One is the Loneliest Number

It really is. As many have said, we are social creatures. We live to be social. You ever hear about the story of the children who had no affection but were still taken care of? They all curled up against the wall and died. Why? Because they had no affection. True story. Back in the day, many didn't realize how important affection was. Life is pointless if we don't do something with it. I'm completely against suicidals and people who are deeply depressed. People make us live. Without people, we die, essentially. All those people who live by themselves they try to find something to do. If they're retired, well they join some group. They don't just sit on a couch and watch the world pass by. Well some do, and they need to be shown how spectacular  life is. So do something with your life, and you'll enjoy living as long as you do. I don't want to put religion into this and I don't know when I'll die. All I know is I'm going to live my life the way I want to live my life. You should do the same.

What is the point of that last paragraph? Well, let me explain.

I'm alone. Okay, now that's a depressing way to start a sentence. The point is, I'm alone in the house. Yes, "Home Alone" if you like. No one else is here. Being jobless doesn't help the situation. No job and no one else in the house because my parents are in Spain. What's a 19-year-old to do? Party? Well there is that, but I'm actually looking for a job, so not much time for that. Luckily, my last job, that I had before I travelled for two months around Europe, seems to want to hire me back, so hopefully I'll be working in a few days. Going back to what I wrote in my first paragraph, life needs to have a purpose in order for it to be fun. No one should throw their life away. We are all brilliant, we are all intelligent. Find yourself, know what to do, and then do it. Whatever it may be. By the words of Stephen Fry, "How will you ever know if you don't try?" Trying is all the fun of it. "Make mistakes, get messy," as the famous Ms. Frizzle once said. But as a good friend told me, there's a difference between knowledge and wisdom. Wisdom comes from within. So believe in yourself, and that's all I'm going to write here.

Now back to me:

So now that you've digested all that or just skipped it entirely, days can be quite boring when you're jobless, alone in the house, and all your friends are working. For the past few days I've been going out looking for a job. It is very strenuous work. But job hunting is a job in itself. At least, I'm creative. I can easily write, sing, and play the drums to pass the time. Still, it would be nice to have some company. That's why I'm very excited to be working again. You experience so much when working, and you learn so much too. Experience teaches. Also as a writer, I'm very interested in people. They are quite some fascinating people out there. Understand the mind and the different people in the world, and you can create characters. Go out and explore the world, and understand the mechanics of the world, you've created a setting. Now, learn through either being self taught or being taught by a teacher who knows what they're doing, and you can create a beginning, a middle, and an end for your story. Well, if you're planning to write a book that is. There are many different writing conventions within different types of works though. If you want to write poetry, you just need to understand structure, timing, rhythm, and many other conventions. Read The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry if you're at all interested in this particular subject. If you want to write an essay, all you need is an argument and a topic. Now it's up to you to make your argument convincing. You have to have a way with words for that. Short stories are like short novels. A script a has completely different set of conventions. There are many things I can spend my time doing and while travelling alone, I wrote quite a lot and read a lot. Reading and writing go hand in hand. Without reading you can't write and without writing, well, you can't be writing well if you don't read as well. The word writer is nothing special. "A writer is a person who writes," Professor Arnie Achtman said. Anyone who writes is a writer. But it takes greatness and wisdom, to become the title Novelist or Poet or Scriptwriter. We all have a genius inside us, we just need to release it. But writing is best done alone, so I guess being alone isn't so bad. I have always been a sociable guy, so really writing out of boredom is more like talking to myself but through characters I create. I've always had a creative imagination and have always been a deep thinker. So I guess for me, being alone isn't so bad as long as I have my mind, a computer and keyboard or a notepad, and a pencil or a pen. Still, it's lonely being alone and it's really the reason I wrote this entry. 

My Globe: The Slightly Embarassing Story

Many years ago I was an immature teenager, well maybe I still am, you be the judge. Back in the day, my sister and I loved to make up random improv sketches and film them. Sometimes we even had story lines but nothing was ever written on a script. I believe the day it happened was when we were pretending there was a killer on the lose and I was a teacher teaching my invisible students (though I would have obviously thought they were real) about the world when suddenly I was shot or maybe I had a heart attack and there was no killer, I can't remember, it was so long ago. Anyway, the point being, that when I fell down I was holding a globe in my hand and the delicate structure smashed on the ground and the whole stand came lose. A chunk of plastic, that held the stand together, also broke off. I was so angry with myself after the aftermath of our stupid film. That globe had been given to me as a name day present.* I thought I had really destroyed it so I duct taped the stand to the globe so it could still "stand" without wobbling over. The duct tape never really held and it just kept "wobbling over." A few weeks ago, I realized that this duct tape was useless (I have just proven that not anything can be fixed with duct tape) and removed all of it. But since I had left it on for so long, the adhesive had peeled off and was all over the stand making it very sticky like sap from a pine tree. If you ever had pine sap stuck to you, you know what I'm talking about. So I went down to Mastermind to ask them if maybe I could buy another stand from them, but they didn't carry stands without globes and one of the sales associates told me to email the company that made my globe, it wasn't the same company that made the Mastermind ones. Well I had put that idea off until yesterday where I then googled the company Globemaster and was able to find thousands of results but most on military and marine life. I decided to fix this globe myself using elastics. After wrapping the globe with elastic upon elastic, even my dad helped hold the globe in place, I realized this method was useless and none of these stupid elastics would hold the stand in place. That was when my dad noticed the little hole in the bottom part of the bar that held the globe and the inside of the piece that connected the base to the rest of the globe. The way the inside was formed, it seemed that the hole should easily fit in there. He left me to ponder this thought until it came to me. The hole was in the shape of a screw head. There was a screw inside the part of the piece that held the base and bar of the globe. I had wondered what it was doing there. The screw fit in the screw head hole which would then be inserted into the piece. The bottom of the screw would be seen under the base and after you tightened the nut, it would all fall into place. The chunk of the piece that broke off was able to rest back in the groove it left. With many elastics wrapped around the piece, they held the piece together. So I'm a screw head and a nut for not figuring this out long ago. That duct tape so many years ago was pointless. I had to cover that piece with tons and tons of elastics so I wouldn't touch the sticky adhesive marks. Wow. Well, the mistakes we make help us construct for a better future. You can read that literally and say that I'll be constructing globes some day. Ha! Yeah, right. Or you can take the non literal approach or believe it to mean that some day I'm going to break another person's globe but guess what? I'll know how to fix it. Maybe.

* My full name is Andonis (An-don-e) which means Anthony in Greek and every Greek name has a name day. Mine is January 17. Andonis, if you search it, is also a "variant of Andrew" according to WeddingVendors.com. My name means brave and manly, and my famous bearer is Prince Andrew. So really, when people call me Andrew, they are somewhat right because there is Andrew in my name. It's really why my nickname is Andy, it derives from Andonis. My mother always liked the name Andy. Still, I keep telling people that there is no Andrew in my name because there really isn't. You see, there is no name day for Andonis but there is a name day for Antonis which means Anthony in Greek. Anthony can also somewhat derive from Andonis as well. If you just switch the "d" to a "t," you get Antonis. But isn't Andonis, much better sounding? I think so. Anyway, as Gus says in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, "There you go."

Cold Comedy

Today was freezing outside. I never really particularly liked the cold, never have. I like winter but not when the icy wind rushes through your body. Yesterday was my birthday so I am officially 19 now. Legal in every way, well, in Canada. Read my horoscope today and was told that I would be very financially successful. It even told me to buy me a lottery ticket, so I did. Didn't win anything unfortunately. Chose Crossword, maybe the odds were against me. Almost got two words though. The cashier asked me if I was over 25 and I stupidly said, "Yes." She just nodded at me as I began to hand her the three dollars. I asked her to clarify the question and once I found out that if I was under 25 I had to show her ID, I showed her my driver's license to prove my age. What occurred to me though was that I could have lied and left with the cashier thinking I'm 25. Of course it's something I'd never do, but I never thought I looked anywhere close to 25. The rest of the day was just spent at home fixing iTunes. I'm trying to organize my library and it's taking a brutally long time. I won't dwell into the details. Soon left the house to go shopping for "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" CD because I love the album cover and the music of course. While shopping at HMV, I bought an additional CD, Dave Matthew's "The Best of What's Around" and the movie "Get Smart." It was only $6 and my mother's cousin, who lives in Montreal, had Steve Carell and the film crew drop by his house, and they asked him if they could use his ladas in the film. "Get Smart" was a show around in the 1960s and 1970s that would have used cars of the lada age in the show. The film crew wanted the movie to be as close to the show as possible. They paid him a huge sum of money for the use of his ladas and my mom's cousin even taught Terrence Stamp, who plays Siegfried in the film, how to drive standard because he didn't know how. The cast came to his house and he even got to watch some of the scenes, like the ballroom scene. American actors usually come to Canada to film because it's cheaper and that's just what Carell and the film crew were doing. I even got an autograph by Steve Carrel and one of my friends got one as well. It was a great experience and I had to buy the film to remember the laughs and memories of what this film really means to me.
         At around dinner time, a good friend of mine called me asking if I wanted to go to a bar and see a friend of mine do some stand-up comedy along with many other comedians. Of course I said "yes" because I don't do much these days except work and save for my backpacking trip to Europe which I'm doing in April. We met at his place and just hung out until it was time to head over. His condo is just across the street from the bar. Being 19, I bought each of us a Guinness that was recommended to me via text message from my friend's brother, an also good friend of mine. The Guinness was alright, I never cared for beer much. Some of the comedians were pretty funny, including my friend. Though, I'd heard some of his material before but that's just because he's still trying out material. I'm a huge supporter and have been to a few shows. His punchline at the end is golden. When I was getting the beers, and elderly woman started asking me if I liked Guinness and I told her that it tastes really good in Geneva, Switzerland without realizing the beer I had tried had been Heineken, a German beer, not an Irish one. My friend thought it pretty odd too when I texted him the story. Anyway, this woman was clearly drunk and I quickly left after I received my drinks. It cost me $15 though for both and I was a bit shocked at how expensive this was. I'm no alcohol expert, but I'm pretty sure you can get beer for way cheaper. I went back upstairs with my overly expensive beers in hand and we drank while watching the comedians. Later on, the elderly woman came up the stairs and began talking throughout one funnyman's stand-up. He kept telling her to shut up, but wasn't that tense about it. Comedy, I know is an art, some people have it while others don't. But what I really find strange is how hard some comedians try. I believe anyone can be humourous because life is humourous at parts. I'm not saying I'm some hilarious funnyman, but I can easily tell when someone's trying to shove jokes down my throat. With humour, you've got to be very comfortable and natural with it. If you try too hard, it'll probably not be funny. You've got to be witty and clever at points, and enjoy the topic your talking about. Also, toilet humor. It can be funny but if you push it too far, your act becomes toilet humor. Some people don't know where to start, while others have no idea where to begin.  I wonder what would happen if I did stand-up, I wonder if people would laugh. I would have to come up with some material though, that might be a bit tough. I believe anyone can be funny, if they don't think too hard and are just themselves.
 

       

SNOW DAY

Alright, so I lied. I sometimes do that. In January 2010 I wrote that I would never write another blog unless someone commented on the blog I had just written. Someone commented, thank you K, and so I wrote another blog in December. No one's commented in many months but I think that I should just write more blogs even if people don't comment. Hopefully it'll bring comments and followers. I need to proceed into the darkness and pull the light towards me. In other words, by writing more blogs I might be able to concoct more posts that might draw readers' attention. So without further ado, here's a new blog.

A snow day. When you think of those three words, what do you think of? Probably a city blanketed in snow. Snow up to your waist. Doors frozen solid and the snow's almost at the door handle. Power lines down, roads blocked, school's cancelled. You can't shovel because there's nowhere to put it and your car's stuck in the driveway, buried under the white fluffiness. Mother nature at her worst. It's an official snow day in Toronto but it shouldn't be. People were expecting this freak snowstorm that we never got. They cancelled meetings in advance and even the schools are closed today. Except for UofT, maybe they figured that, like me, the snow's not a huge obstacle for students. There are still cars on the road, not very many though as usual, and I was still able to shovel. Flights were cancelled or severely delayed, but that I understand. From what I saw on the television, it looked as if the sky was so blurry that someone stuck up a very large grey blanket overtop of the sky making it impossible for a pilot to see anything. It's probably cleared up by now. Seriously though, we've had this much snow before and the city didn't complain. Maybe I'm missing something, I'm not sure, but from the looks of outside it seems drivable and walkable. The police have cautioned drivers to drive slowly due to the weather conditions but that's not new. The only time I remember having a snow day was about three years ago. First off, it was brutally cold and there literally was a small blizzard outside. When I looked out the window, it didn't look like such a great day to walk to school but I did. I had turned on the television before hoping for a snow day but the weatherman did say that some schools were closed but not mine or any in the area. When I got to school it wasn't until second period that they announced a snow day. The wind was picking up speed and more snow was falling. It angered me though because I had already trekked the way here just to find that my journey had been useless. Still, I was happy it was a snow day. The next day though there was school. Snow days never usually last more than a day I've found, unless they're critically severe like maybe the one I sort of described at the beginning of this post. Of course, if I was in school, I would be ecstatic that schools are closed but I would still chuckle at the fact that Toronto needs to calm down because the city can still function. I hear that there's more snow to come, but by the looks of things it'll probably only be a few more centimetres. Guess we'll just have to wait and see though.