On marriage and growing up

The couple.

a.m.k. has never been married, but he does love champagne.

This past weekend I got to attend the wedding of two old friends, two friends I’ve known for eight and ten years each. At my age, weddings among friends aren't too common, but I should probably expect a steady stream of them to kick in soon and last for the next ten or fifteen years. Long work weeks and other commitments mean 20-somethings have to skip out on a lot of fun stuff, but one of the few events that can justify a weekend road trip is attending a wedding.

This weekend’s wedding was the first I’ve been to that was friends instead of family, and it was also special for me for another reason: I was the person who introduced the bride and groom to each other about seven years ago. At the time, I gave them maybe a few weeks to last--I just didn't see it. But all the same, they lasted and all these years later they're moving into a house together and saying holy vows.

As the years pass, I am slowly but surely witnessing the shrinking of my social circle. I've read about this phenomenon in textbooks and I was pretty sure it was going to happen to me eventually, but I still think it caught me off guard. They say that the friends who stick around are the important ones, which may be true, but there are still people I’ve lost contact with who I really wish I hadn’t. Part of it is my fault, of course, for not making more of an effort to keep in touch, but it’s also just because life gets in the way: it's hard to manage communicating with people in various different cities, especially with a girlfriend, full-time job, volunteering, sports, leisure, sleep, alcohol, etc.

I’ve only had a little contact over the past few years with this couple (and if I wasn't the one to introduce them, I'm not 100% sure we'd even be in contact at all), but we were close at one point and we shared plenty of experiences. Sometimes I call him up when I'm in town, and sometimes I don't, which is fine; his life gets in the way sometimes, mine does too. He’s not allowed to forget me, in any case, since I’ll always be the answer to "how did you two meet?"

The groom in 2004.

The wedding wasn’t small, but it felt small. There were few friends in attendance—zero from our grade school and only one other from our high school that I saw. Out of his friends, there was his wedding party, a guy from our high school job (that he found me) and a few guys he went to college with. That was it. I'm not sure his wife had any friends there aside from her bridesmaids, but they did invite lots of family. I expected to recognize more people, and I’d been preparing myself for awkward encounters with guys I hadn’t thought of talking to since high school.

Being there with mostly family was uncomfortable, but it was humbling, made me feel the weight of my invitation spot in their inner circle that day.

I don’t cry much in public, but I kept trying to think of dead animals and strange situations to get my mind off the bride walking up the aisle, wedding vows, speeches, first dance. Part of me was just emotional for “selfish reasons”--a life event like a wedding can remind you of your own mortality. I've known him since we were pretty much kids and him being a married man is enough for me to wonder where the years have gone and question when exactly I became "grown-up" – though of course there's no real answer to that. The days quietly go until you’re wrinkled, but it's milestones like weddings that force you to stop and think about the past and where you are now.

I am not where I want to be right now: not where I planned to be at this age ten years ago. I can look at myself and think hey I'm not doing so bad, yeah I'm probably more established in my life than most people around me. I've already done things that were on my list, so to speak, and I'm not slowing down or anything, but I guess I just hoped I would have amounted to something more by now. It's inevitable that you'll be disappointed, I think, especially when you dream big, but it still sucks to sit at a table, drinking free wine and wondering how you have a goatee and are not in the career you dreamed of.

Poof! a.m.k. made this happen.

During those moments of the ceremony and reception when I felt teary, though, I had the important consolation that I’d at least done one thing right in my life. Ironically, that thing I did right wasn't intentional--I probably just double-booked myself that night and didn't mean to introduce them, I remember being relieved when they got along--but some of the most important things in life aren't intentional. You don't try to love someone, not at first, at least.

I don't believe in fate, but I do believe in making the most of what happens to you, which my two friends did. Hopefully soon enough someone can feel like they've done one thing right in their life by introducing me to that thing for my career to take off or put me in the right place and the right time to make something of myself, or by introducing me to my own soulmate. Maybe it already happened.

You should all get married so a.m.k. can come to your weddings and get emotional.

The hunt for a good browser

AJ goes to the U of Ottawa in Centretown. He went to China this May and spent a lot of time thinking about browsers.

I've been fooling around these past couple of days with my computer, downloading and installing system utilities and web browsers, and I can't get over the fact that Facebook might be buying Opera. An Opera-Facebook merger would likely be the end of both Opera Software and the Opera desktop browser. Facebook is surely interested in Opera's market-leading mobile browser, not in its market-5th-place desktop browser.

I don't have a smartphone, and I use Opera's desktop browser, so I frantically spent a good part of last Tuesday looking for alternative browsers, should Opera go down. I learned that Webkit is actually an Apple thing, and not independent -- which maybe shouldn't have surprised me so much. Firefox is terrible now, but Pale Moon, which does more 64-bitoptimization than Waterfox, is actually pretty decent. I don't know where else to turn. There's no sense in using Safari for Windows, Chrome is good but Google is scary, and Maxthon just doesn't compare to Chrome.

Save Opera!

I started looking at the "Big 5" browsers by rendering engine:
- Internet Explorer uses Trident.

- Firefox uses Gecko.

- Opera uses Presto.

- Both Google Chrome and Safari use Webkit, which was developed by Apple.

Maxthon (not counted in the Big 5, but still great), uses both Trident and Webkit, as well as Google's V8 Javascript engine. This is the problem I have with Maxthon: it's one of the best alternative browsers -- maybe even 6th overall -- but it's built on borrowed technology. I might want to use Maxthon, but I'd just be better off with Chrome; Maxthon sometimes slips into "retro mode" and uses Trident, while Chrome always functions in the superior Webkit.

Now, among these 6, both Internet Explorer and Firefox are terrible browsers in my opinion. IE is IE, and it has been bad for many years now. I fear, in addition, that because of Firefox's massive community and large extension library, Mozilla has just gotten lazy and left the innovation to extension devs instead of building it into the browser. This is evidenced by Waterfox's latest changelog (at the time of writing):

"Page Source now has line numbers"? Really? That deserves to be up there? Keep in mind that this is not a minor update, but one moving up from Firefox 11.x to Firefox 12.


Furthermore, Mozilla is extremely dependent on Google for money. Before they renewed their contract with Google in November 2011, 90% of Mozilla's income was Google money, and now that Google has their own browser empire, they still don't seem to mind propping up the competition. But even with the new contract, Mozilla is essentially at Google's mercy.

Writing off Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Maxthon, I'm once again only left with Chrome. If I can't do Opera and don't trust Chrome, all that's left for 64-bit operating systems are the Firefox derivatives (Waterfox and Pale Moon). I used to wonder why I used so many browsers, but now, I can't get my hands on enough of them -- especially because stuff like intentional browser blocking means I need access to at least two browser families.

A necessary evil.

I don't feel like using Chrome derivatives, because unlike Firefox, regular Chrome is actually a good browser. As much as I like Opera, Chrome is, in my opinion, objectively the best browser on the market. I plan to download Chrome Canary once I get back to Canada, because downloading and installing it in China yields a Chinese version.

I'll thus have Opera, Opera Next, Pale Moon (x64), and Chrome Canary. That should be enough for now. But if Opera goes down through a hostile takeover by Facebook... *sigh*.

Update: A second look at the browser question

I am biased toward browsers that are updated frequently (at least once a week). This means mostly experimental builds (for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera), but Maxthon also releases the newest version (with minor version numbers and very few changes) about weekly, although it has no developer build. This preference is why I typically don't like browsers derived from others; these derivatives wait for the next major release of the browser before they are ever updated. Browsers that are updated at least once a week, though, contain minor fixes with each iteration, especially bug fixes, and so I don't have to wait months for bug and security updates to the browser I am using. I especially like nightly builds, where they are available. If I am going to use Chrome or Firefox, I will always download Chrome Canary (because Chromium doesn't autoupdate and each new version must be downloaded separately) and Firefox Nightly.

Furthermore, as added evidence of what I see as Firefox laziness, Nightly doesn't really autoupdate. It automatically checks for updates when you go to "About Nightly," then it takes a while to download the latest version, and then a button appears asking to restart Nightly in order to complete the update. You can imagine how my frustration increased having to always wait for the latest download to finish and then restart the browser (because I need the latest version, of course, or else the point of having Nightly becomes moot). I could have finished checking my e-mails and keeping up to date on blogs in that time (and even checking Facebook, if I wasn't in China). In addition, sometimes, the file is downloaded and the update fails, which means I have to go to the website to download the latest version. That was enough to make me turn away FF Nightly, which is a 32-bit browser and turn toward less-updated but 64-bit optimized browsers, namely Pale Moon and Waterfox.

Truly the sleepiest browser.

Thus, when I say that Firefox derivatives are worth using, especially in the case of 64-bit optimized builds, it's because regular Firefox has, in my opinion, indeed fallen that far. My experience with derivatives is limited to these 64-bit browsers, but I can assure you that they are great.

In addition to regular updates, I love a fast browser. I believe that extension installations slow a browser down, no matter how minimally, just as installing programs slows a computer down; I also am a believer that essential features should eventually be built into the browser. I tried running Nightly with some extensions, found that I didn't use them much, and uninstalled them. I don't really use condiments when I eat, and I don't use extensions when I browse, so the massive Firefox extension library doesn't really do anything for me.(Greasemonkey obsessives will probably be shaking their heads as I say this.)

A quick TLDR:
1. Apologies if I insulted your favourite browser.

2a. I am biased toward browsers that are frequently updated, as opposed to those which release once every month (or less).

2b. Among developer builds with multiple channels (i.e. Firefox and Chrome), I prefer nightlies. Frequent updates matter more than everything else.

3. Firefox, in my opinion, actually has derivatives worth using -- the two 64-bit optimized builds, Waterfox and Pale Moon, both do a good job of keeping up with the stable versions. Chrome, being a far superior browser, does not have useful derivatives.

4. I often use browsers without extensions, further removing any need for me to use Firefox.

Why not use Chrome? As far as I can tell, Chrome is objectively the best browser -- and this is coming from not just an Opera user, but a borderline Opera fanboy. However, there are still a couple of things I don't like about it:
- It's from Google. Call me paranoid, but I actually buy into some of the Google privacy rumours. In any case, it's better to be safe than sorry.
- Secondly, now that Chromebooks are out, it won't be long before Google Chrome is just optimized for Chromebooks. If I'm not on a Chromebook, do I really want a Chromebook browser?

- Thirdly, there's a pattern with big corporations -- say, Mozilla and Microsoft -- where each new browser brings very little in the way of new, innovative features. (I read a post recently on favbrowser.com which announced the release of Chrome Beta 20, but noted that there were no new features in this beta. Aren't the developer builds the places where features are supposed to be tested, before they are implemented in the final build? At least Chrome's move from 19 to 20 in the stable channel will, as usual, be chock-full of bug fixes, security improvements, and performance enhancements.)

I think this is enough to justify why I'm sticking with Opera Stable, Opera Next, Pale Moon (currently at 12.1), and Google Chrome Canary -- though I anticipate that not everyone will agree with it. Considering my current love/hate relationship with Google Chrome, and that two of my four browsers are Opera, I hope it is clearer now why a Facebook buyout of Opera would worry me.

My advice to you "light surfers" is to think about why you use the browser you do, because there are alternatives out there. I've played with many of them. Off the top of my head, here are all the browsers you could technically be using:

- Internet Explorer

- Firefox (and its developer builds)

- Waterfox

- Pale Moon

Four essential browsers.

- Opera and Opera Next

- Google Chrome (and its developer builds)

- Comodo Dragon

- Rockmelt

- Sleipnir

- Lunascape

- Maxthon (a Chinese browser, and the vast majority of its extensions are Chinese)

- Safari

- Webkit (a browser that requires a Safari install as a prerequisite)

- Chromium

- Seamonkey

- Camino

- Konqueror

- Avant

- Flock (discontinued, but similar in purpose to Rockmelt as a social media browser)

- Cometbird (I think it's a browser?)

- K-Meleon

- SRWare Iron

The "Big 6" list I drew up before (counting Maxthon, because it's actually quite good) turned out to match the leaders in each rendering engine, at least without getting into KDE browsers. The other browsers were all interesting, but they didn't have as much to offer and didn't fill my constant need for browser updates.

AJ would walk long distances uphill for a comfortable user experience. He keeps a faith blog and a faith-keyboard tabs blog.

Why am I seeing so many girls naked?

Our favourite new show is making a.m.k. uncomfortable....

Brendan posted an article last month on his defense of the TV show Girls. I'll admit, I've watched most of the episodes, enough to form an opinion on a particular aspect of the show: nudity.

Does having that many nude scenes really need to happen? It's like having to watch an old, tired argument between the characters every week that never changes, you just have to watch them struggle thru it with no hope of resolution or even any new points being raised. I never thought I would be complaining about nudity in a show--I used to search for even brief tidbits of it as a young teen, sometimes even having to watch a 45 minute programme just to get a glance, but it seems like everyone in the cast is taking a turn getting naked for increasingly bizarre reasons. The cute one randomly meets some guy from camp on the street, they make a date within 15 seconds, he comes over and gets an erection and essentially asks for a handjob, a demand for a kiss, and all of a sudden they're on the poor girl's bed with her pants off. I get that it's trying to make us uncomfortable, but let's fast-forward just a little bit more to when the English one or whatever meets up with her ex-boyfriend that was just mentioned in passing before and all of a sudden she's getting fucked out of a window. Both of these scenes, although interesting by themselves, don't appear to have any foreseeable ties to the plot of the episode, and unless they're planning to do something super creative and unexpected in later episodes, I don't think that those two brief storylines are going to tie in any major way back to the main plot going forward.

Then, cut to an episode I haven't even watched yet, but my poor girlfriend told me about. Apparently, I can now go see the penis of the girl's dad, the one, that's right, who you see naked in every goddamn episode. She is, of course, the least attractive of the girls, and just happens to be the girl who writes, directs, produces, and created the show. Most people I know who aren't especially attractive wouldn't be looking for excuses to show their boobs in every fifth scene. What's with the bathtub at the beginning of the first episode? Was that a cheap ratings grab? If it was a cheap ratings grab, at least get it right--throw out the unattractive girl, get in the cute one or the one from the UK.

Of course, that's unjustly rude of me, because the truth is it's not like she's hideous or anything. She's just certainly not actress-pretty. And yes, I think it's a feminist statement by the creator as some kind of empowerment symbol or that she has some other wittier explanation that I don't really understand, and there is a lot to respect in that, honest there is--I'm not advocating against any of that, either. I am just saying that I think she is putting herself naked in the show so often at least partly because she likes that so many people are seeing her naked. I'm not sure if it's a fetish or if it's a statement because maybe she got picked on in school and kids called her ugly or fat or something, and again it's not because she's absolutely hideous or anything because I don't think she is, but maybe she was in high school or maybe kids were just cruel because, you know what, they are. And you know what, I'm not even saying it's a problem if it is either of those things. I love empowerment, and I love kids standing up to bullies, or at least symbolic ones. I just don't love seeing her naked every week.

It's actually one of the main reasons why I haven't watched the last few episodes. I'm sick of seeing you naked. It makes me uncomfortable. I don't think I should be seeing anyone who I don't know naked this much. I feel like I know you better than I really do, and then I feel used because it's probably some smart way to get better ratings that you came up with, because everyone knows that the audience identifying with characters is an important component of most successful shows and one of the reasons why the best show of all time, Arrested Development, tanked. I don't want to be used. I don't want to see you naked anymore.

Current background image
on Lena Dunham's Twitter
account.

Also, that cute girl seems so innocent, and I realize that it's her character and she's probably just a good actress, but I've seen a lot of actresses who play the same role in every film, and, lo and behold, it's the exact same personality they seem to have in their every day life. She might be the exception to the rule and she might be wild and rowdy and have a sex scandal already, but she seems sweet to me. And you come up with the most unnecessary, awkward plot-line to get her naked with some old buddy that she "just so happened" to run into on the street. And then he comes close to verbally abusing her with his sexual aggression, which, granted, I know some people like it like that, but I'm also guessing that a lot don't, at least in that kind of situation, right? I mean, if it was me, and my old camp buddy started talking to me like that after not seeing him/her in maybe 7-10 years, I don't like I like being told that s/he "loves eating pussy" after awkwardly being awkwardly encouraged to touch my erection bulging in my track pants on a first date.

Anyway, if you want to exhibit your body to me every week I guess that's your choice, especially since I'm watching it of my own volition, but you don't need to drag other cast members into your strange ratings grab/feminist statement/other, more elaborate reasoning that I don't understand.

That is all.

The wireless signal at a.m.k.'s apartment is called "nevernude."

[Some images lifted from IndieWire.]

My mysterious charisma

a.m.k. is on an incredible eight-year winning streak.

I have had about a dozen jobs in my life thus far, ranging from five years long to just three weeks. I've worked at multiple grocery stores and coffee shops, a book store, in high tech, a consulting firm, and in a mall. What is mildly interesting is how I got those jobs, or rather, that I managed to get all those jobs. Somehow, I've gotten pretty much every job I have ever interviewed for.

"Well, a lot of people consider
me small and prestigious."

I am pretty socially awkward. Not quite as socially awkward as perhaps some others are who obsess about school as much as I did. Not quite as socially awkward as other people who were homeschooled as long as I was. But I am a bit socially awkward just the same. I am not someone who I would describe as 100% of people instantly liking at first impression. Part of it might be that I learned social interactions by watching daytime TV, Boy Meets World and Seinfeld, and I only ever practiced those interactions with other people who never left their houses and prayed the rosary at least once a day. And according to recent personality tests that I've taken (fun online ones, not at the Scientology centre on Rideau), I lean pretty heavily towards being an introvert--more than something like 95% of people. I am somewhere between a shut-in and that guy who eats ice cream alone (but never on Bank Street on Sunday--I'm no law-breaker).

Somehow, I've done extremely well for myself. I've managed to settle my social anxiety to a manageable level and to interact successfully with other people. My Interpersonal Relations professor mentioned something in lecture once that I found interesting: true introverts can get very good at faking being an extravert, because to succeed in this world, one almost always has to act extraverted. We live in an outgoing society where you have to be liked. And, as I must begrudgingly accept, I am not very likeable because I'd rather spend my evenings in a warm bath, drinking beer and watching hockey or sitcoms on my laptop. Alone. (Side note: don't worry, I put the laptop on the sink so there's no risk of me dropping it in the tub.)

How I once failed a job interview by lying about being nice

"Throw back a couple shots
of Hennigans and you'll be
as loose as a goose and ready
to roll in no time."

I have had a lot of different jobs, but I've only ever interviewed for one job that I didn't get in my life. That was when I was 15 years old, and it was for McDonald's. I made it to the second interview, and my friend Courtney who worked at another McDonald's prepped me for the types of questions that they'd be asking. I was ready to argue about the importance of serving customers -- even if the french fry timer had just gone off -- because the customer comes first. Instead they asked me about when I last helped people.

Helped people? Don't get me wrong, I was actually a very nice boy. (OK, so that was the age when I was around my peak of my Seinfeld-tinted asshole-ishness; I was still sort of figuring things out.) I even think I was nicer at heart then than I am now, but I definitely didn't show it because I was afraid to. I went to a terrifying grade school and high school where any male friendliness, like a chemical trigger, instantly made everyone around you utter homophobic slurs and throw a desk at you. The point is that I was nice on the inside but put on a huge fake show to try to be cool.

I could have listed some of the nice things I actually did do. I did and do nice things all the time, like volunteering and helping people with homework. But the thought about talking about this openly was so bizarre to me that nothing came to my mind. So, I began by talking about how I helped my co-worker at my other job, which was mistake number one, because McDonald's doesn't want to hire a fifteen year old with another job because they want me to be available to be called in any time. Then, drawing a blank, I made up this impromptu story about how I, yes, helped an old lady cross the street.

I remember actually believing that I had helped an old lady cross the street, and I actually might have at some point -- but there's no way that should have been my example. (I actually helped an old lady walk along an icy patch of sidewalk on Gladstone a couple months ago -- I swear to God. Would I cite that as an example if someone in an interview asked me to talk about how I helped someone recently? Absolutely not. Why? Because it sounds made up.)

"Remember, don't whistle
on the elevator."

Why I'm so successful at interviews now

I wasn't offered the job at McDonald's, but after the other 10-15 interviews I've done, I have been offered the job every single time. Which begs the question: am I really that charming?

I don't think I am. What I think the real problem is is that I have a horrible CV. My theory is, that if I get an interview based on my CV, I am pretty much guaranteed the job because if I wasn't stupidly qualified, I wouldn't even be getting the interview. I once sent out 200 CVs before getting one interview, and I certainly applied to many jobs I thought I was quite qualified for. I've reviewed my CV a million times and I have chunks of good stuff on there, but there must be something -- the layout, the font, the format, or maybe I don't sound like a real person -- that isn't what employers are looking for.

Maybe I'm also not giving myself enough credit. Maybe most people just have trouble answering questions about their past experience or promising they'll show up on time. When someone asks me to explain my experience with editing, I can talk about the editing work I've done over the past several years. Is it possible that other people aren't doing that? Or do I just seem really innocent and thus a good hire who isn't going to dick off and read hockey blogs at work?

"I want you to have this job.
Of course ..."

I'm not sure what makes me a good candidate for all these jobs, but for the most part, my employers are pretty happy with me afterwards -- I do good work and I work fast. But that doesn't explain how they would know that after talking with me for a bit, and why my success rate for interview to job conversion is a hair below 100%. Did Boy Meets World, Seinfeld and Days of Our Lives actually give me good life advice thru their bizarre conflicts and offensive/bad jokes? Or do I just have so much natural charisma that no amount of social awkwardness and homeschooling can stop my ability to show my stuff?

I don't think I am charismatic, and I do think that I've been qualified for all the jobs I've been offered. I just don't understand how I haven't interviewed yet for a job that I either haven't been the best candidate for or just didn't get for whatever other reason. Once a manager and coworker were talking about me finding another job because my contract was almost up, and one of them said all I would need is an interview than I would get any job. Did she know something I don't?

a.m.k. is an experienced writer and editor, and he recently charmed his way into a job editing scientific articles. Much of his editing for the Centretown Nonsense blog is done via text message.

Campaign to have a.m.k. institutionalized

Brendan has finally thought of a solution.

Hello friends and readers,

He's always talking to that
wooden doll in the centre.

I've been frustrated with my collaborator here lately, for failing to look at the Nonsense-blog drafts I send to him, letting my outdated Girls rant fester on the front page, three episodes after it was originally written. And as I sit here, on a.m.k.'s furniture, having been entrusted with a house key and an internet password while he's out camping all weekend, it becomes clearer in my mind that a.m.k. needs to be reformed.

I hope to be supported by his loved ones and any medical professionals reading this. It has become clear to me that a.m.k., as he chooses to call himself, is not fit, in his present state, for independent living. The best thing we can do to help him is to let him know that he has a choice, and that a stay at a mental incarceration facility might be needed to curb the criminal insanity from which he suffers.

Many of you will see this as an extreme suggestion or simply as a gesture of mockery, but I contend that you've chosen to overlook A's symptoms of madness in the hopes that his condition will "naturally improve over time." Here is a list of suspicious behaviours displayed by A in the past few weeks:

1. I think he took his laptop camping.

I haven't yet searched his home, but he definitely mentioned that he was going to take his laptop camping with him. I don't think he's even taking the power cables.

2. He made a "balls" joke the last time we played tennis.

No adult of sound mind would have made that joke.

Only a maniac would live like this.

3. He keeps his Ke$ha CDs in the jewel cases.

This is kind of a weird one, but when a.m.k. moved houses at the start of May, I ended up lifting shelves full of his CDs, all in the original cases. He might even have an external storage drive somewhere that he just doesn't use.

4. He listens to a children's radio station.

Other than right now, the last few times I've been over to his house, some combination of Our Lady Peace, Silversun Pickups, and Young the Giant have been playing out of his radio, loud enough for neighbours to hear. He has then instructed me to "make [myself] comfortable" as though nothing were out of order.

5. He throws garbage on his lawn.

Flowers, pizza boxes,
upholstered furniture ...

Walking out of his home the other day, a.m.k. took amusement in an orange-juice carton on his front lawn, declaring, "I wonder if that's mine," and mentioning that he'd left an empty orange juice container on his balcony. On inspecting the balcony today, I found multiple pizza boxes un-anchored and ready to be wind-blown into the street.

(I also keep pizza boxes on my own balcony, but the balcony at my apartment is indoors, so this arrangement is much safer.)

Please write to your city councillor requesting that a.m.k. be institutionalized, and if you see him yourself, please insist that he get to safety and get the help he needs before he can return to society. If you wish to share any firsthand stories of his unstable conduct, please send them in to centretownnonsense@gmail.com.

Brendan knows he's doing the right thing, but he can't help but fear that a.m.k. will be released into his custody.

Worries that kept me up tonight

Most to least intense:

1. Not getting enough sleep.
2. Behind schedule in my accounting class.
3. Needing a job.
4. Eating too many hot dogs.
5. Dad showing concern for my future.
6. Am I a racist?
7. Falling behind on Centretown Nonsense blog.
8. Do 2, 3, 5, and 7 represent me being inherently lazy or ineffective?
9. I sure hope these aren't the symptoms of clinical depression.
10. Probable coffee addiction.
11. Poor performance in ball hockey.

As a fun game, you can also try to guess how they rank from most to least rational. Your guess may be more accurate than mine on that one.

Brendan looks forward to his retirement.

Grown-up temptations and secret addictions

There are a lot of things a.m.k. won't eat. There are a few things he will always eat.

I don't know when I became grown-up. It's not something that you can normally pinpoint to a certain moment of a particular day, saying "ah! that's when!". It kind of creeps up on you like a snake gobbles up a big dead animal. When I open my proverbial eyes and look around at the environment surrounding me, I am swallowed by the snake-skin of grown-up-ness. It's slightly terrifying.

Case in point, I am a more-or-less robust vegetarian. By more-or-less, I mean I haven't eaten meat once since I decided to become veggie "to try it out". The first week into my new lifestyle, veal cannelonis came on sale. That was and still has been the greatest test I have ever faced.

It's been about five years, and I can only recall one or two times where I had picked meat off of something and still eaten it. Once I was at a restaurant and clearly asked if there was meat in any of what I ordered and the waiter brought me something which had what essentially was pig shavings on top (ew). The other time I wasn't even sure if it was meat. Sometimes eggplant looks suspiciously like fish.

Anyways, I am a pretty stubborn individual so not relenting on my vegetarian-ness isn't too surprising, I suppose. What is sort of interesting is that since I was thirteen years old, I haven't been able to eat eggs. I think the time that triggered my "allergy" was when I was sleeping at my buddy's house, let's call him Pat, in my last year of elementary school. He cooked up omelets while I was in the shower, and by the time I was out, my omelet was cold. I think part of the reason why he decided to cook said omelets while I was showering was to teach me a lesson to take shorter showers (or perhaps just to not wack off in it, which he probably presumed took me more than fifteen seconds). I distinctly remember not taking a particularly long shower, but the omelet was cold when I ate it, and it was disgusting enough to make me as close to non-drinking-induced vomitting as I have ever been since age like six. Over the years since that fateful day, I have tried every so often to eat eggs, even scrambled eggs which I didn't mind so much growing up. No matter what, they make me incredibly nauseous after the third or fourth bite.

It's not a severe allergy in that I can eat things like french toast with eggs as somewhat key ingredients, but if it's the main ingredient, it's probably best that I stay away from it.

That last point brings me to my slight aversion for milk/cream. I've heard from several sources that humans continually become more lactose intolerant as they age. I think I am following the human pattern at a slightly more advanced rate than the average homo sapien (cue childhood story number two). When I was in high school, I worked at a grocery store in the dairy department. I was hooked up with this job by that same friend who cooked me that allergy-instigating omelet (is there a pattern here, "Pat"?). Every few weeks I had to work a midnight shift over the weekend and clean the cooler.

I look back on this now and think that I was probably too young to be working overnights when I was in high school, and I am even more surprised to recall how adamantly my mom encouraged me to work these shifts. Anyway, I had to drink like three cups of Tim Hortons coffee just to get through the night, and even still sometimes I fell asleep on my 4am break at the dairy desk. I was still pretty young and not really into drinking coffee yet so I didn't quite know how to take it, and Tim Hortons was literally the only thing around that I could walk to that was open in the middle of the night. So Timmies coffee it was. After a few overnights, I got so sick of Tim Hortons coffee (pulling all-nighters also makes me feel nauseous, especially as a teen) that even the smell of it made me feel sick. I experimented with different ways of taking it because I had no other means of caffeine to stay up and I didn't yet know where to pick up speed or cocaine, and I discovered that if I got it with sugar but no cream, I didn't feel nearly as sick. I began noticing that cream in general made me feel sick when I had more than just a little of it. Smelling spoiled milk all day (even crazy cleaning supplies doesn't completely get the smell out) probably didn't help.

So, I can't eat eggs, and if I have things that are too creamy, I get sick. It seems like veganism is the next step, right? I mean, I am against torturing animals already (most dairy farms aren't too nice to their animals, and even if they are "nice", would you want to be milked 24/7?), and besides, I think drinking another mammal's milk is pretty unnatural, especially as an adult. There's only one (or two) problem(s): I really, really like chocolate milk. And ice cream.

Chocolate milk and Haagen Daas ice cream have been the only reasons for my continued survival some nights (followed closely by Miss Vickie's Sea Salt and Vinegar and alcohol. (Editor's note: The alcohol can be further broken down to the following hierarchy: bourbon; scotch; irish whiskey; other whiskeys/sour mash; beer (two exceptions); white wine; vodka; virtually every other type of alcohol; coors light/corona; red wine). Cutting out milk/cream/ice cream, which I did almost eight months ago, hasn't been as easy as I had hoped.

Ever tried chocolate soy milk? That shit's disgusting. I tried it once and almost threw up. Vegan ice cream? Not nearly as bad, but it doesn't really hit the spot the same way Haagen Daas does. Man, do I ever love Haagen Daas. Peanut Butter Chocolate. I haven't seen that around in awhile, but if they stopped making it, I am going to start a protest with egg shells and used toilet paper outside their headquarters.

When I went home for Christmas, my buddy opened his fridge and showed me about a thousand mini bottles of chocolate milk. The good kind. He slowly drank his and I saw that he was refreshed. I couldn't help myself. I drank two very quickly.

After those orgasmic gulps, I couldn't help myself: I started thinking about eating ice cream and chocolate milk again. Since then, there have been two or three times when I have eaten Haagen Daas or some similar delectable treat.

I mean, I guess cutting out meat wasn't that easy either. I liked bacon and fast food, but the only meat I really liked was veal. And the whole reason I became vegetarian in the first place is because some bitch of a Boston Pizza waitress gave me the dirtiest look for ordering it one day (actually we were kind of friends). Plus, veal isn't as common as other meat, so it's not like I ate it every day (except for a brief period right before I became veggie, to indulge; veal TV dinners went on sale, what can I say). However, I had/have intense ice cream and chocolate milk cravings.

Now I don't want to go full-out back to dairy. I was so close to finalizing my veganism and cutting out cheese. I need an excuse to stop eating pizza three days a week anyway. But now, every once in a while, when I feel the need to be a bad-ass and do something reckless, I go out and drink a bunch of chocolate milk.

That's right.

Instead of going out and getting drunk or having wild unprotected sex with strangers, I drink a tall glass of chocolate milk, looking beside and behind me, paranoid of getting caught. Maybe my nervousness is a throw-back to when I used to drink chocolate milk in the cooler at work and throw the empty cartons into the damages crate, I don't know (no cameras). All I know is that I have a severe chocolate milk addiction that causes me to get out of control.

When you feel reckless by going to Quickie and getting a litre of chocolate milk, you know something has drastically changed from when you were a kid, or even a non-adult. If you were to tell me when I was in high school that my weekend walk on the wild side was to drink some chocolate milk and maybe have a helping of Haagen Daas, I would have cried like I do every time I watch Big Fish.

Maybe it's a good thing. Maybe it's a sign of maturity that the morals I bend to "have a good time" are (arguably) not as unquestionable, as say, stealing stop signs or drunkenly vandalizing buildings with big rocks. Or maybe it's just a sign that I was eaten by the snake of adulthood a long time ago and I'm only now starting to wake up from my delusion and recognize where I am.

a.m.k. has been a closet animal rights proclaimer for several years, but has been bashfully taking it to the streets as an activist for the past two.