It's probably best not alienate ones primary audience...

It's been awhile since my last post, as I was reminded of by my family multiple times when I saw them. I was hoping that my 10 year old cousin (who, at this moment, I can't remember if I nicknamed before, so I'm going to leave it blank until the search function loads on my computer) would start her own blog and I could just link to it, because I'm lazy like that. She said she had nothing to write about. I think the musing of a 10 year old would probably be much more fascinating than this, if only because I remember at 9 years old, I spent most of my time writing stories about accidentally poisoning my teachers or highly dysfunctional families with well timed fatal accidents. I would have used an example from when I was 10, but I can't really remember what I thought at 10. I suspect I mainly thought, "Wow, I was a pretty effed up 9 year old, I should try to lay low for a couple of years."

My cousin with the forgotten nickname (or non-existent one) then suggested she would write a blog about me and the times she sees me, which was flattering. But I'm not sure how many people want to read a blog about how awesome I am at Scattergories. However, that is the blog I now plan on writing, because I'm really really good at Scattergories, even if those playing with me refuse to accept it. For example, under "Kind of Candy" starting with "D" I wrote "Delicious", which was highly disputed, because my family is full of jealousy over my ability to think outside their Scattergories box. The fact remains that there are 2 kinds of candy in my world: delicious and not delicious. Those that contest that delicious is not a kind of candy should be forced to eat the free candy from the Korean Grocery store that is all over my apartment (as you might have guessed, it's not delicious, because it would never survive living with me otherwise...by the way, please come eat my candy). Really, in the end, delicious is not only an acceptable kind of candy, it's the only kind that matters. Regardless, I love Scattergories, mainly for the fights. But don't tell my family, even though I'm beginning to suspect they're the only people still reading this, so they might still figure it out.

It's always disappointing to go to family events and realize that you have no anecdotes left because you've blogged them all. I guess it could encourage me to live more life, or at least lie more often, but instead I've allowed it to stop the blogging. For example, two weeks ago, what I imagine to be a felon, probably some sort of bank robber or serial killer, crashed on the road behind our apartment hopped the fence running from the cops. It was very exciting. Later, they had dogs searching. That was also exciting. But I did not blog it so that I would have something to talk about with my family that wasn't a repeat. I mean, I'm the type of person who will watch a good sitcom over and over again and still laugh because I'm simple and such, but I know that my parents will buy entire shows on DVD that I eventually steal forever, because once they've seen it once, it's all over. The point is, I don't think they appreciate my repeats very much.

I suppose I could just stay quiet in family situations, but I worry eventually I'll forget how to talk or my tongue will atrophy, and I do so love to talk. Maybe I could just spend a lot of time playing Shadow. If you do not know or remember what Shadow is, you might need to return to grade school. It usually begins with one child saying "Want to play shadow?" and then the other child repeating it, then it goes back and forth for an hour or two until the weaker child's head explodes. As an adult, it's much more fun, because the other person usually believes they're too mature for it, so you get to repeat a larger variety of statements, like, "What are you doing?" and "Please, for the love of God, just stop that." Well, I imagine it's more fun, I haven't actually tried it yet, because I'm fond of having friends. But family is different, because they have to keep dealing with you. That's why god gave us families, so that all our most annoying traits would have somewhere to flourish, without restraint. So, I might keep blogging, and then just play Shadow more often. But not during Scattergories, because that's serious time.

I've been racking up the happy songs during my brief hiatus, but I also forgot which ones I've already used. I should have kept a list. I've realized that any song about New York brings me joy. Examples include New York, New York; Empire State of Mind; NYC; and A Heart in New York. I've never actually been to New York, but I suspect that if I could make it there, I'd make it anywhere. For now, I'm yet to make it anywhere, but give me time, or maybe give me money, because that would also be useful.

Oh, my family also kept asking me how the novel is going. The answer is, I'm fond of empty internet promises, but I still might write it anyways. It will most likely be gibberish, especially since a month is quickly turning into only a week to finish it.

Is there anything illegal about plotting against yourself?

Since finishing school and deciding to defer board exams to February, I've been feeling a tremendous need for deadlines. I've realized that without clear, tangible goals, I end up actually looking at my life and trying to improve as a human being in ways that are not objectively measurable. I don't care for this. I much prefer my self-reflection to occur in short spurts, usually ending with the thought, "I'll take care of that when I have the time, but right now I need to focus on ______" (with "______", in most cases, being a trivial wheel-spinning like task that somehow makes me feel important).

I mean, I still have long term goals, like passing boards and generally being awesome, but, for now, they're not enough to fill the days. Getting a job is a short term goal to prevent starvation, but searching for one doesn't really feed my urge for productivity. I could probably blog more often again...but I won't (sorry Jennijen).

In general, I'm not an A type personality. If anything, I'm A/B. You know, just organized enough to piss off the slackers, but just lazy enough to irritate the hard-core overachievers. I like it this way, I makes me feel like my Yin and Yang are in balance (also, of course, because it maximizes irritation to others). But, now that I'm free of stress, my B side has been so overindulged that the A side is jumping out. I want to plan and control everything in my surroundings. If there is a problem, I will solve it, even if it's best left alone, or imaginary. Most are imaginary. It's difficult to solve imaginary problems, mainly because there is an infinite supply of imaginary obstacles. Plus, even once your solve it, there are just more imaginary problems right behind it. It's very tiring.

So, I'm going crazy because the A side of my personality is taking over, and, to be perfectly honest, I hate that bitch. But, not to worry, as always, I have a plan. And by I have a plan, I mean the side of my personality that I just outright slandered (Wait...libeled. Although this is all sort of talked out in my head as I write it down, so it's sort of like slander. Not really though. Wait, but if it's true that my A side is a bitch, then have I really done either? Why is life so hard?) has a plan. Well, many plans. So many plans that my A side won't know what hit it and will eventually calm down, allowing my B side to bask in the glory that is summer freedom.

The first, promise baking to anyone who crosses my path. Birthday? I got ya covered. Excessive studying? Let me feed that sugar craving. Trying to lose weight? Oh wait, we might have a problem, but do you want a cupcake anyways?

The second plan is to attempt to be a vegetarian again without starving to death. This plan was thwarted quickly by a friends birthday celebration at a Korean BBQ, where I ingested a good months worth of meat. I'm trying again and hoping I don't randomly come across a large stash of unclaimed steak. You know, because eating random meat you find on the street is always intelligent. Well, it might be, if you just saw it fall off a truck of a trusted meat distributor. Of course, you could probably trace it if that happened, and would need to return it to the proper authorities as a responsible and ethical citizen. Which leaves me as a vegetarian for the time being, unless offered free meat. Or bored and craving Korean BBQ.

The third (and last plan I will discuss here, as I have too many random plans flitting through my head to fully document) is to write a novel in a month. I know that November is apparently supposed to be the month for writing a novel in a month, but I'm going to be busy with other things in November, so why not now? Well, why not might be because I don't have a plot or characters or a setting, or really anything that could make a novel other than a vague sense of the tone I'd like. And even that I can't describe in words. But, I figure if I don't force myself to do it now, when will I force myself? The answer is never, which is probably a good answer, because, seriously, what's the point? However, in the interest of kicking my A personality back into submission, I will take on this task. You will most likely never see the results, well, not unless you are family or a close friend who I am willing to torture by forcing you to read a large number of jumbled words I tossed out in a month in an inane attempt to regain my sanity.

You know what I haven't done in a long time? Listed a happy song. Luckily, I've recently been obsessed with the song Tightrope by Janelle Monae, mainly because I can't listen to it without dancing like a crazy person, so my abs are getting really tight. Now I'm off to write stuff that is not this.

I'm back, sort of, for now, but probably not tomorrow or the next day

So, you may have thought that I'd forgotten about this blog. I have not, I have however, knowingly neglected it. It's not that I don't care about it anymore, it's just that it's summer, and I'm happy, and I'm starting to think all my best rants might be rooted in neurosis and generalized anxiety. I'm sure something will throw me off soon, and then we're back in business.

Last night, I copied some of my posts into I Write Like because apparently it's all the rage. My first result was Chuck Palahniuk, which was interesting since it wasn't even on of the ones where I referenced Fight Club. Those came up as Cory Doctorow. I don't really know who that is, but I think Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is an awesome title.

I've put in a bunch of different posts and gotten at least 10 different people that I write like. I'm not sure that this site is incredibly accurate. Or maybe I just don't really write like anyone, but it has to spit out a name, so it does so at random. That's probably for the best, since I don't want to be the person that broke I Write Like. I feel that the Twitter community would take vengeance swiftly.

One might also theorize that each post comes up with a different author because my writing is so erratic and inconsistent. I don't care for this theory, so please stop that.

Banana brain goo

The world is too hot to blog. My brain is actually in a puddle on the floor, but I scooped it up a few days ago to write the following, and then didn't publish it, but now I will, because, otherwise nothing is going to posted for a very long time if summer keeps this up. I would like to visit Antarctica and hang out with the penguins. I mentioned this to a friend, and they said, you know it's winter there, right? And I do. I'd wanted to say Alaska and hang out with the polar bears, but the 24 hour days are probably as bad as the heat.

The other day, I went to Canada's Wonderland with my friend Nicola Tupperstein who was visiting from out west. We ate foot long hot dogs and rode all the roller coasters, except for the boring ones. Then we had a cookiewich. Really, it was a recipe for indigestion, but totally worth it.

As we were walking through a semi-secluded path where it was possible to hear the various screams coming from the rides around us, Nicola speculated that this would be a great place to hurt someone, because no one would hear the screams. Sometimes, when people live far away, you can forget exactly how terrifying they are. In case you're wondering, she did not kill me.

We also saw some teens who had won a human-sized stuffed banana and were trying to put it in their not-human-sized backpack. It wasn't working. I could have predicted that, which is why I only try to win obscenely large stuffed animals at the end of the day. Nicola asked what one would do with such a banana. "Well," I said, "It will probably sit around their bedroom for awhile, until they go to university, where it will be brought out while drinking and humped periodically. Then, eventually, it will be trashed by his future wife." I had that banana's number, but I think that's because I've always been skilled at reading bananas.

I call it "Nice Cream"

I forgot until I posted yesterday that writing stuff is kind of fun. Well, it's fun-like, making it a good substitute for actual fun. Like eating protein powder, berries and soy milk all blended together instead of ice cream, which I also did last night. Currently, my life has plenty of fun, but less fun-like activities, so perhaps I'll try to blog more. Blog, and study random pharmaceuticals.

Also, I need to get a job, which can also be fun-like, which is why they make all those internet games and iPhone apps based on menial labour. Once, I was playing a lot of Diner Dash and decided to try to get a job at the Keg. I figured that my Diner Dash skills would transfer, and also, that it would be super fun, because, how could it not be? Unfortunately, at the time, I was a pretty serious vegan. This posed a problem, because I'm a bad liar, except for the rare times when I'm a really, really good liar. Being the sole herbivore in a room full of steak lovers was not one of those times.

Somehow, I managed to sneak my way through the initial recruiting interview to make it to the group interview. I quickly realized I was out of my league when they told us the mission statement, or maybe it was the vision statement, either way it was something similar to: "create an environment where steak lovers and their families can feel free to be themselves". At this point, my head screamed, "Interloper!" I was afraid my eyes would get too shifty, so I tried to stare at one spot until I realized staring is also a little suspicious and started carefully timing eye movements to avoid shifty or staring eyes. There's nothing like meticulously orchestrated eye movement to tell those around you, "I eat meat and I'm not an interloper at all. Please don't hurt me, it's hard to get sufficient protein so my muscles are quite weak and you will break me easily."

The end of this story is the part where I did not get the job, which is probably best because I couldn't have kept it up for long before I broke down and told them the truth. There probably would have been a lot of tears, and dramatic background music. Then a commercial break prior to me actually revealing my veganness (As well as playing excessive Diner Dash in my time, I've also watched far too much reality tv). This time things will go better, because I eat everything now. As long as I don't apply to anywhere with a "We steal candy from children" mission statement, I'll be fine. Even then, kids really don't need all that candy anyways. We are facing an obesity epidemic.

Alive and unarrested

Wow, once you're not posting everyday it's really hard to keep it up. It's also easy when it's summer and there are many fun things happening that don't involve me writing random stuff on my computer.

On the weekend, Yelsel and I went on an adventure. We weren't quite sure what to do, but we thought we'd head towards downtown, but not into downtown, because that would be stupid. Towards downtown was probably also stupid, in hindsight. But when you can't see the news about burning cop cars, you don't realize exactly how unintelligent it is to travel towards them. However, we were fine. The worst thing we saw were a lot of cops who did not randomly arrest us and some protesters that we thought were screaming for ice cream, but then realized they weren't, which made more sense, since ice cream is rarely a hot topic for anyone but the lactose intolerant. We also got Ethiopian food and realized that the threat of random violence or arrest really leads to fast service. It probably would have been a good time to get the coffee (they have coffee, it's awesome but it takes forever on a normal day because they just have one pot that they use for everyone...now you're up to speed on the coffee comment).

When we started getting full, Yelsel started making shapes with her injera bread. The following picture was explained to me like this:

Yels: "It's a triceratops skull."

Sharon: "It doesn't look like a triceratops."

Yels: "No, that's because it's a triceratops skull. God, seriously."

You be the judge.


Then she ate it, because she got distracted and was sad because she wanted to save it until the end. Then I laughed, because her sadness was funny to me.

Earlier in the day, we stopped in a random coffee place in Yorkville. Apparently it wasn't actually so random, and seems to be well know as the place where all the old white people in Toronto go to be unhappy with each other. Well, at least seemed well known to all the old angry patrons. We, the young, relatively happy customers clearly missed the memo. I had a woman glare at me because my elbows were on the table. Then she sat quietly with her husband, silently shooting arrows at him with her eyes, while he stared back wishing for death. Whose death, I could not tell. I'm not sure it mattered to him, as long as he escaped somehow. It was awkward. I won't be going back there, well, at least not for 30-40 years.

Earthquake!

It's been a week and I'm back on the Facebook. It wasn't so bad going without it, I tweeted periodically to help ease the transition, because, I believe, Twitter is to Facebook what methadone is to heroin. Today was a good day to get back on, since earlier today I was in the washroom and the door started making a racket. At first I assumed it was my roommate Oysters being a jerk, even though there is no past history of it, or reason to suspect it. Then I noticed that the water in the toilet bowel was splashing and thought, "That's odd". I came out to ask Oysters if she'd noticed anything. "Did everything just start shaking, or did I just start getting dizzy spells?" she asked. So I pointed out that the light above her was still shaking and said, "Do you think that might have been an earthquake?"

As most of you are probably already aware, it was an earthquake. But at the time I was quite confused, having grown up in Ontario, the only reason for the ground to shake is because of the constant construction work which I'm sure sustains our economy since it never seems to end. Well, either that or there is actually a project called "Follow Sharon throughout her life with irritating construction." Why would this exist? I do not know, which is why I assume it's a problem throughout the province, and not just in my general vicinity.

Regardless, what I'm trying to say is that "earthquake" is not the first thing I think when the ground starts shaking, even if it should be. However, I was concerned about the potential that construction work could have caused toilet splashing, so I got on the internet to search for earthquake related news. But even the internet is not that fast, and I could find nothing. Until I signed onto Facebook, where every single status included the word "earthquake", usually accompanied by words like "what?!?!?", "apocalypse", or "missed :(". I know that Facebook is probably not equivalent to a seismograph, but it was good enough for me to know it wasn't construction. And that is the story of why I will never leave Facebook again (even though it is mostly evil.)

Happy song: I'm going to go for a long-shot and choose Helpless by Neil Young. Yes, I am aware that the chorus is mainly made up of repetition of the word "helpless" which is rarely misinterpretted as a happy word. But, to be honest, usually my best turnarounds in mood happen when I finally admit that I'm helpless to change things and finally begin to accept where I am. Usually that's followed by an epiphany about what I do have control of in the situation and, voila, helpful, not helpless. And that is why I think Helpless qualifies as a happy song. Don't fight me on this one.