No, I still don't know Bosco.

Have you ever had one of those days when you'll be sitting in the bus, minding your own business and you realize that your thoughts are voicing themselves?

It's never anything intelligent, of course, and everything you say is out of context, just little things like

"Damn, it's quiet. I've never had a dishwasher that quiet before." or

"It always leaves people wondering."

Things that indeed leave people wondering what the hell you're talking about and to whom. But maybe they don't. People tend to ignore each other on the bus.

None of this has actually happened, I just have a feeling that this is one of those days.

I got an interesting phone call just now. It was a woman's voice, but it was a really hoarse whisper so I couldn't quite make out who it was. At first I thought that maybe one of my friends was sick and asking to borrow my notes or something, but the voice was so obscured that I really couldn't tell what she was saying. That is, until I caught the name of who she was calling for.

Bosco. First time in months.

Oh Bosco, who the hell are you, why do you keep giving out my number and what kind of work do you do that all manner of bizarre and idiotic people seem to want to call you with disguised voices at random hours of the day? I'm not sure I really want to know, to be honest.

I hope that's the last one.

You too can make a friendly plastic giraffe. I am so tempted to do that.

Dad plays with a piece of string

I once made a movie about the end of the world. It was twelve seconds long and it had no plot. This is not that movie.



I doubt it's even all that entertaining, to be honest. And the quality? Low budget.

According to my grandmother, Tommy Douglas worked in a chocolate factory, unionizing oompa loompas and bringing free, universal healthcare to the good people of Canada and that's why we should all vote NDP.

Still sharp as ever.

Rappers from Nova Scotia? What will they think of next?

Death of an encyclopaedia salesman

I saw this one on Postsecret today.

Seems to me that at my father's urging, I struggled through Kafka's Metamorphosis some time around the age of seven or eight. It took a fair amount of time and I'm not entirely sure how much I got out of it, to be honest, but I did it. I had heard the plot from him a few times before, anyways, and I've read it a couple of times since.

Seems to me that that was about the same time that I told my teacher (who we called Mrs. Doggypants because that was the meanest thing we could think of at the time) to go to hell because I was tired of reading 'Pat the cat sat on a mat' ad nauseum. My mother met with her to complain and my teacher told her that she had no right to criticize her teaching method because she had a masters degree in art history.

Oooh, a masters degree. Scary.

My mother replied that my teacher was being stupid and childish, and that this academic 'my dad's bigger than your dad' put her at the same maturity level as the children she taught all day. She then informed her that if that was the game that they were going to play, she also had a masters degree, a bigger, better master's degree in business administration.

Touche.

At this, Mrs. Doggypants broke into tears and I got transferred into a special program where I wrote poetry and occasionally sat for hours alone, amusing myself by reading books and drawing pictures about them. Yay me.

We used to run into encyclopaedia salesmen all the time whenever we went to the PNE (for non-Vancouverites: a large summer fair, carnival rides, entertainment, petting zoo and mini donuts, lots of mini donuts). Encyclopaedia salesmen have a simple method:

1) find a family made of young parents and young kids.
2) convince the parents that their children will be stupid, unsuccessful deadbeats with no opportunities in life if they don't buy a set of encyclopaedias, and that will be entirely the parents' fault.
3) sign them up and take their money.
4) lather, rinse, repeat.

It works because no self-respecting parent wants their kid to be stupid and there are plenty of parents out there that want every opportunity for their children. Kind of gross and manipulative when you think about it, and my parents did.

In fact, my father was so offended at the suggestion that he and my mother, both university educated, weren't completely capable of raising intelligent and well-adjusted children that he used to say just that to every encyclopaedia salesman he met. His insistence that the salesmen were disgusting and subhuman because they exploited people's insecurity for profit tended to get him into trouble at times.

He wasn't much nicer to door-to-door vacuum salesmen either.

But for me, I was always upset whenever he got pissed off by a salesman because I was always afraid that the salesman would turn into a giant ugly bug like poor Gregor Samsa.

That's what the postcard reminds me of.

If you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, you can download the entire Metamorphosis here because the copyright has apparently expired. Reading books is good for you.

Conspiracy

Finally saw last year's year-end dance show dvd. I always hesitate to watch these things, partially because I have no desire whatsoever to see some of the dances there and partially because I have no real desire to see myself on there either, that being partially because I have better things to do with my time and partially because I look absolutely hideous in the majority of the costumes I've worn in the past few years.

I'm not partial to the costumes, but I've said that before.

But it just so happens that I am going to visit my grandmother tomorrow and my father thought it would be a nice idea if we took the dvd for her to watch. But of course, we had to go cue it up first. (My father's got this old skool lingo thing down.)

Now I remember when those costumes were made. For some reason or other they brought in this really eccentric little Japanese lady to make them and she came in one day to do some measurements for a vest thing. She must have added an extra eight centimetres at least to my bust and waist measurements because she would not put her hands anywhere near me.

The first rule of measuring for and fitting for clothing is that there is some sort of groping involved. This is both a fact of nature and something that doesn't bother me in the least. I was not groped, and consequently I am positive that the costume added at least thirty pounds.

That's what, 13, 14 kilos?

Way, way too much.

The camera always adds some too. It's a conspiracy, I tell you.

Correspondences

Dear Moriah upstairs,

I understand that your brother is very irritating. Most ten year old boys are. However, it's really difficult and a tad bit embarassing to talk to my employer on the phone while you're screaming at him upstairs. Seeing as you've been screaming at him hysterically for a year or so, I think it's pretty safe to assume that that doesn't work. Maybe you should try something else?

Thanks,

Erin

ps. please stop putting powdered laundry detergent into the liquid bleach dispenser in the washing machine. That's not where it goes.

---

Dear Linda,

Please answer the phone. I can't leave a message because you never check them. Don't make me go over there and ambush you.

Do I need to do a criminal record check again? I can't remember when exactly I last had that done.

Thanks,

Erin

---

Dear Meg,

This whole speaking through a third party thing is bullshit. You have both my phone number and email adress. You may talk to me directly or not at all.

Screw you,

Erin

ps. you can tell Pat to go screw himself too.

---

Dear Blogosphere,

I am bored. Please entertain me.

Sincerely,

Erin

---

Dear skeptical guy in my political economics class,

Yes indeed, Finland has a pretty cool broadcasting system and progressive regulation. Yes, indeed, the way that the CanCon system works in Canada isn't ideal and maybe it should be scrapped. However, there's one major thing that you fail to notice.

In Finland they have a complicated language that
a) has a million and a half unnecessary vowels
b) sounds really weird
c) is not English.
Finnish people can watch TV in Finnish and think 'hey, I'm pretty sure this isn't American programming', and watch stuff in English and think that it probably is American.

In Canada we can't exactly do the same because we kind of sound the same as Americans. Americans do a lot of things well, but they just don't make quality Canadian programming, and broadcasters usually don't show CanCon unless someone tells them to.

Erin

ps. I realize that 'quality Canadian programming' is a bit of an overstatement unless you're talking about This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

---

Dear Dad,

It's really nice that you make appointments for me at the bank. I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know about them before it's too late for me to actually get there on time.

Thanks,

Erin

ps. not that I'm being picky or anything.

---

Dear people who read my blog,

Sorry about all the cat pictures. I'm uninspired.

Lou

My cat just had a massive seizure on one of the chairs in the living room. The first time it happened a few years ago I was shocked and upset. Now they don't even phase me.

Sometimes when she's asleep something short circuits in her brain and she begins to convulse violently and then she falls on the floor where the only sounds you hear are her head and claws smashing repeatedly into the laminate and shallow, raspy breathing. She usually pees all over herself and foams at the mouth leaving herself in a crumpled mess on the floor and then she lays there, very still, with her eyes wide and glazed over.

When she finally wakes up, she's very disoriented and I always try to clean her up a bit with a towel, which makes her growl because she's so sore. Then she wanders around the house mewing for a while because she's upset and dirty. Poor girl. She then disappears for a few hours and later emerges as if nothing happened.

Nothing shocking about that. It's the reason why every piece of furnature in the house has a heavy quilt on it, that's all. It's also the reason why I suddenly have plenty of laundry to do.

I checked my email this morning to find that my only class today has been cancelled. Technically I have a meeting in less than an hour but it'll have to pass. There's no way for me to get there and besides, I'm not exactly dressed yet, and unless I find a good reason to, I don't intend to be. It's just not one of those days.

I am, at the moment, fighting the urge to go back to bed. I could really use the sleep but I figure that the more sleep I get now, the less I will get at night, though it's probable that I won't get any sleep tonight either. I think I'd probably be much more at home in another time zone, somewhere in central Europe but I'd probably be an insomniac there too. It's just stress, that's all. I'll get over it eventually.

And now the fish slapping dance

I've never been in a class before where the whole point of the lectures and tutorials is to tell you repeatedly how to do the assignments. I hate going to tutorial only to have the TA lecture on something and then say that everything he's just said will be repeated in the lecture.

Last night I had a long conversation with John. I was paddling an inflateable dinghy around Lost Lagoon and he just sort of appeared out of nowhere. He's done well for himself, it seems. "I've got a claim up north," he said, "placer mining".

"But I thought that there isn't really any gold left in the Yukon," I said, "the best claims were staked like a hundred years ago."

"Not there," he said.

"The Caribou then? No gold left there either."

"Do you honestly think I would tell you where it was?"

"No, not really. Just don't turn out like my uncle. He was crazier than shit. Used to keep gold nuggets in mason jars and used fifty and hundred dollar bills as underlay for his carpets."

"Um, I won't."

"This is all about not thinking about Faye, isn't it?" I shouldn't have said the f word, because that was when he left the conversation, though to be fair, he had been levitating over the water and the breeze came up so that could have been the reason too...

I have weird dreams.

More cowbell

Those girls, they're up to no good. The one on the left looks positively rabid, and I hear they're going to see Matt Good in April. No good, I tell you.

I have finally figured out what makes Jack such a miserable bastard.

Is it the fact that he's chronically obese like the rest of his family and experiencing serious health problems because of it? Is it that he's got no education, so he's self employed working a crappy dead end job he hates with no dental insurance or pension plan? Is it that he feels that he's never really accomplished anything and his childrens' talent hasn't exactly been a ticket to quick riches? Is it that no matter what he does, money is always, always tight?

No, it's because he doesn't know what you're talking about when you say this song needs more cowbell. The world is full of tragedy.

Dance today has left me feeling kind of battered. Throughout the whole class it felt like someone was punching me repeatedly in the abdomen, along with a sharp pain in my left side, and I only ever feel like that when I'm running. On top of that, my right hip was really, really stiff, but I don't want to complain about that. It makes me feel so old. Next thing you know, I'll be having the damn thing replaced.

Reading break

I wish I had a reading break like all those slackers out there, but I just have a reading day. One lousy day. It's almost not worth it, but I'll take it anyways.

I guess I shouldn't complain. I get a four day weekend every week. Yeah, who's the lazy one now?

Yesterday I managed an uncharacteristic eight hours of studying and paperwriting. Most of it was on discourse analysis of this document about Canadian feature films and it's probably going to take many many more hours to finish. Sadly.

Some people enjoy doing this stuff, but for me it's like... How do I describe it? I want to say something kind of painful like maybe having someone pluck every hair off of your body one-by-one, but perhaps it's more like being poked repeatedly with a pencil, not painfully painful, but more like painfully boring.

So far I've made good use of my reading day. I slept in until 11:30ish. Pretty good since I haven't had a good night's sleep for a couple days now. And since I woke up I've watched the Olympics for a bit. Mostly figure skating today. Never been my favourite thing to watch, but meh. There was freestyle skiing earlier, but it ended abruptly when one of the Australian jumpers landed and started rolling around on the ground screaming. I hope she's alright.

Now I think I'll have a shower and then maybe get some reading done before I leave for dance. Maybe when I get home I'll have something worth saying. Cheers!

A picture, a thousand words

I seem to have developed some sort of resistance to decongestants. I'm not getting any better. It's not that my nose is stuffy, it's my whole head. It's giving me a headache and that wouldn't be so bad if it didn't make my ears itchy too. The most irritating thing is that I know that no amount of trying to scratch my ears will make them stop being itchy until my head stops being stuffy.

They're supposed to make you drowsy, but for some reason or other, they do just the opposite to me. Regardless of if they're daytime or nightime, they always make me jittery and a tad bit paranoid. Sometimes I think that I should take less of them before lifeguard interviews and recerts but the last thing I need is for my ears to start hurting as I'm swimming to rescue that damn yellow brick off the bottom of the pool. Who says performance enhancing drugs are always bad?

I've been looking at a lot of old pictures today and they bring back tons of memories. Like this one:


Alright, it's a bad picture, but back in 2000, when I was a wee lass, I nearly got stranded in Seattle when I found out that the guy who had driven me down was going to visit some family and had absolutely no intention of going back to Canada that week (I'm clever, I always thinks things through). And in spite of her chronic bitchiness, she was nice enough to drive me home to Canada and turned out to be a lot nicer person when you took the time to talk to her. Just one of the many people I'm forever indebted to.

I guess the picture's kind of fitting, because most of the trip was a blur to me anyways. I seem to remember John and Stu talking about eating at their favourite greasy spoon where they served 6 egg omlettes and even the waitress was a greasy spoon. I didn't ask about that one. I still don't want to know.

Oh, and going to a restaurant and asking for a salad that didn't have meat on it and having the people there be really incredulous. I mean, a salad that has vegetables in it is a pretty foreign concept to you too, isn't it?

And asking for iced tea at the same restaurant and getting tea with ice cubes in it and not iced tea because that's apparently what Americans do.

And staying in a sleezy motel on the wrong side of town where we had made a reservation but they had given our room away to someone else and we couldn't all go in to complain about it because we had planned to jam as many people as we possibly could into the room, and apparently that is against the rules. Or at least, you have to pay extra for that.

Then later that night, something posessed us to pull the matress off of one of the beds in the amazing family suite that they gave us to apologise for the inconvenience (amazing being an overstatement). Princess and the pea, I guess, because underneath we found a large stack of porn which some of the more puritanical people in our room objected to so we called room service and the guy was quite happy to remove it all from our room.

Oh, and probably the most important thing of all, how I came to eat the bagels that will make me live forever.

Would the real Erin please stand up?

I didn't just do that, did I? I promise that I will never ever do that again. Please hold me to it.

However, it has come to my attention that since I post so many pictures of my sister on my blog, people think that I'm her. Well, you see, my sister is a camera whore, so she takes a lot of pictures of herself. My camera is a bulky slr and while I absolutely love it, it's not the best thing for taking self portraits with, so I take pictures of her too. The only thing is that no one bothers to take pictures of me, and I'm not really all that photogenic anyways.

When Peter first said something about starting up a blogging circle of special people kind of like Blogebrity, but not, I thought breifly to myself that it would be cool if I was the first member. Then I dismissed the thought.

Imagine my surprise when he emailed me to ask me to be part of this special circle. I guess he thought it would be cool if I was the first member too (besides him, of course and his blog is definitely worth checking out too). So here is my nifty new button:

And here is the nice post he wrote about me. I'm not worthy and I definitely look forward to seeing what other blogs are chosen, especially since I know I could probably squeeze in some time to read a couple more. Now to find a nice place for that button...

Consider the hiatus over

Well, that was a pretty short hiatus, if I might say so myself. I got bored and disconnected the invisible tv in my room to plug in my modem and router, and now I'm all set. The tv didn't need to be plugged in anyways. Having a tv in your bedroom is bad for you you know. The same story was also in the news in Bahrain, of all places.

I'm working on a paper right now about online news coverage of underreported yet important stories. Some of the stuff you hear is quite shocking, actually. You know they test AIDS drugs on orphans and foster children in the US? Pretty disgusting if you ask me. And why was that not all over the news?

Today hasn't been a very good day. You know the feeling.

You wake up feeling crappy, move everything out of the living room, install a floor, take a bunch of decongestants for your stuffy nose and head/headache, blow your nose until it starts to bleed and then rub a combination of vaseline and lip balm all over it because it's red, chapped and hurts like a bitch. And eventually you begin to feel very, very cold, so cold that you suddenly wake up shivering violently in a fetal position on the floor and figure that you should probably take some more drugs and go to bed.

Yeah, I think the past couple of weeks of late nights and paper related stress is starting to bite me.

I guestblogged on a friend's blog about a year and a half ago and I can't seem to find the post. Maybe it was 2 years. I really have no idea. Maybe he took it down. I hope not because it was brilliant. I guestblogged on my sister's blog today and it was not brilliant. Read at your own peril.

I took a lot of pictures today, but they all look really weird. I don't know why. The one pictured above is the least weird. As I am still kind of sick, I'm off to bed. G'night all.

Politiking

It's funny. We're perfectly fine together, and yet the moment we're all separated, the daggers come out. Doesn't take much either, and that's the saddest thing.

We have elections next week, which is stupid but necessary. I can pretty much guarantee that I will keep my position as secretary because I'm the only person with a laptop that works.

There are a lot of other people who will keep their positions too. The two paid positions will stay with the people who already have them because one of the people will call in the computing science death squad to murder us all in our sleep if we don't elect her.

The other person probably won't even show up, but she'll be elected anyways even though no one has seen or heard from her for nearly 6 weeks. Why? She's got drama in her life, of course. No one knows for sure what the drama is, but apparently it excuses everything.

Our current president will continue to be president because she does a good job and honestly, who else really wants to be prez?

I'm always surprised at the stuff I hear about people when they're out of earshot. Maybe I shouldn't be. Sometimes I wonder how much I get bashed when I'm not around. Is that the reason why I'm always around, I wonder? I don't know. That only just occured to me.

There will likely be a breif hiatus from posting, as the livingroom is in a very volatile state right now. Volatile meaning that the contents of the entire room are being moved into other rooms to replace the floor and my router will be disconnected. I don't know when exactly that will be resolved.

Cold shoulder

"There's Erin with her big-assed saxophone on wheels walking ten miles to school..."

"Barefoot, in the snow, uphill..."

"Both ways," he chuckled.

"Well Erin's graduated now, so she's got a laptop and a bus pass instead."

"Did she get those for graduation?"

"No, she bought those with her own money thankyouverymuch."

"And what did she get for graduation, might I ask?"

"A nice watch and a palm pilot. A car would have been nice, but it didn't happen."

"Did you ask for one?"

"No, but I wouldn't have gotten one anyways."

"You never know. Like I could have been going out with that girl over there. Did you see that? I was totaly hitting on her and she so blew me off," he said.

"I noticed."

"What's with that? I mean, I went over there with chocolate and I offered it and the friend was excited and took some and she said no, she didn't want any."

"Maybe you should have been hitting on the friend then."

"And I remembered her name. I mean I wrote it down on the first day of class so I wouldn't forget it because I'm supposed to know her name and she's supposed to be impressed like ooh, this guy knows my name and is giving me chocolate..."

"And you got the cold shoulder? Aww, poor you."

"I just don't understand."

Hmm... could it possibly be that your every action screams out 'I'm a filthy, cheating, lying bastard,' and has screamed that every day since I first met you eight years ago? No, of course not.

Chapter 72: in which erin is confused

In the crush to get into the bus last night, three people tried to force their way through the door at once, those three people being Hao, myself and a guy with a walleye, respectively.

We all stood there for a moment, staring at each other. The walleyed guy began to chuckle as he looked at Hao. Finally I got tired of standing there, so I got on the bus.

Hao followed me to the back, where he sat beside me. "That was so cool," he said, breaking into a wide grin. He then promptly fell asleep.

I have thought the whole incident through a few times now and I still have no idea what exactly happened there. Did I miss something? Maybe I'm not to know. People shouldn't do weird unexplainable things around me when I'm tired.

Abu's exams are weird. Every question is weighted the same, when it's obvious that they expect very different amounts of work for them, and you never quite know what he's expecting from you. I can't remember what the question was, but it was something complicated. I began to explain something, and then something else and finally I got tired of explaining things and wrote

BOLLYWOOD

as if that explains everything.

I think I did well.

Red Right Ankle

Ryan asks whose gypsy uncle? Well, it's a song by the Decemberists called Red Right Ankle, a song that I happen to absolutely love today:

This is the story of your red right ankle
And how it came to meet your leg
And how the muscle, bone, and sinews tangled
And how the skin was softly shed

And how it whispered “Oh, adhere to me
For we are bound by symmetry
And whatever differences our lives have been
We together make a limb.”
This is the story of your red right ankle.

This is the story of your gypsy uncle
You never knew ‘cause he was dead
And how his face was carved and rift with wrinkles
In the picture in your head.

And remember how you found the key
To his hide-out in the Pyrenees
But you wanted to keep his secret safe
So you threw the key away.
This is the story of your gypsy uncle.

This is the story of the boys who loved you
Who love you now and loved you then
And some were sweet, some were cold and snuffed you
And some just laid around in bed.

Some had crumbled you straight to your knees
Did it cruel, did it tenderly
Some had crawled their way into your heart
To rend your ventricles apart
This is the story of the boys who loved you
This is the story of your red right ankle.

As an afterthought, I thought I said at soume point that I would never ever post random song lyrics or things that looked remotely like poetry. Damn.

This post printed on 100% recycled paper

Muchos apologies for illegibility of post. Click, enlarge, enjoy.

Cornmaze

Because Peter was so kind as to tell me a story about about how he and some friends foiled the attempts of a wildlife photographer to find seabirds, I now have a story to tell, if anyone was actually waiting for one.

We decided once to go out to the corn maze, because nothing is more entertaining than wandering aimlessly through a field of corn. I'm told that there are some people that get up to some pretty interesting things in the corn maze after dark but that has nothing to do with my story today.

No, this was war.

Guys vs. girls.

We wanted to see who could get through the maze the fastest, because it doesn't matter what it is, rowers can and will turn it into a competition.

So we started running as fast as we possibly could through the corn, trying to find all the checkpoints to stamp our cards.

At one point in time, our path crossed with that of the guys. We chased after Sparrow, Brad, John and Baby Dave as they went flying down one of the paths, turned a corner and ran straight into a woman and her son.


The little boy was close to tears, but as soon as he saw the guys, he broke into a wide grin. "You can show us the way out!" he shouted, instantly latching onto Sparrow's leg.

The guys were in such a hurry to beat us that they just kept running, Sparrow dragging the little boy behind him because he couldn't seem to make him let go. The woman began to run after them as well.

"BILLY!" the woman screamed. (yes, of all the names in the world, it had to be Billy)

"Don't worry mom," Billy answered, "this man knows where he's going!"

Somehow I don't think that that was what she was worried about. It definitely wasn't what Sparrow was worried about either.

The poor guy just kept running, trying really hard to keep up with the other guys and drop the kid so he wouldn't be charged with kidnapping and molesting him, but the kid just wouldn't let go.

Eventually he did, but the story was a constant source of amusement for weeks, nay, months to follow.

And after all that, we still lost. The world's just not fair.

Spandex

The beauty of speedskating is that it legitimizes having big thighs. It reminds people that some of us kids have big thighs because we can easily leg press our body weight, and not because we're fat.

The fact that it's a spandex sport can't be overlooked either.

We used to have a competition at every regatta to see whose spandex rode the highest up their thighs during the day, and I never won. Never ever. That may possibly have been a good thing.

I really have nothing to say today. Sorry. A little bit of sleep should fix me up.

Maybe you should tell me a story instead.

Songs for the sombre

And here I am, standing in the shower, contemplating the simplicity of belly button lint, how it just arrives out of nowhere and begs to be cleaned out. People with outies just wouldn't understand, I guess.

Through some strange combination of shampoo and bodywash, I smell suspiciously like breakfast, but as in the good wholesome fruit and granola kind and not the fried sausage and eggs kind, thankfully. Delicious. If I basted myself in yoghurt I would be all set.

Had a dream last night that I was sitting in a room with a threadbare grey carpet on one of those plastic chairs they have in public school. There were lots of people talking, but I wasn't listening to them because I was staring at the loose change scattered across the floor on the other side of the room. I sat there for about four hours doing that.

Another scene kept cutting in and out: a gentle sloped hill dipping into the sea, covered with a tall grass with long white cottony fronds at the top, swaying slowly in the breeze. People were walking down the hill through the grass, veiled in white cloth that billowed out behind them. Everything was blurry, in slow motion with a story narrated overtop. Very cinematographic.

And every time that segment ended, there I would be, sitting in that room, ignoring conversation and staring at the coins. I could make out at least two toonies from where I was sitting and eventually I left my chair and crawled across the floor to them. As I was collecting, a little east-Indian girl walked up behind me and she was incredibly cute, so I gave her some and she left shortly after.

The white people continued to flow down the hill, never really reaching the sea and all of a sudden there was a lady there in sharp focus. She was dressed in green and gold silk brocade with garish gold jewellry and debating interperetations of Tactitus' Annals with a man, who I don't remember at all.

I am listening to Peter's podcast again and I still like what I hear. I am ignoring the mountain of dishes on the counter and sharing a pot of green tea with my African violets because they like it too.

I have to go buy some milk.

Self-storage

So I was thinking that I could take me down to the Coquitlam Self-storage and store myself for a few years. I'm thinking eight would be good, then I could come out with a phd and a heavy Russian accent, because face it, we all want Russian accents, don't we?

And then I could be as arrogant as my uncle with his teaching university in Austria and wine-tasting classes so he doesn't have to be anywhere near the rest of his family. He says that he's going to change his name when my grandmother dies and I think I will too. Something Jewish, maybe, just for the hell of it. I'll be a polevaulter by then. Just watch out, because I'm going to stop shaving my armpits. That could be a tad bit frightening.

I had had some plans to go out and do something remotely social today, but instead I went to rescue my sister, who had locked herself out of my apartment. Long story.

It took me about two hours to get there, and by the time I had arrived, she had broken in through a window. Just my luck.

The Olympics has begun. I will be glued to the television for the duration. I missed Turin when I was in Italy. That's sad, because it looks like a nice city. I guess I'll have to go back some day. The Olympics are a pretty good commercial for tourism. That's the reason why they host them, isn't it?

Italics are a lost art

The same in our Apprehensions can consist
in nothing more than the brisk Activity of
our men, who in former Ages were justly esteemed the
Ablest Performers in Christendome; But to our unspeakable
Grief, we find of late a very sensible Decay of that
true Old English Vigour; our Gallants being every way so
Frenchified, that they are become meer Cock-sparrows,
fluttering things that come on Sa sa, with a world of Fury,
but are not able to stand to it, and in the very first Charge
fall down flat before us. Never did Men wear greater
Breeches, or carry less in them of any Mettle whatsoever.

from The Humble Petition and Address of
several Thousands of Buxome Good-Women,
Languishing in Extremity
of Want.

Let it be known that I love old-fashioned English. The overuse of italics is sadly, a lost art.

In the interest of fairness: THE Mens Answer TO THE Womens Petition AGAINST COFFEE, VINDICATING Their own Performances, and the Vertues of that Liquor, from the Undeserved Aspersions lately cast upon them by their SCANDALOUS PAMPHLET.

Keisha II

"You know the other Ryan?" Ryan asked me today, "I went for breakfast with him the other day and there was something about him that I couldn't put my finger on. And finally, I said, 'You're the Ryan that Karen always talks about!' and he looked at me and said 'You're the Ryan that Karen always talks about!' and that was weird."

It's a small world.

Saw a commercial last night that upset my sister.

A lady took a teddy bear, abused it cruelly, and then gave it to her daughter, who was overjoyed. My mother tried to explain:

She obviously lost the original somewhere, so she bought a new one and aged it a little to look like the old one, so her daughter didn't know. In other words:

She woke up in the morning and found out that the budgie she got her daughter for her 6th birthday the day before was dead at the bottom of the cage and so she goes out and buys a new one and doesn't tell her that she did it until her daughter's 16, leaving her daughter to wonder why the bird turned from yellow and white to yellow and green overnight.

Yeah mom, I love you too.

I just donated what's left of the contents of my wallet to charity, depriving myself of the snack that I usually have in the afternoon because I don't get off school until 6:30. I should get my head examined.

There's always garbage bags

"Have you done anything about your costumes yet?" Donna asked.

"No, we haven't," one of us said, completely prepared for a lecture about how we should practice and take more responsibility or something.

"I was at Rocco's the other day looking at saris and I saw these nice tops..."

And that was when my brain shut itself off. I figured listening would only make it worse. We all know what Abby thinks about Donna's sense of style, now we're going to hear what I think:

Donna is a really nice woman, she is. However, she's a little old-fashioned. No, fuck it, she's very old fashioned. That's not always a bad thing though. I think it's nice that she believes that girls under the age of say, 10 shouldn't dress like whores. Some of their costumes are downright cute.

I hate to say it, but she's got an old lady's sense of style. That means colour combinations that will make your stomach turn and any combination of sequins, beads and frilly lacy shit. If Donna ruled the world, we would all be wearing our pants with the waistbands wedged firmly in our armpits with a top that is sufficiently shapeless to hide the fact that you may possibly have breasts.

And while this sort of thing looks great on old ladies, I'm not old and I resent looking like a shapeless bag. I see no reason why my skin has to be covered up from my neck to my ankles to my wrists. My elbows aren't that offensive to look at, are they?

For once I want a costume that is a nice colour and is flattering enough to not make me look 40 lbs heavier and 40 years older than I am. Is that too much to ask?

"And these tops, they have all these beads and they're long and flowy, and I think they would look very nice and they're only five dollars each but I didn't want to buy them in case you didn't like them..."

At that moment I should have said something to the effect of "You should have bought the damn things, because it doesn't matter what we get, we'll hate it, so you may as well have made it painless as possible." But I didn't. I kind of regret that now.

She said something about green. Maybe a garbage bag would be appropriate...

Questions

Why did I leave the scissors out on the kitchen counter?

Why is that sufficient grounds to cause a domestic disturbance?

Why is it that sometime between 1:30 and 2:00 am all the regular ads on TV are suddenly replaced by ones for gay chatlines?

Is that the only advertising space they could afford?

Do they think that gays, like vampires, only come out at night?

Why was I up watching late night TV anyways, and why do I care?

David Emerson left the Liberal Party today to be a minister in Stephen Harper's brand new cabinet. Shouldn't there be a by-election in Vancouver-Kingsway to see if the people there actually wanted a Conservative MP?

Didn't Harper campaign on a platform of accountability, honesty and openness? Is that really what we all expected when he was elected two weeks ago?

Why does the bread always land butter side down? I know someone's explained that one to me before, but I just don't understand.

Adventure

I was going to go to the river to look at eagles and things, but alas, I forgot how far that was from my house and only made it to the dyke where people walk their dogs instead. I spent some time watching the horses play and petting people's dogs.

Well, I didn't pet any of the small yappy dogs that were there because frankly, little dogs scare me. Ellen calls those little dogs 'puntables' and that always made me giggle, even though the thought of kicking little dogs like rugby balls is terrible.
Then suddenly something rustled in the grasses and caught my attention...
And so I chased the peacock around until I was bored.
Then I rode my bike home.
Fin.

In between awake and asleep there is a taco stand

Good morning Monday. Did I ever tell you you're beautiful?

I was a little surprised to see the sun when I woke up this morning. Ever heard of the boy who cried wolf? That's what I think you are. I can't tell you how many times over the past couple of weeks I've looked outside, seen a glimmer of light through the clouds and thought that it was going to be nice for the rest of the day. Then it rained.

Are you actually going to be sunny all day, or are you just playing tricks on me? I want to know, because if it's going to be sunny, I'll take my bike and my camera down to the river. Maybe there will be eagles there. If it rains, I'll just be pissed off.

I have to have a shower first though. There's always something in the way, isn't there?

Sometimes when I'm in the shower, some idiot upstairs decides to have one at the same time, and it's not the same as if someone flushes the toilet. The temperature doesn't change, but all of a sudden there's half as much water as there should be and while the twit upstairs is enjoying their shower, I stand there in the downsairs shower with the water on because I will not back down.

And eventually the water will get very cold, very quickly, but I'll stand there and wait for whoever is upstairs to shut off the water because I can be an onery bitch sometimes and there's no way in hell that I'll let them have a nice shower after ruining mine.

Right now there is someone in the shower upstairs, so I'll wait. I just wish that they were nice enough to do the same for me.

But then again, maybe they just don't know that they're doing it. After all, they obviously don't know that they're not cleaning the gum out of their pockets before they wash them. And they certainly don't know that that makes a mess when said gum sticks itself to the inside of the dryer and other people's clothes. You wouldn't know that either, right?

Alright, Monday, you are now bright, yet overcast. I hate to say it, but that looks remotely promising. I think I'll take my chances.

Crickets

Dear Alison,

Yes, I have been whitewater rafting before, on the Cheakamus River, near Whistler. The rapids were pretty tame, so most of the time we spent just talking and enjoying the scenery. One of the people in our raft fell out for no reason whatsoever. She wasn't all that impressed. Maybe she should have thought of that before she did it.

However, I've never been rafting in Thailand and our guide on the river was neither stoned nor confused as to his country of origin, so I guess you lucked out.

Cheers,

Erin
My sister has taken a sudden odd interest in the Superbowl. She refuses to watch it on the TV, but she's got a couple blogs on constant refresh so that she knows what's happening.

The game? Yeah, I watched it. All five seconds of it. It looked like American football to me. What's with this four downs crap? Pretty wimpy if you ask me.

Someone got me kind of excited when they said something about cricket on television. I thought that we should call Abu and tell him which channel it was on, but it turns out that it was something to do with construction and not cricket, as in the sport.

Then my mother said "why, is he into this construction stuff?" and I said no, he likes cricket the sport. And she said something really confused about something in construction being called a cricket. And I said "No, he likes the sport thing cricket with the wicket and the bat thing and the ball and running and the wearing of white." That took me way too long to explain to her.

After weeks and weeks of rain it was sunny today. It was a welcome change.

Frick

This is my cat on drugs.

Not a good endorsement for drugs, eh?

Actually, I'm kind of worried about this one. I don't think she's long for this world.

Soggy

40 days and 40 nights, I'm told. Noah obviously didn't live in Vancouver. But if he did, he'd probably be like me, sitting in a little basement suite ark hunched over a laptop, making lentil soup for dinner. Cups of ingredients march two by two into the pot as the storm rages outside. The wind was so strong that it tore the roof off of our neighbour's treehouse. The news tells me that there is flooding and ferry cancelations elsewhere because the weather's so bad.

In the underground parkade at Ikea they play a lot of choral music. The atmosphere gets kind of spiritual while you wander through all those pillars, trying to figure out where you parked your car. But I didn't come for an out of body experience. I wanted measuring cups. Good, heavy stainless steel ones with rivetted handles instead of the cheap spot-welded ones that fall apart. I could only find plastic. C'est la vie.

My mother is painting the hallway yellow at the moment. Life is a constant renovation. The previous owners of the house used to buy cheap blue paint from the mistint shelf at the hardware store, and the guy's wife used to do a really half-assed job painting it everywhere. When we bought the house, we found out that they had just painted around all their furnature and left huge parts of the walls unpainted. We christened the colour 'Bev blue' and we've hated it ever since. Now it's nearly gone. I'm glad.

Outside, it continues to rain. Walking in it leaves my brain saturated. Even the creatures living in the most isolated and remote regions of my mind have wet feet.

The alligators don't mind though. They like it swampy.

One of my previous posts has disappeared from my blog twice. Censorship or coincidence?

Maybe not, because this one disappeared too.

Everyone has a story

The fire alarm startled me from a semi-deep sleep over Can Selfishness Save the Environment? on one of the library couches. Between Mina and I, we decided that it would probably be a good idea to leave the building.

Once outside, we were passively mobbed by the "Everyone Has a Story" campaign, which today has real people attached to it. It has been going on at school for over a week now, and from a marketing perspective, it has been a pretty effective campaign so far, as far as I can see.

It began with extensive postering. Good, professionally printed posters , and not those cheap ones that you make up late at night and max out your copy card photocopying in the library. Each poster had a picture of a smiling student with a tag line like "I couldn't have done it without him..." or "After 21 years of marriage...", followed by the adress of a website: everyonehasastory.ca.

Sounds inspirational, motivational. It's true, everyone does have a story, and I'm sure that more than a few of us would really love to share it, whatever it is. It certainly got my attention. When the matching pamphlets appeared everywhere, I noticed that there seemed to be an unusually high number of people carrying them around, so I'm guessing that it got their attention too.

Our fire evacuation took us outside, right into the middle of the campaign set up in the Convomall, which now includes large billboards, free hot chocolate and spokespeople. All this expensive advertising? Jesus of course.

I question the validity of any faith that must be promoted by its members in the same way that you would sell a movie or a car.

Then again, maybe he's only ever been a commodity.

This is not the only potentially inflamatory thing on my mind today.

Not the prune song

no matter how old a prune may be
he's always getting wrinkled

a baby prune looks like his dad
but he's not wrinkled half as bad

we've got wrinkles on our face
prunes got wrinkles every place!

no matter how old a prune may be
he's always getting stewed

My sincerest apologies. That's the best I've got.

Who took that picture? It's terrible.