Can one quack lugubriously?

After last night's post I was talking to my brother, Shamus Van Nostrum, and he told me he was just waiting for me to slip up and miss a blog post, and then, kablamo! (he didn't actually say kablamo!, but I assume he would have, had he thought to at the time). So, my resolve to post everyday has been further strengthened, which is why I'm starting this one at 5:30am, because I'm not sure when today I might have time to actually write one. I figure, if nothing else, I have this paragraph, which is already pretty much awesome, because of the 2 instances of the word kablamo! (wait...3).

Oh, I also have a picture. Remember how I don't know how to work my cellphone? Well, in one of my many attempts to share the picture of my magic mug with the world, I tried to e-mail it to myself. Having never e-mailed from my cell, when it didn't arrive, I just assumed I'd messaged a random Sharon with my mug picture and would never see it again. But, through the magic of internet it arrived later last night, which makes me kind of wonder where it was hanging out for those hours in between. So, now I can share a slightly better fuzzy picture of my mug teetering precariously off my bottom shelf. As you look at it, remember that this is how it landed after falling off my desk and bouncing off the floor, but also be careful not to let it blow your mind.

So, this part of the post is no longer 5am, in case you're wondering. This is the midafternoon, "Hey, let's blog while I drink my coffee to keep me up for the rest of the day," part of the blog.

I spent my day at a school teaching small humans how to eat healthy. At the beginning of the day, I was given the all important job of helping them cook, of which the most important task was ensuring that no little fingers were lost, and if that was unavoidable, then to at least ensure they were not eaten. I'm happy to say that, despite little training, I was successful.

It had been a long time since I'd been in an elementary school. I was surprised to hear that they listen to the same a cappella recording of "O Canada" at the beginning of the school day as we did approximately 2 decades ago. I'm not sure what exactly it is about this particular recording that they think will engage the nationalistic spirit of our youngest citizens, but it still doesn't quite do it for me. Except, of course, for the addition of a punctuated "Ca-na-da" at the end, which is helpful to remind me which country it is I've been singing about for the last minute and a half ("What? I thought we were singing about Grenada. But that Canada thing does make the north reference easier to understand.")

They also had a list of synonyms for the word "sad" on the wall. No "happy", no "angry", just "sad". As a daydreamer who throughout a year in a classroom would read anything posted on the wall about 10000x on average (are you aware that "chemists do it in tubes"?), I have to imagine that an entire list of words meaning depression could really mess up a 12 year old's psyche. I'm not sure if the focus on improving the children's ability to express sadness was driven by a need to more accurately prescribe antidepressants, or whether the high schools had asked them to better prepare them so that their emo poems might be less repetitive to mark.

Example:

Pre-Project Sad Vocabulary:

I'm so sad.
No one understands me.
That makes me sad.

Post-Project Sad Vocabulary:

I'm so devastatingly miserable.
No one understands me.
That makes me lugubrious.

Forgive me if I misused the word lugubrious, not having been a part of Project Sad Vocabulary I've never been fully trained in the proper way to use it in a sentence. But, I was part of: Project When People Come to Farms They're Oinking at Cows and Quacking at Horses, We Seriously Need to Fix That. It has served me well when conferring with barnyard animals in my day to day life.

God wants me to drink coffee Q.E.D.

I don't know if I've mentioned this, but blogging everyday is not easy, especially while juggling a life full of random hurdles. But, I'm a stubborn person, and I said I would write everyday, so that is what I shall do.

An example of my persistence: when I was in grade 4, a teacher told us a story about a 6th grader trying (and failing) to read the unabridged version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and said no 6th grader could ever get through the book. So I, always one for a challenge, found a copy of it and started reading, determined to prove that I could do in grade 4 what no 6th grader could handle. I read about 12 pages, and all I can remember was that it was about some sort of expedition or something...I don't really know. All I do know is that I thought "Where the hell is my monster?" and put it down forever. Oh, wait, that's not a good example of my persistence.

Actually, it's strange that I was upset about the lack of monster, considering this was only a few years before I couldn't sleep for fear of Raptors eating me in the night and shortly after the phase in which I would hide in terror when my brothers put on the soundtrack from Ghostbusters 2 (The song "(Your love keeps lifting me) Higher and Higher" caused pretty severe panic attacks for a disturbingly long time after that movie). I'm lucky the beginning of that book was so excruciating, because I probably wouldn't have slept for most of my childhood if I managed to get to the monster.

A better example of my persistence would be the day that I decided I needed a new bookshelf right away, so I walked to Canadian Tire in a snowstorm to purchase one. When I'd found one, I thought, "This isn't too heavy, and the walk isn't so far...I think I can do this." I was a thousand kinds of wrong. Actually, that's a lie, because I did eventually make it, so, I was at least one kind of right. But, regardless, it was pretty ridiculous.

I hadn't reached the corner outside the store before my arms felt like they were on fire. As I mentioned, there was a snowstorm at the time, but despite the very real potential for frostbite, I have never been more certain that I was about to spontaneously combust than I was on that walk. Because of this, I had to stop approximately every 5 meters to set it down in the snow...until about halfway through the trip, when I realized that the box had disintegrated on the bottom and everything was falling out. So I had to flip it over, and continue in 5 meter spurts, until it was clear that the other side was going to lose it soon.

This was the point where I nearly fell into the fetal position crying on the side of Sheppard Avenue, which is not the cleanest of street sides. The one reason I didn't is I realized that the box would completely break and all the pain and suffering would be in vain. So I started running. Well, more like rapid waddling, but the point is, I had come too far, and I was going to get that MF home if it was the last thing I did (such a statement felt quite real at this point because I was fairly certain death was coming soon, due to the aforementioned combustion). Long story short, I made it (that's right, it's an actual for real story about persistence...and you totally thought I was bluffing again). I ended up temporarily leaving it outside, hoping that any thief that might wander by would assume it was garbage. I was lucky that it would be hard not to mistake it for garbage by the time I got home. Now I have a beautiful shelf with slightly watermarked edges. Yay persistence.

Thinking of that shelf, I'm glad that I managed it that day, because it was a key player in the closest experience I've ever had to magic. I love coffee. But that is not the magic of the story, just an important thing to note. Ever since I started drinking coffee, I've had my latte mug. I don't know where it came from, but when I moved out of my first apartment, it was one of the random leftover dishes that seemed to belong to no one, so it ended up belonging to me. Since then, it has gotten me through every late night paper, every exam period and the majority of my post-exam hangovers. So, you can imagine the pain it would bring me if I were to break it one day.

I think it's obvious that this story begins with me dropping my all important latte mug. Actually, I knocked it off my desk. Then I tensed every muscle of my body as it managed to bounce off the floor, flip over and land upright teetering on the edge of my shelf. The statistical odds of this happening have not been calculated, as far as I know, but I'm going to guestimate that it's 1 in eleventeenzillion. Below is a diagram of the fall and a picture of the mug after it landed.


Yes, I'm aware that my mug picture is more sketchy than that photo of Bigfoot, but at the time I only had my cell phone camera, which is not that great to start out. To make matters worse, I don't actually know how to get photos from my phone to my computer, so I ended up using my webcam to take a picture of the picture, which was difficult, because the phone kept on reflecting my computer screen, so I had to carefully turn off the screen with my mouse hovering over the capture picture button, but if it took me too long, my cellphone display would shut off and it would all be for naught. The point is, stop creating magic mug conspiracy stories and start spending more time teaching me how to work basic technology.

I miss you Puddleby :(

Today is the day I realized: Holy crap, we're graduating. To celebrate our exodus from this school of horrors, they gave us lunch, which was really just a clever ruse to get us to listen to important information for our success in the future. Nicely played school. They also gave us some speeches about not hating us, which were very nice, but probably won't encourage us to give them money in the future as much as they might have hoped. They were all pretty cliche, except for one of my many favourite supervisors, who, at least for today, will be known as my sole favorite supervisor because she actually had the balls to tell us the truth with a smile on her face. That truth being that, although we are made up of a number of lovely people, together we're a little...umm...high maintenance. The choice of the term "monster class" was what made her truly awesome though and has led me to aspire to be her when I eventually grow up.

But, monster or not, I'm sad to see it ending. I'm not always sure why, but it kind of reminds me of my first hamster, Puddleby. She got a taste for human flesh early on, so I spent 2 years in a "no touchy" relationship with her. I would feed her and, in exchange, she would spend the night finding various new ways to keep me from sleeping. But then, one day, she got sick, and, for the first time, I was able to pick her up without a thick leather glove. I took her to the vet, where they told me her little hamster kidneys were failing, after they told me that it was difficult to diagnose, since she wouldn't stop biting the vet. That night, as I buried her tissue box coffin under our blueberry bush, this brought me joy, because as much as I would have liked to have a hamster that didn't scar me quite so often, I liked knowing that right up until the end, she was herself. I cried like a baby. And this is the same feeling I have for the class of 2010. The fact is, we had teeth, and we weren't ashamed to show them sometime.

I've decided to cope with the demise of the awesome power produced when the class of 2010 is united the way I cope with most negative things: lots and lots music. In the past, I've written about my frequent desire to path dance, but I neglected to mention my other favorite past time: the overly dramatic walk. Sometimes, when I'm at home, listening to a really good song, I'll go to the kitchen, hoping I'll figure out that I needed to do something there, just because I felt the need to dramatically walk somewhere. Once I realize that I don't have anything to do, I dramatically walk back to my room, only to repeat the whole thing in a few minutes when I've "forgotten" that nothing is happening in the kitchen. Sometimes, I'll drink a lot of water, just so that I can dramatically walk to refill it. That has the added bonus of allowing me to dramatically walk to the washroom 2-3 times an hour.

I wanted to include pictures with this post to spice it up a bit, but I'm not at home, so I don't have my crayons or my scanner or anything else that would allow me to depict a hamster or a monster or a dramatic walk. But that's okay, because you have an imagination. So, this is the part of the post where I'd like you to close your eyes...wait, open them again so that you can read the rest of this. Now imagine, with your eyes open and continuing to read this, that you are walking through a field. And, in this field, there is a hamster...a giant hamster, with yellow polka dots...and maybe antlers, I haven't quite decided. The hamster sees you and starts chasing you. For 4 years. And then you realize that money is falling out of your pockets and the hamster is eating it. Then you realize that the field is full of paperwork that you're expected to finish while running away from the hamster. But you don't have a pen, and you're running from a friggin' giant hamster, so you can't fill it out on time.

Okay, you can stop imagining now. Think about how you feel. Now you know how I felt today (and most other days for a very long time). If you're thinking "You felt confused?", then you are halfway to understanding my world. In conclusion: next time I'll draw a picture.

Hobo chic

I've been trying to get my friend Katarina Yashtastico (actually, I feel like this name has a ring to it...go me!) to read my blog, but she's been so busy with wedding planning that she says she just can't fit it in. So, I asked her if she would read it if it were about wedding planning and she said yes, which I think is somewhat unintelligent, because, well, she's met me and should know that I have the time and patience to waste my life on fake wedding advice.

To be honest, I know very little about wedding planning. I've seen people go through it, and it seems painful. I've been thinking that once I find that special someone, I'm going focus my efforts on alienating all those who might possibly want to attend the wedding, just to avoid having to plan one. Some might say it would be easier to just elope, but then I'd have to deal with the complaints about having cheated people out of a meal and open bar, so I'm thinking general alienation might be the simpler route.

But, a blog about wedding planning is what I promised, and a blog about wedding planning is what I shall give you, Miss Yashtastico. How shall I do this? Well, I'm glad you asked. I'm going to do it the way I do most things, using Google. So, to start, I have just googled the term "top wedding planning questions". I will answer the top questions on WikiAnswers until I decide I'm bored of that.

1. How do I plan an inexpensive wedding? Well, I already mentioned the ideal plan for an inexpensive wedding, that being global alienation of all family and friends, but, if you're the type who has some sort of ethical issue with treating your friends like crap just to save a few bucks, might I suggest the theme "hobo chic". Just decorate with things you find beside the road. Centerpieces can be easily crafted from old newspaper, other peoples trashed flowers can be your fabulous bouquet, and various round things can be your wedding bands (nuts, springs, calamari...well, maybe try to avoid perishable things).

2. Are there classes on wedding planning? Really, this is number two? Why look for classes on wedding planning before you've fully explored what information you can get from asking other questions on the internet. Come on people, it's free.

Most of the following questions were about how to become a wedding planner, because apparently there are a lot of people without the desire to run in the opposite direction of anything involving wedding planning. So, I skipped to one that I found more interesting.

3. What is the right way to plan a second wedding? Don't wear white. Everyone will know that you're lying. Colour is more fun anyways. I suggest that you choose the hue based on how many children you have from your previous marriage. For one child, pastels are okay. But if you have, say, 8 kids, I think you pretty much have to go with black, or something very close to it. Again, everyone already knows white is a total lie, so you might as well give them the opportunity to applaud you on your honesty.

Okay, questions are getting boring. So, other wedding advice. Well, I have advice for guests based on previous mistakes I've made (or imagined mistakes...I can't really remember). Apparently, divorce jokes are considered in poor taste. Examples include: "I hope this sticks" (with crossed fingers), "Well, your (insert relationship to bride or groom here) only gets married once...hopefully," and "If this doesn't work out, I call dibs on him" (okay, that last one has never happened, but it sure would have been awkward if it had). Avoid skeptical facial expressions during speeches about the bride and groom, because other guests might not be as fond of honest body language as you are. Regardless of how well you've choreographed your dance to it, requesting "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is a little depressing at a wedding (especially when part of your choreography involves you crumbling into the fetal position for the entire second verse). And, if you have to wear white, try to a least avoid anything with a train, because it seems that's universally frowned upon.

No bad touch

I've been feeling a bit guilty, ever since implying yesterday that Jim Henson was somehow involved in bad touch with Ernie. I don't really think that, but I'm afraid that if the spirit of Jim Henson is reading my blog that he's highly offended, and will no longer consider being my friend in the afterlife, as has been my dream for many years.

I even drew a picture of it.

Yes, that is Kermit in the middle and it would have been wonderful, but now I can't even entertain my BFF dreams, because I fear they will be torn away from me at any moment by the angry spirit of Jim Henson. Except, I don't think he could be angry, because Jim Henson is way too awesome for anger, but he might be like "Man, I thought you were cool, but you're so not." Then I'll be sad, because Jim Henson thought I was cool but I blew it for cheap laughs. I tried to draw a new picture to cheer me up, but all that came out was this...
And can you blame me? All my dreams of skipping through the clouds singing the Rainbow Connection with Kermit were seemingly gone forever. Then I realized, perhaps the power of blog works for good as well. Maybe, just maybe, I could fix the slander from my last post if I made an apology so spectacular that Jim Henson would be forced to reconsider my BFF offer. So, I drew another picture.
That's right. "No Bad Touch." Right from Ernie's mouth. You can't argue with that kind of evidence. Now I'm going to bed, to dream of hangin' with the Swedish Chef. He will feed me some sort of talking food (potentially foam-based). It will be fabulous. Then tomorrow I will write a guilt-free blog. That will also be fabulous, and will probably involve less crayons. Or maybe more crayons. I haven't decided yet.

I wonder if you can get BFF halos...they do seem to be the accessory of choice up there.

Me like cookie.

Some of my friends are midway through exams right now. This is boring to me, because I want to play, but they have to study. But then, I'm also happy, because I'm not writing exams...until I remember I'm lonely and wish I had my textbooks to keep me company.

When I was writing exams, I liked to try to cope by using denial. I'd get up in the morning and stare at the wall for 20 minutes, thinking, "I wish I had something to do today." Eventually it would hit me and I would think, "Shit, study." I think this coping mechanism is better suited for those with severe head trauma (or those that are goldfish).

Sometimes, I try to pretend while studying, because pretending is fun. For example, when I'm studying pathology, I'll imagine I have whatever I'm studying. So, if I'm studying diabetes mellitus, I'll go to the washroom frequently and eat lots of pixie stix. The best part of this method is when I decide to take a break I have both the pay off of a break and the relief of discovering that I probably don't have prostate cancer.

When the joy of not having prostate cancer is not enough to pull me out of exam depression, I still have my standby guaranteed-joy-bringing-things. One is jumping. If I feel like exams are making me a little too crazy, I'll just jump for awhile. Try it sometime, you will see that it is impossible to be stressed about anything while jumping, unless the thing you are stressed about is some sort of joint injury, in which case you should probably stop jumping.

Another thing that will make you forget about exams, without aggravating your potentially arthritic joints, is all things muppet. The Muppet Movie is the best option for maximal happiness because it has ukulele playing Kermit, bike riding Kermit and dancing Kermit in it. Try watching a muppet-frog riding a bike and not being happy. You just can't do it (unless you are a robot or some sort of a demon, then I make no promises).

Similarly, Fraggle Rock can pull you out of any slump, while simultaneously teaching you important life lessons like: "Radishes are all you need for a balanced diet" and "Trash will give you advice if you ask it nicely."

Sometimes, people say that Bert and Ernie are in the closet. This irritates me, because what does it matter if two muppets share a bed when they don't even have genitalia. It's like saying that a pencil is gay. The pencil is not gay, it is a pencil. Muppets are the same as pencils in this respect, except muppets instead of pencils. So, in my opinion, attempting to determine the sexual preference of asexual muppets is futile. Unless the muppet you are referring to is some sort of novelty sex shop muppet; then you are free to speculate on whether the novelty sex shop muppet likes novelty sex shop males or females (but don't tell me about it, because asexual is how I like my muppets). Regardless, if anything, people shouldn't be talking about the relationship between Bert and Ernie, they should be talking about the relationship with the guys that have their hands inside them. That's where the real scandal lies.

My parents used to get mad at Cookie Monster. They said he was ruining my grammar, but me did not think so. Really, I think they should have been more concerned about the fact that I ate a cookie I found on the playground. It was an Oreo, and it was totally worth it.

Blogging everyday is hard...

So, the whole blogging everyday thing works when you're bored and procrastinating, but it's hard on days like today in which I actually want to finish work and then go out and have fun. The way I see it, I have two options: I could drunken post tonight or I just post something I wrote in the past. I chose the second option.

Luckily, I'm a pack rat, so I found a plan for world domination that I wrote back in high school. One of my many plans. I actually used to be very focused on world domination, until I realized that once you're at the top, there's not much else to do except worry about other people killing you, which I don't enjoy, so, over time, I've learned to focus on new hobbies (by which I mean, you should support my blog, because it might be the one thing preventing me from crossing over from mild-mannered ginger to evil despot).

In high school I really liked gel pens, so it was originally written in a few different colours, and for some reason I chose hot pink for the bulk of the writing. Perhaps it was to force spying adversaries to have to read it a very slowly, so that by the time they reached the end I would already have knocked them out with a vase and hog-tied them in my closet. It was a smart plan, but will make it difficult to transcribe without going blind. You're welcome.

Sharon's Ultimate Plan for World Domination

Step 1: Breed Hedge Hogs
Through the acquirement of as many hedge hogs as possible, I can create an army to destroy all who oppose me.

Step 2: Train Hedge Hogs
By teaching the hedge hogs math, I can unleash their mathemagical power upon the world for all to tremble beneath. They will also be trained to bite peoples ankles, making them a constant annoyance to my enemies.

Step 3: Change Name to Liza-Jean and Infiltrate Yokel Society
After entering an unsuspecting yokel town, I will quickly gain their trust by teaching them wonderous new methods for roadkill preservation and preparation. With their trust, I will be able to manipulate them easily using their natural fear of those who are different to have any who question my rule eliminated.

Step 4: Have Hedge Hogs Dispose of Yokels
Once all foes are gone, it will be dangerous to have such an easily controlled group of gun owners around.

Step 5: Fully Establish Status as Despotic Leader
By constantly reminding those around me that I "own their ass" and introducing myself as Queen/Empress/Supreme Ruler Sharon, I will quickly convince everyone of my power and they will treat me accordingly.

Step 6: Enjoy a Milkshake in my New Civilization

...Well, I'm not blind, but it doesn't quite have the same charm when it's not written in technicolour with little stars and spirals doodle in the margin. I'm still going to post it though, because of the aforementioned "having a life" today. Don't worry, it doesn't happen often.

What about cows?

Today I went on an adventure with my friend Yelsel D'Stupid (disguising names is hard, leave me alone). To be honest, just spending time with her is an adventure, because, based on countless interactions with her, I have come to the conclusion she has no mental filter. Or, at least, if she has one, she chooses not to use it most of the time.

For example, we were planning a camping trip and thought we should invite our friend Neyney Charmin (just be glad I don't get to name a small child...yet), and I said "It's a good idea to bring Neyney, because if a bear decides to eat us, it'll go for her first because she's a vegetarian, giving us some time to escape." I thought it was a well known fact that herbivores are generally more delicious than carnivores, but Yelsel seemed unaware of this and asked for more explanation. "Think about it," I said, "you don't really hear of people eating, say, wolf. Most things we eat don't eat meat." To which she said, "What about cows?"

For awhile, on this brilliantly sunny day, we ended up walking behind a woman in a raincoat. My suspicion is that she woke up and thought, "It looks like rain, I think I'll wear my yellow raincoat with my yellow shoes. Yes, that's a good idea." Then, after she realized that there was not a cloud in the sky she thought "Shit, if I take off my jacket, my shoes will just look stupid."



We met some people giving out Pringles Stix samples on the corner. This product confuses me. There are only two reasons I might eat Pringles. One is that I'm craving potato chips, but don't want to have to imagine that they have any relation to actual potatoes. The second is that I want to put two back to back in my mouth and pretend I'm a duck. Pringles Stix don't fulfill either of these criteria. Instead of a tenuous connection to potatoes, they have zero potato ingredients. Also, if you try to put two in your mouth to look like a duck, it's a lot of work and you end up looking like this:



That seagull was mocking me, so I imagined that I was crushing it's head with my giant beak. I also noted that Pringles Stix contained pork extract, which does have to go in the pro colum, because, as I mentioned earlier, there is an inverse relationship between meat consumption and deliciousness. They should include that in the advertising: "Pringles Stix: The snack of choice for people who don't want to be eaten by bears."

We also met a lot of rude people. When we went to sit and eat by the water some people started shouting "Ginger...hey ginger....ginger". As a redhead, I was highly offended and said to Yelsel, "Are they trying to mock me? Seriously, I have a name." She said they were trying to call their dog, but I watched carefully, and it had no response to that name. It wasn't even ginger.

Today, in a continuation of my lessons from the zoo, I learned about pigeon mating. It turns out that pigeons are not that different from giraffes when it comes to sex. From what I can gather, the male hangs out for awhile until he assumes that the female has stopped paying attention, then he suddenly goes for it and she's like "Seriously, how would I not notice that?" and runs/flies away. Then he repeats.

We sat for awhile watching this occur over and over again with completely uninterested females. Yelsel thought for awhile and then said, "I just don't get it. Why doesn't he just take the ones that are already bending over? That would make a lot more sense." I think that it is good that she is human and not a male pigeon, because there are already too many pigeons. Also, pigeons don't talk, and she amuses me.

Why is it so difficult to find a pitchfork when you need one?

I was walking in the park with a friend when I made a horrible discovery. As we walked along on the warm, sunny day, I had an irrepressible urge to path dance. Actually, that's a lie, because I did repress it; but what I didn't repress was expressing my desire to path dance aloud to my friend. "Path dance?" she said, completely unsure what I was talking about. "Yeah, you know path dance," I said, to which she responded with a blank stare.

It was then that, for the first time in my life, I realized: Not everyone has irrepressible urges to path dance. For those that don't, I may need to explain what "path dance" means. According to the dictionary, "Path dance: the act of dancing along a path as if you live in a musical, often combined with path sing, but can also occur with no discernible external source of music." (Please don't ask for references, because I obviously made it up and, seriously, do you really need to make this any more awkward than it already is?)

Up until this point, I had gone through life assuming that we all secretly want to path dance but just don't. But, if one person doesn't want to path dance, there are probably others. My mind was officially blown. Then I thought, what about hall dance? Subway dance? Grocery shop dance? No, not even public washroom dance? Really? Are these all yearnings that I alone am repressing? No, I don't think that could be it. Others are probably just double repressing. Like, it would hurt so much to suppress their need for random musical moments that they've managed to hide that desire from even themselves. Unfortunately, instead of comforting me, this explanation just made me very sad.

But, then I remembered my friend Bark Montes (Note: all names are changed...badly). He not only appears to want to randomly dance, but does it. Sometimes he'll just start dancing alone, completely out of nowhere. I wish I could post a video, but that might defeat the purpose of so cleverly disguising his identity.

This temporarily comforted me, knowing that I couldn't be the sole person on the planet who wants to randomly dance on a day to day basis. Then I remembered that I'm pretty sure Bark Montes is not human at all, but a robot.

There are many reasons for this theory. First, he wears many layers. Far too many layers. For a long time I tried to figure out why one would need so many layers, until I realized it was to shelter his chrome heart and muffle the sound of creaking in his robot joints. Second...oh wait, it's mainly just the layer thing. But I think too many layers is a good enough reason to assume that a person is a robot and make plans to run them out of town, hopefully with pitchforks, if we can find them (I hope Bark Montes isn't reading this, or, to be more accurate, downloading it into his robot brain, because it might ruin the surprise).

Pitchforks aren't as easily accessible as they should be. I have often thought "this job would be easier with a pitchfork" only to realize that I don't have one. To be honest, I've never looked that hard, because my pitchfork needs are usually pretty fleeting.

So, after much thought, my one hope that path dance might be normal turned out to be a robot. That led me to think: "Could I be a robot?" Probably not. First, I wear very few layers. Second, I often use bad grammar. Third, I'm afraid of bears. Fourth, no one has ever made my head explode with a logical fallacy, mainly I just silently judge them. For these reasons, it's pretty clear that I'm not a robot.

Sometimes, when I'm bored, I like to silently judge people. But, sometimes when I'm bored and lazy I like to just pretend that I'm silently judging them. No need to go through all the trouble of actually judging when you can make them uncomfortable without it. Shortcuts are fun.

I love the zoo, but hate the maulings

Spring is the best time to go to the zoo. Today I went and saw some giraffes mating. Well, kind of. He was trying really hard, but she was having none of it, which made it a thousand times more awesome, watching him get shot down repeatedly.

Animal sex is amusing all on its own, but what makes it much more amusing is listening to parents trying to avoid having to explain what's happening to their little ones through a variety of futile distraction techniques.

While they worked hard to preserve their children's innocence, I took a picture.



I also enjoy taunting animals that would maul me if I ran into them in nature. They mainly ignore it, but I think it affects them more than they let on.

I spent awhile standing behind a tree watching a polar bear and imagining that we were out in the wild in an epic man-against-nature struggle. I was hoping that he would see me and charge, but he only glanced at me briefly with a "Seriously, I can see you, but I'm pretending not to because I'm embarrassed for you," look. And that's when I learned that polar bears are surprisingly expressive. Also, kind of assholes.



Anything monkey or monkey-like is exciting to me. There was a monkey-like creature (clearly I don't go to the zoo to learn taxonomy) missing a hind leg. People seemed sad for it, but I thought he had it set. If he wasn't in the zoo he probably would have been eaten a long time ago. He worked really hard to make friends.

Too hard. I'm glad I'm not a monkey, because he would annoy me but then I would feel bad because of the missing leg, but then think, "Seriously, why so annoying?" The internal conflict of annoyance versus sympathy would almost certainly obliterate me over time. Luckily, I'm not a monkey.

Sometimes from a distance I'll see a parent pick up a small child and think "Monkey!" then get very sad when I realize it's not monkey, just a tiny human. I see those all the time. That is the part of the zoo that is sad, the tricks. I don't like to be tricked. Especially by small children masquerading as monkeys.



Driving home I thought, "This is a nice neighbourhood. I wonder if the property value is affected by the increased odds of tiger mauling." I haven't really looked into it, but if it isn't, I think it should be. Tiger maulings suck. Although, I have to admit that part of the draw of the zoo is the potential for some sort of terrifying animal escape, like in Jurassic Park.

After seeing Jurassic Park, I couldn't sleep for multiple days because I was pretty sure a Velociraptor was going to eat me in the night. The only reason I was ever able to sleep again was realizing that their big clawed hands can only open lever-style door handles. They are powerless against the common doorknobs, no matter how intelligent they may be. And that is the story of how I overcame my fear of Velociraptors.

Grad photos = lie

My graduation photos were taken today. I hadn't put too much thought into them; in fact, I'd barely managed to remember to book them, which is why I got stuck with an early morning slot. But, my blasé attitude all changed last night when I realized: This picture is going to be around approximately...umm...forever. Long after my classmates have forgotten my witty retorts ("No, you are the one who is stupid") and aptitude for confusion, all they will be left with is this lone image of me.

"Damn," I thought, "maybe I should wash my hair or something." So, I got up early to get ready, but started thinking again over my morning coffee. Isn't making yourself up for a single day to take a picture to represent your time here until the end of days just lying? I mean, I've spent 4 years suffering to finish this program, and I didn't do it with perfectly coiffed hair and brilliant eye makeup. I did it with blood, sweat and tears (literally on all three counts...yes, even the blood, actually, especially the blood). And then I thought, "Am I suggesting that my photo shoot prop should be blood? Wait, I'm confused."

I think what confused me was the part of me that's a little vain (and not sure how to find blood at such short notice) and, therefore, isn't sure that the accurate representation of my natural appearance after these four grueling years is something that should ever have photographic documentation (the best description of my appearance upon waking would some sort of zombie-catfish hybrid...or if you want an image a little more easily accessible to the average person - I look like death). So, instead of trying to work out the confusion, I decided to make compromises. For example, I allowed myself to pluck my eyebrows...but only one side (I guess I should say, "pluck my eyebrow," but it just sounds wrong). Or, I could put on eyeliner, but I didn't let myself do it well (okay, that wasn't so much a matter of compromise as of skill, but the impact is still the same). Unfortunately, in the perfect illustration of exactly how bad I look on a daily basis, this half-assed effort was rewarded with countless compliments on my appearance today (secretly I wonder how many people substituted "Hey, you look less like a corpse than I'm used to," with "Hey, you look...umm...nice hair").

Anyways, it's still a lie. In reality, I look like death. But, in our graduation composite I will probably look like the living dead, a vast improvement and blatant distortion. In a few years I'll pay for it when I've had time to rest and live like a semi-normal human being (read: when I legitimately don't look like death) and I meet up with my school friends. They're not going to be able to compliment me on how unsickly I look, because they will have been looking at my lying liar of a grad photo for so many years. So, instead of having many years of people saying how good I look, I got just one day of hair compliments, and now I'll go through a lifetime of nothing. Then I'll die.

Stupid lying grad photo.

Drunk.

Day three of blogging. I promised myself when I started this that I would do it everyday, so, here I am, blogging. On day three. I think I can do it, I managed it with my journal for awhile. I said "I'm going to force myself to journal every day," and I did, even when it was entirely unnecessary, like the night where my entire entry was: "Drunk." Actually, I think it was one of my better entries. Quite insightful.

Since I don't really have a good blog topic but I don't want to fall out of the habit so early, I'm going to just write about my day and see what comes of it. I woke up this morning and did a bunch of stuff that I now forget probably involving coffee and showering. At some point I decided that dressing would be a good idea if I wanted to emerge from my apartment at some point, which is about when life became difficult, mainly because yesterday I decided that laundry was not worth my time. A fine decision, but it didn't leave me with many options as I stared into my closet.

I eventually decided to wear a black skirt, but, due to recent weight loss (new apartment with hardwood floors + socks = incredible calorie burning dance parties + many new bruises) combined with no discernable source of income, most of my clothes are a few sizes too big, and this particular skirt was already a size bigger than needed because I bought it on sale ("cheap over-sized clown skirt...score!"). So, it almost fits (read: can stay up...kind of), but not quite enough that I couldn't guarantee that if someone decided to pants me they would meet even token resistance.

Although I've never encountered anyone trying to pants me, even when actually wearing pants, it's an important daily consideration, because I know the first day I don't think about it is the day I'm going to be the victim of an unexpected pantsing. You may be thinking, "What would be the point in attempting to pants someone in a skirt?", to which I say, "Good point." But the Boy Scout in me likes to always be prepared, even when I'm not quite sure what my hypothetical assailents motivation could possibly be (fine, you caught me, I wasn't actually a Boy Scout, but the Brownie motto, "Lend a Hand," has never once helped me avoid an embarrassing pantsing).

After much cost-benefit analysis of my outfit, I was finally ready to hit the world . And I'm pretty sure some stuff happened there. Ooh...there was cake at some point, cake that I ate with my hands off of a paper towel, which I think just makes it more delicious because it was all like "Haha, you can't eat me because you don't have plates or utensils" and I was like "Think again, m.f." Actually, that cake probably explains the coherence of this post, cause my blood sugar is a little wonky now. Totally worth it though, if only to show the sucker who's boss (it's me, by the way, I am boss).

Disney and Various Asymmetries

I thought it would feel different being a blogger now, like maybe I'd feel taller or something. Maybe that comes with time.

It's that time of year again when my iPod requires some serious renovations to its play list to help fuel my spring fever. This year, the annual need for excessively happy music has been compounded by the fact that I'm graduating soon, which, I fear, will most likely be followed by my becoming a highly educated hobo (which, although considered superior to vagrants in the hierarchy of modern nomads, won't quite make me enough to pay off the massive debt I've accumulated over a lifetime of school).

To combat this ever present fear of living in a box within a year, and reflect my growing desire to run far far away from my current life (because it consists of school and...school), I've been listening to a lot of Disney movie music. Not just any Disney music, but the "this place sucks, I want to be in this other place because I'm way too awesome for this place" songs. They seem to occur at the beginning of every movie with a female lead. Like "Part of your world" from The Little Mermaid, "Little Town" from Beauty and the Beast, "Just around the River Bend" from Pocahontas, and "Reflection" from Mulan. Oh, I also have "The Bare Necessities", which, even though it doesn't fit that mold, is essential because it helps with my fears of both poverty and bears.

Anyways, this change in music recently led to me belting out "Reflection" into my mirror (because I enjoy being as literal as possible, especially when music is involved). While singing about how the world doesn't know who I am (while simultaneously thinking, "to be honest, my reflection's not so far off from who I am inside, because...damn!") I noticed a strange anomaly. It may have been a trick of the light, but I noticed my left eyelashes seemed significantly darker than my right eyelashes. Immediately I thought, "it's probably just because I'm bad at applying mascara"...but then I remembered, I hadn't worn anything but clear mascara for a month and a half; ever since the moment I realized that general exhaustion brought on by school had led to all emotions (sadness, anger, happiness, indiferrence etc) immediately being followed by me sobbing uncontrollably. So why the colour difference? I don't know, but it didn't really matter because by this point my mind had already moved onto another asymmetry I'd noticed a few years ago.

I detected it while working a summer job in a factory cutting wires (or, more accurately working a machine that cut wires for me, which I would stare at for 10 hours so that if it jammed, I could press the emergency stop button, effectively saving the world from a catastrophic wire explosion, or so I imagined). I quickly learned that the best way to entertain myself through the day was to see how much water I could drink and then use the resulting frequent need for washroom breaks to get a change of scenery. Killing time in the washroom was imperative to this plan, so, washing my hands very slowly gave me the opportunity to notice something odd: the veins on the back of my hands are structured completely differently on the left and right side. And I don't just mean a little different, my left hand has perfectly organized straight veins that all bifurcate at the same perfect level, while my right hand's veins are like weeds, just growing in every direction.

My discovery of this difference really wasn't worth much unless I could figure out which hand was the evil one. It was useful to have such a topic to ruminate on during my long days of waiting for something to go horribly wrong so that I could press the stop button (hopefully with the good hand, or who knows what would happen). Also, given that periodically I was given other jobs that could seriously damage a hand, I thought it would be best to determine my evil hand's identity before it had a chance to sabotage the other one, as evil hands are known to do.

At first I thought, "well, the left is so organized, while the right hand has this whole 'rebel without a cause who doesn't care what you think' thing going on...the right hand totally must be the evil one." But, then I remembered who else was very organized: fascists. There's no way that the fascist hand could be the good one. Then I flip-flopped again, because having lived my life as a southpaw, I'd read enough lefty day calendars (a common Christmas present) to know the sort of prejudice surrounding the left hand, and I just didn't want to be part of that. So, around this point I gave up figuring it out and just hoped for the best. I'll probably regret someday that I didn't really put the work in to ascertain which hand is evil. This day will most likely come once it finally reveals its evil scheme and I'm powerless to stop it because I only have one hand working for me and it's probably a wimp (also, evil hand will have already hog-tied it, because that's what evil hands excel at). I think I'm going to start doing more things with my feet.

So I've decided to blog...

One might ask, why would I decide to blog now? Oh wait, by one, I mean I might ask. I just keep thinking that it would probably be smarter to invest my time and energy into inventing a time machine to take me back to when blogs were all the rage and then start blogging. But that's not my style (and by my "style" I'm referring to "outdated")...and I already tried to make a time machine back in grade 5. It was made of a refrigerator box and it took a lot of black paint. Just painting it was enough of a hassle to make me give up on the idea of time travel to this day (other than the linear forward moving pattern I've become accustom to).

So, here I am, blogging in 2010, because it's officially gotten to the point where there is too much stuff in my brain that just needs to come out somehow. Insignificant things that are taking a lot of space that could be filled with relevant facts, like where I left my keys or how I plan on acquiring dinner on any given day. Since it has to come out somewhere, I figure why not just put it on the internet, where I can imagine that someone is reading, instead of randomly in my journal, where I imagine no one is reading, but, most likely, someone is stealing it in the night and mocking my grammar.

But, apparently to start a blog you need a name, which was a massive obstacle for me. One might think that someone who is unable to think of a few words to name their blog will probably not do too well at actually filling the potential blog. However, I like to think that I'm more a quantity over quality person when it comes to writing. It is much easier for me to string together many words that mean nothing than a couple words that mean something.

Since you're reading this, I clearly thought of a name, a name which I think needs some explanation, to prevent you from imagining I'm a pack-a-day chain smoker...although reading this with a raspy smokers voice might add to the mystique, so feel free to do that. But, in reality, I stole it from a Tom Waits song. The full quote is "I'm all alone, I've smoked my friends down to the filter", which I've often thought would be the greatest Facebook status ever. But, the Catch-22 is that the only time I could actually post a quote that miserable would be if I'd truly alienated all my friends, which means there would be no one left reading my Facebook status and thinking how awesome I am for posting such an insightful status. Every time I listen to the song I repeat this realization and mourn the loss of my perfect Facebook status all over again. So, when prompted to write a few words to title my blog it was the only thing I could possibly use.

Now that I am officially a "blogger", you might wonder what my game plan is. No? Well, I'm wondering that. So, basically what I'm thinking is that in my pre-blogging life when in the course of the day I had opportunities to make amusing or insightful comments I would just speak them aloud and be done with it. No more. Now, when such a moment arises, I will instead sprint to the nearest computer and write it up for the benefit of all, then send a link to my blog to whoever I happened to be talking to so they know my thoughts on our long abandoned conversation. I think it's a solid plan that won't result in me seeming weird at all. If nothing else comes from it, the constant running will be good for the cardiovascular system and the frequent unexpected retreats from social interactions will keep bringing me one step closer to my perfect Facebook status.