my new version of a rad saturday night kind of goes as following: get off work, eat burger king on the way home, and proceed to do shit all in my bedroom, until i run out of things to watch on alluc.org, or my wikipedia muscle gets tired.

i finally got around to watching the premiere of america’s next top model, cycle nine. although its musings on ‘regular size girls’ was totally humourous, it was pretty much just another episode. rad chicks whittled away to make room for skinny, boring girls who look like they walked out of a mall somewhere in new jersey. oh wait, they did. the boat was a rad touch, and tyra and her jays are also rad as ever, with the addition of some cute new deliberating room sets. in general, i like, and i will, obviously say that i’m on teams victoria and jenah. yeah, smart girls?

so, in the spirit of being smart, i dropped a class this morning (it started at 830, oh, the outrage!), and am going to spend the rest of the day honestly focusing on school, and well, blogging, because i can somehow justify this, to myself, as a scholarly endeavour. i figure that since i want to be a blogger for the rest of my life, i had better at least produce one of these things a week–the torontoist won’t hire me unless i get my shit together. when ARE they going to hire again? i’ve got an insatiable urge to write and produce, and at least my literary non-fiction class (in which i must speak for no less than fifteen minutes about the glorious drunkeness that is norman mailer), provides me with an opportunity. i have an assignment due wednesday that was described as follows: “300 words, descriptive writings sans cliches. you will not get more than 60% because that way you have no where to go but up, and there is no one you can complain about that to, because i am the head of the english department.” so sweet. professor creet in some ways reminds me of the way that i associated with mr. richardson in high school. i’ve spent a couple of years at york enrapt in the myth of this woman, and now i am appearing at her door feeling totally insecure about my abilities, and relying on her approval as the thing that will prove that yes, i AM a GOOD WRITER. buh. it’s scary–this sort of field sort of demands that you get out there, publish as much as you can, and contribute wherever possible. so that’s how i justify this. i’m out there, are you?

my assignment is going fine, if you consider the folders and folders of unused words and images that i have saved within the confines of my macbook intel dual processor. i initial thought that writing about the process of dreading nate’s hair would be just brilliant, but now, i see that that decision was clouded by some kind of, well, some kind of cloud. my next option came to me in the pages of ‘in cold blood’. capote’s musings about wheat fields and silos reminded me of home, or more specifically, the barren field that edges upon my suburban neighbourhood at home. i suppose that could work, but i’m getting really tired of writing about that small town existence. so the other night, i sat down, on my stoop, and made brief records of each and every strange thing that i saw, because, you know, if you’ve been here, exactly what breed of weirdness festers in these parts. it’s coming along, and i hope to god that it doesn’t cound as a cliche, because if it does, then i’m obviously not cut out for this shit, and it’s on to cabinet making at humber north. seriouslym it’s only a three semester program, and i could learn to make ‘beautiful cabinets and fine furniture’. this is what my frustration leads me to: toying with the idea of no longer pursuing my master’s, but instead, taking a short course in cabinetry. i like wood.

the one good thing about school is that my newly acquired women’s studies major is making the entire world hilarious again. take for instance, fucking john tory and his warping the nation into a neo-colonialist nightmare. honestly, not only is he promising to up penanlties for occupations (and this does include trespassing laws!), but the already reigning tories are obliterating status of women programs. this attitude has trickled down into regular people, not only because negative news is the only news we hear about aboriginal people, but also because no one is questioning the ever pervasive covert racism and sexism that we accept. i mean, at the risk of being dooced, even people think that santa, absolutely, positively should not be black. i guess this narrative, this train of thoughts doesn’t really make any sense, but it doens’t have to. i don’t have to have a clear, direct point, because there really isn’t one, but, instead a random smattering of hate and fear.

at least i’ve recently (and i mean, within the past 12 hours) rediscovered my angsty nirvana loving side to deal with this. i figure that the statute of limitations has expired on the hype that was 90’s grunge, and the subsequent fall-out that we experienced on the t-shirt of every sixteen year old boy i went to high school with (and i’m sure you did, too)–it’s okay, in bloom is a hot track. haaaa. i suppose that the only other thing i need to sort of centre myself is a cat. i love wolfie, but she’s not mine anymore. i need a new, bigger, better feline, like any of the ragged, sad examples that prowl my ‘front yard’. i’ve failed twice at capturing one of these strays and adopting it as ‘octopus’, or ‘ultraviolet’. i’m going to send my parents to the annex cat rescue for a bundle of fur and cuddles.

and, i guess that since the sun is getting kind of low in the sky for me, and i should be heading off to the ever hilarious class dubbed women and aging, i should mention alnwick garden. i didn’t even know that this place existed until recently–that is until i found out about prince charles’ poision garden that is to become public. his project, which is funded with a cool 32 million pounds, houses deadly nightshade, coca plants, and no less than a patch of pot. yeah, it’s crazy. the garden itself also has a tree ‘castle’ (really, look at pictures of that thing, there’s no way that you can call it a house), and some rad fountains and bamboo labyrinths. alnwick is in nothumberland, relatively close to the place that my grandmother is from, so i reckon that i can find a relative to crash with and head over to the gardens. prince charles, who knew?!

okay, my appetite for creativity has been nourished, and now i’ve got my tummy and my intellect to worry about. adios, amigos.