Breakables & Unbreakability

I can understand why a person might steal. I can even almost understand why a husband might steal from his wife. I can grasp the concept of wanting all the money instead of just half of it. I'm the same way with pie. I can likewise understand why he also took the car, and the apartment, and all of the furniture. Having a couch is good. Having a couch, a love seat, a lounger and 3 chairs is much better. And it's perfectly understandable that he'd feel entitled to both the dining table and the little kitchen table. After all, he's got all the dishes, all the damask napkins, all the serving platters, all the candle sticks, and even the little pot holders that my grandmother crocheted for my hope chest when I was 8 - the poor guy needs a place to put them all! And I certainly don't begrudge him all the bedding, including the Winnie the Pooh set my mother gave me when I left for school, or the Star Wars set I inherited from my cousin Tim. I mean, come on - he took the bed, so what the hell would I do with sheets and blankets anyway?

So yeah. I kind of get it. It's nice to be able to buy food, and have an oven to heat it in, and a fork to eat it with.

What I don't understand is why he would also steal a drawer full of my underwear. What is he doing with my panties? Wait - don't answer that. Turns out, I'd rather not know. Rather not even consider it. Rather not picture him walking around his lonely apartment with lace chafing in all the wrong places.

But I would like to know why he's also taken my mittens. When he leaves the house bundled in the leather coat I bought him and gets into the car that isn't his, does he feel guilty that his hands are warm and mine are not? Or does he watch the weather network (while wearing the red silk thong) and gloat over my frostbitten fingers?

Does he feel like a big man when he puts on my cupcake pjs, pours some champagne into my monogrammed flutes, tosses aside my suede throw pillows and sits down to watch Love Story?

Is he proud to have robbed me of Christmas - of my mistletoe bar ware, my gingerbread cookie jar, the papier-mache reindeer ornament that I hand-painted just last year?

He's got every photograph I've ever taken, every poem I've ever written, every memento I ever deemed worth keeping. They're just things, but they're my things, my lifetime of things, and he's holding them hostage. The only thing he's not taking is his medication, but maybe if I wrote my name on the bottle he'd want that too.

I grieve for the man that I married, lived with and loved as if he's dead. For me, he is. He doesn't exist anymore. He's been replaced by a thief who's stolen more than just my possessions. I picture the man I married buried somewhere underneath the things taken from me - beneath broken promises, broken vows, broken hearts. I might have been buried there too, suffocating under the collapsed burden of the fraudulent life we built together, had I not taken my leave when I did.

He can have the teacup that belonged to my dead Aunt Mary, and the picture frame that my sister made me when I graduated high school, and the video tape of my third grade recital. It'll take a lot more than that to break me. Those are just relics of a past life anyway. I don't need them anymore.

So pardon me if my smile is too bright for a woman who's just lost everything. My new life may be sparsely furnished, but it's mine, and nobody can take it away.

I'm Getting Fat for Christmas

The good news is, there's nothing left to stop me from taking up grand theft auto.

The bad news is, when they inevitably find my bloated corpse in a ditch by the highway, they'll have to use dental records to identify me.

I'm going to miss having fingerprints, but on the upside, my laptop screen has never looked more smudge-free!

As I'm sure you've guessed by now, I've been doing a little holiday baking. You know, the kind where you bake furiously with the intention of freezing it all so you can pretend to be the perfect hostess when those annoying impromptu guests show up when really you're just thawing crap you made a month ago. Also the kind where none of the desserts ever actually make it to the freezer, because of course you can't simply trust that they're delicious, you have to taste them, and then you can't rely on such a selective sample, you have to be more thorough, and then someone comes in the kitchen and catches you furtively shoving sweets down your gullet and it makes such an attractive picture they decide to join you, and suddenly you've spent 7 hours baking and all you've got to show for it are some crumbs and a pile of dirty dishes that you're considering just chucking out because it's not like you'll need them again before next year, at which point you can claim ignorance to what's happened to them (and let's face it, you've already opened your second bottle of wine, so it's quite likely that you'll have legitimately forgotten anyhow) and besides, you just consumed several kilos worth of sugar - you need a nap, or a padded cell, or a nap inside a softly padded cell.

So yeah. I'm feeling a little queasy. I just seared off my own fingerprints via the painful but effective method of molten marshmallow - and damn if that stuff doesn't stick! And when you finally get to peel it away, off comes those identifying little whorls you wasted years of your life becoming familiar with.

Anyway. Everyone knows there's only one real reason we do holiday baking, and that's to have the opportunity to freebase some sweetened condensed milk. All year long, I fantasize about that little pop top, rolling back the lid and finding all that sweetness inside. The baked goods get sacrificed - they end up dry so that I can get my fix - but just a little of that ooey gooey good stuff dancing on my tongue, and it's all worth it. Years and years from now, scientists will find my legacy. I won't leave behind cave paintings or arrowheads or clay pots. I'll leave behind crumbly bits of dessert buried deep within a chest freezer, and when they do their experiments they'll conclude that in the year 2007 there was a frightful sweetened condensed milk shortage, and how did we all survive?

Name That Boyfriend!

About 45 minutes into our date, he pretty much had me figured out.

As he pleaded with me to have even one chicken wing, so as not to let them go to waste, he then pointed at my accidentally third rye and coke (to his half a Guinness) and mumbled something about it certainly not going to waste. And it didn't. I gave each and every one of them a good home, and still got off my bar stool in a practically-lady-like fashion (thank you jesus, I wasn't wearing a skirt).

About three hours, 2 drinks, and 1 joint later, we were lying in bed when I had my aha moment. I was being a little....handsy...when I made an unexpected discovery, prompting him into a quick confession.

Oh, by the way, he says. I only have one testicle.

He only has one testicle!

I mean, his testicles still outnumber my testicles, but by a much slimmer margin than I am accustomed to.

And mustn't it be lonely in there, swinging away all day without a twin? Does it throw him off balance? And how can I tactfully ask these questions? It's not exactly typical first-date fodder: where did you go to school? do you like your job? are your brothers hot? what happened to your other ball?

So, I'm trying to find something to say to that. Something one-testicle-positive. Something to put him at ease. Something to break the weird shroud of silence that fell immediately after the one-nut discovery. I mean, should I confess some medical mystery of my own? But somehow the scar that I acquired from a bad double-dutch-skipping accident pales in comparison to a testicle that's mia. How am I to compete with that?

Luckily, I managed to nonverbally communicate the fact that, oh! one ball! neat! doesn't bother me at all! see what we can still do! and from this angle! oh, that tickles! And by the time I got through nonverbally showing him how cool I think his one ball is, I was thinking to myself, I'd like to do that again.

Only not.

Because there's a problem.

A nontesticular problem.

He has a horrid first name.

Stop the presses! For the record, I DID know his name before all of this, thankyouverymuch. I just didn't realize it was going to be such a problem until I was saying the name out loud, over and over, kind of insistently, while being slapped in strange places by one hairy ball (what? who says you didn't need to know that?).

Why couldn't he be a Leonard, or a Wilbur, or a Harold, or a Thumbelina, if it came to that?

Why on earth did he have to be another Jason?

Because it's already getting a little messy. Anything I say, I have to qualify with New-Jason and Old-Jason, or Sane-Jason and Crazy-Jason, or The One I Don't Hate Yet (just kidding) (mostly). So I was thinking you might help me come up with a nickname for (New) Jason, one that does not contain the phrase "The One Nut Wonder", preferably.

Un-married.

As you may or may not have heard, I have recently become unmarried, which means that I have suddenly become able to do things that I promised not to do for the rest of my life. Not naming any names, but through the magic of mental illness, a certain ex of mine was unstable enough to warrant some time apart even before we officially called it off. He called it "trial separation" - I called it "practising being single again." He spent the time thinking, stealing money out of our joint bank account, and not taking his anti-depressants, and I spent the time partying with boys who don't share my last name (may not even have last names, for all I knew). Obviously, a good time was had by all.


But I've had to learn some things along the way.


Like: It doesn't matter how old he is. What matters is when his kids, who are your age, call him in the middle of the night because they want some Wendy's.


Like: When you're in bed with a teacher and he huskily whispers in your ear that he likes to be spanked, it kind of kills the mood to picture the innocent children who are doubtless being corrupted by this pervert. And it's not that spanking is so bad, just that you always thought of teachers as being rather sexless, and when you start picturing your second grade teacher while someone's feeling you up....you've pretty much lost the game.


Like: Even though he's a broad, built, handsome firefighter who picks you up in a Prada suit and opens the door to his hot little car for you on your way to tapas (your favourite, without telling him), tells you all about his volunteer work at the SPCA and asks you to dance before splitting dessert, and then leans in for the perfect kiss without getting fresh when he drops you off, it's still okay to not return his calls because his facial hair is too "wispy".


Marriage, if nothing else, is habit, and in the 8 years I've spent in this past relationship, I fear I've adopted some rather bad ones.


Like: being way too comfortable with nudity. Like forgetting myself and changing clothes in front of men I haven't known very long. Not that they're complaining, but about the time when my clothes are on the floor and I'm bent over searching the bottom drawer for an elusive t-shirt, I freeze and think, There's some sort of unspoken waiting period for this shit.


Like: not changing the sheets after every single, erm, emission. You can get away with that when it's the same emission every night, but when you're seeing different emitters, it's more polite not to have someone else's leftovers on your linen.


Like: not carrying any money with you when you go to the bar. Single girls don't need to buy their own drinks either (at least, not this one), but she should always carry cab fare. And as dresses lack pockets and she doesn't have a husband's at her disposal, she has to carry her cash and lipstick herself. Learning to dance with a purse again is bullshit.


Getting married was easy. You invite people to send you gifts, write some sappy vows, drink some champagne, and voila - married.


Getting divorced is easy. You throw your diamond ring with all your might at your ex's eye, get strange men buy you margaritas, sign your big fat maiden name beside the X, and presto - divorced.

But getting into the mindset of un-married, that weird transitional phase where you actually have to shave to have sex, is harder.

And surprisingly fun.

Facebook makes me suicidal.

If you have thus far avoided the vast, sucking hole that is Facebook, congratulations. You will never have to learn that your ex-lover got fat and bald and the guy you turned down in high school has just bought his second waterfront cottage.

You will also never know what your good friends, your creepy relatives, your casual acquaintances, people you vaguely remember fucking, and others you added because you were too embarrassed to admit you didn't recognize their names really think about you.

And by "think about you", I don't mean whether they think you're a decent person or a hard worker. I mean whether they want to make out with you, secretly or otherwise. Now, clearly this is a bit sketchy: you can't claim that only want to make out with your wife. You have to pick. And you have to pick between 2 random people on your friends list. So if Facebook asks if you would rather make out with the guy who lives across the hall from you whom everyone refers to as "Mr. B.O." or the old lady who runs your eczema support group, you have to choose.

Worse than choosing between two need-to-gargle scenarios is the fact that these very people are also making the same decisions about you. And then the results of hundreds of these decisions are published for everyone to see.

I discovered that 100% of my friends voted me "rather kiss" , "better body", "cooler", and "sexier", which is natural enough. Thankfully these were also tempered with "most entertaining", "smarter", and "funnier." All words I use in reference to myself on at least an hourly basis. What perplexed me was also scoring 100% of the votes for "rather get stuck in handcuffs with" (although, even I can admit that it IS a pretty likely scenario), "more likely to win in a fight", (okay, I do have a pretty kicky reputation), "can drink more" (jeez, you name one saint after alcohol and suddenly you're a lush) and "more likely to skip class" (let it go already!). And what worried me is that I got no votes at all for "well-mannered", "studies harder", or "better at science."

Oh, so I suck at science, do I?

Okay, so it's great that my friends know me so well. But aren't friends supposed to, you know, lie on your behalf? Pretend you're better than you are? Not give you suck-at-science complexes?

I was just about ready to saddle up my high horse and ride to my closest Facebookian's house, and pound on their door shouting obscenities until they either called the cops (how quickly those handcuffs make an appearance) or give me the votes I am due. I realize I've wasted lots of good years by not stumping for votes, not polling my friends, not having fancy dinners that raise millions of dollars in order to have me elected Most Honest.

Would it help if I got celebrity endorsements?

Now, I'm not saying that you should withdraw your votes for "rather sleep with". I still want to be your hottest friend. I just would also like to be more your most talented friend, most accomplished, smoothest legs (okay, that one doesn't exist yet, but it should) - and hell, just for shits and giggles, let's throw in most organized as well. Fuck I'm impressive. Or, I would be, if only my friends were better liars.

You know, as long as I'm here, I may as well just junk the so-called friends who dared point out the fact that I am not tech-savvy and accept applications for new friends. Facebook friends. The only qualifications you need is the ability to stretch the truth, a willingness to assume that I am the best singer and the best smelling, and above else - not be better looking than me.

Judgy.

Why do I shave my legs before a job interview?

It's not like I applied at Player's Club or the Body Shop; smoothness of skin was not top on the list of desirable qualifications. In fact, none of the people I met with fondled me at all. No one commented on the intoxicating scent of my coconut body butter, no one eye-fucked the sexy toe-cleavage I had going on, no one had any trouble making or maintaining eye contact. It was all very proper.

And disappointing.

Why bother being beautiful when people are just going to look beyond that and judge you by your "skills" and "education" instead? What kind of world are we living in?

Heroes: too sexy for their own good?

Super Girl and Wonder Woman don their sturdy, practical

uniforms for another day of fighting crime and looking fabulous. Just a couple

of hours in hair and makeup and some craftily-applied two-sided

tape and these ladies are ready to go!

First stop: a pile of possibly hostile dead leaves, where the two

heroes confirm that indeed it is quite "nipply" out today, and Super Girl's

super mittens are not so funny after all. The cape, however, provides

little warmth.

A trip to the Tree of Truth puts both heroes on dangerous footing when

Wonder Woman feels compelled to confess that she loves the feel

of stalks between her legs and Super Girl sobs that

she really wanted to be a dentist. Luckily

they pull themselves together just in

time to save us all from

similar crimes of

veracity.

The pressures of being scantily-clad super heroes

eventually gets to Super Girl and Wonder Woman, and they almost

come to blows in front of the Evil Giant CoffeeMaker of Doom.

Super Girl calls Wonder Woman out on her slut-boots and Wonder Woman

strikes back by pointing out the PVC-ness of a certain super skirt.

Exasperated, the CoffeeMaker of Doom steps in and

assures them that they're both equally skanky, which gives the girls the

confidence to combine their ho-bilities and conquer caffeine, thus

saving the world.

Eco-conscious Wonder Woman leaves her SUV at home and

rides her noble steed instead. The steed is

less than thrilled, but does it for the love of snausages.

The girls take a moment out of their hectic day to sit with Jesus in the hot tub.

They ask him important questions such as "If you're all-powerful, why

do super heroes exist?" and "Which one of us is hotter?" and "No really,

who would you rather do?"

After a long day of hero-ing, the girls

kick off their shoes at the spa and argue over who

most urgently requires the services of Manuel, waxer

extraordinaire. And I think we all know who won that fight.

Spilling Secrets

As a member of the mental health profession, I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but the truth is that therapy can cost upward of $140 an hour, but the supermarket sells cans of frosting for just $1.99. Not that I don't believe in the powers of psychotherapy, but if you really need to talk, then splurge on 2 cans of frosting and invite a friend to share.

True story.

This is not a post that I relish writing, and now that I've just used the word relish, I like it all the less, but here it is:

Jason and I have officially parted ways.

See? The world did not just implode. In fact, I have it on very good authority that it continues to turn, even in this very moment.

I have been purposely vague these past few months on two accounts. First, because it is a private struggle deserving discretion, and second because we were all the while testing the waters and coming to different conclusions almost daily.

But I think we have come to the realization that though we wish it could be different, separation seems to be what's best for both of us right now. While this is not a happy occasion, I believe that it is a good thing. I am fine, and I am working toward fabulous.

As a "widow of depression" as it were, I have certainly had some dark days recently, but I still have a heart full of love for Jason, so you needn't use the harsh words that are probably biting at the tip of your tongue. We will always have the years we shared, and always have mutual affection, but as I have said myself in the past, love is not enough.

You cannot help those who will not help themselves, so while I wish him the best, it's time to take care of Jay now. I'm moving on. Wiser souls than I have called this "healing", but I'm calling it "wearing slutty tops and making some bad decisions".

Oh relax, relax. I kid. Well, mostly. "Healing" may include the liberal application of cleavage-glitter. Time will tell.

For now, I can say that I woke up this morning feeling pretty damn good for a woman who has recently lost everything that ever mattered to her. And that's probably because I haven't actually lost everything (it just feels that way). Every day I remember something else that I have: old friends who reverse the charges when I need to vent, new friends who buy the splurge items I can't afford, family who indulge me more than I deserve, canned frosting and hot baths and kleenex with the lotion built right in to get me through the worst times, and patent leather heels to be admired in by droves of handsome men in the better days to come.

By the time you get home, have a shower, have a post-work screw (or two), the sun has set and your belly is a-grumbling.

Cooking is out, obviously, because the big grocery store will be closed by the time you find the fare to get there and nobody likes riding the streetcar back, trying to juggle cold things in your lap while bearded men ogle your purchases, and while there is a 24-hour market not too far away, it would require walking past the guy selling dreamcatchers on the corner whom I've already made far too much eye contact with today, then past a bitter, heckling homeless man whose smell would ruin anyone's appetite, and past at least 3 Second Cups, and those devils float delicious whipped cream on top of everything, which means I'd need an iron will to even reach the market, and if by some miracle I held fast on the way there, I'd surely get lost in sweet, sweet nirvana on the way home.

Like most fridges, mine contains a jar of olives, some beer, some nail polish, little packets of soy sauce from the Chinese take-out down the street, and a half-empty bottle of mustard (you could call it half-full, but I think it's pretty stupid to waste optimism on mustard). Not exactly the fixings of a great repast. Luckily, however, I've got a little something in reserve. It's called a "cupboard" and its contents are perfect for the pinch. I start to salivate just thinking of the dozens, maybe hundreds of possibilities in contains. This is where I keep my take-out menus.

Living downtown seems opportunistic for the plethora of possibility, but the truth is closer to this: you can drown in choice.

In fact, what usually happens is that by the time I've flipped through all the menus once, eliminated the greek place for its skimpy use of feta, the thai place for consistently giving me heart-burn, and the pizza place across the street because, frankly, we just had it 2 nights ago, and narrowed it down to just 27 places that all sound equally appealing. Thankfully, in the time it's taken me to do the first run-through, half the places have now closed (what kind of old fogeys live in this city? no one else is hungry at 11:30 on a Wednesday night?) and we are slowly but surely chipping away toward choice.

The rotisserie chicken place we eventually settled on "guaranteed" that supper would be in our lobby in 40 minutes. But I wondered - where's the or else? If the chicken was not in the lobby at the appointed time, then what? They weren't saying 40 minutes or it's free. 40 minutes or we'll walk your dog or wash your feet or throw in a pair of flat-front chinos. What good is a guarantee if there's no repercussion? If they're 34 minutes late or don't show up until April or come bearing apricots instead of chicken, it would be all the same to them. It might cut into the delivery guy's tip a bit, but they're already charging $3.50 for the privilege of maybe bringing chicken to your house in 40 minutes so I'm not really feeling the guilt. The guilt from a pseudo-guarantee that's only hypothetically been breached.

Long story short: the chicken was punctual and delicious, but before you start getting all smug, let me just remind you that eating is a particular habit of mine, and it's inevitable that this scenario will be repeated again tomorrow night.

Riding the Rocket

Here in Toronto I am faced everyday with an inapporpriate nickname: The Rocket. The Rocket is what the TTC (our lovely public transportation) calls itself.

Now, rockets are characterized by a certain thrust, thanks to the ejection of fast moving fluids. Rockets are fast, sexy beasts. Who wouldn't want to be compared to them?

But comparisons should be reasonable...or at least remotely possible. On most days, however, calling the TTC "The Rocket" is like calling this guy "Tiny".

The TTC, often billed as "The Better Way", in reality usually "The Only Way", or else "My Car Wouldn't Start" or "Fuck, it's Raining", is not so much a rocket but an expensive, unreliable way to maybe get to where you're basically going, eventually. And sometimes not even that.

But I still have love for the TTC. I love the ding ding of the streetcar, the fact that the bus seats are so high my feet don't touch the ground, the varied, blurred artwork of the subway stations as you speed by.

But mostly it's the people-watching. $2.75 is a steep price to pay for being late to your appointments, but it's an excellent bargain for an afternoon of entertainment. And who wouldn't be entertained when 2 drunk guys get on the bus singing The Hockey Song and spend most of their commute rolling down the aisle? Or when the driver keeps a running commentary of all the "jerk drivers" who "nearly" kill him "all the feckin time". Or when everyone boarding the subway in the morning has the same look on their faces when sniffing the damp, musty smell of newly "cleaned" seats. Priceless.

I love how every subway car reliably has at least one person who is sleeping (like, really, snoringly, head-bobbingly sleeping), one person who is praying (like, really, devotedly, rosary-wieldingly praying), and 18 discarded coffee cups rolling around the floor leaving swirling, sticky puddles in their wake. And then a smattering of mothers yelling at their kids to stop licking the chrome, business drones clutching briefcases for dear life, shifty-eyed men rubbing their crotches conspicuously, and a guy taking up 3 seats trying to wrap a gift without the benefit of scissors or tape in between the Queen and Wellesely stops while juggling his cellphone and a cinnabon. Good times.

Keep on rockin the Rocket, Toronto.

Live from HoJo, it's Thursday Night!

Thursday is the new Friday.

I'm celebrating at the Howard Johnson.

The drapes are floral and the valance is plaid. Yeah, they're on the same window. Howard is hardcore like that. Matching is for fools.

Bobby Brown had a heart attack. No more humping around, I guess.

The "complimentary" plastic cups are having some strange chemical reaction with my Pepsi, and it's fizzing way more than is normal. I've resorted to "drinking" foam. I imagine my lungs slowly filling with it. That's a pretty undignified way to die, but let's face it - with my lifestyle, it's probably a step up from my probable fate.

The bathroom wallpaper has cuttings in it where bits of completely different wallpaper has been patched in. Most likely someone died pretty violently in there last week and Howard was too cheap to repaint completely, so they just took an exacto knife to the most obvious blood spatters and gray matter and saved themselves a couple bucks, which they did not pass on to the consumer. Ahem.

I notice that the bar of "hand soap" and the bar of "facial soap" look suspiciously familiar.

A package of Nabob is supplied for my coffee-drinking convenience. Nabob. Arguably, not actually coffee at all.

The ice bucket is laughably small. You couldn't keep so much as a bottle of water cold in there...but I think it might come in handy if I actually sever a finger.

Te faux-gold wall sconces are really classy, if a little crooked. I also appreciate the mirror that is strategically hung right across from the bed, where I am presently making myself comfortable and trying not to think about special investigations involving black lights. At first I kept winking at the hottie staring back, but now that I'm wearing my "complimentary" shower cap, I'm pretending to be a cafeteria worker, and she's much less sexy.

I love how the maid folds the end of the toilet paper into a charming little triangle. It really helps me to forget that perhaps just hours before someone else's butt cheeks were sitting in this very same place, and someone else's hands were fondling this same roll of paper, and the HoJo bastards are too cheap to replace it.

I never look under the bed when I stay in hotels. As an insomniac, I've been privy to a whole gamut of terrible late-night movies in which there is always a dead hooker under the hotel room bed. Or at the very least, a drippy condom.

I don't have to worry about not sleeping tonight, though. Howard provides his guests with "complimentary" white noise (ie, it's right next to a major (noisy) highway). Nice touch, HoJo. You've really thought of everything.

Okay, I took off the shower cap. It was making me giggle pretty loudly, and the neighbours aren't even having inappropriately loud, wall-banging sex to drown me out. Pity.

Well, I'd like to stay and chat, but it's getting late and I have to let Gideon out of the drawer and write corrupting footnotes in the margins.

Wino Forever

On Thanksgiving, it is customary to be thankful, and boy was I ever.



Thankful, that is.



So I stood (well, it was mostly upright) and raised a glass (being careful not to spill a drop) and proposed a toast (what kind of verb is that anyway? I thought that "to toast" involved a stick, a marshmallow, and an open flame) - a toast to getting (and staying) drunk; a toast to the lushes and alcoholics who keep me company; the barware that twinkles so invitingly; the olives that provide sustenance during long, intense bouts; the bubbles that tickles inside your nose; the people who squint to see 2 or 3 fewer of you; that spot on the rug that will never be the same.



Three cheers for Crown Royal, makers of fine whiskey, whiskey so fine it makes you try to lick the freckles off your own shoulder.



Huzzah to Grey Goose, a vodka that I can only hope comes into no contact whatsoever with actual geese, and that gets shaken (not stirred) with such vim that I feel humbled to worship before such dry, dirty perfection.



And to the 6 or so bottles of n;adkspkj white wine (either a very strange name indeed, or my eyesight was at this point failing me) that was meant to go well with the turkey, if only I had remembered to make it (but it went well with the pie - okay, I admit it - pies).

Anyway, long story short: ain't nothin like a little sauce for the holidays.

Much Too Young to Feel This Damn Old

So the other day I'm talking to my friend Sean who was telling me about this magazine article about people under 30 who've made their millions or climbed their way to the top or made some significant contribution to society and he was practically pissing himself with admiration.

He didn't think my attitude quite cut the mustard.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked. "That's some impressive shit."

But if Sean thought that I was going to be happy for these people, he thought wrong. I'm way too busy being jealous.

You won't hear me admit that very often, but yeah. Jealous. Instead of thinking "Wow, good for them" I think "What the hell is wrong with me?"

When you're trying to get pregnant, you look at other women's bellies with envy, maybe a little resentfully, but probably not with full gladness of the heart.

I feel the same way about success. I'm mostly concerned about my own ambitions! I'm ready to give birth, dammit! When will it be my turn?

Screw those other pregnant bastards, my clock is a-ticking.

Loudly. Except I don't know want no damn baby.

They say writing a book is like having a baby, only with a longer gestation period, more alcohol, and no epidural.

I've always hoped to be published by 30, but in order for that to happen, I probably should have finished writing it, like, yesterday. But I didn't.

I know my Ovaries of Creativity are not about to dry up. I know that logically. But logic is for losers and under-achievers. Me, I'm a dreamer. And a little unrealistic. And very self-critical. And pretty lazy. So while I may have dreamed of being published by 30, I've never dreamed of spending hours at my desk, pulling my hair out. I don't dream of follow-through, or discipline, or writer's block, or paper cuts, or actual hard work. I waste my nights dreaming of creamy cheeses and naked firefighters instead (and while I don't regret those, they're not exactly productive).

My Creative Fertility is at its peak. So, again I ask: what the hell is wrong with me?



.....Maybe don't answer that.

Never too early (or too late) to buy your mother a vibrator.

Note the date and time: I just saw my first Christmas commercial.

It was for a "shower head" that wasn't even pretending not to be a bath-based masturbatory experience. All for just $19.99!

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.

How to discover your underwear is inside out in 12 easy steps:

1. It was a nothing-special kind of day, so I chose my underwear accordingly. I picked a so-so pair, not the big ones that I only wear when I'm grumpy or bloaty (or god forbid, both) and not the cute ones that I was saving for going-outness. Just a plain-jane pair of panties, high cut with blue and orange stripes which I learned the hard way not to wear underneath white linen skirts.

2. Jason doesn't think I should bother with the cute underwear when going out with someone other than him. I think it makes him nervous. But they say beauty comes from within, and though I'm pretty sure that's an ugly chick's way of saying that personality counts, I prefer to interpret it in the foundation-garment kind of way. Lingerie makes the outfit, even if you're the only one who knows it. It puts the grrr in you. But husbands think fancy panties should be just for them.

3. This is a case of what I like to call "boy logic", also known as "flawed logic" or else "not logic at all". I like for my underwear to match the occasion, and let's face it, if you party hard enough, at some point your underwear is going to be showing. This is an important life lesson that I have learned along the way (unfortunately, I internalized it during my commando phase but luckily this was in the age before digital photography).

4. I recently revamped my whole underwear drawer after my eureka-discover of the hipster panty. But then my sock drawer looked sad, so I've been refreshing it too, one pair at a time. But then I realized that I needed some of those short little ankle socks that you wear with your yoga capris to make your calves look slimmer, and the thing about athletic socks is that they're always sold in bunches, like bananas. As if you could have no use for one banana or one pair of tiny socks. Fruit of the Loom does socks now too, I guess, and they've taken it upon themselves to provide the two-tone sock. Was there a rash of sock tragedies that I didn't hear about? Millions of people where mis-wearing their socks, creating untold havoc, and possibly bunion aggravation, and Fruit of the Loom thought this is our fault for making socks uniformly white. If only we could colour the toe-part and the heel-part gray, and the gray would be like a beacon to the people: toe goes here! heel goes here! And all the sock tragedies would dry up and we would all live happily ever after. And from what I can tell, that's exactly what happened.

5. Obviously Fruit of the Loom takes us all for a bunch of retards, but I could live with their toe-goes-here philosophy of life, if only an even greater atrocity had not been committed by these fruity bastards (do you think the apple costume is going to make me back down? you're not so cute, apple. the grape guy, maybe, but I could take him. I could take the whole fruit salad). The latest in sock technology is the resealable bag. Resealable! To keep the freshness in? I'm perplexed for two reasons: first, I always assumed the bag was just packaging to keep the socks together until you got them home, put them in your sock drawer, and then started losing them one by one over the weeks and months and years like everyone else. Do other people not have sock drawers? Do you just have bags of socks strewn about your house? And second, assuming that there are some people out there who do keep their socks in bags instead of drawers, are you really afraid the socks will go stale if you don't keep the bag closed tight?

6. With 6 new pairs of socks, it was clear my socks:pants ratio was vastly out of sorts, and so a-panting did I go. It used to be that all you needed to know was your size, and perhaps your height, and you were set, but lately the world of pants has exploded into considerations such as how fond you are of ass-crack, camel toe, and whether you like your thighs to look like sausage barely contained in its casing, or sausage ready to burst out of its casing. To "help" make it "easier" to shop for pants, they've now given arbitrary names to the pants. The only trouble is, every store has its own cheesy naming process. One store names all of their pants after cities - there, I find I am a 'Rome' and that the people of Chicago must have a very strange idea of pants. But the next store has its own set or rules and you have to shove your ass into a whole new round of pants all over again.

7. I see by the Old Navy commercials that they too have jumped aboard the naming process with Diva, Flirt, and Sweetheart jeans, "something for everyone." Next to diva and flirt, 'sweetheart' sounds very much like a synonym for 'fat friend', doesn't it? And in the commercial the diva has a man practically sucking on her toes, and the flirt is touching up her makeup as a man looks on and imagines what her lipstick will look like on his cock, and the sweetheart...the poor sweetheart has a puppy. No one wants to get with the sweetheart. The commercial, in 30 seconds or less, condemns the sweetheart to die alone with her predilection for covering her kooch and leaving ample room for hips and thighs. Sigh. I think I'll stop wearing pants just on principle.

8. Or not. Generally people make a big stink about 'no shirts, no service' but pants seem to be optional. Nevertheless, for propriety's sake, and for my fondness for spending other people's money, I obligingly will continue to wear pants. But I refuse to be a sweetheart, which I am sure is to be our generations word for 'spinster' and will soon be only spoken in hushed tones and italics.

9. I finally found some unnamed cargo capris, but there was a hitch: as I headed for the change room, I prepared myself for the incongruity of low-rise pants over underwear that are not. What I did not prepare myself for was the big blue ribbon that floated up out of my ass. Like a dog chasing its tail, I twirled around a few times trying to identify this unknown entity, and found that it was the (rather large) tag of my underwear, and that I had indeed been wearing my underwear not just high on my hips but all the way inside out the whole day long.

10. Half naked in the dressing room, I was hit with a wave of self-pity, and not the usual I-hate-my-belly-god-why-did-I-have-that-extra-piece-of-cake-damn-that-button's-about-to-blow way, either. No, I pitied myself for having the kind of day where I could walk around with my most basic, most intimate layer just completely in the wrong and never even know it. It can't be a good omen, can it, to be rubbing on the wrong side, seams pointing outward, everything in disarray. Life cannot be right when your underwear is wrong.

11. Which begs the question: if you have worn your underwear inside out for more than half the day, do you even bother switching it? Keep in mind I am still in the dressing room, which is the vilest place there is for being naked, not wanting to put your butt where other butts have been (not even wanting to put your feet where other feet have been, but what choice have you got?). And so you hop on one foot while trying to insert the other into an unfamiliar hole (ahem), which may or may not even be the right size, and which as almost certainly be folded or tagged in such a way as to make you trip or fall over, the pressure of which springs open the unreliable change room door and there you lie on the grubby floor, pants around your ankles, breasts splayed for all to see, forcing you to purchase hundreds of dollars of clothes just to ease your embarrassment and make it all seem worthwhile (but in reality, the overpriced blouses will hang droopily in your closet, unworn, until you donate them to goodwill 3 years later, with the tags still on). Or something like that.

12. Long story short, I threw the underwear out. I mean, obviously they're cursed. I have no need for underwear that have it out for me. I get enough shit from my vests.

One Book-Orgasm After Another

When shopping for a new purse, I kid myself by measuring strap length, zipper durability, goes-with-clothesiness, ease of opening and closing, whether it will bump on my ass when perched on shoulder or give me uni-boob if wear the strap diagonally across my chest, etc, but in reality, only one thing truly matters: whether it is big enough to hold a book, and hopefully two.

Recently I have been living the life of a nomad (a nice smelling nomad, it goes without saying) so the bigness of my bag has been of even more importance than normal. Purse-packing really sets your priorities straight. I will take my chances and leave the umbrella at home in favour of a book. My god, I will leave behind my cell phone, my gum, and 3 out of 5 tubes of lipgloss to make room for whatever I'm reading. I'll even leave the tampons on the table - and girls, you know what kind of trouble you're asking for when you leave the house ill-prepared! But there are few places I'd really want to be book-less, and many places where I'd probably go nutty without one: just in the past 30 days I've taken 3-hour subway rides, waited in a walk-in clinic, stood in line to return stuff behind 25 or so other people waiting to do the same, been trapped in an elevator, spent a lunch hour indoors while it rained, and met a chronically-late friend for drinks at a pub. I suppose other people use this down-time to, oh, bite their nails or develop neuroses or whatever, but me, I prefer to expand my mind and enrich my thoughts and culture my intellect. It's just a thing I have.

And lately, this thing has been lucky. I have been buried under a veritable orgy of literate. My book-karma is through the roof. I mean, I'll be the first to admit that I am not a book critic. I read a book wanting to love it. If bibliophilia was a crime, I'd be locked away, which is a shame since what I've seen from prison movies, the reading selection consists mainly of condensed reader's digests and other depressing material. But the god of words smiles down upon me because I am free to lust after as many books as I please. Lately I have encountered so many incredibly good books, I've just wanted to hole myself up in my room and never leave until my eyes start bleeding, which I rather hope wouldn't be for a while, and certainly not before the climax. But keeping a good book to yourself is a rather selfish, masturbatory experience whereas I have always been a giver. I like to share my good fortune with as many people as possible, which is why I started my book review site six months ago. However, I continue to get emails asking me which books I'm currently reading, which leads me to believe that people are a lot sillier than they appear. Check my sidebar. See the Quickie Book Reviews? Click on any of the titles and it will magically tell you whether to love it or leave it.

I've recently read my 108th book this year, so there are lots of titles to choose from. If you'd like to recommend something, please do so. If you've already read something featured there, please comment and share! Don't make me moon over my author-crushes all alone!

I know I can't be the only one getting my rocks off on books. What's the last thing you read that gave you the shivers?

I Broke My Blogger

It all started Monday morning when I woke up feeling like someone had stuck a wire coat hanger down my throat and used it to strip the inner layer.

No, that's not true.

It probably goes back to the Wednesday night before that when I became intimately involved with the bedding of a woman who hadn't previously slept indoors in months and had the word COMMUNICABLE practically tattooed across her forehead in perma-dirt.

Or, really, it can probably be traced back to the unholy hours of the Sunday night\Monday morning before that, when my friend Cynthia had to bust me out of a room where I was being held captive by a mad black woman threatening to bust a cap in my ass.

Well, let's just say that trouble has been brewing for a while.

Anyhoo. The painful strep-ness of my throat was evident from the moment I woke up on Monday, but I raked a comb through my thinning hair and rigged a belt through the loops of pants that have grown way too big for me during the past few months, took a 3-hour bus ride into work where I struggled to stay on my feet for 12 hours and 'counsel' women with problems that sometimes actually seem trivial in comparison to my own (shame on me!), then took another 3 hour public transit joy ride back to the couch I am presently sleeping on and slept maybe 4 hours before repeating the process, only this time with an ear infection, a sinus headache, and a sty to boot.

And then I got a chest cold. And I probably should have called in sick right there and then, but I thought if I could just get through this week, I'd have enough money so that the next time I got sick, I could, you know, maybe afford penicillin. So I made a steady diet of Benylin and Halls and somehow survived the week (fyi: subway + migraine = worst thing ever) and when I got home, knees shaking, I was ready to collapse from relief and exhaustion and I ached for deep, uninterrupted sleep.

But the phlegm in my lungs had other ideas, so I spent the night being racked by coughs, and any time I attempted to get horizontal I'd be punished with a lack of oxygen, and I don't know about you, but I find being unable to breathe to be pretty uncomfortable.

So then I got the bright idea to be productive and I forgot to try not to die. I stacked some pillows behind my back, bent my knees and with the laptop balanced on my thighs, I thought I might finally be able to write a word or two to say hello to you all. And then I sneezed, propelling the cursed laptop right into my noggin (how on earth do corners always crash directly into your eye?) and in a flash of pain and potential blindness, I had two incongruent thoughts:

1. Emergency! Wake Jason!
2. Holy fuck this is embarrassing! Do not under any circumstances wake Jason or admit to anyone that this has happened!

Well, you can guess which one won out. He brought me ice and Tylenol, and a soup bowl full of Benylin and made soothing noises, and politely locked himself in the bathroom so I wouldn't hear his fit of laughter (but he didn't turn on the tap so I heard it anyway) and now I have an egg on my temple, a bit of a black eye, a bit of a swollen lip, and after all that violence I didn't even knock the damn cold out of me.

So you see why I cannot possibly write a post today, don't you?

Forgiveness?

Serendipity wears a badge.

Erratic posting once again as my life is once again thrown into chaos, but let me ask you this in the meantime:

If 911 sends you the same police officer 3 times in 2 weeks, is this coincidence or is the universe sending me some kind of signal? And if I buy him a donut, is that considered flirting? And would you go with a cruller or maple dip?

Bet You Can't Have Just One.

Man on the street: Hey pretty lady, what are you so smiley about?

Me: I just had 15 orgasms.

Man on the street: Oh.




If I had known how quickly that shuts up men, I would have been using it years ago!

The Best of Peter Frampton

The best offer I ever refused: When I was in high school, a man 12 years my senior proposed to me in a Tim Hortons. We were not dating or otherwise romantically involved (although I may have been schtupping his best friend). His ex-fiancee-turned-lesbian was squatting in his house and refusing to vacate. His life was a mess and apparently I could turn things around for him. I had no idea how to respond to such a question, but I found the strength to break his heart. I was never in any danger of accepting, but I sometimes like to wonder how different my life would be if I had said yes.





The best gift I ever gave: Hm. Well, I made my mother-in-law cry when I gave her a scrapbook about her son. I made my friend cry when I gave her a baggie full of pre-rolled joints. I made my mother furrow her brow when I gave her a hand-painted toilet seat. But I think the best would be the night Jason walked me to my class (criminology) and before slipping in the hall, I handed him a card. It wasn't a special occasion, but the card told him that gifts awaited him under the bed, and to open the big one first. It was the highly coveted PS2 which he hadn't even dreamed of getting his hands on, along with several games to get him started. I put beer and treats in the fridge and left a note to call his friends and not to bother picking me up from class - I knew he'd be busy. By the time I got home that night, he already had a serious callous going, but he still paused the game to give me a hug.



The best lie I ever told: I don't know how my bra got in his car.

The best skirt I ever misplaced: It was a black Tommy Hilfiger mini skirt, and my sister bought it for me a size too big so it hung on my hips instead of my waist. I loved that skirt. It prompted one boy to observe you wear the shortest skirts of anyone I know (though I was actually wearing a different one of decent length the day a man stopped me on the street and asked how much I charged for blowjobs). And then one day...poof. Well, okay, there was no poof. The vanishing was absurdly quiet. I held hope in my heart for months that it would be found alive and well, but it never was.



The best movie I never saw: Star Wars, hands down. Any of them. It really infuriates people.

The best funeral I ever crashed: I was 9, I think. Some old lady died. I didn't know her, but I was staying with my aunt and she took me into the bosom of grieving strangers and left me to my own devices. The family crowded around the corpse to pose for photographs. Some of them said cheese, others made attempts at solemnity. One little girl sat cross-legged on top of the coffin. I remember there being salmon sandwiches of a suspiciously vibrant pink colour cut into impossibly tiny triangles. I didn't eat them. Back at the house, a woman I didn't know said that "the kids" should go swimming, and she thrust at me a green bikini of unknown origins. It was too big and the pool was the last place I wanted to be, but I hadn't been given a choice. I stood on the diving board seething, and then leapt in feet first, somehow managing to lose my ballooning top in the process. I covered my baby boobies and tread water like crazy until someone I'd never seen before and luckily never saw again handed me a towel and I made my escape.

You'll never guess what I had down my throat today.

Me: I swalled a bug at Glencairn today.

Him: The subway station?

Me: Yes. It was a big one.

Him: What where you doing all the way out there?

Me: I walked out there to take the subway, obviously. But you're missing the point here: I swallowed a bug the size of a golfball. I felt it hit the back of my throat. He left quite an aftertaste.

Him: But Glencairn is way north! How many perfectly good subway stations did you walk past to get to it? You must have walked for hours!

Me: Gah - you see these two big meaty things hanging off my torso? They're legs. They're made for walking. So I walked.

Him: Gah yourself - you know those little brassy coins in your purse? They're subway tokens. Guess what those are for?

Me: Oh, I quit.

Dear Lace Hipster Undies:

Where have you been all my life?????

The illusion of cutesy butt cheeks is finally mine!!!!

Paltry Excuses for my Recent Non-Blogginess

1. Discovered a dormant addiction to guacamole.

2. Saw Travis at Kool Haus; was inspired by Doug Payne to die and come back as a bass guitar.

3. Carried around Homer Simpson's head on a wooden stick for the better part of a day.

4. Wasn't terribly surprised to hear that Patty the transvestite prostitute would be spending another night in jail.

5. Was enticed to eat overpriced ice cream pellets; forced to concede that they were good.

6. Realized that donating my crap clothes was a bad idea since ill-fitting clothes are still better than having my naked ass touch the grimy plastic of a subway seat.

7. Listened to a man cuss out his wife, loudly, via cell phone, on a jazz bar patio, for more than 30 minutes, while he pretended to be at the office and I polished off 3 drinks but not the whole plate of nachos because it was bigger than my head.

8. Did I mention the guacamole?

Cat-Sitting 101

1. Do not actually try to sit on, or ride the cat. As funny as it is, they don't really like it and it's not technically what their owner meant whey they asked you to catsit.

2. Don't bother making friends with the cat. If the cat wants to hide under the sofa for 3 days straight, let him. It's better than contracting cat-scratch fever the old fashioned way....trust me.

3. If the cat insists on being served its wet food in your shoe, comply. There are grosser things the cat could be doing in your shoe. Again, trust me.

4. If the cat appears to dislike the movie you are watching, trust it's opinion and shut the damn thing off. The ensuing cat showdown just isn't worth another 20 minutes of Sandra Bullock. As cats are not allowed in Blockbuster, be prepared to leave the remote control wherever little paws can reach and watch cable at the cat's mercy - if the cat shows a preference for late night latino talk show hosts who appear to have traded sex for money or blow for the past 60 years or so, then so be it.

5. Do not do yoga in front of the cat. Don't even wear yoga pants in front of the cat.

6. Don't fall for the "but I'm still hungry" look - it's a dirty trick that all cats play. The cat is NOT still hungry. However, when you overfeed it, the cat will overeat, until it's little belly is extended in bloated, resulting in explosive cat diarrhea the next day. Not only will you spend the next 3 hours scrubbing your friend's carpet, couch, drapes, and improbably, the top shelf of a very large book case, but you'll also have to kiss goodbye your favourite pair of Chucks (but for hygienic reasons, don't actually kiss them goodbye, don a double pair of latex gloves before incinerating them at your nearest toxic waste dump).

7. When you give the cat its shot of insulin (yes, the cat is diabetic) and suddenly the cat goes all crazy-eyed and starts acting like a donkey who just finished drinking a bucket of beer, call the vet immediately. Don't stop to take hilarious-but-insensitive video of the cat with your cell phone, then post it to Youtube, then call 3 of your easiest-amused friends to come over to see "the diabetic cat who's shit-faced on insulin". And when you finally do get to calling the vet, who says to come immediately, do not stop of slurpees, or to buy a new pair of Chucks.

8. When you get to the vet's office and she asks what kind of cat this is, don't say "um, orange?" and don't guess that his name "might be Charles", because the cat will turn out to be a girl, and you'll look like a dumbass. Remember that little note on the fridge back at your friend's apartment? The one with all the cat's details, that says something about what to do when the diabetic cat reacts badly to its insulin? Turns out, you should have brought it with you, or at least read the damn thing instead of mocking it, and your anal friends who wrote it - both sides, front and back! - about an effing cat, christ it's just a cat, do they think I can't sit and watch their dumb cat?

9. Also, it turns out that vets politely require you to have cats in some sort of carrying case when you go to their office, and frown upon just throwing the cat in the trunk of your car, and then trying to coax it into the office via an intoxicating trail of fruit loops (as a matter of fact, fruit loops don't go over well with diabetics in general).

10. Never catsit for people you actually like and expect to remain friends with. When they get home, receive the vet bill (and the bill to replace your Chucks, naturally), see that their heirloom turkish carpet is harbouring telling stains, and that you went through a 25 bag of cat food in 36 hours, and that their beloved Mrs. Fudge (Mrs. Fudge? Seriously? You named your cat Mrs. Fudge?) is recovering from diabetic coma and deals with the emotional trauma of having the 2058th highest-rated cat-related Youtube video by shredding random pieces of furniture....well, let's just say that you probably won't be receiving a thank you card in the mail anytime soon. Cat people can be such snobs.

Things That Amuse Me

One of my favourite offshoots of blogging is that people not only write me great comments (and let's face it - the comments are what make this blog worthwhile) but they write me vastly amusing emails as well. And so, with margarita swimming stealthily in my stomach, I share with you the gems that made me smile this week:

Mr. Unedited Meat wrote to me that he too has been enthralled with the Feeling Droopy? soup campaign on Dufferin Street. Sadly, the sign has since been replaced and seems to now focus on some sort of deli meat, and is far less witty. Okay, so soup is a tough sell in 40 degree heat, but corned beef is even tougher on aesthetics alone, and frankly it makes me like the mustachioed, safari-hat spokesman that much less. Mr. Meat was also gaying it up at the pride parade recently, and was astute enough to note that being crushed by fat men in leather thongs is far less exciting when you're sober.

Anthony thought I might need some beer money, and sent me a link to sell my DNA for the low, low price of $5000. Now, I don't know about you, but $5000 sounds good to me. That's a lot of martinis (well, with taxes and tip, about 275 of them, which, frankly, is like, what?, 3 decent benders?). The part that doesn't sound good to me is that some company will actually own the patent to my DNA. So, conversely, the website also encourages me to sell my friends' DNA instead - once it leaves their bodies, it isn't theirs anymore. So potentially the fact that I only wash my sheets once a week means I am sleeping on a goldmine here! Let's start the bidding!

Boris, meanwhile, was kind enough to take my self-confessed shitty poem and tell me how to make it better. Granted, it's called a shitty poem for a reason ( a very good, very cliche-riddled reason), but it's always nice to hear from readers, especially ones that call me "pleasing to the ear", when it did not involve my tongue.

Mike sent me a newspaper clipping involving the sad demise of my own siblings. A big rig tipped over, and more than 240 goats, stacked 4 deep in the back, were killed. Obviously, I don't like to read about so many nice goats meeting their makers, but I was also dismayed to read that the goats were worth $150 each. Frankly, when my time comes, I hope my retail price is not listed in my obituary. And in the meantime, I'm damn glad that as bad as "economy class" is, cramming us in shoulder to shoulder, at least there's not someone prone to nervous shitting stacked over my head. Plus, the peanuts. Those poor goats died without peanuts.

Finally, Sandra gave me a huge reason to smile when she confessed that she landed on my page by actually googling how to kill a goat. That rocks! Of course, I don't really know how to kill a goat, so let me refer you to the 4-H club of Cornell University, who suggests first finding someone who "is used to killing goats." Sounds good to me. Then you stun the goat with a sharp blow to the head, and then cut his jugular. Of course, if by goat you mean me, I would prefer to be sent a case or two of fine Canadian whiskey and a few slabs of bacon. No, that's not enough to kill me, but don't worry, I've had a head start. :)

Hijack!!

Greetings Goat readers!

This is Rod and Chris and we have hijacked Jay's blog in honour of her [cough]th birthday!

We apologize in advance for the fact that we both suck at writing. In fact, Rod can barely read - but he makes an exception for Kill the Goat, because this is an exceptional blog, I think we can all agree.

Party hat or no, never ask a lady her age.

If you've been reading here for a while, then you know that Jamie is almost certainly Canada's next great writer, probably the best friend any of us could hope to have, and a prolific curser of seamen proportions. She's a doll, and we all love her.

But she's been going through a rough time lately. I think she's kept it purposely vague on the blog, but I think I can tell you that she's lost someone very close to her, been violently attacked, suffered more health setbacks, and continues to live through various repercussions of all these things. But she's so strong that she just keeps going, through more than any one person should have to live through, and she's only [cough] years old for heck's sake! Any one of us might easily have folded by now, but this girl doesn't know how to give up. She's still making us laugh, asking how we are, shaking her thing like there's no tomorrow (not that we were looking, Jason...well, okay, maybe Rod was a little), and as you read this she is literally helping the homeless. Can you believe that shit?

So, to make sure that this year is a better one for her, we've gone directly to the source (by which we mean her blog, as Jamie would never agree to having us "dumb down" her blog if we actually had asked permission) (by the way, Jay, your passwords are ABSURDLY easy to figure out) and we have it on the authority of a previous post that Jay wants nothing more in life than a new tattoo, and a lot more sex.

Stop!!

Please do not send pictures of your penis to her email account. As per her own rather loud admission in a crowded bar, Jay is currently having "the best sex of her life."

Today we are focusing on the new tattoo, and we're taking up a collection to make sure she gets it. If you would like to make a birthday contribution, click on the paypal donation button in the sidebar to your right. Also feel free to inundate her with birthday wishes and spread the word via your own blogs, and if you live in the GTA and know of a great place to have a tattoo, or could contribute original artwork, be sure to send those details along too.

Happy birthday, sweetie. We love you!

*****Jamie's Edit:


Aw, guys, you're making me all misty.
This has got to be one of the best birthday surprises ever - I don't think I've ever been gifted with hundreds of needles to rip apart my flesh before, and the fact that so many of you are willing to contribute to that pain and torture really means a lot. :)

It's true that my day did involve a crazy lady who chugged hand sanitizer, so my birthday festivities are really only just commencing. I've got a whole week of scoring free lunches planned ahead of me.

Oh, and boys - I am far too young to have to be coughing over my age already. Sheesh.

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.

Video Killed the Radio Star

I was born in an MTV world and grew up obsessed with channel 29, which featured Canada's equivalent, Much Music. But while I couldn't live without it during high school, I haven't seen it since, and I wondered why...except not really, because even very brief channel-surfing reveals the stark truth. I remember the glory days of music videos - when real musicians who played real instruments made miniatures movies that actually meant something in terms of the music they were set to. Today videos feature short shorts, bouncy cars, and not much else. The days of the 'concept video' are clearly over, and the stuff that I remember are relics of the past.

1991 Nirvana, Smells Like Teen Spirit

The opening chords to this song served to incite an entire generation, and the video defined it. It was later called an anthem for apathetic kids, but as the video aptly shows, if the kids are apathetic, it's only until they found a suitable outlet. The video captures not what high school is like, but what high school feels like - dark, angry, and teeming with anarchy. I have never heard another song where the distortion is so fucking appropriate.

1992 Guns N Roses, November Rain

It's hard to believe that Axl Rose was ever cool, but nothing lasts forever, and we both know hearts can change. However, for a brief time (well, not that brief, this sucker clocks in at nearly 9 minutes) Guns N Roses ruled, and this song and its video were nothing short of iconic (and set the standard for mini skirts and tongue-kissing in church). The video is epic, and leaves no doubt as to the true rock godliness of Slash, who features prominently, not just atop the piano, but in the church yard playing his face-melting solo.

1993 Aerosmith, Livin on the Edge

This video is a time capsule of social ills - school violence, unprotected sex, theft, vandalism, the wrecklessness of youth - and it turns out that much of what was wrong with the world then is still wrong with the world today, only by now, we do know what it is. Combining lyrics inspired by the L.A. race riots (If you can judge a wise man\By the color of his skin\Then mister you're a better man that I) and unexpected, theatrical imagery, this video was a mainstay then and a treat to come across now. Nearly 15 years later, my heart still races every time Joe Perry just barely misses getting pulverized by the train.

1994 Live, Lightning Crashes

Birth, death, forces of nature, the whole damn circle of life for those of us who were too old to go see the Lion King. This song made me realize that not only could lyrics could be poetry, but so could video.

1995 Radiohead, Fake Plastic Trees

This is probably the only Radiohead video that's anything less than subtle and obscure, but not to worry, it still has that unassuming Radiohead essence that we all expect. The song comes down hard on the artificiality of the life we've constructed, and the video draws parallels to mass consumerism, and both call attention to the vast, empty voids that result. Lonely and desperate, it's no wonder this song has sunk into the consciousness of so many people.

1996 Smashing Pumpkins, Tonight, Tonight

Somehow, the video, which features a zeppelin to the moon, manages to capture both the urgency and the longing of the song's lyrics while painting a dreamscape which contrasted dramatically to the usual Pumpkins fare.

1997 Green Day Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)

Releasing an "adult" sounding acoustic song is often considered the most punk thing these boys could do. Lyrically about a breakup, the video highlights the crossroads at which we often find ourselves, and is surprisingly introspective for a single off an album titled nimrod. But no matter how much it was overplayed (it even made it into the final episode of Seinfeld), it made us all hope that one day we'd grow up to be half as mature as Billie Joe - for what it's worth\ it was worth all the while.

1998 Fatboy Slim, Praise You

Most excellent video EVAH. It has nothing to do with anything, and that's probably why it was so stand-out-able. It was novel, but the strange thing was, the novelty never wore off, and I find that even 10 years later, this one still makes me smile.

1999 Our Lady Peace, Thief

It's hard for me to pick just one OLP video because I doubt even Raine Maida's mother is as big a fan as I am. I even have a scar on my body from rushing down the stairs when I heard the opening strains to a newly released song (fittingly, the song is called clumsy). And though the band has many honourable mentions in terms of video, I chose this one for its simplicity and the fact that it's hard to watch and not be moved. The song's lyrics grapple with a little girl's cancer and I think the video is just plain grief.


And finally, the only video I find worthy of mention since 2000, brought to us by a man who's career spanned many pre-MTV decades - Mr. Johnny Cash. Originally this was a Trent Reznor song, but with this video, JR brings new meaning to it (and proves that radio stars can adapt). It's emotional and raw, and especially poignant because his wife, who appears in the video, died unexpectedly as it was released (and Cash followed soon afterward). This is Hurt.


Which ones meant the most to you?