A little while ago, I went into the local record store to return a CD. Not even opened. Tight and secure in it's clear wrapping. I talk to the man at the counter who has yellowish sweat stains that are more than apparent, on his 'Styx' tee shirt that is 3 sizes to small for his round body. I tell him that I need to return the CD. He asks what’s wrong and I tell him I got it as a gift but I already had it. He looks me up and down and says "Well, since you don't have the receipt, I bet you probably just burned it and wrapped it up again. You most likely didn't even get it from this store.". He reeks of onions and cheap cologne. Even though the CD still has the label from the store on it, the plump little man doesn't seem to care. So, one week later, I bring daddy in with me. No problem. Dad's a big man with a beard and slightly intimidating features.
I'm still debating if he didn't listen to me because I am a teenager, or because I am a woman. Maybe it's a little bit of both.

And sometimes I'll get a response to something I said like 'Yeah, when I was your age, I was shallow too'. Sometimes I wish I never said I was 16. I bet most people would treat us differently if they didn't know our ages. In all honesty, would you REALLY lecture me on how superficial I am if I was three or four years older than you? Granted, most of you do have more experience, but in the whole grand scheme of things, twenty isn't that old. Don't get me wrong, I take the advice most times, but sometimes you make me feel so . . . little.

When you were 'my age' and your parents warned you about something or someone, did you listen? Probably not. Most people who are 'my age' think that there parents are idiots. (Sometimes they are right, but that’s besides the point). The point is, would you really talk down to me if you thought I was 40? Better yet, would you talk down to me if you thought I was a 40 year old man? I don't think you would.

Because as much as we swear we don't stereotype and we aren't biased, we all are.

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I was about 13 when my brother died. He was about 12. He died of organ failure in his room in my mother's arms. His whole life was according to my mom, a miracle. It started the day he was born- he wasn't supposed to live past it. After that, he was supposed to die when he was 3, and again at 9. He could never walk, talk, or even eat through his mouth. My mom decided it wouldn't be right to make him live any longer in the pain he had recently found.

But this isn't about my brother. This is about god.

He died in Wisconsin after we had recently moved from Pennsylvania- my home for my entire life until I arrived at that endless land of ice and snow. We moved because of my dad's job. He worked at a naval base with computers. Then they decided to move to Maryland. It was either follow or find a new job. My parents decided to look elsewhere.

After my brother's death, my dad found out his kidneys were failing. One was completely dead while the other was well on its way. It seemed like a great blessing that we just happened to move to Wisconsin- the best place to be for kidney failure patients. However, it still took a year and a half before he got a brand new kidney. Any longer, and he wouldn't have made it.

Oddly enough, just as he got his new kidney, my dad got fired from his job. Another company from Sweden bought out the company and fired half of the workers. It was back to the east coast for my family again, back where we belonged, after Wisconsin's purpose was complete.

Miracles? Coincidence? Fate?

I should mention my family are avid believers in the christian god. I have since broken away from this chain due to various reasons and much to my mom's disapproval. She doesn't believe that I can witness the aforementioned happenings and deny there is any "force" behind them. Honestly, I sometimes can't believe it myself. However, these events, if looked at skeptically, reveal no evidnce of the christian god's handiwork being involved in any way. They could show possible evidence of a "higher power". Sure. But they in no way affiliate themselves with one particular god.

The point is, we will never truly know. We will never know for sure whether it was the christian god behind the bizarre coincidences in our lives, or Allah, or just plain dumb luck.

We will never know.

So why waste time trying to figure out if the bible matches archaeological records when no god is making themselves clearly seen any time soon? Why waste money on an expedition to the far reaches of the earth to find the ark or the lost city of Sodom? It's knowledge that will never be able to be completely confirmed.

This is how I live because of my own experiences. We're never going to know, so I don't bother trying.

We will never truly know until we die.

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I'm gonna take things down a notch here, get a little personal. Many of you may find this difficult to believe, but I don't have a lot of friends. I know. It's shocking to imagine. It must be something about my demeanor that makes me undesireable. The friends I do have, their numbers have been dwindling in recent years for one reason or another.

This isn't a ploy for pity or sympathy. I don't want it, never have. I want to talk about one of my friends here because there's something significant going on in her life right now and I can't tell anymore if it's my place to involve myself in it.

One of the funny things about my relationships with the opposite sex, platonic or otherwise, is that I always seem to find myself becoming attached to their families. I can't recall a girl I've dated where their mothers or fathers haven't had some sort of impact upon me. More often than not, I miss the parents far more than I miss the girl when it's all said and done.

The mother of a young lady I was close to all through high school insists that I come to passover at their house every year, despite not being jewish myself. I don't even talk to the girl anymore. Another girl (who has long since been relegated to the status of acquaintance simply by virtue of never being in contact with her), her mother still talks to me on the phone almost weekly. Checks to make sure that I'm eating properly, that I'm not smoking too much.

Recently, I spoke with an old, very close friend. I have not seen her since the night of my twenty-first birthday over 18 months ago. We've been through a lot of shit together, she and I. A lot of bad relationships, some pain, some suffering. When she walked into my place of work one day after having had no communication with her in nearly three months, all it took was a glance to know that she was pregnant despite being only a few weeks in. That's how close we've always been. It's always been this way with us, only showing up when something important has happened. Sometimes it's only a few months, sometimes it's over a year. I always know that when the shit hits the fan, however, that I can go to her and she'll support me. She can always talk to me because I'm always going to be there.

I spoke to her most recently in mid-February. I try to drop a line every other month or so, just to see if she's still alive. Nine times out of ten, she forgets to return my call. This time, she called back, said it was part of her New Year's resolution to become better at returning messages. That, and her mother has been diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas. Happy Valentine's Day.

It's not fucking fair. Yeah, I know, life's not fair, get a fucking helmet. I know that line. I say it all the goddamn time. It makes me fucking sick to my stomach to think about all the times I've said that to somebody expecting that it'll make some kind of difference. Life's not fair. Fuck life. She may not be any sort of saint, but I can think of thousands of people more deserving of the kind of pain and suffering that this woman is going to go through, and I include myself in that list. The doctors are optomistic about chemotherapy. Isn't that grand? Meanwhile, she loses more weight, she loses her hair and she loses more of the energy and vitality that I have so admired in her despite any of the bullshit life handed her before. And here's life, shoveling more on.

The thing that gets me, the thing I'll be least surprised by when next I see her... it probably doesn't bother her at all. Well, it bothers me.

More likely to follow.

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Well, are you?

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March break is here. Oh everyone cheer, because march break is here.

Okay, yeah, I know, I still have 200 pages of papers due at the end of the break. Yeah, I know I still have to manage to job-hunt in Halifax so I can stay with my girlfriend this summer (oh, it will be wonderful if I can see her more than 3 times a year!). And yes, I do also know that I hate travelling.

However, all these things are going to, from now on, be on my own schedule. I do not enjoy the strict scheduling of the day. I do not like it when I find myself using the facilities at the same time each day. I like the anomalies, things like being hit on, growing a beard, making weird, experimental foods, writing...

I am a man of random thought. Satan-monkey nipples. Okay, that just was not funny in the least, but perhaps a few people might not think of me as stale anymore.

At any rate, I am a man without a schedule. I like to operate on my own motivations, on my own discrepancies. I like taking a day off for no reason then I do not feel smart today, I enjoy computer shopping, video games, and other useless tasks that leave me with little-to-nothing more than when I first started.

In fact, it is an idea of mine that human-kind needs wasted time. Think of the most common "down-time" activities: drinking until stupidity, drugs, sex, masturbation, viewing porn, video games... all of these things (at least, if you are cautious) leave you with nothing to show for your time. If you are not careful, granted, a few of these activities could wind you up with pregnancy, venereal diseases, or a host of other negatives, but I do not think anyone would argue that you are being productive in the least in undergoing these things.

So now, I waste time... thinking, reading, and writing. In other words, I cannot get sloshed, my girlfriend's in another city, video games can only occupy me 1 hour at a time, and damn it all to hell, I do not like wasting my time.

Unless its sex. I particularily enjoy sex.

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