Intuitively Speaking

I've watched programs on television that showcased some of their, for lack of better terminology, powers, but I will never fully comprehend those people who possess psychic abilities.  Nor will I ever be one hundred percent convinced of the legitimacy of said power.  All that withstanding, I can't shake this strange feeling from time-to-time.

The idea that a person can accurately predict or reveal secrets, unbeknownst to them previously, from sources from the beyond.  Bringing to light messages and secrets that only the dearly departed and a particular loved one connected to the deceased, completely blows my mind.  The process that an empath or medium can subject themselves to in order to bridge the gap between this world and the next is incomprehensible.  A completely alien concept to me, unless I'm under the influence of something, in which case I'm convinced everyone is psychic and are obviously probing my brain, seeing through the transparency of my alleged sobriety.  Then again, it could just be my own anxiety giving me away. Revealing my secrets.

Until recently, it never occurred to me that I might possess certain proclivities that would allow me certain abilities.  Nothing outlandish like predicting the future or bridging that gap, as I stated previously between here and the afterworld, but it's a legitimate feeling, nonetheless.  I feel as though I may be sensitive to...  Awe, hell.  I don't even know for sure.

According to Google; One who is psychically sensitive is like being highly empathic.  The definition explains that those with this "gift" are very attuned to the feelings and attitudes of those around them, often taking on some of the burden, stress and/or emotions. This attribute can be dangerous as the compilation of so much energy can be detrimental to the host, especially if much of that energy is dark and negative.  If someone is already afflicted with depression, piling on more negativity is definitely not beneficial.

I don't know if I qualify for that category, although I do have that small collective of friends & acquaintances who always seem to be so negative.  The never seem very happy or joyful, but constantly complaining and whining about shit.  I find it exhausting, sometimes, to be around them.  Practically sucks the life out of me.  Like a succubus, only I'm awake during the torturous process.  Is it possible?  Possible that I'm affected extra hard, because I have this third eye, so to speak?

I'm also familiar with that feeling of heaviness, when you walk into a room after two people have been arguing?  It's like an unseen fog that blankets the room, like a veil of webs draped across the room.  The room is electrically charged, but it's negative.  It's heavy and you can feel it weigh you down.

I've mentioned previously in my blog (Jeff's Brain Matter) about my encounters with supernatural forces.  I aim to share more and one of those experiences will be in the next paragraph.

Years ago, I tagged along with friends who were going to a party of some friends who'd recently returned to the city.  The party was in the basement suite of this tattered old building which stood not far from the Woodlawn Cemetery.  The area already feels strange, what with the neighbourhood bordering on the largest cemetery in the Bridge City (YXE).  This night was cool and breezy, which felt nice on my face as I exited the crowded party.  There was something else, though.  I got a strange feeling whenever I was inside.  I felt overcrowded.  It was separate from the people, because as people left the apartment for fresh air, the nearly empty room still felt heavy and uncomfortable.  I left that party, soon after.  I just didn't like the way it made me feel, there.  I would later learn that the apartment was formerly a hospital.  The first one in the Saskatoon area and the basement, where the apartment is situated, was originally the morgue.  To this day, thinking about that party still gives me the creeps.

I've had similar experiences over the years.  Some light and peculiar.  Other shit that's been heavy and uncomfortable.  One such experience occurred when was working nights at the Heritage Inn.  I was the night custodian which had me roaming all over the place in that hotel.  I'd already experienced some weird shit over on the banquet room and restaurant side of the building.  It was weird and unnerving, sure, but what occurred on the third floor of the hotel, freaked me the f*ck out and I avoided the third floor at all costs after this horrific experience occurred.

Recently, I was watching television and saw a commercial for Casino Regina, located in the Queen City.  The advert invited people from far and wide to come to Regina and visit the casino, listing all the amenities in the process.  It really is more than just bells and sirens of winning slots.  There's a very fine restaurant there as well as a theater for concerts and shows.  I've been to Casino Regina a couple of times and was fun both times.  For the most part, anyway.

I've gone to the casino in Regina a couple of times, both being with my mom.  We'd be in town for whatever and figured we'd stop at the casino before leaving that wretched city.  We'd play the penny slots and leave with more than we'd arrived with.  I recall the last time we were there.  It's been more than a decade, now, I'm sure, but we'd arrived and started playing the penny slots, like always.  I had a string of good fortune, while my mom didn't fair too well.  I remember scooping out a handful of coins from my bucket and gave them to my mom to play with.  And play she did.  She won back the money she'd lost and then some.  When we'd had enough, my mom treated me to supper at the fancy restaurant inside the casino.  We had a nice time and before leaving to go home, I stopped to use the washroom.

I'd visited the Casino Regina once before and as I recall, I had to use the washroom that time, too.  The washrooms are located in the basement of the building.  I felt uncomfortable the moment I began my decent into the lower level.  The feeling downstairs, for me, is staggeringly heavy.  It's like a weighted vest placed over my shoulders and the simplest of tasks almost seem laboured.  Suffice it to say, I got out of there as quick as I could.  Even now, reflecting on the experience, weighs heavy on my chest.

After the TV advertisement for Casino Regina had ended, I was left with that familiar heaviness and then took to the interwebs, calling on Google once more, typing in Casino Regina haunting and yep.  As suspected the aged building has some unearthly residents within it's walls.

Casino Regina now resides in the former home of the Canadian Pacific Railway.   Dubbed Union Station, the building was constructed in 1912, making it one of the founding buildings of the fledging settlement that would eventually become our province's capital city.  After many years of service, the building was eventually converted into a casino in 1996.  Since the opening of the venue, there have been reports of paranormal sightings.  From railway workers appearing and disappearing on the main level, to a woman witnessed roaming about upstairs.  And then there's the basement.

When the building was a train station, the basement level served as a jail.  Prisoners awaiting trial would stay in these cells, as well as those awaiting transfer.  It's said that one prisoner wanting to avoid a lengthy prison sentence, attempted to escape, losing his life in the process.  It's believed that his soul still roams the basement of the casino.  The basement where the washrooms are located.  The basement where I was overwhelmed by the heaviness.

I don't know if there's anything special about me.  It's not something I'd want to pursue.  I would like to verify or confirm that whatever it is, is real, but beyond that, it'd just be nice to know that when I'm experiencing that heaviness that there's a reason for it and not something goofy like a stroke or something. 😂 

 

Lowered Expectations

Given the strange behaviors that occur behind the locked doors of the hotels and motels scattered across this fair land, it's not surprising what a black light may reveal.  There is some peace of mind that comes with "out of sight, out of mind".  What you don't know, can't hurt you.  If, however, the stains are visible to the naked eye, it doesn't take a wandering mind to wonder what lurks beyond our field of vision.

For a price of just under three hundred clams, one would expect top notch service would be included.  Certainly, clean sheets on the bed shouldn't be too far out of the purview of what one might find.  Granted this hotel, where I'm staying in Regina, has a "Reduce/Reuse" program in effect, which basically means the maid service won't exchange your sheets until your departure.  This concept doesn't seem too unreasonable to me, however, considering my surprising discovery, this morning, I'm questioning whether the maid service is sticking to this premise faithfully.

I slept, surprisingly comfortable, last night, messing the bed spread only minutely.  I'm not comfortable with maids coming into my room to tidy up in my absence, so I quickly made up the bed, myself, and in the process, looked down to find a small crimson spot on the snow white sheet.  I slept on the other side of the bed and don't have any open wounds on my lower extremities, so there's no way this spot originated with me.  It had to have existed before my arrival yesterday afternoon.

As I stated, the bill that I'm going to be stuck with is just under $300, which for a two-night stay, seems a little hefty, but the value aside, for such a price, I would come to expect that the sheets be clean.  I don't give a shit if the previous occupant never laid their head down on this bed, opting for the one closer to the A/C unit.  I want... Nay!  I demand clean sheets, no matter what.  It's not like this spot could elude one's vision.  It's dark shade is such a vast contrast in comparison to the blizzard snow white sheet.  Even a half blind pirate, with a patch over one eye, could see this button-sized dollop forever present on the sheet.

I took a photo and posted it to my Twitter feed.  It took a few hours, but the kind folks at @DaysInnCanada, responded with a Toll-Free number for me to call in and give a more detailed account of my discovery.  I wasn't going to bother, but if it helps alleviate some of the heady cost, perhaps I may do as requested.

If you're in the Regina-area, feel free to stay wherever you'd like, including the Days Inn on Eastgate Drive.  It's a very nice and impressive venue, but you may want to pull the bed spread back and inspect them sheets.  Who knows what kind of foreign shit you may discover.

A Hidden Agenda

It's not often that I get to recycle a picture for my blog, but when the opportunity arises, it only makes sense.

As stated in my previous blog, I've traveled from my home in sweet Saskatoon, to the bowels of Hell, aka Regina, for the bittersweet weekend among friends, to commemorate and celebrate the memory of our friend and family member, Darcy.

The last few years, we've stayed at a hotel on the northern end of the city, but this year we've moved to a new spot.  I'm not certain when this establishment was built, but the rooms are nicer, bigger and way cleaner.  To put it plainly, I'm not afraid to sit on the bed spreads while wearing shorts.  The rooms all, from what I've seen thus far, are all generic with practically the same artwork on every wall, but over all, I believe this experience will be for the best.

The location is superb, seated just off a main drag.  There's a decent speckling of restaurants and fast food joints all around, unlike the other place that had a Burger Baron across the street and a Tim Horton's about a block south.  The Burger Baron's food is so sub-par to what should be considered edible, and the walk to the Timmy Ho's is not for the faint of heart.

I got to visit the Carl's Jr, down the street from this Days Inn and though it fell short of my experience when I visited the one in Kelowna, British Columbia, the food was still okay.  The only downside to that visit was the bearded toilet and the creepy albino dude who lurked behind the corner of my booth, readily available to jump out and inquire about my meal.  He asked three frickin' times.

The hotel, costs about the same per night as the previous one did, only this one seems to have a plethora of hidden fees that the other never seemed to have, or at least hid better than this one does.  The room is $128 per night, which by my math, comes out to about $256.  I'm being charged just under $300.  When asked about the extra charges, the quirky fellow behind the desk proudly answered, "Taxes and other fees."

Taxes, I understand.  We can't get away from that, unfortunately.  No matter what a person does or buys, the government needs to have their hand out for their share, too.  It was the "fees" that sparked my interest.  "What sort of fees?"  I asked.

"Well," he explained, "There's the destination fee."

"Destination fee?" I asked, "What's a destination fee?"

"Regina charges visitors a fee for coming to the city." he said.

I found this reasoning, absurd.  "The city charges people to visit their city?  That's ridiculous."  I said.

That sounds as stupid as the conversation with the bank last week, who told me that the bank charges it's customers a fee for banking with them.  Now this city charges people a fee for the "privilege" of visiting their city?  That doesn't make any sense.

"It's to help pay for events like the Exhibition (fair) or Agribition (agricultural exhibition)." he explained, without so much as agreeing that the premise seemed deceitful or devious and no matter how much prodding I made, he wouldn't budge and admit that it was stupid.

I look at situations like this and wonder where I fell short, unable to think up a helpful service that people require then charging them a f**king fee for being so helpful.  I couldn't do such a thing, though.  As much of a scoundrel as I can be at times, I can't be a complete asshole.  I wanna be an asshole, but I can't bring myself to it.  Regina, on the other hand, in addition to being a giant toilet, is proving itself to be every bit the asshole I've always suspected it to be.

Double Digits - Ten Years of "Loud 'n' Proud"

It was New Year's Day 2006, when I received the phone call that my friend, Darcy Corrigan, had passed away unexpectedly.  After only twenty-eight years on this mortal coil, his shining light was extinguished, but not forgotten from the hearts of all who knew and loved him.

Darcy was a generous, funny, smart, no bullshit kind of guy and though I wasn't as close to him as some, having known this amazing fella, has influenced my life in more ways than I could even know.  His generosity, alone, was more than I could fathom.  One story sticks out particularly.  It occurred just a little over a month before his passing.  It was my birthday and there were lots of people taking me out for dinner followed by some drunken karaoke.  A common practice for a few of us, at the time.  Darcy was living and working out of town, at the time, so I never expected to see him show up for my little soiree, but he did.  Despite working all that Saturday and having to open his store up the following Sunday morning, Darcy traveled the two-and-a-half-PLUS distance, following his shift, to pick me up from my house, take me to where everyone was meeting for supper, then on to the karaoke bar, doing in all with the often seen, rarely photographed smile on his face, as observed in the photograph above.

I think of Darcy everyday.  I have a tattoo on my left forearm, as a memoriam to Darcy, of a lone woman in a red dress.  "Why such an obscure tattoo?", you ask.  On one of the many occasions that we had gone out for a rousing night of drink and song, a friend and I thought it'd be funny if we signed up our usually silent cohorts for a song.  The first was "Funky Town" for the normally reserved Boyd, who performed to song stunningly.  So good he was, in fact, that months later when another friend attempted the song, he got up to instruct them.  For Darcy, however, we decided to tame things down for him and requested "Lady In Red" by Chris de Burgh.  My friend and I were waiting to chuckle when he bombed, but there were nothing but the sweetest notes coming from his breath.  So memorable was his performance, that every time I've heard that song on the radio, since, I am reminded of Darcy.

It was nine years ago, New Year's Day, when I answered the phone and received the heartbreaking news.  I never cried at the death of my father in the same way that I did with Darcy's passing.  Maybe it was because of how unexpected it was.  At the funeral, I met Darcy's family for the first time.  It was no wonder that Darcy grew into the incredible man that he was, surrounded by such a loving family as this.  It was a time where it was beneficial to be a wallflower.  To sit back and listen to all the amazing stories where Darcy was a main focal point.  I got to see and live his life via some sort of magic in those couple of days and in the years since.

Every year, beginning in the summer of 2006, a mass conglomeration of family treks from the recesses of western Canada, migrating to Regina for a Saskatchewan Roughrider game, in what has come to be known as: The Darcy Corrigan Memorial Game Weekend.  The numbers have dwindled some, from that initial game, but given how tough life has been getting for people, I can't blame them.  I've fallen on tough financial times in the last five-plus years, but as tough as I see it, I think of how Darcy traveled all that distance to spend a few hours with me and friends on my birthday, only to race home again to open his store for the morning traffic.  That kind of generosity, boggles my mind, to this day.  I go to the Memorial Weekend, just for that reason.  That and I love his family.  More so than my own, in some instances, if I gotta be honest.

Darcy's been absent from this world of a little over nine years, but he's remained LOUD 'n' PROUD in our hearts and minds for TEN years.  So this weekend, whether you knew Darcy or not, I hope you'll raise your glass in his memory, anyway.  R.I.P. Darcy Corrigan.  I can't wait to meet up with you on the other side.

Haters Gonna Hate Hate Hate

Speaking of hate, I hate the fact that I quoted Taylor Swift for the title of this blog, but don't hold that against me.  That annoying song is a part of pop culture and for argument sake, it fits the subject matter of today's blog.

I'm an avid user of Twitter.  I don't have a high number of followers.  Not many people privy to my unique stance on the world.  In fact,  I'm still yo-yoing in the vicinity of 250 followers, after four years.  I still have fun with it, though.  Trading comments, remarks and praises with my favourite celebrities.  

Once in a while, though, I'm greeted with unwelcome comments, remarks aimed to discredit or belittle me, usually on a personal level.  I generally ignore these comments, but once in a blue moon, a comment crosses before my eyes that I simply cannot leave alone.

One thing that I find most irresistible is my ability to point out the flaws, shortcomings and blatant mistakes that people make.  Spelling errors, poor grammar or general stupidity, I find impossible to not point out, or even belittle, depending on it's severity.

I have a friend on Facebook, whom I continually correct spelling and grammar mistakes.  She thinks I do it out of a need to make her feel stupid, despite my repeated assurances that I don't do it for that reason.  Instead, I do it..., simply because I have no choice.  It's as involuntary as deciding to breathe.  The fact that I point out that her poor education is due to growing up in the city of Regina, Saskatchewan, IS by choice, but that's only because Regina is such a shit-hole.  It's true.  Look it up!

Earlier today, while looking through my Twitter feed, I saw a posting from TMZ that remarked: #Breaking: ATL Hawks star, Thabo Sefolosha, in HEATED scuffle with NYPD officers...  They offer up a video, which I did not click on because, frankly, I don't give a shit.  I did, however, make a quick comment, which was meant as a humourous quip based on the fact that celebrities usually get special treatment over regular folks.  "@TMZ Do the police not know that he's a celebrity? #DifferentRulesForCelebs" is what I wrote.  Less than a minute later, I received a comment from a fellow by the Twitter handle of @prototypekicks, who began questioning my use of the word 'celebrity'.  Back and forth we exchanged comments, each response I received, the more disparaging they got.  I'm not proud of myself, but I deduced that this fellow was of limited education and the meaner he got, the meaner I got.  Unfortunately, when I get mean, I go for blood, getting as vicious as I can.  I go for the jugular, with hopes of offending the party so deeply, they'll give up and leave me alone.

I don't know who Thabo Sefolosha is.  I don't watch basketball.  I barely consider basketball as an actual sport.  Given the terrible physical shape that I'm in, I consider any activity that I can do, can't actually be considered a sport.  Even if I can't do it well, if I can still do it, it's not a sport.  For instance, I'll never make it on the PGA circuit, but I can bang the f*ck out of a golf ball, and therefore golf is not a sport.  That withstanding, the goofball, @prototypekicks, begins giving me the basketball player's stats and claiming that his lack of skill, prevents him from being a celebrity.  Even though, by definition a celebrity is: A famous or well-known person.

@prototypekicks apparently did a check on my Twitter account, as he began attacking this very blog.  Upon reciprocating and doing the same on his account, I gather that he possesses a fetish for sneakers as his photos are overrun with pictures of the gayest looking shoes I've ever seen.  There's no way in hell that any self-respecting man would be seen wearing those shoes, unless it were while performing yard work or shoveling manure.  Hashtag: Ugly as f*ck!

As Taylor Swift croons; Haters are gonna hate hate hate, and I'm certain that this isn't going to be the last Twidiot that crosses paths with me.  Christ!!!  I wish I was paid a dime for every f*ckwad that I exchange words with on Twitter OR Facebook.  I've had to stop following many of my favourite wrestling sites on FB, due to assholes blanketing me with a horrendous barrage of hatred if I say anything negative about the WWE.  

In the end, assholes are going to continue to be gaping assholes, so long as a level of anonymity accompanies their dickishness.  I could care less.  I stand behind every stupid comment I make.  I welcome any backlash that may come of it.  I'm not afraid of any of these simple-minded fools.  Chances are, I could Jedi Mind Trick most of them with the wave of my hand...  Or simply jingle my keys to distract.  I'm not saying I'm better than everyone I interact with on the internet, but DO say that I'm smarter than a majority of them.

"Water's wet.  The sky is blue.  Fact is, I'm way smarter than most of you!" - ToontownJuggalo, to the World Wide Web.