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in ten easy steps (and twelve deep breaths)
How to play a D Pennywhistle. In case, you know, you got a pennywhistle for your birthday. Like I did.
places to go
Here is a map of all the states I have visited. Doesn't it make you sad for me? There is no Canadian map option, so I would just like to point out to you that I have visited all the western Canadian provinces. It looks like I have never been west of the Great Lakes, but I totally have.
Here is a map of all the countries I have visited. It is even sadder.
I am making a pledge to you right now that by this time next year, one, if not both, of these maps will have changed.
"if today is your birthday..." : a compilation
"Happy Birthday: This can be a great year for you if you aspire to reach your goals. It's the time of new beginnings and you must let down your guard and stop fearing failure. Success will not elude you this year. Your numbers are 6, 15, 24, 33, 42, 49"
"This is the year for clearing your plate for bigger, better and more just deserts. Next month, complete projects (even ancient ones) that have somehow been left unfinished. Someone will help you celebrate in style. Major moves are made without warning in the spring, which could cause stress but will also be fabulous for your life in the long run. Your lucky numbers are 30, 1, 12, 33 and 9."
"According to your birthday chart, life would be a lot easier for you, and a lot more enjoyable, if you did not take yourself quite so seriously. That applies to all areas of your existence, but especially to money matters and business issues. Yes, of course, they are important, but not so important that you think of nothing else."
"Enjoy your birthday but give serious thought to restructuring your life so as to make the rest of it more fulfilling and successful than hitherto. You must resolve to help yourself otherwise you may simply sink into a much deeper rut."
"This year, you become interested in finding out what's real and what can be built upon. You'll want to go back to the basics, both in your research and in your life. There's work to be done, but don't shy away from it. There's money to be made."
"Between now and your next birthday, you can make considerable progress in the year ahead in advancing your personal interests by setting worthy goals and staying focused on your objectives."
"Start keeping a dream notebook or a tape recorder by your bed. Often you will be challenged by those around you or events in your daily life."
"The stars are on your side today. . .professionally speaking, everything falls into place. The universe has been testing you--positive things are on the horizon in many areas of your life. It is possible you made a job change last year and the time of testing is just about complete. Your identity is evolving, and at no time is the growth more obvious than now. You are able to see yourself in a new light and may decide to purchase finer suits for the work place. Anything that seems like pressure from close relationships right now are more for your benefit--it would be wise to just go with the flow. Ask yourself if you know the truth about any particular situation--you are learning very well. There is harmony this evening and a party may evolve--HAPPY BIRTHDAY!"
"Your lucky number is 4." Well, that's true.
beg to differ
"We should invent teleportation!"
"Nah, it wouldn't be profitable."
-- Two men in blue technician-type uniforms leaving the Square-Victoria metro station
detour
An envelope, postmarked Regina, SK, and addressed to Saskatoon, SK, somehow ended up in a mailbox in my apartment building in Montreal, QC.
Will the wonders of Canada Post never cease?
things that i have stolen back from people
after they stole them from me
1. My purple shell, stolen by my best friend Gabrielle, who lived across the street, circa Grade 2.
2. My Beck CD, stolen by my evil rez roommate, first year at university.*
3. My recycling box, stolen by the people who live across the street, yesterday.
*Ok, so it turned out that this was a big mistake on my part. My evil roommate had not stolen my Beck CD, I had lost it, and my roommate had meanwhile legitimately purchased an identical one. Unfortunately, I had no way of knowing this at the time that I discovered what I thought was my CD in my roommate's CD player, since we pretty much hated each other at that point and were no longer on speaking terms (we still to this day ignore one another if we happen to pass on the street). I don't know if she suspected I had stolen her CD, but we both started locking our bedroom doors soon afterward. I didn't discover my mistaken theft until the day I was moving out of that apartment and found my Beck CD wedged in the crack between my bed and the wall. The roommate had moved out months earlier.
Hey evil ex-roommate #1 (first of several), sorry that I stole your CD that I thought you had stolen from me! Also, sorry that I stole some of your stash out of pure, malicious spite.
don't be an asshole, vote democratic
Bush in 41.2 Seconds.
Also, did you hear that CBS is refusing to run the winning bushin30seconds.org ad?
Also, because here in Canada, our lovely democratic system does not allow us to elect our country's leader, we have no fun ads. Instead we have this.
I really want to name my computer Hermes.
signed: i stole this card
How crazy would I have to make my signature before someone would actually notice? : "So far, I had tried altering my signature in a number of ways, but what if I didn't even sign my own name? The waitress at the restaurant didn't say anything, probably because I am mistaken for Mariah Carey all the time. Except for the goatee and the back hair, we are like twins." This is funny, but not comforting when you have just lost your wallet. Nothing was charged to my card, but I still had to cancel it, which is a hassle.
big fat stupidhead
I left my wallet on the metro today. I hate myself.
My wallet was inside my red tuque (my favourite hat), which I left on a bench (I think). Sometimes I use my hat to carry stuff. Also inside my hat were the lovely mittens my sister gave me for Christmas last year, a change purse full of nickels and 2 Christmas cards with insufficient postage (the post office was out of 1 cent stamps so I, because I am a big fat stupidhead, decided to go somewhere else to mail them, instead of just paying more money. Also, the girl at the post office was so clueless that I was pretty sure asking her for 2 cent stamps would cause some major confusion that would take a long time to resolve.)
(Actually, I want to go off on a tangent to tell you about the girl at the post office. This is a small portion of what actually happened:
She: "Ok, so these are for the United States?"
Me: "No, these are for Canada. These are the States." The addresses are right there in front of you, can you not read?!
She: "Oh." Takes the first enveloppe. Scrutinizes it for a while, types some stuff into a computer...
Me: ...
She: "Um, sorry, but what is the city in this address?"
Me: "Uh, Raymond?" The hell??!
She: "Oh." Types some more. Looks confused some more. "So, um, what does this NH stand for?"
Me: "Er, New Hampshire?" Oh my god, you really are this stupid. Also, all you have to do is put a goddamn stamp on the thing. What are you doing? What is taking so long?
She: "Oh, right." Smiles sheepishly. Looks at letter some more. Types some more things in to computer. Looks confused. Goes to get supervisor to ask something about postal codes...
Me: Christly hell.
And that was just the first enveloppe.
Speaking of stupid people, maybe her stupidity rubbed off on me, causing me to do the stupidest thing I have done in a long time. Which brings us back to the matter at hand.)
Inside my wallet were ten dollars, my credit card, my debit card, my driver's licence, (I just paid 85 bucks to renew the damn thing and now I'm going to have to pay again. And I need it ASAP because I need to submit a photocopy of it with my passport application.) my medicare card (expires this month, new one is at my parent's house, thank god), my SIN card, my old student IDs, every other card I have collected over the course of my lifetime, and, 8 movie passes (an 80 dollar value).
I am most upset about the debit card. Without it, I can't access my bank account, which means I can't get any money. My branch of the bank is located in my hometown, a 2 hour bus ride away. That bus costs $30. Which I can't get without my bank card. It's a catch-22.
I am also kind of weirded out by the lost Christmas cards. What will the person who picked up my stuff do with them? Read them? Throw them out? ...Mail them?
I want to say that I can't believe that I did such a stupid thing, but, in reality, I can completely believe it. I am just that stupid.
reading list
One of my resolutions for this year is to read all the unread -- or unfinished -- books cluttering up my bookshelf. Most of these books have been there for years and I figure that it's about time I read them and/or get rid of them or both. Thus, I give you my 2004 reading list:
1. Volkswagen Blues by Jaques Poulin
2. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
3. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
4. A Passage to India by EM Forster
5. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
6. Seven Poor Men of Sydney by Christina Stead
7. The City of Joy by Dominique Lapierre
8. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway*
9. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
10. Wolf Willow by Wallace Stegner
11. Lonesome Traveler by Jack Kerouac
12. Siddartha by Herman Hesse
13. The Good Woman of Setzuan by Bertolt Brecht
14. Roundheads and Peakheads by Bertolt Brecht
15. Jungle of Cities by Bertolt Brecht
16. The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen
17. An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen
18. A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
So, we'll see.
*Not technically finished, but, rather, given up on.
can't wait to see what befalls me next week
I love my job, but it is killing me.
You know how when you are dying because you need an organ transplant, sometimes someone dies and you get their organ, which is really weird because you were all ready to die and now you have a piece of someone else inside of you for the rest of your life, but hey, at least you're alive! but then your body rejects the transplant, so you die anyway?
Like in 21 Grams with Sean Penn getting the heart of Naomi Watt's husband, but then dying anyway after impregnating Naomi Watts? Oh, hey, sorry if I just ruined the movie for you, but the movie kind of ruins itself with its choppy narration and constant backflashes and forwardflashes; so that you already know most of what's going to happen by the time anything does happen and you are so dissociated from the entire storyline that you really can't care anymore. Also, it is really weird to see Melissa Leo play any character that is not a tough as nails cop named Kay Howard.
I feel like my body is rejecting my job the way it would reject a transplanted organ. My body refuses to accept that I have a job and have to work and puts up any barriers it can think of to my getting any work done. Last week it was the flu. This week it is burning, dry, itchy eyes.
As soon as I sit down at a computer, my eyes start itching and I want to scratch like a flea infested dog. Working through the pain only makes it worse.
"Are you okay?" concerned co-workers ask when they see me.
"I guess."
"You look really tired," they say.
"My eyes are itchy," I explain.
"Oh!" says one, "That happens to me when I'm playing tetris! If I'm staring at the screen for too long I just start crying!"
They all offer me eyedrops, but I refuse. Then I have to explain my eye-poking phobia.
It gets the same weird looks as my squirrel phobia.
I am afraid of getting my eyes poked out. (Also, clawed out by squirrels.) Thus, I am afraid of anything getting anywhere near my eyeballs. I don't wear glasses, erego I have never had to deal with a contact lens issue. Usually, whenever I get a piece of dirt or an eyelash stuck in my eye, I just blink until I make myself cry and it comes out.
A few weeks ago, I had something stuck in my eye that was just not coming out. I tried every combination of blinking, rubbing, etc. I became frantic. Then, the unthinkable happened.
I TOUCHED MY EYEBALL WITH MY FINGER FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER IN MY LIFE.
It felt a lot more dry and rubbery than I had imagined it would. But it was still really, really weird and gross. That's all I have to say about that. Because everyone I have told this story to has been completely unimpressed. Everyone touches their eyeballs a thousand times a day, apparently.
Anyway, the eye-itching has gotten to be so unbearable that I didn't go to work. Also, I broke down and bought some visine. It took me, and I am completely not exaggerating here, about seven tries before I could manage to get even one drop in. And then about seven more before I could get anything in the other one. But I did it! Kind of freaked out, but oh so proud of myself. I! Did it!
The relief lasted for about ten minutes.
My body: "Ha! Nice try! Good of you to go to so much trouble to get over your psychological hang-ups for my sake, but I'm afraid that it simply won't do. Remember that two week break you took, where you looked at a computer like twice and slept in until noon every day? Give me some more of that."
concealed cheese, anyone?
This looks a lot like that phrase book I got in Switzerland. One of my dreams is still to one day make my own book of random and useless phrases translated into as many languages as I can manage.
a more useful periodic table
Table of Condiments That Periodically Go Bad
lotr as an allegory for pregnancy
defective yeti: "But as bad as the journey is, it's the ending that truly sucks: the agony of carrying the burden is nothing compared to letting it go. The bearer gets all, like, 'I can't do it, it's impossible!' and the companion stands around heming and hawing and lamely asserting 'sure you can!' And then, out of nowhere, a creepy-looking bald-headed creature comes onto the scene."
one two three four five six switch
current temperature outside: -22*C (-7*F)
current temperature with windchill: -33*C (-26*F)
today's high: -20*C (-4*F)
tonight's low with windchill: -40*C (-40*F)
number of days since I have left my apartment building: 4
oxygenated air in my apartment: 2%
foiled again
Friends foil Olympia man's home: A man returns from vacation to find that his friends have covered absolutely everything in his apartment -- including the walls, and his loose change -- in tinfoil. Nice. That night they covered his car and left a note on his windshield that said, "Drat! Foiled again!"
the healing power of cbc
This has to be a good sign.
I turned on the radio and the first song I heard was Beautiful, by Danny Michel, which is my current favourite song in the whole world, and which I haven't been able to listen to recently since I left my CD at my parents' house, where I had it on repeat all through the holidays. That is one long sentence, but the point is that I cranked that sucker up and was giddily happy for the first time in days.
So, as if that wasn't good enough, then they play Fred Penner's Friend Like You, which pretty much exactly describes how I'm feeling and is such a cute song. I wish I could find the lyrics for you, but I can't, because it's a kid's song and the internet doesn't care.
And then, while I was already high on music, they played Kris Demeanor's This Old House, which is a song that I absolutely love and that you never get to hear on the radio because it is so twisted. But that is what makes it so awesome!
I feel much, much better today.
But I'm still not going to work tomorrow.
this week sucks major
I have the stomach flu.
Please appreciate your good health.
melted monkey
fancy catfish: "the couple below is a husband/wife scientist team. they are currently working on their very own robot... for real. the couple decided to make the robot a monkey robot. they made a latex rubber mask for the face. it turns out that the rubber mask was too thin and it melted in the sun. now their monkey robot looks terrible. i know this sounds like bullshit but it's not. i found this picture on their website and these people are 100% serious. they love their robot and were very upset when its face melted. in my opinion, i think the monkey robot is pissed. he looks bitter and angry. i bet he will never forgive them for leaving him out in the sun and melting his face. he will never forgive them. you can see the sadness in the couple's eyes. they are sad. they fucked up... and they know it."
hmmmm
Brain Alphabet
4 is my favourite number
I am a little bit behind on a lot of things, including New Year's. 2003, for the most part, was a big sucky year for me, and processing it is taking some time. I did, however manage to come up with a list of best and worst things that I saw, attended and read.
Best movie: The Quiet American. This is what I wrote back on Feb. 20, 2003:
About half way through The Quiet American, like, I would guess, about the part where Michael Cain and Brendan Fraser are holed up in a bunker with a war happening all around them and Brendan is telling Mike that he wants to marry Mike's girlfriend; it was sometime around then that I started to feel a whole lot better about my life. I may feel completely stressed out and anxious about the fact that I haven't gotten any thesis-work done at all in the past two days and that unless I get a job tomorrow I won't be able to pay rent in April, but this is nothing compared to what others face, daily. There is nobody handing me a gun so that I can shoot myself in the head in the event that I am captured while I sleep. On the whole I've got a pretty sweet deal, you know?
Watching all these horrible things happening on the screen, I could feel the tension evaporating from my body. I realized that this movie was acting as a kind of therapy for me; shaking me out of my rut and allowing me to see the world that exists beyond the confines of my life. I have been craving this for quite some time, without realizing just exactly what it was that I was feeling so dissatisfied about.
Maybe I should read something by Graham Greene. A Passage to India just isn't working for me. I need something more subtle. More curt. Something engaging, but which at the same time allows for contemplation. The Quiet American had this beautiful subtlety about it which I loved. I love those moments when you suddenly begin to understand what is going on, and flash back to all those previous moments which you thought were odd, or a bit off, or actually thougth nothing at all about, but which you now realize were clues to something bigger. Like how surprised I was at the ease with which Brendan Fraser wrestled away the gun and took charge of that situation. It didn't seem to fit with his character at all. That should have been a major clue, but I just chalked it up to adrenalin.
I love when things fall into place in a surprising way. I love being told a good story.
Worst movie: Mona Lisa Smile. Just as I predicted. I did, however, like Pamie's idea:
I was telling Dan the other day that while watching Mona Lisa Smile at one point I imagined that it was actually a time-travel movie, and current Julia Roberts went back in time to the 1950's and tried to teach women about feminism. You didn't have to change one word of the script, and it actually makes Julia Roberts' acting more believable.
Then Dan and I figured out how fantastic the script would have been if Julia Stiles was Julia Roberts' mom, and she found out that her mother skipped law school to have her, and she has to decide whether to give her mom financial freedom and let her be a trailblazing feminist, or to let her mom go through with the family, so that she can be born.
Genius!
Best live music: The Weakerthans at the Spectrum, November 1st. Actually, the acoustics were terrible at this show and the award should probably go to one of the other fantastic concerts I saw this year, but I am so in love with the Weakerthans that just being in the same room as them while they played their music was enough to get me blissed out.
Worst live music: The Social Register, when they opened for Hawksley Workman at the Cabaret du Plateau, December 11th. I have never hated any music so before as strongly as I hated theirs. It was a little scary. From an email I wrote:
wasn't the second opening act the worst band ever in the world? like, no exaggeration at all. i am considering sending them some hate mail because someone needs to set the record straight on the fact that they can't sing for shit and their music sucks too. there is no need for them. whatsoever. Sadly, the friend I wrote this to disagreed and said he thought they were promising, which means I can never trust his judgement about anything ever again.
Best play: Shakespeare: The Lost Play.
Worst play: Some piece of crap student-written, acted and directed thing that was part of the MDF last year, about some retarded kid who catches fireflies. Not only was the acting awful, but each of the three cast members, who were playing immediate family members, had different accents. As a dialectologist, that is the kind of thing that can drive me crazy.
Best book: The Lovely Bones.
Worst book: Where the Heart Is. The worst book I have ever read period.
best. syndrome. ever.
American Woman Developed British Accent after Suffering Stroke: "The dramatic change is even more surprising because she has no links with Britain. She has never been to Britain or followed British television programmes. Doctors have diagnosed her with a rare condition called foreign accent syndrome, which is caused when part of the brain is damaged." Weird!
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"The mind of the thoroughly well informed [person] is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, and everything priced above its proper value."
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