Dependent Claus

Fig.1 Where's the damn #17?

This is a picture of my current living room. In the spirit of Christmas, I was going to make an advent calendar, but I figured that instead of building some sort of cardboard-wood contraption and fill it with candy, I'd up the ante with the new and improved...

Booze calendar 1000.

For each day leading up to Christmas, you will feel more angst and frustration that a) The government is in a shambles and I can't take it anymore B) The mall seems like a good idea until you get there C) The holiday season will inevitably go by before you manage to listen to the bible on the internet and write that play you've been wanting to for a year now.

In order to counter these negative feelings and curb binge eating, I have devised a new tool to cure Christmas angst. It's called, the Booze Advent Calendar, and much like the house advent calendars I talked about in a former post, it is a new way to think about the countdown.

I will guide you through the process of setting up your own.

a) Buy shots of rye, gin, port, scotch, and vodka.

b) Empty each shot/bottle into a festive holiday container

c) Rummage through your recycling bin for empty boxes, and cut squares out of the boxes. On one side glue a picture of something christmasy, on the other side, write a number from 1-24

d) Hide the liquor with a number somewhere in the house, or better yet, get your roommate to do it for you.

e) Wait until midnight. Find #1 and in the name of baby Jesus, chug it down.

You can't get any simpler, gentle reader, but afterwards feel free to crawl underneath your Christmas tree and inhale.

INHALE DEEPLY.

See? The holidays aren't so bad.

I swear I'm not obsessed with his medals

I woke up this morning a blank slate. It's a beautiful thing, but makes me worry I'm getting dementia.

It took me about five minutes to figure out what day it was. As I lay there, the memory of me on a raft ride with Michael Phelps and a classmate slunk through my sedated brain.

Apparently this classmate has a fantasy of riding Phelps while wearing all eight of his medals so that they clang together. Somehow she has access to my dream state, though thankfully this scene did not occur while I watched.

I was not drunk last night, but I ate a lot of roast beef and butternut pie right before going to bed. My roommate suggested the reason why I felt like I'd been clanged over the head with Phelps' medals is because I was NOT drunk as he handed me a blueberry tea - a mix of Amaretto, Earl Grey, and Cointreau. I accepted gratefully, spilling it on my wrist as I drank and staring at him like a hatchling fed for the first time.

While my life may feel as though it's divinely routed, ThePeach put it the best today as we sat at joined computers and she blogged about how we're not lesbians while she countered another classmate's assertion that her life is divinely inspired.

"That's alcohol; not God."

The season premier of 30 Rock brings up a key point in my life.

Tina Fey: What are you going to do?
Alec Baldwin: I'm going to give Kathy the full soap opera while you trick a lady with a head injury. We may not be the best people...
Tina Fey: But we're not the worst!
(In emphatic unison) Graduate students are the worst!

I'm starting to believe it, at least about myself.

Potential employers, please disregard.

My landlord has a lying lazy eye

He brought over space heaters the other day because we had to shut down the furnace, which was leaking carbon monoxide. My roommate asked him whether he was going to help us with the electricity bill now that we'll be running an arsenal of space heaters 24/7.

Suddenly his left eye shot out to the side. "I'll give you money for the leftover oil in the furnace. That'll be plenty."

Hey, landlord, thanks for making us feel like beggars. Did I mention that every time I open my window finger-length icicles break off and thump onto the floor?

As you can imagine this house has had a high turnover, and it's relatively easy to find previous tenants. A friend of mine was talking to one the other day. I guess a former tenant sub-letted her room to a cocaine dealer. That room was my room. Hence the three holes and large dent above and below my doorknob - where he had installed a deadbolt. Can't have just anyone interrupting the party.

They called it the "slanty shanty" and that's pretty apt.

It's makes me a bit dizzy to lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling, because my mind expects right corners.

I'm hoping we get the furnace replaced before it gets really cold. Already, I feel as though I'm wading through a shallow icey pool if I stand in the kitchen too long (the kitchen is the lowest point of our house and thus the coldest).

Our landlord also owes us $200 for cleaning the carpets, which he now says he wants a receipt for.

Given that a cocaine dealer lived here, I should have saved the vacuum bag.

The sky is on fire

A woman gave birth in a plane yesterday.

She delivered the baby over Kazakhstan on a flight from Bangkok to Helsinki.

This is the second time since August that a baby has come into the world at cloud-level. The August birth is more amusing, though. It's not so much the event as the story.

Is "jet-lagged" really the best descriptor for someone who just squeezed out a baby in a 30,000 ft high airplane bathroom?

I must have missed that on the nausea tabs:

Take 1-2 capsules every six hours if feeling drowsy, nauseous, or post-partum. Ie) you just shat out your kid in the airplane bathroom. Holy fuck. Treat yourself to some drugs.

What actually happened on that plane is a mystery, as this excerpt suggests:

"An Adelaide doctor who, along with three other medical practitioners, helped deliver the baby, said it was a smooth, 'fun' birth."

It's perplexing. You can't just say it was a fun birth and not elaborate. I'm pretty sure fun birth is an oxymoron and definitely not short-hand for anything I know.

While we're on the subject of birthing, I'm reminded of something a friend of mine was saying today about some Japanese believing that spawning a child under the Northern Lights will increase their baby's IQ. Tourists flock to the Yukon and North-West Territories to copulate in glass-ceiling hotel rooms under the flickering of the magnetic field.

Unfortunately, I think the glass-ceiling hotel rooms are only in Finland, since I could find no evidence of such a hotel in Canada.

I hope some babies were conceived in the prairies yesterday under the meteorite that crashed after dazzling the night's sky with a streak of white, yellow and red. Some called it a fireball. Others called it a weather balloon. Yes, a weather balloon; they look so much like flaming meteorites headed towards earth.

Some comments from the Vancouver Sun's comment page:

IMHO
Fri, Nov 21, 08 at 10:31 AM
I'm sorry I missed it!! Shoot!!!
Julie
Fri, Nov 21, 08 at 10:32 AM
i was driving past macklin sk and i saw the sky light up so bright then turned to look at what was going on and all i see is a fire ball shooting towards the ground. it looked not to far away from where i was. it was pretty intense.
Garry
Fri, Nov 21, 08 at 10:33 AM
I got a chance to ride this bad boy Meteor to earth' what an amazing planet you earthlings have here ' keep it clean and keep it real.

I want these people in the same observation room.

Now the hunt is on for the meteorite's remains. I guess a similar meteorite landed up north six years ago, and the guy who found it was paid $200,000.

Here is one guy's advice for meteor hunters:

"Look for charcoal like rocks, don't touch it to contaminate it, put it in plastic and freeze it right away. sounds obvious, but if there is snow, it will look like a pile of black rocks scattered everywhere on the snow."

Like, duh, everyone knows what to do when they're trying to preserve a meteorite. All those elementary school drills with ziplock bags and dry ice.

I would be down for a reconnaissance mission. Think about what kind of baby I'd birth after conceiving on top of the meteorite? Hopefully a kid that can distinguish between a meteorite and a weather balloon, the word 'fun' and 'this oxygen mask is really... friggin.. oxygen... lots... I'm the doctor... this is fun...'

And one who doesn't use exclamation marks as emoticons for meteorites: Shoot!!!!

Opus Hokus

Picture courtesy of the Internet. Thanks Internet.

Yesterday I was drinking a Smiling Jerry with two classmates and one of our profs at a bar on Bank St, when St. Nick walked in, and Ian whispered something to me and smiled.

It was one of those moments when suddenly nothing made sense anymore. The drink's name, the owner's secrecy about the name, and his father who reminded me of a Cabane a Sucre worker who once scared the shit out of me when I was four. I have the photo.

The night progressed into delirium (the Smiling Jerry lives up to its name) and here I am now with a media law presentation tomorrow morning. In addition to feeling more and more like Marla Singer from Fight Club I also have no clue what the hell is going on with public interest defenses for defamation... something... pizza?

I find that this is a trend in my life - the absurd takes over. But it's comforting that other people also spend their days wanting to ridicule the world. Take for instance, A Softer World's spin-off project Overqualified, where the author writes fake cover letters and applies to real jobs. Here's a snippet:

Thank you for taking the time to review my resume. In addition, I have attached transcriptions of some of my most recent games on Yahoo Chess. I believe that my ability and skill as an analyst and strategist in the games section of Yahoo.com will demonstrate that I'm perfect fit with your company. It is worth noting, before you check the transcripts, that I lost every game I played. The real strategy lies in the chat transcripts that accompany each game.

There are funnier ones, but less suitable for republication.

Do visit the site. Do tell me to get back to work. Do apply for a job with my company basing your cover letter on your overqualifications.

Oh yeah, and...

My roommate, who's been in Peru for a month, bought a carbon monoxide detector since she was feeling tired and tingly Saturday. She had to take out the batteries, because it won't stop beeping.

My roommate called the fire department. They told her not to call 911 since she already aired out the house so the reading won't be as sexy as before. Let me emphasize that: his best advice is to wait for the levels to rise again so the fire dept. can rate their job satisfaction higher. Perfect, just great.

Here's what the alarm user's guide says:

WARNING: Activation of the CO Alarm indicates the presence of Carbon Monoxide which can kill you. Immediately move to fresh air - outdoors or by an open door/window. Do a head count to check that all persons are accounted for. Do not re-enter the premises nor move away from the open door-window until the emergency services responders have arrived, the premises have been aired out, and your alarm remains in its normal condition ... never ignore the sound of the alarm!

Thank God I'm a fresh-air coveter and often keep my window open. Carbon monoxide builds up in your system, causing you to feel more nauseous, headachey and dizzy as time goes on. It may have been in our house for a month now, ever since we turned on the furnace on that fateful October day.

Maybe it's a good thing I spent the weekend tracking down futile story leads out of the house.

I'm not leaving the house this afternoon, though I threw open my window. I have an essay presentation in two hours and the works cited is going to include my forgetfulness caused by CO inhalation which caused me to forget my binder in the Montreal Metro yesterday (it's plausible isn't it? Makes me feel better). As an aside, I called the Metro lost and found today, and they told me to call back this afternoon to see if anything turns up then.

I'm going to go treat this headache now.

I need to start carrying all my shit in self-addressed envelopes

I was having a moment alone outside the Montreal bus station, smoking a cigarette with the hand that should have had a death clutch on the binder with my research; a binder no doubt sailing under Montreal's streets on a subway car.

Flashback to me sitting in the cafeteria at 2:15 this afternoon, writing my parents a letter to include with the confirmation of enrolment so I can continue to send massage receipts like the one I sent today. Free health care: it works until you're 25.

The stress is caused by these extravagant trips to Montreal every Sunday, and today I learned the massages are causing stress too. You see, if I'd left the envelope with the massage receipt and confirmation in my binder, whoever picked up the errant zip-clipboard that is destroying my life would have had two addresses to send it to, or even just a name. But I mailed it. I mailed the fucking letter. Some guy at the Tabagie was kind enough to give me tape so I could re-glue the flap.

It's the second time in two weeks I've abandoned that binder without knowing it. I need to start carrying it around in a self-addressed envelope, postage paid. And consider never having children.

The reason for taking the subway in the first place was to see Synechdoche, New York, the new Charlie Kaufman film which is apt to tear your soul apart. It's why losing my binder wasn't so bad at the time. The film is the most depressing thing since Requiem for a Dream, and I would have felt like an asshole for walking out of that theatre with my life intact.

Lo, I'm the fucked up star of my own play and I play me best.

Philip Seymour Hoffman deserves an Oscar for his performance. I didn't know how true his existential words were about each person being alone and the star of their own destiny until I patted my lap and swept the floor with my shoe and tried tapping into the solitary confinement holding cell that was my brain today.

This film's rating? One out of one lost binder.

Kaufman, who wrote and directed the film, is lonelier than I'll ever be, and I could have been robbed of my wallet and clothes and still felt luckier than Kaufman's alter-ego in the film.

That is the revelation of my smokey moment alone as my hands turned red with cold and I dug out my Visa to pay for another ticket home.

My presentation tomorrow will include a timeline of today's events, a graph of y=possession of binder and x= ability ot make this presentation interesting. The ending will be a Venn diagram showing how my essay is encompassed by the loss of my binder in a meta-fictional way that they'll only be able to understand by watching Philip Seymour Hoffman, almost having a heart attack, running through the metro, almost puking, and then filling their lungs with cancer.

The interactive part of this presentation, which I like to call a simulation or synechdoche, will begin now.

I hope they didn't publicize this

114 kg of heroin, one tonne of poppies, and 10 tonnes of hashish in an open field in Afghanistan.

The governor of Kandahar holding a match and a litre of gasoline to torch the drugs that have "burned his country."

= The perfect foggy night to go star watching in Kandahar with your address written on your arm for when you wake up in your neighbour's manure heap.

story here

I wonder what happened to those plans

When I was 10, I designed on paper a Swiss Family Robinson-style house that was completely underground and included water slides, a dungeon, and hammocks. If you ever played Sim Ant, think those same ant tunnels times Never-Never-Land.

Imagine my excitement when I came across this story about train car offices. What gets me most is how hauling old subway cars onto buildings is the least expensive option for office space in London.

I may have designed extravagant hideaways in my youth, but I never kidded myself about their practicality.

But it's what I've been waiting for: the grown-up version of The Caboose Who Got Loose. I think Bill Peet deserves some credit here.

And think about it, you could turn train cars into just about anything if you perched them on top of buildings in a major city: how about a sauna bath complex? movie theatre? subway-themed restaurant/bar?

The bar cowboy hat is been there done that: I want the sexy railroad cap and twirly moustache.

Imagine when people realize that attaching subway cars to their houses is the cheapest way to renovate: goodbye classic London, enter London that thinks a sock is a hat.

Personally, I see no problem with this. I don't care if London looks silly. I want this fad to come to Canada, and Via Rail tells me to go to hell when I ask for a caboose.

Don't ask why I was looking up rice videos

All you need is the right pot, your finger, the rice, the faucet, and a demonic smile! It's that easy.

I have the impression this is what a Sarah Palin rice video would be like. Also, her voice wave graph is worse than the stock market's fluctuations.

"All those famous New Orlean’s dishes: red BEANS! GUMbo! étouffée! chicken sauce picANTE..."

"Then we BRING the pot to a FULL, ROLLING BOIL."

I suspect this isn't the first time her job title has included "fluffer." It gets me a little frustrated.

It happens most days

To get there, it takes 40 mins.

To get back?

4 hours, 18 minutes.

Including waiting 63 minutes at the Queensway.

I had already started writing this post when I realized I had used a.m. instead of p.m.

As my journalist classmate would say, reporting FAIL.

Remembrance Day 2008 at the National Military Cemetery in Ottawa

This man celebrated his 20th birthday with a bottle of Cognac in the trenches of France during WWII. He lost many friends, including one who was shot a day after the war ended. He is a great-grandfather and has been married 59 years.

Soldiers wait inside a truck before the ceremony.

Ice Capades

Fig1. Think this dude but faster, higher, and slightly more gutsy


Monday is public skating at Carleton's ice house.

It's been Ian's and my routine to go there and spice things up a little with our hijinks like synchronized out-of-control skating. But today was different.

While sitting on the ground, my legs straight out in front of me as Ian gracefully pulled me around in a circle, I spotted her. The lone figure-skate wearer of the rink. She was taking off her coat - then she undid her ponytail so as she breezed along the boards her blond hair flew back like motion streaks. In Ian's words, she was a librarian fantasy on ice.

In my usual MO, I glided beside her and asked for her advice. She patiently guided my steps as I learned the waltz jump, a trick that has nothing to do with dancing the waltz and everything to do with not falling down.

Fantasy-on-ice demonstrated the jump for me, and I copied it with the to-do of a preschooler fingerpainting Emily Carr.

Suddenly Ian appeared out of nowhere headed backwards at a terrifying speed. He launched off the ice, spun around like Elvis Stojko, and landed perfectly on one skate.

"You're not jumping," he informed me. "You have to push off."

Apparently Ian can do waltz jumps with poise and elegance he lacks in his encouragement.

Fantasy-in-ice was not as critical as my roommate who I suddenly realized would star in my next film - journalists on ice.

I'll make up for my lack of excellence in skating by my excellent camera work and uploading to Youtube.

My obsession

Revised essay proposal

Here is how my essay proposal for Candian Studies should have read:

I propose to analyze a newspaper not available online, and only available in two places - Montreal or Sept-Iles.

Given that Sept-Iles is 12 hours away, I propose that I buy a $50 ticket to Montreal on the weekend and brave the Sunday archive crowds to stare at microfilm and feel my head pound.

I propose that I will have gotten 6 hours of cumulative sleep the two previous nights.

I propose that I will run into bureaucratic loops, where each library employee has a different concept of the rules over library cards, and not be able to get a library card because I'm not a damn resident of Quebec. Is looking at your newspapers in-library too much to ask?

I propose that I will not be able to complete my research and repeat the aforementioned steps next weekend.

I propose that I take up drinking, smoking, yoga, and jogging to combat the stress, and busk along the street to pay for my transportation.

I suggest selling artifacts that I make or find to pay for expensive relaxation habits mentioned above.

Finally, through a theoretical framework, I will analyze why I become Grendel's mother when around large hoards of people and slacking employees and people behind me in line who keep bumping into me.

WTF.

Works Cited:

- Shitty Greyhound cafeteria sandwich
- good conversation with Montreal friend
- flattened ass from sitting all day
- panic

I am a carved-out pumpkin full of melted wax

After last night's Halloween blitz, getting work done today was not made easier by futile internet searches.

I shouldn't say futile. They were incomplete. I was halfway done reading a Google Books article online, when I realized that this sentence supposedly stood on its own:

"By contrast, in the two weeks before the election, the Liberal media had"

Lo, the book sample was missing pages, and I had already skipped several, without knowing - does that reflect poorly on me or the authors? I would be writing a reading response on a chapter of this book minus pages 231, 233, 236-237, 242 and 250.

In between those pages were a lot of charts and polls; I wanted to assume I could glean the gist of the quantitative results myself, but with my concentration level, sadly no. As usual, my studying was peppered with frequent visits to YouTube to refresh the stimulating Yann Tiersen background music that I was convinced would awaken the mind I'd foreclosed on last night.

You see I stopped making payments on my mind weeks ago - vitamins? Is that Latin for something? REM? Is that something in a computer?

As for my diet, my stomach actually churns when I consume anything with high water content and coloured like a rainbow bright character.

You say you can't live off champagne, darling? Pour yourself another.

I did buy sparkling wine to complete my arrogant rich woman costume. I bought the wine from a little man at my door who sounded exactly like David Sedaris hyped on amphetamines. I had called him an hour earlier with my order for gin and Anders wine, promising myself in a footnote that I'd never run for office, lest my hijinks become public.

"My opponent, here, says she supports the bill to lengthen hours of liquor sales. Is that because she has more than once called a liquor delivery service and then shamelessly tried to trade empties to pay for them?"

(Mostly empties left by the previous tenants, generous as they were).

The man at my door was probably impressed by the strung-up skeleton that descended from the ceiling when I opened the door. It was Ian's ingenious mechanism to scare the living crap out of me when I came home for lunch Friday with other things on my mind.

Print off cover letter... eat something eggy on bread... check email... SKELETON ON MY HEAD.

The kids who came trick or treating didn't seem as impressed as me or their parents. The adults made lots of ooooos and ahhhhs; the kids looked at me skeptically and demanded to know why I was trying to scare them.

Two things baffle me on Halloween: kids who don't understand Halloween is supposed to be scary and people who don't believe in Halloween.

I asked my neighbour who suffers from arthritis whether she wanted me to help her hang a pumpkin on her porch. She said she didn't want to upset her husband. I later saw him on the street and asked whether any trick or treaters had come by. He glanced at me and scanned the street. "I don't believe in that stuff," he said.

I can see not believing in Santa. But what is there not to believe in Halloween? Is anyone really connected to Halloween's roots anymore? Isn't that why children are confused when we try to scare them? Let's face it together, Halloween is not sinister.

That being said, Halloween parties can up the ante, and surely have the greatest potential to cross the cute wire with the demonic. Conversation runs easily, everyone has two personalities, and often someone wields fake blood. Because everyone can pretend it's their alterego talking, they'll say stuff like, "Give me the fuckin glow in the dark sword, Commie," or "For conservative women, Belinda is definitely hotter than Palin, but I'd do them both."

Plus in Ottawa, you never know who will show up at your door.

I'm sure 24 Sussex got its share of MP and ambassador kids. Good on Laureen Harper for carving 200 pumpkins at 24 Sussex. Is that why I couldn't find a damn pumpkin at Sobeys Thursday or Friday? So you and the PM opened the Beauty and the Beast style gates of your property for Halloween, I'm guessing. More importantly, did you let anything out?

Anyway, if the PM and his wife have some pumpkin leftovers, I think pumpkin is a vegetable and well, you know, I 'm trying to recover those enzymes.