Irrational thoughts on vans, and the creeps who drive them.

He pulls up beside me in his white utility van, slowing enough so that the pace of his lumbering vehicle nearly matches my own, its physical presence cutting me off from the rest of the world. It's eerie, being stalked by this great white whale. If his intention is to thoroughly creep me out, he's doing a good job. He rolls down the window to ask directions, and once dispensed, he does depart. But I can't shake my apprehension, nor can I believe that it never crosses his mind that this scenario is inappropriate. He could have stopped at any number of gas stations, but instead he turns down an isolated little side street and pursues a woman walking alone in the dark in an area not particularly well-lit. Yet he never considers that this is exactly the thing her mother has warned her about; exactly the thing that half of all email urban myths are about; the very essence of Stranger Danger personified.

He has to know that a man driving a large van is most often described as a suspect, or else an “alleged perpetrator” in the crime blotter section of any major newspaper. Those vans are the kidnapper's vehicle of choice. Even the car salesman at the lot sheepishly hands over a glossy brochure that says

“Perfect for abducting to your heart's content! Park it in a secluded spot and you can dismember in the privacy of your own fully-automatic vehicle without ever worrying that someone will overhear. Driver-controlled power locks ensure that no victim will ever escape. Now available in child-molester white!”

So yes, I'm wary of men in vans who drive up beside me in the middle of the night when I'm all alone. The question is: how is it that it never occurs to these men that they're giving me the bad kind of goosebumps? Because a week later, it happened again.

Another man pulls up beside me in another van, same quiet street, same time of night. He asks for directions, and I give them, generally, even though my beating heart tells me to run in the opposite direction as fast as my little legs will carry me. Placated, he drives away, once again leaving me wondering how these men can be so thoughtless, and whether scaring solitary women half to death is a common hobby among van owners, or if the neighbourhood predators really are just doing their recon work on me.

I don't get very far on my path or in my thoughts though, because van guy is back. He wants me to get in the van.

Suddenly, I'm feeling worse. He doesn't take no for an answer. He persists, trailing me at an ominous 5km\hr. If I guide him to where he wants to be, he says, he'll drop me off at the train station. He seems genuinely mystified that I'm not hopping right into a strange man's car. I walk briskly and ignore his yells and whistles. I don't know how far he might have followed me had I not turned up a pedestrian-only path.

And this is how I have come to dread my nightly commute to work. Common sense has refused to teach these men that some behaviours are just not acceptable and I'm paying a price. I've been made to feel unsafe in my own neighbourhood, which is not actually a dangerous place. But when I'm alone at night, I'm not reciting soothing crime statistics in my head. I'm fighting tears and quickening my pace. I'm not rational when it comes to protecting myself from harm.

Luckily, my momma didn't raise no fool. I won't be willingly climbing into the back of one of those vans unless the driver is really, really cute, or he's offering me an awful lot of money.

Pee-Fetish

My favourite word in English is corpuscle. Corpuscle. Mm. What a meaty little word. It starts in the back of my throat and ends up vibrating in my stomach. Corpuscle corpuscle corpuscle. Corpuscular. Corpusculous. Corpuscularity. God, it's exciting. It's a thrill just to say.

My favourite word in French is pneu. What a delight for the tongue - such complexity in just 4 little letters. You can say and resay the word until your lips tingle and the word loses all meaning and still it's a pleasure.

Perhaps I have a p-fascination, which is queer because as a much younger version of my current self, I was most obsessed with the letter M because I thought it was so pretty in cursive. I am probably too swayed by the prettiness of letters - it was the deciding factor in how I should hyphenate my last name. Originally Jason's name was to go first, we thought it sounded better, but after weeks of practicing, I still couldn't make a convincing cursive T, and so we flipped the names, and there you have it. (Now I rather think that my cursive Ts are more pleasing than my cursive Es, but let's just keep that between you and me.)

My M-mania has long passed, but once upon a time every character I wrote about was named Melissa and every time I played Barbies mine was called Marcia (it was apparently lost on me that Barbie was already named, well, Barbie). And despite the obvious arousal the letter P elicits for me, I've never dated Peter, Paul, or Mary. Well, you know what I mean.

Yeah, I know I'm weird.

The Ocean is a Giant Grave

I was watching this old news footage of a dying whale beached somewhere near Vancouver and it really bothered me that all these people in business suits were on the beach, taking time out of their morning commute to watch and touch a whale who was taking its last breaths. It seemed awful to me that this beast was not dying with dignity, had become a side-show in its last moments and that people just naturally assumed they had a right to witness what should probably be a very private moment, even if it is a whale. Or maybe because it is a whale. It's not a human, so how dare we impose our own (lack of) morals upon it?

Then I wondered what a "normal" whale death consisted of. Do they go belly-up and sink to the bottom? I imagined what the ocean floor would look like with thousands of hundred-tonne whale carcases strewn around. But then I wondered if perhaps they tended to float, like a human body, if it fills with gases and rises to the top and bakes in the sun. And then I figured that whale or not, in death it would probably become food pretty quickly, and somehow I find that a comforting thought, like the deep-sea version of "dust to dust."

They say all dogs go to heaven, but I wonder if heaven has a place for whales, and if so, it must be a pretty big place. I mean, the world is overpopulated with just the people who live here now - imagine how big it would have to be to accommodate the souls of all the dead people and animals who came before. I think it must be crazy to be rubbing shoulders with dinosaur ghosts. I don't think you'd have to worry about getting eaten though, because you have to be on your best behaviour in heaven. Probably heaven is like a party after everyone's had a few hits from the same bong, mellow and polite, a little stunned, but you forget about grudges and grievances and just wink at each other an awful lot.

If there was a beached whale in downtown Toronto, I wonder if I'd go. I mean, it's easy to be outraged by the whale's invasion of privacy when it's all the way in Vancouver and the only ocean for 1700km is in a small vial on the top shelf of my closet, smuggled in from a trip to the Caribbean, but what if it was right here? An accident always attracts a crowd. I don't usually like to gawk, but we're talking whale here: the closest to a mythical beast as we are ever likely to get. They've been around for millions of years, and can apparently live longer than we can, if only we'd stop killing them, and man, if they could talk, imagine what they would tell us! But whales are excellent at keeping secrets, so we can only guess, but they fascinate us so we build theme parks and cheesy movies in their honour. They're like fish, but not. And they sing so beautifully we bottle it and pipe it into spas.

I think I remember reading somewhere that some cultures revere whales and hold funerals for beached whales, and I can't help but think of how beautiful it would be on a beach at night, with hundreds of people holding flickering candles, the smell of the salt water and the sound of little splashes with the water lapping on the beach, trying to reclaim one of its own, and the low hum of sad voices, and this huge, mysterious creature lying in the middle of it, still slippery, seaweed still clinging to its body, sandy and sparkling in the moonlight. And then, perversely, I think of the size of the calluses on the hands of whatever poor sucker is roped into digging the grave.

But then I'm sad that this poor whale has to die alone, without his mummy or his wife, or his close "companion" or whatever. I think most of like to picture ourselves going quietly, maybe even in our sleep, in our nice warm beds with a loved one's arms wrapped around us. And while whales don't have arms, I like to think that they have their prefered death rituals too, and being poked by curious investment bankers wearing suspenders and appearing in the latest youtube video probably doesn't factor into it.

I hope, at the very least, that the whale can close its eyes and think of a happy, kelpy place, and as he drifts into whatever afterlife awaits him, that he's swum a few good laps, eaten some succulent fish, and given at least one Ahab a run for his money.

I Steal Puppies.

So I was walking down the street, heel-toe, heel-toe, a little bit jaunty because I was humming some Al Green to myself, and I was swinging my purse to and fro (I'm a voracious purse-swinger. Lots of times, the straps on my purses will break mid-swing, flinging my purse and its contents far and wide, sometimes directly into oncoming traffic...it's funny how the strap never breaks when my purse is calmly sitting on the floor of the car or beside my chair at dinner...not, it only breaks when it's mid-air). At any rate, I was safely ensconced in Jamie-bubble and there isn't normally much that would burst it - I could walk by the world's hairiest man wrestling a llama and I wouldn't notice, I could step over a pile of severed limbs spelling out my initials and I wouldn't look twice, I could walk through a replica of castle Grayskull made entirely of gouda and pretzels and notice little more than a rumbly in my tumbly - but a sweet little puppy trotted out to the sidewalk to greet me, and in mere moments I was all moist-eyed and sugar-tongued.

He was a cutie, which is a fancy way of saying I can't identify breeds. But he had short little legs and an ironic smile, and a coat of fur that looked like it would shed very negligibly. But the best part was that he was unleashed and people-less. And did I mention he was about the size of my purse?

The thing is, I don't have a dog but would like one very much. If God himself happens to put a purse-sized dog in my path, who am I to argue? I need a pet, and this dog seemed in need of some water, and it just so happens that I have a tap or two in my house, which is a pretty astounding coincidence, no? It seemed like the universe was practically forcing this puppy into my purse, and then forcing me to run furtively with the squirmy dog back to my place, ignoring shouts of "Stop, thief!" and "Dog-napper!", which, to be fair, could equally have been "Chop beef!" and "Hog-slapper!" for all I know. There are some pretty sketchy butchers in my neighbourhood. And that being the case, thank goodness I've rescued this poor dog before he followed the fate of the skunk.

All right, so I didn't steal the dog. I just thought about it. A lot. I thought about his little eyes, and the way they seemed to see straight to my soul and say "Hey lady, give me a cheese slice!" and how I don't actually have any cheese slices, but I know where I could get some, and how we'd have a happy, calcium-rich existence together forever, or at least until one of us got run over by an ice cream truck.

And then, a couple of days later, I was again confronted with temptation when a dog boarded the bus I was on. This guy was a golden retriever (which is probably the only breed I know, because one starred on Full House), and I could tell he and I were kindred spirits because he got on the bus, looked around disgustedly at the other riders, and then collapsed in the middle of the aisle, taking up more space than he deserved with a definite air of superiority and I-don't-give-a-shittedness. Unfortunately, his owner boarded right behind him, which confused me because he had protuberant elbows and forest-green corduroy pants, so on the one hand I thought clearly this man does not deserve to be a pet owner, but on the other hand I thought perhaps the dog is his only friend in the whole wide world, and as puppy-free as my life is, at least I have proportionate joints and seasonally appropriate clothes. But the pity was fleeting as I am quite self-centered, and I used the rest of my bus ride to establish eye contact with the dog who remained comfortably stretched out on the floor, looking like it quite expected to be fed peeled grapes at any moment. I felt like if only I could catch his eye, we could silently communicate our intentions. I thought that as we approached my stop, I could pretend like it was just another pole on a long and pitted road, but then at the last minute, having fooled everyone into thinking that I was staying seated, I would leap through the doors just as they were swinging shut, sort of Kill Bill-style (if Kill Bill had been a movie about the seedy underbelly of public transportation) (call me, Quentin!), and the dog, casting a "so long, sucker" glance at his ex-owner, would follow suit, and then we'd both stand on the curb and smirk as the bus pulled away with the bamboozled Mr. Big Elbows staring aghast out the window, helpless and alone.

But it turns out that I didn't do that one, either.
I guess I'm just a softie at heart.
Or, you know, a pussy.

One of those two.

Window Pain

This morning I was woken up by a sound that I would have guessed was a robotic lamb bleating loudly for its mommy.

Turned out, one of my neighbours was doing her laundry (her clothes line is in desperate need of some WD-40).

It was 5:47am and the sun was just pink enough in the sky for me to make out other eyes such as mine peaking from between the slits of horizontal blinds, all of them beaming rays of unkindness upon the woman who dared disturb our last (and therefore most precious) moments of peace before another day begins.

I feel back asleep only to be wakened again, this time by what sounded like someone using a screwdriver and various cans of half-filled, half-spilled paint as a percussion instrument, and it turns out, that's exactly what it was. The musician was a 2 year old kid in a diaper, who must have been freezing in the cool temperatures that still cling to the dewy grass before 7am.

I was personally a little happy to have cooler temperatures prevail - not only was my sunburn soothed, but it allowed me to wear my Feel Good Sweater, something I have longed to do for 2 whole weeks but because of fevers in the body and stuffiness in the room, I could not.

Feel Good Sweater is a short hoodie, gray knit with silver strands throughout that are like pieces of tinsel from a Christmas tree. There's a little bunny pouch to keep my hands warm and long strings to keep me entertained while talking on the phone. It becomes part of my pj ensemble, and to me, it's like wearing a hug. I'm not much of a cuddler, and I don't care for the person-to-person contact, but Feel Good Sweater is all the affection with none of the pressure.

Perfection.

So I'm sitting in bed in Feel Good Sweater and some fuzzy slippers, and watching the things that happen outside of my window when it rains (I mentioned it's raining, right? Because it is, and not softly, either).

The raindrops tap tap tap on the shingles of the roof, and also ping ping ping on the piece of corrugated iron below and slap slap slap on the cracked window pane lifted above my head. Through the magic of window screens, I can smell the wet earth, and the scent is rich because it's spring and the earth is dark and recently churned where people have started to garden.

The yard below me is a narrow mess. There is no lawn, it's mostly rocks and patches of ground, and a few intrepid weeds that have managed to poke through the obstacles.

The yard to my left is much nicer. I wish that yard was mine. The grass, though only slightly larger than the proverbial postage stamp, is actually green and grows in one blade at a time, and has been uniformly cut. There's a neat patch in the back that could be a garden if only someone spared the time. I would spare mine. I would love to sink my hands in the wet dirt, dig holes and leave behind seeds, watch the earthworms filter through.

The yard to my right is an embarrassment. There is a white minivan up on cinder blocks. It has clearly been left there to die an undignified death, slowly rusting away, showing its sickness in bright orange patches for all the world to see and pity. Beside it, comically, is a white jeep, the plastic battery-powered kind that kids can drive around, but this one too has been relegated to junk, and it sits not on cinder blocks but a battered old folding table that looks ready to collapse.

Other yards are harder to see, although we are only separated by low chain-link fences. One appears to have been paved over. Another is obscured by the 3 satellite dishes attached to the house. One yard is completely full of...something. Stakes? Posts? I like to think that some sort of inventor-type person lives there, and creates these elaborate contraptions, and in the morning when the sun hits the sundial, a little ball starts rolling, which opens the gate, which drops the weight that's holding a bar that releases the mechanism that flushes the upstairs toilet. Or something. I like that house because there's a tiny window up on the upper floor that's been framed by electric-blue paint. Electric-blue for no apparent reason on an otherwise sedately bricked and sided home. I hope it's there for a whimsical reason, and not because electric-blue happened to be on sale that week.

In the yard beside that one are four tall wooden posts holding up a thatched covering of some sort. It kind of reminds of me of a chuppah, but that can't be what it is. But right now, it's just a free-standing thing, and I hope that as summer approaches its usefulness might become apparent.

Two houses over there's the bare metallic bones of a car port that houses no cars. On top there's a pile of dead leaves, only I can't decide if they're last year's garbage or this year's attempt at having vines grow over an otherwise incredi-ugly structure.

And beside that, a house which has its upper windows boarded over with plywood. I hope sincerely that no one lives in those quarters.

Beyond, there are several low-rise apartment buildings, all sitting squatly in their uniformly boring brownness. Why so much brown? The brown that reeks of cost-saving bleakness. If I ever have a million dollars, I will buy myself yards and yards of fabric and wrap those buildings up like presents in pinks and oranges and maybe even electric-blues.

But I don't have a million dollars, so for now I am content to sit in my Feel Good Sweater and gaze out at the wet, wet world, and wonder who, if anyone, is gazing back.

A New Tattoo, A Lot More Sex

I was at the grocery store early this morning, too early in fact, because it didn't open until 9, and despite this fact, there was a throng, yes a throng of people - at least 30, waiting impatiently to get in. It was a veritable sea of gray heads and glasses on chains, one that I kept my distance from for fear that I might get swept under their current and not resurface until I'm withered and wearing orthopedics myself.

They had all brought their own buggies - lined with cardboard and plastic bags, some of them adorned with little flags or rosaries - and they kept tapping insistantly on the glass windows, though this seem to have little effect on the speed of the employees inside.

This end of my block is referred to as "Little Italy", and if you happen to walk among them, you'll know why. They're small. They're all small. And they segregate themselves by sex while waiting outside the grocery store. The women stand with their arms crossed and a sour little purse of their lips. The men stand more socially, and they kiss each other an awful lot. They also seem to have an unwritten code that prohibits them from ever leaving the house without a sport coat and a pair of spiffy loafers.

The one upside to shopping with these eager-tomato-squeezers is that when it comes to my feminine hygiene needs, I have the whole aisle to myself.

I should have decided between laundry detergent and the case of pepsi, but I didn't, and I regretted it the whole way home, as I felt one disc slipping into another. Once relieved of my burden, I was one happy camel. I rewarded myself with a trip to the park with a little hummus and some cucumber slices and a book to keep me company.

But sitting on the wobbly bench, I was distracted by the other patrons of the park:

First, by a gathering of adults all dressed alike, rather boisterous at times and prayerfull the next.

Then by a cheep cheep cheep noise coming from a woman who had brought a green plastic lunch tray heaped with bread crumbs and was calling the dirty birds to her, and then left abruptly after dumping the contents of the tray directly behind me. Knowing my sweet spot was about to become a fowl toilet, I fled to the grassy hill where I sullied my bum (but avoided the shit).

And then by a lazy cow of a mother who let her 2 year old daughter run into the soccer field where the above group was playing. The mother stayed more than 100 yards away (way out of reach, in my opinion), and called feebly, even though from that distance not a sound could be heard. The play had to stop constantly for her, and still she got dangerously close to the flailing limbs of a soccer team, and if you've ever gotten thwacked in the face by a soccer ball kicked at high speed, just imagine being 2 and that the ball is bigger than your face. And the mother made no move to retrieve her kid.

I was afraid I would end up yelling at her, so I packed up my stuff and left. And as I walked home, I felt rather directionless. I was finding my way all right, I was headed home, but no longer sure what that meant. I have never thought that home was the place you lived, but lately it's certainly not where the heart is, and it's rarely where the rump rests or where I hang my hat. I don't know where I'm going, and I don't mean north or south.

At the start of the year, I made 2 resolutions:

1. Stop plucking.

2. Don't break the blender.

As you know, I feel like I've already accomplished the first, and as for the second, I no longer own a blender.

It's time for something new. It's time to do something for me. It's time for resolution v2.0:

1. A new tattoo.

2. A lot more sex.

Train (Wreck) of Thought

When I was a kid, I had a long-standing Saturday night date, and her name was Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. I miss those days. I wish I also had the opportunity to miss seeing tongue-kissing on television. But I wouldn't miss it because really I hate it, and that's too bad because I don't think it's going anywhere. If the visuals weren't bad enough, there's the slurping, soft-porn sound effects that go along with it.

It's kind of gross to see someone's big disgusting mouth-muscle dripping with expectorate probing another, with big gobs of drool and lines of bacteria-ridden spit flying about. Luckily, it's much less repulsive when I do it. Although, in the spirit of full disclosure, I have paid a steep price for my mad tonsil-hockey skillz (to this date, the only sport I actively participate in): yes, in my senior year, I contracted the nasty orally transmitted disease often referred to as the kissing disease. My grandmother still looks at me rather pointedly when she says those words (somehow, she works it into the conversation around the Christmas table every year without fail). I've tried to explain to her that rum & cokes are expensive and a girl's got to kiss a certain number of faceless, nameless, gropey men to store up enough stories for 10 years down the road when she's married and swapping much less spit. Long story short: french kisses are the reason I never eat at Wendy's, and why I never saw the end of Mission to Mars, and why my grandma thinks I'm a slut.

Where I come from, they call them "frenchers", and I can't help but wonder what is so french about them. If there is a common denominator between french toast, and french kissing, and french onion soup and french horns and french braids, it's eluding my silly french-canadian brain. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I realize if there is a connection, I don't want to know about it.

I also don't want to know what kind of undergarments the pope wears under his robes. But I do wonder. I wonder if he's a boxer or briefs kind of guy, I wonder if he matches his panties to the colour of his hat. I wonder if he goes commando under there (my rational is: a robe is dress-like as is a kilt, and we all know the scots like to go "regimental") but I try not to think too hard about it since I'm pretty sure that thinking about papal dangly bits is probably sacrilegious.

The pope sure does make some "interesting" fashion choices though. Funny how he never lands on the worst-dressed list. My grandfather also wears some funny hats, but has thus far only landed in the papers for occasionally winning raffles. Sometimes he wears a ten gallon hat when he takes my grandmother line dancing. The cowboy hat gives him such much-needed height (so do the cowboy boots with lifts), but really I think country music just brainwashes people. What else could explain that many bollo ties all in one place? The mere thought of that many denim-clad people who don't own pick up trucks and have never shovelled pig shit all doing the boot-scoot-and-boogie is pretty much my idea of hell, and given my proclivities for talking about pope-penis, I should probably get used to it.

I can see the upside to hell, though. I mean, the warm climate is a great draw for a snow-bound Canadian such as myself. And I imagine it will be populated with all kinds of interesting characters, stumbling and slurring around, just like me. Kind of like I imagine Florida must be like: crowded and hot, but a nice contrast to the great white north.

Not that I'm anxious to experience the nine circles of hell. What I am anxious for is diving between my cool, just-washed sheets, or getting the first hint of tan, or finding the cell phone that I lost 10 ten days ago, or finding a skirt that makes my hips look "curvy" instead of "fat", or...okay, you got me. What I'd really like is to settle into my big comfy couch and watch a season or two of my ex-girlfriend, Dr. Quinn. You know, for old time's sake.

Mentally Constipated

When I make a grill-cheesed sandwich, I like to cut into 4 triangles.

I remember, as a kid, my mother would occasionally take us to lunch at The Fifth Wheel, which was a truckstop where her friend was a waitress and she could smoke as furiously as she liked. I always ordered the grilled cheese, not because they made particularly good sandwiches but because of toothpicks topped with colourful cellophane that were always stuck through the middle.
Secretly, I collected these treasures in a hidden cubbyhole in the very back seat of my mother's Ford Aerostar.

Grilled cheeses are such perfect, humble food. So unassuming. People say pie is humble, but obviously they've never had my black and white pie, which is so snazzy I call it my Snazzy Black and White Pie (never underestimate the power of Capital Letters).

That pie is as unhumble as I am. Today I cleaned out my light-rotation closet, and came across some very unhumble ditties, such as my black boa. There is nothing humble about a boa. I remember once wearing it to the movies for no other reason than I felt like having a feather boa kind of day, and the grizzled old man selling the tickets said "I've worked at this theatre for 37 years and I've never seen a boa before" which is one of the highlight compliments of my life.

Personally, I'm not sure if I see many benefits to being humble. I realize the baby Jesus thinks humility is a virtue, but I'm not sure if I'm prepared to take humble lessons from a guy who has his own bobblehead. Patience is also a virtue, apparently, but I notice that this is something usually said by government workers when they've taken 7 years to issue you a passport.

I can't imagine a scenario in which I would have to pick a favourite virtue, but if I did, temperance would be it. Not that I am temperate person, but then, nor am I a virtuous woman. But I love temperance for its valiant attempt to remove from life every single thing worth living for. I don't endorse temperance, but I love the ballsiness of it - anything that feels good must be sin, and therefore it is to be avoided. I remember this one time I was visiting one of those pioneer villages with my friend Anna. The residents of this village, straight from the year 1870, were trying to have us sign an oath of abstinence. Randy teenagers that we were, we could only imagine that abstinence referred to sex (we had seen the pamphlets in sex ed...and promptly put them in the waste bin, where they belong). But imagine our surprise when the abstinence theme song turned out to be a lusty rendition of "Throw Down the Bottle!"

Anyway. I think I was making a point about grilled cheese sandwiches somewhere back there.

Today I am not having a feather boa kind of day, I am having a grilled cheese kind of day. But also the kind of day where I just feel like heating up a pot of extra virgin olive oil and combing it through my hair. It's weird to sit around all greasy in the hopes that my hair will, through the magic of olives, become lustrous and healthy despite the fact that I've burned it beyond redemption with bleach. Also, despite the fact that it's dead. I believe in the power of hot oil treatments...but at the same time, I'm not about to dig up my dead grandfather, rub him thoroughly with a pound of butter and expect him to come back to life. I mean, I'm an optimist. I'm practically a groupie where monosaturated fats are concerned. But I'm pretty sure that all the time and money we spend on the dead stuff growing out of our scalps - the shampooing, the conditioning, the curling, the straightening, the styling, the colouring - it's kind of necrophilic, isn't it?

Well, good sense tells me I should quit while I'm ahead, and though I can't identify what I'm a head of, I am 98% confident that I could sink lower if I kept going. It's just one of those days. Try not to hold it against me.

Stuff I Wonder

Why does my back never get itchy in a place where I can scratch it?
Why does the grocery store sell lemons in 3s and limes in 4s?
Why would polish # 96, Rouge Vamp, pick today to turn from liquid to solid?
Does Ellen DeGeneres wear a bathing suit?
Will Jason ever clean the baking soda that I used on the oven to put out the flames caused by preheating it for chicken wings without wiping the residual apple pie first?
Why do I do laundry so often when I own 37 pairs of panties?
Am I too tired to eat or too hungry to sleep?
Why do I let Jason pop my blisters?
Is it possible, that in the final week's wait for Adam Sandler's new movie Reign Over Me, I will simply burst with excitement, and Jason will have to scoop up my goop, put it in a yogurt container, and take that as his date instead?
What are we saving daylight for? Are we saving it somewhere safe? Does it accrue interest? Will it come in handy at a later date?
When will the the hangnail of my little toe finally fall off and stop torturing me?
Why did I spend $28 on a bottle of tinted moisturizer that makes people ask me why my knees are bruised?
How can a grown man not keep track of tupperware?
Did I ever get the grass stains out of my wedding dress? Where is that dress, anyway? Why am I only wondering this now?
How is it fair that my favourite bracelet rips the hair right out of my arm?
Why do the bananas go bad 5 minutes before I start to crave them?
Do I really have nothing better to do than this?

Just Me?

Sometimes, when I rent a car, and pay for the insurance, I feel obligated to smash into things just so I get my money's worth.

It's an honour just to be nominated?

You know you've really hit it big when your "amigos" at latingossip.com email you congratulations about your recent nomination (incidentally, I would have preferred champagne).

Yes, my friends, what you've read about me in Star Magazine is true: I am a Bloggie award finalist, and I say that with all the sincere pride and gravitas such a distinction deserves.

Kill the Goat is nominated in the Best Canadian Blog category, which is somewhat fitting, because it is a blog, and I do write it in Canada, for the most part. But let me tell you, the competition is stiff. You can kind of tell that in this fine country of mine, there are 4 "big" blogs out there (and by "big", I mean the kind that refer to themselves as "we" because they have editors and contributers, and their own domain and blog design) and that I'm the wildcard (and by "wildcard" I mean, the only one who still uses blogger, and who has nothing of importance to say, and what I do say I say without style because I don't even know how to use italics).

But it's an honour just to be nominated anyway.
Well, not really, but it's the right thing to say.
It's kind of akin to saying "it's what's inside that counts" and you just know that only ugly chicks say stuff like that.

But it is an awful lot of fun to be the underdog, to be the only one in the bunch who actually writes about the banalities of life, you know, like:

I ate 4 clementines today. I really like clementines. And geez my elbows are dry lately. Jason's boss bought him body butter for Christmas, so of course it was re-gifted to me, but it mostly just stinks and doesn't hydrate the skin at all. I think I would have nicer skin if I just rubbed the clementines all over my body. Why doesn't spell checker like the word clementine? Am I not spelling it right, or is blogger just anti-tangerine?

Yeah. Like that.

So obviously I have no delusions about winning. I mean, when fellow nominees include Boing Boing, Dooce, and Postsecret, you pretty much know that the goat is doomed. So I won't ask you to vote for me, but I will suffer you to sit through my would-be acceptance speech.

First of all, I would like to thank The Lord. Because we all know that God loves rappers best, football players second, and bloggers third.

I couldn't be here without my mother, who provided me with the kind of childhood that breeds the ultimate blogging material: neurosis and bleeding ulcers.

I would also like to thank UPS for constantly giving me something to rant about, insomnia for giving me the time to rant about UPS, vodka for making me think that anyone cares, and of course, the penis, because it always gives me something to think (and write) about.

Seriously, I know that a blogger only gets anywhere when she has some good friends who drop by and pretend to read her ravings on a semi-regular basis, and to all of you who have done that for me, I thank you. An especially big thank you to those who take further time out of their day to write comments or send emails. Comments are like crack - intoxicating until they run out, and then I just want more.

And finally, thank you to the prestigious 2007 Weblog Awards for bestowing upon me this dubious honour and for letting me fill the "Doesn't Stand a Chance" slot this year.

Buckle up for safety, everyone.
Thank you, and goodnight.

Sugarhigh

There's a fire drill happening between my ears. Not a huge, blazing eight-alarm fire, but not a tame kitten-up-the tree alarm either. More like...someone's burning trash in a drum in their backyard, and it's been a dry season, and there's a fire ban in effect. It's like that: moderately urgent, moderately jarring. Or it would be moderate if it wasn't taking place inside my head cavity, which it is. And I think my head has an echo effect because the fire drill between my ears is causing my jaw to seize up.

And you just know it's Jason's fault.

He's been serving me Pepsi all night, you see. Despite the fact that it's diet Pepsi that I adore, and diet Pepsi to which my system is accommodated, and diet Pepsi that I've been addicted to for 17 years and counting.

And I knew it was wrong.

"Does this taste flat to you?" I asked.

He thought not.

"Does this taste thick to you?" I asked.

Again, he thought not. But he put extra ice in my glass to appease me.

And like a fool, I drank it. And I probably drank more of it than usual because of these ultra-inviting straws I bought, pink and orange swirls that just say "drinking is fun!", and it is, so I did.

If I wake up tomorrow without teeth, I won't be surprised.

Of course, that takes for granted that I might actually fall asleep at some point, which I strongly doubt.

"Did ten thousand flies just start humming Yellow Submarine?"

"Um, no."

"Are you sure? Because I can hear them."