Because Eventually I Have To Die, Maybe
Completely Out There
Best Bucket List Everrrr
Dec 13th
The articles over at Cracked are pretty much the only reason I get out of bed each morning. This morning they outdid themselves with this amazing Bucket List of things to do before (or while) you die. I like things that are both relevant to my life but also written well enough that I no longer want to punch a whole through my computer using my phone.
I’m not sure if my favourite is “cause an eclipse” or “touch Christian Bale’s face”…either way, a little ridiculous inspiration for you.
There’s a Giant Rock in Alberta
Nov 6th
- Me in a field
The Glacial Erratic
I took my friend Mikaela out to breakfast in Okotoks and on the way back we found a giant rock. There were teenagers playing guitar on the top. Alberta…
Apparently the rock is called Big Rock and is just one of many giant glacial erratics in Alberta. Here is the Wikipedia page.
North Koreeeeeear*
Jul 12th
* North Korea, according to North Koreans in English propaganda movies, is pronounced like this. FACT.
I suppose most people’s idea of a vacation is Hawaii. Maybe Mexico or even Punta Cana. Some might be adventurous and dream of one day laying on the beaches in the South of France (I’m looking at you Beyonce). That’s all nice and well, but I have a certain expectation that any travel I partake in will eventually lead to me being buried due to a well-earned gun shot wound. Roughly translated: I have a powerful obsession with North Korea and possibly an unhealthy fascination with visiting this Powerful and Prosperous Nation (yeah, that’s me, quoting North Korean propaganda). People find this incredibly odd and confusing. (Apparently the economy in North Korea is in direct offense to the beliefs of Canada? – but their website calls me “friend”! So it’s TOTALLY OKAY GUYS!). This reaction has always been alright, because my obsession makes me quite a celebrity amongst my friends – in that I am obviously some kind of spy sent from the Democratic People’s Republic to gather information about what capitalist pigs are up to these days (I like to send Kim-Jong Il pictures of potbelly pigs in Lincoln hats).
Side note: One time I got …rather… drunk at a gay bar and was telling these people in the bathroom how I went to North Korea and fell in love with this guy and when he told me he loved me I said “hahaha I choose FREEDOM!” When I started laughing and confessed I was joking, my friend Andrew punched me in the arm. My friend Andrew is a jerk.
So why the fascination with North Korea? Let me tell you in the only way I know how - NUMERICAL LISTS ORGANIZED BY DECREASING LEVELS OF HUMOUR.
Side note: I know this blog post will probably remove any possibility of ever going to the United States again. I take my “journalism” seriously, okay?
1. The Vice Guide to North Korea. If you have Netflix, if you have YouTube, if you have the ability to click that link, I sincerely suggest you watch this documentary. In return, I will not deny that this documentary helped turn my fascination with the nation into an interest for visiting. When did I first visit The Official Webpage of The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to look at travel options? Yes, after the first time I watched this film. Later on Kimjongilia would make me feel sad about North Korea for a while, but that was fixed by watching the Vice Guide again! YAY!
2. My Imagination. Picture it: Gadhafi and Kim Jong-il meet the day of their trials at the Hague for crimes against humanity, their eyes lock across the room. This was it; the reason for their murderous reigns thousands of miles apart. They approach each other from across the room, or whatever the Hague is like – I don’t care enough to find out. Eyes still locked, Gadhafi says “I really like your special brand of crazy” and Kim Jong-il replies “your style is impeccable…I mean those sunglasses….” As they are dragged away, they scream out “I LOVE YOU SO MUCH” to each other and vow to be reunited. These are the things that occupy my mind most of the time. Can you imagine a charcoal sketch of this moment? Can you imagine bringing that sketch to North Korea and getting Kim Jong-il to sign it?!? A girl can dream.
3. Totes Hipster. I literally know of nobody who has gone there, or who wants to go there. Where else in the world is there a destination that obscure and awful? Well, maybe like…lots of places?
4. Perspective. On a more serious note, I’m a spoiled brat. I’ll admit I have nothing on Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton, but on a global level, I’m just awful. My water usage, gas consumption, eating habits… just ridiculous. And yet I never think about these things, ever. Mostly because I’m too busy gluing feathers in some gay dude’s hair or filling bathtubs with champagne – just for funsies. I so rarely stop to think about what my life would be like if I had been born anywhere else in the world. The fact I can hop on a plane to any continent in the world tomorrow if I choose isn’t something I should take as lightly as I do. So many people ask why I’d want to go to a country that would never give me the freedom to roam as I pleased. People constantly ask me “how is that experiencing culture?” A trip to North Korea presents the rarest opportunity to be thrown directly into a culture of complete control. I can only imagine how much more I might appreciate my freedom if I spent a week without any.
5. The Landscape, people, culture, buildings…it has all the reasons people travel anywhere. My favourite site for pictures of North Korea shows it all: Wandering Camera: North Korea
So I did something I thought was on my list
Oct 21st
…but it isn’t.
While wandering around downtown today with my gay-sian friend (yes, you CAN contract gay and Asian into one word!) and he says
“have you peed in that toilet yet”
And I say
“in what toilet?”
because Keith thinks that everyone can hear his thoughts.
Anyways, it turns out he was referring to the robot potty on 17th Ave SW, which is part of a “City of Calgary Sanitation” project. There is seriously no website about this thing or information. Useless city.
It’s basically this weird roundish box plopped on a street corner. It looks kind of like something they would protect a major electrical center in or something. I decided, as I needed to pee anyways, to make use of it! Plus, I thought it was on my list, even though it is totally not actually on it. The toilet itself is fantastic. It tells you how to use it in a robot voice and cleans itself. You press a BUTTON and a CLEAN TOILET SEAT APPEARS OUT OF THE WALL!!! It also plays calming music for you as you make your business. Rad and a great idea for public bathrooms. Clean and calming!
I’m sad it’s not on my list, but whatever. I peed in a robot today and that in itself is fantastic.
My Top Ten
Apr 11th
I think by now my list has every continent, and possibly even every country, on it. Of course, like with all things, I have a few favoured destinations, ones that distract me from everything.
Snow = like Iceland. Boring roofs = not like Iceland
1. Iceland
Most people like warm destinations, but being Canadian, I prefer familiar temperatures and not having to buy new clothes to travel. I also like colourful roofs, which Iceland has an abundance of. Oh, and there’s a penis museum.
2. Morocco
Whenever I dream I’m travelling, I dream I’m in Morocco. There was this one time I dreamed I was in Italy but people were trying to kill me and I stabbed someone in the neck, very vividly, so you can see why I opt more for Morocco. One time someone asked me if it was the beaches that drew me towards it, and I replied “Morocco has beaches?”. There’s something about the food, the giant deserts and the culture that I like, all of which I, of course, learned about from Brad Pitt in Babel.
3. Russia
Adam says if I go to Russia I will get stabbed and die. Why does he think I want to go? Can you imagine that twitter message? EPIC! “Landed in Moscow, went through customs, agent stabbed me in the eye”. Really, I just want to go to Russia for two reasons:
a. My Russian history teacher had a mesmerizing moustache and was totally hot.
b. That same teacher told me about a guy who dresses up like Lenin and runs around in St. Petersburg
4. Los Angeles
I’m going to find the Zachary Quinto and follow him around until he files a restraining order. Hopefully he’ll spend some time at tourist hot spots so I can see those too.
5. Cuba
I just want to be a Communist and lay on the beach without abandon.
6. Afghanistan
While I hate to see myself as being too good for a war zone, I can also see how deciding to travel freely to one as people try to escape it is a bit…well wrong. I met a guy from Afghanistan when I was in high school and he was one of the nicest people in the world and looked really good with a popped collar. He told me once about how he had shot a gun and my tiny white 17 year old Canadian brain exploded. I really want to go there, but I think I might wait for it to settle down a bit there, which I hope it does eventually.
7. Yemen
I was once told Yememi men do it better, and I now want
a. a shirt that says that
b. to wear that shirt in Yemen
Plus it might be the closest I ever get to being in Saudi Arabia.
8. Peru
I think a lot about the fact they eat guinea pigs. It fascinates me. I want to see the farms they keep them in. And try eating one, maybe. They also have alpacas which are indisputably the most awesome animal ever to exist in the entire Universe. They do not eat the alpacas from what I understand, except in rare cases, which makes Peru super cool in my books.
mmm Asian stuff.
9. Japan
Adam really got me into Japan. I used to have no interest in going at all, but after Adam kept blabbing on about wanting to go there, he totally changed my mind. And I love Asian stuff, like the food and wonderful English translations on packages.
10. New Zealand
I have a secret passion to be a sheep herder. And they have the steepest hill in the world and I want to roll down it in a garbage can.
Thanks But No Thanks: The Calgary Stampede
Apr 7th
Last summer I packed up my school bag and an over-sized purse, met my friend Chris at the airport and took off for a month. I roamed through Montreal, Toronto, Guelph, Oakville, Kingston and Manhattan. I took the Greyhound, VIA rail and the Metro. I crashed on couches, slept in cramped, stinking hostels, and rested in my mom’s childhood bedroom. I saw cockroaches, watched Central Park become aglow with fire flies, witnessed the tallest French transsexual this side of the Atlantic, and had a conversation en francais with a man about his pen.
That’s all nice. But the best part? I escaped Calgary for the entire duration of the Stampede.
The Calgary Stampede is a 10 day adventure that draws in tens of thousands of people a year, packing themselves onto our already stuffed C-trains and transit system to get down to the Stampede Grounds in order to drink, hurt small animals, and risk their lives riding 40 year old amusement park equipment run by homeless drug addicts (seriously). The best part is that the Stampede Grounds are technically within the downtown limits, which means trying to get to work and back from “the Core” becomes par with having the ability to shit out fluorescent pink llamas.
Most people who live in Calgary love the Stampede. Love it. 10 days of with a city full of foreigners just waiting to have a drinking contests and a one night stand. Or, you know, they own a downtown hotel and make several million in this one 10 day span. I am not one of these people. These 10 days mark the worst time of the year to live in this city. It makes me feel so badly for people who live in truly hot tourist destinations, like Amsterdam. People who might never see their favourite bar without a loud, drunken buffoon again. Or, even worse, to live in a country where the only form of employment is to serve the rude, self important jerks who think their $900 vacation package bought them the country and all of its inhabitants.
I’m not sure if it’s simply that I was born without the cow-wrangling gene, refuse to define myself as “country western” in any manner of speaking, or that I was raised by liberals in the East, but I seriously have my hate on for the Calgary Stampede. Enough so that I intentionally travel to other tourist destinations to get away from the one I live in.
Monday’s Picture of the Week
Mar 30th
One of the many anti-meth photos I collected when I went to Montana a year ago.
Have Music, Will Travel
Oct 5th
So I took a break from cleaning, studying, writing and all that good stuff this afternoon and used it to clean up my music collection. Since part of the cleaning process let me properly set up my giantess of a laptop that holds my music collection, I’ve also been able to listen to it for a few solid hours. Between the downloads, moving, deleting, and – sure enough – grooving, I got to thinking about how important music was to my travels this summer. It kept me company during lonely nights in Guelph, drowned out chatting people on the overnight bus to New York, and distracted me on long flights across the continent. My Ipod only holds 2 GB, but it provides me with hours of entertainment on the road and gives me some solace when I’m missing certain people’s company.
Here are my fave songs for certain travel situations!
Needing Sand and Sun: Madera – Hey Ocean!
Packing: In Love With a Bad Idea – Matthew Good
Pre-Flight Jitters: Time Bomb – Beck
First Leg: The Distance – Cake
Roadtrips: Running Down a Dream – Tom Petty
Overnight Travel: Turn Up the Stars – Hey Ocean!
At the Hostel: What I Got – Sublime
No Itinerary: Ruby Soho – Rancid
Traveling Alone: Two Hoboes- DJ Champion
Train Travel: On A Train – Waking Eyes
Lost and Confused: Sing Me Spanish Techno – The New Pornographers
Homesickness: I Wish You Were Here – Pink Floyd
Destination No Where: To Here Knows When – My Bloody Valentine
The Ride Home: Jimmy – Tool
Back At Home Blues: Everyday is Exactly The Same – Nine Inch Nails
Leaving Las Vegas
Sep 5th
I’m sitting at the Las Vegas airport, taking advantage of the free wireless, and have decided to combat boredom by wiritng my first post regarding Las Vegas. Here’s a brief list of things I realized whilst in Sin City.
1. You walk on naked ladies everywhere on the Strip. The amount of people handing out the little call girl cards on the Strip is insanity! The ground is littered with pictures of naked women, quite literally. It’s bother disgusting and amusing. Do men actually call for these women while in Vegas? I mean, they must, otherwise they wouldn’t be in business. But SERIOUSLY?
2. It’s impossible to find anything here. I’m convinced most places in Vegas should be charged with illegal confinement, because it seems the main goal of all the major hotel/casinos is to make it very hard for you to leave. I spent several hours lost in them while trying to get back to the Strip or to a different hotel. The only place with decent signage was the MGM Grand.
3. There are more McDonalds than people in the city. Ditto for 7-11s.
4. The build out instead of up. In most cities, as they grow population-wise, you get a boom of tall apartment and condo buildings, so you don’t end up with a city 8 hours across. Apparently Las Vegas either missed the memo on how awesome multi-story buildings are for living accomodation, or they have some law against building high-rises off of the strip. The tallest condo building I saw was maybe 10 stories, which even by small Canadian town standards is small. We have grain silos bigger than that!
5. Drinking is so much more fun when done out of drink-ware that is shaped like the building you are in.
6. If there weren’t topless women dancing, you didn’t actually see a show in Vegas. I reccomend you get your money back or demand topless women.
7. Las Vegas is a black hole in which time stops. After about an hour here, you’ll already be trying to figure out what day things happened on.