Confessions

Mostly just one confession for you, nameless internet. I have a great and terrible secret i should share with you:

I have never watched Bonanza.

Not an episode. Not a season. No more than a couple 2-minute clips. Every "Hoss" reference is a fallacy. Every picture an elaborate ruse. If you've been paying attention as long as my first story about Carlos, you know how I got the name. I'm Canadian. I'm not even convinced you can watch re-runs of Bonanza up here, and even if you can I probably wouldn't. I'm not really interested.

I know you might be reeling in shock, so I'll try to keep this brief. If the world begins to spin around you, please seek medical attention. In fact, just sit down. It'll be over soon.

This particular hypocrisy fits in nicely with my collection of other ones. But confession is step one to fixing hypocrisy. So I'm sorry. I repent of mis-leading any of you. And I beg your forgiveness, nameless internet. (Well, except for public followers. You have names)

Glad I got that off my chest.

As a bit of a side note, it's entirely possible that I might entirely axe this blog. Since I don't use it. But it was a fun ride. I'll waffle on the decision a bit longer - cause that's how I roll - and then probably do it. In case I do: So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Weird Night

Tonight was a weird night.

We hit the bar this evening. It's not usually my scene, but wednesday nights are cheap wings night and I love chicken. So I was there. I met up with a bunch of friends, who I barely have energy or creativity to invent fake names for. (I've become aware that among some of my more familiar readers, he practice of guessing the pseudonyms is the game you play. I'm going to start giving fewer hints and just use names whether I've introduced them or not. Be confused.)
The waitress came by and asked if we wanted anything. To my shame, I didn't look up. I usually try to be friendly to wait staff; they have a hard job that i admire. But this time I was tired and just asked for a water. I looked up and recognized Maria, I girl i'd been tutoring for some extra cash. Weird. We had a brief conversation, but it was busy and every minute spent talking with me was a minute not spent serving customers who were actually going to buy booze. It was weird. To say the least.
I think I've always indulged myself with this fantasy that I can go to the places where the non-Christians are and relate to them and meet them and try to talk to them without my real life showing up. But I'm going to be recognized from the outside. I'm going to have that accountability.
it happened again when I was in line for wings. Behind me was a guy I'll call Felix. who used to be one of my supervisor's when I worked at a fast food joint last summer. He was a tad inebriate,d but he recognized me and we caught up. I was instructed to give him a call. I'm seriously thinking about it. But I never expected to meet so many people at the bar. I was beginning to have reservations about whether or not I was all that comfortable being seen there.
Either way, most of the people peeled off until it was only myself, Kermit, Bruce, Melody, and Brumhilda left. The girls wanted to dance pretty badly, and since there were a lot of creepy drunk guys around I was uninterested in letting them go off on their own. I'd be useless in a fight, but they don't call me "Hoss" for nothing. I can pretend to look intimidating. Long enough to usher a girl off the dance floor, anyway. So I went with them.
I am not an excellent dancer, but I tried to have fun. the other guys went nuts but soon left to get some air. Which left me as the sole protector for a good while. I didn't want to leave, really, but I wasn't enjoying myself. The more I listened to the music, and saw the people around me, the more I found myself in the background of people's drunken photos inevitably destined for facebook, the more crammed the dance floor got and deeper we were crowded into the corner, the less happy I was that I had come. I couldn't leave the girls there, and they seemed to still be enjoying themselves. But I became acutely aware of the increasingly untenable position I was in. Trying to reconcile my role as man of God with bar-dancing fool. It was disconcerting and uncomfortable.
Mercifully, the girls got tired and we left not too long after. But walking home in the cool summer air I couldn't help but wish I hadn't gone. I'm glad I did because I think that Kermit and Bruce on their own would've probably dropped the ball on being there for just-in-case purposes. But it wasn't a tonne of fun, and I think I shall decline the invitation in the future.
I think the contours of navigating how to be a "light of the world" while "mak[ing] every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him" is hard and has no easy answers. I heard and saw a lot of stuff I didn't want to see. But I also had opportunities to meet other people where they were and to be there for my sisters in Christ. So I don't know.

Just found this

Made my day:

Hoss sound bite  LOST sound bites

I don't know what hardware Sawyer is alluding to, but I love his show and I love that he knows my name. Whoo!

Home Stretch, Part II

Update

Just saw more people coping very badly with the home stretch.

In the school cafeteria, abandoned since it closes at 4, there were two women sitting at a caf table, poring over notes and talking hurriedly and importantly about something they were working on. So far no surprise. But as I walked past, I noticed they had open on the table a game of Monopoly. Money, board, dice... everything. A full game of Monopoly in full swing by themselves in the abandoned cafeteria.

That wasn't the weird part. The weird part was that they still had open notebooks and pens out too, frenziedly writing as if they were working on something very important.

I am unsure as to what conclusions I am intended to draw. Perhaps they are conducting an assignment assessing probabilities of landing on certain spaces? Or revising and planning a business model for a revised version of the game?

Or maybe they're education students. This is exactly the kind of weird junk that we've all grown accustomed to watching them do. If it's not model cars or balsa wood catapults, it's Monopoly in the cafeteria at 7pm.

I hope the end comes soon. I'm losing hold of the already-tenuous grip on sanity I possessed in the first place.

Home Stretch

The last days of school are upon me, and this is beginning to affect me in interesting ways. I've noticed my sentences getting longer and my patience getting shorter. My hours of sleep have all but vanished, but my hours of staring into space have increased exponentially. I've decided I'm getting basically the same amount of mental downtime. I'm wrong, but that's what I've decided.

Noticeably, however, the same phenomenon has been affecting the people around me. Today, after kicking the proverbial posterior of my final exam (Boo Yaah!) I retired to the library to work on my last assignment before I graduate (Boo Yaah-er!). About an hour ago, a couple guys were sitting at a study booth just around the corner from me. In eyeshot, but not making-you-feel-like-you-should-say-hello eyeshot. One of them was booting up his laptop, or at least that's what I figured he was doing. I was wrenched from my blissfully ignorant-of-the-world work zen (by which I mean head-on-desk catnap) by a garishly over-volume-ed Windows startup music.

This wouldn't have been so bad, really. It happens. I felt kinda bad for the guy. I remember it happened to me. You feel like you've ruined everyone else's day. Which, I suppose, you have. But people need to relax a bit, breathe, and re-establish their study-Chi on their own.

But about a minute later, another sound blasted out from the computer. It sounded like the Muslim call to prayer, except not the opening part, because there weren't as many "a"s and a lot more "ee"s and "oo"s. I don't speak Arabic, but it is a beautiful language and I'd love to fail hopelessly at learning it some day in the future.

But this time it was not so much beautiful as it was loud. And disruptive. And long. And I looked over, the guys chuckling to themselves. I thought one might have even looked over at me and snickered.

Instantly I felt embarrassed and self conscious. Why should I be mad, maybe he has that as his startup music...after the startup music? Why were they laughing at me? Was it 'cause I was napping? Maybe that was the part of the morning call to prayer that says "prayer is better than sleep"? How could I tell? Should I speak Arabic? Are they still looking?

Eventually, I arrived at a tried-and-true answer to most of these questions. It's an answer that has served me well for many of my ponderings and confusions. It goes something like this:

"Hoss, you're being an idiot."

That helped me feel better. Like I said, I'm running on a bit of a short fuse. But I'm also, after four years of this song and dance, getting pretty good at talking myself down from some of the smaller cliffs. An hour later, though, I'm still perplexed as to what possibly could have prompted that musical outburst. And unless one of them reads this post and lets me know, I shall forever be condemned to mystery and wondering.

Bummer.

Part III: “What’s this? Two meals in one week?” – Dr. John Zoidburg

And now, the exciting conclusion!

When last we left our hero, he had been assaulted and robbed at awesome-point my men stronger, if not bigger, than he and left in a pile of laundry and hurt and shame. He could tell from the laughter outside his again-locked door that everyone was having a great time at his expense, but he was no longer in a mood to laugh.

It was at this point that Hoss decided that he was out of escape options. Which left only the window. Donning shin and knee pads and affixing a bike helmet to his head, he prepared for the escape and fight for freedom. He opened up his window, climbed up onto the fence outside and down onto the neighbours’ driveway.

After discovering the front and back doors to be locked, and realizing he had lost more than just the door key in the combat earlier, he returned into his room which, at least, was warm.

It was at this point, as Hoss had half-climbed back into his room that he was met with some company. Greta had come in, bearing some cold leftover food and a glass of water. She deposited them on the table and escaped the room before Hoss had a chance to make a break for the door, but the thought was appreciated.

AT least, it was appreciated for a couple minutes. For a short while later, an assailant burst again through the door, throwing a cloud of small green plastic BBs over the room already reduced to chaos. Hoss wouldn’t have been so upset, if the food he had been enjoying was not now filled with small green beads.

Despairing of freedom, Hoss found something else to do. He sat down at his desk and wrote letters. Some time passed. Eventually, the sound of the door opening broke him from his linguistic composition-ing. It was Greta.

“Y’know, the door’s been open for, like, 10 minutes?”

Hoss sat, finished his letter, and then emerged.

Ultimately, I sense, as an author, an anticlimax. But, like the nature of most pranks, it was never as much fun as it was in he first 10 minutes. I am encouraged to know I have so many friends who are willing to drop what they are doing and gather to taunt, mock, and in some cases attack me. Together. Like a family.

And it’s going to take a couple days before I work up the energy to try and fix everything in my room.

Part II: “I’ll be in my Angry Dome!” – Professor Hubert J Farnsworth

When last we left our hero, he had been bamboozled, swindled and otherwise hustled into a small, if not unfamiliar, prison.

As I looked about, I started thinking about how to escape. The window was always an option, but it was cold out and I’m not nearly flexible enough to do it quickly or quietly. That, and the climbing-out would necessitate a certain shuffling of stuff in my room which could only end badly. I am a bit of a pack rat, and the delicate ecological balance in my space is a beast best not toyed with.

Other options, however, were scarce. There was a hatch leading up into the attic, but upon climbing up there and looking, I remembered that the half of the house my room is in is an addition; and the attic over my room is separated from the nearest other hatch, being in T-Bob’s room, by a brick once-exterior wall. Of course, I didn’t manage to remember that without first letting big flaky tufts of insulation fall all over me and my bed. Woot.

My other alternative was a bit of a legend. I had heard tell (from voices in the next room) of the promise of freedom for he who would search hard enough within his prison. That perchance there was something in the room that could let me out. But my room, like I already said, is a bit cluttered, and to conduct a thorough search would be to invite chaos.

So I sat and endured as they called friends from all around town to speak with me and them on speakerphone and mocked and gloated. I got a bit of a scare when a couple of girls from 4 doors down jumped up at my window while I just happened to be looking at it. I screamed pretty loudly and high-pitched. I am not proud.

Eventually I discovered some leverage. For though they had left me with almost nothing of value in my room, they had left me with the room. And, through some great unexplainable accident, my room houses the circuit breaker board. I waited some time later, content to know I had the leverage if not desirous to use it.

After they began shuffling potato chips and spoons under my door, I decided I’d had enough. I opened the board.

Idiot. Big dummy fool putz. The key to the door was sitting there, taped to the inside of the breaker panel, waiting for me to find it.

What here follows is likely my single greatest miscalculation:

“Oh, a key!” I cried out.

What now follows is likely my second-greatest miscalculation:

I put it in my pocket and decided to wait until they weren’t expecting me to use it.

I’ve been looking for a way to adequately describe what happened next, and I think that my words will be insufficient to convey the frustration, terror, and nauseating effect of the following events. So however you imagine it to be after reading the following, please understand it was far more unpleasant than that.

Here goes.

I heard Jane’s voice through the door, “Hey, guys, you should go in there and take the key from him.” Shuffling followed; they were assembling a strike team.

Panic set in. What could I do? I’m a large man; they don’t call me Hoss for nothing. But I’m not great in a fight. And Ivan, just as big and twice as good in a fight, would obviously be taking point. And they had Bubs and T-Bob too. This was not going to end well. I began shouting, warning.

“I have weapons!” I yelled, grabbing a steel water bottle and a broken drumstick. “I will bludgeon and shank and kill!”

They did not heed my warning.

In a flash, three men burst into the room. I took a swing, but I didn’t actually want to hurt anybody. A hospital ride would take the fun out of everything. I had stuffed the key in my back right pocket. But that moment’s hesitation; lack of killer instinct, cost me. Ivan and Bubs grabbed me and took me down hard. I fought back, but I didn’t want to knock over stuff in my room. The interlopers were not nearly so considerate.

They began going through my pockets. But they only checked 3. The three where the key wasn’t. What luck, I thought. But it was not luck. It was doom.

Pinned to the ground, held immobile by the impossibly-strong and well-trained Bubs, Ivan began repeatedly wet-willy-ing me, demanding to know where the key was. I refused. T-Bob pulled off my sock and threw it in my face.

Somehow, the key fell out of my pocket, they took it, and made to make their escape. I was not going down so easy. The small two got out, and held the door for Ivan. He gave me a good shove into the corner and then made a break for the door. But they weren’t fast enough. I lunged for the door and got my fingers in the crack before they could slam it shut.

Yeeeoooow

Ivan, thinking quickly, burst through again, picked me up (did I mention I’m a large man? This was a move I had not expected), and dropped me to the floor, hard, on top of the corner of a small paper recycling bin.

I was down for the count. The assaulters left, locked the door, and listened to my pained moans for a minute until I stood again. Despite being sore and a bit dizzy, I was OK. But my room was a disaster.

“Thursday,” I mumbled to myself. “It must be a Thursday. I never could quite get the hang of Thursdays.”

Will Hoss find another way to escape his prison?

Will the delicate ecological balance of his room be restored?

Will he ever get to have his important conversation with Kumar?

Tune in next time for:

Shin-pads and Bike Helmets

Or

Killing them with Kindness

Part I: “Friends, the Guinea Pig Tricked Me…” – Dr. John Zoidburg

For the longest time, I have been sitting looking mournfully at my once-mildly-amusing blog and wishing there was something to write about. Some heart-warming anecdote or humorous tale to weave into your, the readers’, lives.

Well, batten down the hatches.

Last night I came home from a couple friends’ apartment in residence where we had been watching the new episode of “The Office,” which was as funny as I had hoped and brought a smile to my face. A nice ray of sunshine at the end of an otherwise rather trying week. After sitting about and talking for a little while, it was time to go home. So another buddy drove me home, which was pretty cool of him. We stopped briefly at Sobey’s so I could pick up some M’eggs for Dmitri; his birthday is tomorrow.

But enough of that; after acquiring the aforementioned confectionary, I was taken home, greeted by another gathering of friends. I handed the M’eggs over to Calamity Jane, who has taken them down south to Dmitri today, if all went according to plan.

This, however, is not a story about Dmitri’s M’eggs.

A short while later, the phone rang, and Tim-inator answered it. He then gave the phone to me, and ushered me into my room so that my voice, loud, resonant and rippling with the timbre of a great mountain oak (if such trees existed and if they made sounds) would not disturb the movie he and Ivan were trying to watch. I closed the door behind me and sat down.

On the phone was our good friend, who I suppose I must now name. I shall call her Chance. That have a nice ring to it?

Anyway, it was Chance on the phone. It was nice to speak to her; I don’t hear from her much since she moved back down south after graduating. She asked me about Rusty and Dusty’s upcoming wedding. She talked to me about life and the universe and everything for 10 minutes or so. And then she asked me an odd question.

“Hoss?”

“Yeah, Chance?”

“You in your room?”

“Why, yes…” I answered uneasily. Should I be sitting down? Is this one of those really awkward conversations? Should I be worried?

“And the door closed and everything?” She sounded uneasy, nervous. Holy crap.

“…Y-yeah,” I replied. “What’s up?”

“Well… uh, you’re probably locked in.”

My eyes darted to the door. The knob was shinier, and had a keyhole facing me. Facing inside. Which meant the lock knob thing was on the other side. I had fallen victim to the doorknob prank. And was now stuck. I heard laughter from the other side of the door; perhaps people were listening to the phone conversation on another receiver?

And then I began to make a lot of loud noises. Many wails of “Why, Chance?” and “How could you do this to me?” and “After going to Paris and leaving me in the Ice cold dark, this? This!?”

Suffice it to say, I made a lot of noise. I felt like Carlos trapped under a bed.

The events of the next hour can be best detailed and thematically expanded in a separate composition, hence the demarcation between parts I and II. I would like to take some time, however, to expound on the moment of realization.

The point in which a person being pranked realizes the trick is the funniest part. By a mile. It was a good thing I was loud, because my captors had no visual reference to see my shock and dismay. And I soon realized my options for escape were limited – I had no tools with which to dismantle the lock or unhinge the door without damaging the frame.

Mostly, however, above shock, surprise, and even the “why” factor, what I felt was the pangs of betrayal. What had I ever done to Chance for her to be a willing accomplice in this ensnarement? How had I offended Tim-inator for him to be willing to assist in this attack? I could’ve expected it from T-bob or Bubs or even Oz – I give them reasons to be mad at me every day. In fact, it turned out that it was a peeved and upset T-bob who had initiated the proceedings. But the scores of willing participants, friends, and accomplices struck me. Even Kumar, on msn, was in on the joke. I had to sit down. Lucky for me I had furniture and clothes and whatnot.

I wish I could say I yelled and hollered and then sat and did something else for a couple hours, but everything was far more interesting than that. SO, tune in next time for the exciting conclusion of:

“White is the door and changed is the lock that leads to destruction”

Or

“Knock, and the door will be slammed on your fingers before you can get out”

Sadness

Disclaimer:

This post is not intended to be fun, funny, or amusing in the slightest. In place of my usual tendency for the anecdotal, allegorical, nonsensical and nostalgic, I have chosen to try and write something that is true. Any laughter you find is merely the product of your own imagination, and I'm pretty sure they have pills for that now.

---

I think sadness can be like a lot of things.

For lots, sadness can come in short, sharp shots. Like a knee-jerk reflex. Maybe a pang of nostalgia or regret. Something catches your eye or someone walks by or someone says something and for a brief moment you think on what’s lost, broken, or missed. That hurts. It fades, usually. It passes. Like a knee-jerk, your leg goes down, the small discomfort rubs away and with a bit of rubbing and trying to take your mind off it, the pain can go away really quick. Some of these are pretty low key. Some are big. Debilitating. But a lot of that depends on the magnitude of the hurt being remembered. And I think I’ve been learning to live with a lot more joy by identifying some of those triggers and taking proactive steps to change, heal, and figure them out.

A lot of the time, though, sadness is neither short nor sharp. Sadness comes at us less like a punch in the gut and more like a really bad winter. Comes on slow. You know it’s there when the first snow falls, but it’s been in the brewing for a while. And once it’s in full swing it changes everything. You walk different. You don’t go out. You grumble and complain. You can’t play or smile like you used to. The light of day comes far too late and darkness overtakes it far too soon. People talk a lot about the “long dark night of the soul”, but that makes it seem less horrid than it is. And far less prolonged than it often can be. For some it’s barely escapable. Some people just live there, in the North Pole with Santa. They walk in darkness, fear, pain, suffering. They don’t know what the warm kiss of a tropical wind can do to the heart. They don’t know what its like to be thawed, melted, and at peace with their surroundings. More people are like that than I think any of us would dare to think.

And having recently taken my first baby steps into spring, I look and see people stuck in winter still, shivering and crying. Trapped by the sadness. I don’t know what to do. It’s not so simple as “take heart; you’ll be OK.” It’s true, but it doesn’t help much. Is there anything I can do to pull someone from the pit of sadness?

I think that, like winter, this long dark night of the soul is not something I can fix. I cannot heal a broken heart any more than I can cause snow to melt or trees to blossom. I could try, I suppose, but my best efforts would mostly just be a temporary salve on a bigger problem. And the thing the one who walks through winter needs is not me. It’s God. The same God who turns winter to springtime melts the ice of a broken and wearied heart.

What can I do, then? Why would God let me suffer the agony of watching the people I care about walk in sadness if there was nothing I can do? He doesn’t. I can’t stretch the days longer or make the sun shine brighter. But while God waits for the right time to do that, I can shiver alongside the shivering. I can shovel his walk. I can brew her hot chocolate. It doesn’t fix the problem. I’m not qualified to fix the problem. But it makes it more bearable.

I make no secret out of my dislike for winter. Hence the analogy. But this season of despair – this “winter of our discontent” – that truly chills me to the bone. Keeps me awake at night. And with the sheer number of people around who are trapped in this hole, I’m going to need a new shovel, and some good hot chocolate mix.

Nightrider, the Water, and the Toronto Maple Leafs

I know I said I would hold out for some interesting things to happen, but the truth is I’ve got so many great stories about Dmitri and Carlos that even though they don’t live here anymore, I’d be doing the e-public a grand disservice to not try and Hoss-ify some of the more important epics.

And I think there’s no better way to start than with one of my personal favourites.

Dmitri might be one of my best friends on Earth. Maybe not my very best friend. That’s a tight race. But he’s on the podium, and at the end of the summer of 2008, it had been 4 months since we had hung out. Far too long, in my estimation.

Well, it was an exciting couple of days. I had just moved into the Hoss house. I was on my own, and anxiously awaiting Dmitri’s and Carlos’ arrival. We hadn’t yet met Bubs, but we had put up posters and I think he showed up only a couple days later.

At any rate, it was the big day of Dmitri’s arrival and I was stoked. Even more exciting, we’d been invited with our friend (I really am running out of ideas for pseudonyms, but this one will probably stay important, so I’ll try and come up with a good one) Tim-inator to go to a buddy’s place on the lake and go tubing. That sounded like a party. It was September, things were still warm, and I felt like I could use a day off.

So Dmitri and his stepdad arrived dropped off his stuff, and then with a flash, we were left to ourselves.

Aside: Dmitri’s stepdad is a very fast man. He works fast, drives fast, and talks kinda fast. Looks like he could run fast, too, but he’s one of those guys who seems so comfortable in his own skin that you can hardly believe anything in life could surprise him enough that he’d ever need to run after it.

With the rest of the afternoon, we hitched a ride with Tim-inator and went tubing. It was a par-tay, let me tell you. Our buddy (wow, this is getting confusing) Ivan tried getting launched off the dock on a GT snow racer and made it work a couple times

Ivan deserves a fuller character description than I can give at this moment. Suffice it to say that if you picture Chuck Norris and add a couple more truckloads of awesome, then you’ve got a reasonably sketched-out picture of Ivan.

Then we got to the main event. First up was Dmitri. Things were getting a little cold and a little dim, but we were men and not interested in such paltry concerns. Our boat captain was a man I hadn’t yet met, identified to me only as “Nightrider” (Not even a pseudonym…or at least not one that I just made up). Anyway, Nightrider tore off into the lake with Dmitri in tow, blasting over his own wake, punching through big waves and trying as hard as he could to unseat Dmitri from his cold and watery and inflatable perch.

Suffice it to say, Nightrider and the water were successful in dethroning our hero. He hit the water and he hit the water hard. When he floated up, he just kinda bobbed there in the water, and when we got closer we call out to him. “Dmitri! You okay?”

“Ya man,” Dmitri replied. Dmitri is not Jamaican. Dmitri likes mayo sandwiches with a side of conflicted internal ethnic identities – he’s as white-Canadian as they come. Russian at heart, actually, but either way he was not from the islands.

So we put him in the tube again. And Nightrider threw him again. And this time, when he came up, he really didn’t look so good. We hauled him into the boat.

It started raining.

Dmitri said he’d be fine, so I jumped in and tubed for a while. I got thrown twice, and hard. The second time I came down on my leg and it was screaming when I hit the surface. So I called it a day and then Tim-inator hopped in the water.

By the time Tim-inator had done a couple runs, the rain was really starting to pick up and Dmitri looked really bad. So Nightrider brought the boat into the dock to drop Dmitri and I off. I figured, if I could get him on land, maybe into some dry clothes and sitting down on a chair that wasn’t dipping and bobbing an smelling like gas, then he’d be OK. I was still limping a bit, but we gingerly hopped out of the boat, and then the others sped away to do a few more runs.

The moment they pulled away, Dmitri staggered over to the side of the dock, and decided that he was no longer so sure he wanted to keep his lunch in his stomach. After a moment of careful deliberation, he decided to deposit it off the dock into the water. Almost all of it, at least. Some hit the dock.

I’d like to say I met this new difficulty with calm preparedness and altruistic self-sacrifice for my friend. My thoughts actually ran something a bit more like:

“Man, I’m cold.”

“Oh, my leg is killing. Nightrider is a maniac. I wonder if Dmitri…”

“Oh crap.”

“I don’t remember my first aid. I didn’t pay attention in the class. Why do I carry the certification, why do I advertise it on my resume if I don’t even flipping remember what to do?”

“Vomit, disorientation…uh…maybe a concussion? He could’ve hit his head on the tube or the water or something. And vomit wouldn’t make sense for hypothermia, which he could have. I know I’m about to lose some toes.”

So, after my moment of panic, and helped him up, holding his shoulders because he was very obviously weak on his feet, and helped him up to the house. There, our buddy’s mom, who I think might actually be a nurse, helped him into some dry clothes and got me on the phone to telehealth to ask about what to do.

Now, Dmitri is a rabid Canucks fan. Hockey is the most important thing in his life besides God and maybe…maaaaybe… his family. And coupled with his adoraton for the Vancouver Canucks is an almost inhuman hatred for the Leafs. I mean, I’ve seen people hate the Leafs, but Dmitri has every Habs fan in the world beat. He will actually cheer against Toronto even if they’re playing against a Vancouver division rival. That’s dedication.

So you can imagine my surprise when Dmitri emerged wearing one of our friend’s old t-shirts. An oversized grey number with a bright blue maple leaf right dead centre on his chest.

I know it isn’t classy to laugh at someone who’s throwing up and needs help walking from room to room, but I threw class and propriety and even common decency to the wind. I laughed. And I laughed hard.

And so did all the guys when they came in from the rainy wet boat ride. In fact, we tried to get pictures of it, but he kinda covered up the leaf on the shirt and I think most of us drew the line at actually manhandling the wounded even for a good laugh later.

Well, it was about 10pm now, and getting late. Some of the guys had work the next morning. But Ivan, because he’s not only awesome but a good man, drove me and Dmitri to the emergency room, where we got admitted immediately. I would be lying if I said I didn’t plead Dmitri’s case to the nurse a little more enthusiastically than might have been absolutely necessary. But they brought us in, got him lying down and told him to not sleep.

Well, it was about 10:30. Dmitri had been up since 5. And he had just gotten a concussion. And he’d just effectively had a lake-bath and was now in comfy, dry, loose-fitting clothes eerily reminiscent of PJs. And I’m just not that interesting a person, folks. So keeping Dmitri awake for the full hour and a half it took for a doctor to come over and take a look at him was a challenge.

When our exalted physician finally appeared, he had Dmitri sit up, looked at him, asked him a few short questions – the same ones, in fact, the nurse had asked an hour earlier – and then bestowed upon us his prescription:

“Go home and get some rest. Don’t sleep for more than 2 hours at a time, and if you throw up anymore, come back in.”

Thanks, Doc.

You guys want to guess whose job it was going to be to make sure Dmitri didn’t sleep for more than 2 hours at a time? Well, he doesn’t wake up to an alarm after 10 hours, so it would have to be me, el Hoss-io. I’m not still bitter. But I am still tired.

Waking Dmitri up is a difficult prospect, and essentially requires physical attack. I felt kinda bad waking him up over and over again because he was so tired, but I had my orders and Carlos wasn’t in the house yet to help share the burden

About 8am I woke Dmitri up and then, because I had to leave to help a buddy move (which is a story in itself, by the way), I told him that I didn’t care if he slipped into a coma and died after that because I was tired. Or something eloquent like that.

Turned out Dmitri slept for about another 5 hours and didn’t die. So no biggie.

As for the photos of the Maple Leafs shirt, they’ve gone completely AWOL. My theory is that Dmitri had them destroyed. Or at least the people who owned them.

And I think they might have made our buddy clean up the part of Dmitri’s lunch that didn’t make it into the water. But I have no sympathy. It’s his own fault for bringing Nightrider in to come and destroy Dmitri’s head.

Dry Spells

Howdy y’all

You ever get in one of those dry spells? And I don’t mean like the “when your throat is rough and you get unexpected nosebleeds” kind of dry. I mean the times when a lot of stuff happens and you go days without a really good laugh? And then some really little thing happens and you laugh way too hard?

End of hypotheticals

So it’s been a bit of a dry spell and yesterday I was sitting in the living room with my two roommates. Since I haven’t yet introduced these characters, I suppose I’ll do so now:

T-Bob is a relatively new addition to the house. Quiet, keeps to himself mostly, but he suffers from that same ailment that most Canadore students do which is that sometime after about 10pm he goes completely and totally insane. He may have picked it up from Carlos, who is actually his brother. Suffice it to say that when T-Bob does have something to say, it’s usually loud, boisterous and intended to make someone in the room upset. And usually followed by inexplicable maniacal laughter.

Bubs has been in the house almost as long as me, and is good at everything. Every. Single. Thing. He is very reserved at first, although he gets just as squirrelly when the clock gets late. Being one of the more mature and forward-thinking of the housemates, however, he usually has the sense to hit the sack before he has an opportunity to go truly insane. And in Carlos’ absence, he’s done all he can to carry the torch of tri-syllabic shouting, speckled from quotes from Bob and Doug MacKenzie and obscure movies he admits he can’t even remember, but they had that one good line that one time… Example: “ ‘Ello, Chee. Lezz talk-why-not.”

I don’t know either.

Anyway, last night we were watching the Canada/Norway hockey game (Whooooo!) and cheering loudly. A buddy of ours, I’ll call him Watergate, came over to watch Lost, which is usually on. But since Oz wasn’t home, and I’m only a mediocre Lost fan at best, and T-Bob hates Lost on principle, and the game was on, we watched that instead.

Then, thanks to the miracle of timeshifting, we watched Lost

T-Bob was doing his usual routine of complaining loudly that the show sucks and loudly interrupting so as to hamper mine and Watergate’s enjoyment of the show. But he stayed. And Bubs was there too, conspicuously silent. Although I think it’s possible he was only half-awake.

Anyway, a commercial break arrived and T-Bob was seizing the opportunity to obstreperously obtund the show, building to a crescendo of pontification on the subject. And then, at the height of his diametrically denunciatory diatribe, his chair in the corner slipped out from under him and he came crashing to the ground with a great “Thud.”

At this we all began to laugh, even Bubs. But because it had been so long since any of us had a good laugh (I am projecting of course, but then I am convinced that my experience must be universal to everyone else’s, and so mine is the only one worth worrying about), we continued to laugh for some time. Far too much and too hard and too long, in fact. I joined in, but not without a certain crisis of jollity. What exacerbated the problem was that the tight confines of T-Bob’s corner meant that for a minute he couldn’t even get up. So we continued to laugh at him almost all commercial break.

I have done my best to convey every iota of comedic effect the moment possessed, and know that I have done it a great deal better justice than it deserves. It was not as funny as you now imagine it, and we laughed far longer and harder than you are currently imagining as well.

Just saying.

Anyway, I think this is what happens in midterm season. People just aren’t interesting enough. And I’m thinking that if business don’t pick up soon, I may start to just record more favourite anecdotes from the recent past to keep something on the page. A writer with no muse is just a word-monger, not a craftsman. If people don’t start getting very interesting soon, I may have to pull a Picasso and just paint what sells, throwing feeling and belief to the wind.

By the way, I know nothing about art. I am just a Hoss. So if you care about Picasso, too bad. But it strikes me that if I were judging, the anatomical errors would end up as point deductions.

---

“People don’t have 3 eyes on one side of their face, Pablo. Look at one. Find me someone who looks like what you painted.”

“You can’t? Then I’m gonna have to deduct you.”

---

In the meantime, if you are truly lacking inspiration, just google some demotivational posters or something. With safesearch on, though. Apparently a lot of people find naked women very demotivating. So be careful.

Superbowl Sunday

Today is Superbowl Sunday!

Whoo! Booyaaa!

No self-respecting Hoss would be able to look himself in the mirror if he didn't get excited about the biggest football day of the year. However, I have a secret to share with all of you:

I know absolutely nothing about football. I care absolutely not at all about football.

In fact, recently, I had become convinced that football was actually one of the lamer games that are followed by a large audience. Hear me out.

Football is almost the exact same game as the ever-impressive game of rugby. Rugby has picked up a lot of popularity up here in Canada and is the real thing "across the pond" in Britain and other European countries. The only key differences between football and rugby are as follows: In rugby, you do all the exact same things, except you don't wear an imposing suit of pads and protection, and in rugby you don't get to take a 5-minute break in between each play.

Let's review: rugby is no padding and no resting; football is lots of protection and frequent rest breaks.

Real men play rugby.

That being said, I'm watching football tonight. And I like watching football. But I'm facing a powerful quandary. What team am I going to cheer for? Last year I faced this same problem; since I never follow the teams, I have no favourites. Last year I kinda cheered for the Steelers; they were Pittsburgh's team and I follow the Pittsburgh penguins (because hockey is a real sport!) This year, however, I'm faced with the choice between the Colts and the Saints. I know nothing about any of these teams.

My first reaction, actually, was to cheer for New Orleans. But that has nothing to do with the team and everything to do with the city. They've never made it to the Superbowl before. They've never won. The city is still rebuilding. It would seem morally excellent for the Saints to win the Superbowl. It would seem most altruistic and people-loving to cheer for New Orleans.

Then again, is that really what's virtuous? Why do we feel a need to sympathize with the underdog? Why not cheer on the Colts who'v forged a successful dynasty? The hard work, difficult management and consistently good football required to turn out those kinds of results should be rewarded by our allegiance, shouldn't they?

Hence my quandary. The Saints is a cool name. So is Colts. If someone comments or messages me or something before kickoff telling me who to cheer for, I will. First come, first serve.

Anyway, as far as annual traditions go, this crisis of conscience isn't so bad. I'll survive. Unless I choose the Colts and all my roommates choose the Saints. Then I'll be tarred and feathered like a Loyalist in 1777 Massachusetts.

What do you read?

I just had the oddest experience.

I instantly want to clarify. I can imagine odder experiences. I could have just been dipped in a vat of banana yogourt and give the Nobel prize in cartwheeling. That is not what just just happened. I imagine, however, that the one I've just had is likely the oddest experience I'll have today.

I am currently getting work done. That is, until I was interrupted and so shaken by the experience that I decided to stop what I was working on and carpe the creative diem.

I was getting some research done for one of my papers. Rwandan genocide. Scary unhappy stuff. lots to read. I was in the midst of this reading when a couple people walked behind me.

Considering I'm in the Nipissing library, this is not an entirely uncommon phenomenon.

However, all is not well. Because the taller of the two indistinct presences whose existence I am all-but ignoring stops, turns to me, and says, "Do you read novels?"

I need you to understand something about me. There are people who are single-minded. There are people who have a one-track mind. But I take focus to a whole new level. Exclusivity is my trademark. The mental effect of this question on the progress of what I was thinking about (which was fascinating, but this doesn't strike me as the venue) was that of a perfectly happy train rounding the corner and bumping into an entirely inconveniently placed mountain.

"Uh...umm...sure..." I believe was my eloquent response, my brain scrambling to put the pieces of the train together, to look for the track again, to write apologetic and sympathetic letters to the families of everyone who had been on the train, and praying they would be able to trust Hoss-Brain-Rail again someday in the future.

The asker of this question turned out to be an older gentleman with short, trim white hair. I don't believe he was very tall, but since I was sitting and he was standing behind me, I didn't have a great angle for comparison. He was accompanied by a lady who seemed younger than him though old enough to have a family and a mortgage and real problems. The man was dressed in a dark suit, I believe. Maybe a red tie? His face was dour and serious. I had the strongest need to impress this man, as if he were something of importance. I hoped that he had wanted me to be a novel-reader.

And then the follow-up question, breaking the momentary and even unnoticable silence.

"What kind of novels do you read?"

It wasn't the question that threw me off. It was his manner. He wasn't trying to make conversation and he wasn't interested in getting to know who I was better. After not even so much as an "Excuse me", I don't know why I would expect warmth or interest now, but there it is. Force of habit.

Anyway, I blanked. Way blank. What do I read? What have I read?

The book I just finished the other day was "World War Z: An Oral history of the Zombie War" by Max Brooks. But that wasn't really a novel exactly. The most recent novel I read was "And Another Thing" by Eoin Colfer. Great. Funny. Really liked it. What kind of novel is that? Science Fiction? Comedy?

I believe these last two categories are what bumbled unceremoniously from my still-derailed and wrangled-by-insurance-companies brain.

Well, apparently he was pleased. He smiled, turned to his friend and said, "See?" and then turned to me saying, "Thanks, son. You've helped me prove a point." With that they walked away, the woman laughing and the man seeming very proud of himself.

Hrmm.

I feel a little taken-advantage of. How could he know that I read Sci-Fi? Is it how I dress? My Mac? At that precise moment I had a page from Google Books open to a book I was previewing. What about Genocide and Public Health screamed "Science Fiction"? Or is it a demographic thing? A lot of guys my age, in university, are big on sci fi and fantasy.

What was his point? Should I be happy I helped him make it?

The book I read before that was John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress". What if I had told him that?

I guess I don't like being pigeon-holed. I don't like meeting expectations. And I don't like being picked on by people bigger than, or at least standing over, me.

And now my train of thought is good and dead. Jerk. Maybe I'll take lunch now.

M'EGGS!!!

M'EGGS!!

I have another friend and his name shall be Dmitri. Naturally, Dmitri is not actually his name, but if you know him, you will see through the pseudonomial veneer instantly. And I could hardly fail to extend to Dmitri the favour I've extended to Carlos.

I lived with Dmitri for a full school year, and I think he may very well have been one of my favourite roommates of all time. More fun than my karaoke-singing and Hannah Montana-crazy Phillipino roommate. More nightmarish than the half-rehabilitated crack dealer who taught me how to make ecstasy from common household ingredients. Not that I've done it, mind you. But knowing how is an interesting little bit of spice for the resume.

I think, in fact, that one of the best parts about living with Dmitri was three am. There was something magical about three o'clock that turned Dmitri and every person around him into complete babbling fools.

Now, I normally like to think of myself as a rather even-keeled person. I can get rather nutty; don't get me wrong. But I always got the impression that my continued existence in the house was entirely for the purpose of acting as a character foil for Carlos and Dmitri. As if God were a novelist and I were a stock character straight man for the other guys' jokes. An if that meant putting out fires and having small candy frogs hurled at me every couple of nights, than that's what it would have to mean. That was my role in life.

But this particular three o'clock the madness was contagious. You really had to be there. And so, to that end, I shall try to make it real for you.

I am tired. Not tired enough to go to bed, but tired enough to be sure that doing homework is a bad idea. I go to the kitchen to consume some sugary substances. As tired as I am, there is, in fact, work to be done and it can't be put off a day longer.

Dmitri, likewise, is sitting in his room off the front hall. I decide to pay him a visit, cup of hot chocolate in hand. He is sitting in the corner of his large bedroom. The room is made particularly large-feeling because he has no wall decorations or stuff. You couldn't call the room spartan; that's Carlos. Carlos has no stuff and what few things he allows to exist in his room are rigidly catalogued and organized. Dmitri is a fan of free expression and long intervals between laundry days. Clothing in particular is the defining decorative feature.

Like I said, Dmitri is sitting in the corner at his computer, staring blankly at an equally blank screen, 2L bottle of Diet Pepsi in his hand. He notices me, turns to face me.

“Friend,” he says, his voice rippling with a hoarse baritone. Hoarse baritone usually precedes something very unimportant and very awesome. Hoarse baritone never comes before, “Will you pray with me” or “I killed a man today”. That is, unless he's talking about Carlos, who he often declares to have killed.

I nod, smiling a tired and weak half-smile.

“Friend,” he begins again. “I'm not having a lot of success with this paper.”

“No?” I jab, raising an eyebrow and looking at the screen. I can be a jerk when I'm tired. But Dmitri doesn't seem to care.

“Nope,” he says, and takes a big swig from his bottle. Than he rises and walks towards the door. I am standing in the door. He stops about a foot in front of me. I stand in his way. I don't know why I don't move, but I don't. He looks at me and laughs.

“Friend, what's up?”

I stare at him. A very long pause goes by.

“S'up, Christmas?” Dmitri says, with a side head-bob like from Night at the Roxbury. I don't know how I got this particular nickname; perhaps from wearing red and green one time ever in my life once.

I have lost the will to be sane. So I walk a few steps across the hall to the closet and retrieve my Canadian Tire, a bit-too-small and not all that comfortable or even protective goalie mask and put it on. Dmitri has seized the opportunity to walk to the kitchen to make food, or some such thing.

He turns and looks at me.

I don't know why, and I think I never will, but I make a neanderthal-esque overbite face, bring my arms up to my chest like a T-Rex, and stand perfectly still. Like a startled squirrel, or a meerkat. With a goalie mask.

Dmitri begins to laugh and almost falls over.

Maybe it's cause it is late and we are making noise, but more likely the product of the increasingly diseased state of my mind, but I step close to him, peer at him through the helmet and say, “Shh Shh Shh Shhh Shhh.”

Now Dmitri actually falls over. His Jamaican beef patties just barely make it to the counter before their bearer collapses in a heap of laughter. I join him on the floor.

I decide to walk back to my room, content that I've entertained Dmitri for a couple minutes.

Ten minutes later I am no longer content and walk back to his room. His screen is still blank but his pepsi bottle is significantly more empty. Or maybe less full? Which of those is optimistic? I am still wering my goalie mask, and I shush him again. Then, with my little squirrel arms, I wave them about in a squirrelly facsimile of a breaststroke.

“Swim?” Dimtri asks between chuckles.

I nod very vigourously.

“You swim?” Dmitri asks. “You swim good?”

Now we both laugh again.

Despite all of my effort, I'm not sure this exchange could have possibly been made to be funny unless you are either myself or Dmitri. But I shan't easily forget the day that it was I and not one of my crackpot roommates whose completely irrational behaviour made someone else's life a little bit stupider than before.

3AM is magic hour. Where Cadbury Mini Eggs are gold and Frogs are LSD. No wonder I never get any homework done.

Irreverence

I think I've always been fascinated with irreverence. Irreverent comedy, for example, has always been a favourite. Although, to be fair, hardly any comedy these days could be styled as 'reverent'. So perhaps most comedy is irreverent. And when I think 'irreverent comedy', I'm usually thinking 'absurdist' comedy. Which isn't the same thing, exactly. Absurdist comedy is great. Carlos is absurdist comedy. People-watching is absurd. Family Guy, before it began to really stink, was deliciously absurd.

But enough about that, because what I've been thinking about is irreverence. I hear a lot and think a lot about the values of irreverent speaking, of irreverent leadership, of irreverent participation in democracy, and other similar things. That creating these artificial boundaries of 'reverence' do a lot of harm. It keeps people from speaking their mind and being plainly understood. It makes absurdism impossible. In fact, it may make all comedy impossible.

But the problem, I think, with breaking down the boundaries of reverence is that it leaves us all rather too irreverent. That if we prize and value honesty to the point of bluntness, pointedness to the point of unsophistication, and shock-and-awe to the point of un-nuanced and purposeful speech, I think we lose something. That just because a speaker says something striking doesn't mean it's true or even very bright. Just because a writer posits naked honesty doesn't mean that they are saying anything of meaning or substance. That it's one thing for someone to say something that tickles your ears and it's another thing entirely for someone to say something that convicts the soul and captivates the imagination.

And as a collection of young twenty-something, impressionable, over-educated, shaving boys and girls, maybe we need to realize that we will grow the look-before-you-leap instinct later and that it's not a bad thing. That maybe lots of my anxt and zeal and existential Tolstoy-ism is not necessarily because I'm smarter or better-read or deeper-thinking than anyone else. Maybe it's just that I'm 21 and so I therefore freak out about life.

Is that ageism? I dunno. I don't think so. I hope not. I'd hate to get associated with any -isms.

Which may also be a symptom of being 21. Fear of being wrong? Fear of being disliked? And at the end of the day, maybe a little reverence is the exact kind of structure that could hold the jumbled mess of thought and colour and smell that is my overtaxed and macaroni-dependant brain.

People-Watching

Last term the Nipissing and Canadore Christian group had a big worship service and they brought up this speaker. He had a lot of cool and amazing things to say, but this is neither the time nor the place for the cool or the amazing. This is the place for oddity. And there was one very remarkable thing he told us that struck me and has stayed with me.
See, he was actually a Nipissing alum. And he opened by telling us stories from his education - a long time ago when dinosaurs roamed the Earth - and about his nostalgic memories of North Bay.
He told us that North Bay, Ontario, was the single best place on the face of the planet to people-watch.

Apparently, if you go and sit down at Twigg's at the right time of day - I think it was early-morning-ish but I don't remember exactly - you can have the time of your life watching people pass by. Apparently the folks scurrying around in our bustling "downtown" are fascinating.

Naturally, I have been rather skeptical. Wouldn't the people-watching be better in a really odd place like a fish market in Hong Kong or a hot dog stand on Wall Street? But being the inquisitive and experimental kind of guy I am, I've tried to take him up on his people-watching dare.

Now, I don't want to alarm you, but what follows is not for the faint of heart. Put the kids to bed, pop a Tum's to settle your stomach, go pour yourself another glass of wine. A full one.
Ready?

North Bay, Ontario, IS the best place on Earth to people-watch.

I had to figure out what I was doing first. There's a bunch of rules I hadn't been given that I was forced to discover myself. For example, it's best to not even try watching other people in the coffee shop. You're just too close. They'll feel your eyes on them and then they spin, look at you funny, and back away slowly. I guess it beats being shanked back home in the city, but it's still a mite unsettling.
Doing it at the school, too, is a dodgy bit of business. For the last ten minutes I've been trying to watch the teacher's college students in the small cafeteria but they just aren't that interesting. I'm beginning to think teacher's college sucks a tiny bit of your soul away the longer you stay in it.
But the school can have benefits, because Nipissing has some real characters. For example, at this very moment there is one very fascinating young man typing furiously away at his laptop with such intensity and quaking with purpose. Occasionally, he stops, sits erect and scans the cafeteria. He almost caught me by surprise doing this the first time. And then, as suddenly as he stopped, he starts again. As if he was a groundhog popping out of his hole or a squirrel standing up on his haunches to get an extra two inches' perspective on the universe. And, having returned - I suppose uneventfully - from his little reconnaissance mission, his typing is as furious and squirrellious as before.

Truth is, there's something about this town so potently human, I think, that you can watch people live their lives and be amused. The city is a borderlands of sorts, where people are all kinds are drawn by the promise of education, work, country life, city life, or a butt-whalloping Dionne Quints museum. And with all kinds living in such close proximity, I can't help but stare. And hyperventilate with laughter.

Then again, while I'm killing myself laughing, there's someone else in this cafeteria wondering why I'm staring mercilessly at this very fascinating young man in the corner, pausing only to type and smile amusingly to myself.

HOSS!!

I have a friend and his name shall be Carlos. At least, I'm calling him Carlos to protect his identity.
Carlos is the loudest person you shall ever have the great fortune to meet. He enjoys nothing quite so much as loudly declaring whatever may come to mind. Often, a loud declaration is entirely appropriate. For example, when he is watching hockey and my team (Pittsburgh) scores on his team (Calgary), he yells. Very loudly. And usually after yelling he will pounce on me and attempt to throttle me with a Cheeto. So far he has never been successful, but the last couple of times were rather close.

But more often than that, Carlos' s affinity for audaciously aggravating audio carries not even the slightest bit of justification. He is particularly fond of three-syllable words or phrases. CHEVY HAT! BREAKFAST TOAST! and SKIN SKIN FRUIT! are some of his favourites.

The reason I'm telling you about Carlos is because, here, on the threshold of a new blogging adventure, I owe him a sincere debt of thanks. For it is Carlos who gave me the name "Hoss". It's not the first unexplained and unsolicited nickname he has bestowed, nor will it be the last. Allow me to sketch the scene:

"S'UP, HOMIE!"

"Hi, Carlos."

A pause

"WHAT'S UP?...HOMIE!"

A pause. I stare at him blankly, unsure of what he wants from me. Sometimes I ask him what he wants, but experience has taught me that Carlos never has a good answer to this question. So I stare at him blankly.

"HOMIE!"

I wait, praying he will tire of the game.

"HOMES!"

I wait.

"HOMIE WORD LIFE!"

'Homie Word Life' is in fact four syllables, but you wouldn't think so the way Carlos screams it.

By this point, I am tired of the game. I go to sit down in front of the TV, pretending Carlos isn't there.

A very long pause.

"SO HOMIE WORD, WHAT'S UP!? WHAT'S UP, HOMES?"

The next three come in rapid fire, almost rhythmic if it weren't so mentally jarring.

"S'UP HOMES?" "S'UP HOMES?" "S'UP HOMES?"

He pauses again. Then, entirely unexpectedly,

"S'UP HOMES?"

And it is then that everything changes forever. At that precise moment, in a flash, a streak of brilliance flashes through Carlos's mind. A new idea.

"S'UP, HOSS!?"

That gets my attention. I look at him. Inexplicably, just as inexplicable as everything Carlos does, he break down laughing. His entire shaved head turns bright red, his lungs screaming to pull in enough air while at the same time vomiting it out again in a torrent of the most inexplicable laughter.

In spite of myself, I begin to laugh with him.

"Hoss?" I ask, between chuckles.

"HOSS, HOMIE!" Carlos declares, clapping his hand on my shoulder in an entirely uncomfortable and unsolicited way.

"HOSS!"

And thus was I named.

The New Year is a time for new beginnings. New classes, new resolutions, new friends and a new carbon monoxide detector. And so, fittingly, I have been dubbed with a new name, entirely unfamiliar to anything that has come before it. I've been called Jimbo. I've been called Fish. I've been called Monica. But this piece of linguistic mastery, this figment of feverish folly's fruitless flailing to find a fitting phylogenesis is the new me.

I am Hoss.

Apparently.