pocket shrapnel

i was walking past the speaker's corner machine in the public library downtown and i caught a glimpse of one of the questions that is supposed to "inspire" you to record your thoughts for the local tv station, the new pl.

what do you think of the proposed $5 coin?

now, while i enjoy coins as much as the next person, i see two glaring drawbacks to a $5 coin:

a. as with the $2 coin, the evil vending machine conglomerate will see this is as license to charge more for their goods and services. or perhaps, they will go japan-style and start selling more big-ticket items.

b. it will be more difficult to tip strippers. not that i tip strippers, but if i ever were to tip a stripper, i wouldn't want to tip a large amount. with a $5 coin, the lowest stripper tip would have to be a $10 bill. that, or strippers will have to start incorporating a coin toss into their acts. maybe they already have. it just doesn't seem convenient.

thank you fat lady

the weather is gorgeous. sunny, blue sky, 17 degrees. i was in a weird mood today and decided i wanted some sugar, so i had my friend drop me off at william's coffee pub, so i could get some cheesecake or something. when i got to the dessert counter, there was a fat woman with her fat husband and their soon-to-be fat daughter standing in front of me.

fat woman: oh, the pieces are big
fat man: that's great
fat child: (giggle)

and that cinched it. i walked out. i've never felt so repulsed by food before. i've become way more conscious about gaining weight lately, and i feel like i should just go with it. i know i'm not fat, but boy, the way i eat, i could be. i've been lucky, but that won't hold out forever. sigh.

on a (somewhat) lighter note, i saw sin city last night. it was so stylish and slick. and so sleazy film noir.

current book: the life and times of the wicked witch of the west by gregory maguire. very good. people have asked me if it's funny, and when i tell people about it, it sounds really funny, but within the context of the book, it's just a story about an unpopular girl growing up. ugly, but very smart and cynical.

toronto rock city

just got back from a weekend in toronto. it was great to get out of london if only for a few days. now i have to do some liver detox unfortunately. friday night i went to a wine bar called idoru (or idaho, depending on who you talk to). it's a very lovely little place on roncesvalles, with shockingly brave white couches. after some great sangria, we all headed back to andrew and meadow's to have more beer. this was a most unfortunate choice on my part. i ended up passing out around 1am.

the next day, had breakfast at a cute place called mitzi's. asked my good buddies to take me to ikea. got to ikea. asked my good buddies to take me home. too hungover to look at swedish furniture. picture my heart breaking. months of wanting to go to ikea, i go, and i wanna barf. sigh.

then saturday night, we went to the gladstone for karaoke. andrew wow'd 'em with "just a gigolo"; andrew and geoff did a great version of "rawhide"; and i did "calendar girl" by neil sedaka. the karaoke guy even sang harmony with me. it was hilarious. oh how i miss going to karaoke. i remember tuesday nights in osaka, going bowling and then to karaoke.

sunday morning went to a place called the beaver cafe: lots of pictures of the national animal, some gnawed wood and fantastic food. and nobody cracked a joke about the name. which kinda struck me odd, but maybe i was hanging out with grownups. it's known to happen.

walked around roncesvalles area, which has a large polish community. saw a beflowered statue of the pope. there were a lot of people wearing black and a few strange families taking pictures of their kids in the flowers.

seriously considering moving back to toronto to give it another shot. knowing people makes things easier. we shall see...

google me, google you

i decided to image google some friends of mine to see if there were any photos of them on the internet, and apparently i have some famous friends. on the other hand, i suck. when i googled me, there were a bunch of old black and white photos of families in full-length bathing suits and 1970s sears portrait shots of women in their 40s.

and in other news, my personal chef and one of my best friends has gone newf. dr. christopher james lockett is now a member of the memorial university of newfoundland crew. cod tongues and screech 4 life! i'm happy and a sulky baby at the same time. on the upside is a free place to stay in st. john's. on the downside is no more gourmet meals to look forward to. props to the mun man.

two dialogues that shouldn't happen (but did) at work

guy1: hi, i'd like to update some information on your system. the person who is listed as my daughter, is actually my common-law.
me: we'll fix that right up so you don't look like a ped.
guy1: ...

guy2: hi, i'd like to update some information on your system. i'm listed as female, but i'm not.
me: yeah, you sound pretty masculine. lucky for you we do free, quick and painless sex changes. you have nothing to worry about. it'll be over before you know it.
guy2: ...

note to self: shut mouth

clarissa minus 2. it's the new math and i'm getting it

the weekend has been quiet, though i had to call the neighbour this morning at 6:30 to turn down the happenin' tunes. all i could hear (through my earplugs) was thump thump thump thump. i was half asleep and i couldn't tell if it was my heart beating through a megaphone or if there were giant bunnies getting busy.

i had my eyebrows waxed for the first time yesterday. i didn't think i had enough eyebrow to worry about, but i thought i'd give it a shot anyway. it was quick and painless. but man, i wonder what my face looked like when she ripped off the cloth.

walking around in london, i always get some drunk guy or some punk trying to be a smart ass to get some kind of reaction out of me:

do you think red heads are sexy? (and then wink or wave or grab his crotch)
hey nice skirt
my pleasure
hello (i mean, please!)

if i'm asked a question or if someone says hi, i always respond, because, for whatever reason, i worry they'll get angry. more often than not this is fine, and sometimes they're even surprised. but last summer i was walking through victoria park and this drunk guy was hanging out with his drunk friends and waved at me and said "have a good day." i said thanks and waved. and then he stopped me, told me his name was two, showed me his cell phone to prove his name was two feathers and then continued to inform me of the following:

he needed a date for some event. he didn't know where to find a woman because...
he was from "america"
he asked me: why i colour my hair, was i busy saturday night, did i believe that his name was two

when i told him i had to go because my boyfriend was sick (which was actually true at the time), he told me i didn't have a boyfriend. that he could tell by my eyes that i was single. then he asked for my name (i said clarissa - it's my standard. drunk men can't pronounce it, get frustrated and forget about it), my phone number (i said, oh no i don't think so) and told me i had a beautiful smile. i think at that point i just started to walk off.

anyway, loooooong story slightly shortened, guess who i bump into on dundas street while on my lunch break last week? two! still drunk,

2: how you doin?
me: fine thanks (smiled)
2: i love your smile
me: that's great (walked off)

i'm learning, but very slowly.

current music: the decemberists, picaresque. i've listened to it about 7 times in a row, and i can't get it out of my head. very good stuff. they make songs about lords and ladies and barons listenable again.

crazy week for poor old me

my friends andrew and geoff came down from toronto this week, and hijinx ensued. monday night drank, played poker, drank some more. tuesday went to work late and hungover. blah. wednesday night ate cheese fondue and then chocolate fondue and drank at the barking frog, then moved to molly bloom's and drank some more. then andrew and i dropped our mad scientifix on the dance floor to stevie wonder's superstitious. what a great song. it was some good craic, but i'm ready for a quiet long weekend.

the phones are quiet at work today which is nice, but the day will drag on...on the upside the people calling in are great. one guy told me he hopes the easter bunny is good to me, and another woman called me sweetie over and over again. too cute. much better than someone yelling and threatening to sue.

current music: johnny cash, greatest hits (pretty cheesy website)

i've been reading too many mcsweeny's lists

while bored at work, top 10 words you can spell upside down on a calculator assigning the numbers as follows -- 1 = I, 3 = E, 4 = h, 5 = S, 7 = L, 8 = B, 9 = G, 0 = O -- and excluding plurals and the suffix -less:

shoe
boob
goes
goose
hose
shell
goo
hog
oil
blog

rotating around the sky fire

i think everyone has years that they agonise about. turning 20 was my first nightmare. i thought that when i turned 20, all my memories from 19 under would suddenly disappear, that i wouldn't recall anything from highschool. a former professor/friend of mind said that forgetting high school wasn't a bad thing and i felt better.

i then freaked out at 24 and 27. not for any reason that comes to mind, just a random panic. and now, i'm 29 1/2 today. how gross is that? i really don't feel almost 30. shouldn't i be more mature and accomplished? and married and have a car and a house? my friend nathan says it's just a number, just 30 rotations around the sky fire. i'm totally agonising about it, and at the same time, i know it's silly. i'm always being told that i don't look my age. when i was a kid i knew age was just a number, and now it's a big, flabby, wrinkled, spinster monster with coke-bottle glasses and knobby cardigan sweaters. sigh.

i watched a very cool show on scream the other day called ghostwatch. it was a bbc pseudo-documentary broadcast on hallowe'en 1992. it was presented as a real news show with well-known bbc newscasters spending an evening with a family who claimed their house was haunted, and it ended up being the first tv show blamed for post traumatic stress disorder! it was never aired again, and just recently became available on dvd. gallons better than the blair witch project (which i won't even link, because it sucked so bad), it really follows in the steps of war of the worlds (check out mercury theatre to listen to it).

disco inferno

work is going allright. my boss was pissed off at me last week, and that was less than pleasant. it took a week of being a totally innocuous, shoot-the-shit employee to smooth things over. it's not a perfect job, but it's a job, and i'd like to keep it. and i also want to ask for benefits, so i should try not to rock the boat.

my roommate is reading dante's inferno, and we were trying to think of who to cast in the film version. this is what we came up with:

director / dante: roberto benigni
virgil: umberto eco
beatrice: monica belucci
satan: tim roth/gary oldman/ralph fiennes -- for satan's three faces
count ugolino: robin williams
archbishop ruggieri: billy crystal
charon: jack nicholson
minos: brad pitt
phlegyas: christopher walken
the fallen angels at the wall: the remaining members of monty python.
the angel who lets virgil and dante through the wall: bill murray.
cerebus: benji

more black comedy than divine comedy. it would have to be an all-star cast in any case. i'll gladly take suggestions!

well, i just got out of the shower, my hair is wet, and i'm getting cold.

here's a gratuitous shot of jude law:



current music: the streets, a grand don't come for free. oh, and if you haven't heard it, you have to find johnny cash's cover of soundgarden's "rusty cage." it's sublime.

swedish yummies

for the past week, i've been keeping a frozen dinner in the freezer at work and yesterday, when i finally decide i'm in the mood for it, it's been taken over by jack freezer burn. so, i head over to nooner's. nooner's is the kind of place where no one likes to eat, but everybody does. there's one special there that i love though -- swedish meatballs and roasted potatoes. i walked in the door and lo! i could smell meatballs. does my nose deceive me? i look at the menu and lo! once more, i see my special special. i then pump my fist at my side and exclaim "yessss." yeah, that's what i did. i couldn't believe it myself. i'm so embarassing.

i had a dream

i had a crazy dream last night that there was this evil conglomerate that wanted to create a fast acting virus. so they captured all of the olympic swimmers and shrunk them to the size of little bacteria to carry the infection so it would kill the subject quickly. what they probably did was threaten the swimmers that they would leave them as bacteria unless they did what they were told. so they had to spread this virus so they could be turned back to normal size. in the dream there was also a board game i was playing with my sister and a pirate ship. i had a sweet bike and a really nice power suit as well. but i don't know how they all fit into the "plot." i have a lot of weird dreams, but i think this one would make an awesome B movie starring christopher lambert or chuck norris as an evil scientist. tia carrere would have to be in it as well.

and just 4 years ago i hated them

yes, the proviso was that there would be no more than one cat picture, but i just love this sequence. i don't want to turn into the cat lady, so i promise that's it for a while. from now on, just gratuitous pictures of jude law.

i'm at work right now on my break. it's a busy day, so i'm loving my fifteen minutes of lame. the weekend was great though. i actually feel ready for the week today. saturday i was sitting at william's coffee pub on richmond, flipping through vanity fair and eating a strawberry caramel waffle. and when i left i realise how relaxed i had been the whole time. i haven't felt like that in a dog's age. even in spite of the guy (a) who went ape shit on a pyramid schemer (b). (b) was presenting his material like it was a serious entrepeneurial endeavour. (a) was like canada's own woody allen yelling at (b) and telling him he's a schill; "how dare you." it was entertaining. after he was done and the yellee stormed off, woody shrugged his coat up on his shoulders and said "uh, that felt good."

the battle for catalan(ding)

clarence: what...the...hell? darcy: i saw you up here, and i thought it looked nice. i hug the bookshelf all day. whaddya gonna do about it?


clarence: i'll tell ya what i'm gonna do. i'm gonna kill you! darcy: get off me you pussy.


darcy: yeah, how ya like that? clarence: what are you talking about? i attacked you. darcy: whatever.


clarence: gimme back my spot. darcy: no dice. clarence: dis ain't over

next...cleaning the litter box

long week, no blog. things came to a head with the neighbour. we had to call the cops on her. she had a party that started at 3am and went until 11am. the cops showed up 2 ½ hours after we called, but the party was still going. she was totally surprised to see cops knocking on her door. “but there are only 5 of us up there….it’s an old house.” oh my gawd. the cops took their names and told them to turn the music down. they did, but it wasn’t enough. so chris and i didn’t sleep all night. i was so angry i was shaking, and i haven’t been that mad in a long time. when they turned the “morning after” music on at 11:30, i knocked on the door until my knuckles were red, and i told the sister to turn the music off with a few other choice words. i was obsessing about it all week. i just kept thinking of all the things i should have said to her. i’m so bitter about them now. and that sux.

ah well, other than that, the weather here is cold again. though one day, my weather pixie took her hat off. i was so excited. it was like seeing a robin in the spring. today i’m going downtown to cruise the market and the used bookstores. try to take advantage of the weekend and relax. the music is playing tonight at centennial hall, and i’m trying to decide if i want to go. i’d love to see them, but the winter hermit in me is taking over. the tickets are cheap, and there are still lots of seats, so i figure i can do a last minute thing if i want.

i have a zit on my chin that’s gonna go atomic.

current mood: tired
current music: 2 picks today: kasabian (slow loading site) & the weekend (awesome site)

save the adverb

i've felt kind of off this week. no real explanation, but really wound up and stressed out and all those other verbs and prepositions. i'm looking forward to some QT this evening, so I'll take the time to calm down. eat cookies. watch a scary movie or two. i rented ginger snaps 3: the beginning (i love the ginger snaps series - and it's canadian!), the first season of the office, and from dusk till dawn.

this morning on the walk to work the snow was so thick i couldn't see from one end of the park to the next. it reminded me of a story i'd heard when i was at upei. there's a building there called dalton hall which is home to the department of education. well over 30 years ago, when upei was st. dunstan's university, dalton hall was a nurses dormitory (as my co-worker puts it: "sexy"). one of the nurses was walking across the field coming home during a really bad snowstorm. i guess she was totally snowblind and ended up getting lost. they found her the next day frozen to death in the field. they say her ghost haunts the fourth floor of dalton hall. when i had an office in the basement, i loved all the stories people would tell me about the building. i suck at retelling them, but i love hearing them.

one of my favourite lessons when i was teaching in japan was to have my upper level students tell me ghost stories they had heard. i LOVE ghost stories. but i also really like all the japanese horror movies that have become so popular here in the past few years. they can do creepy like nobody's business. although i didn't really understand ju-on...maybe when i see the anglicized, buffy-friendly version.

revenge of the dollar store umbrella

walking to work this morning was a treat. freezing rain and blowing wind. when i wasn't shuffling my feet they were shooting out from under me. my poor umbrella, she get caught in a gust and blow inside out, then she blow back in, then i stopped talking like a fisherman. then the wind blew so hard, that the umbrella closed on my face. when i finally had it propped back open again, it blew sideways and whacked me on the side of the head. then i was splashed by a transfer truck. by the time i got to work, i was wet and cranky and my umbrella was a bundle of torn fabric and broken metal spokes. but in the elevator the pr girl said she'd give me a new umbrella. so, now i have a new brolly. it's big and black and has an insurance company logo on it. but i'm happy.

we also had free pizza at work. good times! i gave out valentines to the folks at work, and they all thought i was

1. a darling cutiepie
   
2. a total nerd
3. a stalker weirdo
4. all of the above?

now i'm home and trying to decide what i should do for the evening. i've almost finished the plot against america by philip roth. it's very good, and more than a little creepy. so it'll be nice to move onto something less nazi-ish.

other than that, my weekend was busy. the valentine's party saturday night was a good time. i didn't stay too long, but i was decked all out in pink, the drinks were pink, the treats were pink. very cute. and it was nice to see my friend lily as always. sunday was game day: lord of the rings risk and poker. for about 8 hours! jinkies.

mr. darcy won't stop biting me, so i'm chasing him around with a remote control rat.

current mood: indecisive
current music: whatever's playing on x-posure with john kennedy on xfm

poster cat

so shan wrote me back and apologised. i was shocked, and now i feel like i should bake her cookies. like when you give a dog a treat to reinforce good behaviour. i know she's not evil, but i choose to believe that she might be.

i'm going to my friend lily's this evening for an unapologetically pink valentine's party. i have a great dress for the occasion, but i'm off to the mall to accessorise it with shoes. i hope. i know it's one of those laws of murphy's that you always find what you're looking for when you don't have any money. or something like that.

below is a picture of clarence as promised. i had a helluva time uploading it for some unknown reason. i've said it once, and i'll say it again: if someone from jameson marketing gets their hands on this picture, he'll be their spokescat.

i watched the brit awards the other night. i don't know half the people they're talking about, but the fact that robbie williams got 'best british single of the past 25 years' is very painful to me. i often look to the brits to save indie rock. alas.

current mood: headachy
current music: morrissey, you are the quarry


clarence and his beverage of choice

hooligana

so the list of 2005 ecma recipients is up. they did a really nice write up on my dad. i was talking to him the other day, and they had offered to fly him up from florida to cape breton to accept the award, but i found out that my dad doesn't like flying. i never knew that before. i said to him that i'd fly over if they paid for it, but that probably won't happen. i even had an idea for a speech all ready. about how when i was a teenager my dad and i had reverse roles. he was the one with the band practicing in the basement, and i was the one banging on the floor at 10pm when i was trying to get to sleep.

our neighbour, "shan", was having a party last night, and i think every super bowl idiot must have been in attendance. we had to move the bed into the back room to get to sleep. argh! it's so boring bitching about her all the time. i've composed a letter to remind her one more time to be quiet. after this, it's landlord time.


the dreaded v-day...
the candies are coming. run!

current mood: goofy, probably for watching napoleon dynamite last night.
current music: cowboy junkies, my own mix -- a couple of years ago, my office at the campus library was broken into and someone stole a laptop i was borrowing from a friend, my gym clothes (?!) and my walkman. the thing that pissed me off most, was that they didn't take the tape out of the walkman. i worked long and hard to compile the perfect cowboy junkies mix and some arsehole stole it. sigh. anyway, i hung onto that tape cover, and after much ado, i finally recompiled it. robbers and/or hooligans be damned. you can't keep a good mix down.

gracefuladies

long time no blog. it's been a busy week.

monday: just a normal day of people calling and being angry. actually, it was a rough one.
tuesday: i got my hair done. it looks good, but the guy was a total perfectionist. cutting every little strand. it took 3 hours. i shit you not. the best part was this cute turkish guy named samir who gave me a head massage.
wednesday: i went out for beer with a co-worker, which was nice, because we got to vent about work.
thursday: i went to the thee-ay-ter to see a street car named desire with my friend kristen. we're quite a pair i tell ya. when we walked in, i accidentally pulled a fake fern out of a flower pot with my coat and kristen leaned forward to talk to the teller and whacked her forehead on the glass. we're all about elegance.
friday: worked on building my web knowledge, drinking wine and eating cheese.

this week we've had my friend's cat clarence staying with us. he's mr. darcy's sleep over buddy. they're very cute together, except when i wake up and can hear them grooming each other on my pillow. slurp slurp slurp. right now they're staring at each other from across the room. but they're chillin' like villains. i'll try to get a pic of them on here sometime soon. i need a digicam!

current mood: glad that it's 0 degrees
current music: white stripes, de stijl