Surly Snobby

I've moved

2005-03-23T15:16:00.000-05:00

I've moved here.

But One Last Thing Before I Go

2004-11-12T18:17:00.000-05:00

I couldn’t leave without saying one last thing - I never know when to shut up. My good friend of many years, poet and novelist, Chandra Mayor, sent me this poem. She wrote it about a recent election in a country many of you may have heard of. I place it here in a different context.

The ability to connect with people from all over the world can be a powerful thing for good; and an equally powerful thing for evil. The amount of hate-filled rhetoric I have exposed myself to while reading the blogs and while writing my own is heartbreaking. Humans, despite our greatness, seem to content ourselves with self-righteousness disguised as opinion, with pettiness and hatred, with conceit and fury.

Please let me whisper in your ears for a second, using Chandra’s words.

The dog paces the kitchen, her nails clicking
on the linoleum. Morning sun seeps through
the bamboo slats on the door. The radio is already
full of noise and prophecy. Desperation curls
the edges of all the voices. The balance of the world
teeters and trembles. The cat licks his toes. All
over America people stand in lines at polling
stations, while others go about their lives as if they hold
nothing cupped in the small of their hands. Today
is a good day to chant or pray. I do neither of these.
I drink coffee. I chew last night’s lipstick off my lips.
I put on a sweater as pink and tight as an eardrum. Time
is stretched taut. My fingers pull at threads. The dog
barks out the window. I wish for the power to whisper
in a nation’s ears: Do not choose hate. Do not choose fear.
Cup your hands. Open your ears. Feel the surge of billions
of voices seeping through your borders.

We are waiting. We are counting. Our open arms tremble.

- Chandra Mayor, November 2, 2004

Thank you all for the encouragement. This has been a life-changing experience.

Peace.

Nathaniel

So Long and Thanks for all the Fish

2004-11-12T11:04:00.000-05:00

I took the week off to try and remember why I write a blog. Now I remember! It's because I love writing. And because I wanted to improve my writing skills.

Although it's an ongoing process, mission accomplished!

Your Everlasting Soul

2004-11-12T01:02:00.000-05:00

From Charles

Gravity Zero

Why it is good and healthy to stare at cows for long periods of time

2004-11-10T02:22:00.000-05:00

I think it was Oscar Wilde who never said:
'All of us are in the gutter, but some of us are staring at the cows'.

Oscar was an urbane sort of chap, and he rarely saw a cow. His visual field was largely taken up with hansom cabs, fog and flowers. But life is very different for those of us who live in the middle of fields. We know the intense pleasure that is to be attained from furiously contemplating a standing bovine.

Oh. Hang on. There is a voice in my ear.

My apologies. I seem to have been discussing the wrong topic. I thought I was guesting on 'cows_are_wonderful', but that's for tomorrow. Yes. No. Hang on.

My name is Frank O'Connor. Welcome to my world. Today, I am guesting on surly snobby because he is clearly so desperate for content that he will take any old rubbish from anyone, including those of us, who, like myself, are very easily distracted.

At this very moment, I'm supposed to be piloting my nuclear submarine through the Mariana trench. But that's just way too complicated for me to be doing and writing this at the same time. So I've left it on autopilot, and if it hits a rock or something, it will just make a little dent in the hull, probably. Fingers crossed, eh?

So, today's topic is 'Why do I blog'? That's a good question. Up until now, I've never even thought about it. I just thought about it then though, and it is actually quite scary. But, first things first.

Let's get one thing right out of the way right here and now and this minute, now. I really hate the word 'blog'. It is supposed to be a neat compaction of web log, but it ends up trading its soul for only two letters. It sounds like food poisoning and trips off the tongue like a brick. I know this is controversial, but, heck, we all have to live with a bit of controversy, even those people whose bolgs explode.

So, why do I WRITE a WEB LOG? I don't know really. It keeps me off the streets, I suppose. I mean, some big sociology professor would probably tell me that I am compensating for some helpless disjunction between my own world view and the world as it actually is by sending out little cries for help every morning at 2am through the medium of the wondernet. But that's just bollocks.

But really, why do I write a web log? Why don't I do something more practical, like etchasketching, or wobble boarding? Why don't I do something that has the slimmest chance of contributing something to human culture and civilization? Well it's all because of my brain.

I don't know about you, but my brain makes a fizzing sound when I wake up. This sound gets louder and louder throughout the morning. By noon, it is a high pitched whistle, which really annoys all the neighbors. If I don't write something down at this point, and post it off into the ethosphere, my head gets very hot, and that means only one thing: singed pillows. So that's why I do it, see? To avoid singing my pillows.

Next week: The cow, and its role as savior of the earth.

Sorry, Surly Can't Come to the Blog Right Now

2004-11-08T23:56:00.000-05:00

For those of you that don't know me, I'm Aaron, Surly's American relative. What, you've not heard of me? Well this is because he usually locks me in his storage room with a bottle of booze whenever company arrives. This began ever since the accident, which we don't ever talk about.

If only I wasn't in this chair.

The reason why I am guest blogging is because Surly is off writing a 50,000 word essay on the benefits of Velcro and during his breaks, contemplating the shrinkage of the waist bands on his shorts. For a Canadian he has quite a lot of shorts, jams and tank tops. Sometimes I try them on when I'm locked in the storage room but they're all kind of baggy on me.

Well since we've got the place to ourselves and while Surly's distracted let's run over to the medicine cabinet and see what we find. Shall we?

Hmmm - this is curious. It's not even his shade. Erm - maybe I'll just put this back. Oh look - self- tanning lotion. Oh I can see where that shade in that other case might just work now. The poor boy - not even a bottle of sun block, no wonder he's been looking dry and puffy lately. And here I thought he was simply working too hard on that essay. What's this, "Apply three times daily to ________"? Oh now that just sounds painful. Let's leave from here.

I was hoping we could rummage through that drawer next to his bed, but I can't get this damn wheelchair up the stairs. If only I wasn't in this chair. I can take a pretty good guess as to its contents though - his diary and a pen. I saw his diary once - it's a really big book with a combination lock and bars, sort of like a bank vault really. Once a picture of Jim Carey fell out of it but I was too afraid to ask. Just forget I said anything, okay?

Growing up, I remember him being quite an accomplished yodeler. He won a regional competition doing a remarkable yodeling rendition of Flight of the Bumblebee. A few girls actually fainted from the excitement. Oh wait a minute - I think it was he who had fainted. It's a difficult piece to yodel so that makes more sense. That's right, I remember now, one of the judges plucking off little Surly's clip-on bow tie, plaid and quite the fashion statement, in order for him to get better air flow. He had turned rather orange, much like when he wears too much of that tanning gel, then green and blue. It turns out he also does quite the impression of a mood ring. Fortunately for all of us, he had won the Yodeling Cup - it came in handy on the ride back to his house as he had gotten car sick. By the time we arrived back his skin had cycled through the rainbow twice. He's quite the talent. It's a good thing he had forgotten the bow tie in all of the excitement as it would have clashed.

Now I know some of you think that my relative can sometimes be hyper-critical according to the notes attached to the rocks that often come flying through the windows. As a writer he tends to notice things. He's a much harder critic of himself than anyone else - well other than me that is. He's pretty mean to me, but that's only because he still feels guilty about the accident we don't ever talk about. I don't mind really especially after a few hours in the closet with the bottle. But make no mistake about it, although he presents a certain image here on his blog - I'm here to tell you he really is a decent, loving, affectionate - oh sorry, once I get giggling I can't ever finish a sentence.

I think for the next installment I may interview one of his babysitters if I can find any willing to speak on the subject of Surly. There may be some legality which may prevent this, but I'll do my best. At least we can see what he has in his ice box.

Oh - I think I hear him now. I better roll.

Until next time dear readers - if there is a next time…

Warmly - Aaron

הראל סקעת

2004-11-08T14:01:00.000-05:00

Between rancid e-mails over my political opinions, some extremely rude house guests who should really have just walked to the next street if they didn't like the colour of my house, and one death threat over one (1) Hebrew word in a previous entry (all in the space of 4 short days!), I have forgotten why precisely it is that I enjoy writing online.

So I asked some friends to remind me. Over the next few days I will remain silent while some of my favourite writers take over for me. The suggested topic is "Why Do You Blog?", but any topic is just ducky as far as I'm concerned.

Until then, here is some more Hebrew. One of the cutest men in the world, Israeli singer Harel Skaat:

הראל סקעת

Interlude

2004-11-07T21:09:00.000-05:00

On Vacation

I'm here

Blog Corrosion

2004-11-06T11:25:00.000-05:00

“What the heck is Blog Explosion, Surly?”, I have been asked on numerous occasions over the past month. “I must know for my own well-being.”

Well if it's for your well-being, I’ll answer your question.

Blog Explosion is high school . You pretend to make a lot of friends by going to visit as many sites as you possibly can for 30 seconds, while feigning interest in pictures of someone’s chinchilla Mr. Foopy Face. And in return, precisely one half of your new ‘friends’ come to your site and feign interest in your brilliantly witty observational discourse on the state of the humanity and the world at large.

After they’ve stayed the exact minimum amount of seconds they're they’re obliged to stay, and maybe even after having left a comment stating how much they just love your blog and how gorgeous your blog is, they will turn around and backstab you by clicking on the banner all Blog Explosion bloggers surf by and give you 2 Blog Explosion stars out of a possible 10 Blog Explosion stars. The goal of Blog Explosion is to be voted Homecoming Blog. You see? High school.

I admit that I found it fun at first. I enjoyed the comedy of some of the absolutely atrociously mundane things out there that people think should fascinate others. I also have found some lovely reads (Merry Meet, Robyn the Good Witch of the East! היי , Ani! Howdy, Joshylin! Hi … um … Mud Woman and … erm … Bollocks Guy!), and some very friendly folk have left some very sweet comments here. It was also fun at first to see the amount of my daily visits shoot up to the sky.

For the most part, however, Blog Explosion involves slogging through the “Evangelists”, the “Democrats are evil”, the “Republicans are dumbasses”, the teenage girls who think they have the deepest, darkest souls in the whole wide world, the “Let’s go hunting” hetero cliché guys, and the people who think that everyone will be just thrilled to pieces to read all about their fecal occult test, complete with pictures (If you don’t already know what this is, you don’t want to know. Please trust me). I actually take the time to read most the blogs shoved in my face.

So there you, Blog Explosion social climbers. Give me 0 Blog Explosion stars out of a possible 10 Blog Explosion stars. Block me. Go tell Teacher on me, complaining about how I said mean things about you. In high school, I spent a lot of time on the front steps smoking while managing straight A's. Some things never change, I suppose.

Why am I bothering to write about Blog Explosion? It’s because I’m taking a break from my NaNoWriMo thingie, which is going rather well, and the ols Explosion seemed like a really fun target. The word count is a little below where I think it should be on Nov. 6 although I’m already a little more than 10% finished. As far as first drafts go, I think it’s looking pretty good. I am a very severe critic (has anyone noticed?). I’ve posted an excerpt on The Event Horizon, where I am an irregular contributor. At the time of writing, the excerpt had been read by approximately zero people. I’m telling myself that it’s because everyone is intimidated by my obvious genius. Yes. That must be it.

But back to Blog Explosion. Can you believe that some people actually want this eyesore to be the first thing you see when you alight upon their blog? It’s like being assaulted by Las Vegas! No. Wrong imagery. Too classy. It’s like being assaulted by a video lottery terminal:

And if you click on the banner above and sign up, I get more traffic. Not that I care or anything. Really.

More Good Housekeeping

2004-11-04T09:53:00.000-05:00

I’m unable to post again today because 1) I have too much other stuff to write that I’m not allowed any fun for all of November, 2) I had spicy udon noodles for supper last night (I should really know better) and I’m still paying the price, and 3) I'm busy planning a move to New Zealand. New Zealand doesn’t have next-door neighbours. All it has is Australia down the road a spell and some Polynesian and Melanesian Islands. But it doesn’t have scary next-door neighbours who make it shiver in its boots.

So if any of you Americans who said you’d move here after a certain election result want to sublet a large one bedroom apartment in downtown Toronto, let me know. The cat, computer, 900 books, and 900 cds come with me. Everything else, the concept of true equality and a federal government that once again has a surplus rather than a deficit, is all yours. I’ll be playing with the elves on the South Island (mmmmmmm ... Legolas ... ).

[***UPDATE*** Before another irate person gets the urge to send me a gracious, politely worded e-mail (link now deleted indefinitely) questioning my right to free speech, let it be known that I am an American citizen as well as a Canadian. But that shouldn't make a difference. I have as much right to be unapologetic for my beliefs as you have to click away when you run across something you don't like. Lighten up and if you don't agree, at least laugh at the ridiculous idea of Canada attempting to assimilate almost 50% of the States' population!]

I had decided not to write something long and boring, and I see I have already failed. Instead I bring you a repeat of something you read and just loved, something that reminds me of a simpler time, a time when my worries over the state of the world were like an annoying cat, not like the loud clanging and banging keeping me from sleep that they are now. So please enjoy again “Good Housekeeping” ...

Good Housekeeping

The strangest thing has happened to all of my shorts. I first noticed it last week when I finally dragged them out of their winter seclusion in my storage room that’s so big it could be a bedroom for a very short roommate. Yes, I have a large storage room in my apartment. This is one of the many reasons why a bout with unemployment won’t scare me away from it despite its hefty rent.

But to get to my point, I had to drag my shorts out of storage. Now, I have a very elaborate filing system. To the untrained layperson it may appear as if I have simply thrown those objects I am too silly to throw away into boxes (or never bothered to unpack them) and then piled the boxes in precarious, quivering piles in the very large storage room. When nosey visitors open the door to the very large storage room they invariably look at me with a quizzical mixture of horror and condescension.

In truth, the only entity aside from me who isn’t displeased with my arrangement of the very large storage room is Noudnic the Cat. He gets very excited every time I open the door, which isn’t that often, and he immediately bounds in, transmogrifying into the vicious untamed beast his ancestors were when they ran wild over the Elburz Mountains in the days of yore. This is when he’s not sleeping on his back in the bathtub (I wish I had a digital camera). In any case, he leaps over mountains, lurks in caves, and dodges avalanches (caused by him, might I add). Once while hunting he attacked and eviscerated an entire colony of old hair elastics I had kept from the days just after the days of yore when I wore plaid and ripped jeans and had hair that grew past my titties. I'd saved them because I thought they might be useful one day. Brave, regal Noudnic.

This acknowledgement of the inherent usefulness of all used objects permeates my entire outlook towards happy housekeeping. It is my philosophy that if an object has been useful, one should simply leave it precisely where one used it last because it will undoubtedly be useful once again. This applies to all objects. CDs should remain outside of their cases in tall unsteady stacks on my desk because I play them on my computer. Plates should stay on the coffee table in front of the TV because that is where they are utilized. Envelopes from hateful bills need not be discarded: they, or the bills themselves, can easily be transformed into wacky cat toys in one smooth crumple-and-toss movement. C'est simple comme ‹‹bonjour››.

This is a philosophy, you realize, not laziness as some have deemed it. One of these naysayers is my future husband, Ajay. He objects to my practical house-keeping style, believing for some reason that special places should be found for every object in a household and that things should be placed in these places when not in use. It’s a theory. And it’s also very easy for him to accomplish such a meaningless task since he is a model/Bollywood star who has servants to do these things. So whenever he scolds me I simply say, “Well then, fantasy fiancé, send over some of your fantasy servants!” We are then both so stimulated by the charged atmosphere that we make sensual, passionate love in the piles of clean laundry on my bedroom floor. All of this probably goes a long way towards explaining why housecleaning remains a fantasy in my household, along with other fantastical things, like future husbands for example.

In any case, last week my goal was to extract my shorts and my expired passport from the very large storage room. I also thought I would take advantage of the opportunity to put some order in the room, much to Noudnic’s distress. Fortunately I was saved from this task because the shorts were on top of the whole domestic topography. The passport was in the first box I opened, along with some term papers from my undergrad when I wore ripped jeans and plaid and I had hair that grew past my titties. I’d saved them because I thought they might be useful one day.

And so as I walked to the passport office in my brand new fashion sandals and my brand new fashion blisters, I noticed something odd about my shorts (Ha! You thought I forgot what I'd written in my first sentence). Their waist appeared to have shrunk over the winter. It’s very strange. The shorts are no shorter than they had been last summer. I cannot explain this odd phenomenon. Perhaps there’s something about the atmosphere of an overheated, closed storage room that causes cloth waists to shrink. I am completely flabbergasted. Has anyone else noticed anything similar?

'Cause You Liked It So Much the First Time ...

NaNoWriMo (track my progress on the metre in the top left and things that I actually get paid for are weighing down on my shoulders. One thing that happens when you only pay half attention to your personal e-mail for several days in a row is that you’re late foe the party. So here, a little late, are three new Bunnies in 30 Seconds movies, almost pillage from Daniel until I noticed the e-mail from The Genius herself (Not really; I’m on a mailing list)

"Freddy vs Jason"

"Texas Chainsaw Massacre"

"Scream"

Robyn's Halloween Thoughts

2004-11-01T18:03:00.000-05:00

For my Halloween entry, I asked Robyn to guest blog. Robyn is a witch and I thought no one other than a witch would be able give the real scoop on Halloween. I don’t mean eye-of-newt stuff; I mean an explanation of the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain and how it has been adapted to modern sensibilities in Halloween.

She was late. I guess Halloween is a busy time of year for a witch. The moral I’d learned in my initial contact with Robyn was do not piss off a witch, even a good one. So I didn’t rush her. I’d already learned my lesson. I just sat in the corner and ate all my Halloween sweets. That’s what Halloween means to me, sweets and sloth. This doesn’t make for a very interesting topic. Luckily, she finally sent me her thoughts

But what you’re about to read is what it means to others, and, presumably, where it comes from. So like a Simpsons Halloween Special, which always broadcasts after Halloween, here are Robyn’s Halloween thoughts. Thank you, Robyn!

Samhain: In Times Past

You can smell it in the air as the West wind blows. The end of summer. The Death of Light. The time of long nights has arrived. The harvest is over and it is time for a great celebration to thank the Gods for all their aid in bringing the harvest to fruition.

All of the house fires in the village are extinguished and you gather in the field. The great common fire is lit to pagan hymns. The ancestors call this time of year. Remembering perhaps the harvest festival, they walk the night and sing the songs with you.

This is an inbetween time. The time between the Light and the Dark of the year. It is perfect for talking with loved ones who have passed. They will answer your questions if you know how to ask. You toss the bones of the cow your family slaughtered for winter on to the bonfire (bone fire) in hopes that you will see the future in the flames coming from them.

The shaman or druid of your village comes forth to tell of the year past and the year ahead. He takes a torch lit from the common fire and walks toward the second pyre of wood. In the center is the large image of a man woven from branches and vine. He is a fine large man this year. He is filled with everything a person needs to live. There are vegetables and grains, cloth and candles, meat and drink, sometimes there are people in the wicker man as well. This year was good though so no people are in the construct. With reverence the shaman lights the pyre. The other villagers sing loudly and dance around the wicker man. You join in as well. This sacrifice will insure that the Winter goes well and that Spring will come soon.

After the wicker man is consumed it is time to feast. You move to log tables. This is a mild year so it is outside and not in the common house. The rough hewn tables contain all manner of food. Once everyone is gathered, the Druid speaks to ancestors. He thanks them for their love and guidance through the year. He sets a place at a lone table for the ghosts. Everyone then begins to mill about taking their own meal. Before you eat though each person moves past the table of the dead. The first bite and first drink is given from you to those who have gone before. It is only respectful that they should eat first from the plate that gives you life as they gave you life.

Stomachs full and the moon high the feast is ended. Each family gathers according to their rank. They each file past the great common fire and light a torch or take a coal to go back home and light the fire in the family hearth. You marvel at the strength it gives you to know that the fire that will warm you this dark time will warm your neighbors and kin. You feel a belonging here, a kinship with each of these people who share your fire.

You walk home with your family feeling not quite so alone. You are happy. It was a good celebration. You could feel those you loved. You know that your bit that filled the wicker man will help to feed everyone in the year to come. Though the night is dark you can feel the light within glowing warmly. Your sleep will be peaceful tonight.

Blessed Be

Want to learn more? Check these links.
http://www.samhain.com/samhain.shtml
http://www.celticspirit.org/samhain.htm

Love and Light,

Robyn

The Tower of Babble

2004-10-30T13:47:00.000-04:00

I woke up this morning and couldn’t see across the street. The fog was so thick that even the bright bursts of autumn trees in the schoolyard across the street were muted shadows. I like the feeling that I’ve woken up into a parallel universe that looks almost and acts almost like mine, but where different possibilities will open up. I have to admit that this surreal feeling is partly fuelled by an intense caffeine withdrawal, the first thing – sorry, second thing I remedy – in the morning.

I also like it because it’s a gentle reminder that no matter how wonderful we thinks we are, we are all still at the whim of nature. We can build as many Towers of Babel to the sky as we like, but it is certain that eventually something is going to come along and obscure them; we’re lucky if it’s just fog.

Where I live in downtown Toronto I am surrounded by towers. There’s a surprising amount of green in this city’s core considering how high up the majority of this area’s population lives. For this reason, Toronto’s downtown is one of my preferred of all the cities I’ve seen. I’ve seen quite a few. I myself live high enough up that I can recognise these monoliths as towers and not simply as vast brick or concrete walls with a regular pattern of television screens, each with its own docudrama or soap opera. When I woke up this morning I couldn’t see one of them. I could have woken up in a log cabin for all I knew on the shores of Lake Winnipeg, for all I knew. There was no evidence to the contrary. It was pleasurable to admit that nature has power I’ll never get around and that I don’t control every aspect of my environment.

Another bit of nature I can’t seem to control is my cat, Noudnic. Noudnic (pronounced Nude Nick) is Yiddish and now Hebrew for something a little like ‘pain in the butt’. I like to think that this is my apartment. Such self-delusion; it is clear that Noudnic runs the household and I exist merely to bring home the bacon-flavoured adult hairball control now containing bromelain nuggets.

This morning, before I realised I had awoken into a ghost world, I could feel his eyes on me as he sat in the middle of my floor.

“Look, mate … ” I myself don’t say ‘mate’: I’m Canadian. But I think that if Noudnic could speak English he would have an Australian accent. I don’t know why. “Look, mate. I’d really like to have a chat about my foo … No! Do not fall asleep! [some sort of cat swear]!”

A little while later I opened my eyes and he was lying next to the bed, staring up at me.

“Listen. I reckon we really oughta talk about the situation in my food bowl … Listen to me! Do not fall asleep! [some other sort of cat swear]!”

Not so very much later I was unable to keep my eyes closed one more. I could feel an intense gaze upon me. I woke up and immediately jump back. All I could see were two enormous, glowing, yellow eyes piercing me with the intensity of a full moon. My bed is low enough that if he sits on his haunches right beside it the top of the bed is exactly level with the bottom of his eyes.

“Strewth, ya’ bodgy bludger! Get out of bed and feed me now! Now!”

His bidding done, I was dismissed with a little mew. “Very good. You may leave now.” Once again, nature proves its predominance.

Another bit of nature I cannot control is my love life. I don’t try too hard at it anymore; as the years trudge forth, it seems less and less worth it to make an effort for something that seems broken anyways. But my invitation for this morning seemed intriguing, almost enough to throw down my Cloak of Scepticism (I’m a super hero in that respect).

“Let’s meet for breakfast.”

Breakfast? How … how charming. How unique. Meeting for brunch is such a cliché. What’s more, the implication of a morning date is that, if all goes well, it can last the entire day and maybe longer, just like in those books I never read ever. It’s a not-so-carefully-guarded secret that I am a romantic at heart. The cynical surliness is just a front, scaffolding for the undeserving.

I was in the process of realising that every single colour in the spectrum makes me look wan and blotchy, while finally coming to grips with the fact that I have the bizarrest colour of eyes in the entire universe when I got the inevitable phone call that regular readers of this site saw coming as soon as they read the word ‘date’. As it turns out, he had accidentally stayed out too late last night and tripped, falling into an entire vat of beer. Oopsie!

“You were, no doubt, so nervous about our date,” I said in that way I have, “that you had to get drunk to calm your poor nerves.”

“Hahahahaha! You’re so funny! That’s what I like about you.”

Hahahahaha. I am the hilariousest.

I will certainly not call him again. If he calls me again I could be convinced to meet for coffee. Everyone deserves a limited second chance.

So I put my Cloak of Sceptism back on, knowing that I can still take it off anytime I need. I may not be able to control nature at large, but I can certainly control my own.

Hobbits, Hunks, and Black Holes

2004-10-28T13:41:00.000-04:00

Hobbits Among Us

Humans are inherently egotistical. We believe that we are the only creatures in the world like us. We divide the universe into ‘man-made’ and ‘natural’, not realising that because we come from nature, everything we do is natural – even when we’re in the process of destroying ourselves and everything around us. I think it's because we have a more developed sense of self than do the rest of the creatures. We are aware of ourselves beyond just a survival instinct. We feel alone and set ourselves apart. Maybe I think this because I am a self-conscious and self-centred individual and am therefore constantly aware of my ‘self’.

So what does this have to do with hobbits? Well, there appears to be evidence that a completely different species of human lived alongside homo sapiens in Indonesia until around 12 000 years ago. They were apparently around 1 metre (about 3 feet) tall and made intricate tools. They have been dubbed ‘hobbits’, although their stuffier name is homo floresiensis, named after the island of Flores in Indonesia where their remains were found.

More intriguingly, the island’s human, urm, homo sapien inhabitants reportedly have complex legends about a race of little people that once lived on the island. Of course just about every culture has legends about little people. However, if these particular legends are true, it implies that they lived – or still live – long after their hypothesised extinction approximately 12 000 years ago. I guess this means that what I wrote about Dan when I guested there last week wasn’t all that farfetched.

Hunky Hits

When I started writing this at the end of March I thought it would be for me, family, and maybe a few friends. When I received my first comment from someone neither I nor my friends had met before. I was elated. I could talk to the world!

I soon realised I could track how was coming to my site. Now I have two metres at the bottom of the right-hand column that are set for public viewing, so click away if you wish. Most of the hits are from Blog Explosion people who stay their allotted 30 seconds of torture before clicking ever onward. One of the metres keeps a record of which countries my visitors are from, and I visit it regularly. It fascinates me that someone from Singapore, for example, may right now be reading what I have to say.

I was amused at what happened when I developed a crush on Israeli singer Harel Skaat (הראל סקעת ) and plastered his adorable mug all over the place; suddenly I was getting from almost as many hits from Israel, where I’ve never been, as I was getting from Canada, where I’m from, and the States, where much of the world appears to think I’m from. When I followed some of these referrals back, I was surprised to discover that good ol' Surly was #1 on a couple of Israeli search engines for a month or so when the key words were ‘ הראל סקעת ’ (his own site was #2). There was also some speculation in a couple of chat rooms as to how well I actually know Mr. סקעת (not at all, although a friend met him once and said that he’s quite nice).

When I added Canadian Olympic diver Alexandre Despatie to my pantheon of oooooo I wish! I wish!s and was consequently unable to post without a picture of him somewhere, the world came knocking at my door to see if I knew anything they didn’t about notre beau plongeur agile. As it turns out, I do. I have access to something most of the rest of the world doesn’t have: Quebec talk shows and the ability the speak Québécois French, which is to European French what white water rafting is to yachting. He appears to be a very sweet kid totally unprepared for the glare of the international press. Poor guy. I hope he survives.

So that was how I came close to touching the stars without, alas!, touching any stars in the process. But a few days ago when I noticed that in the same day I’d received hits from Mongolia, Malta, and Kyrgyzstan, I thought, “I wish I could put all this on a map”; not because I don’t know where Kyrgyzstan is. I think it’d just be fun.

So here’s my new toy:

Where are visitors to this page from?
(Auto-updated daily since Oct. 27, 2004)
It's updated once a day. Hopefully my little world will soon be covered with measles.

Event Horizon

Go-getting blogger, Dantallion, has put together an interesting assemblage of some of his favourite bloggers in a very loose collaboration called The Event Horizon. Now, I reckon that if you’ve read this far down, there must be something about my writing that you like. In that case I invite you to go read my first contribution, where I write about how much I miss my mommy (I should be called Wussy Weepy instead of Surly Snobby for that entry). Read the others too. All the writers have a unique perspective and style; we’re all, like, rilly cute too! It should be a fun project to be involved with.

A Brain as Big as an Orange

2004-10-26T23:54:00.000-04:00

Writer’s block is like being lost in a foreign city. It’s like having a word stuck at the tip of your tongue but refusing to come out. It’s like constipation. It’s like cooking on a day when you’re fasting.

My cat, with a brain roughly the size of a mandarin orange, never gets writer’s block. I doubt that he would even be able to wrap his brain around the concept of writing since his verbal communication is limited to:

Pay attention to me now!

Feed me now!

Pet me more now!

Stop clipping my nails now!

I want to eat that bird / bug / thing I just vomited two seconds ago now!

So even if he had opposable thumbs, writing would probably be a bit beyond him.

It’s also very likely that he wouldn’t volunteer for a local HIV/AIDS organisation as well. That’s something that I do. Even if he did volunteer for one, I doubt he would have heard this as he walked by the reception area:

... It’ll mean a lot of changes. Speaking of changes, I’d like to change him out of those clothes and lick ...

... and the rest has been swept from my memory. Even if my cat hadn’t looked over to see the man’s crusty leer, it would have been clear that the comment was about him. Even if my cat didn’t have super-sensitive kitty hearing, he would have noticed that the comment was made loud enough for the entire reception area to hear. This made him an object but not a real participant in the discourse, a little like those websites where webcammed models will do whatever your e-mail tell them to do.

It’s a good thing that it was me and not my cat because he would have simply strode over and swiped at him violently his claws. That’s what he does to me when I rile him up. They’re pretty sharp. I don’t clip them often. My decisive action was to stand mute with very little going through my head. Then I walked away. A few seconds later a little angry string began to wind itself around my head.

I am rarely at a loss for words when angry. I like to say exactly what I think in as precise a manner as possible just so that there is never any confusion. I think that’s pretty considerate of me. It just makes sense to think ahead if you let the offending party know exactly how, in a memorable manner, they’ve offended, they may never do it again – to me, at least. I also like to allow myself my little rants every once in a while, and even on this blog I’ve shown evidence of it here and here and here, just to name a few. But this time I had nothing to say. I just walked away. Later, I talked about it with a few people, something that turned out to be of very little help at all.

One male friend responded was that if he had been hot, which he wasn’t by any stretch of imagination, I wouldn’t have minded. This leads me to believe that the man who said this actually think that he himself has the right to make these kinds of statements whenever and wherever he likes. This takes me back to my early and mid-20s when I looked much younger than I was – it wasn’t until I hit thirty that I began to look my age – and often had to fend off the assertive attention of older gentlemen, the stereotypes of whom had kept me cowering in the closet for several years. These charming encounters occurred in bars where you might expect such things to happen. In a bar you can leave, pour beer on the guy, or get your favourite bartender to kick him out. It’s very easy. What’s less easy is when it takes place where you don’t expect it, like in the middle of the reception area of an HIV/AIDS organisation where you volunteer.

One female friend’s response was, “Now you know what it feels like to be a woman”. My early 20s aside for the moment, I do live in a world in which both men and women frequently wear an article of clothing called ‘a wife-beater’, so I my thought process on this topic isn’t entirely vacant. But I do very much appreciate the implication that I somehow deserved it just because of who I am. That’s a great big help.

But they’re just words and words flow through you like air and then are gone. Most people, mostly women, experience far worse reactions to their sexuality, But they are words that, later, can elicit an incredible feeling of loneliness later on. The niggling suspicion that that strangers opinion of me is correct, that only my body is important, not my brain. This is a slight concern for as I age; the fact that I can now get married hasn’t yet opened a floodgate of proposals. My concern is that soon it will be true that that all I’m good for will be what he described me doing as if I weren’t there and that I will only be good enough for men like that.

I am certainly not opposed to a little attention. A little, furtive glance is alluring. A brief, bright smile is charming. A shy introduction may arouse a conversation. I don’t need to get married tomorrow or next year - or ever, for that matter. But lurid countdown of all the things you think I can do that will make you happy doesn't deserve anything more than a lip curl. For some reason, this embarrasses me. I’m not the one who should be embarrassed.

As I said, my cat who does things now! and has a brain the size of a mandarin orange would have turned the guys face shredded beef and would never be embarrassed. But this is a creature who runs into walls, falls into full bathtubs, eats bugs, and has been castrated, so he’s probably not a very good gauge in this.

Thunderous Applause

2004-10-26T09:30:00.000-04:00

National Novel-Writing Month fast approaches. I have been diligently preparing for my entry in it by skipping the first meeting of the Toronto chapter to go get magnificently drunk at a friend's 40th birthday and by only deciding on a premise yesterday. If you're going to do something rather large, be sure to do it half-assed.

I have to thank close friend and frequent commenter, AlefAlef, for the original idea for the premise, although I have modified it somewhat. He suggested it to me after reading yet another entry in which he was the topic where I'd bent te truth ever so slightly so make myself look be ... I mean, to highlight the humour of the anecdote. You'll see what I mean if you click here. That site is where I will post it as I write it starting Nov. 1.

And the truly observant will note that I do something on that site that I have never allowed before here. If you think you've figured out what it is, leave a comment on that site.

And while I type up yet another 'real' genius entry for this site, have fun with this little game. If that gets annoying, which it surely will, read this hilarious overview of the movie "Troy" that made me fall off my chair, much to the astonishment of my cat.

Brain Mulch

2004-10-23T11:07:00.000-04:00

Dan is a cruel task master. I agreed to guest on his site for a couple of days while he spends a few days in Guam evicting orphans from their orphanarium so he can build a highrise / tourist resort called "The Gates of Heaven". Keeping perfectly in line with his personality, he has chained me to his URL, handcuffed me to his blogger code, and bound me to his haloscan. While await rescue, I am still permitted visitors. Come visit.

Those of you opposed to visiting Dantallion on moral grounds – he has none – take this very cool tour of New York I stumbled into while trying to pinpoint exactly where various scenes where taking place in an episode of "Law & Order". At least I turn my brain to mulch in creative ways!

Gone Away

2004-10-21T15:39:00.000-04:00

My friend Dantallion has asked me to fill in for him over there while he takes a few days off to fulfill his life-long dream of performing the role of Cowpoke #3 in a Broadway production of "Oklahoma". Anyone who truly loves me will go there and check out Surly in a different context.

And over here, play with this for a few hours (pillaged from Daniel). Try to spell words by clicking and dragging a letter, while the rest of the Net tries to do the same thing. Turn your brain to mush with panache!

Sorry. Nothing more to read. There was no good place to place a break.

Bewitching Trouble

2004-10-19T17:35:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I got into trouble with a witch. I’ve had troubles before. I have got into trouble with family members, friends, teachers. I’ve got into trouble with cops, German border guards, Polish border guards (in the days of communism), a French narcotics squad – I was innocent and found innocent (Hi, Surly’s cool and open-minded parents who sometimes read this blog!). With bosses, employees, customers. With boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, wannabe boyfriends, flings, wannabe flings. With drag queens, bartenders, bouncers. But I have never got into trouble with a witch before. I do not recommend searching out such trouble.

Did I learn nothing from my childhood? I know the story of Hansel and Gretel. I know what fate could have befallen Snow White and Sleeping Beauty had they not been saved by random chance in the end. Rapunzel was imprisoned by a witch for something her father did. I saw “The Blair Witch Project” and survived. Do not anger a witch.

It wasn’t the kind of hysterical screamy trouble we would get into with Mme Lévesque, my grade 9 math teacher, who would holler at the top of her lungs if someone couldn’t remember the difference between sine and cosine. That kind of trouble just makes me roll my eyes and do whatever it is that got me into trouble, but with more intensity. This was more along the lines of the kind trouble Mrs Brown, my grade 12 English teacher, would give out: low, calm, with a little smile, dripping with beatific disappointment. She could stun and entire classroom into horrified guilt simply with the slight raising of one corner of her lips: Eeep! She’s gonna smile and give us a speech! This was that kind of trouble I got into.

“Really,” she assured. “I am in no way angry at what you wrote.” No? Um, that’s good. “It’s true. I found it funny!” she continued. Something tiny began to squirm in my stomach. “Humour is an excellent remedy for many ills.” Yup. I’m beginning to feel ill right now, as a matter of fact.. “If only …” I knew it! “If only you could have sent me a little link so I wouldn’t have had to discover what you’d written about my blog by stumbling into it. But it was really funny. Really.” Every single one of my Jewish ancestors stood up on their ephemeral spirit legs and applauded vigorously at this magnificent guilt-trip. And the best guilt-trip is the unplanned one that does nothing but speak the truth.

I made my apologies as best I could and figured that was the end of it. But I was wrong, I think, because all day weird things happened to me. First of all, after having just that morning traded quips with Harvestbird on her blog about who loved Hong Kong actor Tony Leung – with whom I have actually been totally gaga for since seeing this film – more (I do – so there, Birdie!). And then, not but fours hours later, I went to see this gorgeous movie, in which Tony Leung played a significant role. American actions stars are so proud when they “pull off” a serious role. Hong Kong actions flicks, unlike American ones, are all about heart and honour. The heroes agonise over practically every life they take, whereas American action heroes gleefully douse their enemies in toxic waste and laugh as they watch their skin melt off. “Hero” really is an incredible movie. It’s a kung fu action movie with a pacifist theme that will make you cry. Much of the tears come from good ol’ Tony, who has made me cry in practically every movie I’ve seen him in (Always the melancholy guys I have to go for – perhaps that’s one of the reasons I’m so surly). And the unexpected treat of Tony’s big, brown, liquid eyes was a pleasant coincidence.

Or was it a coincidence? It may not seem like much, but how often do a Canuck and a Kiwi babble over a Hong Kong star only to have him pop up again that day in a completely unrelated manner? Just bear with me.

All day I couldn’t get my cell phone to work. Then my cable went out for precisely four minutes. None of this along the lines of the time that I was at an isolated cottage in the dead of winter with some friends who decided it would be uproariously fun to improvise a ouija board; after fifteen minutes of ouija the electricity went out for no reason we could perceive. I shivered and not just from the cold. But still odd.

Then the counter for that particular post go stuck at 13 and wouldn’t move. That was a little creepy. Even though I figured out after a while there were indeed thirteen comments when I’d thought there were more doesn’t matter in the slightest. It’s all about perception and I perceives that my day was taking a very strange twist.

This Wiccan witch to whom I refer is kind of like Glinda the Good, but without that weird operatic way of speaking – I assume – and the awful dress with puffy sleeves - again, I assume. All I know about Wicca I gleaned from The Mists of Avalon
about two decades ago; in other words, not much. But it seems to me that Wiccans aren’t curse-layers; their style is more to sit back and watch as people dig their own holes. So there was no curse on me in any Blair Witch sense. It was just my good ol’ Jewish guilt relating everything in my day together; as a happy bonus, the core of the guilt happened to be an individual who is particularly in tune with what I would label ‘the supernatural’ (although she probably just call it ‘the natural’). Lots of stuff to play with! So curse or no curse, the perception was all-important.

This reminds of another movie I saw recently that attempts to question our perception of self as individual units and, well, fails pretty miserably ... although it’s still a fun way to spend a couple of hours (I know it doesn’t sound like fun, but it’s got Lily Tomlin in it). How do our perceptions affect the world around us and, ultimately, do we really exist? Philosophers and religions have been studying this for years. I don’t know much about philosophy but I do know a little about some religions, and they will give you very different answers if you ask them if we really exist. Buddhism says, “Who cares?” Judaism lifts an eyebrow and says, “Such stupid questions you ask.” I don’t know tons about Islam, but I have a feeling it says something similar. Protestantism says, “Yes. You exist. Now get back to work.” Catholicism says, “You exist and your misery lets you know you’re alive.”

I don’t know what Wiccans say. Probably something like, “You exist over and over and over again because life is pure joy!” or something optomistic like that. But I doubt they care so much as to make my day slightly surreal. I did that all on my own. A normal day went berserk because I perceived it straight into the twilight zone.

So to clear the whole thing up I decided to write something in honour, in a way, of someone with some very powerful people skills. You were right, Robyn, your blog did make an impression on me.

And I purposefully made this post extra long so that anyone else whose blog I satirized will get bored and stop scrolling down (go ahead! Scroll down and check. I dare you.): I don’t know if I could stand another day of spirits and existentialism. A free Gmail account to the first six people who read all the way to the bottom of this and leave a comment. No cheating. There’ll be a quiz.

Lollygaggery

2004-10-17T17:57:00.000-04:00

Surly spends a couple of hours surfing the net:

Hello Darkness My Old Friend ...

I know that I talk a great deal about the love and light of the universe. I talk a great deal about the helpful spirits around us.

The Love and Light of the Universe is permeates all through all of us. The Spirts of Help want nothing but to aid us as we struggle valiantly in this conflict we just call Real Life.

click

OK so like why do ppl say things like that???!??!?!??!!?!?! I was just siting by my self waiting for math clas 2 beggin and that skank RS came over and like totaly yelled at me!!!!!!!! Wuddup wit dat beeatch? Im like SoOoOoOoOoOo PiSsEd!!!!!!!!!!!

I love my friends! ByYyYyYyEeEeEeEeEe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

click!

I had a dream last night that we lost to the [some sports team] 24-10. I woke up to a wet bed.

click

Welcome to my first entry. I need to expel some demons.

click

It is a hitherto lesser known fact that, as I have often stated in the past, as regular readers know due to the discussions of this all-too important fact and issue that I have mentioned on several occasions, you know the one I mean, in which dissenting views, which have been more than adequately enumerated here since the beginning of this discussion even though dissenters have not thought the facts through although I have clearly laid them out here on several occasions – as you well know – and I am still mystified as to how anyone could disagree.

CLICK!

My cat Mrs. Floopikins is peeved at me again.

click!

Jesus hates those Democrat asses to Hell!

click

Did everyone catch Bush drooling during the last “debate”? Loser!

click

Ok, after a long time away I've decided to come back to Blogging. Finally something really interesting to write about. I'm studying Computer Games Software Engineering at [some university].

CLICK!

The life of me, in a nutshell.

CLICK! CLICK!

[Cursor turns into a red, pulsating ♥ and then into a magenta unicorn, into a ♥, a unicorn, and so forth; miniscule baby blue font against a pink background; characters from Japanese animation in the corner ; giant pink banner flashes ‘LOVE TO LOVE’ ; “DID YOU EVER KNOW THAT YOU’RE MY HEEEEEEEROOOOOOO?!?!?!?!?!” suddenly blasts through my speakers] click [popup stating “You can’t leave me now! I’ll cry!”] CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! [‘right click’ and ‘back’ disabled; pop up stating “Where are you going?!?!?!?!?! I’m crying now!!!! BOO HOO HOO HOO HOO!!!!!”; speakers blast “YOU ARE THE WIIIIIIIIIIIIND BEENEEEEEEATH MY WIIIIIIIINGS!”; close browser and reboot computer for good measure; run spyware and virus check]

This is a photo of my toenail just before it fell off. Gross!

*sigh* click

Over the Rainbow

But seriously, if you sign up for this thing, all your dreams will come true. All of them. Really!

[Warning: All your dreams will not come true by clicking on the link above.]

Cool Crowd

Who wants Gmail? Who needs Gmail? I certainly do; I’m cool and cool people have Gmail. I’ve only used it like twice, but I’m cool because I have Gmail. If you want to be cool too, e-mail me. What’s the matter? Afraid your mommy will find out?

Oy! I’m going for a drink.

Writer's Block

2004-10-15T13:48:00.000-04:00

If there’s one thing I hate more than editing other people’s stuff for little money (for free for friends, it’s a find karma-inspiring activity), it’s editing my own stuff for no money. I’m submitting a very much modified version of this for publication (embarrassingly, it looks as if there are no comments on it, although the 20 or so I received are still there if not registering). This is an entry you all read and loved although embarrassingly, the twenty or sop comments it did receive aren’t registering – they’re still there though.

It needs a lot of work and I don’t feel like doing it. I enjoy editing my more serious stuff, none of which appears on this site. Reshaping the more light-hearted stuff inspires me to live up to my (online) name and I shake my head at my vacuousness. It also gives me intense writer’s block, and so here is an entry that is built mostly on other people.

Slander and Defamation

After reading about Neonbubble’s experience at the auto body shop, I will definitely have to remember to watch my surly mouth. Imagine bloggers being sued for slander merely for expressing an opinion.

Bloggers already take themselves seriously enough as is it. I express the bile that shoots up past my uvula every time I stumble across a site where some person I will never meet blogger details the momentous buttering of their toast (“Today I left the crust on my toast!”) or regales me with their unresearched, uniformed political opinion, again … and again … and again … We all know that is posted on a blog is a personal reflection (or, in some cases, lack of reflection) and so to have someone threaten to sue is pathetic and dangerous. It isn’t just the government that has the power to stifle our opinions.

Someone Needs a Hug

On the opposite end of the spectrum comes an article that comes down a little too heavy on bloggers and their opinions. He disses political bloggers for their self-proclaimed journalist status – and there is definitely some merit to his opinion – but then goes on in an offensive diatribe that shows him off to be nothing much more than an angry, bitter old man. Does this leave me open to a lawsuit now? What I mean is, he then goes off on an offensive diatribe that, in my opinion, shows him off to be nothing much more than an angry, bitter old man. (I can’t link directly to the article, but Andy can.)

What’s more, in my opinion his writing almost reaches the heights of the very lowest of blog stylings, and he gets paid for what he does! Why can’t I get paid to do that?

Stop Complaining

Now before I get too het up because some journalist I’ll never meet tried to make me cry, a friend from a far away land reminds me that I have it pretty easy. If the worst thing I have to worry about while writing a blog is a ridiculous slander suit that’ll be thrown out of court if it even made it that far, I have nothing to worry about. How enormous the world is.

Welcome Ramadan

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan began yesterday at sundown, at least it did in North America. I have been reading up a little on this – with North America’s sizable Islamic communities I feel I should know more about them – and have discovered some very interesting things that go beyond simply knowing that there is a fast during daylight hours for a month. For example, true to Islam’s grassroots (for lack of a better word) beginnings, Te Holy Month of Ramadan begins at the first sighting of the crescent moon at this time of year. This means that it begins on different days in different areas of the world. I like the idea of a very holy period – one of the Five Pillars in Islam, in fact – intertwined completely with natural cycles of the universe.

Ramadan Mubarak.

Canonization

Dantallion has been a close friend for a few years and I truly miss living in the same city as him. One of my favourite things about him has always been that he wears his heart utterly exposed on his sleeve. I don't have that kind of courage. This means that hanging out with opinionated, outspoken Surly Snobby is sometimes a little like having his parade rained on (not that he can’t dish it out very well, himself). It also translates into a gutsy blog that gets much more personal than I am willing to get (what you’re reading right now is about as far as I’m usually willing to go before making some sort of joke). Anyways, he’s in cyber vacation in Australia for a couple a weeks and guest blogging for a friend down under, so you shouldgo visit him.

I want to guest blog for a really cute Australian too!

Dinosaurs Attack Local Hospital

2004-10-12T17:19:00.000-04:00

Dinosaurs live! All right, they don’t really live, but dinosaurs live! I saw them today! I was sitting at my desk proofreading some palpitatingly enthralling progress reports for a local not-for-profit organisation (hurrah for freelance! There are as many ways to say “flushed due to budgetary restrictions” as there are new condo developments in downtown Toronto.) when I heard a screech and then a loud series of bangs, followed by what sounded like series of large objects crashing to the ground from a great height.

I ran to the window and there they were, a herd of brachiosauruses attacking a building a short distance from mine. They were knocking out its walls by butting them with their heads and then pulling out the support beams until chunks the size of my entire kitchen came tumbling down from several stories up. “That’s odd,” I thought to myself as a complete ventilation system hung limply in the mouth of a brachiosaurus like giant ferns. “I didn’t even know that dinosaurs ate buildings”.

But they weren’t really dinosaurs, of course. Everyone knows that dinosaurs died out, except for birds that is. According to Steven Spielberg, birds are really dinosaurs with feathers and beaks instead of scales and razor-sharp teeth. He should know what he’s talking about. After all, he’s the one who let everyone know about the dangers of swimming off the coast of New England and about how aliens with strange manicures can ride bikes in a totally heartwarmingly manipulative way. Instead, they were giant tractors with really long, biting tractor bits and they were knoking down a hospital to replace it with townhouses and a set of stacked, towering condos.

They looked a lot like some dinosaurs I did really see once, though, on this very cool BBC documentary that was like a nature show but about dinosaurs. It showed them hunting and eating and pooping and having sex and everything. Only, it wasn’t really dinosaurs they were showing, of course, because everyone knows that video cameras hadn’t been invented yet when dinosaurs were pooping everywhere. Instead, they were CGI representations of dinosaurs, so it was these giant blobs of pixels or whatever were the things that were hunting and eating and pooping and having sex. This was extra interesting to me because not only was I a dinosaur enthusiast when I was a kid, but I never even knew that there was CGI way back in dinosaur times. You can learn so much by using science these days.

When I was a kid I wanted a pet parasauropholus, not just because I figured I deserved one after learning to pronounce ‘parasauropholus’, but because I thought it’d be pretty neat to have a pet parasirpoopigas or whatever. But my days of cool dinosaur enthusiast (now there’s an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one; it's like saying, “‘Star Trek’ makes you sexy!”) have definitely came to an ignoble end a few years ago: once when I was all growed up, I was having a chat with my cousin, 17-Going-On-30 (at the time his name was 5-Going-On-17), when I happened to mention a dinosaur called ‘brontosaurus’. He rolled his eyes at me and told me in no uncertain terms that no one, absolutely no one, calls it that anymore and that the correct terminology was ‘apatosaurus’. I was no longer even cool enough to be a dinosaur lover.

Another thing he told me was that I was born just after the dinosaurs died out, so it’s not clear to me how reliable his paleontological facts actually are. He has just moved here to go to the University of Toronto and I’d planned for a while on using this last statement against him should he ever get too uppity, but I cannot for the life of me see how it makes me look good to state that I may have been born just after the extinction of the dinosaurs. Instead I’ll have to think up other threats such as sending letters to his mother detailing what he gets up to in his first year of freedom. That’ll keep him in line.

[insert witty title here]

2004-10-08T10:41:00.000-04:00

Asparagus movie

Last night Sexy Librarian and I went to see “The Motorcycle Diaries”, the movie about one year in the life of Communist idealist Che Guevara. As usually happens with movies I’m supposed to love because they are idealistic, artistically independent, and critically successful, I thought it was pretty mediocre but with some great shots of South America. I swear I am moving to southern Argentina.

Of course, the entire audience clapped and gave Sexy Librarian and me strange looks when we shrugged and talked openly – so, like, everyone could hear n’stuff – about how we thought it was mediocre.

“There was no dramatic tension in the climax of the movie: we know he’ll live!” she lamented.

“He had no flaws!” I pointed out over the head of the teenager in red Che Guevara t-shirt, glaring at me for daring to diss the movie about his supposed hero. “He was perfect in every way. Who wants to see a movie about an cherub?”

Sexy Librarian taught me a term I’d never heard before, an asparagus movie. It’s a movie you go to see because it is supposedly good for you, not because you like it; yet you tell everyone you liked it. Well, at least this one didn’t make my pee smell funny.

And at least at starred sexy Mexican actor and husband number eleven? . . . twelve?, Gael García Bernal. Even at the movie’s most painfully earnest moments, there was Gael.

so very Canadian

Even our failed revolutions are polite. Canada’s federal government came to the brink of toppling last night, and yet it survived. Was the explosive ideal set to bring down an entire government the treatment of Canada’s aboriginal people? Was it Quebec independence? Alberta Independence? Nope. What almost brought down out government was the inclusion of the words “fiscal imbalance” in a sub-amendment of the Speech to the Throne. I repeat: a sub-amendment (and don’t even get me started on why we still have a Throne to which we need to give a speech).

In true Canadian spirit, a compromise was reached and everyone congratulated themselves on how open to compromise and negotiation they were. And even though I mock, I am very glad that these are the kinds of issues that can bring us down. There are far, far worse.

NaNoWriMo

Thanks to Mikevil, I will be participating in National Novel Writing Month in November. The goal is to write a 50 000-word (or more!) novel from midnight, Nov. 1 until 11:59PM Nov. 30. The goal, as they point out repeatedly, is quantity not quality. Quantity I can supply no problem. All you have to do to win is reach 50 000 words (not the same word over and over again, they caution) by the end of November. “No plot? No problem. ” Thanks, Mike!

Once I’m declared one of the winners (last year there were 5 000 winners), I’ll publish my masterpiece chapter by chapter on another blog (unless it’s way too embarrassing). Stay tuned for details.

My Words Are Delicious

2004-10-07T01:53:00.000-04:00

A couple of months ago I poked a little fun at a friend of mine because he walked straight into a pole while admiring the beauty of a man he saw while strolling down the street one day. When he told me the story, I almost fell off my couch I thought it was so ridiculously funny. “I would never do anything like that,” I thought to myself.

I often think thoughts like that. I have an enormous ego and I truly believe that the world would be a much better place if people either thought exactly as I do or if they did exactly what I want. Please stop curling your lip at me; we all feel like this sometimes. Why else would we roll our eyes with impatience when the overworked barista takes a whole three and a half seconds longer than we consider necessary to serve the person in front of us, forcing us to address the inconsiderate wretch in icy turns and rethink the 25¢ tip we were generously going to leave. (Oooooooo! Twenty-five cents! How generous!) We really are a petty breed.

So, I’ve talked about my giant ego and I’ve laughed at a friend who found himself in a particular predicament. Where could I be going with this?

Today as AlefAlef and I were walking though his new lobby, which, incidentally, looks as if Kandinsky were trying to paint someone being violently ill, but somehow let things get out of hand, when who should walk out of the elevator we were waiting for and stride across the lobby but Blair Underwood! Well, it wasn’t really Blair Underwood, but he may as well as have been.

Because I am full of intellect and higher learning, I intelligently and entirely rationally turned my entire body around to follow him with my gaze as he walked out the front door. Once he was gone from view, I turned back and whooooomph! walked straight into the now-closed elevator door. I rubbed my forehead to regain my equilibrium while abstract, multi-coloured Kandinsky birds tweeted around my head, but no sympathy was to be received from AlefAlef. He just raised an eyebrow and shook his head, walking into another elevator that opened in front of him. How humiliating it must have been for him to be associated with a fool such as me.

And to return to my original point, I think that the world would be a happier place if everyone were able to make a public fool of themselves occasionally. A little humorous humiliation is great for the soul, even of the body – like one’s forehead – suffers.

A Moving Friendship

2004-10-04T11:20:00.000-04:00

There are times when friendship doesn't seem worth the effort. Well OK, that’s not the case. A good friendship is always worth the effort. A better way of phrasing it is to state that there are times when you might wish that a friendship isn’t worth the effort, even though it always is. Included in this list of hypotheticals is the pretend date (when your single friend is invited to a couple-type event such as a wedding, office party, or party hosted by friend’s ex, etc.) and moving day.

“I’ve decided to fire my movers for tomorrow and I’ve rented a van,” AlefAlef informed me at some ungodly hour this morning. “It'll be way less complicated this way. Can you be here this afternoon?”

“Uh . . . sure . . . ?” I was vulnerable and incredibly stupid; he’d caught me in a pre-caffeinated state.

“Great! Oh! And can you bring boxes?”

“Um . . . You haven’t finished packing yet?”

If, when I arrive at to help at a move, the movee is still frantically thrusting things into boxes and rushing about looking for the packing tape, I turn around and go home. I’ve lived the hell of packing and moving enough times that I don’t need to live anyone else’s hell with them. Except maybe for AlefAlef. Not only is he the best cook I know (and his mother bakes the best cookies ever) and I would be cut off for an indeterminate length of time if I didn't help in the move, he is also the kind of close friend with whom you don’t quibble over the small stuff (like a disorganised move – very minor in the grand scheme of friendship); you write blogs about the small stuff. Plus, he’s helped on two of my moves so I owe him. But my moves are easy: they are spectacularly well-organised.

I start packing weeks beforehand and I’m finished and scrubbing the floors already the day before. I ask everyone I know to help – I’m not shy about favours! – knowing that maybe half will say yes and of those, approximately half will actually show up (although one time everyone who said they would show, showed, and the move was over in less than an hour). That is about all it takes for a smooth, successful move.

Not that there aren’t still glitches, no matter how successful. One time a mover cancelled on me the day before my move and refused to relent. No amount of reasoning and pleading worked – and neither did yelling, swearing, and cursing his children, both unborn and born. Those kind souls who appeared for the move were very surprised to learn that they would be moving me in their cars. One of those helpers, who is himself most likely the most disorganised movee ever, has exacted his revenge on me a number of times over the years since.

But the very worst move was the one where my friend-with-a-van arrived at my apartment one hour late and on a bicycle. “This can’t be a good sign,” I though with great intelligence to myself as I spied him peddling towards me. He was there merely as a courtesy to let me know his van had caught fire and that there would be no moving me that day or any other day for all eternity. Panic! Chaos! Cacophony! Fire! I went mentally through all the Ten Plagues to determine which one(s) I’d most like to see visited upon his head.

I moved two days later - much to the consternation of the woman who was to move into the place that day - in a plagueless van; there wasn’t too much she could do since I was doing her a favour by allowing her to move in a couple of days before the first of the month. The two days we lived together among the mountains of boxes were bliss.

So I suppose that AlefAlef’s move will be easier than that. And I had better get an amazing meal out of it.

. . .

I found out where Mr V is (see previous entry). I wish him strength, health, and good spirits in his difficult time.

Mr V, Where Have You Gone?

2004-10-02T20:34:00.000-04:00

a little colour in the white

Alexander Demianchuk / REUTERS

Alexander Demianchuk / REUTERS
Pillaged from Dr. Vodka (great name).

i don’t read them either

The button on the top right hand of the monitor has its hazards.
Pillaged from Harvestbird

speaking of which . . .

all ignorance toboggans into know
and trudges up to ignorance again:
but winter's not forever,even snow
melts;and if spring should spoil the game,what then?

all history's a winter sport or three:
but were it five,i'd still insist that all
history is too small for even me;
for me and you,exceedingly too small.

Swoop(shrill collective myth)into thy grave
merely to toil the scale to shrillerness
per every madge and mabel dick and dave
--tomorrow is our permanent address

and there they'll scarcely find us(if they do,
we'll move away still further:into now

- e.e. cummings

and then . . .

. . . um, e.e. on acid? Scroll down this one a little. Have a party.

Snow Flakes

2004-09-30T23:23:00.000-04:00

In honour of winter (even though I was wearing shorts today), and to stave off blog tedium, here is my new winter look.

Sorry, nothing more to read.

Virtue

2004-09-29T13:51:00.000-04:00

The cat box looked like this (don’t be too grossed out; it’s really a cake, not a repugnantly dirty cat box. Does that make it less disgusting?). I’m not surprised since Tallboy, who took care of my place and of Noudnic the Cat while I was away told be he didn’t “scoop poop”. Fair enough, especially since I got my place back cleaner in every single other respect than I’d left it (including washing the outside of all the windows!). Embarrassing? Not in the least. I should go away more often.

I could have stayed at my folks’ another week or so. A chauffeur service, a chef service (that takes requests), and all the surreal conversation you can stand; I sometimes think that my parents inhabit an alternate plane of existence. Winnipeg is a great little city and I left just in time: Winnipeg is a great little frozen city as of very soon.

So I guess it’s fair to say that I’m fairly happy to be back, although I don’t want to start facing real life yet. I’ll do it next week. For the rest of this week I’ll continue to pretend I have no responsibilities and that I can live without need of trifles such as money before I really have to live without trifles such as food (except burritos).

In the meantime, however, I have plan to live like Martha Stewart on the tightest budget she could ever imagine (before that whole prison thing, of course). No going to bed until the dishes are washed, the bills filed, the recycling squished into the undersized box, and the clothes put away or placed delicately in the hamper. I will eat healthy food only and remember to take my multivitamins every single day. I will wash them down with fruit juice I myself will squeeze every morning as the sun comes up.

Why as I write, even, I am virtuously lunching on a sandwich made entirely of vegetables and – get this! – wild rice bread I brought back from one of Winnipeg’s one hundred thousand hippy bakeries. I so am enjoying the subtle vegetable flavours mixing in my mouth and if I were to desire to make even the smallest of critiques it would be to add only the delicate zest of bacon bits, and mayonnaise, and just a hint of roast beef. But just a hint, mind you. The fact that I have a side or Doritos next to the sandwich has no bearing here.

Caffeine Withdrawal

2004-09-26T11:23:00.000-04:00

I successfully fasted for twenty-four hours for Yom Kipur without pushing anyone into traffic or slicing anyone’s head off. The Yom Kipur fast is a nasty one: not only are you not allowed food, but you’re also not allowed any form of liquid whatsoever, including coffee. No coffee make Surly super surly. By the beginning of the afternoon it was as if someone where massaging my spongy brain matter with acid-tipped stiletto heels.

This is fast is not, as many believe to make you feel as horrible as possible for one day, forcing you into a subservient and repentant state until the end of your fast when you feel virtuous and righteous for having made it through the entire twenty-four hour period. This would logical since it is the Day of Atonement. It’s not altogether accurate, though; if you actually feel yourself to be virtuous and righteous, you’re not being very Jewish. If you’re Jewish, there’s always something you can be doing better or more of (or less of). The purpose of the fast is, while atoning for all the bad things you did during the previous year, big bad and little bad, to help you into the shoes of someone less fortunate than you – just to nail home the point that much more poignantly. A forced starvation is a very pointed way of achieving this.

I felt the caffeine withdrawal more acutely than I did the hunger. This does not mean that now I understand the hardship of those who cannot afford coffee. I’m sure they have other things on their minds than standing in Second C*p or Starfuck’s trying to decide whether to get the Brazilian Meadow blend or the Bolivian Mountain blend.

What I do understand better now is how a former colleague had to muster all his concentration at work as he suffered through a painful medical condition that eventually ended his life. I could barely read after just a few hours of no coffee. He worked full time and did a good job (although he did need help with detailed stuff occasionally). I was barely able to hold a conversation. I have a much better appreciation of what he had to do every single day and am in awe of what he achieved in such a circumstance. All the petty problems seem to melt away when you find another perspective, even if it’s only for a few hours.

And on the theme of putting yourself in others’ shoes, Radmila wrote something beautiful, something very few people in Canada or the States have ever had to deal with in quite this way. Read “Repost” (Sept. 25).

I'm Too Lazy to Write Too Much

2004-09-22T11:03:00.000-04:00

mmmmm . . . something . . .

I got this recipe from my dinner host yesterday evening. I was disappointed she didn’t actually serve this though. The photo provided below is of the actual food item. Really. The guests at my next potluck, beware.

Kitty Litter Cake

Ingredients

1 box spice or German chocolate cake mix
1 box of white cake mix
1 package white sandwich cookies
1 large package vanilla instant pudding mix
A few drops green food coloring
12 small Tootsie Rolls or equivalent

Serving “Dishes and Utensils”

1 NEW cat-litter box
1 NEW cat-litter box liner
1 NEW pooper scooper

Prepare and bake cake mixes, according to directions, in any size pan. Prepare pudding and chill. Crumble cookies in small batches in blender or food processor. Add a few drops of green food coloring to 1 cup of cookie crumbs. Mix with a fork or shake in a jar. Set aside.

When cakes are at room temperature, crumble them into a large bowl. Toss with half of the remaining cookie crumbs and enough pudding to make the mixture moist but not soggy. Place liner in litter box and pour in mixture.

Unwrap 3 Tootsie Rolls and heat in a microwave until soft and pliable. Shape the blunt ends into slightly curved points. Repeat with three more rolls. Bury the rolls decoratively in the cake mixture. Sprinkle remaining white cookie crumbs over the mixture, then scatter green crumbs lightly over top.

Heat 5 more Tootsie Rolls until almost melted. Scrape them on top of the cake and sprinkle with crumbs from the litter box. Heat the remaining Tootsie Roll until pliable and hang it over the edge of the box. Place box on a sheet of newspaper and serve with scooper. Enjoy!

wi jonny kant reed

There are already some blog writers who do this – unintentionally, I believe – but have a look at what the Simplified Spelling Society thinks we should do to increase literacy. Is is the language's fault, or the TV's fault?

Pleez leev al comments for thiss poast in Simplified Spelling.

Black Milk and Green Poo

2004-09-20T11:22:00.000-04:00

I can’t seem to shock my parents. I have to admit that they’ve pretty much seen it all with me, and what they didn’t see they heard about long after my adolescence had faded. Perhaps after the whole coming out thing there wasn’t that much more about me that could surprise them.

But still, you’d think coming home late a little drunk and with a head shaved completely bald would stir some sort of parental tsk-tsking. After all, now I look exactly like the kind of thug you see quite regularly on British sitcoms and soap operas. But no. My father simply said “oh” and continued his back-stretching exercises. My mother had a slightly more involved reaction: she laughed at the fact that my face is brown and my head is white and that there is a very sharp line between the two colours and told me it looked as if I were wearing a tight costume from a bad sci-fi movie. No hysterics. No pleading to know why I had marred my beauty in such a fashion. Doing not so daring things when you’re 34 is boring.

Come to think of it, when I was a teenager my parents always seemed more concerned with things like my grades, like whether I had practised my viola (it’s like a bigger, better, deeper violin) that day, like why my sister was stomping around the house giving everyone a very loud silent treatment (“I dunno what her problem is. I didn’t say anything to her. Really. I didn’t . . . ”) and so forth. The length, colour, consistency of my hair, the music I listened to, the clothes I wore were never gigantic emotional issues for them. My mother even went with me to thrift stores to help me pick out everything black they had for tall, skinny art fags (still deep in the closet). Where was the fun and the shock in that? I had to find my angst elsewhere, something I managed to do quite well.

The whole head-shaving activity was inspired by my friend The Lizard Queen, whom I’ve known literally since I was only a few weeks old. She asked, admiring my simple buzz cut, if I had ever shaved my head completely bald. Nope. Wanna try? Ok. Ten minutes later I was bald, slightly drunk, and running my hands over my head in satisfaction and disbelief.

This kind of “let’s see what happens if we” attitude had always fuelled our activities with varying, though always entertaining, results. Inspired perhaps by the blue milk from “Star Wars”, we decided to see what would happen if we tried various hues of food colouring in our own milk. What happened is that our milk eventually turned black and was really gross to drink (although it tasted fine) and that our poo was bright green for the next few days. That, as you can imagine, fuelled conversations for years afterwards.

When we got older “let’s see what happens if” also caused us to things like smoke a lot of pot before and during really scary movies? Result: we both had to sleep in the living room because there were quite obviously zombies and possessed children in our bedroom). What will happen if we live together and work together and also live with The Lizard Queen’s boyfriend at the time, who also, by the way, worked with us (ah, stupid youth!)? Result: fun that quickly changed to anxiety, pain, duplicitousness, several threats to quit/move out, the beating of breasts and the slamming of doors, many statements beginning with the words “I will never again”, war, anarchy, the end of romance, the end of that job for The Lizard Queen, the almost complete destruction of our lifelong friendship. Ugh. What will happen if we invite two feuding former best friends to our party without telling each one? Result: a few snippy comments, but not the Alexis-Crystal Dynasty bitch-slap fest we’d hoped for. A fun party was the real result. But then again, all our parties were fun.

This “let’s see what happens if” attitude had sustained me throughout my life. Let’s see what happens if I move to Montreal and live with a Francophone who doesn’t speak a word of English. Result: I now speak French so well I’m told I have little accent, if any at all. What will happen after graduation from university if I decide not to go to grad school after all? Result: the balance of the universe remained unshifted. What will happen if I quit my high-paying job and try to become a professional writer? Result: utter poverty, complete joy.

The Lizard Queen is now a married homeowner with a job and everything and she is still very much the Lizard Queen. And I am still very much me despite my frequent swings back and forth from respectability to dreamy and artsy. She is my oldest friend who had never done me wrong (except maybe a little during the war alluded to above, but there was a lot of wrong being done by all sides). Despite the lack of frequent contact some things never change. My head is bald and I am happy to be from this city with its hundred-foot high elm trees, architectural nightmares right next to beautiful turn-of-the-(last)-century buildings, totally funky little cafes in strip malls, and old friends, even if I only visit every couple of years.

Days of Awe

2004-09-16T16:44:00.000-04:00

This is one of the many reasons why Manitoba should never again be confused with Alberta. I'm glad I could be here for it. (For the non-Canadians among you, Winnipeg, the city where I grew up and am visiting right now, is the capital of Manitoba)

And for those of you who care about such things (my parents' computer doesn't have Hebrew characters installed), Shana tova umetuka! A good and sweet year to all. Happy 5765!

Take Off, Eh

2004-09-14T11:07:00.000-04:00

My flight from Toronto to Winnipeg could not have been any more Canadian unless Bob and Doug McKenzie themselves had been the flight attendants (“Hey. You gotta pay fer the meels now, eh. Take off!”). I was lodged firmly between a Native guy and a group of Revenue Quebec auditors flying to Winnipeg to verify the revenue of Manitoba companies who have offices in Quebec. I usually find plane trips pretty sterile and unfriendly, the atmosphere set by the trolley dollies and their little fake smiles. But this flight was different. We chatted for the entire two and a half hour flight. Waves of bilingualism wafted over the aisles. It was like a CBC movie about “typical” Canadians and how we share our experiences and celebrate each other’s diversity and all that crap. It was a fun time, eh. Mets-en.

I had been lucky to have been let on the flight at all. Left over from the days when I had a job that required be to carry the equivalent of an entire desk around with me everywhere, there was a pair of forgotten scissors in that very bag. As I reached to take it off the conveyor belt at security check-in the guard slammed her hand down on it.

“Sir, there are scissors in this bag. Can you show them to me?” Her eyes were firmly fixed on mine.

I know that not too long ago this might have been the reason to hold me for hours, and I calmly slipped into calm panic mode, where my voice gets all placid and serene while my mind fires off ten thousand non-sequiturial thoughts at the same time (Did I turn the coffee maker off?). I rifled through the bag, unsure of where I had left them months ago. I resisted the urge to say something like Well if I can’t find them, I can’t be too much of a security risk. I have found that people with supreme power don’t appreciate the questioning of their authority. I learned that when I was nineteen with a West German border guard (way back when the was a country called West Germany). You don’t need the story, but take it from me that the lesson was learned very, very well.

Once I had finally located them, the lecture began: I could still be charged. I have to be aware of what I’m doing. Did I leave my bag unattended for even a microsecond? I must learn to be a more responsible traveller. All the while, I hung my head contritely. I had no objection when she told me she would have to confiscate them. The scissors I bought at the dollar store?! Shriek!

I’m very glad for airport security, although it’s a great pity that a single pair of scissors could cause such uproar. I also suspect that if my eyes were brown instead of green or if my last name began with “El-” or “Al-” or had a “q” or two unaccompanied by a “u”, my treatment at the hands of the airport security guard for an innocent pair of scissors might have been quite different. What a world we have been born into.

And so here I am in the house in which I grew up. My old bedroom has become the computer room. My parents like spongey mattresses that give me a backache. I can’t get into my comments for some reason on this computer so I am temporarily mute. I have been stuffed with good food and good cheer. I sit typing in my former bedroom, looking out the window at Winnipeg’s beautiful, enormous elms and I remember why I used to think I would never leave this city.

***UPDATE - I am not totally mute. All I have to do is "edit" the comments from the Haloscan homepage***

Nanookie of the North

2004-09-13T09:45:00.000-04:00

The last time I was in Winnipeg in September, we were supposed to be afraid of the Eastern Bloc and Madonna was controversial. It was 1990 and I had no clue that a scant six months later I would be leaving that city for good. It was a different millennium. Now in 2004, we have Osama instead of Kruschev (yes, I know Gorbachev was in power in 1990), but no one has yet dethroned Madonna (although she sure has mellowed in her pre-golden years).

I don’t remember what September in Winnipeg is like. I know the mosquitoes and black flies are gone. Are the leaves turning yet? I almost called my parents to ask if I should bring shorts and sandals, before I realised that was a silly question. Have the leaves turned? Should I bring a hat? I almost forgot to pack a jacket.

Although at the tender age of nineteen we lived for months on end out of my backpack on various trains zipping through Eastern and Western Europe, I am nevertheless a neurotic traveller. I regularly check to make sure my airplane ticket still exists and hasn’t been sucked into another plane of existence by some transdimensional being who really really wants to go to Winnipeg. I had a bit of a scare when it turned out that The Safe Place I’d put it – the coffee table – turned out to be too safe and the papers on my desk suffered as a result before the ticket was located, lounging indolently in front of the television, just where I’d left it.

This is only my second post-9/11 airplane ride and I must say I’m a little nervous.

I have already jinxed myself from all Hollywood-type stories by imagining that the person next to me in my airborne sarcophagus will be a top publisher/literary agent, or really hot, sweet, perfect, kind, generous, edgy, funny, brilliant, humble (but not too humble), perfect, Jewish guy who lives in Toronto and will fall instantly as in love with me as I with him. Now that it’s been imagined, it ain’t gonna happen.

I will blog while there, although not as much. My parents still hunt the woolly mammoth and are connected to the Internet by dial-up.

As you are all so sad I’m leaving, here is a little picture that is easy on the eyes while you dry your tears:

Remember

2004-09-11T09:25:00.000-04:00

Remember the victims of September 11, 2001 and the victims of terror all over this world.

And also remember on this day that we still live on a beautiful planet.

The Internet Ate My Brain

2004-09-10T13:02:00.000-04:00

I’m (temporarily) bored of blogging. The only thing I could think up to write today was a debate on the merits of chunky peanut butter over smooth peanut butter. I’ll leave that one to the diehards. Besides, chunky is clearly superior, so there is very little debate.

Here are some pretty pictures instead (thanks to new and speedy free image host ImageVenue so now it shouldn’t take as much time to load the site or click on the thumbnails). Click on the thumbnail for a larger image:

Dubai model Murtaza Moulvi

Iraqi traffic cop

Bollywood star Aryan Vaid

Israeli jazz bassist Avishai Cohen

Blackout, August 14, 2003

Lightning sunset

Shefali Shetty in “Monsoon Wedding”

Justice

British Olympic diver Peter Waterfield

Singer Yma Sumac

Funky chicken

Cabeza de flan, comida por tiburones

2004-09-07T16:53:00.000-04:00

My very recently acquired old age is addling my brainpower. My neurons misfire and my logic gets all squishy and slimy like flan. I labour under the impression that I am still able to handle things I enjoyed greatly not so many years ago, such as martinis, spicy food and disturbing movies.

I don’t know if I’ve already mentioned this over and over again without a break, but it was my birthday on Saturday. Most of the day itself was spent in a hung over, zombie-like state (that makes no sense! I’m pretty sure zombies don’t drink. See?! My brain has become so decrepit that I can’t even come up with good imagery anymore!) due to AlefAlef’s and Johannaburg’s insistence that I drink martini after martini. Apparently this is an appropriate old man birthday celebration: fall into inebriation and scream your sex life in great detail over the tumultuous thumpa-thumpa music. I suppose I should take advantage of the fact that I still have a sex life to discuss. Happy Birthday!

Now because I am very very smart, I had scheduled all sorts of activities for the actual day of birthday. This is something I regretted the instant my alarm plunged off the nightstand and jumped up and down on my head yammering. Who sets their alarm on their birthday? My mouth tasted as if an entire colony of spiders had lived and died for generations inside it and no amount of water could wash this away. My head felt as if my cerebellum had been scooped out and devoured (hence the zombie imagery . . . Get it? Get it?).

But none of that stopped me from enjoying my friends and the care they had taken to endure my passage through time. The celebrations began early last week and still continue. I have many incredible friends.

But the fact remains that martinis may no longer play an integral part of my life. And quite frankly, I will not miss them all that much.

The next on my list of old man no-nos is spicy food. A mere decade ago . . . not so very long ago (although I realise that this was still when some of my dear regular readers were still in their single digits) I used to like my food so hot it made me cry. I would gather with friends for Malaysian food, ask for it as spicy as it could come, and then drown it in Vietnamese chilli sauce. Last night for my birthday supper at a pleasant Mexican restaurant in Old Cabbagetown with Cute Capitalist Landlord, I only consumed a few bland chillies and some moderately spicy sausages. This morning I discovered just how much glop of all possible qualities and consistencies resides in the human body. Very educational. As odd as it is to feel as if I am expelling much of my body weight, I have no regrets. Cute Capitalist Landlord and I have almost ten years of friendship and that was the point of the meal.

Finally, I must consider very carefully my logic behind movie choices. More specifically, I must carefully consider my logic in all of my decisions related to personal edification. Movies, especially Hollywood movies, and edification don’t appear to be old friends, but one particular recent movie has intrigued me and terrified at the same time.

I am afraid of water. Although I am a strong swimmer, water deeper than my waist frightens me. When I was a kid, I couldn’t take bubble baths because I was afraid of not being able to see what was swimming in what I was sitting in. You will get me to perform open-heart surgery on myself before you get me on a cruise. I swear I saw a gigantic plesiosaur in the murk below me the last time I went canoeing.

Following the logic that if you’re afraid of heights you should go skydiving, I thought going to see “Open Water” with Medical Diagram Boy, a movie in which the bulk of the action takes places between two abandoned tourists floating in the middle of the ocean would help me get over this fear. And I’m sure most of you can already see the flaw in your logic. Going to see a movie about shark bait floating above a mile of ocean when you’re afraid of water is the same as going to see “Alive” to get over a fear of flying or “Silence of the Lambs” to get over a fear of psychopathic maniacs.

As we got our first view of the tip of a shark fin slicing through the water I understood the folly of my reasoning. Seeing the muscly boy with the sexy lip piercing and angel face – not Medical Diagram Boy, by the way – beside me cringing behind his fingers in the seat beside me made me feel a little bit better (even though he wasn’t accompanying me), but I spent most of the movie wishing that my bag of popcorn could somehow protect me from the sharks that were circling beneath my seat, waiting to drag me down screaming to the bowels of the Paramount and devour me.

This was the movie “The Blair Witch Project” was supposed to be, with its low budget, simple theme, tiny cast, and characters completely at the mercy of their horrifying circumstance. "Witch", however intriguing it may have been, was mostly a yawner for me. Shriek! Piles of pebbles! Stick figures! Snore. Not so with this one. The most you see of a shark is a shadow in the deep or the tip of a fin, but I could barely speak as the credits rolled. I am quite certain that I have caused myself even more trauma rather than get over my irrational fear. Showers are now terrifying to me.

So now I have a bigger fear, harsher dietary restrictions, but some excellent friends (not all of whom have been mentioned here, but my gratitude is nonetheless very much alive). So that’s a pretty good way to start a new arbitrary number.

Mes chers amis, c’est à mon tour . . .

2004-09-04T01:00:00.000-04:00

(Modified lyrics to Quebec’s Happy Birthday song)

Age Rage

Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.

- Oscar Wilde

Good thing I'm only 34 today

Wanda’s Wisdom

I am honoured to have been crowned Wanda Wisdom’s Blog Queen of the Month. I don’t know if this is related to my birthday, but I humbly accept.

Very cool. Thanks Wanda!

Austen’s Power

I would have gotten along very well with Jane Austen, I think (what a very gay thing to say). This isn’t directly related to birthdays, mine or anyone else’s, but it still seems appropriate.

One's consequence, you know, varies so much at times without any particular reason.

- Jane Austen

And Finally . . .

Happy Birthday to me!

Have a [ . . . ] Day

2004-09-02T09:53:00.000-04:00

Today I made the mistake of turning on the news as my coffee was dripping rather than waiting until after I had been fortified by caffeine. In a pre-caffeinated state I am less able to maintain my normal steely vigilance over my emotions and I am fragile and impressionable. This is why I should know better than to watch the news in such a condition: the news is not about information; it’s about provocation.

It first I was treated to action shots of panic-stricken Russian mothers. I can never know exactly what they are going through right now. I extend as much sympathy as I possibly can. However, showing weeping hysteria does nothing to educate me on the matter, inform my opinion, or challenge me to think up solutions. It merely serves as entertainment, like in that movie I saw a promo for where Kim Bassinger’s kid is abducted and she spends the whole time screaming and crying. Poor Kim! Pass the popcorn.

Next, there was a discussion around the potential banning of pit bulls. Instead of showing the interviewees and a few stock shots of pit bulls, the screen shot for almost the entire story was a night vision shot of paramedics clustered around last weekends horrific pit bull attack. As a bonus, they left the sound of this oh-so-informative shot on so that as the eggheads babbled self-importantly back and forth, I was therefore treated to the screams of agony of the victim whose life has been changed forever. Is that real butter or oil on the popcorn?

I need to know that Chechen rebels are holding hundreds of schoolchildren hostage. I need to know that there was yet another pit bull attack (a two-minute walk from my place, no less). I should be informed so I have at least a clue about the ways of the world. I resent newsmakers underestimating me, telling me that I am too stupid to expect them to appeal to my intellect, that I am just stupid enough for them to entertainment and make me feel smart because I watched the news and now I know. I think the general public is smarter than that and is capable of greatness when provided the right tools. Now I know that mothers cry when their children are in danger and that pit bull attacks cause intense physical anguish. And I also know that reporters have their brains liposuctioned out to get their jobs.

I came to the swift conclusion that Saturday’s birthday is enough horror for me for the week. I turned the news off and retreated into my little fantasy world in which four of my husbands (pictures below) made me breakfast in bed, all children are safe, and pit bulls’ teeth are made of cotton candy.

In the Style of Mr. V, segunda parte

2004-08-30T15:27:00.000-04:00

Despatie Still Not Gay

Despite several hundred attempts to make Quebec diver, Alexandre Despatie, gay by googling the search words “alexandre” + “despatie” + “gay”, hundreds of new visitors to this site have been unable to turn the photogenic young diver into a homosexual.

“I don’t understand it,” said googler, Einojohani Kähkönen-Lappalainen, 32, of Turku, Finland. “I have googled over and over again and I have found several hundred sites that contain all three of these words – and Surly’s is by far the superior one, by the way. Unfortunately I have not found any confirmation that he is, in fact gay. Perhaps if I continue to google the words, I will find the proof of my hypothesis. I just know that if I persist, it will come to pass.”

“I just don’t understand how he cannot be gay!” lamented Joop van der Ginckelschiep, 47, of Bruges, Belgium. “He has that angel face, the funky shaggy haircut, the imaginatively sassy facial hair, and that body that’s is just bursting out of the little speedo! I just don’t get it.”

Although Surly has no direct evidence of M. Despatie’s heterosexuality, he has it on very good authority that although the diver celebrates the diversity of all his fans and he thanks them wholeheartedly for their support, he is definitely straight and no amount of googling his name will change this fact.

Quel dommage.

Gloria

While strolling through Toronto’s fashionable Distillery district yesterday, fantastically cool bloggers Radmila and Surly were attacked by an ignorant thing too young for its own good. The blogger were innocently perusing the artistic wares of the district while discussing the recent, untimely death of 80s superstar Laura Branigan. The ignorant young thing turned to the pair and asked, “Why does that name sound familiar to me?”

As Radmila and Surly Snobby regarded the ignorant young thing, they realised that it could not have been born before Branigan became a star in the early 80s, which really was not all that long ago. They then proceeded to cast a spell on it by singing a rousing chorus of “Gloria”, transforming the ignorant young thing into a F*%#ed-Up My Pretty Pony that was left to melt in the acid rain on the Distillery’s cobblestone streets.

Happy Birthday Song

Here is a very happy birthday song by my latest brand-new favouritest singer of all time, Quebec’s Pierre Lapointe. They are very uplifting to the rapidly aging. I’m sorry there’s no translation into English. I couldn’t possibly do it justice.

Tel un seul homme
Et si je vous disais que même au milieu d’une foule
Chacun, par sa solitude, a le cœur qui s’écroule
Que même inondé par les regards de ceux qui nous aiment
On ne récolte pas toujours les rêves que l’on sème

Déjà quand la vie vient pour habiter
Ces corps aussi petits qu’inanimés
Elle est là telle une déesse gardienne
Attroupant les solitudes par centaines…

Cette mère marie, mère chimère de patrie
Celle qui viendra nous arracher la vie
Celle qui, comme l’enfant, nous tend la main
Pour mieux tordre le cou du destin

Et on pleure, oui on pleure la destinée de l’homme
Sachant combien, même géants, tout petits nous sommes

La main de l’autre emmêlée dans la nôtre
Le bleu du ciel plus bleu que celui des autres
On sait que même le plus fidèle des apôtres
Finira par mourir un jour ou l’autre

Et même amitié pour toujours trouver
Et même après une ou plusieurs portées
Elle est là qui accourt pour nous rappeler
Que si les hommes s’unissent
C’est pour mieux se séparer

Cette mère marie, mère chimère de patrie
Celle qui viendra nous arracher la vie
Celle qui, comme l’enfant, nous tend la main
Pour mieux tordre le cou du destin

Et on pleure, oui on pleure la destinée de l’homme
Sachant combien, même géants, tout petits nous sommes

Car, tel seul un homme, nous avançons
Vers la même lumière, vers la même frontière
Toujours elle viendra nous arracher la vie
Comme si chaque bonheur devait être puni

Et on pleure, oui on pleure la destinée de l’homme
Sachant combien, même géants, tout petits nous sommes

Paroles et musique: Pierre Lapointe
Édition: Éditorial Avenue

mother gives birth, eats children

An onlooker watched in horror as a mother gave birth and proceeded hunt her own infants and eat them. AlefAlef, 972, of Toronto watched Pearly-Jean Pnina, 6 months, his mother-of-pearl swordtail give birth to several offspring and then devour each and every one in the fish tank on his desk.

“It was horrible,” he exclaimed. “The little ones tried to hide amongst the plants and gravel, but she found them all. She was relentless! And she’s still giving birth. How am I supposed to do anything with all these high-pitched fish screams distracting me from my important work?”

Police have not indicated whether they intend to press charges against Ms Pnina.

Thanks Mr V.

Dommage

2004-08-29T09:15:00.000-04:00

C'était dommage hier, mais ce n'est pas la fin du monde. Aux prochains jeux, alors!

Bonne pré-fête

2004-08-28T11:09:00.000-04:00

In exactly one week it is my birthday. I will transform with a little puff of smoke from the handsome, vibrant, active, vivacious young man into a dilapidated old man with perpetual bowel irritation and dentures. If only it were that simple.

The slow, steady decline of my body is subtly terrifying. It’s a little like watching your house fall apart around you with the contractor telling you that “that’s just the way it goes, eh”. Granted I’m only turning 34 and that isn’t that old (is it?), so it’s not as if I have to replace the shingles, replace the boiler, redo the plumbing and wiring, undergo major foundation work, and build a new chimney. For now all I have to do is patch up the cracks, touch up the paint job on the front door, and maybe wash the front windows. That doesn’t seem so bad. However, there are a few things I miss about the days when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and I was younger:

Being able to stay out until 5AM and still be relatively functional the following that day, or rather, late that day. Come to mention it, I miss having the desire to stay out until 5AM;

Eating food so spicy I cry – believe me, no one wants to be around me after such a meal nowadays (see above for “bowel irritation”);

Knowing where little aches and pains come from;

Feeling invincible and optimistic about where my life is going;

Trusting people I’ve just met in social and/or romantic situations without automatically looking for faults and weak points and without wondering how I could possibly fit a new person into my busy, busy oh-so-cool life;

Answering, when asked by friends what I want for my birthday, as happened yesterday evening, “Socks. Sheets. Underwear”. Socks? Sheets? Underwear? For my birthday? I admit that this request is partly inspired by poverty, but it is not the case that nothing screams love! like having a dear friend say, “Here! Please accept an acrylic sheath for your stinky feet”. And then, as if to underline the inanity of my request, my friend and I ran into linguistic difficulties and I had to explain what boxer briefs are exactly. (How does one say “boxer briefs” in Hebrew? בריפים הבוקסר ?) Forget that crap! All I want is a two-four of Keith’s and a stack of gay Brazilian porn and to be left alone! (Hi Surly’s cool and open-minded parents who occasionally read this blog! Don’t forget to wish me a Happy Birthday!)

Of course, there are advantages to aging as well. And if anyone can remind me what they are, that’ll be birthday enough for me.

And to the scores people coming to my site by googling “Despatie” and “gay”, I’m sorry that I have no good news for you. Despite the fact that I have proclaimed him one of my future husbands, he is straight as far as I know. If in the course your searches you happen to find out differently, please come back and let me know. That would be a pretty good birthday present too.

And now I’m practically a p@edophile. At my age I find myself lusting after a 19-year-old, born when I was already almost an adult already. Vive l’âge d’or!

Marine Biology

2004-08-26T13:03:00.000-04:00

We all know how amusing illness is. I myself adore that mix of claustrophobia and cabin fever swirled in with the lovely aroma of approaching death that wafts through my apartment as my fever climbs ever higher. The taste of chicken soup never gets old. A steady stream of orange juice down my throat is bracing and revivifying. The deliciousness of Tylenol crushed to powder because swallowing is agony is indescribable. Every second of a sick day is an adventure because I can never tell from moment to moment whether I will feel a shivery Antarctic chill or sweats from the Amazon. Exciting and new! I am incredulous that the calcium on my bones actually seems to contain nerves because I can certainly feel the things. The human body is an amazing thing. The past couple have days have been a total blast.

One very hilarious friend opined that my sick days can’t actually be too different from my healthy days. After all, all I do for the entire day is sit in front of my computer, typing whatever comes to mind and screening my phone calls (if my phone is even on). Yes, of course. My life, and writing for that matter, is just that simple.

There is some truth to it however. My living room is my office and my computer knows all my secrets. It takes a herculean effort to convince me to leave my apartment and I do avoid the phone as much as I can and. Despite my apathetic, antisocial tendencies I somehow still manage to have a healthy romance and sex life and, much more importantly, quite a number of friends who still want to spend time with me for some reason. But that’s not the point. I challenge anyone to sit up straight all day at a computer and be stupendously brilliant while your internal body temperature is approaching 50,000 degrees Kelvin and you wish your flesh would just slide off your bones already so they would stop aching so much, and then say such things to me.

But at least I don’t live in my friend AlefAlef’s fish tank, and not just because you would have to remove my bones to stuff me inside it. I am glad that I don’t live in it due to the ichthyoid version of the bubonic plague that appears to be sweeping through his little marine community. Around 60% percent of his fish have succumbed to this pestilence. While this would be a disaster for humans, it doesn’t appear to have affected the survivors in any enormous capacity – except for one gorgeous male betta who has been banished forever to a separate vase for, as I understand it, munching on the dead and dying. The affliction causes fuzzy white mold to grow all over the fishy body, inside and outside, until the poor creature suffocates. What a terrible way to go.

I cannot imagine a more nightmarish scenario to live through. You flutter from water plant to water plant, dodging zombies covered in white slime begging you for aid, their eyes glazed over with pussy white cataracts. A giant glowing ogre roams to and fro like the Angel of Death looking for corpses on which to feast. You are terrified he may mistake you for one of the infected and start with your fins so you can’t get away as he slowly consumes the rest of you. All the while, AlefAlef’s giant net ploughs through the water chanting, “Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!” Horrific. I am certainly glad I don’t live there.

So I’ll stick with my little fever and weird dreams and pump the liquids through my system until I feel better. I’ll fight through the invisible clay that has settled on my limbs until it cracks and falls away. The next time I go to AlefAlef’s for supper, I sure hope he doesn’t serve me sardines.

Alex

2004-08-24T21:27:00.000-04:00

Because I am utterly without shame:

Alexandre Despatie se repose.

Pax romana

2004-08-24T13:42:00.000-04:00

Children who cannot behave in public should be locked in their rooms until they know how to behave. The parents of children who do not know to behave on five- to six-hour train rides should be cast off the train along with the shrieking, screaming children as soon as the train slows to a velocity such that no one be too damaged when they are tossed off.

Teenagers who have just two seconds ago reached the drinking age who are on their first trip to another city where they can learn about all the potential colours and textures of alcohol vomit should be encouraged to take Mumsy and Papa’s limo rather than torment peaceful passengers. Barring that, they should be tied to their chairs with adhesive tape on their mouths, forced to watch reruns of “Lassie” and “Father Knows Best” until tears sun down their cheeks.

The problem started when my walkman battery had decided to end its short life three hours before the train was to depart and I had to resort to the plugs to keep me in the sweet, calm, totally non-volatile disposition that I’m renowned for. I had put them in to block out all the possible annoying noises public transport has to offer, one-sided deeply personal cell phone conversations going on five rows back, the sound of tinkle and too much spicy food from the rest rooms, etc. Well, I learned on my seventy zillion million mallillion hour train trip yesterday that the only sounds that cut through earplugs are the sound of a two-year-old-screaming, the sound of Beavis and Butthead sniggering in the seats behind me, and the sound of Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie screeching in the seats across the aisle from me.

It was as if I were trapped in the scene in The Blair Witch Project where the three losers are lying in their tent terrified at the sound of laughter of approaching children who then – EEEEEK! – bang on their tent and cover everything with – * shiver * – blue slime! Only in my little choo-chooing scenario, I wasn’t trapped in the doomed tent with two Kurt Cobain wannabes; I was trapped with two televisions that broadcast “Beavis and Butthead” and “The Simple Life” over and over and over. All other sounds, the train chugging, the drink cart squealing, the chorus of walkmans just loud enough so that you could hear only the bass and cymbals and the occasional wailing guitar solo, faded into a beige void that echoed only screeching, screaming, and piercing giggling. Just before the earplugs popped out of my head due the raging torrent lava that was about to erupt from my entire body, I removed them. If I were going to be engulfed in sound, it didn’t have to be maddening sound.

The fun began when the screeching two-year-old realised that if she ran up and down the aisle screaming at the top of her lungs (years from new I’ll be able to say that I once met the Whitney Houston of her generation), her very passive mother would have an even harder time catching her and disciplining her by completely ignoring the fact that she was disturbing everyone else in the car. As her shrieks echoed up and down my spine in minute waves of shattered glass, I was very tempted to trip her and watch her fall on her pretty little dimpled face. Luckily I realised that that would be mean and that the real culprit was her lazy, inconsiderate mother. Fortunately for the mother, someone else asked her to rein the child in. I wouldn’t have done it so politely.

Next came the attack of the rocker bimbos on their first trip away from home apparently. At first it was funny when they read the sex advice columns of their various fashion magazines so that everyone in the car could hear. By the time one of them head a screaming match with her boyfriend on her cell over whether or not he was going to pick them up that the station if the train were late, their charm was wearing thin. When one reached across the aisle and punched me in the shoulder, saying “Where the f*$% is there to go out in Toronto”, I had had enough; I assessed their neo-grunge, multiple-pierced look, decided that the area they would hate the most for going out would be Wellington Street, and promptly showed them where it was on the map. Have fun, girls! When the conductor came by and told them in no uncertain terms to clam it, they swore loudly but remained silent afterwards.

By the time the teenage boys behind me decided to fight over who should sit in the window seat, my nerves were a little frayed. When they began kicking my chair, giving me an unwanted roller coaster ride, I somehow transformed myself into the kind of late-early-thirties guy I mocked when I was much younger, wore plaid and ripped jeans, and had hair that went past my titties. I turned into one of those conciliatory adults trying to act all good-natured and hip and with it and cool (do the kids still say those words?), saying totally wussy things like, “I know you just wanna have fun, guys” and “I don’t wanna ruin your fun, guys”. It was a perfect example of the material teens and tweens mock. I am so looking forward to my birthday in two weeks.

Predictably, Bill and Ted just laughed at me. I sat down feeling old and ridiculous. However, when my chair suffered the first of a series of kicks and blows that were obviously not by accident, I transformed into the other kind of adult I can be. I rose from my chair like the demon from “Night on Bald Mountain” and fixed them with a stare that comes very naturally to me. I then let loose a string of swears and threats of bodily harm in French. Quebec French is far superior to English in the effect its swears can have because it is rocky, melodic, and faster than any manner of English that can be spoken. After a couple of seconds of silence, one of them responded the way most unilingual English Canadians respond when confronted with a bilingual Canadian and they can think of no comeback (unilingual Québécois just swear back in English). He haughtily said to me, “I speak English” as if it were an accomplishment along the lines of “I invented email”. I knew I had won. And I responded, “You speak nothing for the rest of the trip” (which was greeted by a smattering of applause from other passengers as close to the edge as I. And they spoke nothing for the rest of the trip. Old age, here I come!

And because life sometimes often works the way it should, there was something to cut me down a peg or two from my dizzying military victories. Next to me was a young man from Sri Lanka with a name similar to Augustus, first Caesar of the Pax Romana. While I sat in my self-righteous state of spoiled desire to meld my immediate surroundings to my wishes, he told me all about his trip to the various churches of Montreal, his pilgrimage up the St. Joseph Oratorio. Even though I had already eaten and wasn’t hungry, I shared his meal with him because I could tell his feelings were a little hurt when I refused the first time. His offer to share had less to do with food and more to do with sharing. He told me about his house in northern Sri Lanka that was blown up with him in nine years ago in the hostilities that country has endured for decades and how he can’t rebuild (he and his family still own the land) until the hostilities finally end. He has the scars on his face and arms to prove it. I heard all about his family and girlfriend still in Sri Lanka he hasn’t seen in eight years. He showed me the thick packet of photos of them he carries with him everywhere. He told me that he’s here trying to save enough money to return to Sri Lanka, buy a house for his parents and his girlfriend whom he will marry, and buy a house. With such problems, such courage and such optimistic dreams within him, I felt like a petulant little child whining because I don’t wanna go to school today.

He gave me his phone number when we parted ways, saying that he knows Canadians are busy and don’t usually make friends with immigrants, but that we should stay in contact a little bit so that he can say goodbye before he goes back to Sri Lanka and invite me there should I ever want to travel to his beautiful country. And I do want to travel to his beautiful country, and meet his girlfriend I heard so much about on that long train trip. And I’ll wear my walkman for the long plane trip.

Still in Montreal

2004-08-21T21:45:00.000-04:00

My old place:

Bonne fin de semaine à tous

2004-08-19T13:28:00.000-04:00

I’m off to Montreal for a few days. Just some alone time for the husbands and me. All 12 of us (meet husband no. 11, Quebec Olympic diver Alexandre Despatie) should have a wonderful time together, all except Alex who’s competing in Athens right now. Go Alex!

Here they are (all except Massimo and Billo, who are still too shy for me to post pics) in all there clickable thumbnail glory.

It should be a great weekend!

In the Style of Mr. V

2004-08-17T11:55:00.000-04:00

Not the Gay Olympics?

Greek divers win gold.

Pillaged from Mr. “Rose Nylund” V

Signs

“The Crop Circle, which appeared near Silbury Hill in England last month, features a Aztec/Mayan calendar.”

Pillaged from 2012

Roots Angers Both Sides of the Border

“Roots is a Canadian brand for Canuks, not for our Olympic athletes.” -- MattyG

And Canadians resent the rows and rows of Team USA paraphenalia in our stores. No one is happy on either side of the border and we should all let Roots know.

הראלים

Pillaged from 2 כוכב נולד

Jaws in 30 Seconds . . .

Moyal First. Skaat Second.

2004-08-15T17:33:00.000-04:00

מזל טוב , הראלים

Congratulations to both Harels, especially to the Harel Moyal, the winner of 2 כוכב נולד.

Birthday

2004-08-14T08:47:00.000-04:00

Once, when my sister and I were much younger, she and I had a colossal fight over a very serious issue of the utmost importance - who got which burgers for lunch - that resulted in her doing heavy damage to my bedroom door. I was, of course, entirely innocent and blameless in the whole matter, as I was in every single altercation throughout our childhood and adolescence as you may well imagine. Ô, the heady days of childhood!

Now that we're both all grown up, according to our birth certificates, I simply pester her on MSN while she's at work so often that she is simply unable to perform her tasks. This is a much more adult way of torturing your siblings, although I should seriously rethink my strategy if I'm ever going to get her to reimburse me for that bedroom door . . . and those burgers

Happy Birthday, Surly Snobby's Dear Sister! Pull out your old Laura Branigan albums and have a party!

Good Morning

2004-08-13T13:17:00.000-04:00

I got used to talking about poo – its quantity, colour, texture, consitency, etc – when I worked on the colorectal and breast cancer project (the job that eventually drove me quite mad and into the state in which you currently find ol’ Surly Snobby). Much in the same way, when I worked on HIV project (sorry I couldn’t find a link in English) where two thousand gay men underwent regular, very detailed and thorough interviews on their sex life I grew accustomed very rapidly to discussing the finer point of fellatio, rimming, mutual masturbation, etc. around the office over coffee and croissants. I liked that job a lot!

So the day before yesterday when Médecin-sans-frontières who was to undergo a screening colonoscopy kept excusing himself to go to the little boys room kept apologizing, I had to tell him to stop worrying about grossing me out. I’d already seen it all (on that topic, at least). Everyone over the age of fifty needs to screen for colorectal cancer every four or five years with a simple fecal test. My friend, who is very much younger than fifty and has a history of colorectal cancer in his family, had to start screening with a colonoscopy when he was fifteen years younger than the age his closest family member was when they were diagnosed.

Part of the preparation for this procedure is to drink a vile, gag-inducing potion that cleans out every nook and cranny of ones digestive tract. Along with this concoction comes a forty-eight-hour fast during which you may drink nothing but clear liquids and eat nothing but jello, which is congealed clear liquid. From what I could tell, this is even more fun than it sounds. Observing my friend that afternoon as he oscillated between hunger-induced hallucinations and wrenching bowel movements, I could hardly wait for my own, very first colonoscopy.

We did, however, have a very good, very surreal conversation on the nature of life, love, and the universe that would have made Bergman proud. Neither of us discussed the possible results of the procedure he was about to undergo.

The next morning little fluffy pink clouds flounced in tiny puffs around his head as he sat in the recovery room when I arrived at the hospital to pick him up. Now of all my smiley friends, Médecin-sans-frontières is the one with the biggest, brightest smile. I can see it across the room in a dark bar when I arrive late. I hear it when we speak on the phone. The smile that greeted me was probably the largest I have ever seen, but it wasn’t big enough to mask his dilated pupils.

“Hey there!” Up went his arms into the air.

“Hey. How’s it going?”

“Great! Well, they pumped me full of air so I really really have to fart . . . oops!” he tittered through his fingers like a child who’d just said a dirty word in front of Teacher. “I’m on valium and demerol”, he explained.

“I can hardly notice. And did they give you your results?”

“Oh yeah. I’m fine.” He shook is head knowingly. “I knew I’d be fine. I’m a doctor.”

“Well, that’s great then!”

“Oh yeah! It’s been a great morning! I am so hungry!”

A great morning, eh. Well, sign me up for my colonoscopy because I want to have a great morning too.

To celebrate his healthy colon, he selected the ever-health conscious MacDonald’s as the first solid food to pass his lips in over two days. We munched on warm worm’n’grease burgers as we floated back to his place, both of us healthy and happy. The breeze was warm and the burgers were tasty. He glided through the sunlight along the sidewalk and I strolled beside him and I didn’t much care where we were going. It was a good morning.

Falafel and Healthy Communities

2004-08-11T10:23:00.000-04:00

Yesterday evening while strolling through the Annex with Tallboy on our way to eat Toronto’s most delicious falafel, we ran into Jane Jacobs – almost literally since I was distracted by some pretty flowers, or maybe something shiny, or maybe a pretty boy (ooooooo…shiny, pretty boy with flowers). Now, Jane Jacobs is the Empress of Modern Urban Planning. If she hadn’t saved Manhattan’s Greenwich Village from being knocked down and replaced by a superhighway linking New Jersey to Brooklyn, Toronto, hundreds of kilometres away, might today be crisscrossed by highways and access ramps and I wouldn’t be able to stroll through the Annex with Tallboy on our way to eat Toronto’s most delicious falafel. I’d have to drive fifty blocks to get to a restaurant that would most likely be a Denny’s or an Olive Garden rather than someplace good while Tallboy drove in from the other side of the city.

I didn’t bother her with any of this as she stood smelling pretty flowers in a garden. I just excused myself and went to eat delicious falafel with my friend.

//ipconfig_-underscorerepairip//$#$%544sucker!

2004-08-09T11:12:00.000-04:00

First of all, my difficulties with the internet meant that I was unable to wish, Har’el Ska’at, my tenth and – at this moment – favouritest future husband a very happy birthday yesterday.

יום הולדת שמח , הראל

So despite my melodramatic pronouncements of the other day, my internet difficulties do not actually appear to be my computer’s problem. Now, stupidity is something that I usually anticipate from the general public, but when I pay a lot of money for a certain service that becomes integral to the way I lead my life, I expect a certain amount of cerebral capacity from the people hired to give me technical support. I should know by now that the more money I pay, the lower the quality of the service I receive.

My conversation with my tekky on Friday started off pleasantly enough. She seemed friendly and I wasn’t extremely worried since service interruptions are infrequent but a always possibility. At first we went through the same tests I had done myself (she was, of course, “an expert” as she reminded me) and came to the same conclusion: the modem was all happy and chipper but it just couldn’t get it up, ie. connect to the net, although it could receive. I was pleased to know that I could figure out the same thing as a qualified, technical school tekky.

And then she got me doing things that made me feel a tad edgy. I had to sneak into corners of my computer I’d never even knew exist without the rest of the programmes knowing or they’d get jealous and angry (PC programmes are so sensitive!). Once in these little nooks and crannies I had to toggle things and dump other things and I began to feel a queasy sensation in my stomach akin to job interview/first date nausea and cold sweats.

“What do you mean, ‘dump’?” I asked with more than a little trepidation.

“Sir, it’s just a computer term,” she replied barely disguising her impatience too well.

“Oh.”

נודניק the Cat observed me from his vantage point on the living room windowsill and rolled his eyes. Humans . . .

I continued to click and toggle and uncheck and do all sorts of things I’m sure proper folk would never do in public to cajole the net to full performance. Soon I realized that all her words to me were words that I understood individually but made absolutely no sense when put in the same context with one another. Soon I didn`t even understand the individual words.

“Ok, sir. What we want to do now is mosulate the harpeffects of the pi-modulator. Ok? Now to do that, I need you to go into “My Synergeflizzlebox” and triple right click while scrolling with the middle roller and pressing “flx” + “F37” + “q”. This should bospourize the metacomplexifier while simplificating the hyperstranding divider of your computer’s warp drive and transporter buffers. Are you with me?”

I screamed in agony on the inside as I came to the horrifying realization that I had stumbled upon a pocket of Star Trek nerd trekker tekkies. In a desperate effort to quell my rising panic I stared out the window and sang I happy song myself. La la la la la la Eveything will be alright . . .

“Sir? Sir!” Her nasal voice cut through my reverie like a phaser set to “stun” through a Jelly Entity of the Planet Blobzmotroin XIII.

“La la la la . . . I mean, I’m here.”

“Sir, do you type in ‘//ipconfig_-underscorerepairip//$#$%544sucker-idontknowwhatimdoing-either’ like I asked you?”

“Um . . . how do you spell that . . . ?” Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!

Hours later, after w'd failed tp reinitialize the replicators and clear gamma particles from the aft nacelles or something, my tekky came to the conclusion that it was my network adapter and not at all Rogers fault.

“Don’t worry, sir. It shouldn’t cost too much to get it checked and repaired.”

I wept.

However, it seems an interesting coincidence that the service cuts in and out at around the same times every day and that five other friends in the neighbourhood are experiencing the same difficulties at exactly the same time. Further investigation through a spy who works at my internet provider that they are rebuilding the network and not telling their costumers. I should be getting money back rather being told to spend more by sending my computer to the cyberdoctor. Canada’s embattled health care system doesn’t cover hard drives. The tekky covered her ignorance with a lot of flashy, intimidating words when all she had to say was “Patience. Please bear with us as we improve the network. I’ll credit you for the downtime.” I would have been happy. Now I’m angry.

Ah well. I’ll find something else to do when the Net goes down again at its regular time in about thirty minutes, like dream of Montrealers and rainy days (see below).

Granola and Pizza

2004-08-09T09:00:00.000-04:00

Yesterday afternoon I hung out with this guy and I discovered that, as he had claimed, he does indeed have excellent taste in women. Did I forget to mention that he's pretty cool too?

Then on my way home there was an unexpected downpour and I found myself trapped in very very close quarters in the sheltered doorway of Pizzaiolo on Queen West with two very cute men from Montreal. These two very cute men from Montreal a) thought I was pretty cute and spoke about to at length to each other in French and b) didn't know that I speak French. So, although the potential for porn was high, what with wet clingy t-shirts showing off some very impressive pecs and Surly uttering such cheezy lines as "I know where you can come . . . to dry off" and all (Hi, Surly's cool and open-minded parents who occasionally read this blog!), I wimped out and simply gave them directions when they asked me how to get somewhere (can I flub a golden opportunity or what!) in my practically perfect Montreal French. However I did enjoy that the very cute one giggled like a child when he heard my French and that the even cuter one blushed.

I felt instant regret as they wandered away, damp shorts clinging to their perfect posteriors. Instead I came home and watched TV. Yay, Surly.

Hope and Glory; or, The Ten Plagues

2004-08-06T10:52:00.000-04:00

I won’t set the dramatic stage ironically by stating that I woke up with glowing eyes full of hope and glory, eager to face another magnificent day. In truth, I woke up with a clunk. My eyes opened and despite the fact that I have had difficulties sleeping for the past couple of days, they would not then close. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t feel like getting out of bed. All I wanted to do was lie there like an aging, unemployed, creatively-challenged, poverty-stricken lump and feel sorry for myself. But that just would not do.

I have become very adept at giving myself pep talks and so I arose, my eyes not exactly glowing but there was definite luminous potential. I wasn’t feeling spectacular, but “How bad could it be?”, I thought to myself. Regular readers, what is your sign of a Quality Blog®? The answer is in the snappy comebacks below.

I stumbled into the kitchen to make my coffee and then fell onto the couch to doze while I waited. Now, I wear earplugs to sleep because I live on a very busy street. It is so noisy that I cannot sleep without them, especially in summer when I have to leave all the windows open. They were still in my ears as I waited so I of course could not hear any sound. Some of the sounds I could not hear were busses rumbling by, obnoxious teenagers rapping poorly, babies screaming as their parents wheeled them around in strollers, the sound of construction of the approximately ninety zillion quadrillion condos going up around me, and the sound of hot, brown liquid steaming on the burner and dripping off onto the floor. Had I heard that, I would have immediately put the coffee pot under the drippy thing where it can actually perform its function, which is to collect coffee. But I didn’t hear that, and so the coffee fell to the floor. This was not a great beginning to the quasi-magnificent day I had told myself to have.

The day, which I began to suspect was going to be a bit of a sadist, continued on this path by filling the drippy thing with coffee just waiting to spill out all over my hand as I brushed against it while cleaning up the mess. I had never previously spent too much time wondering whether the water is heated in the coffee maker or whether it is heated on the burner, although I had wondered. Now I know that it is heated inside the machine and so when it reaches the pot, or as the case may be, my hand, it is already scalding hot. Pay heed. This is very good to know.

As I sat on my couch anticipating the next mini-disaster, I noticed that there was some dirton the floor in front of the living room window. I turned my head and there was ore dirt. And even more when I turned my head farther. There was a massive pile of dirt in the corner of my living room. And in the dirt were the shredded remains of a regurgitated plant. נודניק the Cat had once again lived up to his name (Noudnic = pain in the butt, kinda) and skirted all the anti-kitty booby traps I had placed around my two surviving plants and minced one of them and then, because most houseplants are slightly poisonous to cats, thrown it all up in little greenish lumps on my living room floor.

“It’s no big deal”, I thought to myself. “It’s only cat puke. I’ve seen worse things.” So of course, I stepped in a pile and it went squoosh! between my toes.

All this is framed against the backdrop of the news that my friend Lightning met and had an actual conversation with one of my future husbands at the TV station where he works and he did not even let my future husband know of my existence. Such betrayal by a friend! Yes, Lightning’s job at this station is apparently to rampage through my future husbands and steal them all from me one by one. In any case, this future husband is apparently very sweet. And then again, so is Lightning. So I’m very happy for the two of them. Yes. It just warms the cockles of my heart.

So as I sit here with coffee and dirt all over my floor, cat barf between my toes, a wounded, throbbing, burned right hand, and minus one future husband, I have to wonder what next can happen to me today? Frogs? Boils? A third eye in the middle of my forehead? Athlete’s foot? I’m going back to bed.

****IMPORTANT IRONIC UPDATE**** A few hours after I'd first posted this entry: three hours after I'd wondered what the day had in store for me next, I got my answer. Nancy's mother was right. Nothing is so bad that it can't get worse. My internet connection failed and after many long an arduous hours with my provider it turns out it's my network card, so it's my problem' Well, that's justsuper! So until further notice, blogging will be infrequent and angry.

Steam Vent

2004-08-04T22:58:00.000-04:00

So it doesn’t look as if I’m getting married any time soon. While it is true that I have ten future husbands, so far none of them seem to be rushing to fulfill their vows with me (ie. put out), although I suspect that – and by “suspect that” I mean “think it would be really really cool if” – one of them visited my site a few days ago. I may have to dump them all and find new ones.

The real potential husbands aren’t doing better for themselves either. I am an expert at choosing men who are practically unattainable. I apparently like them distant. Emotional and/or geographic distance are enormous turn-ons to me and is it my fault that they are the way they are or that they live where they live? The world ought to deliver me a decent husband. Right now. I deserve it.

OK, the phone didn’t just ring nor was there just a knock at the door, so I guess I’ll have to give the world a few days to work on it. But had better be soon or there will be hell to pay.

But at least I have my cat. At least I have the opportunity to live with a creature that does nothing but eat my food, mess up my apartment, shed hair, and poop. It’s exactly the same thing as a husband minus the sex (don’t even start on me with the bestiality jokes). All he needs to do is learn to promise to paint the apartment and to drink beer and the vision will be complete.

I can actually picture myself growing old and becoming the neighbourhood’s crazy cat man. I will have exactly 67 cats climbing in and out of the apartment thought the windows. I will grow a beard, dye it purple, and braid it into cornrows, maybe with bells at the end of each braid to add extra annoyance. I will walk with a cane that I’ll shake at children. I will walk through the streets, pushing people out of my way, singing old songs from the Turn of the Millennium like Christina Aguilera and Ricky Martin (I have years to learn them) at the top of my lungs. Just to freak people out, I will occasionally glare at random strangers and point at them as they hurry away. If I’m going to be old and alone, I really should make it as entertaining to myself as possible.

As I approach my birthday in around one month, I find myself thinking these thoughts with increasing frequency. If this is what birthdays are going to be like for the rest of my life, I renounce them completely. I deny the importance of the annual reminder that I am this much closer to lonely death. And I renounce men too. I will take a vow of gay chastity (not as paradoxical as it sounds) where I will live in bliss without the influence of either men or aging. Actually that sounds boring. I’d rather be the crazy, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”-influenced, cat coot, terrifying his neighbours and amusing his friends.

What a stupid post. Happy Early Birthday to me!

Gay Sex: Detrimental to Bad Literature

2004-08-03T01:17:00.000-04:00

Once again:

Best of luck, הראל !

The lengths to which some of us will go to receive attention from the objectives of our desire is absurd. For example, since I realized how much attention my little crush on a singer from a country 10 000 km from me was getting me, I have been shamelessly throwing myself onto the Net in the vain hope that Mr. סקעת himself will somehow discover me and instantly decide that he’d at last met the heart he’d been searching for his entire life, and live with me forever in bliss and joy. It could happen! The world is an odd place. That’s why I have fantasy future husbands. You never know who is going to pay attention to you and why.

Predictably, no starry attention has come my way. However, the unexpected and very fortuitous side-effect of all this silliness has been inspiring contact from the other side of the world. Maudlin as it may seem, I marvel at the uncomplicated nature of the Net when, for example, a brand new friend clicks on a button 10 000 km away from me and a few seconds later I have received a song from afar. Now if only someone would invent transporter technology, as seen on Star Trek, to make the world as small small as the Internet makes it feel. Sigh.

Now for a funny story: yesterday my friend l'Urbaniteur-franco-ontarien went to quite a different length to gain the attention of a handsome man as he was walking down leafy Maitland Street. Allow me to set a little background to my tale. Although studies that I have only heard about and never actually read apparently prove conclusively that women are experts at multi-tasking whereas men fail miserably at anything that deviates from one complex thought pattern at a time. I beg to differ. Men are constantly multi-tasking. Whatever we do, driving a car, reading philosophy, performing delicate brain surgery, there is a constant porno flick playing itself out in the back of our heads. We are perfectly capable of functioning while carnality swirls about in the recesses of our minds. I myself have an unchaste series of thought buzzing in the background as I sit here typing.

Now, l’Urbaniteur was not naked as he walked down leafy Maitland Street, although what was about to happen would make him feel naked. Innocently he bounced down the street, humming a happy little ditty to himself, admiring the beauty of the birds twittering in the trees, naked men frolicking behind his eyes.

Suddenly a man so beautiful entered his view that even the naked frolickers in his head stood silent and gaped at his incredible splendour. L’Urbaniteur’s head swivelled naturally on his neck in order to keep the gorgeous creature in his full sites as the man passed him by, oblivious of his affect on l’Urbaniteur and on his imaginary Greek tableau. And soon the tableau gained a new player as my friend’s head rotated further and further on its axis, unaware that he had fallen so deeply into his internal erotica that with a slight booooing! an enormous shock when a “No Parking” pole leapt up and struck him in the forehead directly above his right eye.

The frolickers scattered into the pastoral distance. The birds peered down and twittered scornfully. Maybe one pooped on his head even (I don’t know. I wasn’t there). L’Urbaniteur staggered slightly and raised his hand to his head, unaware of what had just happened. He stared mutely at blood on his hand and rubbed it between his fingers, his brow furrowed. Beauty has the ability to completely addle all our upper brain functions. He simply stared as the beautiful creature floated away, still oblivious to the inane affect he had had on a very small part of the world.

It wasn’t until his forehead was being stitched Frankenstein-fashion that l’Urbaniteur realized how absolutely ridiculous his actions had been. When he told me, I spit my coffee out all over the book I’d rested on my lap when I’d answered the phone. The book is ruined now, but that’s ok. I wasn’t liking it all that much in any case.

So there you have it. Gay sex is amazing but it’s bad for books.

Just Say Mew

2004-07-30T13:08:00.000-04:00

First of all:

הראל סקעת פה

It’s called giving the people what they want, since yesterday my hits from Israel outnumbered all but my hits from the States and the trend continues somewhat today. Clearly, they’re not looking for Surly Snobby. This is weird, since I’m Canadian but I’m certainly not complaining. I’ll accept all the attention I can get.

And now for something completely different. As the temperature creeps up into the high 20s – practically arctic for Toronto and the end of July/beginning of August (sigh what happened to our summer?) – I set up my improvised air conditioner. Now, as soon as you see the words “improvised air conditioner”, you should immediately know that you’re about to read another story about Noudnic the Cat.

I realize that I write about him a lot. It’s not that I’m a weird cat person, a topic Maktaaq deals with (along with a set of intriguing notions on the differences between men and women). It’s just that he’s far more interesting than TV, believe it or not. Remember, Noudnic is a creature that cannot get enough of chasing the reflection off my watch face up the walls and around the floors. This, believe me, is far more gripping than watching “Trading Spouses”, for example, a show that should never have been allowed to exist. If only I had a time machine and the ability to bend all of Southern California to my will.

I’m rather bored today. No temp or freelance work has appeared this week and the check for some other freelence I did months ago that I was supposed to receive two weeks ago has yet to appear. My entertainment options are therefore rather limited right now. I don’t feel like doing my “serious” writing since and I really should be cleaning my place for a guest I’ll be receiving tomorrow. And, as I’ve already explained, TV is no option. So to amuse myself my mind travels back in time, the closest I can get to that machine I'd hoped for in the previous paragraph, to my late teens when I was still living in Winnipeg and with my friend Happier-not-Teaching whom I’ve known since I was a foetus.

One thing that Happier-not-Teaching, whose name back then was either The Lizard Queen or The Magnificent Colourer of Milk, and I definitely did not do when we were bored was smoke a lot of pot. Oh no, cool and open-minded parents who, on a totally, completely undeniably unrelated topic, used to be hippies! Of course we filled our down time with studies and fervent prayer. Never ever, ever in ten million zillion thousand years would it ever have crossed our pure little minds, all fresh with the glory of G-d, to smoke so much pot that we would turn into hysterical giggle machines, reduced to exploding with laughter at what we perceived to be hilarious faces or strange-sounding words in the English language (Basmati! Rutabaga!). In fact, one evening we didn’t smoke so much while watching “The Exorcist” that we spent a sleepless night warding off imaginary pea soup-spewing demons with rotting skin and milky eyes. That never happened. Ever.

Well, at my advanced age of way-to-close-to-my-mid-30s I couldn’t smoke pot even if I wanted to. The last time I tried (I swear I didn’t inhale), it turned me into a stuttering, paranoid zombie, which is even less fun than it sounds. And so to finally get the story around to Noudnic, I decided that the most entertaining thing for me to do was push drugs to my cat. All I have to do is open the cupboard that contains his catnip and he sings like Mariah, but with more restraint as well as the ability to respect the natural phrasing of the music as well as the ear drums of the music.

I used to have a cat named Robin whom catnip would transform into a little calico blur zooming through the air at just below the speed of sound. But not Noudnic. This valiant hunter stares out the window, ambles about the apartment, purring with his tail straight up, and every once in a while gives me a little look through squinty eyes and chirps the kitty version of “Dude, I am so stoned!” before passing out with his head in one of my shoes. Smart, Noudnic. You’re the poster cat for an anti-drug campaign if I’ve ever seen one. Just say “mew”.

I told you I’d fit Noudnic into that overly-verbose mess somehow.

A Star is Born

2004-07-29T16:59:00.000-04:00

My tenth future husband, סקעת הראל , has won the semi finals of כוכב נולד and Surly has been inundated with visits from now-disappointed Israelis searching for him. Apparently Surly rates higher on the search engines than his does. As flattering as that is, and as tempted as I may be to wax philosophically on the virtues of romantic destiny, I say this instead: הראל סקעת fans, אני מיצטער , and welcome to קנדה . Go פה instead.

Nope. Can’t be destiny.

The Storm That Passion Did Begin

2004-07-28T15:46:00.000-04:00

Sent to me by my friend, Sexy Librarian, who is much too smart for her own good, is this poetry mood matcher. Here is my result - I have no comment as to the accuracy or lack thereof of the conclusion drawn by this cyber-robot/database other than to say, "Oh great. A love poem":

Amoretti VIII

More than most fair, full of the living fire,
Kindled above unto the maker near:
No eyes but joys, in which all powers conspire,
That to the world naught else be counted dear.

Through your bright beams doth not the blinded guest,
Shoot out his darts to base affections wound:
But Angels come to lead frail minds to rest
In chaste desires on heavenly beauty bound.

You frame my thoughts and fashion me within,
You stop my tongue, and teach my heart to speak,
You calm the storm that passion did begin,
Strong through your cause, but by your virtue weak.

Dark is the world, where your light shined never;
Well is he born, that may behold you ever.
Edmund Spenser (1552 - 1559)

Let the robot tell you how you feel today.

Un bon petit repas

2004-07-27T09:56:00.000-04:00

Entrée
Entrée in French gastronomical terms means "appetizer" and not "main course" as it has come to mean to English-speaking North Americans (and maybe English speakers elsewhere too; I don’t know) for some reason I’ve never managed to understand. It literally means "entrance".

In any case, check out my fancy new pointer (not available with Mozilla, apparently). Oooooo! Swish! And it only takes a few seconds to get annoying. But oh! the fun you can have on those few seconds. Try spinning it in circles and racing it as rapidly as possible across your monitor. This is my pretty way of saying that I need a new life.

Premier service
My major trip home – rather more appropriately "Home I", Winnipeg, as opposed to, Montréal, "Home II (The Return of Home! It’s not just back! It’s back with a vengeance!)" – I watch too much TV – for the High Holidays is booked and confirmed. I could almost hear my father telephonically fall off his chair when I agreed to go to shul with him. And I’ll fast bigger’n’better than the rest of them all on Yom Kippur too (in a contrite and observant manner, of course).

Deuxième service
Despite yesterday’s bloggie, I am not starving to death. What’s more, many of my socks are darnable and those that aren’t are damnable (buddum-chhhhhhhhhhhhh). Plus, I actually can afford to buy a pair or two every so often. I simply wanted to use an image that most people would be able to relate to and have a reaction to without reaching for the melodrama of, say, a top-hatted landlord twirling his moustache as he plans to tie me to the train tracks because I can’t pay rent. Manipulative imagery. Your sign of a Quality Blog®.

Of course, that way a Mountie, played by the first of my ten (so far) future husbands, model and Bollywood actor Ajay would ride up on his trusty steed, pop the evil landlord in the kisser and untie me from the tracks. We would gaze at each other as we rode off into the sunset, hoping that the horse knew where he was going since we were gazing at each other. And that’s my desert.

If I Were a Rich Man

2004-07-25T13:43:00.000-04:00

When I was a kid I wanted to have a pet dinosaur. This was completely impractical, of course, simply because my parents would have never had enough money to feed a dinosaur. Children don’t worry about such practicalities. They just imagine what they imagine and although the big bad world starts ripping apart their dreams at birth, the effects aren’t noticeable until near the end of adolescence.

After years of adult pragmatism, I certainly have enjoyed being impractical. Now, however, I don’t want to face the fact that all my socks have holes and my savings are almost drained, my writer’s salary (the oxymoron, sign of a quality bloggie) allowing me to buy only one single sock once every six months. Good thing almost all of my nine future husbands are rich.

Speaking of which, I now have a tenth. His name is Harel Skaat ( הראל סקעת ) and he one of the finalists in the Israeli version of those horrid “we’ll turn you into a one hit wonder” vocal pyrotechnics shows, imaginatively called “A Star Is Born” (כוכב נולד). He’s a little younger than most of the men I regularly marry, but he’s legal.

One day I’m going to have to enumerate all my future husbands before there are too many of them.

Cats Are Stupid

2004-07-23T13:59:00.000-04:00

Stupid Week is drawing to a close, thank God. Let us now recap what we have learned during this momentous week. We have learned that while people are stupid as a group (well, we already knew that), men as a subgroup may or may not be stupid. If one happens to be a man who hypothesizes that men may indeed not be stupid, one must be prepared to see one’s daily hits immediately cut themselves almost in half.

One must also be prepared to wake up one morning to read outraged, indignant emails while savouring one’s morning coffee. Since I’d already covered people being stupid in yesterday’s entry, and for a much more pointed reason, I simply clicked my heels in glee. I must really be a writer! I get hate mail now! Not my first, mind you, or at least not my first blog-related hate mail. This inspired that. Without realizing it, people who write to me expressing a strong opinion are treating me like the editor of a publication that has published an article that has struck a chord. Their hatred of me legitimizes my writing credientials. Huzzah! I’m like Dan Savage! What else could a bitchy aspiring writer wish for (aside from a little more money)?

Perhaps it’s true, however, that I occasionally go a little overboard in my scathing reviews of humanity. After all, this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, which – according to that book I reviewed so scathingly and am now beginning to enjoy very much (mmm . . . my words are delicious although the writing still sucks) – is the dawning of humanity’s search for truth after the Age of Pisces which apparently was the Age of Being Bossed Around.

It may be true that humanity may be committing slow, painful suicide by poisoning its home and by cutting its nose off to spite its face. Humanity my be so bound by its own and various sets of ideologies and dogma that it cannot even begin to contemplate the truth, no matter how minor, of another point of view. It may willing to shout loud and even murder to stamp out any opposition to unconsidered dogma. Finally, humanity may have begun my day for me by sending me an email that began, “Dear f---face! [ed. note: “dear”?] You hate women!” but I still loves it . . . despite its stupidity.

And speaking of stupid, cats are stupid. My cat, in particular is stupid. Thus far I have painted him as a clown, as a predatory teacher, and as an interior decorator but let’s face it, he’s pretty dumb. Now before I get another tsunami of indignant emails (I love that I get to write that now!), starting, “Dear f---face! You hate cats!” let it be known that I love Noudnic with ever fibre of my being. When it’s his time, because if all goes well in my life I really should outlive him, I will be devastated and writing about for months. However, we are discussing a creature whose favourite game is to fish out crumpled pieces paper from the recycling bin and tear them to shreds, and whose second favourite game is to be tossed, purring with tail straight up in excitement, onto my bed and to scamper back to me, mewing for more. May we move on now?

That aside, Noudnic is stupid and here is the proof. After a very late start, Toronto is finally having the kind of summer to which it is accustomed. The mercury is busting out of the thermometers and people are crawling down the street, swooning under a humid layer of car fumes. I have no air conditioner, because I am morally opposed to them (as in, I don’t have enough money for one; they are therefore evil) and so I set up quite an ingenious system, if I so say so myself, system that actually had the desired effect.

I closed all the windows in my apartment to let none of my anticipated cold air out. I then filled my bathtub with cold water, which lowered the temperature in the bathroom by several degrees (both Centigrade and Fahrenheit). I then set up a series of strategically placed fans all over the apartment end voilà!, a cool breeze circulating through the entire place. As I said, men aren’t stupid.

Those who have already picked up on the keywords, “cat”, “stupid”, “fill”, and “bathtub” get a gold star and don’t have to read any more of this entry if they have other things they need to do.

There I was, sitting comfortably at my computer, a cool breeze blowing though where my hair once was, sipping on a nice, cold iced tea, chuckling over the apparently deliberate stylistic choices of yet another vexed gender divide-related email (“When will you learn that women are not your jokes to make?”), when I heard scratch! scratch! scratchscratchscratch! SPLASH! splishsplashsplishsplash! Mew! Mew! Mew!. Half a split second later a pathetic, water-logged creature scuttled across the living room and into the kitchen where he promptly began to chase his tail. I suppose he didn’t recognize it as his own because it was so wet; since he was on edge, he decided that the tail would have to pay). Round and round and round he went without noticing that his little silver kitty maelstrom was sliding directly towards his food dish and boom!, little nuggets of cat food flew into the air as tornado collided with bowl. This was too much for his poor nerves. He hissed at his scattered sustenance and darted under the desk where he cowered, his ear flattened.

After I’d picked myself off the floor and the laughter cramps had subsided somewhat, I coaxed him out from his refuge and brushed him until he was only damp. He spent the rest of the afternoon purring at my feet, staring at nothing. But I think even he would admit that he was cool, even if he didn’t know why. Stupid cat.

That was pretty funny, eh? Even though we may all hate each other with blind, murderous rage, there is still room for humour and, dare I say it, love. Happy Stupid Week, folks! Go for a walk in the park and throw bread at the pigeons.

People Are Stupid

2004-07-22T00:03:00.000-04:00

Video Shows 9/11 Security Check

Have a look at how easy it is for both genders to be reduced to ashes. This is the world we're giving to our children. With the arrogant and dehumanizing justification of brutal violence on all sides of our poor world's latest pissing matches, those of us who aren't killed by invasion or blown up on our way to work will know someone who will be. All our differences will by smoothed away by the worms, our opinions carried away on the rising smoke.

Men Aren't Stupid

2004-07-21T09:46:00.000-04:00

I’m not quite sure why I was surprised that no one rushed to defend men after my last entry, entitled in my usual delicate manner “Men Are Stupid”. After all, had I written something called “Women Are Stupid”, or even “Gals Are Vain, Insincere Flowers Who Need Our Guidance”, there’s a distinct possibility that I would have been pilloried, my blog burnt in effigy (what would that effigy be, I wonder) with my mother, bless her heart, leading the ravenous, blood-lusty pack. Before the lynching begins, please note that I do not believe that, I was just trying to make a point. That point is that while humour that pokes fun at women is sexist and evil, humour that pokes fun at men is politically correct and completely acceptable in all segments of society

Now before someone brings up the point that I myself am the one who scribbled an entry entitled “Men Are Stupid”, let me be the first to say that, in certain contexts, off-colour humour can be quite funny. I do enjoy the odd Jewish joke – I’m not talking about the Wise Men of Chelm here – and it doesn’t even have to be told by another Jew. But the context must be right.

The wrong context was last week when Médecin-sans-frontières and I were at a bar chatting with a bartender with whom we are acquainted. The bartender’s description of demanding customer was that he was “a typical J.A.P.” and the only thing he could back it up with was the statement that he wasn’t referring to me (a point that doesn’t seem to obvious to me), indicating that he might truly believe that such a description is an accurate one. The context was also wrong because he doesn’t know me very well and should therefore save his delicate humour for his friends.

But I was referring to men. I have another example. When I was still in university, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth and God hadn’t yet invented grass or flowers, I took a seminar course led by a female prof with eight or nine female co-conspirators. Male jokes were told with glee and when I would speak on matters related to the actual course, I was often dismissed as I “thought that” just because I was a man. It was a linguistics course, which is mostly math, believe it or not, and therefore has no business in the Mars-Venus divide. At first I took it good-naturedly. But as the semester continued I began to feel increasingly uncomfortable. When I finally stood up for myself, I was told that now I “knew how it felt”.

Well, I grew up the butt of practically every joke at school until I reached high school where, for some reason I never understood but was very happy for, I suddenly became cool and popular. Unlike most people, I quite enjoyed high school, but maybe it’s because I was relieved. So I think I already had a fair idea of what it’s like to be dismissed in inane grounds. The statement that it was OK to treat me any way because of my gender was along the lines of saying to a woman, “Gosh! You gals are so cute when you try to use your little brains!” If it was indeed simply humour, which I’m not convinced it was, the context was inappropriate due to the fact that it was a seminar class and that this “humour” did not take into account any of the myriad of factors and past experiences that show us all to be human beings, not penises or vaginas with legs.

Now, back to “Men Are Stupid”. Since it was clear that I am a man and that I obviously don’t believe that men are stupid any more than I believe that women are wispy, simple beings, I suppose there was no need to rush to the defence of men or our brainpower although it would have been fun if someone had. So I guess, like most of what I write, there was no need for this entry. Now go back to work!

Men Are Stupid

2004-07-19T13:03:00.000-04:00

I should not at all be surprised at how superficial men can be. After all, I am a man and it therefore must follow that I occasionally suffer from the same debilitating lack of judgment, my brain cells impaired by that pesky y-chromosome, my neurons puttputting along in a valiant attempt to fire off and allow me to make sense of my environment. D’uuuuh . . . shiny!

The circumstance that has brought these thoughts to the forefront of my testosterone-addled brain – true intellect is always lurking back there somewhere in the fogs of pornography and . . . um, well nothing else, if truth be told . . . that pass as thought processes in my noggin – is the amount of male attention I have received since yesterday morning. I used to have no problem whatsoever with male attention. In fact, I enjoyed it when it was welcome and I had absolutely no difficulties sending unwanted gentleman callers on their merry way. I suffer some terrible stage fright, which was a problem when I was a musician, but I would enjoy walking down Church Street, noticing the heads are swivelling my way and remaining there. But aside from my Cabbagetown adventure, I hadn’t been experiencing so much of it recently. Until yesterday morning at approximately 10:17AM, that is.

10:17AM is approximately the time when the clippers starting mowing off my gorgeous, ever-expanding locks, leaving me with 1mm on the sides and back and 1.5mm on the top. The greenhouse on my head was just too much for my poor delicate composition. Now I look exactly like the handsome young gentleman to the left of these words. Why is it that I keep finding pictures of myself on Swedish soccer sites? I'm no soccer star.

OK, I don’t really look like Olof Malleberg (thanks SparkleMpls for bringing him to my attention, by the way). I look more like I’ve just joined the Israeli army (I cannot imagine myself joining any army, by the way). But the lack of distracting tresses all every which way on and around my head shows – and it grieves me to write this stereotype – my nose to be somewhat more prominent than I had remembered. Plus, the sun has managed to break through the layers of sunscreen I slather onto every square nanometre of my exposed skin and my summer colouring does indeed appear to point to some ancient Middle Eastern origin.

In any case, I digress as usual. My walk to the Starfucks’s after my Samson impression was an eye-opening one. Men whose gaze used to go right through me when I had a nice early-70s moptop going now observed me predatorily. Little did they know that I was impervious to their powers of trash and smut. Months as an ugly duckling have reminded me that there is attention and then there is attention. Those who found me undesirable when my hair didn’t fit an unwritten Queer Eye norm do not become more attractive to me simply because I pass evening gown contest in a silly beauty contast, all because my hair is now acceptable for a gay man. It’s just hair.

Only one day later and I find it inconceivable that I, a strong-willed, independent person such as I am, should have ever regretted lack of attention from these self-centred bozos. But I wonder how many intriguing guys I’ve glossed over simply because I didn’t like their hair or clothes. Stupid y-chromosome. D'uuuuuuh . . . pretty!

Scrumptious Éclairs

2004-07-16T13:42:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I went to see a mediocre yet well-intentioned film called "La Finestra di fronte" with occasional lurker, Sexy Librarian. It appeared at first as if it were going to be about an elderly Jewish gay concentration camp survivor with Alzheimer’s who returns to Rome sixty years after the Nazis swept through that city and sent the entire Jewish Ghetto to the camps. He returns, lost and confused, to face the demons of his past, including that horrible night (obviously) and searching for the boyfriend he’d abandoned that night in an effort save fellow the very Ghetto residents who had scorned him his entire adult life because of his homosexuality. Now that would have been an interesting movie! Instead, it turned out to be about a woman who tries to save her marriage to one of my future husbands by having an affair with another of my future husbands and then by becoming a pastry chef. Incongruous? That’s what I thought as they tried to draw the various themes together towards the end.

As you may have noticed, I got myself a whole bunch of future husbands in this movie. There was Massimo Poggio and Billo Thiernothian who appear so shy in my presence that they have posted no pictures of themselves on the net. Then there was Ivan Bacchi who spent far too little time onscreen and far too much time wearing clothing. And then there was butch mechanic with a soft and squishy heart, Filippo Nigro; I’d save my marriage to him by becoming a pastry chef too, preparing for him the most scrumptious éclairs ever. Finally, there was Raoul Bova whom I’d admired since I first began stalking him after seeing him on a commercial for "Under the Tuscan Sun". After I’d seen the movie just for him (and believe me, he was definitely the only reason to see that drivelly piece of fluff), I still wasn’t sure if he liked me "like that". Now, however, I know that he does like me in that way and I greatly look forward to our blissful life together.

Now speaking of "Under the Tuscan Sun", the most entertaining part of the entire movie, aside from Raoul of course, was listening to the people in front of me buy their tickets. They strode up to the wicket, slapped down the forty trillion zillion dollars and seventeen cents it costs to see a movie these days, and proudly asked for two tickets to – I am not making this up – "Under the Tucson Sun". Both the nice woman selling tickets and I managed to maintain our composure until I asked for a ticket to "Under the Albuquerque Sun" (yes, I know they’re in different states). She told me I’d made her day. Hmmm . . . maybe you had to be there, but it was really, really funny!

But back to the real Italian movie I’d been talking about. Sexy Librarian, who’d liked the movie slightly less than I did, still found it pertinent to scold me for all my husband-hunting throughout, unjustly accusing me of superficiality. But as the movie was so much less than it could have been – the two separate storylines never gelled and, in fact, detracted from one another – I was forced to look elsewhere for the movie’s strong point: a whole buncha really hot men to towering twenty feet above me as I sat in the darkened theatre. Always look on the bright side.

But the movie did get me thinking a little. In North America for the past year or so the media has been diverting much of our attention from the fact that we maybe blown up at any second or arrested or invaded for not agreeing with a certain government on how to deal with the fact that we may be blown up at any second to the issue of same-sex marriage (for an interesting discussion on the recent failure of Bush’s failed Constitutional ban of same-sex marriage chez my neighbour to the south on Hot Abercrombie Chick. Then check out my brilliant, thoroughly under-appreciated comment on the post – it was the wrong audience for me). Much of the discussion has revolved around the view that the sole purpose of marriage is procreation. This seems simple-minded to me, but then again I have never procreated nor, I suppose, will I ever. This certainly does explain, however, loveless arranged marriages (whose actual purpose was to create alliances between clans and amass wealth) and it does not address right of married couples who cannot or chose not to reproduce their little devil DNA mergers, running to and fro terrorizing cats and eating bugs. It seems to me that marriage is really about stable and loving companionship and sharing throughout the course of one’s life.

One scene in the movie demonstrating this beautifully was towards the beginning when the elderly gentleman has a little breakdown in front of a store closed for the night, crying to be let in, that we later discover was owned by the boyfriend he hadn’t seen since 1943. No one wants to be that man, having lived a full life yet ultimately alone. The fact that I am almost 34 and just found last week a white pubic hair (I enjoy the gradual silvering of my temples but it is completely unnecessary for the rest of my body to age as rapidly) leads me to believe that I may indeed be that man in forty years. Now before you say, "No way, Surly. You’re brilliant and witty and kind and, like, totally hot! Any guy would be lucky to snag you!" let me say thanks but a) you don’t know that for certain, especially since gay men are generally much less forgiving than women are of the slow disintegration of others' beauty due to age, b) I will never be ultimately alone since I have very many excellent friends and a pretty cool family to boot, and c) that’s not really what I’m writing about.

What I really mean to say is that most humans want companionship and even the most antisocial of us emerge blinking from out lairs every once in a while. The basis of this loving institution is love, not "The Brood". We all want companionship and because humans are social creatures and basically insecure, we all want out companionship to be recognized by those around us. This is one reason why civil union is not enough and why just living your life with someone isn’t enough either. Straight couple may choose common law, and it's their choice. They can have their wedding or they can choose not to have their wedding. In most of the world gay men and women do not have this choice in most of the world. Gay men and women merit the consideration of the rest of the world and the recognition that our relationships are based on the same emotions and the same dreams and desires as straight relationships. All . . . um, how many are there now? . . . nine of my fantasy future husbands agree and my real fantasy future husband – Taye Diggs’ gay, Cabbagetown-dwelling doppelganger perhaps? – agrees as well. So all in all, I guess it was a pretty good movie.

O Frabjous Day!

2004-07-15T09:11:00.000-04:00

Yesterday this happened and then this happened.

And so I chose for once to concentrate on the good things that happened yesterday and not the bad.

Mona Lisa Riled

2004-07-14T10:29:00.000-04:00

[My apologies to those who enjoyed the subject matter of the following post. I am often, as you have come to realize, an impatient, judgmental kinda guy]

Even though I was warned by many not to do so, I have started reading The Da Vinci Code. My friend Médecin-sans-frontières lent it to me, telling me that I would be completely appalled by the writing, but that I would thoroughly enjoy the story. "Oooooo," I thought to myself. "A thriller set in Paris about the Knights Templar, other secret medieval societies, and the Mona Lisa! How bad could it possibly be?"

Well, the writing is often so bad that at times I want to gouge out my eyes with the book's pointy corners before casting it and then myself out the window. Here is an example (and it is paraphrase and parody, not an actual extract):

They rounded a corner to find that a hulking guard, his large arms crossed in front of his massive chest with a steely look of determination on his broad features, was standing in front of the door.

The entrance is blocked and none shall pass

Langdon looked at the guard and then back at Sophie. "We won’t be able to get through the door. The guard is blocking our path through it," he exhaled.

Sophie looked at the guard standing in front of the door, impeding their way, and then fixed Langdon with a gaze of complete desolation. "Yes," she sighed mesmerizingly through her slightly pouted French lips. "He will stop us from getting through that door."

I acknowledge that it’s in bad form to attempt to make oneself look better by making another look bad, but the author of that book is making millions whereas I have holes in every single one of my socks (which is my fault for not having a real job, I know! But I just want to see where this takes me). So I suspect my criticism would mean very little to him.

But my question is this: if books such as that are published and become bestsellers, does that strengthen or weaken my chances of every being published (aside from the odd letter to the editor in the Globe and Mail – four in the past six months!), once my style is mature enough?

True Loneliness

2004-07-14T01:49:00.000-04:00

To the gay Middle-Eastern blogger to whom I’m not sure I should link because of the recent Internet law passed in his country, the one who said "I never had a friend" when a robot told him to talk to his friends about being gay and lonely, this is what I say to you: you are not alone, my friend. I hope you come back and read this, again and again if need be. Come back soon.

The Emperor of the Universe

2004-07-13T09:44:00.000-04:00

Yesterday’s weather continued to be glorious, unlike today’s dreary goop and I decided it would be the perfect time to make the long quest to Queen & Bathurst for my regular hit of Serbian pea soup. Unlike my first few encounters there, the nice ladies who work there now know me and love me. Yesterday when I entered I was greeted with a chorus of "Oh Handsome! We are out of pea soup today!" I was instead convinced to buy a delicious vegetable soup and an even more delicious gooey mushroom blob with bits of politically incorrect baby cow. Now before you get all in my face about baby cow, I have dealt with very formidable individuals on this issue and I still eat it on the odd occasion. Show your love for all God’s creatures by beating me up some other time.

On my way there I saw whom I swear was the same woman I saw walking down the street discussing Heidigger almost exactly two months ago, wearing one of those skirts I thought were all torched once the 80s were finally over (if we witness the rebirth of acid wash jeans, folk, I’m packing up and heading for the Arctic). In any case, this time she wasn’t yammering on her cell while applying lip-gloss. This time she was strutting down the street with her laptop open and balanced on her shoulder, blasting rap through the littered streets of downtown Toronto. Her laptop . . . just like we used to see with boomboxes (I refuse to call it that other thing we called them in the 80s). And I swear it was the same woman

At first I thought, "What a brilliant modern adaptation of an old cliché!" And then as I passed her and almost had my ears singed off and my eardrums exploded I thought, "This chickie just desperately needs to be noticed".

If I told her that she is rapidly becoming for me a symbol of all that is shallow and vapid about the West as it struts along, blasting its music, babbling into its cell, applying its makeup, and completely ignoring all around it, would she care? And before I am accused of misogyny, the equally apparent male equivalent is the guy I the teeny-weeny (note the emphasis on "teeny-weeny") car that’s been fitted with subwoofers under the seats so that all you can hear when it comes within a block of you is BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BA BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM.

The world will be a much different place when I become Emperor of the Universe.

Taye Diggs Me

2004-07-11T23:16:00.000-04:00

If too-beautiful-to-be true Taye Diggs, or someone who looked exactly like him had smiled at you as you were walking down Parliament Street, all virtuous and virgin-like, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, what would you have done? Would you have smiled confidently, nonchalantly walked up to him, stunned him with your massive wit, fascinated him with the breadth and depth of your knowledge and interests, but only enough that he was left wanting more, before exchanging phone numbers and emails and MSN Messenger nicknames (the Third Millennium so complex)? Alternately, would you have done what I did, giggle like a complete goof and scurry away, using as an excuse that you were on your way to a garage sale at the home of constant lurker and occasional commenter, Marqanoid, and you therefore had no time for such dalliances? I choose the second option.

I arrived at Marqanoid's to find that the garage sale was over and my "excuse" had been for nought. He was so sunstroked that he was all but passed out in his backyard, so incapacitated that he thought the squished bugs he'd rolled on were freckles. Such were the heights of his intellect this sunny Saturdaafternoonon. I didn't even get to snag the matching Wonder Twins salt and pepper shakers!

I am surely losing my touch. The street pick-up has never really been my thing, but I'm certainly not opposed to walking a few blocks out of my way with an interesting fella just to see if a later date is possible. I've met some of my favourite ex-boyfriends that way. So no shakers and no Taye for Surly, who now feels both adolescent and incredibly old, and a bit of a loser, at the same time.

In honour of this non-event, I am not announcing my engagement to Taye Diggs, a straight actor whom I will never meet. That would be silly. Plus I already have four fiancés. Instead, I promise to smile brightly back at his gay, Cabbagetown-dwelling doppelganger if we ever cross paths again. I hope he's enjoying his burritos, wherever he may be right now.

Alien Bunnies

2004-07-11T22:43:00.000-04:00

"Alien" in 30 seconds, and re-enacted by bunnies

Blogger had a stroke and lost the first Alien Bunnies post I'd done, so here it is again. But this time it's even better because I've got a pic from the cartoon donated to Surly personally by the SuperGenius behind the 30-Second Bunny Crew herself! It's better than an autograph! Does this make me a groupie?

Liberté Égalité Fraternité

2004-07-11T16:57:00.000-04:00

Attacking Gang Draws Swastikas on Parisian

There is an enormous difference between this and what I was complaining about a few days ago.

The fact that the other passengers did nothing only appears to reinforce the notion that French society tacitly accepts this kind of behaviour, as anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic acts are on the rise in that country more than in any other Western country. This is misleading, though.

Would we do any better? What would you have done had you been on that train observing this? I'm ashamed to admit that I probably would have been terrified into paralysis.

[Update July 13 - Paris Attack Victim Admits She Lied

It is truly unfortunate that this individual chose to twist a very sad and volatile issue and turn it to her own devices just for a little attention. It in now way lessons the danger of hate crimes against any group, not just in France but everywhere in the world. It is, however, an example of how these types of real crimes may be pushed aside easily. Attention. La prochaine fois c'est vous qui pourriez être victime d'un tel crime.]

A Deadly Lesson

2004-07-10T13:17:00.000-04:00

Cats are generous creatures. With all the magnanimity they can muster, they graciously allow their humans to give them affection, feed them, clean their kitty litter, and open and close the door repeatedly while they sit moewing at the entrance. We forget they are wild animals as we pet them and coo at them in baby talk.

Noudnic the Cat is always considerate of my feelings. For example, he scratches endlessly in his kitty litter loud enough for me to hear him wherever I am in the apartment just to assure me that he uses it. He sits on the pile of clean clothing in the middle of my bedroom floor and not on the pile of dirty laundry just so I know which is which. Sometimes he rearranges my books for me. And a few days ago he brought me a gift.

Many people, and these are usually the people who give their cats names like "Smoofikins" or "Princess Pastel" and take pictures of them hanging adorably out of baskets, will swear up and down as if cats spoke English (ou français, o español, eller svenska, או עיברית, etc.), when their cats plop bloody, pulpy, half-alive creatures before them, that they have been presented with a precious gift of love. "My little poopikins loves me so very very much!" they will exclaim joyously as they nuzzle their faces through the cat’s fur. So far will people go to believe that everything in the world revolves around them.

Now, as much as I’d like to think that Noudnic lives for me, I acknowledge that he in fact lives because of me. I feed him and make him feel not to alone in the world. And when it comes right down to it, that’s about all one can say of most human relationships (this is my justification for being almost 34 and single again, or still, but that’s another series of stories full of serendipity and mishap). I don’t labour under the misguided notion that he does anything for my benefit out of love; he does it only because he knows he has to share space with me.

I recall reading once on a site I can no longer find that cats actually bring their human slaves little tidbits the same way that mother cats bring their kittens half-alive squirrels. It’s education: the kittens must learn to kill and devour and their prey is mostly incapacitated to make the slaughter a little easier. And the same goes for us: they observe our incomprehensible eating habits (by their standards) and they undertake our edification. It has less to do with "I love you" and more to do with "Eat this, stupid . . . "

There could be no trace of affection in the gift that Noudnic gave me a few days ago as I slept. I awoke in the middle of the night to see a slight fluttering inches from my face. I leapt out of bed as I realized what lay on my pillow. It was a spider only the size of the nail on my little finger struggling to run away and hide in a corner. But it couldn’t move because all but three of its legs had been ripped off. Noudnic lounged on the windowsill observing us and I had no idea what to do.

I hate spiders. They terrify me. When I was a child I would run away from daddy-long-legs because it seemed impossible they be anything but monsters, tiny as they were. I was probably the only person who shivered rather than laughed through "8-Legged Freaks", rented by a cruel friend.

As Noudnic watched me coolly from his windowsill, his yellow eyes glowing faintly from the lights outside the window, I stared in horror at the creature struggling on my pillowcase. It quivered spasmodically as it struggled to raise itself up and then fell, tumbling off the pillowcase. It lay on my bed as its three remaining legs flexed and convulsed. The spider was obviously in excruciating pain as Noudnic gazed at us and I wrestled with conflicting impulses. Silly as it may sound, I felt compassion for it as it thrashed about through its torture, half of its body missing. I couldn’t bring myself to kill it, but keeping it alive seemed just as cruel. What kind of life could a mutilated spider live? I was grateful that spiders don’t make noise. It would have been screaming in agony.

Noudnic didn’t deign to watch me as I skulked out of the bedroom. As I closed the door, separating myself from the small patch of wilderness my room had become, I turned and saw Noudnic rise, poised to leap onto the bed, his ears slightly flattened. My sleep on the couch that night was not a good one.

The next morning Noudnic chirped at me pleasantly when I let him out of the bedroom. There was little trace of the nocturnal hunter from the previous night. I stared at him suspiciously as I knocked about a crumpled paper ball he fished out of my recycling bin and chased it around my living room before carrying it to the privacy of the bathtub to rip it to shreds. After the night, it didn’t seem like such a fun game anymore.

There was no trace of the spider and I felt a little pang of guilt, and even a brief moment of sadness. I know how ridiculous to feel bad over a spider, but after witnessing its horrible fate I pondered the terror it must have felt in the last horrible minutes of its life. I can’t bring myself to sleep on the sheets on which it had been devoured, but it seems inane to throw them away over such a small affair.

I have a healthier respect for the being I share my space with. Sedate and affectionate, he has no interest in harming me, but he is still a wild animal at heart who would obviously know be able to survive if I weren’t here to pander to him. So to those who insist their cats are hardly more than sentient Carebears, watch out when you roll over at night. You never know when Princess Pootikins will decide to educate you.

My Kosher Burrito

2004-07-07T13:21:00.000-04:00

Actual snippet of a conversation Surly had yesterday evening with a real life potential future husband, here named “That Hot Guy” for convenience:

That Hot Guy: Why do you speak Hebrew?

Surly: [wanting to discuss tongues other than linguistic ones] Well, my Hebrew is actually quite bad, but I speak it because I started learning it when I was a kid.

That Hot Guy: Oh! You’re Jewish. That explains it.

Surly: [innocently . . . yeah, right! In a fake friendly manner to elicit an elaboration of the statement and with a great big smile] What does that explain?

That Hot Guy: Oh . . . nothing.

I never did find out what that explained. I can therefore only presume that it was a terrible thing not fit for polite conversation, as in "That explains why you look as if you drink the blood of Christian babies." That Hot Guy, who is indeed very hot, is Mexican and although he was the one who opened the conversation to ethnic quips, it wasn’t too difficult to restrain myself from sarcastically asking him where his sombrero was (although I admit that I did think it). My sarcasm would have led to an innacurate picture of my view of Mexicans; always take the high road unless your sarcasm is actually constructive.

Perhaps it was a joke. Certain things however, are just are not funny between two people who don’t know each other all that well. Someone who takes liberties prematurely gives the impression that their jokes are not entirely jokes. And some people are simply offensive, something to which Radmila can attest and that I have dealt with in my usual piffy manner earlier.

Maybe there’s a cultural difference. Recognizing this thorny issue, I didn’t press it. As much amusement as I have being pedantic, I didn’t have any inclination whatsoever to administer a lesson in cultural competency yesterday evening. People must occasionally take a certain amount of responsibility for their words without having their hands held.

So, his words had almost the same effect on me as if he had told me that one of his favourite vacation activities is to club baby seals in Labrador and wear their pelts as thong underwear (now that's an image!). In other words, that is one guy who will definitely never taste my kosher burrito.

Maybe I should do what my Bubbi would have wanted, in a manner of speaking, and forget about all these Christian boys find myself a nice Jewish boy. Therefore, my brand new future husband is cute Israeli singer Eviatar Banai, sort of a straight Rufus Wainright in Hebrew. He, Ajay, Kamron, Justin, and I will be very happy together. But I think I need to find a bigger apartment now.

Gay Tin Can Ban

2004-07-06T09:32:00.000-04:00

Since I continue with my fascinating bout with writer's block, here's an article by Linwood Barclay I read in the February 20 Toronto Star that I've been saving for an occasion just such as this.

Bush tries for tin can dragging law

The Bush administration, sensing it needs a backup plan should it fail to get a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, intends to make it illegal for just-married gay couples to tie tin cans to the backs of their cars.

Feeling the heat from a court decision in Massachusetts upholding the right of gays to marry, and the recent flurry of gay weddings in San Francisco in defiance of California law, the White House is determined to make some aspect- any aspect- of marriage off-limits to gays and lesbians.

President George W. Bush has set his sights on the practice of taking tins- the kind that typically contained soup or beans or stew at one time- and linking them together with string, then attaching them to a car bumper.

"I think," the President said in a news conference recently, "we're all familiar with the joyous sound of empty cans rattling along the pavement behind an automobile as it pulls away from the church."

"It's long been recognized," said a White House spokesperson, "that this is a traditional aspect of the post-wedding. This adminstration is committed to preserving the tin-can tradition as a sacred aspect of the marriage ritual, and that it should only happen behind a car occupied by one man and one woman."

The Republicans, backed by the religious right and pro-family groups, believe the wholesome tradition of tin-can dragging is under attack from those who believe it's a suitable activity for gay and lesbian couples.

"When I see a gay or lesbian couple driving off on their honeymoon, tin cans trailing behind the car, I see the end of civilization as we know it," said the Rev. Jerry Falwell.

The administration, still considering its options should the tin-can amendment fail to pass, is instructing its legal experts to determine whether it can ban, at same-sex ceremonies, such activities as rice throwing, glass clinking to make the newlyweds kiss, and bouquet tossing.

"Just leave us with something," the White House spokesperson said. "Understand, this adminstration believes in equal rights for gays, but we may have to draw the line, for example, at one gay person carrying another gay person across the threshold."

The Republicans say that while the man traditionally carries the woman across the threshold, if a woman wanted to carry her new husband across the threshold, and were capable of it (think Liza Minnelli and David Gest in happier times), they wouldn't pass a law against it. But if both partners are of the same sex, they should walk through the door together, then close it behind them immediately, lock it, and nail some boards across it if they've got a hammer handy.

"We don't think that's asking a lot," said the White House. "I mean, come on, throw us a bone here."

Asked for her thoughts, Britney Spears, a noted singer and dancer, said she believes strongly in the tin-can tradition, but pointed out that when she was recently married for several hours, there was not time to string several cans together and attach them to a bumper. Instead, she and her beloved tossed a few empy Coors Lite cans out the car window.

Right-wing groups in the U.S. have said they're prepared to go all the way to the Supreme Court over the tin-can issue.

The White House says it might permit gay and lesbian newlyweds to drag plastic containers- the kinds used for pop and maple syrup and fabric softener- which don't make as much of a racket, and wouldn't draw as much attention.

"The advantage here," the White House said, "is that many of these containers have built-in handles, thereby making the stringing process even more convenient. We're hopeful the gay and lesbian community will embrace this compromise."

Worst . . . Post . . . Ever!

2004-07-05T17:11:00.000-04:00

Phew! It's a good thing that my career is still in complete dissarray or else my life might look something like this (pillaged from the ever-charming Mr. V - you have to choose whether you want WMP or Quicktime, which take a little bit to load, but it's worth the wait).

On a completely unrelated topic, according to Maktaaq, I am Bitch Queen My Pretty Pony. And don't you forget it.

Finally, because I don't want to turn this into a reference page for silly personality tests (they're just not terribly accurate; even this HR site admits that there is a "lack of evidence to support validity of use of personality tests" in selecting personnel . . . before going on to try and sell its array of personality test to aid in the selection of personnel), I dreamt I had a pet this last night.

The Truth Revealed

2004-07-03T11:30:00.000-04:00

Before I venture out into the sunshine, I decided to waste a few precious braincells on this highly illuminating personality test (pillaged from Crazy Jane) that is most likely used by some sniffy HR peon at a wanna-be Fortune 500 company in a vain attempt to classify human beings like so many kinds of kinds of cheese (sharp, creamy, or goat). Here is everything you need to know about me:

You are an SRCL - Sober Rational Constructive Leader. This makes you an Ayn Rand ideal. Taggart? Roark? Galt? You are all of these. You were born to lead. You may not be particularly exciting, but you have a strange charisma - born of intellect and personal drive - that people begin to notice when they have been around you a while. You don't like to compromise, but you recognize when you have to.

You care absolutely nothing what other people think, and this somehow attracts people to you. Treat them well, use them wisely, and ascend to your rightful rank.

Ayn Rand?! The Kurt Vonnegut portion of my personality rebels againt this assertion. However, the rest seems pretty accurate so I suppose this is one of those moments where I know I must compromise. I have no idea who those others names are.

Now, take the personality quiz, let me know your results, and then go outside and spend time with loved ones (which is exactly what I'm about to do).

Hilarious, Evil Zombie Tomatoes

2004-06-30T13:50:00.000-04:00

As Canadians recover from post-traumatic stress disorder ... I mean, as Canadians rest after a raucous election campaign (raucous by Canadian standards) and as I try to figure out how to re-entice my international readership that almost completely gave up on me after I wrote bloggie after bloggie on the election (except for some very patient Americans – some of whom disagree quite strongly with my political convictions and were very understanding on some sticky points of contention, for which I am grateful and I promise to accord you the same respect when your election campaign kicks into high gear – and one very loyal reader from Romania) everyone is sick to death of it. Myself included. And who could blame anyone, especially Canadians, when the Net is full of sites dedicated tosuch important things as navel lint (There. I promised fluff in yesterday’s bloggie and I have delivered)?

After a couple of weeks of thinking of nothing more than the shape of my country (it’s funny-shaped and has an odd, vaguely gonadic-phallic shape punched out of the north-eastern part), as well as after a vodka-soaked Pride weekend, I have writer’s block. This is particularly detrimental to my happiness as the blog is not the only thing on which I concentrate my alleged writing abilities. To counteract it, I stared at the computer for a while. Shockingly, this did nothing to help. Then, I thought maybe of getting Noudnic to walk across the keyboard and telling everyone he had posted a bloggie all by himself (wouldn’t that have been hilarious?!). A post written by a cat! `^kowrohiéÉQWEFO;GUQboug; Brilliance! But I have less time than I used to to disguise the fact that I usually have absolutely nothing of note to say, disguised with pretty words and long, Proust-like sentences full of commas and subordinate clauses.

My attempts to convince occasional commenter, Rakl, and perpetual lurker, The Fabulous Miss Kate, to guest blog today failed. Apparently their work is more important than I. I can’t really say the same because, as much fun as it is to live off one’s savings, my employ these days is made up of temporary contracts and odd jobs for which I am massively overqualified . . . and I prefer it that way. You see, your stress level decreases to a minimum when you cease fretting over how much money you have and why you’re trapped doing something you hate doing with a bunch of people you wouldn’t normally associate with (Ceux parmi vous avec qui j’ai déjà travaillé et qui lisent ceci, vous savez que ce n’est pas vous que j’indique dans la phrase précédente). But we each have our own approach to adulthood and, as usual, I digress from my very important point, writer’s block.

As Hollywood has shown us, all you need to do is give people something they can laugh at and feel nauseous to at the same time and you have a bona fide hit! This explains such blockbusters as the recent remake of Dawn of the Dead, as in: “Hahahahaha! That chick totally got sliced in half with a chainsaw and like her guts went everywhere! I mean, it’s gross and all but I’m laughing ‘coz it’s so unexpected to see people die horrible deaths, especially in a zombie movie! Y’know? That’s why it’s funny n’stuff.”

Now, I can’t write gross stuff. My knowledge of human anatomy isn’t good enough and this is lucky for you or this blog would most likely be splashed with innards. The best I can do is to discuss food I find gross. It’s probably a bit of a letdown after navel lint and people being sawed in half, but you can place the blame for the mediocre quality of this bloggie squarely on the shoulders of Rakl and The Fabulous Miss Kate.

Are you ready? This is going to be fantastic. Boiled spinach. It’s like eating mushed-up brains with green food colouring. Right? So are you collapsed in gut-roiling hilarity yet? Are you? No? Ok. Eating lychee nuts reminds of Science class in Grade 8 when I had to dissect a cow’s eyeball. They’re all round and squooshy and cloudy liquid shoots out of them when you pierce their skin. Have you vomited through your nose while shaking with hysterical laughter yet? No? Wow. Tough crowd.

OK. The Fabulous Miss Kate cannot eat tomatoes and there is a gross reason for it. Once when she was a wee lass she ate an entire truckload of tomatoes. Her teensy, half-formed belly was understandably displeased with this invasion and she retired to her bed with an upset tummy. Now, The Fabulous Miss Kate claims to be a very heavy sleeper and I cannot comment on this; the only one I know who can confirm this is her long-time companion Subversive Banker Dude and he doesn’t even read this so we may never know the truth. In any case, she is such a heavy sleeper that she apparently did not awake as she vomited the truckload. When she woke up, everything, the bed, her pyjamas, the pillows, her face, her hair, were covered with a red, sticky, tomato-y-smelling film. Plus, she could have choked on her vomit and died. Isn’t that a riot?

Well, I have a better ending. One of the surviving zombie tomatoes, driven to madness by excessive political commentary and covered somehow with belly lint, took a chainsaw and chopped her in half. Now it’s funny!

This bloggie is terrible. I should stick to half-baked political critiques. Vote Quimby!

Again With the Election

2004-06-29T09:53:00.000-04:00

I may have the Canadian election on the brain, but there is something superficial and silly at the end. I cannot burn certain images from this campaign out of my head: Stephen Harper’s Fischer-Price hair, Belinda Stronach’s shiny pink Coco Chanel jumpsuit (it would be a very different country today had she won the Conservative leadership), Jack Layton’s action figure jaw, and a map of Canada divided once again by regional parties; blue in the West, red in Ontario, bleu et blanc au Québec, and a whole bunch of colours in the Maritimes.

The Conservatives failed to make the gains to which they felt they were entitled. The majority of their wins in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba were in rural ridings. They could not capitalize on voters’ anger towards the Liberals in any urban ridings in Ontario. In fact, they were short by almost 50% of the number of seats they expected as a minimum in Ontario. With 29% of the popular vote, the majority of it coming from Alberta and the rural regions of the three other Western provinces, it is clear that Canadians by and large view them as a Western or rural party and are uncomfortable with their vision of the country. But they’re a new party, so this may change.

The Bloc Québécois won as many seats this election as they did in 1993 immediately following Meech Lake and Charlottetown. The Bloc is using this as ammunition for another sovereignty debate, although it seems fairly clear that much of the vote was really anger against the Liberals for laying blame of the sponsorship scandal directly on the entire province. The Quebecois wanted someone de chez nous to represent them and who better than a party so zealous about in its love for Quebec that it wants to lop itself off from the rest of the country? After these results, I’m glad I don’t live there anymore.

People from outside Quebec can only imagine the tension in the streets immediately proceeding and following 1995’s sovereignty referendum. I have to admit that, even though I ended up voting “non” (ended up is the correct term in my case), the Non side annoyed me as much as the Oui side and the So-called Unity Rally . . . well, I’ll just get myself in trouble with all of my English Canadian friends if I admit what I thought of that. However, any doubts I had as to my decision evaporated instantly the moment I heard Jacques Parizeau’s rant of concession in which he promised revenge against the ethnic vote for the loss. In any case, the honeymoon is over and we’re back to those same old issues.

Ontarians again voted overwhelmingly Liberal although the Grits did lose a significant number of seats. Not as many as had been predicted. And that was really the only surprise. Everyone, not just the Conservatives, expected much greater Tory gains, especially in Toronto’s suburban 905-Belt. It just didn’t translate as Ontarians, uncomfortable with the new party and with the prospect of the Bloc Québécois being the king-making party voted to maintain the status quo . . . to a certain extent.

The North and the Atlantic provinces showed interesting mixtures of all three major parties. It was here that the NDP first began making its presence felt as the polls began to close yesterday evening.

It is significant that although the Tories gained seat from over the former PCs and Alliance combined, they were down in the popular vote. Perhaps it’s not fair to compare last night’s popular vote results to the last election, as it is officially a different party, but they plugged themselves as The Right-Wing Party of Canada and their numbers failed to play that out.

The big winner in the popular vote was the NDP. Just about doubling their popular vote, they may just make themselves into a ruling party in a few decades, if there is still a country called Canada in a few decades. What is also interesting is that, despite Stephen Harper’s claims that Canadians wanted a change and they wanted his kind of change, the only parties that made gains were the lefties, the NDP, the Bloc, and the Greens (who will not be in the House of Commons but are up in the vote nonetheless). If you combine this with the vote for the Liberals, another left-of-centre party (especially in comparison with what counts as left-of-centre in our southern neighbour), you see that almost 70% of Canadians want Canada to stay the socially and fiscally responsible, progressive country that Canada is. With no clear coalition possible in the House of Commons with the new break down, it should be interesting to see how this plays out. Maybe out leaders will actually work together to govern as we return to the days of Quebec sovereignty and Western Alientation.

As promised, the fluff: I have another new future husband. I am the luckiest guy in the world. Meet Justin Theroux, of “Mulholland Drive”, “Sex and the City”, and most recently, “Six Feet Under”. He adds the much needed rebel element to my pantheon of husbands. Plus this one actually lives on the same continent as me and so I will have to put my money where my mouth is and cease using geography as my claimed impediment. Who wants to fly me to Hollywood?

Tomorrow: No more election. I will grace the blog with fluff!

Out, Damn Spot!

2004-06-29T01:21:00.000-04:00

Through the haze of election fatigue, this is what I have to say: now that the Liberals have won by a statistic not nearly as slim as we were led to believe, I want to change my vote. I unvote Liberal and now I vote to NDP. What can it change by this point?

Go Vote!

2004-06-28T10:13:00.000-04:00

"The streets might not rule, but they vote!"

If you're Canadian, stop reading this and go vote now!

Same Old, Same Old

2004-06-25T13:45:00.000-04:00

Canada’s election is in three very long days and I am surprised to find that I have decided to do what I always do: vote against a party that I do not want to govern the country rather than for the one I do want to govern. I apologize to the 75% percent of you who read this regularly who live outside of Canada, but you should know that, despite its moderate reputation, Canada is just like any country and deeply divided along political, ideological, ethnic, regional, and religious lines.

The cracks are certainly beginning to show. They had been patched over since the Mulroney years when the regions went on verbal warpaths against each other, culminating with the Quebec Referendum. With talk of firewalls around certain provinces, threats that votes for another party will hasten another vote for Quebec independence (let’s start calling a spade a spade; enough of “sovereignty”, the Canadian public has a confusing choice between four acrimonious political parties with conflicting views they claim to espouse wholeheartedly. One party apparently wants to bring about the end of the world as we know it with it’s alleged views on child pornography, abortion and *gasp* homosexual marriage. Another frolics in the meadows of make-believe with their lovely, utopian view that people truly believe they have a responsibility to society as a whole and not just to themselves. And there are the Conservatives.

Conservative Party supporters forget three very pertinent facts. First, Stephen Harper very publicly stated that Canadian troops should have accompanied our neighbour’s to Iraq despite the fact that the majority of Canadians wanted no such involvement. Had he had his way, Canada would have become involved in one of the biggest military lies ever concocted, not to mention the devastating effect it has had on the stability of the Middle East. It would have moved Canada up the list of potential targets and the bombs in Madrid in February could have just as well been on Toronto’s GO trains; all because of misused intelligence.

Second, the Conservative Party is quite simply the old Alliance Party with its regional concerns and right wing views in disguise. It is very pertinent to recall that immediately prior to old Progressive Conservative Party vote mandating it’s merger with the Alliance to create the new Conservative Party, 20 000 Alliance members bought PC memberships so as to take part. The old PCs may still have voted for the merger, but not with such a stunning majority. This also gives good insight into the types of tactics this party will use to get its way. I feel confident they would not be above the type of scandal that has plagued the Liberals these past months.

This brings me to my third point. The Conservatives are a party that has been in its present incarnation a matter of months. They have had no general policy-making meeting and therefore have no coherent policy. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the more extreme views of some if its candidates who actually advocate taking rights away for the first time in Canadian history. Supporters of this party may be quite shocked at some the policy decisions made by a Conservative government with no concrete policies except campaign promises. And we all know what those are worth.

And so despite the fact that I want to vote Green or possibly NDP, I will vote Liberal. Until Canadians have proportional representation voting, we will forever be forced to vote the party that who will do the least damage rather than for the one we want to win. I believe that a rural regional party will do vast damage to a country already fracturing along these lines and I do not want them to win. I do not want to take votes away from the Liberals and so I will hold my nose and vote for them, waiting for the day when my vote will actually be worth the opinions I hold.

On a different note, I hope you like my old look that I decided to bring back. The green one was nice, but a little too pretty. Surly may be fun and kinda cute, but he ain’t pretty!

And speaking of pretty, I would like to introduce you to my new future husband. Please meet Thai action movie actor and model Kamron Boonteesud. Don’t worry about Ajay. He’s still my future husband; since he has no idea who I am, I feel perfectly justified in not consulting him on this matter. Please, I think the three of us will look great together.

I have two husbands now. This is exactly the sort of thing the Conservatives are worried about.

The Fountain of Youth

2004-06-22T13:39:00.000-04:00

I have the secret to eternal youth. Unhappy people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying desperately to look young. Ponce de Leon got himself killed look for the Fountain of Youth. All the money, all the energy expended on the quest for youth; it is such a collossal waste. I have discovered exactly what these people need. All they need do is spend of couple of days with their parents who are visiting from a distant city and they will be instantly shunted back to their adolescence.

I have an excellent relationship with my parents and this excellent relationship is certainly exemplified by the mirthful, hearty conversations on the first couple of days of the visit. But somewhere on Day 2 or Day 3 the mood changes all at once for no reason that I can discern and I am instantly transformed into a petulant teenager less than half my age, with arms crossed and pouting crossed in a corner. Youth has been achieved!

Paraphrased Regular Conversation:

Parental Unit: Whatcha doing? [translation: I’m curious about your life, especially since we only see each other once a year and I’m hoping you can tell me a little more about yourself now that you’re an adult. Plus, I’m a little nosey.]

Snarling Surly: Going out. [translation: I am embarrassed to admit that I need a short break from hanging out with you and so I am about to give a reason to want to take a break from hanging out with me so I don't have to admit this.]

Parental Unit: Where are you going? [translation: I know nothing about this city where you live and I’m curious.]

Snarling Surly: Out! (eyes roll) [translation: If you knew how boring my life really is you wouldn’t be so curious.]

Parental Unit: Who’re you going out with? [translation: I like all your friends I’ve ever met and I’d like to know more about them. Is it anyone I know? How’re they doing?]

Snarling Surly: * sigh * I'm going out with friends . . . [translation: I’m really glad you like all my friends, especially since most of them are gay and some parents wouldn’t like that so much, but I don’t want you to hang out with them too much because they always seem to like you more than they like me…and since I am a snarling, surly, insecure teenager . . . ]

Ô the wondrous joy and guilt of spending time with parents.

Luckily for me my parents are quite used to this sort of behaviour from me (they did, after all, live in the same enclosed space as me all through my wonder years) and seem to mostly ignore me when I un-age. What’s more, they are great to hang out with, for the most part and I miss always them when they leave.

Youth is overrated.

Happy belated Father’s Day!

Contractually Bound

2004-06-20T10:17:00.000-04:00

[Much of this post is now moot since I've switched back to my former template]

The new look is not really a political statement, but if you wish to view it as one...

I was bored. Also, I enjoyed with raptures conversation in the style of last week's federal leaders debate with four decidedly unfriendly staff members of my cell phone provider that left me feeling impotent and weak. The point of contention was my old (foreshadowing, the sign of a quality blog!) defective cell phone, which they claimed was no longer in service because of “water damage” before they’d even looked at it. Apparently, all of the phones they sell are of such high quality that the only possible reason for defectiveness is water damage. There is no possibility that they be of poor quality.

When asked the following question, "Well if it’s not water damage [Surly’s first name] – [I loathe it when complete strangers presume to call me by my first name simply because they can see it on a computer screen; I am 33, not 13] – what do you do with it? Play baseball?", Surly’s careened out of "diplomatic", speeding right past "surly", and plunged straight into "ferociously wrathful". It took three shop keeps and the manager to subdue me by that point. I admit my bad temper, but I rarely erupt fully in front of others. It does, however, occur from time to time and those of you have witnessed (or experienced it) can probably picture clearly how events transpired.

But please forgive me for not providing a colourful description. I have no desire to relive too much of the entire event. Suffice it to say that as my phone was no longer under warranty I would have to have it sent for repairs that would take "2 to 8 weeks" (the woman beside me was complaining because hers had been gone for three months and was not yet ready) and the cost would be almost as much as buying a new phone. I was intrigued by the fact that all this occurred not two short months after my old (foreshadowing, the sign of a quality blog!) phone’s warranty had expired and after I had signed a contract with them, locking me into their service. I informed them of this intrigue in various expressive ways.

One long, heated debate, complete with lava flows and calls to "Corporate", and five hundred million thousand dollars later, I left the store with a cloud in my head, an earthquake in my step, a new (admittedly pretty) cell phone that I can’t afford, and a print-out of my address book they salvaged from my old phone, waiving the $10 print-out fee "as a gesture" (such benevolence! Why do you waste your time in this store when you could be negociating peace in the Middle East?). The moral of the story: only sign contracts of any type if you absolutely have to. Signing contracts with service providers eradicates any say you may possibly have as to the service you receive and the quality thereof. It is carte blanch for the provider to treat you as simply the client number as which they so obviously view you. This was also communicated to them as lividly as possible immediately following the financial transaction.

And so feeling used and powerless against the demons of big business (tax their asses off if you win, Jack!), I took my feelings of impotence out on this blog. Do you like the new look? I’ll keep it around for a bit to see if I get used to it. The tiny font against the dark yet busy background of the old look was making me bug-eyed. Any and all comments and suggestions are welcome.

And on a brighter note, my summer has been improved by the discovery of this band thanks to Andy (on whom I would most likely have an enormous crush if we didn’t live appoximately one million zillion kilometres from each other; but we do, so I don’t). Like most of you, I have often wondered what it would sound like if Elton John, the Bee-Gees, the Human League, the New York Dolls, Dexy's Midnight Runners, and a drag queen decided to collaborate. Now I need no longer imagine this wondrous event for the answer is nigh. Plus, the lead singer and drummer are like so totally hot! Buy the album and Torontonians can catch them at Lee’s Palace for only $13 on July 20.

My inanely purchased phone is ringing.

Rainy Day

2004-06-17T14:11:00.000-04:00

Surly Snobby, Noudnic, and Ajay on a good day in a faraway land.

Illustrator pillaged simultaneously from Radmila and Ice Queen.

Leadership

2004-06-17T13:52:00.000-04:00

The federal election looms closer and I find myself growing increasingly cynical. I could only stomach a few minutes of both the French and the English televised leader's debates. It was like watching my sister and me try to out-yell the other when we were children. A political leader should lead through intellect and innovation, not through bluster and lung capacity. I'm not sure I want any of these buffoons near any aspect of my life.

This is what other Canadians had to say on the debates, all pillaged from today's Globe and Mail:

These are our "leaders"? Their comportment in these debates is a frightening spectacle. Talking over each other, answering questions that only they can hear (certainly not the ones I heard posed to them), behaving like children arguing in a park over who is next at bat.
Link

I would like to thank The Globe and Mail for its prescience in running the front-page photo of the historic match between Stephen Harper and Paul Martin in Tuesday night's debate.

Even a cursory glance should reveal that Mr. Harper's overly aggressive play of Rock is beaten by Mr. Martin's bureaucratic Paper.

It warms my heart to see that politicians are finally embracing a higher form of dispute-resolution than the archaic "who talks louder" form of debate to which we have become accustomed.

It would appear that Mr. Martin is going to win hand over fist.
Link

After seeing the debate in English I am left wondering how, out of a population of 30 million, did we Canadians end up with these four?Link

How refreshing it was to be able to watch a leaders' debate undistracted[sic] by even the slightest hint of charisma.
Link

Voter apathy is at an all-time high. I encourage people to vote. I encourage people to consider the issues they deem important before they vote. A confident-sounding leader, like Stephen Harper, does not necessarily make a good leader, as Ontarians have learned with Dalton McGuinty. I am discouraged at the thought of living in a country run by the Conservatives and mini-Dubya, even if it's just a minority government.

Good Housekeeping

2004-06-16T13:47:00.000-04:00

Giant, Man-Eating Hair

2004-06-14T13:31:00.000-04:00

Summer is always fun for Snobby, having grown up with what some might consider to be the Arctic, complete with metres-deep snow in the winter and clouds of blood-sucking insects in the summer. Since I left Winnipeg almost a decade and a half ago, I don’t think I could survive a western winter anymore, that little thing the government implanted in me under the guide of “rubella vaccinations” . . . rubella is silly name for a disease; it sounds like the heroine of a Verdi opera, along with her sisters Anæmia and Carcinoma: she of course dies of consumption at the end of the opera – "consumption”! Now that’s the name of a disease! – while singing an aria about coughing up blood and the injustices of love and life before collapsing into the arms of her spurned lover, Escalope Parmigiano, who has, by some amazing coincidence, returned that very moment from serving as a merchant marine on the Caspian Sea to ask her hand in marriage; Rubella accepts the proposal with her final dying bellow and Escalope Parmigiano goes mad with guilt and thwarted love. But I digress ...

The computer chip that determines the entire course of my life (eg. You are from the West. You must love winter. Your skin is impervious to mosquito bites. You must vote for racist, homophobic political parties and hate anyone who speaks French, etc. . . . ), implanted when I was a child, must have physically carved neural pathways within by brain. Even though I had had it extracted in that weird tattoo parlour in New York’s Lower East Side, I still have difficulties understanding why Easterners go berserk when the temperature dips below –10°C. It has also cursed me with the inability to function normally when the temperature climbs to above 25°C plus humidity. I swoon on Toronto’s gum-encrusted pavement like Rubella in the arms of Escalope Parmigiano. I crawl down the streets in a feverish daze. I stumble from iced drink establishment to iced drink establishment. My primary criterion for male companionship rests solely on whether or not he possesses an air conditioner anywhere in his apartment.

The most striking indication of my inability to abide the sticky weather is the size of my hair. Almost smack dab in the middle of my 30s I am still blessed with the entire shock. This is a blessing of insulation on pretty (to people who don’t live in it) wintery days. It is akin to having an entire rain forest on the top of my noggin on mouldery summer days. As the heat and humidity rise, my hair, perhaps in an effort to save me from drowning, absorbs most of the humidity that surrounds my head like a sheet of quintuple-quilted Bounty and expands at an alarming rate, twisting into large loopy ringlets that appear to writhe even when there is no breeze.

I scoff at products people buy to add volume to their hair. I have spent four times the money for products that make my hair manageable and small. Otherwise, I am Medusa as I stumble down the street. It is, of course, my fault for having made the senseless decision to grow my hair in an attractive, modern, mussed-up looking style that covers the nape of my neck and my forehead, adding to the Turkish steam room quality of my existence. I am regretting this lack of foresight as I contemplate filling a shower cap with ice and sticking it on my head. It couldn’t look any less attractive to the boys than does the kudzu on the top of my head.

Noudnic the Cat, who has the same amount of hair on his entire body as I have on the top of my head, but is much, much smaller than I, has the right idea. He lies on his back, little legs splayed akimbo, in the bathtub the entire day, emerging occasionally for water. We should all be so lucky. At over 6 feet tall (or, if you prefer, at almost 2 metres tall), I fit into bathtubs as easily as I do into airplane seats, movie theatres built before 1995, and Italian cars. In any case, take it from me that he may lie in the bathtub all day, but he objects to having the water turned on to amuse me cool him off. Cats are weird.

Just joking. I didn’t turn the water on him.

post scriptum On an unrelated topic, boys are stupid and they smell bad, especially the one who stood me up this weekend. Next time I run into him I shall set my giant, man-eating hair on him and then we’ll see who doesn’t have time for whom.

However Ajay, my future husband, remains lovely and amazing, in case you were wondering.

The Blighted Right

2004-06-11T01:29:00.000-04:00

[Warning! This entry contains left-wing, homosexual content. Fans of "7th Heaven" be warned]

It’s once again in election time in Canada and we have a wide array of issues with which to bonk each other over the head repeatedly. Do we gleefully decapitate the Liberals for the sponsorship scandal? Do we pummel Paul Martin with abandon around the nether region for his refusal to apologize for the scandal on behalf of the Liberals? Do we force Jack Layton and the NDP to personally lay off each and every one of the filing clerks, receptionists, and CSRs who will be the first to go if his corporate tax scheme comes into effect? What do we say to the Bloc Québécois who thinks most of us are just dandy, but would rather not have to hang out with us so much? Do we feed the Green Party to giant venus flytraps for their hippy dippy view that all humanity needs is a clean planet on which to dance the Maypole and everyone will just get along and cuddle and be all sweet and goopy?

Nah. Those parties are all fine. However as with every election, I find myself only able to focus on the party I don’t want to run my country, not the one(s) I do. Stephen Harper has a platform I have yet to hear anything about because members of his party keep making statements that give the impression that we’re all going to be voted straight back to the 1950s. The Conservatives' focus on issues of social regulation gives me the willies. But I admit I get the willies easily. For example, most TV gives me the willies, like that horrible parody of American/Canadian Idol where they make fun of those poor people in front of millions of cheering, jeering people. It makes me nauseous just to watch the commercials. TV, however, can be turned off. The Conservative Party cannot. It just keeps yakking. Check out what they had to say this week (you’ll notice I’m focusing on one particular issue, and you know why):

The danger in having sexual orientation just listed, that encompasses, for example, pedophiles. I believe that the caucus as a whole would like to see it repealed.
– Cheryl Gallant, Conservative MP on the protection of gays in hate crimes legislation

I think that the biblical teaching is that [homosexuality] is not a natural kind of relationship…[The Ontario Human Rights Code] says if you are a religious organization, you have the right to discriminate on the basis of your faith.
– Frank Luellau, Conservative Party candidate for Kitchener-Conestoga

He's been asked to make it abundantly clear that he would respect the decisions and lifestyles of consenting adults
– Stephen Harper, leader of the Conservative Party, attempting to be contrite

And a couple of detractors:

Wintering in Florida is a lifestyle. People's loving committed relationships are neither lifestyles nor behaviours.
– Alex Munter, of Canadians for Equal Marriage on why Harper’s reaction isn’t strong enough

It is quite clearly, almost defiantly, not the Progressive Conservative party. I've found in campaigns, you really can't hide who you are.
– Joe Clark, former leader of the Progressive Conservative Party who refused to have any affiliation with the party when it merged with the Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance Party (CCRAP – really!) and renamed itself the Conservative Party

I like Clark on his social issues. I wish he had decided to run this time.

The Conservatives go on and on about lowering taxes (which I like, although I also like free medicare and affordable post-secondary education) and regulating social norms. Through some twisted logic, one can hypothesize therefore that the lower the taxes, the tighter the constraints on our morality must be according to the Conservatives. If they don't take steps to control society once taxes have been lowered and animalistic urges begin to pound through us all, who knows the devastation that could occur?! As people have been basically doing what they want anyways, is the COnservative Party strong enough to restrain each and every one of us as our primal, jungle instincts begin to take control once taxes have been lowered? By God! They must immediately cease promising to lower taxes as it obviously causes society as a whole to go beserk and engage in sexual acts with members of the same sex willy-nilly and have abortions whenever it likes. This last point is odd you think about it because if everyone's having sex with members of the same sex, where do the babies come from? And with no babies, the human race will die out. Lower taxes = homosexual behaviour & abortions = birth rate of 0% = THE END OF CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT! We cannot let this happen!

If the Conservatives win, which they very well might, I want them to practice the fiscal responsibility they preach. I do not want them to lecture women on their bodies. I do not want them to equate my marriage to Ajay with pedophilia.

So this is another election where I won’t get to fulfill my lifelong goal to vote Green. Here I go with my strategic voting again. I always for against. I never vote for.

Miscellaneous Gayeties

2004-06-09T11:50:00.000-04:00

Beer Eye for the Gay Guy
Last night while in the now smoke-free Woody’s (yay!) I almost greeted a loud-mouth blonde who looked very familiar. I pondered and pondered. Where do I know him from? Is he a half-forgotten drunken dalliance? Although we all make mistakes, I sincerely hoped not.

One of my friends whose taste in media friendly mediums (media friendly media?) I will never trust again knew exactly who he was when I timidly asked how I knew the stranger. "It’s Carson from 'Queer Eye'!" he exclaimed as if I had just accidentally discovered the cure for cancer while simultaneously bringing about world peace and an energy efficient means of instant interstellar travel. Ah. The blonde one. Listening to him talk confirmed that not being blessed with the designer gene as part of my Luscious Cornucopia of Queerness is not the only reason I don't watch that show.

Listen to this music!

Bebel Gilberto. If Björk did bossanova, this is what it would sound like.

Snobby, Artsy, Pretentious Book F@g
Which Jane Austen heroine are you? (Pillaged from Dim Sum)

You are Elizabeth Bennet of Pride & Prejudice! You are intelligent, witty, and tremendously attractive. You have a good head on your shoulders, and oftentimes find yourself the lone beacon of reason in a sea of silliness. You take great pleasure in many things. You are proficient in nearly all of them, though you will never own it. Lest you seem too perfect, you have a tendency toward prejudgement that serves you very ill indeed.

Click on the image to take the quiz.

Very true!

This pleases me muchly, as Pride and Prejudice is my favourite Austen book (I've read each one approximately 15 million billion times, except Persuasion, which I've only read 14 million billion times). Elizabeth Bennet is certainly her most engaging heroine. But does this mean that I will end up with Colin Firth, like in the brilliant BBC miniseries? I simply don’t see what other people see in him. I invite someone to enlighten me.

Tightly Wound
I am tightly wound and superficial today. I sincerely hope that I will return to my profound, surly self tomorrow.

Titanic Bunnies

2004-06-09T01:56:00.000-04:00

Titanic in 30 seconds...re-enacted by bunnies

Your heart will go on...somehow...

(c/o Angry Alien)

Surly Snobby vs. Goofy Jolly

2004-06-07T10:50:00.000-04:00

I tried my best to strike terror into the hearts of the poor, doomed number crunchers, but due to lack of sleep – I get insomnia when I have to be up extra early, 5AM in this case – hyper-caffeination as an overcompensation for the lack of sleep, and general empathy for the exam context, Snobby turned into Goofy Jolly (see previous bloggie to understand what the hell I'm blathering about).

Goofy Jolly is a persona I developed when I first started working in restaurants when I was a teenager. I found he was a great hit with women of a certain age and with young families with children, for some reason. He is charming, funny, completely self-effacing, and somewhat bumbling. David Arquette is a pretty fair indication of what Goofy Jolly is like. In any case, he shows his face every once in a while and is very useful for making strangers think I don’t know as much as I do. This allows me to observe them acting naturally with their guard down. This is a very useful skill. I should have been a lawyer.

I had a group of twenty-eight of The Doomed to watch over. A few of my personal Doomed looked exactly like various incarnations of my future husband, but it seemed somehow inappropriate to slip them my telephone number while they were writing the exam. I therefore decided to leave it to destiny to reunite us and I turned my attention to other things, such as comparing very important statistics with the proctor whose section was right next to mine. Over the course of our very long day, she and I discovered the following things about our respective sections.

· three times the number if women were in her section than in mine

· double the number of people were wearing earplugs in her section than in mine

· all of the people wearing earplugs in both sections were men; we decided it was because men have more difficulties concentrating

· I had the double the number of men of Irani origin in my section than she had in hers (2 to her 1); this was important to her since she herself was Irani

· all of the Irani men in our sections were really cute (see above re: future husband)

She also taught me how to say “Hey! That guy is really cute!” in Farsi, but I forget now.

During the course of the day, Goofy Jolly committed the following atrocities:

· writing “absent” in each column of the list of materials received from the candidates, instead of spaced out evenly across the entire row as clearly indicated (italics supplied by proctor supervisor) in the proctor’s manual

· collecting admission ticket stubs instead of tickets from the candidates during check-in, despite the fact that they are clearly (once again, italics supplied by proctor supervisor) differentiated by the 6 point font word “ticket” in the lower left hand corner of the ticket. I had to interrupt the candidates during their exam to trade the useless piece of 5cm x 5cm paper for the precious 5cm x 5cm one

· allowing a candidate to put an illicit highlighter in her pocket. She had one sitting on her desk in plain view, for all the world to see, despite the fact that she had signed a valid and binding contract stating that she was aware of all the examination rules and procedures. I told her to hide the highlighter before my supervisor observed her flagrant act of rule breaking. You see, highlighters are banned from the examination room on pain of a violation report compiled by yours truly that would…well, I’m not exactly sure what it would do but it would be really really bad. If I had been caught, it would have meant the end of my proctoring career. They wouldn’t let me near an exam room again.

· my check marks on the presence sheet look too much like “v”s. According to my supervisor, this could be confusing for the poor people who turn the raw data from the lists into usable statistics. I can just see it:

Data Compiler #756443alpha: Candidate #85467454475984635478 was present.

Data Compiler #945244epsilon: Hold on there, Data Compiler #756443alpha. It looks here more like Candidate #85467454475984635478 was “vee”, not “present”.

Data Compiler #756443alpha: My God, Data Compiler #945244epsilon! You’re right! To think I almost allowed this person’s exam to be graded!

Data Compiler #945244epsilon: An easy mistake to make. Proctor #545389325mu obviously has a difficult time differentiating between a check mark and a vee. We’d better fail the candidate.

Data Compiler #756443alpha: Clearly.

And this destruction of an innocent candidate’s prospects would be my burden to bear for the rest of my life and into the next.

No one, and I mean no one, was permitted to drink water at their desk however. Rules are rules…

By the end of the day I was practically delirious. I had been on my feet since 6AM with no entertainment but statistics sharing with my neighbour and imagining various activities to perform with any one of my future husbands in the group (I'm talking moonlit strolls along the beach, not whatever you were imagining I was imagining; I do have some decorum).

And two days later my legs are still stiff and aching. I wish one of my future husbands would come over and give me a massage.

The Rules of Unengagement

2004-06-04T13:11:00.000-04:00

I have the perfect activity for someone whose hopes for a good job are dimming because he is told that he is either overqualified or under-qualified for every job he applies for. Tomorrow Snobby will have the opportunity of performing such complex tasks as counting exam booklets and looking stern while proctoring for the Chartered Financial Analyst exams.

This week I attended a training session for this activity in which we discussed such controversial exam-related issues as whether or not water bottles are permitted at the candidates’ desks. After a heated 10-minute debate, the consensus was that they may be placed under the chair but that candidates must be advised to consume their water at one of the water stations on the side of the exam area. As you may imagine, Snobby was very impressed with the pomp and circumstance of the whole affair.

I also felt as if I had been shunted back to high school. I sat at the back of the room with Alef Alef as we rolled our eyes as the brownnosers asked questions about apparent contradictions in the training manual (“On page 10 it says that erasers may be placed on the desk yet on page 12 it says they must be placed in a clear plastic bag under the seat” [I am not making this up]. We played hangman in Hebrew and soon it was over.

Now, I have difficulties with rules and regulations. I follow them but, because I tend to overthink things, I believe quite rightly that a reason or motivation can be found for anything. Can it be so irrational to search for these reasons? What's more, I am also unaccustomed to being addressed as if I were a child when I ask question reasoning:

Snobby: Why aren’t candidates allowed to drink their water at their desk? Is it to avoid spilling on the exams?

Head Control Freak: [pointed stare at Snobby for five seconds of silence] Candidates are not permitted to drink water at their desks because candidates are not allowed to drink water at their desk.

Snobby: [feels as tall as the font you’re reading]

Such is the humiliation of the poor. Snobby is slowly growing accustomed to being dealt with as if he had as many cells in his brain as dollars in his bank account. I usually no longer point out that I once held positions of responsibility and had enough money to buy Luxembourg. It just begs the question, “So what happened?” Well, after I burned out and quit my job I decided to make a career change, but haven’t yet found what to. That's what happened. My responsibility, to be sure. I find myself growing increasingly surly and caustic as I struggle to float my ego above constant, grinding worries about money, future, and contributions to humanity. And if I have a brain or a thought or the slightest spark of humanity, the Head Control Freak certainly didn’t care. All she saw was an indolent upstart asking silly questions. Thirty-three and still in high school. This is what I considered as I played some more Hebrew hangman.

But we all make our respective beds.

And on the bright side, I get to spend the entire day tomorrow looking stern and enforcing rules. Rules that I will do my best to explain clearly. The exam writers shouldn’t suffer needlessly because their future bosses are rigid automatons. They’ll suffer enough once they get there.

Breathe Easier

2004-06-02T11:40:00.000-04:00

Last night Snobby went out with Médecin-franco-ontarien to enjoy one of the thousands of Toronto’s (at last!) smoke-free bars. Toronto has finally joined the rest of the Third Millennium and has banned all smoking in bars. Who could have thought that this would happen in New York and Dublin before it happened here, in Toronto the Pure (ha! – Snobby cannot call it that with a straight face)?

Now you smokers who read this and are still swearing that you will never ever again set foot in an establishment that enforces such a blatantly intolerant policy of discrimination and hatred (somebody actually described the new non-smoking by-law to me in such a fashion. I lost my words at the hyperbole and had no idea how to respond without rolling my eyes. So that’s what I did), know you this: once Snobby has approximately half a pint of beer, I shed my mild-mannered demeanour (ha! – I can’t say that with a straight face either) and turn into Super Chain-Smoking Snobby. One after another, almost but not quite lighting the new one off the old one, I inhale them deeply into my body and exhale them into the bodies of my friends and all around me.

This is a hold-over from about fifteen years ago when the only time I didn’t have a cigarette pinched between my stained fingers stained brown, fingers that looked about forty years older than the rest of my body, was when I was asleep. This was my morning ritual from a decade and a half ago when I was a student and stupid, although I was supposedly expanding my brain through study:

1. Alarm clock rings
2. Snobby smokes cigarette
3. Snobby gets up and makes coffee
4. Snobby smokes cigarette while pot of coffee drips
5. Snobby smokes cigarette and drinks coffee
6. Snobby takes shower
7. Snobby smokes cigarette and drinks coffee
8. Non-smoking roommate coughs up entire lung
9. Snobby smokes coffee and drinks cigarette
10. Cat dies

And so forth. You can extrapolate the rest of my day.

Quitting cold turkey was never a successful venture for me. I am surly under the best of circumstances, so you can only imagine the pain I inflicted on all around me. I remember one lovely Christmas vacation when I had run out of cigarettes while back home visiting my family and my staunchly anti-smoking father drove me all over the city in search of a place that was open and would sell me smokes on Christmas Day. Such a joy I can be to all around me!

But over a number of years I methodically eradicated my ritual cigarettes one by one until I felt confident enough to ban smoking in my own house altogether. The one remaining smoking situation I was never able to rid myself of was the bar.

But yesterday I walked into Woody’s and it smelt fresh as a daisy. Woody's?! Woody's. I restrained myself admirably through two entire pints without slicing anyone’s head off or talking non-stop about how much I wanted a smoke. Finally I ventured to the smoker’s dungeon to have my single smoke of the evening (bummed from this like totally cute guy!). Even though it’s open to the outside on two sides it still smelt like an ashtray. The characters I found puffing away in it looked as if they would be quite at home in a bingo parlour, except for the like totally cute guy of course, (my apologies to any bingo enthusiasts among you; I was, of course, not referring to you. You look fabulous wherever you go). The only noise was hushed conversation and the occasional phlegmy hack. I smoked quickly and rejoined my friends, blinking in the light as I emerged from the smoky warren.

And this morning I did not experience the following:
· Clothing that reeks
· Stinging, watery eyeballs
· Aching sinuses
· Wheezy lungs
· An inexplicably crushing hangover despite the fact that I had had relatively little to drink

I could get used to this. Cheers!

More Bombs in Karachi

2004-05-31T16:57:00.000-04:00

This was today's entry in Jalal's blog.

Oh God. All this violence. All these bombs. All these burnign tyres. All these riots. All these mobs. All these guns. All these janazas. All these things.

Too much. It is too much. It has got to stop. It has got to stop.

Please post any comments you may have on his blog.

Revenge of the Nerds

2004-05-30T21:35:00.000-04:00

I have spent the last two hours wrestling with a horrific monster of nerdly proportions. Ô the horror! Ô the misery! Ô the suffering! I signed up for and downloaded free Movable Type. According to the personal blogging élite, Movable Type is the brie of blogs, whereas Blogger is merely spray cheese. If your online name is Surly Snob, this simply will not do; I won’t even eat mozzarella.

I have known HTML for a whole two months now and I’m satisfied with how my blog functions. I’ve learned to correct almost every mistake I’ve ever made and I’ve even managed to make up a few things without reducing the entire bazaar to a sputtering page of unclickable links and gibbering hyper-personal nonsense.

But now it occurs to me that those who deem Blogger like totally uncool are the same people who have posters of Xena plastering their bedroom walls and idolize Barbara Adams, Champion of Intergalactic Peace and Tolerance (who actually has a fan page...I am not making this up, you know). So that’s why I decided to spend a couple of hours swearing at my computer and stomping around the apartment like a baby allosaurus. If it ain’t broken, heap piles of steaming manure on it. That’s what I always say.

After staring at a directory of unzipped Movable files freshly downloaded into my computer for approximately five minutes, I realized I had absolutely no clue as to how to proceed. “I know! I’ll check the online instructions!” I thought to myself triumphantly. After staring at the online instructions for approximately five minutes, I realized I had absolutely no clue as to how to proceed. I felt exactly like I’d felt after having read the following passage from Star Trek: The Next Generation: Technical Manual, a book my sister sent me as I joke (I hope). Keep in mind as you’re reading that the topic is something made up:

“A subspace field of one thousand millicochranes or greater becomes the familiar warp field. Field intensity for each warp factor increases geometrically and is a function of the total of the individual field layer values. Note that the cochrane value for a given warp factor corresponds to the apparent velocity of a spacecraft traveling at that warp factor. For example, a ship traveling at Warp Factor 3 is maintaining a warp field of at least 39 cochranes and is therefore traveling at 39 times c, the speed of light.”

Of course! I am nothing but an ignorant fool! But not so ignorant that I can’t search the entire unzipped Movable files for anything with the word “install”. There turned out to be several, but they all seemed to pertain to magical feats that only occur after installation. In vain I raced my pointer up and down the files, searching for something…anything!…that ended with “.exe”. Nothing was to be found.

So now the files have been removed from my computer. I hang my head in defeat. I could have been a glorious god; instead I will a mere mortal. Vanquished, I return to my dots and that weird orange color I can’t replace with anything…a broken blogger.

Maybe one day I will be like Frank, who I am not implying is a nerd, who designs his own sites and could kick Movable Type's ass, and who on his blog gives you a choice of three styles in which to view his wackiness, manic, arctic teacup, and feline. Maybe one day I’ll turn like Jean-Luc Picard to my computer crew and say, “Make it so.” And it will be so.

[Disclaimer: Voyager and Enterprise are two of my favourite TV shows. What’s more, I think Captain Janeway and 7 of 9 would be pretty cool to have a few beers with, if they were real people, which they aren’t. Moreover, I would enjoy multiple sexual encounters with most of the male cast of Enterprise, and maybe even with T’Pol…or with 7, for that matter. No nerds were harmed in the writing of this bloggie, although I certainly wanted to harm a few.]

Alien Nation

2004-05-30T01:10:00.000-04:00

can't blog...on vacation

2004-05-29T01:21:00.000-04:00

Limbo Bimbo

2004-05-28T10:51:00.000-04:00

The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to the First Level of Hell - Limbo!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very High
Level 2 (Lustful)	Low
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	High
Level 7 (Violent)	Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Low
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Moderate

Take the Dante's Inferno Test

Click on the levels for a complete explanation.
Limbo?! I get boring, beige limbo? I thought I'd get some serious retribution for lust, homosexuality, or surliness (although I have to admit that spending eternity with Caesar, Homer, Virgil, Socrates, and Aristotle doesn't sound like such a raw deal). I guess being Jewish makes me a "virtuous nonbeliever". I must be so much more boring than I think I am.

(Pillaged from Bluewyvern.)