Happy Haloween

I have pictures from our Haloween party, but I don't feel that they really do it justice. However, I have a lot of work to do right now, so commentary will come later.

Headlamp

The wind picked up outside, making my father irritable. "Have you got a flashlight?" he asked me, "There could be a power outage." Not surprisingly I didn't have one in my desk, so he grumbled something and went to his bedroom.

Mom was already in bed by the time he got there. "Do you have a flashlight? The power's going to go out," he said.

"Of course I do," she replied, "on my night table, right here."

"And does it work?"

"Yes."

"And do you have any extra ones, just in case?"

"Yes, under the bed." She got out of bed, dug around underneath it and produced two headlamps.

"And do those work?" he asked.

"Of course," she replied, putting one on her head.

"You're naked, wearing a headlamp."

"Yeah, so?"

"That's weird."

I am not a multimillionaire

Erin is a constant source of interesting and useless information. Apparently ladybugs are extremely promiscuous and have a high rate of STD infection. I honestly didn't know that. She says that I should be on What Not to Wear because of my harsh criticism of women in their 40s and 50s who dress like frumpy old ladies. I don't know. The thought of me on a makeover show is kind of scary.

Okay, I confess that I was probably the only person I know that didn't buy a lottery ticket for yesterday's draw. Maybe I'm an idiot. I just can't even begin to fathom what I would do with $54 mil completely tax-free. I would probably have to rent an army to keep away my new 'friends'.

One of my profs said that we should all invest in Google, because it's worth 88 billion and growing. He seems to believe that it will eventually take over the world, but we shouldn't fight it because it seems to be a fairly benevolent company. Sounds good to me.

My parents first met on this day, 32 years ago. This also happens to be my sister's birthday. Happy birthday Du.

I saw this today and had to supress a bit of a chuckle:

From Daveberta via CalgaryGrit. The other provinces are there too.

Narita International Airport

We arrived at Narita Airport some time just after 7 that evening. A quick trip on a bizarre little commuter train brought us to the edge of the constant rush that is Tokyo to a run-down shopping mall of sorts, though it seemed to be mostly vacant, except for one store that appeared to be a drug store and enticingly enough, had english signs inside. We didn't go to Japan to read English, so we didn't enter.

We set up on a green, overstuffed couch in the lobby of this shopping centre and my parents said that they would be back later and left. We had come well prepared, with a blanket and three rented VHS tapes, not that we could watch them. We had no TV and I'm pretty sure that the Japanese use pal instead.

Eventually we got bored and started exploring. We found an escalator so we took it downstairs. There wasn't much on that floor either. We took a second escalator to the next floor and it took us to a small room, about the size of our livingroom. It was completely empty and had no doors to anywhere. People kept coming down the escalator, walking around aimlessly and then going back up, and we followed suit.

Once at the top, we went back down again, then up. That too got boring very quickly. More importantly, we were hungry. We hid our video tapes underneath the blanket on the couch and headed out to forage.

It was quickly getting dark as we crept through the streets like shadows, stealing the food that people had left out in bowls for feral cats...

And then I woke up.

I went to my computer to find that no one was on msn because it was 7:06 in the morning. Then my computer froze so I screamed at it. I was attacked by a large bowl of fruit salad as I went in search of breakfast and unfortunately had to leave a huge sticky mess all over the floor. Then I was in a hurry to leave for school and forgot my camera, so once again, no new pictures.

An unlikely story, I know.

Lost and found

It seems that autumn is here again. Can you believe that I took this picture a week ago?

I must confess I have a terrible habit of writing off people that I've known for a long time. I shouldn't but I do. It just seems that if I've known people for a while and I'm not good friends with them, I give up hope of ever really getting to know them. Julie was one of those people. We knew each other, but we never really talked. Now we talk all the time.

Maybe it's because we both live in crappy basement suites right now, or because we went to the same school. Maybe it's because we have the same major. Maybe it's just the simple expedient of being both stuck in the same brutally awful class together. Maybe it's just the fact that we've both severed our ties to the cliquey bullshit that went on in high school.

When I first came to university I fully expected to meet a lot of new people that I hadn't known before. I had no intention of meeting and befriending people that I already knew. Funny how that happens.

Tomorrow I'm going to take my camera downtown again. The urban decay fascinates me and renders practically everything photogenic. Not that I'm supposed to say that. I'm supposed to make you believe that I am actually good at photography. Sadly, I can't help thinking that this city is naturally beautiful and I'm just an idiot with a camera that happens to be here. We shall see what I come up with.

Morningsickness

Another morning. As much as you try to prolong the night, morning always comes to steal it from you, and then you have to go through this whole charade again.

It reminds me of that old fairy tale. I can't even remember where it's from. Certainly not Disney, if that's what you're thinking. It's that one where the ungrateful daughter puts on a pair of enchanted shoes that compel her to dance and dance and dance. And as she figures out that she will probably dance until she dies from exhaustion, she asks the world for forgiveness... We all know how Disney would end this story. We North Americans sure like our happy endings, but somehow I don't think the world is all that forgiving.

I think Shakespeare had something to say about it, something about life being a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing.

Last night as I lay awake my mind was a wash of half a million scenarios with you in them, not one of them working out quite right. They were fun and fanciful at first, and then gradually they became more and more realistic, drab, dull, until you and I padded off in opposite directions into the night, disinterested.

Sometimes I wish that that was what we'd do.

Like yesterday I am fighting once again to stay awake, not because I need sleep, but more because I'm bored. I have plenty of things to do, I just have no desire to. I've found lately that I don't really feel like doing anything, and yet I get to the point in the afternoon/evening that I am so bored that I just go to sleep for lack of anything better to do. Then I lay awake for hours thinking of everything and nothing at the same time.

This too will pass, right?

4:45

I like to put While We Were Hunting Rabbits by Matt Good on repeat sometimes. What is so special about that song? I don't know, to be honest. I like the bass line of it. It's 8 minutes long.

It's one of those songs that I like to put on repeat and every time it ends, I stop for a moment and think that another 8 minutes of my life has passed. Does any of that matter? I suppose not. The fact doesn't bring me any satisfaction, but it doesn't make me feel bad either.

It is currently 4:45 on a Friday afternoon and I'm fighting to stay awake.

It is currently 4:45 on a Friday afternoon and I should be doing something infinitely more exciting than sitting around trying to stay awake. Evidently I have no life. I don't suppose I'm alone in this. Everyone I know is half asleep with work and midterms and papers to do. There was a pub night tonight for applied science majors but now, because of the strike it is cancelled.

A lot of things were cancelled today. I went to school, sat in an empty lecture hall for an hour and then left. I just wish that they had been a little more clear about what exactly was happening today. If I had known that no one was going to be here to teach classes, I wouldn't have gone. But when I asked yesterday, they said they were going to be there.

I have a million and a half people to phone. Not tonight. It's 4:45 on a Friday afternoon and I'm going to bed. Good night.

Misatribution

"That's the great thing about flashcards," Erin said, "Everyone benefits. I pass my midterm-"

"-And I get to know all sorts of useless information," I added.

"Exactly," she replied, "and you seem to understand this stuff really well so if you ever take social psychology, you will probably pass."

"Yay." Like that's ever going to happen.

She tells me that the ideal place to take someone that you like on a date is the Capilano Suspension Bridge. You see, when you get someone out there on that little bridge, they get scared and excited and then if they see someone that is goregeous, (ie. you) they think they feel that way because of you and not the fact that they are standing on a little bridge over a huge canyon. It's called misatribution of arousal, apparently. She seems to like messing with people's minds. I guess that's what psych majors do.

Sometimes it's weird to talk to her because we did a lot of things together in high school and yet our memories of them are completely incongruent. "You remember Sean, right?" I ask, and she doesn't, even when I describe him in all the detail that I possibly can. She doesn't remember half of the other people we knew either. What she does remember is a lot of weird little events that I could have sworn never happened. I don't know how to explain it.

My cat likes looking at my computer so I thought it would be fun to turn on my webcam and let her watch herself. Bad idea. She attacked the screen. I won't be doing that again.

Pathetic

It was one of those rare days when it actually got colder as the day wore on. I left my home near sea level and ascended into the dense fog that they call school. Sometimes when you're secure in that concrete prison it's possible to forget that you're actually inside a cloud.

It's like the kingdom of Heaven only different, filled with fog and dying leaves, pot smoke and apathetic kids who can't really afford their tuition but are somehow there anyway. There used to be strikes here, protests, demonstrations and activism, however shortsighted, overidealistic or ineffectual they may have been. There used to be a pulse here, but pressing my fingers against the walls of the establishment, I feel nothing. It's cold.

All dead things go to heaven, or so they say. My heaven's got ivory towers and hungry people and one hell of a suicide stigma. We sit with our laptops in the pub, the hallways, the overcrowded laptop labs. Over coffee I'll tell you I can't focus on anything, that I can't seem to think this semester. As we look out the window, Rob says that the scenery is an adequate depiction of the contents of his mind: vague, nebulous and monochrome.

I feel the same way too. Evidently it isn't just the wireless that permeates our brains. I wish he'd get his coffee maker to work. I wish he'd stop saying "um" all the time. I wish for a lot of things. I know I shouldn't wish away my life, but I don't see the harm in it today. After all, tomorrow will be another day, regardless.

These are the days when I sit down and evaluate things, when I realize once again that as much as I try to fight it, my life is still on hold. After eleven months I'm still living out of boxes. I still feel like a refugee in my own home. I begin to think that I've spent too long out here, in this shithole suburb in the middle of nowhere, with its wonderbread, white trash people. I know I shouldn't be so prejudiced, because in spite of everything, I too am just a working-class fuck like everyone else.

But the fact remains that I have no desire to stay here. No matter how much I unpack, how many old things I throw away, I can never make this mine. It's only a matter of time until I leave, in one way or another, and the waiting is killing me.

For lack of anything better to do, I find my fingers dialling what seem like random numbers on my phone. "You sound bored," he says from the other end of the line. Fuck, is it that obvious? He's such a nice person and yet I can't stand him. I don't know why I called in the first place.

My cheeks hurt

I smiled when I woke up and checked my email, when I spread the peanut butter just perfect across my bagel. People tell me I'm funny about the way I eat, and I don't think it should really matter. But today, that was far from my mind as I ate my kiwi. It was very good. Good kiwis always make me smile.

I beamed from ear to ear as I walked four blocks to catch my bus. The fact that the bus was both late to pick me up and late to drop me off did nothing to wipe the smile from my face. I missed my connection and that didn't seem to bother me either.

I was still smiling when I walked into my exam 10 minutes late. I smiled all the way through it, even though the prof had decided to put a lot of really obscure shit on it that I don't even remember ever seeing, and that he had told us not to study. Once outside, I continued to smile as I heard that practically everyone had the same problem, and as I began to realize that many people had actually had more trouble on the exam than I had.

It's late and you get the picture. There was nothing all day that could possibly make me upset. Why? No reason, really, or maybe I just don't want to say. I don't know.