood sugar. What would normally have been a simple pour job turned into “Shaky Brendo’s funtime human-water park”. A thorough clean of my hands later, and I was set to go on my way, or so I thought.

     On my way out of the lab I was handed a container that could only be described as a small gasoline jug (it was the same colour and everything!). They explained that it was for my 24 hour urine collection that I had to do at home, which was quite the surprise to me since I had never even heard of such a test. Still, there is no test too uncomfortable or fluid-filled for me! I brought the gas jug on home with me, and today is the day for collection!

     At first I was going to fill the jug up with no middleman, just go right into it. Easy enough, right? Well the instructions I received with the jug said that there is a chance of an acidic powder being inside the jug and the last thing I need is an acid-burnt donger. I needed something to void my bowels into, but the new nursing residence is lousy for containers that one can pee into. After a full-bladdered search for a cleanish urinetainer, I found the perfect thing: glass milk bottle. I am not bragging when I say that the bottle neck is a tight fit, but you are permitted to be impressed. Whizzing into a bottle is probably the greatest thing I have done in 2012 so far and if this first week is any indication, my body and I are in for some goodtimes!

Coolwhips!