I Don't Know How To Dress Myself

Dressing oneself is a basic skill that we all pick up as get older. Since we've always worn clothes, it obviously comes naturally that we begin to pay more and more attention to it. Some people get really invested in it and design a very particular wardrobe, and some just don't care that much and throw anything on.

I fall into a weird category. I care what I look like. But I have no idea what I am doing.

A year ago, my girlfriend made me throw out about 90% of the clothing I owned and start a new wardrobe. Apparently a (then) 24 year old man wearing the same clothes he wore when he was 17 shows signs of "immaturity" and "an unwillingness to grow up." So the great purge was enacted, and I went out and bought new clothes.

That's me at 23, pre-purge. Note the plaid shirt with striped shorts. Classy.

Now, I just stare at my clothes, and I don't understand how things match together. In fact, are clothes supposed to "match" together. Do certain shirts go better with certain pants? I have no clue.

It seems so arbitrary to me, but I see other people's outfits sometimes, and I think "that looks really good. It's clear they thought that out." But when it comes to me, I get completely lost.

This is my routine for dressing myself. I put on the pants that are closest to me when I wake up. Then I grab the nearest shirt. No synergy between the two, because I figure, how can I possibly have screwed up already. What t-shirt could not go with a pair of blue jeans?

From here, I have two and half options. I can put on a sweater, or a cardigan. Mainly, this is to hide my arms because I have no muscles, and I figure hiding my shameful non-biceps from the public is my best chance at obtaining the glances of women who are looking to settle.

The half comes from putting a button up shirt underneath the sweater or cardigan. That I assume is where the biggest trap for clashing styles can come from, and yet I put essentially zero thought into it.

"Why you so stupid Alan?" "I dunno..."

I can't even describe the awful things I do, because I don't even recognize how awful they are. I'm at this point where I'm so ignorant, that I don't even truly know how ignorant I am, but at least not too ignorant that I'm not aware that I am ignorant. Yeah.

So this is how I lead my life now. Wandering aimlessly in a closet of mystery, unaware of the dangers I tread, and too dim to learn to combat them.

It is a sad life. But it is mine.

Reddit: Hobby or Addiction? Oh wait, both of those are awful.

Reddit, for those of you who don't know, is a site where users post links, and users vote on which they would rank as the "best" or most "relevant" and really that's it. It's full of pictures of cats dressed up as people, and memes that were invented the week before, and will be played out within a few days (if they aren't over already).

And it's damn addicting.

When I first joined Reddit, I couldn't help but notice how many people would be saying cryptic things like "damn you for introducing me to Reddit!" or if they saw a new user saying "I'm so sorry." I'd see stuff like "I've been here a month and... damn you Reddit. I hate you."

Months went by, and I was still casually checking on the site, but it was nothing crazy, so I still had no idea what the big problem was.

Then I began posting.

You see, in addition to the links that are provided, each link has a comments section, where the comments follow the same rules of being voted upon. The more votes your comment gets, the higher and more visible it is. And all these votes are tracked.

My problem developed when I, after reading these for a while and making a few little one sentence comments here and there, made a long post about a personally embarrassing story that I thought was pretty funny. I forgot about it and went to sleep.

The next day, I had tons of replies to my story, heaps of "upvotes", and worst of all, a new desire for more. More!

So I began commenting more and more, in search of these upvotes. Some posts worked quite well, and got me upvotes. Some had the opposite effect, and I was given downvotes. I was reading so many comments, I hardly cared about the topic we were supposed to be commenting on.

This is why Reddit is so bad. The comments.

They are all the same.

The same things get voted to the top. The same lame jokes, the same stupid memes, or just the same boring ideas; they're never original. And the people who vote on it just want to see the same things over and over, so they upvote it. And the people who got upvoted, obviously figure they are doing something right, so they do more of those things to get those upvotes.

Here's an example: Someone's thread in AskReddit (a place where you ask people to comment on a topic you pose) asked women some advice on men that they found attractive. Something like "weird things guys do that you actually like," or in the same vein as that.

At the top of the post, there were a bunch of answers about specific things, with a bunch of guys replies being saying things like "I do that!" and "that's me, sweet!"

And buried far, far into the bottom of the post, was someone quite rightfully pointing out the ridiculousness of the whole affair. The answers that these guys were getting weren't great advice. These guys would see the answers that women gave. And once they see an answer that applies to them, of course they upvote it. Not because the answer is necessarily "true" or a good answer, but there confirmation bias is going off. So they upvoted them. Other people see these highly upvoted answers, and figure they must be true too. As well, the answers being given are just fishing for upvotes. So it's a vicious, vicious cycle the produces no discussion of merit and just feeds the ideas already implanted in our heads.

So it's that's you see those same discussion with those same answers getting the same amount of upvotes, and all the new ideas and interesting things that are said are never voted or read.

It's too bad. Because sometimes the site is pretty cool, and you read some intriguing stuff.

What has changed though? Not much. I still go to Reddit, and I still try to make interesting comments.

But really I should just be working on my homework.

Am I Being A Scrooge On Christmas? Or: How I Saved A Cat and Learned To Love Again

This is maybe a bit of a cathartic post for me, but it's something I simply have to say. I'm going to start with the happy part first, and then I'll tell you when to stop reading if you don't want that warm fuzzy feeling to go away.

Four days ago a cat came to my door as my brother and I were sitting at home. I hear this very loud meowing and walk over to the door. Sitting there is a very cold cat pacing back and forth on the doorstep.

It kinda looked like this. But colder.

Now, I should be very clear here: I am not a cat person. I am not an "any-animal" person. I do not like animals. My girlfriend chastises me for this constantly, and tries to make me do ridiculous things like say goodbye to her cat Max when I leave her place, and say that I'm his "uncle." I don't hate animals, but I just don't like them. They are messy, and smelly, and I just don't relate to them in any meaningful way.

So I am looking at this poor little cat who has probably been roaming our very cold Winnipeg streets and I figure I have to do something. It runs away anytime I try to get close, but I grab a bowl and fill it with water and next time I open the door it seems transfixed on this bowl. So I put the bowl on the ground, and close the door, and watch from the other side as it slowly creeps forward and begins drinking.

Success! OK, I fed the cat, congratulations to me, now I can move on with my life. Well, actually it's still freezing, so I figure, I should let it inside. I'll skip over the details, but basically this cat was so scared, I had to inch the bowl closer and closer to the inside of the house until it finally felt safe enough to climb in.

I've now been feeding the cat for about 10 minutes. I start to pet it while my hands are gloved, because at this point I think it might bite or scratch me. At first I thought it was purring, but I realized it was shivering, so I took my gloves off and tried to heat it up with my hands, which eventually worked. At this point, I can see that it has a little collar on, and I decide to take a look at it. It says something like:


MY NAME IS GOHN MOMOTO
CALL 614-XXX-XXXX


I yell to my brother, who's sitting in the other room, to check up what area code that is, and he tells me it's Ohio. Ohio! What is a cat from Ohio doing here?

For those who don't know, this is where Ohio is.

We didn't know exactly what to say to these people, my brother Michael thought "we have your cat," would be good, but I thought that sounded a little ominous. We decided on something like "we found your cat, gohn momoto," and just waited for a reply.

Almost instantly we start getting information back that this cat has been lost since July and that these people now live in Alaska! So we decide we need to get this thing to the Winnipeg Humane Society right now.

Mike pulls up the car, and we attach a little gym bag strap as a makeshift leash to to Momoto's collar (I called him Momoto because it's more fun to say; the media would refer to him as Gohn, and his name is actually supposed to be Nomoto, but the collar is misspelled). I lead him out to the car, but he is getting very nervous and is now trying to not budge. I pick him up, but he gets very antsy. I put him back down, and try to coax him closer to the car, as Mike comes out to help. As Mike gets closer to Momoto he starts totally freaking out and *ZIP* he flies across the yard, breaking the "leash" and running off into a neighbour's yard.

I tried to look for him for a bit, but to no avail, so we go back home, discouraged.

We leave the bowl out in case he comes back and wouldn't you know it, not 10 minutes later he is back drinking out of the bowl. This time I decide to call a cat professional: my girlfriend.

My girlfriend says that she and her mom will come down right away with a cat carrier (I don't know the real name for those things) and some cat food. We try to bring the cat in but it is SO SCARED, I can't stress this enough. We simply can not approach Momoto, it runs like hell when anyone goes to it, and I don't want to lose it again. But I need to attach that leash again, and hope it doesn't break this time until my girlfriend comes with the cat carrier.

I walk out, Momoto runs off, but we've now worked out a little system where he will come towards me as long as I am holding the bowl of water in front of me and moving very slowly. Then, once he starts drinking, I can pet him and he will be just fine. So I do this, attach the leash, and wait for the cat carrier.

It is now very cold out, and I am sitting out here for about 10 minutes petting this cat, and I have to tell you, this is the absolute worst part of the ordeal.

Mike comes out to check on us, and the second he gets close Momoto loses it. He runs off in the other direction, but the leash holds strong and yanks him back. If I could describe the pitiful little sound that came out of Momoto when he jumped like that, and the crazy twitching he did I would, but it is way too painful to even think about. It was really heart-breaking.

"Get back inside!" I yell to Mike, and he obliges.

What makes this part so bad, is that minutes later, unfortunately, my dad comes out to see what is going on as well. He opens the door and this time Momoto goes totally insane. He runs a different way: straight up our fence. He is now dangling on the fence, with his two arms holding up and he looks back at me.

I'm not a good enough writer to properly convey what I saw, but I'll say this: the look Momoto gave me is the most human look I have ever seen on an animal with my own two eyes. His eyes were so big, staring right at me, as he clawed the fence to maintain his balance. He didn't make a sound this time, but his message was much more clear. It said "help me."

A little like this, but a thousand times less cute.

"Get inside!" I yell to my dad as I try to pull him down to safety.

Now he absolutely does not want to move. He sits in the snow by the fence as I try to pet him. Surely my girlfriend will be coming soon. I try to move him from this spot to get ready for the cat carrier.

Well, of course, the leash breaks again, and Momoto zips away just like last time.

This time I'm not going to let him get away. He goes from neighbours yard to yard, through back lanes, and as my girlfriend comes with her mom, they find my three houses down on the other side of the back lane holding the bowl trying to coax Momoto from under a truck.

The story does not go well from here. We try to grab it, it breaks free again, we chase it across the street for about 20 minutes, and soon are forced to give up. No Momoto.

Two days ago, however, I hear some meowing again, and look who it is? Momoto! This time we act fast. I get some water into a bowl and begin my classic hold the bowl out trick, and soon Momoto is in my arms, I attach a much stronger gym bag handle to act as a leash (which, of course, sounds ridiculous now) and try to bring him into the cat carrier. As I pull on him, he makes these horrible choking sounds, and I soon realize I do not have the stomach for this, and call on Mike to pull on Momoto. He successfully does, and we close the cat carrier on him with Momoto inside.

Hurray!!! We drive off to the Winnipeg Humane Society and they happily take Momoto and all the contact information we garnered and move on with our lives.

Yay Christmas!

***

OK, this is the point where you should stop reading if you don't want a non-happy story.

Yesterday rolls around, and as I wake up my brother says he has fielded calls from CTV and the Winnipeg Free Press about Momoto.

Here watch the CTV story:


http://www.ctvnews.ca/video?playlistId=1.1089165


Does this tale sound like the one I just told you? What is the main difference from this story to the one I just relayed to you?

That's right!

I'm not in it!

I'm no where to be seen! In fact, if you saw this story, you might think my brother Michael is the one who did all the work.

Now, some might call me petty. The cat is going home, no harm no foul, right? Believe me, I couldn't be more ecstatic that Momoto (now officially Gohn Nomoto) is going to be reunited with his owner. But that's just the point. I couldn't be more excited. Me.

Because I am the one who was out petting him for half an hour as I waited for my girlfriend to come with cat food. I am the one who chased him through Campbell and Borebank street yelling "Momoto! Here, Momoto," to a cat I met not two hours before.

So when I talked to Michael about why he failed to include me when the Free Press and CTV came calling, he said, "I did! I told the truth! I said it was both us, 50/50."

50/50. Fifty per cent him, and fifty per cent me. I believe he thought handing in Momoto to the Humane Society was part of his contribution. Yes, I drove, dropped them off, and parked the car, and saw that he had put his contact info on the sheet for the Humane Society before I got inside.

Thus, they called him.

I don't know, maybe I am being petty. Maybe I'm focusing on the wrong thing here, and I should be happy. Or maybe I'm concerned this somehow diminishes what I did for Momoto; as in if what I did in Michael's mind was 50%, maybe I actually didn't do that much for him, and I built it up to be more in my head.

Grinch, Scrooge, whatever.

Maybe.

I'll leave that up to you, reader.

And to Momoto, you are now Gohn. And gone. I'll miss you.


EDIT: I wrote this last night, and now having woken up with a fresh perspective, I see that the Winnipeg Free Press has written an article about this as well.
Reading there's has got me thinking: this actually is petty.
I am going to leave my post up, but I think this is what was going on in my head.
I think I THOUGHT the story was about my rescue.
Really, it is about the bigger picture, the wild circumstances about Gohn's journey, and I am just a piece of it.
I suppose I was insecure about my contribution.
Oh wel, I hope you enjoy my story anyway, but I guess we're allowed to be a little Scrooge-ish on Christmas, right?

Cheated Out of $100

Over the summer I worked for one day as a Production Assistant on CBC's Over the Rainbow reality tv series where girls competed to get the role of Dorothy for some production in Toronto. None of that matters because the real thing is THEY CHEATED ME OUT OF $100. I worked for them for a day, and they haven't paid me, coming up with bullshit excuses every time.

Just to be clear, it's not CBC, it's the fucking production company Temple Rainbow Productions Limited. Fuck them to hell.

I should have known from the start when after I, and the seven other people about to jammed in the ass, finished up our day of work that they said they wouldn't be able to pay us that day, and instead would email us some document which we would have to fill out and them send back. So first off we get a fucking chore to do AFTER we just worked for you, just to get our measly fucking $100.

Of course these fucking emails went right into my spam folder, as if my email could detect the shady nature of these scumbag pieces of shit. Once I found it, I emailed them all the documents. But oh no!

"The payroll company is mentioning that they can't make out most of the info through you sending them this way. When they're printed out a lot of info is hard to read. Isn't there a way for you to scan them somewhere and send. This seems more like a photograph of them was taken. The other option you can try is faxing it to us and I'll let you know if any info is cut out. Thanks. Fax number is XXXXXX" 

Ok, fine. So I re-send. 

"Thanks for this but none of the info is coming through clearly when printing. Can you fax?" 

NO I CAN'T FUCKING FAX ASSHOLE! I AM A SINGLE MAN LIVING IN 2012, WHY THE FUCK WOULD I HAVE A FAX MACHINE?! Other people seem to be doing just fine without faxing, just eat a dick and send me my measly fucking $100!

I hate you Vince, I hate your stupid fucking company, and I hate your stupid fucking fax machine. I hope you get wrongly placed into hell, and they try to send you the proper documents to heaven, but they can't get them because they don't have a fax machine. 

And then you get raped by Hitler.

Warren Farrell Protest

Watch this video, and tell me what you think:

To sum up, Warren Farrell is a man who was doing a talk at the University of Toronto. A group of people decided to protest this because they disagreed with his views which they deemed anti-feminist at best, and rape-apologist at worst.

People who wanted to see the talk were not able to get in because these people blocked their way.

Really, you should just watch the video and tell me what you think.

My favourite part is at the end when a guy is saying he doesn't have to agree with someone to listen to their views, and he just wants to hear what people's opinions are. This throws one lady for a loop, as she can't understand how someone could pay money and listen to someone talk without already agreeing with all of their views, saying "why would you pay money to support a rape apologist if you weren't one?" He wisely took the high road and walked away, but it got me thinking that anyone who's seen a Chris Rock show are now all actually black comedians, since they supported him, and why would they pay money to see a black comedian if they weren't one?

Leave comments, especially if you know anything about who Warren Farrell is.

Nerd Alert: Fiasco Review

Winner of many independent RPG awards, so hipster nerds love it.

I am going to nerd out here a little bit and introduce you to a fine new purchase I made recently: Fiasco, an RPG published by Bully Pulpit Games, and created by Jason Morningstar.

RPG, for the uninitiated, means roleplaying game. As in a game where you take on the role of a character, and play as them. Roleplaying game! The most well known RPG in history is unquestionably Dungeons and Dragons, but this game really isn't anything like that. There are no battles, no monsters, no complex dungeons to adventure through.

Instead, Fiasco is based on small-time caper films like Fargo, The Ladykillers, and Small Time Crooks. The game falls into a few sections. First, the 3-5 players roll some dice, and die by die determine their relationships to each other. Once that is settled, the players take away dice and act out scenes until no more dice remain, and an aftermath of their disastrous situation is resolved.

A big part of the fun is that during each scene that is acted out, the players who aren't in the scene determine whether the scene goes positively or negatively for a player by giving them a white (for positive resolutions) or a black (for negative resolutions) die part way through the scene. So things never quite go the way you plan for them to.

We didn't have enough black dice, so we had two groups:
"Whites Only", and "Coloured". Didn't think that one through.

So that's the stuff you would need to know. Sounds pretty nerdy, right? Well, what's really cool, is that I've found how amazing the game is as a storytelling tool. Take the way the relationships are established:

Through tables provided in the Fiasco handbook, and with the dice your players have rolled, you determine your relationships together. These each fall into two sections- Relationships ie. how you know each other, and Details ie. a shared Location, Object, or Need. Basically you roll a bunch of dice, and based off of the numbers that come up, one by one you pick a die to correspond with a detail on the tables. Easy.

You share these traits with the person to your right, and to your left. And that's what makes it so interesting.

So you aren't rolling up and determining your own character; you are discovering your relationship to two other people. And they, in turn, are also getting relationships with the two people next to them. Thus, a five person game is going to start to have a deeply-weaved web of intriguing characters.

Our story centered around a store much like this one...

A game I recently played broke down like this:

A.J. and Ricky shared a crime relationship together, which was determined to be centered around a small drug trade. I played the naive cousin of Ricky, the small-time crime lord the suburbs, and we worked together at the Tile Hut in the mall (which turned out to be a front for his drug game). To my left was Robin, and it was determined that we were a recent couple.
Then we found out that A.J. and Robin's relationship was that of a dark past: a drunk driver and next of kin of victim. The four of us talked it out, and determined that A.J. had killed Robin's sister who had been getting into the drug game with A.J..
One of the final details was determined that though Robin and I were a new couple we shared a need together to get rich through ripping off drug lords. Soon our story was becoming clear: somehow I would have to use my contact with Ricky to get into the drug game and either provide vengeance for Robin by getting even with her sister's killer, or somehow screw both the drug guys out of lots of money.

But that was just me. Every other player also had their own different motivations and special interests. It keeps the story moving as their is always some situation that needs resolving and the action never stagnates.

I highly recommend it to RPG players everywhere, but as an improv coach, I have to say it is an amazing tool for just telling stories in general. If you are in any sort of creative medium and want to hone your craft, it's at the very least worth a play-through. It's fun, it's simple, and it's social, so grab a group of friends, plop down $25 for the book (or $12 for a pdf version) and play a game. You won't be disappointed.

Revisiting Predictions

This is a repost of my entry on September 5th. Looks like prediction number one is good. I can't wait for number two. I wouldn't be surprised if we get some quotes tonight of pundits and maybe even politicians throwing Romney under the bus. I'll update with those quotes if they happen. Interesting to see my (and I presume others) mindset going from the convention to the debates. Lots more changes happened than I anticipated, but ultimately, it looks as though my electoral college prediction will still be right.



Predictions for the 2012 US Election



The Democratic National Convention is going on right now, and we are just two months away from election day. So what better way to make things go by faster than by throwing out some predictions!

1) Barack Obama will win a second term as President of the United States.

Not the boldest prediction at this point, but it seems pretty reasonable. Even if Mitt Romney gets Florida and Ohio, he will still have quite a long way to go, and I just don't see the campaigns trending that way.  The Republican National Convention didn't give him a huge boost, so really all Romney has left are the debates to win over undecided voters. But the debates look to be a place where Romney will be confronted head on by issues that he has been able to hide from behind a timid media.

2) Once Mitt Romney loses, the right wing media will throw him under the bus.

Do you remember how harshly the right wing media came down on Justice John Roberts when he was the tie-breaking vote for the constitutionality of the Affordable Health Care for America Act? They are not a forgiving bunch. And it's my feeling that if Romney loses you will see a movement even further to the right.

All the defences they've put up to protect him and push him forward will come crumbling down. Do you recall during the primaries how reluctant they were to embrace him? The voters too, yes, but the media played a big role in that as well. Everyone else was getting their chance to be the anti-Romney candidate in 2011. Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich (twice), Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, and Herman Cain.

Look at this graph from Media Matters:

The left side coincides with his official announcement to run for president. Follow that link (or this one) and you'll see that everyone got their chance on Fox News to audition for the chance to be the nominee. And they all rose up, and then fell back down, one after another. And finally it was Herman Cain's sexual harassment scandal that they had had enough. It was clear no one else was going to take it from Romney, and it was like the changed overnight, defending him from attacks from far more conservative nominees because he actually had the most realistic chance of challenging President Obama.

That allegiance, once the election is over (and thus there is no more use for him), will come crashing down, and Romney will be hung out to dry as "not conservative enough."All the defences they have for him now will turn into attacks on why he actually wasn't the right candidate. They will "discover" that Romney actually wasn't the hardcore conservative he said he was, and now if they just find that guy (or girl) then they'll have a real shot for 2016.

3) The Republican Party will shift further to the right.

George W. Bush, love him or hate him, is conspicuously absent from the campaign trail. And good for him, saying he wants to "stay out of the spotlight." Since leaving office, he has remained silent on President Obama's policies for the most part, made an appearance on Oprah, and has enjoyed retirement. He even found time to combat AIDS in Africa.

But what is the real reason George W. Bush is not around? Is it because he is an easy target for blame for the recession? Partly, but I think it is mainly because George W. Bush is no longer a hardcore conservative to the current Republic (Tea) Party. Government did not get smaller under Bush, it got bigger. He proposed immigration reform that was supported by Democrats, but not by his own party. And look at No Child Left Behind. Bush worked with the Democrats to create the act which actually increased education spending nationwide. This kind of talk is absolutely unheard of in today's GOP.

So we will come to whole new 8-year cycle in 2016, and I believe the party will shift even further to the right. Will poster-boy Paul Ryan take the helm? He is a tea-party favourite, but being tied to a losing candidate for President could hurt his image, and he might not do well against Joe Biden in the debates. Jeb Bush? Or someone new? The field is going to be wide open. You won't see all of these big name candidates declining to run for personal reasons like Mike Huckabee and Chris Christie. It is going to be every man for himself, and you are going to see some very different ideologies come forward as the Republican Party tries to shape itself into a modern conservative movement.

Regardless of who the next nominee is, if you hated the endless primary season this time around, you are going to absolutely loathe it next time.



Let me know what you guys think in the comments below. Am I way off? Do you see something different? I'd love you hear all of your opinions!