Can They Answer My Questions?

At last…
Essays on Philosophy¹ and “Got Milk?” ads have, up until recently, consumed my words; thus, I have had little time to spend in the writing world. Instead, my creativity has been sneaking out in tiny ways like, the titles of my boring essays (ex. “Got Sex appeal?” (I said tiny.)), blurbs to people on MySpace² and rapidly written accounts of some very odd dreams I’ve been having. But mostly, my creativity has been getting out in e-mails to my friends (as well as their titles (ex. “Books are for people who can’t watch”, “On my trip to Africa I contracted AIDS and I got a wicked headache” and, “Have you ever wondered if John Kerry is actually a horse (with a lot of make-up) trying to be President of the USA?”).
Luckily, since I haven’t been able to write, there are some other things have been filling the void. At the beginning of the school year, my fellow Pretzel Brother³, Cam, got back into skateboarding. It gives him something to do, saves him gas money and gets him ready for the snowboarding season (AND if he can learn to ollie up and down curbs it will make him look cool!). Well, after seeing him take up skating once more I thought I would give it a shot again. I am quite a bit older then I was when I used to skate and I don’t think I’ll cry near as much when I fall (AND if I can learn to ollie up and down curbs it will make me look cool!).
I used to skate all the time with my buddy Adam. There wasn’t much to do in Coalhurst, so we took it up as a routine. We would skate all morning, go inside to eat lunch and watch how Tony Hawk did his kickflip and then we’d head back out and skate until the streetlights came on (that’s when Adam had to go home). In the end of our career, despite how many times we watched that video, had both landed something like two kickflips each. I moved to Lethbridge and our career was diminished.
Sad story huh? I know. I almost cried thinking about it when I was skateboarding in between deliveries last night. The tears welled up when I took a pizza out to Coalhurst and saw where we used to skate. And those special drops of salty emotion poured out when I looked at the debit receipt for the delivery and realized that the bag only tipped me two cents.
What the hell…I drive all the way out to Coalhurst and you can’t even give me a few extra bucks. And moreover, you feel the need to rub it in my face by giving me two cents! Well allow me to just rub it right in your face, the two 2 cent candies I’m munching on right now are delicious!
I’m bothered by the fact that I, and almost everyone in the service industry for that matter, have come expect tips. Granted, it does make up half of my wage, but me walking away from a house cursing an old lady because she gave me exact change seems to be a little overboard.
Flashes of the first scene from Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs come to mind when I start thinking about the different jobs our society deems “tippable.” A friend and I concluded that there are a few jobs that are able to have a wide array of effort put in. Those being things like serving (obviously), hair chopping (more commonly referred to as hair dressing), and perhaps prostitutes (which could be included in the serving category, but that’s debatable).
I’m gonna come out right now and say, I do not deserve tips for what I do, unless it’s really crappy driving conditions, in which case I deserve a lot of money (dangerous!). Our culture is really weird like that, for some reason we see it appropriate to have a tip function on certain debit machines and not others.
I wonder if it’s like this in other countries… I wonder what a Fijian would say if they came and found out that we tip our pizza delivery technicians (a nice sounding title I like to give myself)… But, more often, I wonder what—get your lightsabers out—an alien race would think if they suddenly landed on our planet…
What would they think if they got here and saw what we’ve been doing to our planet with our cars, factories, etc.? Perhaps they have been screwing their planet up too and that’s why there here. Maybe we’re doing better than they have been! If they ever make it here and tell us this, I’ll give you all a high-five.
What would they think of the activities we take part in? They might be confused by the fact that some of us plan our whole weekends around what bars they are going to hit or how drunk they are going to get (seemingly more in University, I thought we’d matured…).
Would aliens listen to music? Maybe they would find it odd that we (some more often than others) pay to hear people loudly stretching their voices to background twings and twangs, beats and bops. And sometimes (if we happen to be lucky enough in this cold-ass province of ours) we will pay even more money to go and see these "Voice Stretchers", "Twing-Twangers" and "Beat-Boppers"; voice stretch, twing-twang and beat-bop, live.
Perhaps they’d give us a strange look (do aliens have facial expressions?) when they found out we pay to see others play what we call sports (the term has become quite stretched with the addition of curling). We riot when the team we are cheering for loses and we get very excited when they win (sometimes we even take off our clothes in celebration (see Flamesgirls.com)). Some of our sports involve sticks and balls. Some involve boards and wheels. Some involve nothing but people and we pay to see them beat the shit out of each other (UFC) or we (using the term loosely) pay to see people (using the term loosely) pretend to beat the shit out of each other (WWE).
What would they say to our religions? With all the religions in the world, and Christianity ranking in at the highest with 30%, a majority of us are wrong. Maybe they know the answer and we’re so off the marker they’ll laugh at us (Do aliens laugh?).
Spending all our currency on all these odd activities, it might seem strange to the newcomers that we are willing to spend even more to make these activities quicker or convenient (ex. electric scissors, cars, etc.). They might think it odd that we pay a lot of money to get our “food” fast. Especially when they find out what it’s made of (if we keep any secret from them, that should be it). If they were here on November 23, 2006, they would probably find it odd that there are those of us who won’t work to get a job. Instead, they’ll use a rifle to hold up a one of those places that providing us with “food” fast, and in doing so, putting their lives of freedom at risk for what we call “Loonies”.
Now, because of all of the writing I have been doing for University, I’m looking back on these 1729 words and I’m thinking, “How can I conclude this in a way that will sum up my thoughts?” The problem is they aren’t really my thoughts; they’re the aliens’. Who knows what they'll think? Maybe, if we ever run into another race as intelligent as we are, they can help us figure some important things out. I don't know about you, but I hope they show up soon so they can explain to me why Blind Date is still on…

1. At the beginning of the year I was really excited about philosophy. We were learning all of these really cool things about what people thought about the world in approximately 300ADE. And it brought up so many questions about life and death, and life after death. Unfortunately, we have moved on to more recent philosophers, with more recent ideas; thus, it has become much less interesting than it was to start with and I now have to find ways of entertaining myself in the class. This quest is made easier by the fact that my professor's hair looks as if she spent the night previous in a bush. But, what most interests me are my fellow students, one in particular. A good example of his incompetence and its ability to entertain: One day we were talking about Newton and his discovery of gravity. We mentioned how scientists eventually found out, as an object gets further from Earth, the force of gravity decreases. Upon hearing this I look over to our aspiring philosopher and he is lifting his pen further from the Earth trying to feel the difference in gravitational pull…
I don’t even have anything witty to say about that…Moron!

2. I have criticized, and continue to criticize, Nex(opia) at least once a day. And I now find myself consumed (though it seems temporary) by something like it called MySpace. I find it a great place to check out music and communicate with people you’d rather not e-mail, instant message, text message, contact through postage, or participate in that thing people born before the 80’s call “speech,” over the phone or in person. I find the strangest part about these sites to be, the ability to look into others lives. You can see the relationship between them and their friends. You can read about their favourites. You can read about their day, if you’re so inclined. What’s so strange about this? Well, my friend (who I may or may not attempt to contact), what’s strange about this is that I have that inclination and even once found myself reading someone’s response to 25 questions in a chain letter (and if you click the “next blog” button in the top right of this page, nine times out of ten you will find a blog where people talk about their day and even more people who publicly answer chain mail. This is the same kind of strange behavior that keeps EA coming out with expansion packs for the ridiculous computer game “The Sims”. It seems it's just me (judging by how well it sells) who thinks that if your life is so boring that you need to escape to a fake one, you should probably get out there and work on that.) Uck… This is what I’ve resorted to. I’ve gotta spend more time with you!

3. Definition: Unknown
We are sending you all Christmas cards. Get excited!

-Teck

Let's try this one more time with feelin'