November: "Blah" and "Bah!" Combined

7:38 AM Edit This 0 Comments »

November is a hell of a month.

The days darken and we actively make them darker. The weather turns cold, but no snow falls to dazzle or calm us. Our only celebration is one that forces reflection on the human cost of war.

It makes life seem harder to live somehow. Not that it takes the will to live from you (that’s February’s privilege) only the desire to live actively.

In November it seems a burden to get up in the morning, an affront to have to put those pants on one leg at a time. You lose the desire to filter your thoughts before saying them aloud, to stop at the grocery store to nourish yourself, to stir the milk into your coffee.

November is all apathy and resignation and stuffy noses and offense. It’s chilly fingers and dusty corners and library fines and backaches. It’s chapped heels and ruddy cheeks and brittle finger nails and tell-tale roots. It’s insomnia and scratchy tights and pitch black supper hours and self pity.

And, mercifully, it is almost over.

V was really for Veuve Cliquot

9:16 AM Edit This 1 Comment »

I wrote something about Burton Cummings on the train the other day, but have yet to get my act together to type in here.


So instead I’ll type a little something from Sir Winston Churchill:

“Remember gentlemen, we are not just fighting for France, but Champagne!”

A Very Happy Hallowe'en

6:28 AM Edit This 1 Comment »

From Peter, Paul, Ace and Gene! Posted by Picasa

Three times a bridesmaid...

12:12 PM Edit This 0 Comments »

...makes this one my fourth.

The traditional role of the bridesmaid is to confuse evil forces wishing to spirit away the bride before the big event.

I've gone four rounds with the underworld and nary an abduction on my watch.

Buffy the Bridesmaid at your service. Posted by Picasa

Shine Again Little Fighter!

7:02 AM Edit This 0 Comments »
Those of you who damn 80s hair metal as slick and souless have OBVIOUSLY never heard the anthemic enviro-rock song that is "Little Fighter" by White Lion.

Those of you who have heard it and resisted it's fist-pumping, foot stomping, scarf twirling charm, well... I weep for you.

I also think Warrant's "I Saw Red" is a nice little ditty too.

Yeah.

I mean it.

Meet Kate, Meet Stewart

6:38 AM Edit This 0 Comments »

Meet Kate:

This day, from now on to be known as the day he left, was no different from any other. This bothered her. She was breaking up with the man she had loved, or whatever, for four yeas. Wasn’t it time for crying jags, masochistic drinking binges and emotional self-abuse?

Was she really going to survive this major life change with only a mild headache and irritation over scratches his movers had left on the hardwood.

The phone rings and Allison’s number pops up on the phone. It sounds like salvation. This means sitting at home is soon to become a break-up booze up with her bestie. This means self-indulgent actions with no consequence. This means free drinks. This is what normal people did when they ended four-year relationships.

“You’d better be calling with a plan and a pocket full of money,” she says in lieu of hello.

“What? Hunni how are you? Are you drunk?”

“No I’m not drunk. I’m not sorry that he left, and I’m not glad he’s gone. But let’s focus on the not drunk bit. It seems the part most likely to change with the least effort in the shortest period of time. Oh, how are you?”

“Fine. On my way over I guess, but the traffic’s nasty. Can you just meet me The Local instead? Then we can get right ripped and promote some prosperity for local enterprise.”

“It’s great the way you make me feel smart by using all that lawyer talkin’,” Kate says sweetly, cradling the receiver as she grabs her bag off the table and jams keys and sunglasses inside. It is nearly evening, but Kate feels new relationship widows should have their shades on hand to mask any tears... or in her case lack thereof.

Ali snorts into the phone. “Yeah well, if I associated with dumb people it could harm my stellar reputation.”

“Funny. I’m heading out and the drink will be running when you get there.... along with a tab in your name. See you soon.”

Meet Stewart:

Stewart sits at the bar. His jacket pulled tightly against his body, lips pulled tightly against his teeth. He is cold despite the fire and a pitcher of draft. This place is his second home, but it doesn’t feel it tonight. He wonders if that had anything to do with the fact that he is now homeless.

A heavy arm lands on his shoulder and a slurred voice offers to “by you a drink.” His funds are low, but he isn’t in the mood to barter friendship for beer. With a shrug he removes the offending limb. His would-be sugar-daddy grunts and spins around to look at the “piece of shit who thinks he’s too good to let me buy him a beer.”

Stewart puts his head down, slides off his stool and out the door hoping to avoid a fight. Or as he tends to think of them, beatings.

He can’t fight at the best of times, and certainly not tonight. He can barely keep his knees from giving out, and not because of the fear of an impending ass kicking, well not only that. The twinges he’d felt in the pit of his stomach when he’d packed the last of his things this morning had not been the shock of his eviction from the love nest, but the initial warnings of a full blown case of the flu. A flu presumably passed on by the heartless bitch who evicted him, though she didn’t seem to be suffering any symptoms. Typical.

Out on the street, he briefly debates exorcising the virus and a demon or two by picking up a hooker. A constant urge to vomit curbs the desire, well not only that. Truth be told, he’s never actually attempted to pick up a hooker before. Not because he is in any way against it, but because of a fear that he may be rejected.

Stewart feels the December air creeping up the sleeves of his jacket and tries to pick up the pace, but the effort leads to an intense coughing spasm knocks which leads to him falling flat on his ass.

From this vantage point, he comes to realize a few things. The first; that he is kind of drunk. The second; that he gave his heart to a woman, and when he headed out the door of their (now her) apartment this morning she had failed to return it. The third; He is in fact quite drunk and won’t be getting up off the ground any time soon.

A winter’s night is not a good time to take up temporary residence on the street, thinks Stewart. There is something about lifting your head off the pavement to coming face-to-face with the homeless guy you always mean to buy a coffee for and never do that doesn’t allow you to feel sorry for yourself but instead forces you to remember that sometimes you can be a real asshole.

“I’m going to end up just like him,’ thinks Stewart, all cold and lonely and resentful of the sad looks happy people are shooting him on their way to more important things.

“I ‘m going to die here tonight,” he mumbles to the twinkling stars. “I really think I am going to die.”

“The only way you’re going to die tonight is if I kick your ass for leaving me waiting at the bar for the last hour,” replies a voice from somewhere overhead.

Then a woman’s face appears above him. In his increasingly feverish state, he thinks for a moment that she might be an angel. His guardian angel, come to take him home. Wherever that was now.

The woman sticks an icy hand under his head, propping him up roughly against a building and then Stewart knows who she is. He knows that she is not an angel and he knows that she is furious.

He tries to tell her he’s sorry he’d forgotten to meet her. He tries to tell her he has a cold. He wants to ask her how her day was and if she could help him up because the sidewalk is damp.

What he says is, “the bitch kept the ring AND my Boston albums!”

Then Stewart starts to cry.

“Aw Jesus. She chucked you,” she says grabbing his arm and watches in horror as he blows his nose on her scarf.

“Oh fuck, you’re a mess. I guess we should get you home”

As the word leaves her mouth Stewart’s eyes well up again. She sighs, hails a cab and says, “OK not home then. I’ll take you to The Local.”

A Spoonful of Cinnamon

8:11 AM Edit This 0 Comments »

There are reasons why it’s better to go down kicking and screaming than to be simply swept away. But at that hour of morning she was hard pressed to remember any of them. At that time of day it seemed inconceivable Sophie could muster up the effort necessary to defend herself from this verbal onslaught.

No. It was much easier just to sit there glassy-eyed and take it.

And in this manner she was fired, again. Ending her stint at the fourth accountancy firm she’d been dismissed from this year.

The first time she’d been tearful, the second put out. By round three a sense of déjà vu left her feeling only mild amusement. And by number four her general attitude would be best described as resigned.

In all cases she’d have been happy to scream “I quit”, but had remained silent until her total lack of enthusiasm and work ethic said it for her.

With her newly old boss still leaning over his desk, accusatory finger still pointed, saliva still glistening at the corners of his mouth, she stood, exited the room, grabbed her purse and Fichus plant of the desk and saw herself out.

It was just after nine o’clock in the morning and she was unemployed again. The feeling was like that of an old pair of shoes. Perhaps a little uncomfortable now but so familiar you don’t mind it.

That she had been sacked didn’t bother her. She didn’t care much for accounting or accountants. In fact she was pretty sure she was done with the field altogether.

That she was broke didn’t bother her either. In fact, to her mind she wasn’t broke…. yet. She had some outstanding salary to collect and some vacation pay. She was going to be broke, no doubt, and soon.

But not today.

Today she could still take herself over to the fancy coffee shop, where they sprinkled cinnamon on absolutely everything, to buy a little treat to cheer herself up. She was rather fond of cinnamon.

It wasn’t until after she was sitting at a window table with her plant at her feet and her hands around an enormous steaming cup that she realized the one thing that did bother her about the whole situation.

She had an “I told you so” coming to her. It was likely to be more than one, she had become quite the spectacular failure in the working department, but there was one to come from a most unpleasant source. A screeching, gloating, judgmental source.

Sophie took a long slow sip and wondered how long she could go without Heather finding out about it. Not long she decided.

Her sister would know the minute they saw each other. There were no secrets from Heather, (Hawk-Eye their father had dubbed her). The girl had an uncanny knack of sizing you up in a heartbeat, then broadcasting your innermost secrets in stereo. Sophie remembered:

Walking out of the bathroom one day shortly after her 12th birthday; “OH MY GOD! You’ve got your PERIOD!”

At 16 running up the stairs brown bag in hand; “OH MY GOD! You’re on the PILL!”

At 23 sitting down to dinner dry-eyed and tight lipped: “OH MY GOD! He DUMPED YOU!”

Thinking on it, she couldn’t recall any event in her life that hadn’t been conveyed to her family in this way. Older and wiser, Heather had been the narrator of Sophie’s life for over a quarter century.

Not that Sophie wouldn’t have like to get a word in edgewise every once in a while to set some things straight. (It is truly amazing the way your family can know every single thing about and understand absolutely nothing.) But trying to stop Heather was like trying to slow a freight train down by blowing on it.

No, Sophie had learned. It was so much easier to just sit there glassy-eyed and take it. Being Heather’s little sister was the only job she'd never managed to lose, and as much as it pained her to admit it, she wouldn't quit this one either.

Draining the last of her cuppa even as her bladder protested, she fished her cell phone out of her bag and dialed a number.

“’lo?”

“Hi Hez, it’s me”

“OH MY GOD! They SACKED you!”

Note To Canada's Disenfranchised Youth...

12:22 PM Edit This 0 Comments »
STOP SHOOTING PEOPLE!!!!

Go do some drugs or drink alone or listen to Morrisey like eveyone else before you did.

Jesus...

http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006
/09/13/shots-dawson.html


The One Set In A Science Fiction Setting

9:48 AM Edit This 1 Comment »

Jefferson stirred his coffee as the voice of a long-dead entertainer told complained that “it’s lonely out in space”.

No lonelier than anywhere else he thought staring out the observation panel into the darkness.

He would know, having spent the greater part of a decade moored in this station to the edge of a planet not unlike his own, but quite unwelcoming to the notion of permanent residents. The years of wealthy tourists lining up for a taste of “Life on Mars” were long since over It was now difficult to tempt even scientific minds to come and try a hand at turning the inhospitable red orb into a home.

No, after 40 years of circling its hostile borders, losing time, and lives and hope and, most importantly, money, the human race had decided to turn attention to saving the old tattered planet instead.

But still Jefferson came, begging funding from the few moneyed pessimists and doomsday prophets hedging their bets for survival. He had managed to keep his unrequited courtship with Mars hobbling along, though he was now a team of one, often left for months at a time in the crumbling station.

He’d wait until his very last crate of TANG (traditions must be respected) had been opened before requesting one of the sleek silver rockets now used primarily as pleasure cruisers providing tours of the outer orbit come to bring him back so he could restock supplies and recharge power sources.

He never stayed long.

Why?

Because, coward that he was, Jefferson found Mars was a less terrifying alternative to suicide and he felt he had no reason to stay on this Earth any longer.

Why?

A woman of course.

THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS, STAY TUNED

What shall come to pass...

10:45 AM Edit This 0 Comments »

I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.

Stop it. You have to stop it.

Have some mercy.

I think I’m going to pass out, please.

You can’t keep it going like this, I can’t take it.

I think I just…. Yes I’ve lost bladder control.

Oh my god, it’s still coming.

Let me up… let me up off this couch I need to get out of here.

Can you at least press pause and let me catch my breath?

I hope you’ve had this thing Scotch-guarded.

An excerpt from a conversation you yourself may have as you watch the copy of Little Miss Sunshine that has just come in on DVD to the local video store.

Can't wait? Then see it in the theatre... and wear some Depends.

I Know You Do Honey

8:47 AM Edit This 0 Comments »

“I am planning to put some pictures up. I know how it looks,” Patrick said as he ushered his guest through the spacious and sparsely decorated living room and into the kitchen.

“Of course,” She replied, just as she’d replied during every visit she’d made since he’d taken ownership of the loft.

“I mean, I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “Six months and it still looks like a warehouse or something.

“No, No,” She soothed, I think it’s nice. It’s… roomy.”

“I know you all think I’m not committing to this whole change your environment change your life plan blah, blah, blah. But I totally am. Not that the whole commitment thing has worked out for me so far, ha ha.” He said pouring her a cup of coffee from the impressive looking espresso machine on the counter. The elaborate chrome and eagle-topped contraption had been a wedding present, and the only thing he’d taken from his last kitchen.

And, as far as she could tell, it was the only thing he had added to the new one.

It was like that all over the house. Bare rooms spotted with odd and impractical remembrances of his married life. A gilded music holidng wet towels in the bathroom, a large oak humidor used as a TV stand in the bedroom. And a wrought iron garden bench tossed with mismatched linen pillows in the living room where he was now directing her to take a seat as there was no other chair in the place.

“So, speaking of horrible failures, have you talked to her lately?” He said far too brightly to convince her that he wasn’t desperate for news.

“Pat honey, I thought we agreed to skip this whole nightmare topic for a while,” she said wearily. She’d tried to say it humorously, forcefully and even pleadingly in past visits but with very little success.

“Yeah. Sure, whatever. That’s totally fine. I don’t even really care; I was just asking to be polite…. And, you know, because she was only the freakin’ love of my life and one true soul mate,” he added with a lopsided grin that would have broken her heart if she hadn’t begun to steel herself against it months ago. So she simply changed the subject.

“How’s work?”

“Oh work’s work. I show up, slap on my natty headset, tell a few people that maybe they shouldn't off themselves, punch my time card and come home.” He replied, absently stretching his long legs out to meet the upturned wine rack-cum-coffee table. Cherry would she guessed, expensive, and notably empty.

“Well, that just sounds like hell.”

She often worried about his decision to work at a suicide hotline, more so now that Brit had left him. But even when he was having a relationship with the lady herself and not her absence, he’d never really been one to look on the bright side.

“Oh don’t worry. If I was going to kill myself I’d do it because she’s left me to wallow alone in my own mad and obsessive love for her. Not because some fat fucker in Etobicoke can’t get laid and hates his gay father.”

“Comforting, that’s really comforting Pat. So that’s work taken care of. What’s the next topic of conversation you’d like to bring to a screeching halt?” She asked wriggling forward to dislodge a metal rose from between her forth and fifth vertebrae.

“Health? Let’s see. I went to the doctor for my physical on Tuesday. So far no doomsday calls, and for the first time in six months I had someone caress my balls without paying for the privilege. Thank you OHIP!”

“Oh Christ. Well, that covers your sex life too.”

“Yessiree. We are just whipping through this visit buddy.”

“Well it does help that you haven’t bothered to make any inquiries into my health or well being.”

“Oh. Sorry. I have been wondering…. Pregnant or just bloated?”

“Hilarious.”

“Seriously, how are things in Utero?”

“So far, so good. Have the first ultra sound scheduled for next week.”

“Can you get photos of that?”

“Uh-huh”

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

“Wow, two in a row? I’m flabbergasted, let her rip.”

“It’s not mine is it?”

“Well seeing as we’ve never had sex, I’m thinking it’s not.”

“I guess. Though you do use my toilet. A lot. Every time you are here. And maybe sometimes in my excitement I’ve missed the mark a little?”

“O.K. So now I am picturing you masturbating into the toilet and I am a little nauseous. What I am not, however, is carrying your baby, which you would know if you had paid any attention to the public health nurse in Seventh grade.”

“Pity. If it was mine you could send me the ultra sound and I’d have something to hang on my wall. Maybe I’ll be the godfather?”

“No chance jack off Johnny.”

“Nice talk from the pregnant woman gulping down a double espresso. I wouldn’t want to be any kind of father to your junkie baby anyway.”

“Maybe it’s better when we do only talk about you.”

“I miss her Sarah.”

“I know you do honey.”

Sometimes...

8:42 AM Edit This 0 Comments »
You're Internet goes down.

And you can't access things for a week or so.

And that starts to feel like years.

And then you can't even imagine how it was that you were able to write the things you did.

How did you do that?

Why does it seem so impossible now?

We Go Together...

9:42 AM Edit This 0 Comments »

It’s too damn hot to be this angry, but he’d gotten himself good and outraged and even the blanket of wet smog over the city could not smother it.

Something has his Irish up. Even from the other side of the party she can see his index finger jabbing accusingly into the arm of young David standing to his left.

“How can anyone get that worked up at a toddler’s birthday party?” Lila asks her daughter gesturing towards her Henry and trying to determine if she likes her nephew enough to walk over and save him from the one-fingered assault.

“David told him if they’d wanted a professional clown for the party today they should have seen if the Prime Minister was free,” Anna responds by way of explanation.

“Oh well, the hell with him then,” Lila says dismissing the young man’s pleading gazes. “He’s brought this on himself.”

“Except that if dad keeps this up he’s going to have a heart attack, scarring your grandson and all his little friends for life,” Anna says pushing her mother gently towards the eye of the storm.

Lila tries to resist but can’t help noticing the florid colouring of her husbands face; A mixture of too much sun, too many vodka tonics and entirely too much investment in the defense our nation’s leader.

So she sighs, squares her shoulder’s and crosses the lawn.

“Watching you making this much of a public spectacle, I’d at least hope it would be in the defense of MY honour,” she says stepping between the two men and gently running a hand across her Henry’s forehead wiping away the beads of sweat.

“Oh these kids, Lila,” Her Henry practically spits at her. “They think they know everything. They’ve never had to work for anything in there lives. Never had to fight for anything. Everything always just handed to them and then they bite the hands that feed them!”

She grabs his hand just before he’s about to land a jab. “Don’t even think about it. And quit yelling at me, I’m not one of the kids. Actually quit yelling full stop. This is your grandson’s birthday party and you had better just simmer down and little and enjoy it.”

“I’m not yelling. I’m just trying to set this boy straight.” Her Henry says, attempting to temper his anger but succeeding only in making his words come out strangled and monotone.

“Honest to god Henry….,” she mumbles then turns towards David saying “it’s a miracle I haven’t murdered this one yet.”

But as she looks at her nephew, with his confident stance and indulgent smile, her irritation turns into another feeling entirely.

And as she hears him say, to her Henry, “You sure can get fired up about things there Unc. Best watch your blood pressure. Ha! Ha!” and the placating tone penetrates into her brain, the feeling hardens.

And as she sees that whatever affection this boy has for her Henry is laced with pity; pity for an old man with an old body and older notions. She realizes if there was one man she’d gladly kill at the moment, it was not her Henry.

And she proceeds to tell him so, ensuring the point is hammered home with the tip of a well manicured mail.

You Cannot Kill A Man Whilst Wearing Flip Flops

1:15 PM Edit This 0 Comments »

She had become so fixated the knot in the centre of the interrogation room’s scarred oak table that her whole body leaned into it like a tree in a wind storm.

So intent was her focus it seemed all consuming, causing the detectives to jump inside their sweat-soaked blazers as she snapped her head up to say, “You couldn’t kill anyone wearing flip flops.”

“Excuse me?” said the shorter of her two interrogators.

The good cop she assumed. An assumption based solely on the fact that he was the larger of the two men (his partner being a freakishly tall man who could not have weighed much more than she did). Blame Santa but she couldn’t help but equate fat with jolly.

Though to be honest neither of them had been overly friendly towards her, not at all like on T.V. The heat in the station was making everybody cranky and on edge.

She turned her eyes towards them, trying to ignore the magnetic pull of the table knot, then silently stood up and began a slow march around the table. The detectives watched her in a silence broken only by the hum of the overhead fan and the sound her leather sandals made as the slapped against the heels of her feet.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. To a sum total of 32 thwacks before she was back at her chair, looking up at them expectantly. She was rewarded with more silence and a raised eyebrow from Detective Tall.

She was a bit surprised. These men were supposed to be cracker-jack crime fighters, but it appeared further explanation was in order.

“He was shot from behind, you said. At close range, you said. Well you can’t just sneak up on someone if you are wearing flip flops. They are WAY too loud.”

A full minute went by as the detectives looked at her, then at each other, then at whoever was behind the one-way mirror filling the back wall of the room.

“I’m sorry Mrs. Marshall. But I think we’re having a misunderstanding here. We brought you up from the holding cell because you told us you had an alibi,” said Detective Tall.

“Yes,” she agreed.

“Ma'am, it’s late and I’m tired, and frankly, I’m sweating like a pig. So maybe we you can just go on ahead and give it to us,” said Santa Cop in a tone that made her think perhaps he wasn’t the good cop after all.

“I just did.”

“Ma’am?”

“My flip flops. I’ve been wearing them all day. Even at supper time when Ethan was shot. He was shot around supper time, you said.”

Santa sat down at the table and ran his hands through his hair, then down along his pant legs to dry them off. She tried desperately not to look as disgusted as she felt.

“Ma’am, were you or were you not in your house around 5 O'clock?”

“No. I wasn’t”

“You weren’t?”

“No… I was in the garden.”

“So when your husband was being shot in the den, you were not in the house but directly behind the house. Is there anyone besides you and your dead husband to attest to the fact that you were not the one doing the shooting?”

“But it couldn’t have been me! You heard the noise these shoes made. How could you kill anyone in shoes like these? Especially someone like Ethan, who everyone knows could hear a tap dripping from four rooms away?”

“So ma’am what you are telling me is that in fact you do not have an alibi. You have a dead husband, a murder weapon in your car, and million dollar life insurance claim to send off. But you do not have an alibi,” said Santa, becoming Grinch-ier by the minute.

“Well it’s an excuse then, whatever,” she said allowing some annoyance to creep into her finishing-school perfected voice.

“And this “excuse” is the audible volume of a pair of sandals you may or may not have been wearing at 5 o’clock today? I have that right,” he said leaning across the table.

For a wild minute she thought he might be sucked into the vortex at the centre of the table knot. But looking at him stuffed into his large rayon suit she knew it would taking quite a lot of sucking on the part of the vortex to accomplish that feat. So she was forced to rebut.

“Of course I was wearing them then! I’ve still got them on haven’t I?” she said, now using the frosty tone usually reserved for her housekeeper and nanny.

From the corner of the room Detective Tall made a gesture into the mirror and walked over to the table.

“O.K. Well I think we are about done here Mrs. Marshall. We’re sending someone in to take you back to holding.”

“Holding? You mean you’re keeping me here?” she said looking confused. What part of this were they missing? She tried one more time to explain.

“You just wouldn’t kill your husband wearing flip flops. Barefoot surely, in trainers or even stilettos if you were a little kinky, but you just cannot kill a man wearing flip flops!”

“Be that as it may Ms. Marshall, if I were you I’d seriously start thinking about a meeting with my lawyer,” he said opening the door for a uniformed guard who took her arm in his clammy hand and helped her to her feet.

“Oh this is just ridiculous!” she snapped as she was turned towards the door.

“Well ridiculous or not, I’m thinking you might be getting a little scared just about now,” he said, a small smile playing on his lips as she was led out of the room.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

“The innocent have no fear detective.”

Thwack.

“Nor do the pathological Mrs. Marshall.”

So I've been Thinking

9:04 AM Edit This 1 Comment »

There are times when I think I’ve done all the interesting, spontaneous, life-enriching things I am going to do in this lifetime.

There are times when I think it’s pathetic to go out and drink and dance and get sloppy, and times when I still think it’s cool to smoke cigarettes and romantic to drink alone and feel indulgently sad.

Sometimes I think I could still learn to play the guitar. Don't think I'll ever record an album, but from time to time I still think I’ll write a novel.

I rarely think it’s a novel anyone would publish… or one I’d ever let anyone read.

I refuse to think I’ll die alone… for more than a minute or two. I think I may own a dog one day. I’m not so sure about a child but I think I want one though.

I don’t think I’ll own a home but I think I’ll find a place to call home (possibly a few).

I think it’d be cool to have a car, but then I think it would be expensive and frustrating more often than not.

Sometimes I think I’m hopelessly flawed, and then I think I’m being melodramatic. Then there I times I think I’m really pretty (but I don’t think I’d go around asking for confirmation on it in case I get a response I don’t really want to hear.)

There are times when I can't think about anything at all.

That’s when I stop writing....

Something That Turned Into Something Else

1:02 PM Edit This 0 Comments »

It is the unfortunate truth that he is never so handsome as when he’s angry.

He isn’t terrible to look at or anything. He has a pleasant face and a hairstyle kept tidy with regular trimmings. He is slightly taller than average, with a hint of muscle on his medium frame. All and all he’s easy on the eyes, if a little bit vanilla.

But when he gets angry, how to explain it? Things… shift.

The colour comes into his face to highligh jutting cheekbones and strong jaw line you always swear weren’t there before. His roundness becomes angles and his softness hardens and you think you might like him better that way.

And this always makes you smile which makes him step closer, eyes snapping and burning. As he glares at you, you remark, as always, that you had forgotten how deep the blue of his eyes is, like the ocean. This never fails to enrage him further, but you just can’t help it.

You’ve fallen into them, swimming.

And he yells in your ear but you never hear what he says because it always sounds like thunder (or is that just your heart beating?) And you think you should turn from him but you never do because the heat between you is stifling and you’re drowning in him and he is terrifying and beautiful and you are tired and sad.

And you always think that if he’d just put his arms around you, you could sleep forever.

And his hand always does reach out for you. But only to make you sleep a little while.

FYI

12:51 PM Edit This 1 Comment »
On a day like this...


At a lake like this...


If you do a little of this...


You can make a little something like this...


 Posted by Picasa

True Fine(ite) Love

12:43 PM Edit This 0 Comments »

There was nothing for it. She was going to have to tell him.

She’d spent all day searching, starting in the obvious places and finally resorting to unhooking the drain pipe and staring through the slats in the deck. But the ring was gone. Her engagement ring was gone. And not even St. Anthony seemed capable of bringing it back.

She didn’t know when the little band of gold and rock and promise had slipped off her finger. It was her housekeeper, Anita, who had alerted her to the fact that it was gone, asking her if she took it off when she typed.

It was as she said, “No, I always have it on.” that she realized her finger was bare. This struck her as more curious than tragic, until she looked up to see the horror in the elder woman’s face. A horror she belatedly tried to mimic, unconvincingly.

The ring, she had barely taken it off since the night he gave it to her. In the very beginning she didn’t wear it at night (it tended to get caught on the expensive sheets) but he looked so wounded whenever he saw her slip it off she’d stopped and it had become a permanent fixture until….

When had it fallen? Had she been wearing it that morning? The evening before? The day before that? She truly had no idea.

Trying to focus in on the last time she’d seen it, she found that, for all the months it had been a part of her, she couldn’t really picture it on her finger. Couldn’t quite remember what it would have looked like sitting there winking back at her.

Processing this, she could see Anita from the corner of her eye hovering by the office door and watching for a more suitable reaction. So she dropped to her knees behind her desk in a move she hoped both hid her from view and showed a genuine feminine upset at this turn of events.

While she was patting the pristine carpet, she thought of asking the housekeeper the last time she’d seen the ring. But she was unwilling to further scandalize the proper British woman was already staring down at her with all the judgment of Zeus.

She toyed with the idea of bursting into tears as a way of making amends but instead stayed tuck under her desk murmuring concerns scratching the pile until the door clicked shut.

She was upset about losing it, of course. It was a lovely ring and a large one.

But what truly shook her was how she hadn’t noticed it was gone. And how, her memory of it now, for all its size and weight, felt tenuous and hazy.

And she could not have been long without it she reasoned rolling onto her back. He’d been away two weeks; she must have had it on when he left. He would have noticed its absence. He had a tendency to stare at it, mesmerized, twisting it to see the sparkle.

“This is how much I love you” he’d tell her holding the hand up to better catch the light.

It wasn’t as crass as it sounded. Not really. It was just that he had no belief in the value of the infinite. He kept his emotions like he kept his investments, tied to solid assets.

And now he was hours away from coming home and she’d gone and lost his love somewhere, shed it like snakeskin and not even noticed. How could she tell him that? How could she ever explain it?

She began to panic. She had to find the ring. She jumped to her feet and scanned and floor. Then she turned to the desk, strewing papers and yanking on drawer handles with fervor enough to satisfy even Anita. She did not find it.

She ran to the bedroom checking first in the sheets, then fanning out across the room kicking shoes and digging through boxes she knew she had not touched in years. She did not find it. From room to room she went, shoving and lifting and praying and calling out for his love like a lost pup. She did not find it.

Hours later she sat, defeated, in a shirt smeared with drain sludge and a handful of deck slivers but without a ring. And she knew everything was over.

She didn’t love him. She never had. But the day he’d opened up the teal blue box to show her the sum total of his affection, she thought that maybe he loved enough for two.

But she’d lost his love and had nothing to replace it. And it was over.

And he was coming up the driveway. And she was going to have to tell him.

C'mon C'mon Let's Dance All Night

7:44 AM Edit This 0 Comments »

When you hear the heat humming in your ears like crickets…

When you feel the sun burning your shoulders and like it too much to move…

When you’re blinded by pavement glare and dazzled by diamond-laced pool waters…

When you can feel the ice-cold beer sliding down your throat all the way to your stomach…

When you create a party out of a bag of potatoes, a bottle of wine and a pack of smokes…

When you would rather be dirty and eaten alive than inside four walls…

It’s summer in the city

(Hot Time!)

To Be Honest With You

1:12 PM Edit This 2 Comments »

She missed him.

It’s strange she knew since she was not even sure exactly who she was missing. He’d only been around a few hours, drunken ones at that. But she missed him just the same.

His arrival had produced a moment perhaps, provided an inlet in the river of everyday happenings. A place to pause before life swept her along in its inevitable way back to morning espressos and work-a-days and TV movies and after dinner drinks.

It wasn’t that time stood still or any other vomitous notion like it. It was, perhaps, that she had. She stood still.

She took two hours to have a look around a place she hadn’t been in quite some time.

It was a strange place full of unknown quantities and harmless subterfuges, double-edged comments and loaded gestures. Not a bad place really, but one she had always found to be foreign and disorienting.

To be honest most of the time it scared the hell out her, this place of instant intimacies and heavy lidded stares. In previous visits she had always been acutely aware that she couldn’t speak the language. She did not know their reindeer games. And, being that she hated losing, she opted never to play.

But that night, well, she’d felt lucky. The cynical might say she was just lonely. But whether she felt unbeatable or simply that she had nothing to lose, the outcome was the same. From the minute she saw him watching her, the game was on.

So unlike her to gaze at someone, inching them forward with an arch of her eyebrow...

So unusual to laugh easily with someone unknown...

To sit so close so soon.

But she did all these things until the taxi came to bring her home giddy from gin and good company.

And the next day she dressed herself and drank strong coffee and told tall tales about her exploits keeping one ear cocked slightly towards the living room phone.

And the next day she went back to work looking occasionally for an email she was fairly certain would not arrive.

And the next day she called her mother, knowing there was no need to keep the line free, then she poured herself a glass of wine and flicked on the television.

And the next day she told a friend she was up for a drink on the way home from the office.

And the next day she missed him.

Sage Advice (Or "How I Won the War")

12:48 PM Edit This 1 Comment »

-- “And If I’ve really pissed her off, I have to get myself in a position where I can rub her back.”

--“'scuse me?”

--“Yeah, it’s the only thing that calms her down. It’s tricky too, especially when she’s yelling and her hands are flying everywhere… she’s a hand talker you know… worse than a friggin’ Frenchmen. But if I can just get in there and start running my hand down her back, you know scratch it a little? Then I can usually start talking my way out of whatever it is I’ve done.”

--“Hmmm Interesting. And she hasn’t caught on to this yet?”

--“Oh no, she’s totally on to it. She even tries to start fights when her back is to the wall so I can’t get my arm around. But once I’m in there it’s like Pavlovian or something. She just kinda melts. It’s awesome.”

--“Jesus. I’m going to have to try that next time I’m in the shit.”

--“Well, make sure you pick the right moment to go in dude. Time it wrong and you’ll end up with a shot in the face. It’s happened to me more than once.”

--“But that's, like, accidental right?”

--“Well… I choose to think so.”


(Speaking of How I Won The War, someone brought home a good li'l Report Card and made Mama proud.)

What is Up with the Pleather Banquettes?

8:36 AM Edit This 1 Comment »

This week I had dinner at one of my favourite restaurants. I hadn’t been in ages since I had been erroneously informed that it had closed. But it wasn’t (yay!). The windows had simply been boarded up while the place received a face lift.

This, like most face lifts has had the effect of making the place look sleek, shiny and discomfortingly like every other restaurant opened or renovated in the last three years.

It was once a cacophony of multicoloured mosaic tiles and mod-ish kitschy knick knacks with a stage suitable for the rock ‘n’ the roll and big ass TV which aired American football most of the time. (American football being a huge part of most pan-Asian décor don’t you know.)

It is now a tasteful (read bare) box full of dark wood and white pleather banquettes -- The bastard child of Spring Rolls and Salad King. A copy cat of every thai restaurant in the city.

The food (thank the lord almighty) is still the same…. Yumbo and fairly cheap.

But the feel of the place is now more doctor’s waiting room that exotic food emporium.

I am all for making things better, but does better really have to mean equal parts bland and bamboo?

Just Stick the Knife in My Heart and be Done With it Stephen

8:48 AM Edit This 0 Comments »

So our fearless leader has decided that he needs to add some of this managerial magic to the press room. According to an article from the Globe and Mail:

“The prime minister does not want to hold press conferences unless his staff choose which journalists ask questions from a list they compile. "

The Ottawa press gallery has refused to play by those rules. So the gallery isn’t asking questions and the prime minister is dealing only with local media outlets which he deems less hostile.

But don’t let this decision fool you into thinking that this decision will effect the provision of hard hitting news stories about the government. Just today this crucial piece of news made headlines on Sympatico.msn.ca:

Tories reject recommendation to impose surtaxes on bike and barbecue imports

"On behalf of all retailers across Canada who sell bicycles and barbecues this is a huge victory for their customers and their businesses," Diane Brisebois, president and CEO of the industry association, said in a release.”

Now THAT’S what I call news… at least these days.

Sigh….

A L'il Bit of Column A...

11:11 AM Edit This 1 Comment »
Leo Traits

The One Hand:
  • Generous and warmhearted
  • Creative and enthusiastic
  • Broad-minded and expansive
  • Faithful and loving
The Other Hand:
  • Pompous and patronizing
  • Bossy and interfering
  • Dogmatic and intolerant

The Things You Think About

1:04 PM Edit This 0 Comments »

Her cotton skirt, thin and rain soaked, slapped wetly against her thighs as she walked. The feeling was both uncomfortable and enjoyable. An accurate definition of sensuality, hers anyway, she thought before determining the side of the road was not the most appropriate place to be thinking such things.

There was something of the amateur-erotic about her present state though. Her T-shirt transparent now and looking like she had poured it on, her hair blown free of its braid, the water streaked mascara and high colour on her cheeks.

“I might as well be soaping up the car with my chest,” she muttered knowing that as she was currently a walking dream for would-be rapists and their defense lawyers, she wouldn’t be hitching a ride back into town.

Turning her back on her traitorous Honda she aimed for home trying to remember which side of the street you were supposed to walk on to best avoid being mowed down by a driver. Not that there was much traffic on the road that night…. or ever in that place. Still she knew that once you’re luck has crested things can go from bad to worse in the blink of an eye. And no matter how terrible her night had been so far, dead was worse than wet and wheel-less.

She had to admit that having now been out long enough to be drenched to just this side of waterlogged, her mood was actually improving.

Having surrenderd to a soaking you realize it's not all that bad. It’s not often that your whole body gets to feel something. The real frustration with wet weather, she argued to herself, is the constant battle to stay dry. To defend all limbs and packages and pant legs simultaneously is futile and destined to make you feel a failure. Letting the fat droplets hit her square in the face, she felt invigorated, scrubbed clean. Baptized.

Baptized?

Why was it that whenever her thoughts turned to the sensual, religion was only a thoughtbeat behind?

Thoughtbeat!

She marveled at what a perfectly descriptive word thoughtbeat was and wondered how it could be that it wasn’t even a word at all. How could people explain this mental phenomenon without it? How had she?

Then she swore.

She swore because she had walked into the street sign at the corner of her block. Then she swore again because that kind of thing was always happening to her.

She swore one final time as she realized was already home. That meant she had spent the last three miles and forty minutes lost in her own head and had no recollection of the journey. That kind of thing was always happening too.

She checked herself over determined there was no damage and headed up the drive, the car and the reason she’d been driving it forgotten as she turned her thoughts to large soft towels and larger glasses of wine.

Secretly I Always Knew

6:53 AM Edit This 0 Comments »
Sad news from the wire this morning about Sir Paul:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200605/s1641191.htm

But deep down I knew it couldn't last since he'll always be in love with
me Linda.

Actually It Is You

8:55 AM Edit This 0 Comments »

I really had hoped things would work out. It would have been so much easier for us just to be together. One more thing to cross off life’s to do list. Find a partner? Check.

But he had to keep telling me jokes I’d heard before. A thousand times before.

And he couldn’t stop himself from grabbing the back of my neck when he drove even though he knew I HATED it when people touched my neck. “I’m not grabbing it, I’m rubbing it. …and I’m not people. I’m your man.”

Oh did I mention that he called himself “my man”? All the time he did this. In public.

Alone it was worse since he had the tendency to call himself “my big man”. Not only awful, but woefully overstated.

So that was uncalled for, I know.

But this is a guy who used to take his socks off in the living room at the end of the day then shove them in his pocket.

And the socks...

You know those black ones made out of some poly-rayon-plastic blend? They glistened in the light I swear to God. Shone like asphalt on a sweltering day. Sometimes I just wanted to scream “What did cotton ever do to you?“ But he would have laughed about it.

He laughed about everything. No fight in him. Even as I left he just sat there with a stupid smile on his face while I told him how miserable this life was making me. How miserable he was making me.

He said if I couldn’t be happy with him I’d better go be happy someplace else. And the whole time he’s going on and on wishing me the best all I can do is stare at the wet spot his beet bottle is making on the coffee table. My coffee table.

Couldn’t keep them in the fridge like everyone one else… had to stockpile his beer in the freezer. Nice and frosty and dripping like hell. Do you know how many times he forgot they were in there and they exploded? Do you know how many times our guests had to take their beer with a SPOON?

Anyway so he’s offering me the best graduation speech ever… follow your path, spread your wings. If you love someone set them free... and I’m pissy about the ruined coffee table.

So I’m the bitch right?

Yeah.

Well fine.

He can keep the coffee table.

The Truth

9:53 AM Edit This 3 Comments »
At five years old he was an ugly child destined to become an ugly adult.

His mother has long been holding out hope that he would grow into the pink and chubby blue-eyed cherub she had always wanted. She had dismissed her first impression of the angry red wrinkly bundle he was at birth with the fairly accurate stereotype that all newborns are odd looking. She told people his pointed head would round as the gap closed and that his body would grown to balance out its somewhat shocking girth.

She told them when his hair finally grew in it would be thick and ringletted like his father’s. She told them children's eyes often change colour and that his dishwater grey ones would deepen to reflect the ocean blue of her own.

She had been telling people these things for quite some time.

But looking at him sitting in the back yard staring back at her through the kitchen window, she realized these miraculous changes would not come to pass and that she was looking at her son. Her funny-looking son.

He was thin and small and pale with the gait of an old arthritic. This was presumably due to the weight of his enormous egg-shaped head, mostly an expanse of forehead making his features seem cramped and undersized. His hair had never fully come in, leaving him with a sparse monk’s tonsure of dirty-blond hair which his mother had been tempted to chalk up to treatments for an illness in the face of strangers’ glances(on more than one occasion).

The realization that she didn’t love her son poured over her like ice water. The sensation was unpleasant, but only mildly so. She would get used to it. She didn’t blame herself for this lack of motherly affection, she blamed him.

It wasn’t just his looks that left her cold she told herself, though she could admit it was a major part of it. It was his attitude about it.

He wasn’t a pleaser this ugly boy. He didn’t try to do things to make her forget, to make it up to her. He didn’t fade into the carpet when people came over. He didn’t stay quite and self-conscious. He wasn’t funny and self-deprecating. He wasn’t ashamed of how he'd turned out. He wasn’t sorry.

And she felt, in the deep dark place that you pretend you don’t have, that he ought to be. And she knew that was why she hated him.

Can I Hear An Amen?

9:59 AM Edit This 1 Comment »

Guess I’m not the only one who thinks the mojito needs a little firing up.

Reinventing the Mojito

(Thank You Timothy McSweeney!)

Make Mine a Mojito

8:18 AM Edit This 1 Comment »
I have an overwhelming desire for a Mojito. This wouldn’t be all that strange if I enjoyed a Mojito. But I don’t really. I’m not a big fan of mint and frankly I don’t like drinks that require affecting an accent to order confidently. (A main reason why I do not drink the Thé-Keeee-La on a regular basis).

But this week, the idea of a sipping on a crisp, cool, white and green bevy seems an excellent idea indeed. So too the idea of buying flowers daily, and barbecuing EVERYTHING and walking for miles and miles and miles.

Shopping at the local fruit market also holds great appeal. While greenhouses and cross-pollinated bio-infused superseeds have made fresh fruits and vegetables accessible year-round, it’s only in the spring that I lust after asparagus or homemade raspberry pie (preferably both... with something hot off the BBQ... and a mojito).

In the words of the Birds (oh, and Ecclesiastes ): To everything there is a season.

Who Likes The Rock And The Roll?

7:03 AM Edit This 1 Comment »
I Do! Posted by Picasa

The Act Itself

10:55 AM Edit This 0 Comments »

I don’t have anything in particular I want to say today.

But I do have this peculiar need to say SOMETHING.

Sometimes I think it's the act of writing itself that is addictive. Marking up the world's white spaces with tiny symbols is what fulfills us.

Any meaning proffered is just a flukey kind of icing.

Pretty

8:08 AM Edit This 0 Comments »



Posted by Picasa

Puppies! Puppies I say

10:23 AM Edit This 1 Comment »

This is Dora.




This is Diego.


They are why I want a puppy more than ever. Posted by Picasa

But I'm Sure it's Going to be FINE

9:50 AM Edit This 0 Comments »

The Conservative government has listed the following five top priorities for its time in power on the Government of Canada’s web site. (They are not listed alphabetically so one would assume they are listed in order of importance):

  • Accountability
  • Lower Taxes
  • Crime
  • Child Care
  • Health Care

What these terms mean to me:

Accountability = Bureaucracy (all those wonderful hoops to jump through)

Lower Taxes = Money

Crime = Punishment

Child Care = Our Future

Health Care = Sustaining Life

So what I understand the top priorities of my federal government to be are:

  • Bureaucracy
  • Money
  • Punishment
  • Future
  • Life

No... I'm not the least bit concerned.

I like the sound of that

6:46 AM Edit This 1 Comment »

Words so pleasing to the ear, it’s a wonder that you don’t hear them more often:

  • Demitasse
  • Melodious
  • Conundrum
  • Auspicious
  • Spectacular
  • Cantankerous
  • Extraordinary
  • Felicity
  • Doldrums
  • Forgiven

I Think I’m Addicted...

8:44 AM Edit This 0 Comments »

…to the scent of cherry blossoms.

I spent the weekend in Washington surrounded by hundreds of trees with blossoms ranging in colour from pristine white to deep blush pink. The bark of the gnarled trunks and branches shines sliver in the sunlight and glows slightly at dusk.

They are lovely, but it is the smell that I can’t get enough of. The whole of D.C. is blanketed in an aroma soft and subtle and delicious.

I brought home a bottle of perfume that tried to capture the scent and put it on today. But it is false and manufactured with an undertone of alcohol and without the depth that many trees all blossoming in unison provides.

Still I can’t stop smelling my arm at the crook of the elbow where the scent is strongest.

A junkie will take it however she can get it.

I Got A Nikon Camera

8:51 AM Edit This 0 Comments »

Well it’s a Pentax actually.

I’m going to pick it up tonight, then in two days I’m going to use it to shoot Cherry Blossoms in Washington D.C. and hopefully come home with something pretty enough to hang on my walls.

I am excited.

I love trips; the packing, the planning, the overspending.

A new city gives you the desire to actively participate. You want to go to the zoo and the museum and the park. You aren’t annoyed by the parades, or the people selling junk on the street. You want you some of that junk. You dress up to go to the mall and the grocery store just so you have a chance to wear each of the way-too-many travel outfits you’ve put together and stuffed in your suitcase.

In two more days I’ll be in the air. Two long and endless days.

What I don’t love?

Waiting

Terminally Blasé

9:12 AM Edit This 1 Comment »
I had one of those mornings. The ones where you get up and you think you detect just the slightest sense of purpose skulking around in the deep dark recesses of your soul.

I cultivated it as best I could. Actually bothered to scrub the schmutz off my feet in the shower, used the blow dryer, wore nice pants. And it seemed to blossom. Yes today was a day I would get something done.

I left the house one coffee to the good and with the anticipation of a sausage McMuffin bolstering me along. I brought along Virginia Woolf for the streetcar ride and managed to get lost in it despite the chatter of morning commuters.

As I entered the last leg of my journey, breakfast in hand, I checked the pulse of my purpose. Still there, stronger even then it had been an hour ago.

But somewhere between the elevator and my desk, it vanished. I don’t know where it went. I don’t know why. But it was gone entirely. Almost instantly I was nonplussed by my fragrant greasy snack and immune to the good news that my computer was functioning properly for the first time in weeks.

Even the crossword hidden deep within my Toronto Star isn’t tempting me.

When you can’t even bother to slack off at work… that my friends is what I call terminally blasé.

And Now the News

12:20 PM Edit This 1 Comment »

A Headline from CBC.ca:

Seal hunt to go ahead, despite protests by Bardot and McCartney

You mean Bridget Bardot doesn’t hold sway over Canadian domestic policy? Shocking.

Oh and Sir Paul:

Less protest, more Martha My Dear 'kay?



The Return of Bo-Red

9:26 AM Edit This 0 Comments »
When I was in my third year of high school (and certain I new decidedly more than everyone else) I created a series of short stories featuring a character named Bo-Red.

For the record I did not create the character itself. A friend of mine (who also new more than everyone else) created him during a particularly uninspiring English class because she was beyond bored, she was Bo-Red (clever huh?).

He was a stick man with one arm and a huge head who could only be conjured with a red BIC pen by slightly caustic 16-year-olds who felt their time was wasted listening to the words of their elders.

He was conjured a lot.

But it was I who gave him a back story, made him a super hero, created him a woman to love and a nemesis.

In one particularly memorable story, Bo-Red saved Harry Connick Jr. from a lifetime of Vegas sideshow acts after he was tricked into signing a contract by the evil Black Jack (clever huh? Vegas… Black Jack…. Get it? It’s CLEVER).

This one stands out to me because it’s the one I actually submitted for grading in an arrogant and childish fit of “you’re so out of touch old man you won’t even get I’m being (what I think is) Ironic” pique. Earned me an A.

(Channeling arrogance and childishness is a key step in the creative process. Discuss.)

Anyhoo, I mercifully grew up a bit, realized how little I actually knew and school began to interest me again. Bo-Red was relegated to the back passageways of my memory.

But several frustrating days of server shutdowns, invalid pathways and multiple corrupted file copies have left me unable to do anything remotely productive at work. I’m feeling irritated, unfairly put upon, and about five years old.

And ol’ Bo is glowing in my mind’s eye.

Will he make his grand return today? Will the next chapter of his life unfold?

Find me a red BIC pen and we’ll find out.

Keening for the Green (and Frosty): A Tribute to the Shamrock Shake

11:10 AM Edit This 1 Comment »

Of all the terribly tacky traditions North America has foisted on the feast day of St. Patrick, none was as delicious as the Shamrock Shake.

A frosty mint delight, in its heyday the Shamrock Shake was a St. Patrick’s Day must. Though its colouring was slightly putrid and mint is a sorry substitution for chocolate, this was the IRISH shake and we were proud to have it and to call it our own.

It was extra special for this Irish Catholic girl stupid enough to always give up sweets for Lent. You see, giving up fighting with my brother was too difficult, and my HILARIOUS suggestions I give up smoking never went over well with my mother.

No sugar for 40 days in a row… well 6 days at least (everyone knows Sundays don’t count) was tough for this addict… very tough.

Evey year, just when I thought I’d never survive it, came St. Patrick’s Day. A day smack dab in the middle of deprivation in which ethno-cultural obligation meant my parents, and God apparently, looked the other way as I sucked back 12 ounces of sugary goodness.

The Shamrock Shake, a reminder of life’s little overindulgences just when the endless days of sacrifice may have led me to forget.

You were a true hero of hedonism in a puritanical time and I salute you.

And I haven’t forgotten you. Yea, though the cruel masters of the McDonald’s Corporation decided that among all of the high fat, though not particularly high quality, items on their mighty menu, you (along with the McLobster) would have to go, I have not forgotten you.

I searched for you even today in fact, at the McDonald’s at Yonge St. and Queen W. But to no avail.

Good thing too -- It’s freakin’ freezing today.

I Did Shoot My Eye Out

1:11 PM Edit This 1 Comment »
For those who have never torn their cornea, I don’t recommend it.

For those who have, Yow! No?

I spent most of last week recovering from having my eye split open on a leisurely trip to the nation’s capital.

I will spend a good deal longer recovering from the knowledge that my eye was at one point actually SPLIT OPEN. Ugh.

This happened in the midst of shopping for wedding dresses with a friend. I am her maid of honour and while it's sad I had to abdicate my shopping duties to lay alone in a dark room, it's not all that surprising considering my past actions in positions of honour.

Here’s a sampling:

  • Coming down with the Chicken Pox during my first turn as a flower girl (Sorry Janet)
  • Coming down with Strep Throat during my first turn as a junior bridesmaid (Sorry Pam)
  • Fainting on the altar during my first turn as Godmother (Sorry Clara, and the entire congregation of Emmanuel Lutheran Church)

It’s not that the joy of my friends and family ALWAYS makes me sick, just more often than not.

This time at least I got my trauma over and done with over before the big day….

I hope.

The Mixed Tapes

10:08 AM Edit This 0 Comments »

Back in high school (the day as it is oft’ referred) my friend’s uncle used to make her mixed tapes.

Now this was not your “Old Time Rock ‘n’ Roll” lovin’, Molson drinkin’ uncle. This was the only slightly older uncle, the one who was away at university, and lived with his girlfriend, and drank Heineken. This was a cool uncle.

Anyway the tapes… He used to send her collections of songs from time to time in an attempt to wean her off the sugary pop tunes that made her, and all her friends, waste our meager allowances and fill our brains with lyrics like: “I spend my money on lottery, My favourite number is 1 2 3”. (Thank you Calloway)

His tapes were full of songs by Joy Division and the Smiths and the HouseMartins.

I loved these tapes.

Now I can’t tell you I loved them because of the music. At the time, I knew very little about music and had, at 15, only just concluded (thanks my brother’s constant derision and numerous forced listening sessions of Led Zeplin IV) that the New Kids on the Block really did SUCK no matter what all my friends and Much Music seemed to think.

Instead, I loved them for their cases full of cramped male handwriting, because they came by post from the big(er) city, because listening to the music of grown-ups made me feel grown up (because at 15 I thought 21 was grown up.)

Listening to these tapes made me feel like a little kid staying up at the end of a dinner party when the adults start talking about politics, or neighbourhood gossip or other topics they wouldn’t usually speak of in front of the kids. I was mesmerized by the dark lyrics, the angry guitars, and melancholy. I felt myself getting wise listening to those tapes. I felt myself getting older.

There was one tape in particular I remember. I think it was the first one I liked for the music, not the idea of the music. Some of the songs I heard for the first time on that tape are still my favourites today. I can’t remember all of them. (These weren’t the cheezy 60 minute tapes you know. These were the 90 minute Memorex tapes. These were hardcore) but I do remember a few. Go give ‘em a listen won’t you? You’ll be glad you did.

  • Annie Get Your Gun – Squeeze
  • Sing Your Life – Morrisey
  • Birdhouse in your Soul – They Might Be Giants
  • Love Will Tear Us Apart – Joy Division
  • The One I Love – REM
  • Something That You Said – The Beautiful South