and now, roughly two weeks later, i feel more eaten alive. i’ve decided to take up a job in the eaton centre for the festive season, as planet aid has closed. yes, this in itself was a plea for aggrivation, but we can question my sanity at a later date, perhaps after the destiny’s child christmas song montage four more times in the span of one hour, okay? i think i’m mostly just shell shocked, i don’t usually do malls, and working at a non-profit vintage store is about as similar to working in a girly clothing store in a huge mall at X-MAS time is about as similar as a cocktail party is to a mob of the enslaved. anyways, i was chatting with mum earlier, and bless her dear suburban heart–and i really do mean that, i love her–and she asked me what impelled human beings to rise at 530 am to venture towards a shopping centre and spend their days in an artificial environment. my response, verbatim from the msn chat (and yes, my mother has both an msn account and a facebook page): “because the world is run by capitalism that steals every moment of our lives at an inflated cost.”

the holiday season is never a fun time for me: i’ve objected to almost every large spruce tree adorned with a gaudy melange of glittery bits and bobs. yeah, it’s all really pretty, but tacky and in bad taste. to me, baby jesus or whatever else manifests itself in a melee of human beings packed tight in puffy coats trapped inside a highly controlled environment. i’m complaining like a 15-year-old ‘anarchist’ who goes all crazy for orwellian fatalism and buy nothing day. but, i’ll still say that the only thing that will save X-MAS for me this year, or any subsequent year, is a reindeer petting zoo. waaay cute.

i feel a little out of sorts with myself–i’ve worked twenty-four hours in a three day span, and while that only works out to eight hours a day, it has left little opportunity for me to just, oh, even, not smile. in fact, i only just realized that i was still wearing my little lanyard advertising device, a tiny noose. sigh. i’ve gotta go take care of business, and the kind that i like.

keep it real.

as chronic procrastination sets in, oh, how it has, considering that my laundry has been done, in two carefully sorted lots, and that my room is clean, sparkling, organized, i set my book down. i suppose that it doesn’t really matter now, i’ve read the wrong text for the wrong week again, further emphasizing the fact that i absolutely, positively cannot exist in this ‘real world’ that i keep hearing so much about, but rather some kind of vaguely shadowed place where everything makes sense and is perfectly simple to articulate.

forgive me, forgive this intense introspection, this constant, neurotic self analyzing: it’s been a long weekend (clearly, as it is now tuesday night and i’m still reeling). i’m bruised, my skin languidly bluing at the edges of my skeletal structure, producing a strange sort of document of where i’ve been, even if i can’t quite remember. all in all, i’m a little out of sorts, but i’ll do what i can to recount some highlights.

M.I.A. played the kool haus on saturday night to a sold-out crowd, and i believe that being jammed between hundreds of other crazed, dancing people must contribute to at least four of my bumps, bruises and general aches. we arrived (we being me, you, and everyone we know) fashionably on time, buzzing, anxious to get on with this shit. the performance itself was an incredibly sparse affair: M.I.A. was flanked only by a dj and a back up singer, no fancy stage props or lights, just her, and really, i suppose that’s all we need. hands up, guns out, represent the world town?

i don’t know, i’ll save the remainder of the details of that weekend to our memories, eating at ginger on parliament in the late afternoon, an apprehensive wind blowing in and out of the windows as large as the walls–it was golden, it was beautiful.

i’ve been very busy lately, or rather just found my time annexed by things that seem incredibly important. i fell into a new job, working at planet aid on yonge street, but i don’t start until tomorrow, bright and early, so let’s not jinx it. we did gillian’s birthday, i was a pirate, and as you can tell am feeling just very ambivalent about spending hours in front of this screen musing about it all over and over again.

i think i’m going to take a break, or at least make some sort of admission of boredom with this project. i’ve got other things to do, mostly reading joan didion in the sunshine, watching yellow leaves drift around concrete and steel, pondering paradox, living contradiction.

i think i need to retreat, to go backwards, into my own head fully. it’s not about isolation, it’s about concentration, and i’m spitting out nominalizations like some kind of motivational speaker. coincidentally, november is national novel writing month. i feel like swaddling myself in woolens, a pot of tea at hand, and write something. really WRITE SOMETHING. so i need to make a break.

you’ll forgive me, won’t you?

g appeared, at my door, and after a few minutes of shitting and fucking and william h. macying my failure in regards to the situation, i had it. i’ve got it. i’ve listened, at least twice. i can’t really tell you too much: it’s at times ‘embarassingly minimalistic’ (their words, not mine, but i wish they were), and totally haunting. not quite ok computer, but not far off either–it’s like a moment of clarity, that spooky realization that your whole life has been a distraction from something of epic importance, but, now, unfortunately, it’s far too late to remedy this. the first and last tracks, 15 step and videotape, respectively, are stark opposites of one another, flanking the record in a sort of bi-polar hysteria. at first we’re assaulted and then left totally hopeless. you’re following me with this, right?

anyways. give it a go; and we’ll all work out this mess in the morning.

since this past saturday evening was nuit blanche, lower bay was blown open by art and hysteria, all culminating in the rather unspectacular pilgrimage i made there with lyndsay and my boys after a totally sweaty trip to blurr nightclub (now documented in some nasty photos at dose.ca, don’t look). at the bleak hour of five am, we decide that yes, it absolutely is time to put on our comfortable shoes and skitter up yonge street, suddenly aware of the horror of this route, flanked by flashy strip joints and crumbling pawn shops. we swim upstream, against the dregs of the ocad crowd, our own pack thins until i must routinely stop and determine the whereabouts of all six other people. a lapse in directional judgment ensues, but quickly leads to a triumphant dash across bloor. past a set of giant ropes, presently being used as a makeshift limbo line for very patient taxis, we find the doors to the station, marked with a number nine, and dash down. at this point, my friends seem hesitant, they don’t know why i’ve made them walk for nearly an hour, seemingly only to board some kind of mass transit. i urge them along, eventually descending to the second platform, and their doubts silence. it was spooky, and this wasn’t due only to the phony industrial atmosphere that some artist had carefully created with a set of dark, motionless subway cars, baricadding us in, and some awkward music and lighting. sleep set in, and the novelty wore off, we left, all a little disconcerted with the spooky rattling of cars we heard in the tunnel, even when trains were nowhere nearby (and no, not even upstairs, because apparently the ttc was having a really hard time keeping up with the artsy traffic flow).

i guess that this particular occasion really struck me because i’ve been wrapped up in notions of space and flow of people–the whole notion of simultaneously coming and going. and, naturally, whenever i become semi-obsessed with an idea, it appears in every other person i know: jp insisted that we all watch koyaanaquatsi, or something to that effect. i haven’t been able to glean any further details about it, but i think that i was to gather something about insustainability and the intense pace of our lives. it all fits because school is starting to feel like a thought machine; we pay tuition, have our minds totally wiped by foucault and walk out with a piece of paper in hand. i’m not into the notion.

regardless, i’m not feeling totally gloomy: radiohead’s seventh ep, in rainbows, has been kicking around the internet for a few days, although i haven’t actually had the chance to pre-order my download (for zero pounds, although i think it’s worth, or at least thirty-five cents). i’ve got a random smattering of tracks that are supposed to appear on it, but i won’t be satisfied until it’s all one complete torrent file, stored neatly between hail to the thief and kid a (alphabetically, of course).

and, for the sake of being quaint, and maybe cheering my lonely ass up on this foggy thursday night before embarking home for yet another weekend, i will report that happiness DOES still exist. what i’m getting at is this news story: a group of school kids in manchester let off dozens of balloons the other day, one of which ended up caught by another kid (well, upon further reading, he is twenty-six, but don’t spoil this for me) in hong kong. inside the balloon was a ticket–one admission to the manchester zoo. if you don’t see the terrible cuteness of this story, and the inevitable trip to be made to england by this child as an old man to redeem his prize, then you’re just a sad suck, and you should probably exit this page immediately.

that’s it. i’m done. it took a week.

phew.

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.

i think that this probably has a lot to do with; the fact that i’ve been in school for a bit now and my brain is finally, FINALLY allowed to be sharp, the oncoming of fall, which has, traditionally, been my most awesome time of year, and well, my general awesomness of late. i suppose i’m just totally in love with the notion of being a student and learning, because lord knows that i love scarves and books. the air is different this time of year, it’s expectant, it’s like something cool is going to happen all the time, and it usually does. i mean, i almost rescued a stray cat a couple days ago, but it just wasn’t meant to be. it doesn’t sound cool, but honestly, chasing little octopus around with carley and lyndsay was hilarious enough. oh, and dropping all of my personal identification ONTO the tracks at queen station and being too much of a chicken shit to jump down and grab them myself, so i had to wait for a man in a little cap to come and do it for me. that’s probably why fares are going up, after all, because i needed extra assistance. hrmph.

so today, i’m spending a sunny afternoon by myself, wearing tights and a cap, with a pot of tea and some homework. i’ve got to catch up and finish in cold blood before the damn suspense kills me (although my prof sort of killed it for me, ha ha, when for the last fifteen minutes of class yesterday, we watched the end of the film version, and then were sent out to “have a good one”, or something to that effect–LONGEST PARENTHESES EVER), but i’ve also got to catch up on this new rilo kiley record that i never knew existed (although i don’t know if i’m totally crazy about it). everything feels lush, like after the dry, barren feeling of summer, something is shifting, and it’s all balancing out. i want to eat tofu and snow peas with korma sauce, dye my hair a really deep shade of auburn, and totally forget that ttc fares are going up, set aside the kanye v. 50 thing for about two seconds, and just be, uh, happy? is that cool?

anyways, as of now, i’ve been in toronto for the past couple of days, painting, cleaning, crying, whatever. something about the moving process overwhelms me, and the sheer number of tasks that need to be completed makes me want to suddenly have my genes mutate so that i can either a)grow an extra couple sets of arms, or b)splinter off into a myriad of mes. i’m screwed–there is so much to do. but somehow i think that it’s more interesting to watch the trailer for the darjeeling limited a hundred times and obsess over owen wilson’s suicide attempt (not to be confused with ‘castro is dead’ web rumours). i want to BE owen wilson, or at least a tennenbaum, so why does he want to die? oh well, i guess that’s sorta how it works. if either of these distractions fail, there is always kitty to cuddle with until she bites my nose. and chin. that’s love.

regardless, the darjeeling limited looks awesome: india, camels, trains, jason schwartzman! i didn’t realize that it was going to be released so soon. after everyone erroneously thought that the life aquatic was a flop, i immediately turned to see what mr. anderson’s next project would be (besides that fantastic fox thing or whatever). it’s here, and long story short, time goes by too quickly and i’m getting old.

i’ve been thinking about the passage of time lately, and i think that i’ve decided that i would like to live to be no more than 60 years old. that would mean that i’ve lived a third of my life already–the past is behind me, i’m in the present, and the future is to come. i’m growing up–i can tell, and to have my life arranged in some sort of three part play is sort of comforting. i figured that the rate i’m going, i will be graduating at 21, and can have my master’s and phd by 24 and 26, respectively. i’m smart, i’m so smart.

last night brian and i went out to the ben wicks and sat beneath blue lights (yes, byueyights) and just sort of shot the shit about this stuff. i think everyone has become obsessed with zeitgeist, that phantom internet movie (thank you, nick maitland) about myth and conspiracy, that i have since sort of discredited because the filmmakers cite alex jones as a resource. buh, why does perfectly good logic have to be tainted by former neighbours? at least watch the first 40 minutes, and then praise jesus, amen.

anyways, i’m tired, but i would like to at least tack on another random bit of writing i did on the train on the way home. it’s sort of related, and entirely long winded. no industrial strength rubber gloves required.

no matter how you explain it away, it still feels totally abnormal. it was that really clear time around ten am when the sun hasn’t yet become a blazing ball of fire, but is still a pleasant warm light glimmering under your eyelids creating veiny shapes like clouds. the room was cold, used, alien–it was a place that i had never been allowed to be, but was now passed on, semi familiar. i had fallen asleep the night before dizzily drunk, the liquor swelling my face until my eyes could no longer stay open. my head had hit the mattress (after an excruciating half hour of fiddling with shoddy swedish manufacturing and design), and that’s all it was–a mattress, a cover, and two very flat pillows that ended up crimping my neck into such an accordion that i am still forcing my shoulder blades back as a remedy–and after that it was a fight against gravity and my body to manage to throw a baby lung pink felt blanket over top of the coils and crash.

the entire day had been a series of misfortunate events: i had arrived to my new place only to discover that not one of the past five year’s tenants have so much as thrown away their old food upon their usually very sudden and mysterious flights. i wept all day as i struggled paint my bedroom, standing tiptoed upon dirty milk crates salvaged from within the dirt coated storage room at the bottom of the stairs, trying to reach the tops of the walls where taping had become an impossible task. i’m a germ phobic; ask anyone that has lived with me for the past few years. although i am innately a disorganized and messy person, i usually prefer to live without rotting onions in my cupboards and limescale caked in my bathtub. however, when mess and dirt begins to accumulate, i simply shut off, fearing the intense dirt, and allowing it to only mutate into phantom stains on the walls and black oozing stains lodged into corners and cracks in the floor. the task becomes too much, too possibly toxic, and i would rather hide moldy pots in the garbage can than crack out a bottle of vim. so even cowering in my bedroom, assuming, irrationally and falsely, of course, that there is little to no harmful dirties in there, that all of that stuff is contained to the various other areas in the house that i had mentally quarantined. wrong.

every time i had to pee, or much worse, take a shower, i would go up the stairs, out the front door, three doors down to my old place, unlock the door, fight past the attention starved kitties, down the stairs, and into my old bathroom. whew. so, therefore, my preparations to make myself at home in lyndsay’s new bedroom were not without reason. sleeping in other people’s beds is a tricky business for me: i am incredibly particular about my sleeping arrangements. if you’ve ever seen my bed you will understand, or perhaps not, as it, i suppose, may look totally unsleepable. i keep a stock of no less than eight pillows, half throw and half regular arranged in an inverse ‘L’ shape, as well as one thin blanket and afghan (in the summer months) and one thin blanket, one afghan, and one large goose down duvet (in the winter months) on my bed. add to that my various distractions at any one time: a remote control, a cell phone, a lighter, my pot tin, my mac book, a book or three, one bottle of water, sweaty clothes that i have removed whilst asleep throughout the night, and perhaps some unfinished crochet work. i’m a bit of a hoarder, that i’ll admit, so i like to be circled by my things, just so i know where they are. or just so that i don’t have to get up and out of bed at anytime. all i need is an industrial strength bed pan. so, to wind up this long drawn out version of my oddities and phobias, i’m sure you can understand why staying in a friend’s very minimalist cell would be unnerving.

as i was saying, i at first became vaguely aware that the room around me was turquoise. well, i knew that already, but the colour was very significant, because i had spent at least thirty minutes in the shower the previous evening scrubbing paint off my body and down the drain, watching as the smoked oyster, autumn purple, and galapagos turquoise mixed and became EXACTLY the shade of taupe that i was after in the first place. it was strange, however, as i felt cool, although not uncomfortably so. this was strange because, prior to this very ethereal moment, i had been sweating like a roasted pig on a spit next to brian. my sleep had been spastic; i tossed and turned, trying to fold and re-fold pillows onto themselves to provide myself with an addequate support for my noggin, as well as remain modestly covered with the blanket (as i was, after all, only wearing my panties at the time), while also fending off the heat, and the sweat, oh, the sweat! irregardless, it was suddenly very blue-green and cool, like a cucumber, or any other primarily water based food. it was lovely. except. i was convinced, although not totally, or even partially awake, that i could hear lyndsay in the next room speaking to salina. i cursed myself for sleeping so long, and wanted to get up at once and get out of her room, because, you know, i didn’t want to impose, or even further my seemingly strange behaviours, as i’m sure that salina was quite uncomfortable with my presence there. i tried to move, and suddenly became aware that i was stuck, frozen, locked into place, my muscles seizing tighter and tighter as if i was being wound up. i couldn’t breathe either, and had the vague sensation of being totally under pressure, like i was being vaccuumed sealed into the bed by one of those little wizard machines that are advertised on the home shopping network. i wanted to yelp, or cough, even choke, i wanted my body to respond to any of the commands i was sending it, but it wouldn’t. i was panicked, totally. eventually, and after a great deal of what felt like spine shattering effort, i turned over to face the wall, finally realizing that all of my limbs were thoroughly numb; i was covered in goosepimples and pins and needles.

my mother said that i had an out of body experience this morning, but this explanation is too hoky poky for me, and i prefer to think that it was only extreme sleep paralysis. my mind is, after all, just THAT much quicker than my body, and do you blame it? i was spooked, i still am, as i sit awkwardly on my tailbone on this late go train ride back into burlington. i glance into the window, illuminated by the fierce lights reflecting off of the glass, darkened by the night, just to make sure that my soul didn’t really slip away, that it all managed to crawl back into my body when i finally surfaced from whatever it was. one of the ‘ultra credible’ wikipedia sources i read today claimed that you’re not supposed to try to wake up from such an experience because you’ll lose a part of yourself. so what did i lose? what’s left? as long as it’s not my sharp sense of humour and my lightning quick intellect, i’ve got off scot free, right?

it’s too dark out to even watch the train yards and scrap metal warehouses go by, how boring.

this shitty, cold, shivering business reminds me that although i don’t fully expect to end up back at shuter this fall, it’s totally possible. and i will be cold. in bed. with long johns. mittens. two pairs of socks. i’ve been making tiny preparations here and there for the move that might never be: lynds and i made an impromptu trip to ikea today. i really only needed to buy hooks and shelves to store my mutating collection of scarves and tea cups, and ended up with more bedding, as if blue-green sova pillowcases are really what’s up. jesus. i keep blaming this insanely depressing colour scheme that i love on the desert. i want to totally drop out of school and take any and all monies that i would have to new mexico, to arizona, to whatever, some american desert and just write some books, tanning until my freckles become an even brown, and cuddling up with tea as the sun sets and the shadows get longer and longer until it’s cold, really cold. it’s like my venezuela dream, part two. i think it’s really just my life telling me to take a fucking break and chill with some coyotes. maybe i’d adopt one as a pet. and name him like sequin, or something.

at least i’ve had the time to read since i quit one job, and that’s probably what has contributed to my weird, dreamy haze right now. i’ve spent far too many hours in my bed ploughing through magical thinking by augusten burroughs, who is not, unfortunately, the offspring of one william s. burroughs, but i’ll take it anyways, and some of the lovely bones by alice sebold. burroughs’ book was totally hilarious–he feels like some outrageous bro of mine that was just telling me wacky anecdotes for hours at a time. but really, with a book whose chapter titles include ass burger and holy blow job, it’s gotta be great, right? right. sebold’s novel is kind of a harsh blow after the fluffy, spoiled, liberace-esque world that burroughs lives in: in the first chapter of the lovely bones, a fourteen year old girl is raped and stabbed to death by her skeezy neighbour. in her backyard. almost. it’s really heartbreaking, and i don’t like heartbreaking, and it’s about heaven, and i don’t dig heaven–but at least it seems feminist and presents a cool idea about what happens after we die. and it makes me love my family a lot. we’ll see, it might get too fuzzy for me. but, oh my god, i just realized that it’s being into a film with susan sarandon: be still my heart.

i’m stuffed: zoni and gilb and i decided that it would be a good idea to go to monfort’s and order a very specific, vegan, nut-free version of their maza platter for five–there were THREE of us. we ended up with roughly twenty falafel balls and a whole trough full of bathenjane and baba ganoush. we tried to call people to come take some of the food off of our hands, literally, but we just ended up with some crazy stomach pains. you know when you get so full that you have to leave just a little pita crust on your plate, because GOOD LORD YOU ARE GOING TO BLOW UP OTHERWISE. it’s like you’re literally shoving food down your face with one hand, and trying to stop yourself with the other. our waiter just looked at us like we were fucking nuts, and seemed hesistant to let three relatively skinny people try to consume enough food to fully satisfy the appetites of all of our fellow restaurant patrons…and a couple people just passing through the neighbourhood. anyways, it’s all starting to settle, and i think that it’s probably best if i just put my fat ass to bed.

and just because i’m feeling particularly hilarious, go over to dooce and get a load of her totally hilarious take on caterday.

lawlz.

speaking of beer, glorious beer (and i’m pounding an oh-so-typical grasshopper wheat beer right now, oh estrogen!) metro news published an article about women and beer. now, before i say anything else, let me remind you of my deep love for both women and beer; just read, and tell me what i’m objecting to.

i’m in the city now, in my old place, although i just went to measure my new room a couple doors down. i was apprehensive when we rolled up here last night: toronto has and is about to undergo some pretty ridiculous and unsavoury budget cuts to policing, community centres, the ttc, and lower level (meaning part time and temp workers) government peeps, all because david miller just plain and simply saw a disaster looming and ran out of ideas as to how to fix it. instead he pulled the “let’s give them less and ask for more taxes, because lord knows that that’s the easiest way to go without having to give myself or my buddies a pay cut“. add to this that this province, and this city in particular has seen it’s unemployment levels rise, AND that i finally made it through children of men; i feel totally distopian, like this place is about to disintegrate into a hellish sinkhole festering with shoddy social services and general discontent. not cool.

so as i was saying, children of men has me all freaked out. i, like every other person on earth who has read a book and enjoyed it, appreciates the distopian genre of literature. it started with orwellian fatalism, as it always does, and led me to the point where i am literally crying because michael caine’s character was killed ‘in cold blood’ (word up for having to read capote and mailer in my lit non-fiction class next year). anyways, i totally think that all of that bullshit is possible–we’re doomed. i don’t mean that i fully expect all of it’s creepy premonitions to come true, but i definitely see a lot of haters (see those nasty chicks in the sobey’s parking lot yesterday, wtf?) around who are bringing us down. including me.

i’ve been working on this post for way too long, and i’ve lost the wherewithall to finish it–i’ve only got one job now and it’s making me lazy as shit. before you go, send a letter to mattel and tell them that you don’t give a fuck about american kids who are stupid enough to swallow magnets, but that you’d really like them to review their ethics in their chinese/taiwanese factories. $2 export taxes paid by china on barbie doll as one of THEIR exports? PUH-LEASE.

oh, and is anyone else tired of seeing these fucking astronauts (who also happen to be chicks) on tv being asked how they do their hair in space? they’re physicists! holy shit!

i’m so tired of the cbc.

my urge to return to school could be explained by the recent barrage of tv ads from those ‘big box’ slaveships. apparently, i’m supposed to be really pumped about spending money on binders and pens, while my parents once again grapple with my impending move. i knew that the fun was over when the 2008 IKEA catalogue arrived at my house (and i started seeing the actually pretty adorable commercials on every tv station, all the time). i’m not so crazy about this year’s collection; it’s just a lot of left over stuff that i already got last year, and all of their new stuff is sort of tacky. their designers used too much red, even though purple would have been a much more appropriate substitute. i’ve had some really weird associations with colour lately–i won’t even get within three feet of the colour blue.

anyways, i spent this past saturday night on a date with said book, marking pages with turquoise (which isn’t blue at all, so don’t start) and thinking about stencils for the walls in my new place. oh, and david suzuki was there–i tried to watch the nature of things again, but i just keep finding that it’s not really that innovative or creative. now that i’ve become a slave to planet earth (and since the bbc has eaten my soul), i can’t watch nature shows without expecting super hi-def shots and rad camera tricks. so what i’m really trying to say is that i’ve been staying up late most nights catching up on being a geek. fo sho.

and allow me to be the first one to say that i’m off the beckham bandwagon. posh and becks have just become some kind of weird american pet project–they’re totally media saturated and obviously soaking up every last bit of publicity that they can. becks has only played sixteen minutes with his new team, the la galaxy, this season, and famously sat out of (he didn’t dress either, that presumptuous bastard) this past sunday’s game in toronto. honestly, if you break it down, he’s made $1.5 million a minute (or at least for the total amount of his contract divided by time), for basically being a dead ball captain. so great becks, let’s see another stellar corner kick. get outta here.

i’ve been writing all day–or at least for the few wakeful hours that i have constituted as a sufficient number to be considered a ‘day’–switching back and forth between this post and a reactionary letter to some twat ‘columnist’ for the flamborough post. kevin werner, oh, you misinformed fool, wrote a lovely editorial piece for the august 3rd edition of said publication entitled ‘the gender issue’. it seems as though his only issue is with his own gender and how his views about it continually shape his reality. i fired off this really obscene diatribe at my mother right after i read it and then tried to write a very calm, mature letter to him afterwards, as per her advice. i’ve almost finished my letter, which includes some great little quips such as, “men ritualistically take their privilege for granted”, and “well, mr. werner, it seems as though the only issue here is, and i’ll use your term, ‘gender pressure’, from men upon women to adhere to a specific standard or role”. good lord, it’s fun to shake up suburbia; i’ll post the entire letter once it’s done–gimme a couple more days.

oh, and i’ve been all about collaborations lately–if you get a chance download ‘drivin me wild’–it’s common and lily allen.

okay, i think that this process has been laborious enough for both you and i, so i’m gonna get out for some beer and nachos.