Mocking the Redundancy of a Title

Hello party people, Put your hands up, put your hands up!

Now please put them down. Thank you for that. It just sets the mood of the article from the get-go. I am still in Australia, as you may have imagined. I wonder what your reaction would be if I just randomly put up a blog post that said something like, “Oh hey! I felt spontaneous and took a flight to Sweden!” It would be a really big shock, but I bet you would believe it for a second, no? But I digress, as I am wont to do.

Life is a blast here down under. I have so many school projects I must finish this week but I am not the least bit stressed about them. For those of you who know my work habits back home, you will be amazed to learn that I have found new levels of procrastination and general antipathy towards studying. However, the school environment in which I currently find myself is very conducive to not giving a shit. In fact, it reinforces my indifference. I have received marks at the top of my class in everything I have done so far and I haven’t given it any effort. Tonight, my professor explained how you can merely change some words around in your source document and use it in your own report to avoid plagiarism. She basically said that it is not plagiarism when you switch some words. Even more basically, she told us how to effectively plagiarize. She then told us she will know if we did not write it ourselves if it is written too well. I was flabbergasted and ecstatic. I am going to assume that there are universities that are quite difficult in Australia, so I would just like to take this time to thank Wilfrid Laurier University for sending me to this school.

So why, you ask, do I have all of these projects to do? Well, they are all due over the next three weeks but I want to complete them before Ashley, Chris, Sean, and Dave arrive here in Brisbane. And they arrive in one week! I am so excited and I can’t believe how fast time has gone. When they get off the plane, I am going to feel mixed emotions that will confuse me and cause me to run to the train and go back home without meeting them. I am just kidding, but I know Ash and Chris will be reading this blog post and I always like to keep them on their toes. Leave them wondering, “Is-is he joking?”

I tried to walk home from work yesterday instead of taking the train. It is only a half hour walk and I have done it with my roommates twice before. Yet, being the competitor I am, I still found a way to get lost. I don’t care how easy you try to make my route; I will get lost. It’s my competitive nature, baby. Seriously, though, it is pretty pathetic. I think if celestial beings were tracking my movements the way that humans track birds and other animals, they would be thoroughly confused by the route I take when I am lost.

“Where is he walking right now? He has passed two turns that will take him to his home yet he keeps walking!”

“He is walking slow and disoriented too. Is it possible he is looking for food?”

“No, he bought food from a grocery store yesterday. If he wanted food, he would go home.”

“Perhaps he is looking for a mate?”

“He has a mate on the other side of the planet. You know how crazy these humans are when they fall in this ‘love’ material they have there.”

“Well then I am not sure where he is going – oh wait, he is now walking on his street towards home. You don’t think this human does not know how to navigate his planet, do you?”

“Simon, come on! These humans are advanced creatures. Of course he knows how to navigate. Even primates know how to navigate! Even the cats and dogs can find their way home! This man is clearly of even higher intelligence than the rest. I can see his entire route was downhill. Perhaps he consciously or even sub-consciously planned his whole route to avoid difficult uphill slopes.”

“He is a unique specimen, Riley. He is certainly unique.”

(There is no doubt in my mind that celestial beings would have the names Simon and Riley. I really can’t think of anything else they would be called.)

Two nights ago I watched the movie Open Water. It is about a young couple that goes scuba diving at a reef. The boat driver mistakenly counts all the heads while they are still underwater and they leave without them. There is no happy ending here. The boat never comes back. They die. Since they never found them (except the guy’s camera in the stomach of a shark) they don’t know exactly how they died. However, there is no doubt it involved either drowning or being eaten by sharks. Neither of these scenarios sounds particularly enticing. Believe me when I say that I felt fearful for the characters in this movie.

I know what you are thinking: “It’s just a movie about sharks. It’s been done before. Have you ever heard of Jaws?” I would normally agree with you – wait a minute, did you just get snarky with me? Yes I’ve obviously heard of Jaws, you ass – but allow me to explain. In two weeks, the gang of Canadians will be heading up to Cairns. While there, I will be taken out to the ocean by unknown men. At this point I will jump in the ocean and snorkel at the Great Barrier Reef, for this is why I will have paid them to take me out to this place. This plot sounds eerily similar to the beginning of Open Water and I couldn’t help but think that I hope the endings are drastically different.

I just have a little tidbit I would like to share about my job. As I stated earlier, I work at a store that sells expensive porcelain, bone china, and crystal. So far, I have done a swell job of not breaking anything. However, my hands are like big blocks of wood. They were not meant for doing anything requiring delicacy or grace. This is why it is absolutely agonizing every time I have to wrap somebody’s China in tissue and pack it up for them. I can feel the perspiration forming on my forehead and I can feel them looking at me, judging me. “This guy doesn’t know how to wrap China! This gift is going to look awful when she opens it. My god, he just got the tape gun stuck to the tissue paper and now he is trying to rip them apart from each other. How did he manage to wrap himself in tape?” And then I finish and hand it to her and she says, “Thank you!”

On Saturday, I went to the park for a couple hours and just walked around and admired the beautiful plants and flowers. And the lizards. Man I love lizards. There are big ones here – the biggest I have seen was about three and a half feet long. In the botanical gardens, most lizards are about two feet long. When they see you approaching, they just stand absolutely still and watch you with that wary moving eye. This is too much for me to resist. I have to see if I can get close to them. I stand absolutely still as well and make subtle slow movements toward the lizard. Most times, they run away once I am within a four or five feet proximity but on Saturday I got close enough that I touched one. I like to believe that he recognized I was cool with lizards and that I just wanted to chill. I touched his back a couple times before he finally took off, at which point I said, “Adios little buddy.” We had a moment and we moved on with our lives. But I will never forget lil’ Estado.

I recently published my blog on my Facebook and MSN so I have had a few new people letting me know that they have been checking it out. Whoever is taking time out of their day to read something I wrote, I just want to say thanks a lot. To those of you who I have said it to in person before, let me say it again: I love you. To those of you with whom I have never shared those three magical words, I may love you and we haven’t found the right opportunity to say it or I maybe just enjoy your company. We don’t need to rush anything. The main point is I am happy you are reading this.

Enjoy your beautiful spring weather in Canada.

D. James F. Demers IV

Esquire