Spiders. Keeping me out of most of the world.

Well, I just watched a video about the worlds biggest spiders. And that's it. I don't want to go out anymore. I don't want to travel to any lands where I can come across a scary, alien like creature that could take a sandwich out of my hand. 

"This Cubano is delic.... JESUS CHRIST! What in the hell is that?! Take me back to the airport!"

"Don't worry, sir. That's just the giant Sandwichstealing spider. Not dangerous to people."

"Not dangerous? It almost knocked me over!"

Is that stupid? Yes. Does it cut out a lot of places to visit? Yep. A lot of ones I want to go to as well. Brazil? Man. Only place I want to go. But do I really want to see a spider that's bigger than the asses that are around? 

"Look at that girl, man! That's huge!"

"Yeah. We should go tell her there's a spider on her back."

"Yeah. It's blocking her ass."

What's crazy is, most times the smallest spiders are the ones that can kill you. I always thought that living in Canada was great for that. Nothing really crazy in the country that can just sneak into you house and bite you. If something is Canada is coming into your house to bite you, nine out of ten times you will hear it. 

"Shhh. I think I heard something."

"Roooooaaaarrrrrr!"

"Yep. Bear. Let's do this you son of a bitch."

Living in a place with winter, sure, there's snow and ice. There are days when you have to warm up your car before you get into it. That is bad. But it's better than checking your shoes before you put them on so you aren't bit by a tiny thing that can kill you.

"Why does anyone live where it gets cold? What a dumb thing to do. I mean, we can go to the beach whenever we want. Hey, pass me my sho... shake them first! Are you crazy?! There could be an eight legged monster of death in there!"

Before I went to South Africa, I looked up spiders and bugs that can kill you. Found out there's a huge spider that comes out when it rains. It's massive. When I got down there, I asked people about it. I was told not to worry about it at all. Even though it's huge, it's not poisonous. The real spiders to worry about, were tiny spiders. A guy told me that his friend was bitten by a tiny spider, and he lost his pinky finger. Wasn't gonna happen to me. So every night before I went to bed, I checked my room for small spiders. Found them, I apologized and killed them. True. Said 'sorry spider', then killed them. Not worth keeping them alive. I wasn't trying to wake up in a coma.

"What happened to Nathan?"

"Something the size of a penny got him."

"What's a penny?"

"Oh. You were born in 2014, huh? Well, a penny was a coin in Canada that we got rid o..."

"What's a coin?"

"Look, I know we got rid of money completely and that we only use cards now but that's not the point. Nathan is hanging on here by a thread!"

".... What's a thread?"

"I hate you, futuristic, kid! I hate you!"

twitter @nathanmacintosh

Video game generation.

I have had a lot of video game systems since I was a kid. Atari, original Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Nintendo 64, Original Playstation, Playstation 2, and now the Playstation 3. Thinking now about getting the PS4. All started on the Atari. Atari! Holding sticks in my hand playing some game that was supposed to be set in space, but was a couple of dots shooting dots at other dots. Or a game where you are a soldier, and you control a dot that shoots dots at other soldier dots. I'm now an adult, and I'm supposed to not play video games. They take up time, people get addicted and play them until they can't blink. But, I'm not giving them up. I don't play them nearly as much as I have at points in my life, but I'm still playing them. I'm in the generation that video games were completely made for. These were made for me! It would almost be the same as people who were kids when the Wright Brothers invented the plane just refused to go on.

"Naw, I'm not doing it. I'm grown up, for god sake. I'll walk."

Since I've been playing them for so long, some of the best memories I have come from video games.  Anyone who played video games in the 90's got caught up for a long, long time with Goldeneye. Goldeneye is pretty much the Breaking Bad of video games. You HAD to play it. EVERYone was playing it. This was THE game. I could talk for awhile about all the times I played this game with a bunch of people, so much fun. But, I'll tell a stranger story. In junior high, in which class I can't remember, there was a guy who used to pick on me. Nothing crazy. He would just chirp me and make fun of  me for doing my work and junk. I was a really quiet kid, who did all of his work. BIG wiener in Junior High where everyone was talking about drugs and sex.

"Yeah, man. Smoked some weed this weekend and got a handjob."

"Oh, cool.... Did you finish your Social Studies project?"

"Get outta my face, cuz."

One day in class, this bully was telling someone that he couldn't get one of the cheat codes in Goldeneye. That it was impossible. To get the cheat codes in Goldeneye, you had to unlock them by beating levels under certain time limits on certain difficulties. This one, which I'm pretty sure gave you invisibility, was beating a level where you start with no gun, in under a minute and twenty seconds, on the hardest difficulty. 

"It's impossible, man. Impossible. No way anyone can do that."

Well, I had done that shit. Why? Video games don't beat me. So, I said that I beat it.

"No way. You didn't beat that."

"I did."

"Alright. Come to my house and beat it. And if you're lying? You're fucked."

This isn't what I was hoping for. I just had to tell these people I'd beat it. But now, I'm in a situation. Refuse to go to this guys house, maybe get hurt. GO to his house, don't beat it, maybe get hurt. So, I went. The whole way he's talking trash. Saying that I can't do it and he's gonna mess me up. Get there, and start playing. That cheat code isn't the easiest thing in the world to get, so it took a couple tries, with him sitting beside me. Chirping me.

"You better beat it, man. You better do it."

Then, I beat it.

"Yooooooo! You beat it! That's insane."

After that, me and that guy were friends for the next 6 years straight. 

One Christmas a couple of years ago, my brother brought a Nintendo Wii to our moms house. On it he had a few Super Nintendo games downloaded. One was Contra 3: The Alien Wars. We used to own this game when we were kids. It was pretty hard. For no reason at all, my brother said, 'I bet you can't beat it on hard.'  Like I said, video games don't beat me. So I said, let's do it. Put the game on hard. Man. Got killed a thousand times. But I sat in this room for about four- five hours playing this thing. Getting closer each time. My brother would come in and out, poking his head in.

"Did you beat it?"

"God dammit! Jesus! Get out!"

Took me forever to beat this thing. But finally did it. The last level of this game on hard is insane. The entire screen is just things being thrown at you. There's a big brain blob thing for a final boss that had all these different attacks. I beat it. Put the controller down. But on hard, this thing comes back. Picked the controller back up quick, and beat it again. Told my brother to come see. All that happens when you beat this game is a general comes on the screen, and gives you a thumbs up. That's it? I stopped aliens from taking over earth! You can't give me a house? Or a million dollars? Or say I don't have to pay tax anymore? Just a thumbs up. Wow. My Contra dude will be able to use that to buy groceries. 

Grand Theft Autos have always been amazing. The first one, at the time, was nuts. Steal cars and shoot stuff? Even though it was a kind of ugly, top down game, it was amazing. Myself and my brother at the time used to talk about how great it would be if there was a third person version. 

"Imagine if they made one of these like Mario 64? Like if Mario could get a gun and rob these toadstools of their cars?"

The first time I ever saw the Nintendo 64, I lost my mind. 3D Mario game? Are you insane? He can swim and punch? Craziest thing I'd seen up to then. Loved that system. Got it one year for Christmas, and played it all day. Then, a game called Turok: Dinosaur Hunter came out. This game you were a Native American dude named Turok, who had ridiculous guns and shot dinosaurs. Serious. I don't know what the hell this was about, but it was great. Rented this game, and played it forever. Like, stopped going to school that week forever. Grade 7 I think it was. A friend of mine used to come to my house every morning, and we'd walk to school together. This whole week, he'd come by, and I'd say I wasn't coming. One day he came, it was snowing and freezing outside.

"Come on, man. Come to school. You're missing a ton of stuff."

I looked at him, wearing a scarf and boots, behind him just blowing snow and freezing cold. I turned around, looked at my warm room and Turok holding some kind of ray gun, and just slowly closed the door in his face. I loved that game. 

When I was in grade four/ five, my brother was in grade two/three, every Friday, when our mom would come pick us up from school, she would take us to Blockbuster to rent a game for the weekend. Those trips were great. Me and my brother looking at games, trying to find stuff that was either two players, or something that we could go back and forth on. Most times we agreed on stuff, but I always liked racing games. He hated them. 

"Let's get this."

"It's a racing game. That's so stupid. Same thing over and over."

"You guys better pick something quick! I'm renting The Fugitive and want to get home to watch Melrose Place!" 

"One sec!"

We argued sometimes, but mostly me and my brother would agree. Get a game and play it for the weekend. Or sometimes, rent a game, and just hate it. Play it for about an hour, then come out to the living room where our mom would be watching Melrose Place or whatever else the 90's had.

"What are you guys doing? You're not playing that game?"

"It's terrible. We can't."

"I paid money for the game! Go play it right now before I take the system!"

When our mom would spend money on a game, we had to play it. Sometimes, this SUCKED, but still, video games are great, and I won't stop playing them. 

Twitter @nathanmacintosh

Things I'll still do when I'm a millionaire.

Millionaires really start living like people in weird bubbles pretty early on. Once you become a millionaire, seems to be some things you just stop doing that regular humans keep on keeping on with. When I become a millionaire, here's a list of things I'm still gonna do with my goddamn ass.

1. Walk my own dogs 

Yep. When I become a millionaire, I'm gonna walk the dog or dogs that I have myself.

'What? Why?! How the hell could you put your hands that have all that money on a leash? Or, even worse, a leash attached to a ...dog.'

I truly don't understand having a dog and not walking it. That's one of the things that you do with a dog. That's one of the things that is done with this animal when you own one. They need walks. They get walks. They like going outside and smelling stuff. They like smelling that strange dogs butt. It's a big part of the lives of these domesticated pets. So, you're going to get one of these creatures, and NOT do with them one of the major things that they involve? Why don't you just have a TV that you hire people to come over and watch?

"I just bought this sweet ass, seventy five hundred inch TV! You know why? Because I'm a goddamn badass millionaire. I'm a millionaire, son! Now, where's the number of that service where I pay a struggling actor forty bucks to sit in front of this thing for an hour? Oh yeah, I'll just lean out my window and yell, because I'm a badass millionaire!"

If when I'm a millionaire I'm too busy for dogs, and everyone in my house is as well, there will be no dogs. But if I have a dog, I'll walk that mother. I will see my dog smell that butt. 

2. Raise my own kids  

Now, jesus christ. This one shouldn't even be a thought. You have kids. These kids need to be raised. So, you.. raise... them. YOU do. The person who made them. The piece of machinery that brought this damn kid into the world. YOU, stupid. YOU take this kid out. YOU feed this kid. You don't call a woman whose trying to stay in the country you live in and get her to come over and raise the damn thing. If you're gonna do this, she should be there for the conception.

"Oh, yeah. Oh, oh, just like that. Yeah, I'm about to, I'm aboouuuttt toooo... wait. Divina, are you going to be able to nanny for us from Monday to Friday, 8- 8? And hell, on Saturdays too?"

"... Yes. I can do that."

"Oh, boy. That's great! Because I'm about to put a FULL baby into my wife here. Oh, jesus, I'm gonna come! Ahh, ahhhh, AHHHHHH I'm never gonna be here to see this kid! ... Ah, ah god. Divina, you're really saving my life here. I can just come and come into this thing I married, and YOU deal with what this thing makes with that come! Ah, man. What a life.... Drinks, anyone?"

When I'm a millionaire, I'll raise my own kids. If I can't, and my wife is not able to as well, and the only option is to hire someone completely unrelated to this situation to raise them, I'm not going to have them. 

3. Drive my own cars 

This is another one of those things. You become a millionaire. You can afford any car you want. You pick it out. Then, you hire another human to drive you around in it. What... the fuck. What is the message here? That driving a car is for commoners? Being seen behind the wheel of a beautiful automobile is for peasants? You can't drive you're own Rolls? It's gorgeous! Get behind the wheel! Put your head out the window! Toss watches out of the sun roof! Been seen! Why get a driver for such nice cars? You should have drivers for terrible ones.

"Okay, I'm looking for a driver."

"No problem. We can help you with that. What kind of car? Rolls Royce? Maybach?"

"What? Jesus no! I drive a 97' Corolla. I'm gonna be getting a new car soon. But god, I can't be seen in this thing anymore. I'm trying to get laid, you know? People point and laugh when I'm at the light. I need someone to drive me to work, and I'm going to lay in the back seat under an old blanket. Cool?"

If I'm too busy to drive the gorgeous, half million dollar car that I buy, and everyone in my house is too busy too as well, I won't buy the car. I'll get another fountain.

Twitter @nathanmacintosh