Recently, Paul and Amanda attended a fancy dinner, at which they were seated beside a life coach. This life coach told them that if they were to compile a list of 100 to 700 goals, and then hide this list somehwere (i.e. the internet) that every single one of these goals will come true. The life coach also said you have to do it in between the ages of 21-24 or something, so I dropped the boat there, but I'm going to do it anyways. Now, here's part one of a seven part series.
Ian Baker's 700 Goals
1. Go to a fancy dinner
2. Remember salad dressing
3. Go to the moon
4. Become president of the United States of America
5. Survive a Zombie apocalypse
6. Mow the lawn
7. Go back in time and write all of Shakespeare's works
8. Buy a new coat
9. Institute new 25 hour days
10. Never wear orange coloured clothing again
11. Live a year underwater
12. Accidentally invent time travel
13. Get a new word entered into the Oxford English Dictionary
14. Abolish slavery
15. Succeed in reducing the cost of apples by at least three cents, worldwide
16. Steal a Conn Smythe trophy (preferably Bill Ranford's)
17. Live the same day over and over again for a year, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day except in real life
18. Drop it like it's hot
19. Wear mismatched socks
20. Star in a movie with Marlon Brando
21. Stay up to see the sun rise over the ruins of Tokyo
22. Perform invasive surgery on a human with absolutely no training; have that person survive
23. Eliminate climate change; the climate is so hot right now
24. Get two and a half men cancelled again
25. Bring back VCRs
26. Seize the day
27. Become a robocop
28. Smoke weed everyday
29. Get an honorary degree from Harvard - not a real one
30. Defeat Oprah Winfrey in hand-to-hand combat to the death
31. Go to the store
32. Learn to drive a train
33. Become a long-haul trucker for the rest of my life
34. Replace Jon Bon Jovi in Bon Jovi
35. Replace Eddie Van Halen in Van Halen
36. Win a Gold Medal in Women's Figure Skating, without any kind of surgery
37. Ensure that Goldie Hawn never makes another movie or TV show again, yet remains alive
38. Fake someone else's death - without them knowing about it
39. Become advisor to god
40. Get Purple Heart
41. Buy San Diego Padres hat
42. Write a novel
43. Rewrite, remake, and produce new versions of Star Wars Episodes 1-3
44. Become a platinum-selling Bluegrass artist
45. Assassinate Abraham Lincoln
46. Eat lunch
47. Sit in a recliner for a year without reclining it
48. Keep it on the DL
49. Fire Donald Trump
50. Suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
51. Own Walmart
52. Accept responsibility for my actions
53. Stop racism
54. Start a war
55. Become the Canadian Margaret Atwood
56. Replace both Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel in Simon and Garfunkel
57. Help pie defeat cake
58. Invent a new mistake
59. Abolish pudding
60. Drive across the Atlantic Ocean
61. Ball outrageous
62. Hide this list of goals
63. Get to 700 goals
64. Grow an extra arm
65. Write a new york times bestseller
66. Earn a Nobel Peace Prize, but not a normal Nobel Prize
67. Maindeck Manic Vandals instead of Kargan Dragonlords
68. Manage a pro baseball team for a week (preferably the Yankees)
69. Hehhehe.
70. Drink more coffee
71. Bring back Crystal Pepsi
72. Write for the national enquirer
73. Ensure not to repeat any goals
74. Make a life-sized replica of the death star
75. Never fall over again
76. Be more humble
77. Keep being the best person ever - alive or dead
78. Slap Drew Carey
79. Popularize tomatoes
80. Never sleep again
81. Never be tired again
82. Gamble my life's savings on a horse race - win
83. Replace the guy who is currently the most interesting man alive on those Dos Equis commercials
84. Get into the Guinness book of World's Records for something beard-related
85. Be more goal-oriented
86. Live life to it's fullest
87. Stop, drop, and roll
88. Slap the Queen of England
89. Buy a Chocolate bar
90. Visit Siberia
91. Let them eat cake
92. Ensure not to repeat any goals
93. Become the star player on the Pittsburgh Steelers
94. Find Dubonnet Amber for Mom
95. Keep it simple, stupid
96. Reduce acronym use - RAU
97. Target the main generator - Maximum Firepower
98. Quit smoking
99. Make a car that you drive while in bed
100. Use more parts of my brain
Thursday, 23 June 2011
Thursday, 9 June 2011
A Short Story.
He let the car roll slowly to a stop in front of her apartment building. There was plenty of room on her street, but that green Jetta was in his favorite spot again. This was already not going well. He had never gotten a ticket in that spot, and it wasn’t right in front of the front steps of the building, just a little off center. He had gotten tickets in this spot before.
He drummed his fingers on the steering well. Everything would be fine. He had already gone over what he wanted to say in his mind, hundreds of times. He would knock on the door, and she would open it, and then he’d spout off all his carefully rehearsed nonsense, and she’d just sit there and listen to all of it, and even though she wanted to interrupt him she wouldn’t, because she was just that fucking considerate. So she’d just wait for him to finish, and then she’d say whatever it is she wanted to say. It would all be fine, up until that point.
Sun-tzu’s words, or what he understood them to be, echoed around in his brain as he fumbled to undo his seatbelt: “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” It was possible that all his forethought, all the sentences so carefully constructed would be torn to ribbons by her very first word. But this wouldn’t be a battle, would it? It would be a pact, an accord, a treaty. It had to be. For that matter, she wasn’t the enemy. She had seemed like it, sure, when she had first told him that she wanted to go on a break. He was pretty sure the break was just an excuse for her to fuck that guy with the fauxhawk from her graphic design firm. That guy, always with the smug smile and the firm handshake and the mercurial Photoshop skills. His entire wardrobe was surely purchased from Banana Republic and not H&M, even though the clothes were similar quality, H&M was just a lot cheaper.
He stared down at his dark grey H&M slacks. It wasn’t that bad that they were on a break, was it? Jennifer and Robbie had gotten married last year, and they’d been on at least two breaks, so it wasn’t that bad. That was a good wedding. She’d gotten too drunk and he’d had to take care of her. They kind of wandered around the streets of Banff because he wasn’t entirely sure where their hotel was, but Banff was small enough that eventually they’d get there. She threw up in an alley and was worried about her nice dress. He hadn’t seen her wear it again. They’d gotten back to the hotel room and had awkward sex, awkward because they were both too drunk to do it properly, but awkward also because of the wedding afterglow.
Taking a deep breath, he finally got out of the car. He staggered ever so slightly. He’d had what he judged to be the perfect amount of scotch: not so much that he couldn’t still legally drive, but enough to bolster his previously flagging courage. The stagger made him think he may have misjudged the “perfect” amount, but it was too late now, wasn’t it?
He looked up at her apartment. All the lights were off. He had another brief moment of panic. What if fauxhawk is up there? He knew it was idle panic. It was Sunday, and she wouldn’t jeopardize her important job by having fauxhawk guy over late tonight. That was both good and bad, though. She’d be pretty mad that he showed up at this hour. She’d understand though, right? I mean, sometimes you just have to tell someone how you feel. Sometimes it just builds up, over days, over nights, and eventually you just have to let it all come rushing out in one big flood, and sometimes that flood happens on Sunday night at three in the morning.
It was okay too, if she fucked fauxhawk, because there was that night that cougar had taken him home and they’d fooled around a bit, before he realized that he cared about her too much to actually have sex, and so they’d just looked at the cougar’s record collection. But they’d fooled around. Maybe if she admitted that she’d fucked fauxhawk he’d lie and say that he’d fucked the cougar too, just to see her get mad. It wouldn’t be anger so much as disappointment though, and no one really likes to see disappointment. He wanted anger. Also, he’d already told his friends what had actually happened, and she was close with a few of them. She probably already knew.
He made it up the steps, growing slightly more confident with each one, and opened the door leading into her apartment vestibule. For some reason, surely because he was stalling for time, he double-checked that her buzzer number was 47. Of course it was; he’d punched that number in hundreds of times. Tonight, he felt the need to double check. He was hoping that someone – maybe a bartender coming home late from work, or a drunken couple, or a guy on a weird night shift – would come home, and they’d have a conversation about being stuck in the vestibule, and he’d convince them that he was harmless, and they’d go in together, and he wouldn’t have to buzz up. It was easier to shut him out from down here. He held the antique phone receiver in his hand, ready to punch the buttons. This was the hard part. If he could just make it up there, to where he could knock on her door, and he’d hear her actual voice through the door, and she surely couldn’t refuse to see him. But down here, in the apartment vestibule, that was a world away. It would be awkward, like a long-distance phone call to relatives that you never see, and he’d have to go back to his car, his car that he was no longer sure he was legally able to drive. Maybe he could tell her that; that he was too drunk to drive and that he’d need to stay at her place. But no, that was just pathetic, that was how he’d gotten into this mess in the first place, being pathetic. He was not pathetic.
Then he saw it. Hope. Salvation. Everything would be fine. The inside door had stuck and it was open a crack. It did that sometimes. She’d always worry about it when it happened. She’d talk some nonsense about people coming in and taking all her stuff, somehow transporting her leather couches downstairs and into their vans without anyone noticing. He’d calm her down. It only happens once in a blue moon, he’d say. What a time for it to happen. He swung the door open with vigor, his courage redoubled. He strode confidently up to the elevator doors and pressed the button for the fourth floor. Then, he waited. This elevator was always too slow. It was like that first night, when they were making out like sex-starved rabbits in the apartment vestibule, waiting for the elevator to come so he could get her up to her apartment and tear all her clothes off- not that the making out was bad, but it was to be a prelude of the amazing things to come - he couldn’t wait for that, and just as it had happened on that first night, any and all thoughts of sex were ejected from his mind by the loud bong that announced the elevator’s arrival.
He hated that noise, too. It was pitched lower than most elevators, and as such seemed to shake the very foundation of one’s soul. At least it had done so to him on this occasion. But he was not deterred. The scotch flowed through his veins as the elevator rose, slowly, past the second and third floors, to the fourth. This was waiting, again, but at least he knew how long the wait would be, he’d been on this elevator, taken this route, hundreds of times. Everything would be fine, too, because he’d be able to knock on her door. The fact that the downstairs door was open was surely the work of fate, of kismet, and was a good omen. He strode towards her door and stood in front of it, waiting. Everything would be fine, except that he realized he didn’t believe in fate, kismet, or good omens. Up until this point, he’d thought all that was bullshit. Everything was in his hands now.
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