Apple did not endorse this blog

Within 12 hours of my decision to stop blogging everyday, I was given a story so perfect that I had to tell you about it today. Last night I went over to my friend Sparrow's house. On the walk from the bus to her house, I ran into 2 black cats. One was sitting on what I assumed to be its front lawn. As I passed, I thought, "Please don't cross my path, please don't cross my path, Thank you!" The second one was more risky. It was trotting along the edge of the sidewalk in front of me. Then it sort of veered as if it were going to cross my path, then veered back off the sidewalk, leaving me free and clear. I thanked that cat out loud, because I'm fond of not having bad luck for the day.

Then I wondered if having two black cats nearly cross your path but then not cross it is a sign of good luck. It seems reasonable that if you teeter on the edge of danger but don't fall in, you should be rewarded. Like how if a child nearly drowns, people will usually give them lots of candy when they don't. Narrowly avoiding bad luck causing events should result in cosmic candy, or so I theorize.

I would probably have thought more about it, but by this point I had reached Sparrow's. There, I proceeded to drink a number of Pomtinis, because I figured if I'm going to drink a delicious summer cooler, I should choose one that I can almost delude myself into thinking is healthy. It is full of pomegranate, which, I think should offset some of the sugar and alcohol. Actually, I don't think that, but while drinking them I try to imagine it does. Anyways, good times were had, and I considered sleeping over in their hammock, which was very comfortable and fun to cocoon in, but in the end decided to take the long bus ride home to my own wonderful bed.

Once I reached my stop, I didn't realize how tipsy I still was and nearly fell down the stairs as the bus braked. In the midst of that, I dropped my poor little iPod. Actually, it was kind of propelled forward with inertia. "Wow," I thought when I picked it up intact and working, "I'm the luckiest klutz alive." This statement is very true.

I got my tipsy self home and went on Skype, because I realized I was actually up late enough that Shamus might be on. We were still chatting when I decided to step out on the balcony for a minute. I was listening to my iPod at the time, and I'm not sure what happened exactly, but I somehow dropped it. It wasn't off the balcony at the time though, so I thought it must have just fallen at my feet. However, all I could see was my earphone cord attached to nothing.

I found a flashlight and looked, but there was nothing. I did note a small crack between the railing and the ground through which a perfectly vertical iPod could easily fall. Then I freaked out, obviously, because my iPod is my best friend. At first, I just needed an iPod because I like to have music with me all the time to keep me sane. Now, I need it because every random thought I have is written in it until I think it's a stupid thought and delete it. It's like an extension of my brain, which is useful, due to the memory issues. So, in essence, I had just dropped a portion of my brain 13 floors. As you can probably imagine, it hurt.

It was 2am by this point, but I had to go look, because when you're best friend drops off a balcony, you look for them even though you know what you find might not be pretty. I just needed closure. I wandered out, fearful of random 2am serial killers who, I imagine, just sit outside building waiting for just such an event to grab you. I think the serial killers I imagine are much more passive than those in most horror movies. Anyways, no serial killer found me, but I did find my iPod, lying face down in the grass. It looked so small. Then, I picked it up and it didn't even have a scratch.

I think it is important to also note at this point that the protective case I bought for it was only $5, because, despite the knowledge that I might be one of the worst klutzes in history, I just couldn't spend more than that. Pretty much it's just a flimsy piece of plastic that loosely fits around the corners and usually slightly cushions the fall when I drop it a foot or two, not a hundred feet. The funniest part of this is that I nearly didn't buy an iPod touch because I knew that I was a klutz and that as much as I would try not to, I would drop it. Repeatedly. At this point I clearly wasn't aware that they are magic.

Happy song is Hallelujah the kd lang version from Hymns of the 49th Parallel, because that's the song I was listening to when I dropped my poor little iPod, and it's the song I finished listening to after it was back in my embrace.

Cereal guy?

I had coffee with my friend Vincenzo O'Lun today. I was looking forward to it because he'd promised me drama and excitement when I ran into him earlier in the week. He also gave me the "call me" hand signal, which I found odd, since, as far as I can recollect, we've never once spoken on the phone, and I'm not eager to start due to my general hatred of the phone and its general insistance on making any awkward situation 10 times more awkward. Then he promised I would have plenty of blog material, which makes my life easier, because most nights I have to depend on excessive consumption of sugar and/or caffeine to derail my train of thought. But, if I have a good conversation with Vincenzo, or Yelsel D'Stupid, or some other not quite sane friend, it pretty much writes itself, therefore decreasing my risk of future diabetes.

Unfortunately Vincenzo kept putting things off limits, despite claiming he's an open book. We did get into a good discussion about how he's not sure how to break to his future wife that she'll have to help him clean disgustingly messy townhouse kitchens. He hasn't met her yet. I suggested he wait until the second date. I was surprised he was talking about marrying at all, since Yelsel (who's pretty close to Vincenzo, yet I never see them together, which is probably good, because the two of them combined would probably blow a fuse in my brain) said she was pretty sure he'd never get married. He's pretty sure this is because he once said that he'd absolutely need a king sized bed when he gets married. This somehow makes sense between the two of them. King sized bed = single forever.

He also can't be with a vegetarian. He didn't elaborate, but proceeded to say "my last girlfriend was a vegetarian...I think". "You think?" I said, "How long did you date?" Apparently they dated for 6 months, and yet he never figured out whether she ate meat, even though it seems to be a dealbreaker. "Well, we mainly got dessert." He was happy when they broke up, but still feels a little confused about why. "Maybe because you didn't even know she was a vegetarian? Did you even know her name?" At this point he struggled for a bit, I have to assume the final name he gave was real though, mostly because he had no reason to lie at this point.

I'm feeling a little boring today, but fear not. Sometimes, I will save random notes in my iPod about funny things for future use. Actually, I would continue to fear, because one of those notes was "Vegetarian", to describe the last story. Well, let's see what I have.

"Cereal Guy." What the hell does "cereal guy" mean? Oh wait, I think this is from the day I was walking to school and saw a guy carrying two plastic bags full of what appeared to be about 20 boxes of cereal. Then I thought, this could be something and wrote it down. It wasn't something.

"Tim Hortons...Freezer story...Lady Bugs" Okay, well, I worked at Tim Hortons in highschool, so there's probably some sort of story from that. Oh wait, freezer story, I think I might know this one. Once, when I was working at Tim Hortons, we were bored, so we drew a detailed diagram of our plan to chryogenically freeze our supervisor, Alli, in the walk-in freezer, so that we could clone her in the future, then take over the world, or something. Then our manager found it and thought we were talking about another Alli. When she heard we meant our supervisor she said "Oh, that's too bad, I don't really like the other one." Which I took to mean that she'd read it, thought it was a murder plan and was simply disappointed at who the intended victim was. No concern over the fact that multiple employees were plotting this together. This might be one reason why one should never work at Tim Hortons.

Lady bugs? Oh, wait, I think that's about my pet ladybugs. Once, as a kid, I was begging my parents for a pet. My dad found a ladybug on his shirt and said, "Fine, here's your pet." I named her Lucy and kept her in a shoebox with a window built in the top with plastic wrap. I filled the little top hat from Monopoly with water and built a ramp up with a little piece of cardboard. She would climb up the little ramp and lean over into the hat to drink. I fed her cucumber. It would slowly disappear, so I'm guessing she liked it. I found other ladybugs around the house (there was a bit of an infestation that year) and gradually added them to my shoebox. At some point, I had so many I stopped naming them because I couldn't tell them apart anymore. Eventually, they started dying, so I got a second box and started a ladybug graveyard. When that filled up with little cardboard crosses I decided it was probably time to set my ladybugs free. Then I was alone again. The moral: Just buy your kid the pet.

That's enough of the random iPod notes for today. Happy song! So, I'm listening to my iPod and somehow magically turned Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen on. Sometimes Shamus likes to play a game where he starts a song and I have to name it. I couldn't get this one as of last fall, but about a month ago, I was on an ice cream quest with Mickey Bobicky and sang the whole thing. Really, I just want to get to the lyric, "It's a town full of losers and I'm pulling out of here to win." Maybe that doesn't sound like a happy song, but it's pretty awesome when you're ready to blow this popsicle stand (I feel I underuse that phrase...maybe for good reason). The point is, "so long suckers" (...in a few months. Somehow that makes it lose its effect. Don't worry though, I'll probably just repeat it later, giving you many opportunities to be referred to as a sucker.)

Blah

Today I woke up in an awful mood. This wasn't completely bad, because it gave me a chance to note that I couldn't remember the last time I was in such a bad mood, which says something good about my mood lately. However, having mainly been in a neutral to good mood for most days in recent memory, I've forgotten how to cope with such a global sense of blah. This was not improved when I went to take my road test for my drivers license, the sole reason for me rushing home to Cambridge last night, and found out somehow that my booking had been lost in the internet. This is probably Facebooks fault. This further entrenched me in my bad mood.

When I returned home from my not road test, I decided that my quest for the day was to not give into my bad mood. It's just a state of mind, and since I am my mind, I should control that shit. So, I put on some excessively happy music and started dancing like a crazy person. Which helped briefly, until I decided I also needed water and tried to combine the two. Take note, nearly choking to death doesn't beat bad moods.

Later, I decided that I should go for a walk by the river (this is a river in my home town, so not as elusive as the BC rivers), because water always cheers me up. Then my iPod ran out of batteries, which always spells tragedy for me. But, despite that, I did feel a little better at the water. I thought of things that make me happy, like delicious treats and friends that dance a lot. Feeling good, I decided to walk back home. Then, all my mood reparations were stripped away by an old man arguing with another old man about the speed of his scooter. As I passed, they said something inaudible, then I heard the one say, "Like you could have a woman like that, you old cripple. She does have nice hair though." At which point I went back to my bad mood after vomiting in my mouth a little bit. This is one of the many reasons that I never intend on moving back to this city.

This was the point where it was clear to me that the bad mood was not the result of my state of mind, but of an evil demon that was trying to kill me. This is not the first time this particular situation has occurred to me, so I wasn't too surprised.

Okay, maybe it wasn't actually an evil demon, but that does seem like a much more interesting explanation than "stress", which is the most likely culprit. This stress is coming from a number of sources, but the number one source that is only going to get worse, is the approach of licensing exams at the end of the summer. I suspect that I'm not alone in this, as many of my colleagues will endure it with me.

But, fear not, I have a plan. From today until the end of licensing exams, I'm going to think of one song that is guaranteed to make me smile, and post it, so that, hopefully, it can make others smile too. I'm not certain how many happy songs I have right now, but there is a chance this will force me to seek out new ones (by which I mean, feel free to send your favorites).

First song that is guaranteed to make me smile: Don't Stop Believing by Journey. Although in the past I complained about its lack of specificity, I've realized that might actually be another positive of the song. It allows the song to be used in many variable circumstances. You could be believing that you're in love, I mean, it's a little cliche, but acceptable. But you could also believe exciting things, like you're actually royalty, secretly stolen at birth and that some day they will find you and give you many many jewels. Or that someday, with the power of only your mind, you can learn to turn various household objects into spoons. Also, I often find my shadow is searching in the night. What it's looking for, I'm not sure. Maybe another shadow, or many many jewels.

You think I'm going to zig...and then I zig

Some days I imagine I'll have more time that is temporally possible. Today was one of those days, by which I mean I frittered away my morning and over scheduled my afternoon, so I'm literally writing this as I walk to my friend Andi (to the) Maximum's apartment. I'm assuming I won't accidentally wander into oncoming traffic, but if I do, I'm hoping my iPod will survive so there is evidence of my attempt to blog.

As I listen to my completely randomized music I'm struck by the proportion of country I have (usually I wouldn't notice things like this because I skip a lot). This country-music-liking thing started pretty subtly, if you'd asked me if I liked country 4 years ago, I probably would have laughed at the idea. To be honest, I'm pretty sure it's Shamus and Lilliput's doing. Who started them on it? I don't know. Probably some sort of a leprechaun (or so Occam's Razor would indicate).

My favorite thing about country (or at least my random assortment of country songs chosen mainly for nostalgia purposes) is that it often contains a story and usually zigs for awhile before it zags, just to mess with you. Like there's one song about a poker game where they're all talking about who they would be if thy could be anything, and they all want to be famous and rich and generally awesome...until you get to the guy singing it. He's pretty much like "I want to be a good husband and a father, because my life's pretty damn good." If I had written that song, I also would have added "Now don't you all feel unappreciative. Booyah M.F.s!"

I also have a song about a horrible highway accident where the whole song you think it was the preacher that survived. Until, BOOM, you find out it was the hooker all along. I also like the added touch of a blood soaked bible immediately after that revelation. I don't get to spend enough time imagining blood soaked bibles, so I always appreciate when that one comes on, even though I already know the answer to the mystery (in case you didn't catch it, it was the hooker).

So, I didn't die from my iPod writing, although it was close. But it turned out it was unnecessary because our movie doesn't start until 10:30, so I have a chunk of time to write now. Oh well, now I know that I can do it if I have to, although I suspect people are driving by thinking "Stupid kids, attached to their electronic doohickeys." Actually, this chunk of time is less "blogging time" and more "publishing and then stuffing my face with food time", so I'm going to sign off now. Tomorrow, I promise more crayon drawings, even if both my hands are chopped off in a horrible lathe accident and I have to draw by gripping the crayons between my painful stumps. I guess I could do in my mouth too, but the taste of wax too easily brings me back to kindergarten, which would result in mainly heart people pictures, because for a few years, I would not draw anything that wasn't completely composed of hearts. Tomorrow, I will draw an example. But for now, I'm going to fend off starvation.

First mobile post...woot.

Today I'm flying back to Toronto after my exciting trip to BC to visit Shamus, Lilliput and the little one. Again, I am shocked at how boring an airport can be. I mean, people are friggin' flying here. We're not supposed to be able to do that. And yet nothing interesting is happening. However, I am enjoying the old top 40 music they have playing. I love Outkast. I can't believe no one is shaking it like a polaroid picture. This is only increasing my airport disappointment.

By the way, I'm writing this on my iPod and planning to attempt to publish directly from it when I reach Edmonton, so that if something goes horribly wrong, at least I'll know that I didn't fail my 9 followers. I tell you this because although I've become very good at catching most of the wrong autocorrections and tiny keyboard typos, I still manage to miss some occasionally, so please don't silently and/or vocally judge me on my grammar, the way I most likely would were
our positions reversed.

Still in Abbotsford, still nothing happening. I think they should stage fake crashes, because then we could have the pleasure of being horrified briefly, but then the pilot could jump out and maybe do a somersault, followed by a quick jingle about how he's not dead. Kind of like Willy Wonka. But hopefully our pilot will be less willing to have passengers randomly drowning in chocolate or require juicing. More candy would help with the interest factor though.

While I'm on the topic of Willy Wonka, I think it's important to note how much Wonkavision irritates me. Every time I watch that part of the movie I think that I would much rather drive to get a humongous chocolate bar than have it magically appear on TV. Such a waste of chocolate. I mourn it every time, and I watch that movie pretty frequently, so it takes its toll. (no iPod, I don't want to say "it takes it's toll". What does "it takes it is toll" mean? Ridiculous).

On the plane to Edmonton! My TV is working, but daytime TV is rarely my thing. They are talking about scrapbooking. Apparently it's like the movie Ratatouille. I don't understand this overenthusiastic woman's analogies. Or her love affair with card stock. She's not selling me on it, and I'm really bored. If you're incredibly bored and scrapbooking seems like too much work, it's probably never going to seem interesting. Actually, all I'm really being convinced of is that I should fear scrapbookers, because she's creeping me out.

Edmonton! Found some Wifi and coffee, but still unamused. I should have just given into my desire to plane dance so that I'd have a good story about how it took 4 flight attendants to wrestle me down when the seat belt light came on. But I didn't, so I don't. Someday, maybe.

There's still no sign of my alter ego (see May 3rd's post). I'm sure they'll show up sometime and I hope they bring food, because I'm hungry.

I think that's a wrap for now. This is the part where I actually publish this. Wish me luck! (of course, if you're reading this, I already succeeded, so it's kind of a catch-22...although I do appreciate luck on a day to day basis, so feel free to do it anyways...)

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.