The world is a horrible, horrible place.

May I reiterate:
The world is a horrible, horrible place.

Raisins

(The raisin chronicles have been in circulation for some time now, but I thought this would be a suitable home for them)

I really hate raisins, but they are extremely good in some chocolate bars, such as Hershey's almonds and raisins, and, my personal favourite, Glosette raisins.

Alone, I hate raisins. They disgust me. Not only in taste, but in texture, smell, and sight. Though I truly like grapes, so I do not know how they can end up tasting so bad. But I only like grapes when they are very firm and sweet. If they are sort of mushed they are, as raisins are, repulsive.

Wine, I find, is disgusting as well, and that comes from grapes, as raisins do.

Actually, if I was forced to eat a lone raisin, I could do it. I would not enjoy it, but I could do it if it were a matter of life and death. Or if someone was paying me. Or even as a dare at a really crazy party.

But what I truly cannot stand - ever at all - is a hidden raisin. They are the devil. The muffin looks innocent - you think that it may perhaps be a delectable snack - but then, after the first bite, the truth is beheld. Like Snow White's apple, the muffin is filled with evil. Raisins are lurking inside! You then have to dispose of the entire muffin, because to you it is inedible, and you bit it, so surely no one else will want it, unless they are a close friend or family member. But perhaps raisin disliking is hereditary, and therefore a family member could not help you. And is a friend who likes raisins really a true friend? Giving it to a homeless person would just be insulting and degrading. Not only due to the contaminating bite, but also due to the presence of raisins.

I'm sure that if one were to do a survey, he or she would find that a majority of the population is anti-raisin. It is rare to here one request raisins, or choose raisins. However, it is quite common to see the shunning of raisins.

This leads to a very interesting question. If so many people hate raisins, why are they present in so many foods?

One has to be careful when purchasing any sort of baked good, as the raisins are often baked inside or camouflage themselves. Sometimes they can even pass for chocolate chips.

Purchasing is not the only threat: there is also the grandma threat. Depending on the grandma, raisins could be baked into random desserts, even if raisins to not suit the dessert's style. This is why it all depends on the Grandma. Firstly, not all grandmas like raisins, and therefore they will not all place raisins into pure batter. Secondly, some Grandmas do not follow the stereotype and do not bake all the time. Thirdly, some grandmas are very talented bakers, especially those who might have had a job baking in a factory, and they may know when to and when to not put raisins in batter. However, there is the remaining group of grandmas who are poor bakers (perhaps they were good bakers at some point in their lives but they are growing a tad senile). These grandmas may not understand that raisins never go in certain foods, and that most small children are opposed to the raisin.

This does still not explain the people who give out raisins on Hallowe'en. In theory, they are most likely giving out raisins as a health precaution: they are against the high and presumably unhealthy levels of sugar that a child will intake on the evening. They certainly cannot hand out apples, as people may be concerned about razorblades, or poison, as per the apple given to Snow White as previously stated. These people feel that they are limited to raisins, however there are many other healthy snacks that may be distributed which are not nearly as repulsive. Any child can enjoy a healthy granola bar. Even a juice box is preferred. If they are pro-raisin they always have the option of grape juice. They could even compromise and give out Glosette raisins. If they give out plain raisins, children might egg their house. Luckily my father eats raisins, so if I get any for Hallowe'en I can just give them to him. If people choose to give out raisins, they can at least give out the Sun-Maid ones. The only thing worse than receiving a box of raisins is receiving a box of cheap raisins. I would rather get those candy kisses in the orange wrappers with the owls on them. And no one likes those. Even unsalted peanuts would be preferred, unless you are allergic to peanuts. Actually, I would rather receive cheap imitation raisins than cheap imitation pop. Imitation pop and imitation raisins both taste awful, but raisins do not crush your chips.

Actually I just remembered that raisin bran is my favourite cereal, so there is another aspect in which one can enjoy raisins. But they have sugar on them. I remember that there was an Encyclopaedia Brown story where that bad kid, Bugs Meaney, said that he was sitting in his back looking at the sky, thinking about why the raisins don't sink to the bottom of the box in raisin bran. The answer to the story was that it was 12:00 so the sun would have been directly overhead, therefore the bad kid could not have been lying on his back staring at the sky as he so claimed. I figured that out, so I didn't care. What I wanted to know was the answer to the raisin question, but it was not in the back of the book. I guess Encyclopaedia Brown wasn't so smart after all.

Raisins: The Saga Continues

As previously confessed, I enjoy raisins in the form of Glosette Raisins and Raisin Bran. The other day I was at the grocery store, and was looking for a delicious cereal that I could bring home and love. There before me stood Raisin Bran with its smiling little sun mascot in the corner. But if the sun mascot had seen the price taped to the shelf below him he would have been smiling no longer. For a miniature box it was like $5! I began to shake my head in disgust, but upon shaking my head slightly to the left I noticed a box sitting right next door to Raisin Bran. This box, much like the Raisin Bran box, was purple. It also featured a scoop of raisins. There was no smiling sun, but sometimes I hate the sun when it shines in my eye, so I could deal with this. The box also featured the phrase “raisin bran,” but instead of being preluded by the word “Kellogg’s,” this was called “Extra Raisin raisin bran.” There were many similarities, but there was also one important difference. This box only cost $2.99! I figured that if that cheap brand was significantly inferior to the quality brand they would be kind enough not to trick me by painting the box purple, photographing a scoop, and using similar phrasing. I put my trust in President’s Choice – after all, he IS the president and I should blindly follow – and brought the box of evil to the counter.

The box sat with its cereal friends on my shelf for a few days. Then, one day, I decided I needed a break from the Cheerios so I opened the Pandora’s Choice box. As I dumped the breakfast meal into my bowl I noted a problem. The ratio of raisins to bran was opposite to what it should be! One would think that the ideal raisin/bran ration would be one raisin to, say, eight bran. This was a two raisin to one bran ratio! Kellogg’s Raisin Bran’s entire image and sales pitch is based on the raisin/bran ratio, so it must be an important factor to most people. Though I do have somewhat of a problem with the “two scoops of raisins” catch phrase, because they don’t tell us how big the scoops are, so the information is somewhat meaningless. Also, there are different sized boxes of raisin bran, so that means they either use different sized scoops, bigger boxes have fewer raisins than smaller boxes, or they use more than two scoops for the bigger boxes, which would mean they are lying. Actually, it is probably all regulated by a machine, or mixed in a big tub ahead of time, so they probably don’t even use scoops. But the point is that they are competent and President’s Choice is not, and really one would presume that the cheap brand would be skimpy on the raisins because they weigh more than the bran and are thus probably more expensive. Anyway, so there before me sat a bowl of raisins with some random flakes. It looked like a bowl of dead flies with dandruff. I poured on the milk and began my feast. Except every spoonful I took had six raisins and one piece of cereal! And I really don’t like raisins – I only like them in Raisin Bran because they add a flavour to the bran. I wouldn’t pour some raisins into a bowl of milk and chomp in! And the bran has little flavour, so one flake makes no difference whatsoever! I ate about six bites and had no bran left. I dumped the remaining 42 raisins into the garbage. So I was still hungry. I decided to try again, so I began to pour. Once again, only raisins leapt out. Curious, I pulled the plastic bag out of the box. To my surprise and disgust, the top half of the bag was 90% raisins. But the bottom half of the bag had no raisins whatsoever! Just bran! There had clearly been no mixing involved at the factory. They dumped in the bran, and then dumped in the raisins without any sort of recipe, like the lazy people at Tim Hortons who force you to drink a shot of pure sugar at the bottom of your cup of tea! If the bran was on top, I might not blame the factory. I might just think that during the box’s journey to the store there was some shifting and the heavy ingredients plinko-ed to the bottom (although it would be an unprecedented case of shifting in the cereal world). Anyway, so this problem had to be fixed. I had to stick my arm into the bag and hand mix. And the lovely pouring spout that I had delicately ripped did not allow enough freedom for my arm, so I had to rip the top of the bag almost all the way open, which means next time the raisin bran is going to blast into my bowl overflowing onto the counter. After my mixing was through, I tried to place the bag back into the box, but instead of being a sleek rectangular shape, the cereal had all lumped to the bottom creating dimensions too wide for the box. So I had to tilt the bag and level the cereal out, slowly gliding it back into the box. I poured the better-but-still-too-raisiny-ratioed cereal into the bowl. I thought this would be it, and I would now be able to enjoy my delicacy. If this had been a poorly mixed and ratio-ed box of high quality cereal, enjoyment may have ensued, but now that I was no longer focused on the ratio it became clearer to me that the inferiorly mixed cereal was made up of inferior parts. Bran flakes suck, but these were the blandest bran flakes I’ve ever had. And despite the fact that the box was newly borne from the shelf, the flakes tasted staler than the Shreddies that have been in my grandparents’ cupboard since 1991. But this unpleasant taste was overshadowed by the army of raisins. I like to believe all raisins are inferior, but these were the most inferior raisins I have ever met. They tasted fake, like they were just lumps of sugar ground into a gel. They also clung together, so I would dip the spoon into the depths of the bowl and fish out a horrible raisin creature the size of ten raisins, but mashed into one horrid growth. I would then have to do a dash to the garbage can balancing the raisin ball on my spoon like in the egg race you play during frosh week. And some of the raisins were independently misshapen and unpleasantly coloured. It looked like a bunch of sick potato bugs had drowned in a cat dish of milk and become bloated over the weekend. And it appears the people at President’s Choice are aware of their raisins’ inferior state, because they have blasted the raisins with pounds of granulated sugar. But the sugar just soaks off in the milk so the milk just tastes sour and the raisin tastes as repulsive as it truly is. I was running out of time, so I just dumped the rest in the garbage. I don’t know what to do with the rest of the box. I don’t think I can eat it, I wouldn’t offer it to anyone I like, and I rummaged my arm though it so I wouldn’t even offer it to a homeless person who was eating sandwich remnants from a trash can. I would take it to the park and feed the pigeons, but I don’t think feeding birds raisins would be a pleasant idea. I don’t want to throw it in the garbage because I only ate one bowl and there might be someone out there who could really use it. Perhaps I’ll invent some sort of craft that requires gluing raisins to construction paper. Maybe there’s a theatre group who needs cereal as a prop. Or I could do a science experiment. In grade 11 my science teacher made us do an experiment with Cheerios. We had to make them swing on a rope by using static electricity. I thought it would be really funny if I ate my Cheerio off the string. It was pretty clever, until my teacher informed us he had used the same Cheerios throughout his entire teaching career. He taught my Mom. I felt sick later that day, but it might have just been the power of suggestion. I wasn’t very good at science.

You ain't cool unless you pee your pants.

I may not be down with the nine-year-old kids anymore, but I ain’t gonna deny that bedwetting is a problem. The commercials tell me it’s a problem and frankly I don’t want to research that topic so I’m just going to blindly believe the data. I feel bad for these kids and wish them a comfortable and convenient solution. However, this solution should not come at a greater cost. Over the last few years there have been a couple of commercials on TV with semi-repulsive children muttering through lost teeth that they wet the bed and they are embarrassed but now that they use new Good-Nites diapers they are all popular and cool kings of the castle. I am sure these diapers would help the average child feel better about himself, but what about the child IN the commercial? He probably has never wet the bed in his life. His parents just decided that instead of having his teeth knocked out in hockey like a normal child, he should become and actor and have his teeth knocked out at recess by the classmates who tease him for peeing his pants. The child is too young to know what he is reading and can’t object because his fancy parents in their fur coats and sunglasses can make him do whatever they want. But everyday that child must go to school with a bunch of normal kids who refer to him as “the dirty diaper” behind his back. Some people would argue that these other kids are being unrightfully cruel, but I think any nine-year-old in a diaper ad deserves to get his ass kicked. At least he has padding to protect him from bruising. Plus, this is apparently the entire reasoning BEHIND the diaper to begin with. The child feels insecure but with the diaper no one will know he wets the bed. But the star of the commercial has just announced to the entire WORLD that he wets the bed, so pain has been forced upon HIM by the very people who CLAIM they are trying to help children avoid pain! How dare the company that produces these things force children to testify for their products! Perhaps they feel having kids discuss their problems is the most effective advertising campaign. But do the allegedly good people at the diaper factory not think that sparing the life-long torture of a child would be fair trade for a slightly smaller profit? Could they not have just hired an ADULT (with no children in real life) to explain the product? Or what about a cartoon? If they can use cartoon bears to sell toilet paper I’m sure they could use a cartoon dolphin or something to sell a diaper. The diaper company is DESTROYING a child’s life just so they can sell more diapers. They are PROFITING from a child’s pain! And so are the parents. If the parents cared about their child at all they would not prostitute him to the world of diaper marketing. That’s really something to brag about at the next Christmas party: “Oh, well the child discussing his insecurities in the diaper ad is my son. No, he hasn’t done any commercials since because he had his face punched in at school and has to have total reconstructive surgery.” If the child did not wet his bed before he does now because he has nightmares of being beaten up at school every day. And if the child ever DOES see any of the blood money he made from the commercial – which I doubt – he won’t even get to enjoy it because it will go straight to paying his psychiatrist bills. These parents and the people at the Good-Nites company have basically murdered a child. They are EVIL. If my child wets the bed, and by that time Good-Nites have a complete monopoly over the nine-year-old diaper market, I will dedicate my life to hand-making diapers for my child, even if I have to make them out of my fine linen curtains and antique wedding gown. I would rather my child have restless sleep on crunchy plastic sheets than contribute to another child’s demise. Especially when the people who market the diapers are disguising this demise as care and concern for the child’s mental health. Like the diapers, I think these people are full of shit.

It's NOT a small world after all.

Remember that annoying "it's a small world after all" song? Well, that song should be sued for libel because the world is not small whatsoever. It is a very big place with lots of empty space just sitting there. Have you ever driven through the prairies? There is nothing there except some random weeds and a couple of dead shacks. There is room for everyone to enjoy acres and acres of glorious loneliness. Why then - WHY - do some people think that there is no room left and that if they do not cling to the person closest to them they will fall off the world's surface?

The elevator is bad enough as it is. It is this claustrophobic dangling box that jets you around through a brick mountain. You enter this big jaw mouth and it whips you into the air and then you jump onto a ledge and it whips the rest of the people away. You want to be on the elevator for as short a time as possible, as all that's inside is a flickering light, some brown chipped walls, and a couple of ads for the United Way. And of course it is slow so by the time the elevator comes to get you there is a little crowd formed at the entrance waiting to get on the ride. So you spludge on, all tangled amidst some random lady’s scarf with a random man’s dog snorting on your foot. You beach your arm across some child’s face and lunge at the button that the big bubble-blowing creature in front of the button panel was not kind enough to press for you. You are crammed in the crunchy little corner beside some lankster man in a smoked jacket. You are going to floor twenty, the lankster is going to floor 19, the bubble-blower is going to floor 10, the child is going to floor 8, the man and dog are going to floor 7, and the scarfed woman who has nothing physically wrong with her is going to floor 2. So you wait hunched in the corner as the elevator halts and spews people onto their floors. Finally the elevator reaches floor 10 and the bubble blower bursts off, but the lanky man is still to your right. His smoky jacket sleeve is infesting your tidy sleeve. The elevator is now 80% empty, but does the lankster move? No, he does not. Even though he could have an entire HALF of the elevator to himself, he remains LATCHED to your precious inch of space. You do not enjoy being crammed in the corner, but you cannot escape. Your only route would be to step forward and around the lankster and migrate to the opposite side of the cube. But then you feel like that would be rude as that would put you right by the door and he is getting off first. So you remain snugged against this crummy man, who does not even understand what he is doing because he is daintily watching the numbers on the wall trade glowing status. So you ride up a big 9 floors crammed in the corner while all this precious space is being completely wasted! Why would you not take advantage of the space! Just like sometimes you are in class, and there are 86 extra seats. You are sitting at the end of some random row with 52 empty seats directly around you. Your lovely friend always sits beside you and you are awaiting her arrival, but suddenly this normal looking stranger prances in and waltzes over to your circle of emptiness. He could sit in any of the 52 seats directly surrounding you, but instead he chooses the singular chair directly beside you. So now everyone in the class thinks you are now best friends with this impostor, and when your friend enters she must sit in another lonesome seat so it looks like you had a fight. Perhaps a fight over the newfound stranger? So now you can’t pass notes in class and at halftime must escape the random closeness.

There are also the thrift store peekers. These peekers are delusional and think that you are a thrift store connoisseur who is skilfully finding all the great fashionable deals before they do. So as you joyfully roam, they lurk 3 inches behind you pretending to look at a knitted shawl. But you can feel their eyes twitching to focus on what size the cardigan you are glancing at is. Every time you put something back on the rack they quickly snatch it to examine it themselves. Soon you begin picking up hideous shoulder-padded blazers with stains and carrying them around the store with you. The peeker will float behind you all the way to the dressing room. You don’t try the blazers on, but instead just sit in the dressing room for 26 minutes working on the crochet blanket for your niece. Then you step out and place the tattered blazers on the unwanted rack. The peeker will snatch them up like Gollum and roll to the checkout. Finally you have had your revenge. But beware also for the Christmas tree peeker and the used CD store peeker. A good idea is to bring a sharp weapon with you while you shop. You could, perhaps, create a belt that has knives sticking out of it. That way, no one could get within 10 inches of you and many people would stay away all together. However, this could be dangerous while shopping for clothing or a child to adopt. A safer method may be simply to soak yourself in an unpleasant odour that will make people gag when they whiff you. However, many peekers are the types who stink themselves. I guess the best way would be to bring in a fake gun and a ski mask and yell at everyone to get on the floor. After you threaten to kill them if they move, you are free to roam the store as you please. You could probably get away without paying for your purchases, but I would argue that would be going too far.

"Baby"

Why do so many songs have the word "baby" in them? How often do you actually use the word "baby" in real life, unless you are talking about an actual baby? Some people call their girlfriends "baby," but they are usually yucky men who have six girlfriends and eight diseases. If someone called me "baby" I would punch him. Well, I would at least look at him in disgust. And usually in songs the word "baby" is not being used to describe a specific person. The word usually just fills awkward space at the end of an ineloquent sentence. No one in real life just randomly says, "I was playing my guitar, baby," so why is it suddenly acceptable just because someone sings it? The "I really love you, baby" I might find acceptable because it is possible that the singer wrote the song while his girlfriend was there. Or perhaps he just hasn't found a name for his actual baby yet. But the random sentences should be left alone. Even worse than the single "baby" is the multiple "baby" or the "baby-yeah" combo. The multiple "baby" usually consists of just two "baby”s in a row, but sometimes can be repeated up to five times, especially if the singer is a male in his early twenties who can't play an instrument or do up all the buttons on his shirt. The "baby-yeah" combo is even more predominant, and is used by both real bands and those who dance around with chairs. The "yeah" is unnecessary because we know you agree with what you said, otherwise you wouldn't have said it. And the combination of useless words brings attention to the lack of creativity. I feel very sorry for the first person who ever used the word "baby" in a song, because everyone is plagiarizing and he/she is receiving no credit. No Grammys should be given to artists whose albums contain the word "baby." A good artist would come up with his own word. Why not fill up that awkward space with the word "pencil" or "Marvin" or "chinstrap." Any of these words would make just as much sense as having "baby" in there. If you sang "I walked down the road, pencil" people would probably just assume it meant something really deep. They would then talk about your band to all their friends because understanding your indie weirdness would make them seem underground and cool. Soon all the grade twelves who want to rebel would be writing their own songs that included the filler word, "pencil." You could create a musical revolution. Children worldwide would idolize you. Your uncle at the pencil factory would never have seen better sales. Bill Gates' shares would go down. You might score a date with Courtney Love. You could smash your guitar every night and could just buy a new one the next day. You could smash anything you wanted and would never go to jail. But I think a better idea than smashing the guitar would be to simply break pencils in half on stage. That would be just as violent but more fitting and original. Besides, that's the only reason people liked your band to begin with. And that's another reason the word "pencil" is so much better than "baby." You could never get away with breaking a baby in half on stage. That would mean you weren't the real mother, and the other lady would get the baby.

English

They always tell you you should learn proper English because it will help you get a better paying job. But I think they should concentrate more on the fact that bad English can send you to jail for a crime you didn't commit. Imagine how many people are currently in jail becasue they accidentally confessed to a murder by saying, "I didn't do nothing! I didn't kill nobody!"

Newspapers should be banned.

The high-brow members of society often preach to you that reading the newspaper daily is vital in today’s complex world. These fancy people often brag about how many various newspapers they read. For example, if you read the National Post, then the Globe and Mail, then the Toronto Star, you are more valuable to society than someone who reads just the Globe and Mail and the New York Times. Reading the Toronto Sun, however, actually puts you in the negative, so if you read the National Post and the Toronto Sun that is equal to reading nothing at all. These literates are too high-class to watch the news on television, or gaze at a computer screen. And while I’m sure they listen to CBC Radio One in their automobiles, it is difficult to hear over the clinking of wine glasses in the backseat.

But my mind is puzzled as to why newspaper reading is thought such a classy act, as it seems to be the scruffiest method of the bunch. I do not understand why any smart person would want to read the paper simply because of the newsprint issue. After simply turning one page of the daily news your hands are etched in black ink and it looks like you’ve been working in the mines. So after reading the newspaper you must find a suitable place to wash your hands. Sometimes this is not possible and you have to spit on your hands and rub them on your trousers. And if you were extremely classy you might be wearing white satin gloves. Granted, you would probably have enough money to buy a new pair daily, but if the glove factory went on strike that week you would be in big trouble.

Many people also read the paper as they eat their toast in the morning. This is a bad idea because the ink could easily be ingested due to cross-contamination. Also, if there was jam on the toast and you were still slightly tired, the bread could flip onto the newspaper ruining the Sears ad. This would be a waste of bread and could prevent you from getting a great deal on a new stereo.

There are some days when perhaps you were playing baseball the night before and were bitten on the face by a mosquito. If this wasn’t humiliating enough, you might accidentally scratch your face while reading the newspaper and show up to work with an unattractive smudge on your chin. Even worse, while waiting for a job interview the mischievous secretary might offer you the paper to read while you wait. It would be rude to decline, and you want to look smart, so you grab the pile of dirt. When your potential boss comes out, he shakes your hand, which is now grimy and rough. This is a bad first impression, and now his hand is also dirty and he will lose the Mckinvin deal. Silly Putty went out of style in 1963 because nobody liked these ink transfer games, and the newspaper factories should reconsider the durability of their ink.

They should also reconsider the newspaper size. Why does the newspaper have to be ten feet tall and eight feet wide? Someone with normal-sized arms could not possibly expand the entire paper. The dwarf community should definitely file a lawsuit. Those who can expand their arms to the full width of the newspaper are still restricted as there are no spaces in society a newspaper can fit. An expanded newspaper cannot fit into a phone booth or a bathroom stall or a booth at a restaurant or on the ferris wheel or in a power wheels jeep. It requires its own elevator car and takes up three seats on the subway. Every year millions of subway riders are injured when an untrained fool opens the paper only to punch an unsuspecting grandpa in the temple. Many subway riders try to do the fold over, which involves folding the even-number page backward behind the odd-number page so the width is halved. This is usually effective, but some days there is that random page in the middle that is all by its lonesome that you can not do the backward fold with, so you try and grip the ridges together as you do the flip, but then all the pages shift creating a big ruffled crumpling beast.

One who is conscious of the wonton size of the paper will do the clever businessman fold and won’t unfold it until he is in the safety of his office. This fold is accomplished by dividing the paper into thirds and tucking the flipbook edge into the spine edge slot. It is stable, compact, and effective if someone tells you they were fired and you need to hit their arm with something and leap back while exclaiming. But even though this fold is effective for those with briefcases or large arms the paper can be tucked under, it still does not fit in the everyday purse. You have to ram it in and it still peeks out, creating easy access for the pickpockets that plague our city streets. And if it begins to rain the purse carrier’s newspaper is doomed because of the cheap paper and ink. The purse-carrier could carry an emergency shopping bag with her at all times just in case, but this would be unattractive and would counter the beauty of the purse. You might as well just buy a backpack, but frankly you would rather have the purse than have to lug around a big pouch all day so the newspaper loses this contest.

But sometimes you cannot even do the special fold because on the weekend they try to please you by adding 26 extra sections of interest only to rich white people in their 40s who wear turtlenecks and a gold watch. The paper is too thick for you to fold and even a trendy knapsack might not do the trick. You would be better off just throwing these sections out right away, but you feel bad because you just paid $1.25 and the teenagers walking towards you will scowl if you don’t recycle. So you have to lug the big file home. The rich people who buy the paper feel like they will be smarter if they read the whole thing, so they sit there for 28 hours straight reading the car section, the fashion section, the food section, the condo section, the travel section, the life section, the shopping section, the economy section, the book section, the obituary section, the golf section, the technology section, and the crossword section. They read the wedding section even though they're married, the classified section even though they're employed, and the international section even though they’re racist. And by the time they’re done reading yesterday’s news it’s almost tomorrow so they are now two days behind in what is happening in the world. So by the time they get around to the next day’s newspaper, which is actually the previous day’s news, everything they just read will be out of date so they might as well have just waited for the next day’s paper to begin with.

But they insist that, even though at they end of every day they throw their precious papers with their fancy alliterated headlines into the recycling box only to be snatched away by the man in the dump truck, they are better and smarter people for reading the paper and that people such as myself are society’s undesirable rabble. And while I think newspapers should be banned, I must admit they have some uses. I have killed many a fly with newspapers. When I start fires in my fireplace I get exceptional joy from starting the fire with copies of Kingston This Week. Many homeless people would not have blankets without old newspapers roaming the streets. At Guide camp we had to make sit-upons by shoving some papers in a bag. I hated the sit-upon but it was better than sitting in the dirt. In high school we built our Santa Claus parade float out of papier-maché and without the newspaper our float would have just been some homemade glue plastered on a reindeer skeleton. And once the Polka-Dot Door taught us how to make a clever palm tree by rolling newspapers up and then shredding some leaves. In grade two my friend Rosalyn and I made one for a play about a cat and a purple banana tree. We thought our script was pretty clever at the time, but all I can remember is that I was the cat and I was solving some mystery and she was the bad person who was in charge of the evil tree. If I could rewrite it now I’d probably change a lot of things. But we were forced to write it then because we were the “enriched” students and this was our special time out of class. Looking back, I think the public school system failed me. Or “enriched” was code for something else.

Juice Boxes are evil.

Juice boxes are supposed to be designed for children. They come in fun little packages with tea-sipping mice and flashing lights so kids will think drinking their grape punch from concentrate is a joy instead of desiring a refreshing soda. But whoever designed the drink box should have a mental assessment done. The person who designed the drink box straw should go to jail.

The average standard drink box comes in a pack of three. They are bound together like a little family of fun in a sharp piece of plastic. The plastic is difficult to remove. Sometimes you have to use a knife to get it off, or a pair of scissors. Sometimes the plastic cuts your finger. Children should not be allowed to use sharp objects, especially not sharp objects that are being used to cut other sharp objects. And might I add that this extra plastic seems rather wasteful. Juice boxes should be liberated and sold individually. Not only would this delete the problem of the extra plastic, but it would let a child be more adventurous. Instead of drinking fruit punch three days in a row, he could have fruit punch, orange drink AND raspberry punch! So if one day Timmy was not in the mood for orange drink (maybe he had an orange for breakfast) he could just switch and take another option. Not to mention people who have four kids. If someone had three kids life would be easy because there are three juice boxes. With four kids someone gets dehydrated. Or you have to do the mathematical equation that you have to do when buying the hotdog buns and hotdogs, which all leads back to a conspiracy between the meat and bread industries. Well it appears the juice industry has caught on to the classic hotdog scheme! With four kids you have to buy more than one package of juice boxes. If you buy two then you have 2 extra. You have to buy FOUR packages of juice boxes in order for each child to get an even number! You know how children fight if everything isn’t equal! You could always buy two packages and just throw the extra two juice boxes away to avoid a conflict. It would be a waste of money, but it would still be cheaper than buying four packages of juice boxes.

But back to the straw issue. The straw causes a majority of juice box problems. On the average juice box, there is a homely little straw in a slice of plastic glued to the exterior in a diagonal fashion. Not only is this impractical because it blocks the picture of fruit on the cover that someone at the factory painstakingly designed, but the glue is flimsy and sometimes it detaches. If you liked drinking soda through a straw but there were no straws available you could get by. You could just drink from the can like a regular civilian. But with a juice box there is no option. Sometimes a straw falls off of a juice box and is lost on the way to school. At lunch hour, Timmy eats his crackers and just at his pivotal moment of thirst discovers that he has no straw! A good mother might have given Timmy some extra straws to keep in his desk in case he dropped one on the floor, but most mothers don’t consider the straw factor because juice boxes were not in fashion when they were children. Plus, they don’t sell juice box straws individually, so if one straw is lost it causes a vicious cycle of straw-borrowing, and there will always be a box without a straw sitting in the fridge until one day the father decides to pour it into a glass. But he could have bought a larger container of juice if he had wanted – he was just trying to make Timmy feel better.

Timmy has no straw and no one will share because it would be unhealthy and counter-effective. Sometimes people try poking the metal hole out with a pencil, but it is very difficult to drink from the small hole. There is a limited amount of juice that can flow through the hole, and you have to tilt your head all the way back for it to work. Some people try expanding the hole with their pencil, but in doing so, their pencil lead touches the juice inside and they don’t want to drink it anymore.

There is always the little flap at the front that you can fold up and cut along the dotted like. The problem is a child who can’t read might not understand these instructions. And the Crayola scissors can only cut through construction paper, and even then they leave a rough and unprofessional edge. Besides, the spout would be too large for a child’s mouth and he would just spill the juice on his Ninja Turtles shirt and perhaps develop an aversion to juice.

There is also the danger of a cracked straw. This can be dangerous in different ways, as there are a variety of cracks. There is the side crack. This is the least dangerous because it simply makes the drinking process more difficult. Air comes in through the crack so the child must suck extra hard to attain juice. This could cause an asthma attack if the chid in question happened to have asthma. The pointy-end crack is also not dangerous, but frustrating. It makes the bottom scraps of juice unattainable as there is no proper suction due to the crack. This is a waste of precious and delicious McCain beverage. The dangerous crack is the even-end crack. A smart child will carefully examine the straw before use, but many children are preoccupied with trying to act cool despite their plastic Barbie lunchbox when all the other grade fours have trendy linen Velcro sacks. This straw can act like a crab claw and pinch the child’s tongue, causing a cut and perhaps some tears. This will make the child look like an even bigger loser.

The straw wrapper is almost as bad. The static electricity makes it cling to the child’s hand because she has been sitting on those orange plastic chairs all day. When she tries to throw it in the garbage, chances are she will miss. This is due to the static as well as the fact that the plastic is light-weight and flutters easily. The odds of the child picking up the wrapper are slim because most children are lazy. The janitor might miss it as it blends in with the floor and there the litter will sit for days! In a way this is better than the aluminium foil dot on the top of the juice box. Sometimes the foil is punctured out completely and falls into the juice. Who knows what health problem the juice box generation will encounter in the future.

Another problem with juice boxes is the fact that they come in a box. The corners are sharp and pointy and smuggle juice in the bottom that the straw cannot reach. This causes the child to create that horrid echoing slurp sound in the middle of class. Because juice boxes are not see-through the child can never accurately locate the remaining juice, elongating the slurping mode. Also, if one steps on the juice box it will explode. Sometimes a child might accidentally step on a backpack because there aren’t enough hooks in the winter. If the backpack was one of those cheap canvas ones the juice box would easily explode and destroy the child’s math book. Plus the child would be thirsty at lunch and have only his tears as a reminder of the delicate feel of liquid.

There have been a couple of attempts at solving the juice box problems during the past. There are reusable plastic containers with screw-on lids. These containers are cost-effective and environmentally friendly in the long-run, but they are dumb because they leak. The lid untightens slightly and Timmy’s gym clothes are stained red. These containers are also often difficult to drink from as they have flip-up spouts reminiscent of toddler drinking cups. Plus, after you are done the drink you have to carry the Tupperware home again, and if you did a craft that day you might not have room in your bag. Also, that means your parents have to wash the container every day, and it is difficult to wash because there is a narrow opening and you can’t get your hand inside to scrub. There was also the invention of the juice bag. They might as well have called it a barf bag because that’s what the idea makes me want to do. It does nothing to solve the straw issue – in fact; a bag of juice is more difficult to handle without a straw. It is just as fragile, and there is the added complexity of not being able to place the bag of juice on your desk. You either have to drink it all in one go, or be able to eat with one hand. If you were eating crackers for lunch and you had to put peanut butter on them that would be too difficult to do.

And another note of frustration: are juice boxes recyclable? Most say yes but some say no. It is never on the picture that people send to your house when they have a new recycling program. And sometimes at school we would put them in the yellow recycling bins but the janitors would pull them out and leave them there after taking everything else!

I think the best juice boxes are the square ones that are white and have the angled top – like a miniature milk carton. They have a higher quantity of juice, the juice is usually of a better quality, and they often attach convenient bendy straws instead of the cheap straight ones. But there was this one time in grade five that I brought one of those to school. I think it was called Fresh and Tasty and it was apple flavour. I was really thirsty that day but when I took a sip of my juice it tasted sour. Not fresh, and very tasty but not in a good way. I went to the back sink to dump the juice out. I didn’t just want to throw it in the garbage because the juice would have slowly leaked and then if someone threw out a pencil it might stab a hole in the garbage bag and the janitor would have to clean up the mess. As per the limited juice flow through the aluminium hole, I opened the spout to dispose of the liquid. The juice flowed out and was followed by a large chunk of rotten brown apple glob. I never drank Fresh and Tasty juice again. It was a bad lunch because I felt sick and was really thirsty. I would have just gone out into the hall and had a drink from the water fountain, but I had Mrs. McMahon that year.

Ice-water

I used to have this boyfriend who would always order my drinks for me when we went out to restaurants. My beverage of choice is water, as I dislike the idea of paying $2.65 for a glass of Coke that came from the tap, and I find water pleasant and refreshing. However, even though when the male asked me what I wanted to drink I responded, “water,” when the waitress came the beast would always say, “Could we just get two ice-waters?” Okay. I requested WATER – not ICE-WATER, so what makes you THINK you can just go ahead and add the prefix “ICE” onto my beverage choice without my permission? If I wanted ice-water I would have ASKED for ice-water. But I asked for WATER.

First of all, what the hell is ice-water? Would ice-water not just be ICE? When water freezes it becomes ICE so there cannot really be an ice/water hybrid. What the fool meant was water containing ice. Now, I have a problem with this. I do not LIKE ice in my water. Okay, two cubes will not offend me, and usually when you order just plain water at a restaurant they automatically insert the ice. This is fine. HOWEVER, when you specifically REQUEST “ICE-water” there is a better chance that the server will put EXTRA ice into your water! So then you hear your beverage jingling towards you from across the restaurant. It arrives and you are thirsting to death and you take one little sip and suddenly you are doing the big straw blast noise because there is no liquid left – ONLY ICE. So then you have to stop eating until the waitress floats by and you must constantly harass her for refills throughout the night so she hates you and spits in your cake.

If the waitress catches on quick enough, she simply avoids walking by your table so she won’t have to grab the big pitcher again. In that case you must sit and WAIT for the damn ice to melt. You do the straw mix, thinking the friction will help heat the ice. You do the straw jab, thinking the straw will slowly flake the ice apart into smaller more quickly-melting pieces. You do the glass strangle, thinking the heat from your hands on the glass will heat the ice inside. Fifty-two minutes later you see a little drop of meltation form at the bottom and you desperately try and suck the drip through your straw to wash down the chicken wing. But the one drop is not enough to do a full quench. When you start to get really desperate you attempt the straw chopstick move. This is easiest when the pieces of ice are the ones with the indentation in the middle and you have two straws. With one straw and normal ice, you must do the glass tilt and try and glide one singular piece of ice into your mouth. But that is never successful, and all the ice just shoots down and rams you in the teeth. Then a piece falls on the floor creating a health and safety hazard. Besides, nobody likes an ice-cruncher.

But the space displacement is not the only problem the ice causes. There is also the temperature problem. I prefer water that is between room temperature and cool. When the ice is added to too great a degree the water gets so cold that the taste is destroyed. It stabs you in the throat and contracts your voice so it is all tattered and it does not make for pleasant dinner conversation. You are supposed to drink warm water before you do a speech, so why drink a big barrel of ice when you are expected to discuss your day’s misfortunes?

And on top of all the hatred for the ice-water itself is the hatred of the beast that ordered it. First of all, am I incapable of ordering my own beverage? Am I such an incompetent little child that I cannot look a woman in the eye and respond with a cowardly little “water?” Now, some girls might flutter their eyes and think this is all fancy like in the twenties when men tipped their hats, but the ordering of the beverage does not impress me at all. And it’s not that I don’t appreciate acts of chivalry – I do. I WELCOME chivalry. But this was not done out of chivalry. This was done out of evil so the big beast of a boyfriend could feel superior. And every time he asked for ice-water I would remind him that I do not LIKE ice-water, and did not REQUEST ice-water and that if he insists on ordering my beverages he should learn that I just like WATER. He would say there is no difference. HE IS WRONG!!! Yes, a glass of water is, scientifically speaking, the same as a glass of ice-water, except you can DRINK an entire glass of water whereas the ice-water has random chunks of hardness floating around in it! And even though I reminded him every time, the next time he would just ask for ice-water again! Does he not listen? Does he not care? Clearly not! If you run a fast-food establishment or a movie theatre I suggest you do not hire this man as he will clearly end up being one of those jerks that puts 10 gallons of ice in the little paper cup and then adds a drizzle of Pepsi so halfway through the movie you choke to death. Does he think he’s saving money? I’ll have him know fountain drinks are extremely cheap. And water costs the same as ice. If anything, the ice probably costs MORE because it causes wear and tear on the ice machine. LESS ice = more satisfied customers = more profits in the long run. I hope he opens a restaurant and it goes out of business.

Blogs repulse me.

Despite my pure and utter hatred for everything that is the Blog, I have decided to create one.

I hate the blog for various reasons. Primarily, it is because of the word “blog” itself. Those who know me know I hate words that have more than one “b” or a “b” and “g” mixture. And of all possible “b” and “g” mixture words, the word blog is as repulsive as it gets. I mean, I hate the words “boogie” and “gob” and “boggle,” but BLOG gets the gold medallion. It sounds like a nerd barfing into a swamp. I want to throw up when I say it. Actually, I avoid saying it at all costs. When people drop the word in conversation I shudder and my eye twitches. Could they not have created a more flattering and less nerdster word? And the entire CONCEPT of the blog repulses me. “Oh, please read my diary!” Like, how conceited can you get? You actually think that people should take time out of their precious LIVES to read about how you visited your Aunt Sally and fell in a puddle so Uncle Fredrick brought you a towel. NOBODY cares about your life! Nobody – not even your best friends – want to read about your daily misfortunes and trips to the library. Please AVOID having a life of your own so you can SIT at the computer revelling in how wonderful MY life is. With everyone reading everyone else’s blog it’s a wonder there are any blogs at all! It is worse than reality television. At least when you’re watching TV you can leave the room to get some popcorn and there is movement on the screen to stimulate your eye muscle. And even though reality television is pure and utter garbage, at least a Fox executive thought it was worth paying a camera crew to shoot it. People write blogs because they do not have their own reality TV shows and they do not have their own reality TV shows BECAUSE THEIR LIVES ARE TOO DULL! Nobody would WATCH their reality TV shows. Which means that the only people who READ the blogs are either a) your friends, who are only doing it to be nice and just skim the paragraphs begrudgingly, or b) people who REALLY have no life and have so little to live for that they actually must live vicariously through everyday random people who clearly also have no life otherwise they would not be strapped to the computer writing some fancy old blog!

So, you ask, why, with all this hatred for said blog, have you decided to create one? Well . . . ‘twas a cold autumn night and we had ventured forth to a scruff bar to celebrate my friend’s birth. Inside said bar was a book entitled, “Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul.” Above the title it said, “New York Times #1 Best Seller!” Although my teenage years have passed, I thought perhaps this kindly book would bring pleasure to my soul and the souls of those around me, as that is what the title claimed. So I opened the book to a story and, in my best story-telling voice, read to an enraptured crowd of my poor, poor friends. The story was about some girl who went to a party and then threw an egg at someone’s house because her boyfriend cheated on her and then her mom made her apologize but then her mom wasn’t mad and then they laughed. When the story ended my soul died. There was no inspiration. The story was not enlightening or uplifting or encouraging or funny or sad or even well-written. It was pure and utter crap and I felt the urge to smash it, though you can’t smash a book so that plan was foiled. Clearly the only reason this book was a #1 Best Seller was because all the grandmas who still believe in chicken soup as a valid remedy ruined Christmas for their grandchildren by plastering the book in tape and thrusting it under the tree. This blog is my rebellion against Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul. In this blog I will not discuss my day-to-day frolics. I will only discuss things I hate that you should hate too. I will attempt to not only provide no inspiration whatsoever, but to prove that the world is a terrible, terrible place and we are all doomed.

And, ironically enough, I had never read the book until that day because that particular BOOK disgusted me. It was all the rage when it hit the bookshelves in 1997, but I was anti-the book because I hate the word “soup.” In fact, if you disclude all words that contain two “b”s or a “b”/“g” combo, “soup” is my least favourite word. I think it stems from grade 2 when my teacher read us this book called “Soup” about some boy whose name was Sam and his mother was Jewish or something and her accent made his name sound like ‘soup’ when she yelled it. I think it was probably banned from the library. Anyway, that teacher was psycho and I hated her. Also when I worked at Swiss Chalet there was this girl I hated and every time we were low on soup she would screech, “THERE’S NO SOOOUUUUUUPP” in this nasally ditz hick voice. And I also had this really bad soup at leadership camp once that had chicken gristle in it. And the thought of cold leftover soup in the fridge with the skin squeaked on, only to be splashed into the toilet and flushed away makes me ill. Plus I think the sound of the “ou” combined with the unimpressive “s”/“p” combo is just generally displeasing. ANYWAY - the IRONY is that my HATRED for the word soup has led me to partake in an activity that contains a word I hate MORE. I feel so powerless.

So – do NOT enjoy this blog. I hope it makes you a more bitter and disillusioned person.