Christmas Means Carnage

This is why I don't get along with gay people...

2008-10-07T17:43:00.005-04:00

...is this for real?

Also, yes I suck for not blogging for the past 100 years. I've seriously started and not finished an update post a half dozen times in the past two months. The short story: I have a new apartment that I love and a new job that I also love. All is well.

New

2008-06-20T16:40:00.002-04:00

I realized something recently: since I got a job, I've done very little writing. My job was pretty writing intensive, but press releases are not particularly taxing on my creativity, and in the past two and a half years I haven't written much that would help me get a job doing anything other than writing more press releases. I mean, I do eventually want a job with a focus on more creative writing than what I've been doing, and the only way that's going to happen is if I actually do more writing and put it up somewhere, even if that somewhere is on Blogger (or Wordpress...we're getting to that).

Plus, while I love my little blog, and I don't mind writing about myself, it makes me pretty uncomfortable to write about anyone else I know. I know I only have six readers and I never use real names, but it squicks me out a bit. And would I really be able to point a potential employer to my blog so they could read all about how an ultrasound technician gave me a hard on? Awkward. So I'm not shutting this blog down, but I am starting a new one. I have a name for it and a new posting nick and a picture of pizza (you'll see) and everything. I'm going to try to update on the daily and make it (hopefully) fun and interesting and maybe even informative? I don't know...that's the problem that I'm having. I don't know what my blog should be about. I know a lot about pop culture, but the last thing the world needs is another blog about Paris and Britney (in fact, the only thing I do know is that I'm going make a concerted effort to never write about either of those ladies). I know a bit about politics, but do I know enough to gasbag about it on a daily basis? And am I a good enough writer to keep a blog about Canadian politics entertaining? I could write about Canadian media in general, but I'm not very nice, and since I work (or should I say "am hoping to once again work") in Canadian media, maybe that's not the best idea. I could write about television, but again, how does one distinguish himself from the zillion other blogs on the same subject?

I'm not looking to be the next Perez or anything, and I don't need to make a living off the thing, but at the very least I need to regain some of my confidence in my writing skills. I mean, if I want to write, I should really...you know...write. So Hot Circle of Garbage (yeah, that's right) will be a place for me to write, and maybe even a place for other people to read my writing. I've actually told people in my RL about it, so that's something.

Anyway, once I think of a topic, you will begin to see posts, and maybe those posts will entertain you in some way. Like I said, I hope to still post here about my daily goings on and such (or bi-monthly goings on as the case may be), but you will hopefully be able to find me in my new home talking shit about all sorts of stuff. Just as soon as I figure out what that stuff is going to be.

"Nobody is giving you $100,000 to leave the house"

2008-06-14T14:09:00.003-04:00

I can't really watch The Hills anymore because it's gotten so ridiculous/stupid/fake(uh...faker). (Plus, they were making me hate Lo.) Still, this clip of Spencer on Letterman is so, so good. Could not be better.

Effin' Eh

2008-06-13T22:32:00.002-04:00

It's just a stupid current events quiz, but I take it faithfully every Friday and my average score is probably three or four, so this is exciting [aj: for not one single person other than me]. The questions are usually ridiculously obscure, so I don't know if they were easier this week or I'm reading more news in my unemployment [aj: it's both] but I'm still impressed with myself.

And yes, this is what I'm doing with my Friday night. Does it make it better or worse that there's a glass of pinot about four inches from my right hand?

Don't call it a comeback

2008-06-09T12:10:00.003-04:00

So, I haven’t been around for a while. Here’s the short version of what I’ve been up to:

I’m unemployed.

Here’s the longer version: everyone knows I hate my job. That’s not a secret to anyone, including my employers. I’m looking for other work, and one of the places I apply to happens to be owned by a friend of my boss. The job is basically exactly the same as the one I’m already doing, except the company has an exceptional reputation in the industry, the pay is way better and I would (presumably) have the motivation to actually put some effort into my work. The owner of the company is very interested in interviewing me, but uncomfortable with the idea of sort of going behind my boss’ back to do it, so she tells me that if I want to interview with her, I have to tell my boss.

Uh huh. So…right. So this could clearly blow up in my face, right?

Well, why the fuck not? I hate my job, and if this is the beginning of the end, then even if things end horribly, there’s still a bright side, as far as I’m concerned.

So I tell my boss, and he takes some time to think about it before eventually giving me his blessing. We actually have a really good talk about this, and the word “timeline” comes up. I tell him I’d like to have something within a couple months, he’s vague about how long he’d like me to stay.

So I set up the interview, which takes a bit of time, but when the big day finally rolls around, things go…pretty well. I don’t know, I’m not good at interviews really (like really not good), but I have a lot of relevant experience, and I know I didn’t bomb it by any means. But it happens, and she tells me she has a couple more people to interview early next week, and she’ll have a decision then. Hooray!

So the date when I’m supposed to hear back comes and goes. I follow up, she had to reschedule something, and thus begins an incredibly long, tedious process of back-and-forth emailing. She has some follow up questions, and I’m more than eager to make a good impression, but the process is slow. The new decision date that she gives me also comes and goes. She’s busy, then she’s waiting on something, but she’ll definitely be making offers next week. And that’s the last I heard from her, three weeks ago.

See, the one good thing about the way she handled things is that if you’re looking to get away from extremely unprofessional, generally crappy, disrespectful behaviour in your job, then you don’t feel as bad about not getting a job where your potential boss is a total dick about the way she doesn’t hire you. “Thanks for your time and interest, but we decided to go with someone else.” Is that so hard? It took me 5 seconds to type that, so I don’t think she just got too busy to let me know.

Oh, did I forget to mention that while I was waiting to hear back from this woman, my boss told me to shit or get off the pot?

I mean, it was worded a little bit nicer than that, but basically, he found someone else that he wanted to hire (actually not true, he wanted to bring someone on as a free intern, but he didn’t want to buy another desk, and also, he didn’t tell me that he was bringing in a replacement; I heard about it after I left), so I was told I had to commit to staying or commit to leaving. This was about three weeks after our initial conversation about me leaving, by the way. So when I told him my timeline was two months, it would have been nice for him to tell me that his timeline was three weeks, but whatever. When I was presented with the option, it didn’t even occur to me that there was a choice. “Commit to staying” was not something that I was prepared to consider. The pay was atrocious, my coworkers were (for the most part) awful, no one knew what was going on half the time, and no one really gave a shit. Also, my immediate superior was a total fucking whackjob. Like, Dwight Schrute crossed with a four year old. Like, on a good day, he would throw a tantrum when people phoned him after 4pm. On a good day. So I came up with my worst case scenario and “working here” seemed worse than “working nowhere” and I quit not knowing whether I would get the new job. Turns out I didn’t, and here we are. Unemployed!

I wish I could coherently convey my feelings about the entire thing. The story is actually longer than this, and I spent most of the time since my first contact with the potential employer being alternately hopeful and frustrated (but mostly really, really frustrated. Getting an email telling you that your boss wants you to quit your job is less than fun). Right now I feel relieved about getting out of an awful job that made me miserable and depressed, but also completely terrified about not being able to find something else. As I mentioned above, job interviews are not my forte, so while I’m getting better at them, I’m still not great. And the previous job didn’t leave me “savings” so much as it left me with “debt” so I’m relying on my parents for the next little while, who are wonderful, but really, shouldn’t need to support their 26 year old son. My anxiety level has been through the roof for the past few weeks, and I know it’s weird for me to say that it’s worth it, but seriously you guys, my job was so bad. Just a constant, non-stop drain on my energy, my confidence, my sanity. No matter how things turn out, the meager paycheque wasn’t worth the constant state of anxiety, frustration and depression that I had to deal with. I’m dealing with the new bullshit better than I was dealing with the old bullshit, so in spite of everything, this is still a positive turn of events.

In other news, I met a boy! We’ve been dating for…shit, I’m supposed to know this type of thing, aren’t I? Three weeks? Four weeks? I don’t know, but he’s adorable and hilarious and we have fun together and he takes my mind off of all the other shit I’ve been dealing with lately. We haven’t had the “are you my boyfriend” talk yet, but I like him a lot and I hope he sticks around.

Also, unemployment gives me plenty of time to blog more now, so it looks like the real winner in this whole situation is you, dear reader.

Oh, Canada

2008-04-03T16:56:00.003-04:00

Dear Tom Lukiwski,

How are Canadians supposed to feel smugly superior to the US when you're running around saying shit like this?

Thanks a lot, fuckface.

aj

Question.

2008-02-19T15:47:00.002-05:00

How many 14 and 15 year old boys does a 24-year-old woman have to sleep with before she's treated like a legitimate sexual predator?

Apparently more than five.

Please enjoy this totally boring and not-at-all insightful survey.

2008-02-14T14:24:00.004-05:00

Ganked from Le Monk Seal, by way of Le Sticky.

1. Spell your name without an E,R,S,H,K,I,M,L,C,A,Y,N.
Tp

2. Are you single?
You bet.

3. What is your favorite number?
Five. I don't really have a favourite number, but that's the one I pick if I have to pick a number between one and 10.

4. What is your favorite color?
Again, no favourite colour, but my wardrobe is 95% brown, black, grey, blue and white, if that helps.

5. Least favorite color?
Uh...hot pink?

6. What are you listening to?
Right this second? I just put the Timbaland album on after everyone got mad at me for playing Beck and the Hackers soundtrack this morning.

7. Are you happy with your life right now?
Yikes. Honestly, the answer is no, but things are starting to look up.

8. Are you involved with anyone?
This is the area where things continue to not look up. So no.

9. What is your favorite subject in school
I guess English? I was nerdy and good at everything in school, but the only classes I really enjoyed were my English classes.

10.Do you shop at Abercrombie?
No, but I appreciate the half-naked models in their stores.

11. Do you have money?
Heh. No.

12. Would you take an ex back?
Depends on the situation. Was he an asshole? Am I drunk? How drunk? These are important questions.

13. Are you outgoing?
Depends on how drunk I am. (Sensing a theme yet?)

14. Are you gay?
Only when I'm drunk. Kidding.
Hells yeah.

15. Where do you wish you were right now?
Everyone I know is on vacation, about to go on vacation, or just back from vacation. So let's say Mexico.

16. What should you be doing right now?
Work. Oops.

Can you blow a bubble?
Why are only some of these questions numbered?

Can you do a cart wheel?
I doubt it.

Can you touch your toes?
I can! I make sure to touch my toes while I'm stretching after the gym.

Can you wiggle your ears?
Thanks, but I'm not a total freak of nature.

Can you touch your tongue to your nose?
Almost!

THE DIDS:

Did you ever want to be a doctor?
Nope.

Did you ever want to be a fire fighter?
Nope.

Did you ever want to be a teacher?
I think everyone wants to be a teacher at some point while they're in school. My phase lasted about five seconds.

Did you ever break the law?
Nothing serious, but yeah. I'm sure everyone has.

Did you vote for Bush?
I'm a Canuck, yo.

THE DOs:

Do you like rollercoasters?
Love them. Especially the wooden ones.

Do you own a bike?
No. My last bike was stolen and that was the end of that.

Do you play the lotto?
Never. Although RM's boyfriend made me play ProLine once.

Do you like football?
Uh...no. I did enjoy the last hour of the Superbowl though.

Do you have a shopping addiction?
I can't afford one, but I dream of the day when I will.

THE DOES:

Does your family have family picnics?
Ha. No.

Does your wallet have any pics in it?
There may be a really old picture of me in there, with shoulder length hippy hair and an American flag bandana (taken while we played Century Club in university).

Does your job bring you satisfaction?
Next!

Does a soft answer turn away wrath?
What?

Does sex mean love?
Hells no.

THE LASTS:

Last person you hung out with?
Uh. I went out on Saturday night. Tonight a friend and I are going for wings, then watching Survivor and Across the Universe.

Last car ride?
Drove myself to a job interview on Tuesday.

Last text message?
Someone texted me to let me know she broke one of the keys on her laptop.

Last baby you held?
Babies scare me. I can't remember. Maybe my cousin's baby?

Last time you shaved?
Tuesday

LAST THING.

What was the last thing you bought?
Lunch! Chinese food!

What was the last thing you had to drink?
Water. The answer is always water.

What was the last thing you watched?
I watched a lot of TV last night. Or stuff that I TiVo'd, anyway. Idol (smell ya later, Josiah!), Big Brother (total crap this year), the season one finale of Project Runway (go Jay!), American Gladiators (go...scary brown haired chick!)

What was the last thing you read?
The last book? Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but Haruki Murakami. Non-book? Defamer.

What was the last thing you hand wrote?
Probably filling out my dayplanner.

THE WHOS:

Who last talked to you on the phone?
Mama!

Who was the last person you took a picture of?
I took a picture of a pair of Christan Louboutin shoes on Friday.

Who was the last person to leave you a comment?
Jen. Probably a month ago, the last time I wrote a blog.

CURRENTLY:

What color shirt are you wearing?
I'm wearing a blue/green/crown argyle sweater over a white shirt with little circles...made of dots. It doesn't look as dumb as it sounds (I hope).

Have any tattoos?
I'm not the type of person who can make a decision and be pleased with it for the rest of my life, so no. (This personality trait also bodes well for my love life.)

Have you any piercings?
Tongue and tragus.

Straight hair or curly?
Straight.

Where are you?
Sitting in my office, wanting to die.

HAVE YOU EVER:

Failed a class?
Nope. Me=boring

Professed your love and been turned down?
Nope. Thank God.

Accomplished a life goal?
I have low standards, so absolutely yes. Although getting out of my town and moving to the big city is notable, I think.

Sang in front of a crowd?
I believe I've been drunkenly coerced into karaoke before.

SEVEN THINGS YOU WILL FIND IN YOUR ROOM:

1. clothes
2. CDs
3. bank statements everywhere
4. books
5. things I should have thrown out a long time ago
6. 2p coins
7. the Unofficial Martine McCutcheon poster annual.

THREE RELATIONSHIP QUESTIONS:

1. In a relationship?
No.

2. Want a relationship?
Wouldn't hurt.

3. Wanna get married?
If it happens. It's not a priority.

FOUR THINGS ON YOUR MIND:

1. Why can I not get any work done today?!?
2. I'll start going back to the gym next week.
3. I hope Parvati gets kicked off Survivor tonight.
4. Chicken wings for dinner! Represent!

Harley

2008-01-23T16:44:00.000-05:00

We never knew Harley's real birthday, so we officially celebrated his birthday on the day he came home with us: July 9, 1997. He was six weeks old, and tiny and beautiful and amazing. The breeder had actually promised all the dogs to other people when we first called, but someone backed out at the last minute, so the puppy was ours if we wanted him. We wouldn't get our pick of the litter, but...what, I'm going to get stuck with the ugly golden retriever puppy? No such thing, my friend. We went to see him before we made the final decision, and I knew which dog was mine right away. The runt of the litter. I wouldn't have had it any other way.

And neither would my mom. We had to lie to her so she would let me have him. She wanted a small dog, but she didn't want a yappy dog. Good luck with that, lady.

"Retrievers aren't that big! Really! They're like...on the small end of medium-sized dogs!"
"I think they're bigger than that."
"No."
"No?"
"No. You're wrong."

At least he didn't bark that often.

Harley slept so much the first two days I originally named him Coma. He slept, he cried because he missed his family, and he was extremely patient with me while I carried him around with me everywhere I went, showing off my perfectly adorable new best friend to anyone who would pay attention. He woke up on the third morning with a big, stupid smile on his face and so much energy I could barely keep up. It was obvious that my dog wasn't a Coma. He was a Harley through and through.

He was potty-trained in about 5 minutes. We set up a bell on a string next to the back door and he figured out what it was for pretty much immediately. He also only ever munched on one pair of shoes. Sandals, actually, and in retrospect they were totally fugly and I never should have been wearing them in the first place.

He did, however, eat a couch.

And big chunks of carpet.

And the dog training book.

That seemed like a sign, and the book was damn expensive, so we more or less gave up at that point. He couldn't do tricks, he couldn't lie down. If you told him to "sit" he would stare at you and watch you repeat the command over and over, until he finally sat down out of pure boredom. The only "trick" he really knew wasn't even a trick, but I liked to think of it as one. No matter what, no matter where he was in the house, no matter if he was asleep, if I called his name, he would come running and bring me Instant Love. He would come bounding out of nowhere, big stupid smile on his face, ready to lick me or cuddle up to me or play with me until he passed out. No matter what, no matter where he was or what he was doing, if I said his name, he would be there for me. Instant Love.

Sometimes I described Harley as my jealous boyfriend. He didn't like when I paid attention to anyone other than him. If my arm got sore from petting him, he would get so upset. I'd cross my arms and he would dig his nose into the crook of my elbow and try to force me to keep going. If I let my hand rest on his back, he would shift around and try to get me to start petting him again. Then he would fix you with The Look. The Look that said "you don't love me enough." I hated The Look. Or my arm did, at least, because I was powerless to resist it. And he did it to everyone. I used to say "don't pet him unless you're not planning on going anywhere for the next half hour." No one listened.

"Wow, he really does like attention, eh? Okay, lie down now Harley. Harley, lie down. Okay seriously, when is he going to let me stop?" It was funny every single time.

It didn't make sense for me to take him when I moved to Toronto. My parents work 5 minutes from home, they could let him out at lunch, he had a huge yard to run around in. There were a dozen people in town who would beg to take care of him when my parents went on vacation. I didn't have any of that. It seemed cruel to bring him to the city just so I could have him with me. He wasn't a city dog. But every time I came home for a visit, he was at the door, ready to pout if I didn't drop everything on the front steps and play with him immediately.

My parents were on vacation last week and my mom's best friend was staying at the house and looking after Harley. She was leaving the house to take him for a walk on Friday, there was a dog across the street who started barking, and he bolted out of her hand, leash trailing behind. (He might have had a big fat ass, but he was strong.) He took off to go meet his new best friend, was hit by a car, and that was it. My parents found out on Friday, but decided not to say anything to me until they returned yesterday. I think some people probably would be upset about that, but they had no way of getting in touch with me, and who else was going to tell me? My mom's friend? I can't imagine having to call my parents to tell them, let alone make the call a second time. Seems cruel to me. I wasn't about to bus back home to sit alone in an empty house and cry about my dog. I'm happy my parents were there for me when I found out. I wouldn't want to go through this without them.

I feel awful for my mom's friend, who loved Harley like he was her own dog. I feel awful for the driver. I can't imagine hitting someone's dog. But what can you do, right? He's strong, he took off, fate took its course, the end. It's no one's fault. Getting angry is a waste of time.

I have to say, though, his fat ass left a dent for sure, and that makes me kind of happy. I get some sort of satisfaction knowing that he did a bit of damage on his way out. He was a pee-squatter, so he wasn't that good at marking his territory. I'm happy he was able to leave his mark on something in the end, even if someone else has to pay to have it hammered out.

And so my little family is now a little smaller. I miss you so much, buddy.

Reason #...uh...1 why I love Jessica Alba

2008-01-16T14:53:00.000-05:00

Haha!

The poop.

2008-01-08T12:57:00.001-05:00

So as I mentioned yesterday, my boss decided to close the office for 9 days and only pay us for the three stat holidays. He also (and this is the bigger offense, IMO), decided not to tell anyone that he's doing this, so it was quite the fun surprise when we got back from vacation.

Additionally, since my pay for this week will cover two more days when the office was closed, I inquired as to whether our pay would be docked for those days as well. The answer: TBA. My boss is pretending that he has no idea whether or not we'll be paid, and is forcing me to go through our bookkeeper, who works off site, and hasn't responded to any of my two emails or two phone messages since yesterday morning. My boss sits ten feet away from me and thinks a believable lie is "I, the sole owner and propieter or this company, have nothing to do with decisions regarding whether or not you will be paid."

Meanwhile, I live from paycheque-to-paycheque to begin with, so waiting until the cheque comes in to find out whether I'm being docked a full five days pay is not an option I'm willing to put up with. Having my pay docked at all is not an option I'm willing to put up with. It's such a slap in the face, especially the way he's chosen to handle it (like a cowardly asshole), that I can't justify working here anymore, regardless of whether I find another job in my field or not. I'm looking into temping, just as a way to get out of here ASAP. No matter what I find, it's going to be a pay raise, so even if it's not in my field, it's still win/win.

Meanwhile, I'll probably make it through the week without slitting my boss' throat, but I can't make any promises. Wish me luck!

Hypothetically....

2008-01-07T09:50:00.001-05:00

If you were an employer, and you were planning on docking your employees pay for Dec 24, 27 and 28th (without telling them), would you also give them a $100 Christmas bonus?

"Here, this should cover part of what I haven't told you I'm not paying you over the break. Thanks for all your hard work this year!"

Asshole.

w00t!

2007-12-12T16:37:00.000-05:00

Merriam-Webster names their word of the year.

In other news, I'm very much looking forward to the start of the new year. 1998 looks to be very promising.

Day 80

2007-12-12T16:23:00.000-05:00

You know what I want more than a cigarette right now?

Nothing. There is not one thing in this entire world that I want more than a smoke.

Stupid, stressful, bullshit day.

Jesus

2007-12-10T11:01:00.001-05:00

This is the worst thing I've heard in a while. I can't even fully comprehend it.

The judge's full comments make me froth with rage, particularly the part where she makes it clear that she's treating the under-16 minors the same as the 26-year-old, because she doesn't want to single anyone out as the ringleader. Actually, the entire "oh, whatever will you naughty boys get up to next?" tone is what kills me. Bitch, they're probably going to get up to raping more little girls, since apparently that's allowed Cape York as long as you have money.

Also, the 10-year-old girl "probably agreed" to get gang banged by nine guys?? That's so fucked up.

Hero this, d-bag

2007-12-04T10:59:00.000-05:00

So. The Heroes fall finale. Don't read on if you don't want to know.

For realsies.

Also, don't read on if you don't want to read a lengthy diatribe about how Peter Petrelli can suck my dick. Because there was stuff I liked last night, there are characters I enjoy, some cool stuff happened, but really, all the main action centred on Peter being completely mind-crushingly stupid, and I need to rant about it for a minute.

Peter's behaviour completely flew in the face of all logic and reason. I know he has a thing for believing in people, but he sounded like a battered wife with Adam, completely ignoring the 18 million warning signs telling him "ADAM IS A BAD GUY!" I mean really Peter, how many people have to walk up to you and tell you that Adam is evil before you believe it? Victoria Pratt told you Adam is a killer and then Adam killed her and that didn't arouse any suspicion? You trust Adam over Hiro, seriously? Meanwhile, Adam is telling you to open a vault that's storing an otherwise protected virus on the same day that you know it is released and kills millions of people and you don't think that's suspicious at all? Even after everyone just told you that Adam wants to release the virus? Even after Adam said "YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN OPEN THIS VAULT, PETER"? Nothing clicked?

Also: YOU CAN READ MINDS, A-HOLE!!! I think part of the reason I hate Peter is that he's way too powerful. He can do everything that every other character on the show can do. He can do so much stuff that the writers often have to ignore the abilities that he should be using in order to make the plot more complicated. READ HIS MIND, PETER! I know Adam saved your brofriend from being all fugly and burned and shit, but why don't you just humour everyone and read his fucking mind? You're making Mohinder look perceptive.

As for the rest of the episode: I love Elle, I love Parkman, I love Bennet, I like Micah and Monica, Maya can lick my nuts, Hiro leaving Adam buried alive was totally badass. Has Sylar always been so cartoony and melodramatic and I've just been ignoring it because I think he's hot?

Also: is canned spinach a real thing? Gross. Or was that supposed to be a Popeye reference?

As for Niki and Nathan, I was sad to see them go as I loved both characters, but I also feel like they kind of didn't know what to do with Nathan anymore and they never knew what to do with Niki, so I understand why they're gone. They're not going to get rid of Mohinder, the boring-ass "moral compass". They're not going to get rid of Maya until they take one more shot at redeeming the character. Everything always seems to revolve around Peter, so I doubt he's going anywhere anytime soon.

Anyway, I'm still optimistic for Volume III. I just kind of hated last night's finale.

Next up: The Hills!

New job?

2007-11-28T10:19:00.001-05:00

Not this time.

(Note: 90% of this was written yesterday within an hour of me finding out I didn't get the job. I'm in a much less "down the road, not across the street" type of mood this morning. Still bummed, but with more perspective.)

I mentioned that I had a job interview last week. The job was basically perfect for me: it was in my field and had a specific focus on the parts of my job that I enjoy with a de-emphasis on all the crap that I hate. It was with a big organization that I really like (and happens to be extremely gay-friendly) and an opportunity to do something a little more worthwhile and little less mindnumbing than hawking shitty straight-to-DVD movies and crappy TV shows that no one watches or cares about.

So of course I go and fuck it up.

I'm just not good in interviews. Awkward social situations with strangers -- and specifically awkward formal social situations in which I'm forced to talk about myself to strangers -- are not really my forte. I tend to revert back to my shyest, most socially awkward self. I half-answer questions, I "um" and "uh" all over the place, anything resembling a personality goes into deep hibernation, I sweat, I lose my place while I'm talking, I'm basically just a disaster. I'm sure you think I'm exaggerating, but let me run down a list of every single job and interview I've ever had.

1. My first job was working for my parents. No interview.
2. My second job I had two absolutely painful interviews, but was hired because my best friend recommended me.
3. I had an interview to get into my PR certificate program after I finished at university. Towards the end of the program, I was told by my interviewer that I got in because the essay I wrote made up for my crappy interview.
4. I walked into my first internship interview and my future-now-former boss introduced me to my future-now-former coworker by saying "this is AJ, he's going to be working for us. I mean, I don't see why not. Okay, let's get this interview started!"
5. I'm pretty sure I was hired for my current job because they felt sorry for me (I had been unemployed for 8 months), and it started out as internship, so why not give me a chance?

So this interview went about as well as expected, but was still not fantastic. Not as horrible as it could have been, but I knew I didn't knock it out of the park. I'm pretty sure the interview went as well as it did only because I did two shots of rum before leaving the house.

Don't judge me.

Anyway, I was trying to Secret the shit out of this job, just believing that I had it and manifesting it or whatever, but that sort of fell apart at some point on the weekend, and I couldn't help but become incredibly pessimistic about the entire thing. I saw one of my references on Monday night and she said she never received a call, so I pretty much knew what was coming, not that it made it easier. The thing is, I've been applying for jobs for months, and this was my first interview. So it gave me a lot of hope, and no matter how realistic I tried to be, it's hard not to look at the opportunity as a ticket out. And not just a ticket out of my current job, but out of my current financial situation, and an opportunity to meet new and interesting people. Don't get me wrong, I love my friends, but everything in my life has just seemed so stale and stalled out for the past 6 months or so. Having some new blood in my life certainly wouldn't hurt me at all.

I just...I hate this fucking job. You know about Constant Monologue. If I start to tell you about what a fucking prima donna asshole my boss is, this post will turn into a novel. And his second-in-command has a penchant for throwing temper tantrums when things don't go his way. And by "temper tantrum" I don't mean an adult version of a tantrum, I mean "screaming and swearing, stomping and waving of arms." I mean one time I had to ask him to stop screaming "FUUUUUCK" over and over again at the top of his lungs while I was on the phone. I mean our landlord -- whose office is on the third floor -- once came down to our basement office to make sure Tantrum was okay after overhearing one of his fits.

Also: the pay is absolute shit. Not to get all "I have an education, I shouldn't have to work for this" on you, but I have a degree and postgrad specialized training and I make slightly more than I would if I still worked at the grocery store. And my boss acts like we should fall all over ourselves with gratitude because he buys us lunch once every couple months. Hey asshole, you know what would be better than lunch? A fucking raise. I managed to make it through a million years of schooling without accumulating a penny of debt, and now I can't even afford to pay my credit card minimums.

ANYWAY...Roommate and Mom managed to cheer me up somewhat, then I went to see Superbad with a friend, and who can be in a bad mood after Superbad? I know I'll find something eventually, I'm just sick of waiting. And like...it would have been nice to be able to afford Christmas presents for my friends and family. This doesn't mean 2008 won't still be the Year of the AJ, it just means it won't necessarily be starting on January 2nd.

I'll leave you with my favourite part of my conversation with my mom from yesterday.

"Do you know anything about the person who did get the job?"
"No. I imagine they don't like to give that information out in case I decide to, like..."
"Bomb them?"
"...yeah. Listen, have you ever seen that movie with Tori Spelling about the cheerleading mom?"
"What?"
"Nothing."

I didn't want to give her any ideas. That lady is the best, though.

Shameless/Sad

2007-11-16T10:34:00.000-05:00

I don't know if anyone out there is really strongly looking to curry favour with me for whatever reason, but I need this outfit. It is necessary for me to own all of those pieces. Especially the pants. And the vest. And the shirt. And the bowtie. And the shoes.

Seriously though, I will sleep with anyone who buys me that for me. I don't care if that's prostitution and I'm not even kidding.

Seven Weird Things About Me

2007-11-14T11:13:00.000-05:00

I was tagged for a meme by one Ms. Charming Bitch. She's a bitch for tagging me, but too charming for me to be mad. Plus, she's doing NaBloPoMo and that's just impressive.

So. Seven Weird Things About Me.

1. I am crazy paranoid about losing my hair.
I actually went on an extended rant about this at Thanksgiving dinner. I feel like this whole "the hair loss gene comes from your mother's side of the family" is an elaborate joke being played on me in order to lull me into a false sense of security. I currently have a pretty thick head of hair that's not receding at all, as far as I can tell. Everyone on my mother's side of the family has thick, lustrous, beautiful hair. My grandfather died in his 80s with a full head of hair. On the flip side, I have an uncle on my dad's side who had like, crazy afro thick hair that fell out entirely without warning when he was in his 30s.

I swear to God if you fuck me over, Uncle John, I am coming after you.

2. I didn't start regularly washing my face until about a year ago.
Gross, eh? But I don't really get zits that often, I'm not that oily and soap has always dried my face out. It wasn't until I discovered the magical joy of facewash that I jumped on the Clean Face gravy train.

3. I hate my job.
Oh my God I need a new job so bad. I dread coming into work. I feel like every second that I'm at work involves a great deal of painful effort to not start screaming uncontrollably while I tear people's eyes out. I stay up at night worrying about how I don't make nearly enough money to cover my expenses. There is literally not one thing about this job that doesn't stress me out and upset me. But I do feel like 2008 is the Year of the AJ, so I'm optimistic that I'm going to find something soon.

4. I'm either 'meek' or 'aggressive'. I'm not sure which.
Roommate and I had a conversation the other day about what I would do if a bum started screaming at me. (I have remarkable luck with bums. They're always swearing at R and calling her names and spitting on her, but they generally leave me alone.) I don't know if I would put up my collar, duck my head down and start walking faster, or if I would turn around a full on just start screaming back. R couldn't predict what I would do, either. It just seems weird, because shouldn't I know the answer to that question? I bet you know what you would do.

5. I have no memory for books, television shows or movies.
I can seriously watch a movie three or four times before it starts to sink in. I've seen Elf four times and literally the only thing I remember about it is Will Ferrell and Zooey Deschanel singing Baby It's Cold Outside and "you sit on a throne of lies". Oh, and either Robert Redford or James Caan are in it. In a way it sucks, because I tend to spend time with people who like to quote movies and tv shows and all I can usually come up with is "you can stick it anywhere" from Cruel Intentions. But in a way it's awesome, because I can read a book three times and each time is just as exciting as the first.

6. I fucking hate cilantro.
And I hate that I hate it. I've tried so hard for so long to force myself to at least tolerate cilantro, but I hate that nasty shit so much. That disgusting, strong soapy flavour that mixes with nothing but manages to overpower everything and gets used in so many dishes that I otherwise enjoy...it pains me.

7. I would spend all my money on clothes if I had any money.
Seriously, if it wasn't for Canadian winter and my need for shelter for 5 months a year, I would be the most stylish homeless dude you've ever met.

Angry Johnny and the Mysterious Case of the Missing Pants

2007-11-12T13:38:00.000-05:00

A conversation that took place this weekend:

AJ: Um....
Roommate: What's up?
A: I can't find my pants.
R: I'm sorry?
A: The pants I wore out last night. I can't find them in my room.
R: Um....
A: I know.
R: They're not in your room?
A: They're not in the kitchen, they're not in the living room, they're not in the bathroom. I hope they're not in your room.
R: How much did you drink last night?
A: I actually didn't drink that much. I didn't mix, I didn't have any red wine, I was well-behaved.
R: Okay, let's retrace your steps. You came home, walked in the door, and then....
A: I don't remember. I walked into my room and went to bed, I'm assuming. My jacket is in my room, my belt is in my room, where the fuck are my fucking pants??
R: Your door was partly open this morning. You always close your door.
A: The front door wasn't completely closed when I got out of bed, either. Do you think someone stole my pants?
R: ...No, I don't think that. How much did you say you had to drink last night?
A: More than I thought?
R: How do you lose pants?
A: HOW DO YOU LOSE PANTS??? THIS IS RIDICULOUS!!! My wallet is in those pants!
R: Okay, well they have to be in the apartment. How about we just go for breakfast, I'll pay for you, and we'll look with a fresh set of eyes when we get home.
A: I just don't understand...
R: I know. I promise we'll find them later.
A: Okay.

Seconds later...

R: Um....
A: What's up?
R: Why are your pants lying in the hallway outside our apartment?
A: I...uh....
R: It looks like you stepped out of them and into the aparment.
A: Do you think that...
R: No, I don't think someone broke into our apartment and stole your pants.
A: My shoes...are in my room...
R: God, you're weird.
A: My belt...my jacket...
R: Take your fucking wallet and let's go.

Cleanse

2007-11-02T11:48:00.000-04:00

So. I'm doing this. Actually, my roommate, her boyfriend and I are all doing it together. It's going okay so far, although The Roomie and I were both extremely irritable for the first day or two. We narrowly averted a fistfight on the first day when I screwed up the brown rice. The thing is, there are a lot of things we can eat (as much fish and brown rice as we want, most vegetables and a lot of fruit, any meat in moderation), but here's a short list of things we can't have:

-anything made with any type of flour, including buckwheat flour and gluten-free bread and pasta
-anything fermented, including soy sauce and vinegar
-anything with sugar
-or honey
-all dairy

Shoot me in the fucking head. Actually though, it hasn't been that bad so far. We're on Day 4, and so far we've had curry, stir fry and cacciatore. We're getting sick of stew-y type things on brown rice, so tonight we're having roast chicken. The problem is that there are a lot of things we can eat, we just can't season anything. You can have salad, as long as you find a dressing without dairy or vinegar! You can have stiry fry, as long as you don't use soy sauce or corn starch! Apparently every single processed food on the planet contains sugar or vinegar.

I don't know. I'm definitely...uh...cleansing more than usual, but I'll have to keep you posted on if it makes me feel any better. If nothing else, I'll finish it with a sense of accomplishment, I guess.

Who wants to hear about Halloween? I went out on Saturday night with a couple friends, both of whom had awesome costumes. I came up with my costume idea at about 5:30 on Saturday evening after my roommate forced me to start thinking about it.

Consider this a cautionary tale, my friends. Because when you leave your costume planning until two hours before you have to leave the house, sometimes you have to build your costume around the shorts from your roommate's old "sexy baseball player" costume. And then you have to leave the house looking like this.

I only wish you could see the matching headband.

It was a fun night regardless of how gross I looked. And like, apparently all you have to do is flash a little leg to make the boys come running. "I just wish my girlfriend wasn't here" isn't really the pick-up line I was looking for, but then again, I'm not that picky.

Sorry this entry was kind of disjointed and poorly written. My brain has been a big pile mushy stress lately. I'll try and post something more interesting soon.

Brain Stew

2007-10-23T09:49:00.000-04:00

So, some random crap:

1. Apparently (I need to stop forgetting entire chunks of my night when I drink) I only had half a smoke on Saturday night. Yay! It still made me feel like shit the next day. Also, tomorrow is Day 30, which is a bit of a milestone. Here's hoping I make it to Day 60!

2. Why I love my roommate, reason #2754: I forgot my lunch this morning, and she ran outside in her sweatpants in the pouring rain to bring it to me! Then every single one of the dozen people at the streetcar stop gave me an "awww" look. Awww!

3. This stuff is the shiz. It's so good I can't even tell you. I bought the cranberry one (which I don't see on the website), and I've been mixing it with raspberry yogurt for breakfast in the morning. Check out the flavours, though. Apple Cinnamon?! Blueberry walnut?!?!

4. Okay, Heroes. We need to have a talk. It's time to cut the bullshit with Peter in Ireland and Hiro in feudal Japan and get a fucking move on! You have wayyyyy too many characters to give each of them their own seperate storyline. I felt like last night's episode was good, but we're five episodes in, and barely anything has happened yet. I thought the Parkman/Nathan stuff was awesome, I really enjoyed Veronica Mars, I missed the Bennets and the Monica/Micah stuff was good, if a little pointless.
Hiro: boring.
Peter and that fugly Irish chick: boring.
Mohinder: stupid and boring and enough with the fucking monologues.
Niki: not actually a character on the show.
Maya and her brother whose name I don't even remember: so boring, but at least they've been paired up with Sylar. Seriously though, I noticed that Sylar was missing last night, but I didn't even realize those two weren't around.
Anyway, I'm not saying this season is bad or that I'm not enjoying it; I can still barely stand the wait between episodes. But I can also barely stand the wait between now and when something actually happens and the heroes start interacting again. So get to stepping, Heroes. I mean it.

Why I love my roommate, Reason #3209

2007-10-18T10:35:00.000-04:00

"I think the reason I hate your intern is because he has a really weak chin. You know what I'm talking about? I saw him walking down the street the other day and I wanted to punch him in the face and tell him to man up! Don't you ever just want to beat the shit out of him and his stupid weak chin?"

Day WTF?!

2007-10-17T12:10:00.000-04:00

How did I get Day 20 on October 10th? Like...I don't even think I posted that on October 10th? Didn't I post that on Monday? Whatever. Today is Day 23. I'm posting this because it makes me smile, and I'll probably need to remember it sometime down the road:

I have saved close to $120 since I quit smoking. Yay!

I've also started bringing my lunch to work everyday, and in the past week and a half, I've saved close to $100.

I also haven't eaten out for dinner in the past week and half, saving me an additional $60 (roughly).

Good news: I can afford to pay my rent! And very slightly pay down my massive credit card debt!

Bad news: I still can't afford the totally beautiful, perfect, wonderful new winter coat that I tried on last night. I need that coat.

The non-smoking continues. I had a serious craving that lasted all afternoon yesterday. It was one of the cravings where your saliva gets that metallic taste and then your throat feels dry and the only thing that's going to make you feel right is smoking a cigarette. Or - I have discovered - brushing your teeth, which is what I did the second I got home. The craving wasn't nearly as misery inducing as they were for the first few days, but definitely an annoying reminder that this is something that I'm going to have to deal with for the rest of my life.

I'm still mulling the No Drinking in November idea. I don't know. I've scheduled a 12-day 'cleanse' for either next week or November 1st, and I'm worried that giving up smoking/drinking/eating bad shit all at once is going to make me snap. I feel like my roommate is going to find me on like, November 8th, sitting on the floor in my underwear, eating a steak and cigarette sandwich and washing it down with a bottle of gin.

Don't laugh, it could happen.

Day 20

2007-10-10T15:57:00.001-04:00

I like the sound of `Day 20`. Day 20 sounds like progress.

I don't have much to report, really. I totally slipped and had a smoke last weekend when my friend was visiting and then the next night at the wedding, but everything up to and since then has been fine. Oh, I also slipped this past Friday at a swanky work function (translation: open bar). I would talk more about the slip ups, but I'm afraid my blog is going to start sounding like the diary of a scary, out-of-control alcoholic if I go into too much detail. Short story: I got drunk, I had a smoke. The good(ish) news is that I haven't had more than one on any night that I've slipped. I've also felt really wretchedly awful the next day after having each one. I figure I'll either develop a Pavlovian aversion to them soon enough, or (worst case scenario), my body adjusts to having one a week. Which theoretically would be ideal, but I've quit enough times to know I can't handle just one a week for too long.

I dunno. I'm not sure exactly how to overcome the drinking + smoking stumbling block. I've been toying with the idea of cutting out drinking for the month of November, but we'll have to see about that. I'm certainly open to any ideas from the peanut gallery.

The "peanut gallery" is you, btw...

Day 8: The Hard Part

2007-10-02T12:50:00.000-04:00

Has it really only been eight days? Jesus.

So I'm no longer having constant cravings. The physical withdrawal symptons (shaky hands, salivating at times when I'd normally smoke) have subsided, pretty much completely. I'm not constantly biting everyone's head off. I survived an incredibly stressful week at work and the only thing that cracked me was an actual death, and even then, I only smoked once.

Now for the hard part.

It's easy to say no when you can physically see and feel yourself withdrawing from the nicotine. I mean, the quitting itself isn't easy, but I never seriously considered cheating until Saturday. Unfortunately, the fact that it was so easy for me to have one on Saturday and not seriously consider cheating again is exactly the problem. I mean, doesn't that mean that I'm cured? One smoke in a week and my passion for smoking was not immediately reignited, so why not have another one? Hell, maybe I should buy a pack and keep it in the freezer for when I'm drinking. Sounds like a perfect plan! I can totally be a social smoker; I had one on Saturday and that was fine, right? So this is perfect, I'll only smoke when I drink. And when I'm out with friends who smoke. And after a big meal, but only a really big, really delicious meal.

Do you see how crazy I am? Now that the constant cravings have waned, it is so easy to convince myself that I'm allowed to have a cigarette. Just one. But, you know, if I do have one, the entire night is basically a write off, so I might as well just keep smoking. BOOM! Can't find someone to bum a smoke off of? Might as well buy a small pack, smoke all I want and throw them out at the end of the night. Actually, if I'm going out tomorrow night, too, then maybe I should just hold on to them and finish them then. I definitely won't buy another pack after that. Definitely. Probably.

My point is, while the psychological addiction might not make me want to scratch anyone's face off, it's way harder to beat than the physical cravings. I have very little impulse control, and if the little angel on my shoulder can't come up with anything better "but...cancer!!" then he's going to lose every time. Because the devil is blowing smoke right up my nostril and telling me how much I deserve to smoke as a reward for putting up with an absolutely unreasonable amount of bullshit for the past week (and the rest of this one, too).

Low point of the past couple days: After dinner is still extremely hard. I hope I can get past the point where I feel like a meal just isn't as good unless it's finished with a smoke.

High point of the past couple days: I can already run way faster on the treadmill than I could two weeks ago. I still cough up a mouthful of black shit when I'm done, but even that feels like progress.

Challenges for the rest of the week: a wedding, a funeral, an out-of-town visiting friend and Thanksgiving dinner.

Whatever. I don't even know anymore.

2007-09-30T09:54:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned on Friday, I decided to come home for the weekend. And of course, any other weekend I could have come home probably would have gone better than this one. Apparently my mom has been feeling under the weather for the past few weeks, and every time she thinks she's kicked it, it comes back. My parents were supposed to go out to dinner with friends last night, but my mom got sick, so they had to cancel, which is apparently what's happened every time they've made plans for the past few weeks. I guess after five weeks of being sick, she's finally decided that it might be time to go see a doctor, so at least there's that.

Then I found out that one of the guys I worked with at the grocery store had been killed by a train. He was only 18, too, and such a good kid. I worked with him during the eight or so months that I was unemployed and had to go back home to work, and he was so funny and well-liked, which is probably why I always had to yell at him to be more productive, heh. I feel so awful for all the kids at work; they were such a tight group. There's about a million pictures on Facebook of all of them together at work, out partying, at prom, and like...I don't know. I know how close they were, I saw them all goofing off together every day at the store. They're just going to be devastated. I wish I could do something for them.

That said: if you decide you want to walk down the train tracks with your iPod on, you're an idiot. What a stupid, completely pointless way to die. Especially when you come from a town with a lengthy history of young men suffering train-related deaths. I honestly can't even drive across train tracks without cringing and shuddering since one of my classmates lost a game of chicken with a train when we were in the tenth grade. There have been more since then, and probably more before. I can't believe I was thinking about my own inevitable, train-related death less than an hour before I heard the news.

Also, I had a smoke last night, natch. I don't feel that bad about it, I'll just have to not do it again.

In somewhat better news, I spent most of yesterday taking gross advantage of the Canadian dollar being at par with US currency, as a friend and I headed to Niagara Falls and Buffalo to engage in some hardcore shopping action. I got five different sweaters, one from Banana Republic, two from the Gap, and two from Calvin Klein. I also nearly got a pair of Skechers boots, but chickened out based on the fact that I have no money, and actually couldn't even afford the sweaters. I should have got those fucking boots. I'm so angry. Even though we ended up having to pay the duty at the border, I still saved probably around 70 bucks by doing my shopping in the States. Now, if I could only find a few good online retailers who will ship their crap to Canada, I'd be set!

Also, while people watching yesterday, I was able to confirm something weird about Americans. There is definitely a higher proportion of people who are way trashier and nastier than the average Canadian. I've been to Vegas, I've played Rate My Mullet, I know what's up. But there also seems to be a higher proportion of guys who look like they stepped directly out of an Abercrombie catalogue. The Aberzombie thing isn't really my jam as far as what I look for in a guy, but I wouldn't kick them out of bed either, and there was a fair number of guys out yesterday who would have had their clothes ripped right off their bodies if I thought I could have gotten away with it. What's the deal, there? Do y'all distribute genetics the way you distribute wealth?

Day Three/Four: Turning Point?

2007-09-27T20:56:00.000-04:00

I don't think I could have picked a more stressful, obnoxious week to quit smoking. Work has just been a nonstop nightmare, with everything that could possibly go wrong going wrong. Day Three was pretty much the same pit of misery and despair as Day Two, with everyone else being just as irritating and me being just as nasty and miserable. At one point I put on my headphones and decided to spend the rest of the day listening to my iPod and blocking the rest of the office out as much as possible.

It was such a good idea that I'll probably never take off my headphones again. Seriously though, between the coworker who gives a neverending monologue of everything he does during the day, and the coworker who still hasn't learned to read without saying the words out loud (no I am not making that up, he got annoyed with me when I asked him to stop), it is extremely difficult to get anything done that requires any concentration. Constant Monologue also looks at me for a reaction for reasons that I cannot understand considering I openly ignore at least 80% of the things that come out of his mouth on a good day. Hilariously, the headphones have only slowed him down somewhat. About an hour ago, I saw him looking right at me and yammering away, my headphones plainly obvious to anyone with eyes. I turned my iPod down enough to hear him complaining about the same thing he was complaining about an hour ago, then immediately turned the music up again and went back to pretending I have my own office.

Anyway, today has actually been going shockingly well. I woke up fine, coughed up some phlegm (which always makes me feel better), didn't want a smoke on the way to work, didn't really want one all morning, and (this is the big one) wasn't dying for one after lunch! My saliva hasn't had that metallic taste that it gets when I'm ready to sell my mother into white slavery for a single drag of a Belmont. I still want one, obviously, but I don't feel like it's controlling my behaviour right now, which I'm grateful for. As are my coworkers and my roommate, I'm sure. I'm not about to make any great proclamations about "turning the corner" or "the worst being past" because quite frankly, I expect to be a complete asshole by dinner time, but for now, I'm enjoying not being on the edge of screaming or crying at any given moment.

Low point of the past two days: Storming out of the office in a huff when no one would STFU already.

High point of the past two days: Uh...right now?

Challenges for the weekend: I'm going home, which means I have to contend with my secret smoker mother, who isn't good at hidng her smokes and wouldn't notice if I took one. I'll also be spending a good chunk of the weekend with one of my few remaining smoker friends, which will be a huge challenge, as I've never not smoked around her before. Wish me luck!

Day Two: Suck it.

2007-09-26T13:18:00.001-04:00

As you may or may not know, I don't really have a reputation for being warm and fuzzy type of person (...heh). I'm fairly direct and opinionated, and I have a pretty low tolerance for having to deal with other people's bullshit. I know that not smoking sort of...um...exascerbates some of my less appealing character traits. So I do make an effort not to, you know, plunge my arm into your chest and eat your still-beating heart when you ask me the time. It's a bit of a struggle, but normally I do okay.

I don't know what it was about today (or yesterday, by the time I finished writing this and posting it), but I've basically been a monster all day. And for every time I managed to catch my tongue, there were at least two other instances where I could see pure hatred flash across the face of the person I was talking to. At one point, I saw a coworker mentally decide not to get into an argument with me.

Wednesday was kind of a weird day all around, though. It felt like it was dragging on forever, which I thought was just me wanting a smoke and not leaving the office all day, but everyone I spoke to felt the same way. One of my coworkers was a frantic mess all day, running around and getting up in everyone's business, micromanaging, freaking out whenever something went wrong. I mean, that's normal for him, but it was worse yesterday, and I had far less patience than usual, so it was a bad combination. I spent most of the work day scowling at people from my desk, and they spent most of their day cowering in fear. I figure that was probably for the best, otherwise the day may have ended with an actual homicide.

On our walk home, my roommate told me that I looked "completely miserable," so it's good to know that I have no capacity whatsoever for hiding my emotions. Every time I looked at her for the rest of the night, she was looking back at me with a combination of sympathy and concern. I'm surprised she didn't take all the shoelaces and ties out of my room before I went to bed. I was not a happy camper yesterday, is what I'm saying. BUT, I did make it through another day without smoking, so I guess it was all worth it. For me, anyway. Maybe not for the coworker who learned exactly how I feel about humming along to Amy Winehouse when I threatened to forcibly remove his lips from his face.

Low point of the day: Nearly crying while walking home from work.

High point of the day: Going out, having two beers, and not smoking.

Goal for Day Three: less misery, more company.

Day One.

2007-09-26T00:20:00.000-04:00

For the past few months, not much in my life has really qualified as “blogworthy”, which is just shockingly sad considering this is my personal blog about my life. Anyway, I’ve come up with something incredibly fascinating that I know will thrill the pants off of you: I’m going to blog about quitting smoking! “Wow,” I know you’re saying to yourself, “reading constant bitching and moaning about something that’s easily preventable for anyone who isn’t a complete dumbass sounds like exactly what I’ve been searching for in this endless sphere-o-blogs.”

And to you I say, “you’re welcome.”

Quitting smoking fucking sucks, and I can’t promise that this will be at all entertaining or interesting, but I thought that since everything else I’ve tried w/r/t quitting hasn’t worked thus far, maybe writing about smoking will help me work through whatever it is that’s holding me back from quitting. Or maybe it will make me want to smoke more, I don’t know. It could go either way.

So. Day One. I’d like to say that I sailed through Day One without much trouble. I’ve breezed through it before; the desire to quit can be strong enough to trump the cravings for the first couple days, and trouble doesn’t set in until the third or fourth day when you decide that the first two days were so easy, you should reward yourself with a smoke. Um, hypothetically. Anyway, that wasn’t the issue today, because I only lasted until lunch before my resolve broke and I couldn’t push smoking out of my mind. Basically, the only times I wasn’t thinking about smoking were when I was grocery shopping after work, and when I was cooking. While I was eating, I was thinking about nice it would be to smoke once I was done. Then I came up with this blog idea, and here we are (you’re starting to see why the entries have been sparse lately, aren’t you?).

Low point of the day: picking up the can of butts on my balcony and shuffling them around to see if, hypothetically, any looked smoke-able, should it get to that point.

High point of the day: realizing that smoking a butt from an ashtray is the smoker’s equivalent to paying your crack dealer with a blowjob, and emptying the butt can immediately.

So today was ultimately a success, although it was a bit of a journey to get there. Of course, I could end up in a cab at 4am, scouring the streets for a 24 hour convenience store, but if that does happen, I think I'll chalk it up to a failure on Day Two. At least I got through today.

Why do you think I was late for work this morning?

2007-09-25T14:24:00.000-04:00

I had to spend five minutes cleaning the puke off my shoes from Saturday night.

Ah, the birthday gift that keeps on giving...

Confidential to Charming Driver...

2007-09-24T13:27:00.000-04:00

You are not alone.

We received an email from our landlord this morning letting us know that our neighbours have requested that we get curtains for the "bedroom/office" (I'm assuming the room with a desk in it. aka MY ROOM) because they have small children, and apparently they feel uncomfortable being able to see us (me) naked.

My thought process upon receiving said email: "Nobody can even see into my room, it faces a brick wall across a narrow alley. The only way someone could even see anything is if I was standing naked directly in front of the wind...oh. Oops."

Awkward.

I really thought if everyone else had curtains, that meant I didn't need them. At any rate, I can't afford curtains right now, so my plan of action is to go home and figure out exactly what angles I can be viewed from, and...stop standing naked in those parts of my room. Being naked is fun and all, especially when it's hot out, and in theory I don't care if someone sees me, but aparently I don't ever want to hear about it, because...how mortifying.

God, I hope no one can see me drying myself in front of the fan when I get out of the shower.

"I probably owe you an apology, either for something I've already done, or something I'm about to do. Sorry about that."

2007-09-23T09:57:00.000-04:00

So last night was my birthday fete. I dragged a few of my friends over to my apartment for some wholesome family fun and also a lot of drinking, and then we went to the bar. And I got Birthday Drunk. I don't know exactly how that happens. I didn't really drink considerably more than normal, and we all went out for dinner beforehand, so it's not like I was drinking on an empty stomach, but somehow I managed to get completely obnoxiously shitfaced. I don't normally like to do that, because I am extremely easily embarrassed, but...shit happens, I guess.

Anyway, if you're not exactly sure what I mean by "Birthday Drunk", the following summary of my evening should give you a pretty good idea:

-We started playing drinking games, and obviously I got way drunker than everyone else, way faster than everyone else because everyone kept giving drinks away to me.
-At some point, this made me angry for about ten seconds.
-I played this for everyone, just because I think it's funny.
-"I need you to make me a drink. I don't know how to stop making them so strong."
-"OH A BIGGER GLASS! THAT'S GENIUS!!"
-We were playing some category game, and the category was sexual positions and I said "legs in the air." I was overruled because apparently that position doesn't have a specific name, and also because I was being "graphic" and "gross".
-"I CAN HEAR MYSELF GETTING LOUDER, BUT I DON'T KNOW HOW TO STOP IT!"
-I forced my roommate to bring my keys to the bar instead of hers based on the reasoning that I would be able to get my keys off my keychain faster than she could. I have no idea.*
-Apparently when I get Birthday Drunk, all I want to do is dance as lewdly as possible with everyone around me. Also, apparently when I get Birthday Drunk, my balance is not good, leading me to fall a lot, and also pull a lot of people down onto the ground with me.*
-"Please don't let me drink anymore." *
-"Please get me a drink." *
-"I don't want this." *
-While I was outside for a smoke, I started loudly talking about grabbing some guys ass while he was standing approximately two feet away.*
-I decided that I needed to leave. And by that, I mean that I decided I needed to leave immediately, alone, without keys, my best friend and her boyfriend trailing behind me, an hour after we got to the bar.*
-While sitting outside my apartment (or rather, my neighbour's apartment, because I am exactly that much of an asshole), I decided that I should probably make myself puke, that way I would be able to go to sleep as quickly as possible when my friends finally arrived with the keys.
-I gave up my bed for best friend and boyfriend because I was too lazy to find the air mattress pump.*
-I fell asleep about three seconds after I laid down on the couch.*

* I don't remember this happening, but someone told me that I did it this morning.

At least I didn't inappropriately make out with a stranger?

Meme Schmeme

2007-09-12T14:41:00.000-04:00

So I've officially been tagged for my first meme. Thanks, Sticky. I cannot tell you how pleased I am. Actually, as you may have noticed, I have very little to write about lately, so this is probably a good thing. But don't worry, I won't force anyone else to do it. Mainly because everyone who reads my blog has already been tagged.

So anyway. 8 things about me that you probably didn't want to know.

1. I didn't come out until I was 23.
It took me a little longer than most to deal with the "denial" stage. And then I didn't get much more than a shrug and a "duh, thanks for finally catching up" from anyone I told. My coming out was met with a wave of utter non-shock. Thankfully.

2. I still hate telling people that I'm gay.
Not because I'm embarrassed or afraid, but there's just not a real easy way to work it into the conversation, especially with people who I knew before coming out. Basically my coming out involved telling one person from each of my social groups, and relying on gossip to do the legwork for me. It's never not an awkward, uncomfortable conversation. With old friends, they're always like "now let's talk about your feelings," which makes me want to crawl out of my skin and then hide underneath it. With new people, it's like "do they care? Is this the type of thing I should have to tell people? Can't they just check out my tight pants and connect the dots? And then comment on how nice my ass looks today?"
But if you just come right out and ask, I have no problem telling you. I know it's not really socially acceptable to ask people if they're gay, because God forbid someone get offended if they're not and go into gay panic or whatever, but seriously. Just ask me.

3. Of all your friends, your mom likes me best.
I am freakishly popular among my friend's moms. And some of the dads, if you know what I'm saying. (I just made that second part up, I'm not going around seducing my friends' dads. Although in a couple cases, I wouldn't be opposed...)

4. Unless you're one of about five people, I'm not answering when you call me.
And I'm counting my parents as seperate people in those five. I screen my calls, it's just the way it is. I like to know what you're calling about beforehand so I can be prepared. And if I don't recognize a number, I panic, don't answer and wait for a message. I'm also doing a reverse phone number lookup while my phone rings.

5. I am a selfish person by nature.
But I try hard not to be. I'm an only child, and people generally comment on how they never would have guessed, but let me tell you, it is a daily struggle to not be an asshole 24/7. I can't play the "take this money I owe you" "oh no, don't worry about it" "no no, i insist" game, because I never insist. We get to "don't worry about it" and I usually eek out an "are you sure?" but sometimes I'll just say "okay" because I'd really rather not give you my money, if we're being honest. I basically have to force myself to share my stuff with people (unless I've been drinking, in which case I'm the most generous guy you've ever met).

6. I get extremely angry with poor customer service.
I understand having a bad day and I always try to be extra nice to the miserable-looking cashiers and whatnot. What I cannot tolerate is being ignored. I cannot handle waiting for my change until you finish complaining about your boyfriend to the cashier next to you. I cannot deal with people saying they're going to call me back and then never calling. I can deal with screwups, I know shit happens and I know it's rarely the fault of the person you're actually dealing with. I cannot deal with multiple screwups, and multiple non-apologies, and multiple unreturned calls, and multiple excuses, fucking Sears, you filthy asswipes!!!!

Ahem.

7. I'm a voyeur.
My old apartment building was U-shaped and my apartment faced into the courtyard. And all the other apartments. I had a really hard time not being a noticeable pervert when we lived there. I wasn't jerking off on my balcony while watching people get changed or anything, but I'm basically a people-watcher, and if you're in your apartment, that doesn't bother me as much as it probably bothers you. Unless you're that one guy who spent hours jumping around his bedroom in his underwear, pretending to play basketball, in which case you obviously don't care at all. In fairness to the rest of the building, I do walk around my apartment with no pants on fairly often, so if you happen to be watching me, you might get a show.

8. I'm a bit of a prude.
Unless I've been drinking, in which case I'm a bit of a slut. (see above, re: drinking=generosity)

Note to readers...

2007-09-04T17:55:00.000-04:00

Even though I just said in my last post that I quit smoking today, that...might not necessarily be true in about ten minutes or so. I was planning on quitting on my birthday, but my bank account decided to be disagreeable with me this week by not providing me with more free money once I spent all mine (or...more than mine, as the case may be), so I decided that if something has to go, it's going to be smokes. Then I realized that yesterday was a holiday, and it's actually Tuesday already, and I'm only poor until Thursday after the bank closes, at which point I can cash my cheque and spend all the money I want. Or...enough money to buy me food and smokes for the next week.

I know I'm just making excuses, but I really want to take some time to prepare myself for the breakup. And no, there's never going to be a "perfect time" to quit, but the next few weeks leading up to my birthday are going to be hellish at work, including spending a lot of time at events and functions with my coworkers, which means that I need to smoke just to get away from them. And if that sounds lame, that just means you've never been a smoker, because if smoking is good for anything, it's good for (1) getting away from people and (2) meeting new people. Anyway, after my birthday I'll only have excuses that even I would laugh at, so I feel much better about trying then, when I'll actually have a shot at being successful.

And yes, I did go buy a pack of smokes in the middle of writing this. What of it?

I'm going to send them to your mom after I fucking kill you

2007-09-04T14:42:00.000-04:00

I know I posted in someone else's blog comments that I wouldn't use my blog to bitch about my coworkers or my job, but...tough. I can change my mind if i want.

Question: why is it that when I'm showing one of my coworkers something on my computer, every single other coworker has to get up and stand over me and crowd around my desk so that we can all fucking hold hands while we watch a ten second YouTube clip together? They do it with work-related things, they do it with non-work-related things, it doesn't matter. If there's one person standing at my desk, there are five people crowding around my desk. Standing over me. Breathing on me. Irritating me. I know that it's partly the only child thing (which reminds me, that fucking meme is coming this week, Sticky), because I don't like people up in my personal space like, at all, ever. Last week the intern was gleefully bounding over to my desk to see something completely uninteresting and insignificant that he could have pulled up on his own computer (as could the other two people at my desk), and he caught me giving him the dirtiest look I could muster. Not that it stopped him.

Anyway, the crowding around my desk is something that generally irritates me, but I nearly stabbed someone with my Starbucks straw this morning. My best friend's father passed away late last week and I needed help picking out flowers. (Basically I needed someone to remind me that it was more important to send really nice flowers today instead of the totally gorgeous arrangement of calla lilies that I wanted to send, but wouldn't get there until tomorrow). Anyway, I hadn't told anyone in the office because (1) it's none of their business and (2) I work with weirdos and I didn't want to have the conversation. But I wanted a second opinion on the flowers, so when the one coworker who I do like was walking past my desk, I quietly asked her to stop and look at something for me.

Intern: Can I come look, too???

NOOO! NO, YOU CAN'T!

What I actually said was, "we're just looking at flowers," but apparently he thought that was an invitation to come and look. And of course, the page says "sympathy flowers" all over it, and everyone needs to know why I'm sending sympathy flowers, so all of a sudden I have to explain to a bunch of people who I don't even like that I'm looking for the arrangement that best says "sorry you're an orphan now." Then everyone has to tell me how wonderful it was of me to send flowers to my grieving friend, like...isn't that what you're supposed to do? Isn't that just standard? I'm not looking for a round of applause, I'm looking for someone to tell me "that arrangement is nice, even though they're not calla lilies." For fuck's sake. Jesus Christ.

Oh, I remembered the other thing I was going to mention! I quit smoking this morning. It's going extremely well so far, I haven't been moody at all!

First in an exclusive series...

2007-08-27T14:12:00.001-04:00

...that I call "Songs That Will Definitely End Up Playing At The End Of An Episode Of The Hills This Season"

I present:

Daughtry - Over You

This is actually a game that I play with one of my coworkers, where we judge the Hillsocity of various songs on the radio. And now I bring the fun to you.

Also, embarrassingly, I actually like this song. But I still think Daughtry is a douche.

Dear person who came to my blog looking for shirtless pictures of Jay Manuel,

2007-08-27T12:51:00.000-04:00

Gross.

Love,
aj

Let's show these fools how we do this on that west side

2007-08-21T10:13:00.000-04:00

So I'm officially a citizen of west-end Toronto again. Well, west-end downtown which is more like central Toronto, but I rarely leave downtown, and also, I really wanted to use that 2Pac lyric to show what a gangsta I am.

Moving day was Sunday. I don't know if I mentioned exactly how worried we were about moving, but we were terrified. While the rooms are all big, the front stairs up to our apartment are extremely narrow and the fire escape that leads up to our balcony is not only narrow, but steep and extremely rickety. Hallway: also narrow. There was also an issue with the doorway into our living room: narrow (natch), and also on an angle. We measured all our furniture before moving and we were not optimistic about any of it fitting. Our Plan B involved prying open the window that's up near the ceiling between my bedroom and the living room and fitting everything in through there. Plan C involved a pulley system to hoist the couches through the front window of the apartment. Plan D involved a Turkish Harem-themed living room where we would all sit around our $30 Ikea coffee table on pillows. Well, that was my Plan D. My roommate's Plan D involved a gun and two bullets.

Anyway. Two of our helpers told us on Saturday night that they made plans for mid-afternoon on Sunday, so they wouldn't be able to stay the entire time.

Me: "Well then they better work fast because they're not leaving until every last fucking thing is inside our new apartment."

I'm grateful for your help and all, but don't make other plans after you promised to help us.

Shockingly, everything fit inside the living room. Couch #1 made it in with no problem. Couch #2 got jammed in the door but someone managed to figure out a way to get it in. We somehow managed to ask a bunch of moving savants to help us. One of our friends came up with a magic solution to every single "now how are we going to get this in there?" problem that we had. My roommate's boyfriend is an absolute tank and was carrying big chairs and TVs over his head up the rickety fire escape by himself. We started loading the truck at 1, and we were on our way to return the truck by 3:30. It was amazing. I'm sure it helped that we moved about 6 carloads of crap in the two weeks leading up to the move, but still. Everything went so smoothly that I spent most of the move waiting for something to go horribly wrong.

Did I mention that it was about 22 degrees outside and partly cloudy for the entire move? We got so fucking lucky.

There are a few things I'll miss about the old place. The neighbourhood was perfect. It was fun to sit on the balcony and spy on the neighbours (oh! Quick question. Which is weirder/pervier: watching your neighbour jerk off and not telling anyone, or watching your neighbour jerk off and telling everyone?). We had room for a dining room table. We had a concierge and a free gym and hot tub. Two bathrooms. Air conditioning.

But I love our new apartment so much. We're not completely unpacked yet, but this is already the first place I've lived that feels like a real, grown-up apartment. Everything is so nice and clean and perfect that I'm afraid of messing it up and turning it into slob hell. It also got really cool outside as soon as we moved in so the A/C hasn't been an issue at all. That's going to change tomorrow, but for right now I'm content to believe that it's going to be 15 degrees out every night for as long as we live here.

In Big Brother news, my decision to stop watching was helped along by the fact that we had no cable on Sunday. And apparently Daniele is trying to "backdoor" Jen, so if I was itching to tune in again, I won't be after Thursday. Also...did Dick really say that he wants to kill Carol and rape her corpse? I...just...whatever. From the same recap, I did find the last paragraph on this page hysterical. Miss Alli skipped "a few seasons of this show in the middle there"? Which seasons? She recapped 3 and 7, she had strong opinions about Allison (BB4) being on The Amazing Race and Kaysar/Janelle/Howie/James (BB6) going into All-Stars, so I'd like to get her definition of a few, because I'm counting one season, and I doubt if she even skipped that one. I also loved her recap of the live feeds where she spent most of her word count making fun of people who find the live feeds interesting and/or different from the broadcast, and yet she's the only recapper who constantly refers to things that happened on the live feeds to back up her opinions. Shut up, Alli.

Masculinity, thy name is Aiken

2007-08-16T16:11:00.000-04:00

This is literally the gayest thing I've ever seen in my entire life, and I'm including actual hardcore gay porn when I say that.

Dear cockmaster,

2007-08-15T11:23:00.000-04:00

(aka Dick Donato)

You are fucking revolting. I wish you were dead.

Love,
aj

PS Your ugly daughter is a bitch, too.

I know it's lame to flounce away from a show, but I'm not watching Big Brother again if Dick doesn't leave on Thursday. Honestly, enough is enough. Watching people fight is fun. Watching Dick scream the same four insults ("religious hypocrite", "bad mother", "princess" and "liar") for three hours a week is intensely not fun. Reading on the internet about how it's okay to attack people with slurs as long as you're on TV is also not fun. Last season I ended up hating myself for watching a show that gleefully celebrated the disgusting Mike Boogie. Dick and Mike are kindred spirits, and I'm not doing it again.

And unless Jen votes to evict Dick (which I doubt she will, because none of the LNC seem that concerned with her or Zack's votes), then Dick will still be around on Thursday. The one thing that makes me really hate Eric is his brainless suck-up-to-America interviews where he's so excited to work for the people. Like...how can he not know that Dustin is going to be evicted by America this week, and Eric is going to be completely fucked? Shouldn't he be working on a way to explain what's about to happen instead of hoping no one notices his stray vote? Something tells me he won't be able to pin this one on Jen or Nick.

The Hills are alive with the sound of drama

2007-08-13T15:45:00.001-04:00

You guys, I'm so excited for the premiere of The Hills tonight I can barely even stand it. My greatest wish for this season is that someone stomps Spencer's ugly face, but I feel like I would have read about that on TMZ if it had happened. Other than that, I'm just hoping that Lauren manages to hold on to the backbone that she finally grew last year. And more Lo. I heart Lo.

In Hell's Kitchen news, I don't really think either Bonnie or Rock deserve to win. Rock has more experience, but is awful and mean. Bonnie has no experience, but Keckler has a completely irrational hate-on for her. It's a real toss-up, but I think I'm going to take a stand and root against Keckler, who is such a humourless snob that it would give me joy to see her whine her way through a recap of Bonnie winning. I mean, Bonnie has less than zero chance of actually winning, but a boy can dream, can't he?

Big Brother: I'm so tired of Dick. He just exhausts me. I'm also tired of the organ music they play every time Jameka or Amber prays. It was funny during the "taste God, You are my intimate lover" thing because...weird! But praying isn't intrinsically funny, and it doesn't get funny just because you put church music in the background. It's also not interesting. We get it, they're crazy. So let's add more segments about how Jen is hilarious and cut back on the "here's a three-minute scene of Amber praying, check out the church music...funny, eh???" crap. Anyway, my list of houseguests who I enjoy now stands at everyone whose name starts with J: Jessica, Jameka and Jen. Oh and Dustin can stick around and be cute, but he's not allowed to speak. Everyone else is obnoxious and/or hateful. Which, to be perfectly honest, is just how I like my Big Brother contestants.

"Now I'll hide the eggs!"

2007-08-08T16:08:00.001-04:00

Things have been simultaneously busy and not-at-all interesting lately, but I feel obligated to post something, even though I have no time, so I just wanted to state my unequivocal love for Jen on Big Brother. I know, I know, the fandom has anointed her the new Janelle, and we know how much I cared for her, but at this point, I think that Jen is obviously the new Evil Doctor, and I can't get enough. She even seems to have worked her way into a safe postition for the next little while. Right now, the "LNC" is way more focused on each other than on her, and when they do notice the randoms laying around watching all the fighting, I'm sure they'll go after Zack before Jen.

Otherwise, all my Big Brother opinions this season have been pretty mundane. I hate Dick and Daniele, I love Jess, Eric is annoying, they're all fucking crazy. They managed to get a pretty broad, fun group of crazies this time, especially Jen, Dick and Amber, whose weepy meltdowns have entertained me from the beginning. The editors are also seriously on point this season, between Jameka's church music, Amber's DR crying, the little "ding" they gave Kail when she gave her "the pawn always goes home" DR, and obviously, Jen in the bunny suit while Jameka prayed, which was the most perfect thing ever in all of recorded history.

Anyway, good season so far, but things always disintegrate as everyone gets more hateful the longer they stay in the house. I think I'll reserve judgment a little bit longer.

In retrospect...

2007-07-30T15:49:00.000-04:00

...maybe I was overreacting when I kept having meltdowns every time we didn't get an apartment we wanted. Because the apartment we did get is fucking sweet.

It's the place I mentioned in the comments section that's over a bar, and has laundry and a dishwasher. A dishwasher! I just realized that no matter how shitty of an apartment I've lived in, I've always had a dishwasher. This was the first place we saw that has one, so maybe it was fate? I've also always managed to have laundry in the building, if not free laundry in the apartment. It also has two big, same-sized bedrooms, a balcony out back, ALL BRAND NEW APPLIANCES! It's across the street from the YMCA, so maybe we could join a gym (shut up). It's also the same distance from our jobs, which means we can still walk to work. IT HAS SO MUCH CLOSET SPACE! We were so dead set on eliminating all the clutter when we move and throwing everything out, but now we can actually buy more clutter and store it!

What we're giving up: a second bathroom (unnecessary, but a luxury in the mornings), the most beautiful, amazing neighbourhood in the city, all utilities inclusive. We also lied about the dating thing again, and the guy who owns the place also owns the bar, so we can't bring dates to the bar, but quite frankly, as long as I get my brunch on Sunday, I don't care who's waiting upstairs for me. We also have to double up on rent, since our lease is up at the end of August and we got the apartment for August 1. But that also gives us a month to move in. And our landlord is going to see if she can rent the place for August 15, which means we would only be out half a month.

Yay! Now I just need a job and a boyfriend, and I'll be set!

One more thing...

2007-07-24T19:18:00.001-04:00

...street meat sausage and poutine for dinner. Then to the mall so my roommate could indulge in some retail therapy.

We'll be normal again tomorrow, I promise.

I think I deal with my emotions in an very healthy way, thank you very much

2007-07-24T13:07:00.001-04:00

Since finding out we didn't get the apartment a couple hours ago, I have eaten two granola bars, a package of fruit snacks, one of these, a chicken leg and a bowl of rice. Right now I'm trying to convince one of my coworkers to go buy me ice cream. Actually, that's what I was doing five minutes ago. Right now I'm trying to figure out a way to steal and eat my coworkers veal parmiagiana sandwich without him noticing. Any ideas?

Oh well. At least I have Lindsay Lohan's continuing downward spiral to cheer me up.

I can't keep doing this

2007-07-24T11:22:00.001-04:00

We found another amazing apartment on Sunday. We kissed ass all over the place to convince him to give it to us and felt cautiously optimistic. They were supposed to phone us last night to let us know, but didn't, so we called and left a message. This morning, my roommate phoned again and found out that they chose someone else. Fine, whatever. But whoever they chose, their references fell through. Great! Can we have it then?

"No."
Why not?
"I told someone I would show it to them this coming Sunday."
Um. So fucking what? Our application is sitting there right now, there's nothing wrong with it, we have perfect credit, great references, good jobs, we're on the phone with you right now...what's the problem?
"Well I said I would show it to someone on Sunday."

WHY? WHY DO YOU NEED TO SHOW IT AGAIN? Honestly, you don't even have to pick us, but you have a giant stack of applications, I saw them on Sunday. Just fucking pick someone! It's not even that I'm pissed off that we didn't get it, I just think it's stupid. I would rather be told "sorry, it's rented" than "well, you're welcome to come down and apply again in a week, because I would rather put out my tenants with another open house than call one person back and tell them it's rented." Fuck that. Assholes.

A Heartbreaking Story of Staggering Fucking Horseshit

2007-07-16T23:43:00.000-04:00

So, my roommate and I are moving. At this point, I have no idea why we ever wanted to leave, but we're moving out, we're finding a new place, it's going to be great, whatever. But we've been having trouble finding something that's perfect. We thought we found the perfect place, but the more we thought about it, the more we realized that it wasn't perfect at all and we backed out at the last minute. And we've been so busy, we haven't had as much time as we'd like to look, but we've been looking more in the past couple days and today we found the perfect apartment. So perfect. It had two huge bedrooms, it was fairly cheap, it was in the perfect neighbourhood. We decided we wanted it before we'd even seen it. It already seemed so perfect, we came up with a list of reasons why we could possibly reject it:

1. The kitchen is gross.
2. The bathroom is really gross.
3. But I mean, most kitchens are cleanable, right?
4. When was the last time we cleaned our tub?

We get there early, because we want to be the first ones there, some woman getting out of her car sees me give some pedestrians the finger (in my defense, they were so fucking slow), and gives us a dirty look the entire time we park, we walk up the street and find the place, we love it. The bedrooms are ridiculously big. It has a third bedroom that we can use as an excercise room (shut up) or a spare bedroom or an office. The kitchen is bigger than what we have right now, and has a gas stove. Gas stove. It has a rooftop patio. Sit on that a moment and let it sink in, will you? Feels good, doesn't it? The current tenant, who's showing us the apartment, is cute, and loves us, and tells us he doesn't even want to bother showing it to anyone else. And he's just moving one street over. Look, you can see the roof of his new place while we're standing on this beautiful rooftop patio. He could be a new friend! Weren't we just talking today about how we need to find some new friends? We were.

We were.

So, short of offering him a blowjob right there on the patio, we did everything we could have possibly done to make him want to give the apartment to us. We were perfect. He loved us. He didn't want to take cheques from us right there on the spot (you bet we offered), he just had to talk to his roommate, his roomie showed the place to someone this afternoon, but there shouldn't be any problems. He'd call us back by ten to let us know.

Here's a random sampling of things I said when we found out we didn't get the apartment:

-I want to die.
-But I need to live there.
-Like, if we offered him how much more money?
-It's not fair! We weren't even given the option of going to see it this afternoon.
-Yeah, but would you actually suck his dick?
-Fuck him, he can suck my dick.
-Asshole.
-But we just deserve it more.
-Can you call him back and tell him that my Dad grew up around the corner, like literally ten houses away, and that in addition to breaking our hearts, he's also breaking my Dad's heart?
-Can you also tell him to go fuck himself?

So basically, we didn't handle the news well. I'm normally such a cautious person about this type of thing, but I totally let myself get carried away in the dream that we were definitely moving there. There was a lot of talk of "manifesting" it, and The Secret, and I let myself feel like I've never wanted anything more in my entire life. My roommate does this before every single apartment we go to see, and I don't know how she handles the constant heartbreak.

On the slightly minor upside, I feel like a good portion of the reason we wanted to live there was because of the neighbourhood, so maybe if we confine our search to only places in Little Italy, everything else we see won't seem quite so disappointing.

The funk soul Brotha

2007-07-16T14:49:00.000-04:00

Is anyone watching Big Brother? It's okay so far. I hate the recycled X-Factor twist, but America's Player is kind of interesting (although I was not happy that America wanted Eric to target Jessica for nomination). Jen is...interesting. I hate her, but she's also the one of the few people working to keep me entertained so far, so I definitely don't want her to go anywhere. I'm totally in love with Dustin and Jessica, and really like Eric, too, although he has the potential to get a little too AmazonRob for his own good, if that makes any sense. I can't stand Joe at all, I go back and forth on Dick and Daniele (and I just can't get behind calling Dick "Evil" as a first name), and everyone else is just mindcrushingly boring. I have every intention of liking Jameka, too, but step it up, lady! You're still too boring for me to make a decision yet.

This is also the first time that I have watched Big Brother spoiler-free. Maybe I would be more invested if I knew all the behind-the-scenes stuff? Probably not. I checked out the TWoP forums this morning (oh and PS, Miss Alli's weecap sucks rocks. It's all "I'm too cool for this show and I know everything about reality tv and the only people I like are the buff guys". M Giant's weecaps were so funny! Please bring him back), and was slightly tempted to check out the live feed highlights, but was more put off by all the "well if you watched the live feeds like I do, you would know that so-and-so is actually like this" crap that I stopped reading pretty quickly.

Bleh. I still like a lot of the recaps, but I've wasted way too much time at that site.

I swear I don't usually call cab drivers "motherfucker"

2007-07-13T11:52:00.000-04:00

So, having spent my share of time in retail/customer service, I try to be nice to everyone with an even remotely service/retail-related job.

Unless you fuck with me, in which case I will cut you.

I left my cell phone in a cab last night on the way to a work event. Totally my fault. My phone rang, and as I went to answer it, I realized that we were at my destination, so I put my phone down to pay, and then forgot to grab it on my way out of the cab. I realized maybe five seconds after the cabbie drove away, so I immediately used my coworker's cell to call my phone three times in a row, but there was no answer. So I phoned the cab company, thank god I knew the cab's id number, they got in touch with him, and a minute later I had him on the phone.

I apologized for being a total dumbass (also making me a dumbass: the cab company asked me for a number where I could be reached, and I'm sure I don't have to tell you what number I gave them), and since we were in downtown Toronto at 5:30pm and he'd left less than 5 minutes ago, you know, could he bring it back?

"No, I'm busy. Maybe I'll bring it to you later."
"Later when?"
"I don't know, when I'm less busy."
"Okay, well when will that be?"
"I don't know."
"I just need a rough estimate because I'm not at home so I need to know where I'm going to be when you drop it off. Like, in 20 minutes, or in 5 hours?"
"Dunno."
"Well I'm not staying here all night waiting for you to maybe show up, so I need you to be at least a little bit helpful here."

That's when he hung up on me.

Now, if I had to pay for him to drive it back, that would have been fine. If I had to go pick it up at the cab office, that would have been fine. It's frustrating and annoying, but it's my fault. Shit happens. What I don't fucking need from you is 100 non-answers to a simple question, followed by you hanging up on me. With my own phone. When I know you're not more than five blocks from me. You stupid motherfucker. And that's more or less what I told him when I called him back.

Then he hung up on me again.

I ended up having to call the cab company to try and get them to intervene. I believe I used to phrase "holding my phone hostage" which...well, what it lacked in accuracy, it made up for in over-the-top melodrama, but whatever. It was hot, I was sweaty, I wanted a smoke. Anyway, it took about an hour for the cab company to call me back, and they weren't much help, but they were nice about it, which made me feel better. When I got the cabbie back on the phone, he immediately started in with the "I'm way too busy, I can't get away from what I'm doing."

"I'm sorry, but aren't you 'way too busy' driving a car around downtown Toronto? Are you fucking kidding me? YOU ARE IN A CAR RIGHT NOW! JUST BRING ME BACK MY FUCKING PHONE!!!"

He couldn't bring my phone back to where I was before I had to leave, but he gave me a time when he would drop my phone off at my apartment. Nightmare over.

Not having my phone for three hours really made me realize how totally dependant I am on it. I was supposed to be meeting friends near my work event, but we didn't have a concrete meeting place/time, so I had to just not show up because I don't know a single one of my friend's phone numbers. After racking my brain for 15 minutes, I managed to remember my roommate's cell, but that was it. I made a few random attempts at what I thought their numbers probably were, and let me tell you, Susan does not appreciate wrong numbers.

In other news, I tried to take some camera-phone pics of my new hair yesterday (avec sunglasses, because they're hot, and I'm still all puke-blotchy) and I realized that I suck at taking pictures of myself. Or I have a giant head. Or my arms are McConaghay-stumpy and I can't reach far enough to get a good shot. The first shot managed to fit my entire head in, but it also made me look like I have a double chin and a giant nose. The second shot I managed to cut off my chin. The third shot was the best one, but I cut off most of my hair.

And so I bring you chinless me, avec new short hair:

Got a devil`s haircut in my mind

2007-07-11T13:16:00.000-04:00

I have short hair! My hair has been longish and shaggy for the past couple years (and long and hippyish for a few years before that), so this is a pretty big step. My mother is going to be so pleased.

As much as I would love to grace you with a picture of my genius new hair, last night I apparently thought it was a super idea to go out and get plastered on an empty stomache, and I spent most of my getting-ready time this morning dry heaving and bursting half the blood vessels in my face. So I think I`ll be avoiding the adoring gaze of the paparazzi for the next few days.

This is why I shouldn't read horoscopes

2007-07-03T11:14:00.000-04:00

So I never read horoscopes, but this morning my boss handed me the entertainment section of the newspaper with some story he wanted me to read, and right underneath: "Go with your gut, Libra."

Libra: You've reached a junction that will serve as the launch pad to a new era in your life. Intuition will serve you well in the following days, so follow your gut responses.

On the one hand, I feel like, yes absolutely, I am at a junction right now and I could not be more ready to lauch a new era in my life. On the other hand, my gut is telling me to just tell everyone in the office to fuck the hell off before running as far as I can, as fast as my legs will carry me. I feel like that's maybe not the best idea, despite the temporary satisfaction it would provide.

Anyway, my job search status has changed from "casual" to "critical". I'll keep you posted.

BLEEEAAARRRGHHHH&#$&~~(*#!!!!!!11

2007-06-29T10:59:00.001-04:00

Isaiah Washington proves exactly how much he's learned in the past year.

The pride of Cape Breton

2007-06-26T16:43:00.001-04:00

Is it just me or do the Canadian Idol judges look like a real bunch of jackasses for praising this?

Three things:
1. Brown Sugar? Really? I mean, it's a good song, I like it and all, and I'm not a prude by any means, but isn't it about how Mick Jagger loves black women and heroin? Is that really appropriate?
2. Not that being able to dance is a requirement for being a musician, but...come on.
3. OH MY GOD THAT WAS RIDICULOUS! ARE YOU KIDDING ME???

You Usually Have to Pay Extra for That

2007-06-26T13:13:00.000-04:00

So. Ultrasound. Of course, since I actually have an appointment for this, I have to wait an hour and a half before someone sees me. Whatever, I have nothing better to do. So my name finally comes up and the nurse gives me a plastic bag and tells me to put my shorts in there and put on two gowns. Sure. I go into the little changing stall and I'm like, "oh shit. Am I supposed to take off my underwear? I'm assuming so, but she did just say shorts. But I'm assuming the ultrasound will be happening in the "under the underwear" region. But maybe you take them off when you get in there? Oh well, I'll just take them off." I've never had an ultrasound before, no one even really explained to me why I needed one or what was going to happen, so I was a little confused. Cut me some slack. Anyway...commando. I go into a second waiting room to continue my wait, and basically all I can think about is whether or not I was supposed to take off my underwear, and why didn't I just leave it on, it's not embarrassing if I have to take them off when I get in there, but having to put it back on actually couldn't be more embarrassing. Shit. Shit. Fuck me. So I'm sitting and quietly having my little panic attack when someone else stands up and apparently decided to dispence with the second robe, because I can clearly see his boxer-briefs as he goes into the ultrasound room. Obviously at this point I decide to go into the washroom and put my underwear back on.

Does someone walk in on me because I forgot to lock the door? Of course they do.

So I wait a bit longer, and finally, Omar, my ultrasound technician, is ready to see me. No one had come into the waiting room after I did, so I'm assuming I'm the last patient of the day. Lucky Omar.

First things first, obviously I have to take off the underwear. Idiot. Then I get the "don't be embarrassed" speech, which went something like this: "I'm about to play with your balls. Don't be embarrassed if you get a boner."

Dim the lights. How romantic. I'm assuming dimming the lights helps him see the screen better or something, but he doesn't time that particularly well, coming right after the boner speech. Anyway. He has me choose between the warm lube and the really warm lube (I chose the warmer one) and we're off to the races. I guess they want to make sure the infection hadn't spread, so he starts with the scrotum and moves down from there. He's doing his thing, I'm like...lying back and thinking of England or whatever. All I could really think about was how I have no idea how someone could get an erection from this. It's completely clinical, obviously not at all sexy, especially considering why I'm there. And honestly, considering Omar is basically playing with my nuts, it really doesn't even feel that good. I mean, it doesn't feel bad, but like...actually that feels pretty...oh. Uh oh.

"I told you that you'd get excited!"

Shut up, Omar. I don't know if I would classify it as "excitement" as much as "the natural byproduct of spraying warm lube on my balls and then rubbing them."

Honestly, I'm not even really embarrassed. I feel like there's a ceiling to how much humiliation a person can feel, and once you hit it, you just can't feel more embarrassment. Like, would you rather be naked in front of your entire high school, or would you rather be naked in front of your entire high school...with an erection? Does it really matter at that point? At least the erection is more impressive.

So like, I'm not saying Omar is a pervert or anything, but the balls portion of the ultrasound seems to go on longer than necessary. Actually, he doesn't even really seem to know about the abscess at first, so I don't think he knows what he's looking for until I tell him. Which, btw, is exactly the type of crack medical service that I demand. Anyway, eventually he gets on track, checks out the offending area, and I'm done. Not before he cleans me up, which I feel like I could have done myself, but once again, whatever.

Apparently if I keep taking my antiobiotics, I'll be fine by the weekend. Why exactly did I need some dude rubbing up on my balls to tell me that?

Anyway, I'm doing much better today. I'm back at work with only minor discomfort, and I'm eating again, which is wonderful. I got stircrazy and hungry last night, so my roommate and I went to this Korean restaurant in our neighbourhood and it was delicious. Apparently they have amazing lunch specials, too, so I'm excited to go back.

Absc-ass

2007-06-25T11:25:00.000-04:00

So about six months ago, my friends and I from university decided to plan a little reunion of sorts. The “planning” really consisted of figuring out who still lived in London(,Ontario) and could host people to sleep, and “deciding” on which bar to go to (“Molly’s?” “Um, duh.”). A lot of the people attending live in Toronto now, so I see a lot of them fairly regularly, and in some cases, all the time. But a lot of the people were traveling from pretty far away, and I rarely get to see these friends anymore, and London is a lot of fun, especially in the summer.

Also, I’ve just really been hating my job lately, and I’ve been feeling down about…everything, just general quarter-life crisis stuff. Am I happy with what I’m doing? Have a accomplished everything I wanted to at this point in my life? Have I accomplished as much as those around me? All that stupid bullshit that you go through when you realize that you’re not actually a kid anymore and have to start growing up. Er…unless you’re happy with where you are at 25, in which case you probably didn’t go through that. Anyway, basically I just wanted to get fucking drunk as shit with my friends this weekend.

It’s actually like God said, “is there a way we can prevent this guy from going that will hit the disgusting/painful/embarrassing trifecta? Explosive diarrhea followed by an abscess on his ass? Done!”

I’ll try not to be too disgusting for the rest of the entry.

So I knew something was up when I had to go to the bathroom twice before leaving for work on Friday. Then I had to use the facilities at work twice before 10:00am. Then I felt kind of faint and nauseous, so I left work early, which was a particular piss-off because I really hate taking sick days. The only day off I’ve taken at this job was to go home after my mom’s surgery. So I take a cab home, and don’t I get the chattiest cab driver of all time? He starts talking to me about the piercing in my ear (my tragus. I tried to take a picture of mine with my camera phone but I haven’t shaved since Thursday so I look like a Yeti), telling me that he wants one of those bull rings through his nose (he’s 50, but fine, whatever), and his son has two piercings in his one earlobe, and do I think that’s cool or do I think that’s stupid, because he kind of thinks it’s stupid, and oh, he hadn’t noticed my tongue piercing, did it hurt more or less than the ear one, and by the by, how is the tongue piercing with the fucking, uh, you know, the licking?

Just kill me.

I…don’t really know how to respond to that. I’m not really offended, so I’m not going to go the “inappropriate!” route. I also feel like a literal big bag of shit, so I’m not in a cheeky enough mood to bust out a “well, all the guys I blow really seem to like it.” I don’t even remember exactly what I said, I think it was something like “uh, yeah, they, uh, like it.” He actually shut the fuck up for the rest of the cab ride, so whatever I said, it was the right thing.

Anyway, I was supposed to leave on Friday, but also had a ride available on Saturday, so I wasn’t too worried. And after I got home, my stomach started to feel better, so I was pretty confident that I hadn’t been completely benched yet. I take a nap, I wake up, something is…not right. Down there. Everything from here on out is gross, so I’ll spare you the details, but I ended up going to emergency at 1am on Friday night, thinking I have a hemorrhoid, but not really knowing, because I’m not exactly an expert on everything that can go wrong with your ass. Oh, and my roommate had also gone away for the weekend, and most of my other friends were in London, so I was by myself, which I actually preferred.

The only good thing that happened to me all weekend: I left my apartment at 1am, and I was home again by 2:30.

There were only two people ahead of me, and I managed to get in before one of them (the one who was sitting in a wheelchair, passed out drunk in his girlfriend’s lap, occasionally convulsing, while all his other friends pretended like he wasn’t there). The doctor took a look, gave me some antibiotics, told me there was nothing he could really do that night, but I should come back Monday for an ultrasound. Um. That’s not helpful.

“Will the antibiotics make me feel any better?”
“You should start to feel a little bit better by Sunday.”

I’M IN PAIN RIGHT NOW, ASSHOLE. So I leave, and I’m basically up all night from the pain, but I manage to fall asleep for a couple hours in the morning before I call my friend who was supposed to drive me and cancel, with specific instructions not to tell anyone else until they were already in London, because I didn’t want anyone trying to call and guilt me into changing my mind. So Saturday was basically…painful. If I could find a position to lie in that wasn’t quite as painful as the other positions, I took advantage of it for as long as possible, even though the longer I stayed in one position, the more it hurt when I did eventually move.

I spent the weekend watching the entire original Real World: Las Vegas season from MTV On Demand, and my God. Those people did not need 28 episodes made about them. By the end of the season, the only people I wasn’t completely fucking sick of were Arissa, who is awesome, and Frank…well, Frank’s body. I was actually fucking sick of Frank, too, but I could stare at him from the neck down all day.

The pain started getting better yesterday afternoon, and today I feel like I’ve left Pain City and now I’m cruising through Discomfortville. And thank God, too, because Saturday fucking sucked.

The other great tragedy of this weekend is that I have lived in one of the most gay-friendly cities in the world for three Prides now, and I have yet to attend one. The parade was yesterday, so I’ve spent this morning creeping through random Pride pics on Facebook. Woo!

Ultrasound this afternoon. Wish me luck.

The Most Amazing Hour in the Entire History of Television

2007-06-21T14:07:00.000-04:00

So...Real World Denver. It sucked, it was full of people who were mostly likable when they were sober, but just horrifyingly crazy when they were drunk.

The cast:

Colie: Fucking awful. Just a terrible person. Would make out with her roommate Alex, then make out with a bunch of other guys, then get mad when Alex would sleep with other girls, including their other roommate, Jenn. Then her current, longterm boyfriend came to visit. Then she "got over" Alex after she gave him a blowjob and he didn't want anything to do with her anymore and was generally a drunken bitch for the rest of the season.

Alex: Douche. Emotionally manipulative. Most level-headed person in the house. Only one who didn't turn into a mental case when he drank. Wore a speedo. Looked ridiculous.

Davis: Originally seemed extremely likable. Got drunk and busted out the "n" word. Sympathetic because his crazy mother rejected him for being gay. Unsympathetic because he has a whole host of issues that his mother could have legitimately rejected him for. Got drunk and called female roommates ugly to their faces. Cheated on his boyfriend while three of his roommates sat on the bed next to his and watched. Later tried to deny it. Roommate Jenn's awesome response: "I saw him get up to put a condom on twice."

Jenn: Probably my favourite. Is reasonable, rational and mature when sober. Is confrontational, loud and slutty when drunk. Seems cool, seems like a lot of fun, seems like she would tear you limb from limb if you got her bad side. Made out with possibly all six of her roommates.

Stephen: Whatever. Requisite Jesus-freak, requisite boring guy. Once awesomely called Colie a bitch during a staff meeting for their job.

Brooke: Cra. Zy. Basically just a complete mental case. Davis told her she had a double chin, and she stormed around the house screaming at the top of her lungs and trashed his room. Was also completely in love with Davis, who may have fingered her at one point. She also threw a bottle of water at him. Also did a boatload of other crazy shit that I can't remember off the top of my head. Knows she's crazy, which makes her much more likable.

Tyrie: Funny, charming, level-headed, mature, responsible, generous, warm. Except for that time where he got extremely drunk and came thisclose to beating his girlfriend. But, you know, nobody's perfect.

Anyway, last night (this aired like a million years ago in the US) was the Real World Denver reunion. Five minutes of "we are the best of friends, these people are my family forever" followed by 55 minutes of bitter, burning resentment, passive aggressive jabs at each other, and everyone wanting to murder Colie. They were talking about how much they love each, then they would show a clip of fighting/shit-talking and then it was all gritted teeth and backhanded compliments. Lather, rinse, repeat. BFFs 4eva!

The highlights:

-Davis coked out of his mind for the entire reunion and eventually making out with Brooke at the end of the show before full-on mauling the shit out of her.
-Davis trying to defend himself against accusations of being a shitstirrer by accusing Colie of being just as bad and then telling everyone what Colie used to say about them.
-Brooke's "I'm crazy. Deal with it." defence.
-Tyrie talking about how they had to have a "bitch intervention" with Colie.
-"He told me I have a double chin, so I destroyed his room." (I can't find a clip of her saying it on YouTube, but you can see most of the freakout here.)
-Jenn refusing to apologize to Colie for sleeping with Alex when Colie had a boyfriend and a dozen other guys she was sleeping with.
-Brooke standing up and taking a bow after they ran a clip of her many tantrums back-to-back.
-Stephen saying that he always took Brooke's side in Brooke/Colie fights because Brooke was so sweet and Colie was such a bitch.

And then. AND THEN. Colie deep-throats her own foot.

"I feel like the casting was set up in such a way that Alex was a plant for me and Jenn to go after. Because, like, there's four guys in the house, two of them are black..."

Jigga-whaaaaaaaaaat?

"You know, I don't care, but someone..uh...I've fooled around with black guys before AND I'LL DO IT AGAIN! But uh...and Davis is gay, so that only left Alex?"

I don't even think she got past "two of them are bl..." before my roommate and I buried our faces in our pillows and didn't look up until it was over. And it went on forever. Jenn was making a valiant effort to dig Colie out/distance herself from the comment ("Stephen was in a relationship and Ty was like a brother") but there was really no coming back from that. Fuck you, Colie.

To summarize: Jenn, Tyrie and Brooke can all come and hang out with me anytime. Davis needs to shut the fuck up. Colie can choke on a dick (but only a white one!).

If we're rating on awkwardness, the reunion made The Office look like The Andy Griffith Show. Brilliant on every level. Thank you, Real World Denver.

I am extremely good with directions

2007-06-18T19:36:00.000-04:00

Since I haven’t been home since my mom’s surgery and this past weekend was my only opportunity to go home this month, I spent my weekend chillin’ with my parents and visiting friends. Saturday night my friend and I decided to go to the drive-in to see Pirates of the Caribbean and Knocked Up. Well, really all I cared about was Knocked Up, but Pirates played first, so we really had no say in the matter.

Anyway. My friend and I (I should be coming up with “clever” aliases for these people, shouldn’t I? I can only type “my friend” or “my roommate” so many times before it gets obnoxious. Uhhhhh….let’s call this friend “Pinky”) took separate cars since we were coming from separate directions and Pinky was coming straight from work. I get there first, and wait in front of the ticket booths for a while, but a lot of people are going in and I'm nervous about getting a spot, so I decide to buy my ticket and go wait inside. As soon as I get to the ticket booth, I realize I only have my debit card on me, and hillbillies that they are at the drive-in, they only take cash and have no ATM on site. So the teenagers working in the ticket booth are really nice and they give me directions to the nearest ATM at a gas station up the street. Perfect.

“Okay, so how do I get out of here?”
“There’s an exit at the far left.”
“Far left?”
“Yup.”
“Perfect. Thanks!”

So I drive to the far left, where I’m pretty sure there’s an exit. Wrong. I get about ¾ of the way to where I think I’m going before I realize that I can’t actually get out that way. Fine. I turn around and go back towards the ticket booths, and turn up a different lane where I’ll be able to get to the road. Wrong. There’s an exit, but it’s all chained up. Perfect. I turn around again, and end up having to drive the wrong way through a one-way entrance, which wasn’t at all embarrassing.

At this point I kind of start freaking out a little bit, and I’m kind of sweating and panicking, so I call Pinky and I’m like, “I need you to tell me how to get the fuck out of here immediately.” Pinky and I go to the drive-in a few times every summer, but she usually drives, and when I drive, she’s there to direct me out, so I feel like this is a foolproof plan.

Pinky tells me to go back the way I went the first time, but keep going, and I’ll eventually find the exit.

Wrong.

There’s an exit there, but it’s locked. So I drive past it, and the road I’m on takes me in a big circle back to where I started, except that I now have the benefit of hiding from the ticket booth behind a fence, where I sit in fear that someone is going to catch me and make me leave until Pinky shows up and pays for me, which you can be damn sure I made her do. How embarrassing.

Also embarrassing? Going to the bathroom between movies and seeing the ticket booth kids now working concession. After I peed, I waited outside for Pinky because I didn’t want to be spotted. And, you know, laughed at. Oh, and halfway through Knocked Up, I realized that when I came in, the ticket booth at the far end on the left had no one working there and wasn't blocked off, and just maybe, that's where I was supposed to exit. S-M-R-T.

As for the movies themselves: Pirates was pretty good, Knocked Up was awesome. I’m assuming large chunks of Pirates sprang to life while the writers were high off their asses, but that’s…uh…fine. There was minimal Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley’s chin was kicking ass and taking names all over the place, and Johnny Depp was all hot with the eyeliner, so I really had no complaints. I think being at the drive-in made it seem not as long as it actually was, too, because you can put your feet up and talk if want to.

Oh, and if you think Katherine Heigl is fat, you can kiss my ass. This is really the first thing I’ve ever seen her in, but I know of the “fatty fat fat” controversy, and seriously? Shut the fuck up. And then go see Knocked Up, because it’s so good.

Important Annoucement

2007-06-14T15:48:00.001-04:00

I don't get a lot of particularly exciting Google searches leading people to my blog, but I am proud to announce that Christmas Means Carnage is now the number one Google hit for anyone searching for "Rihanna's vagina". Yessssss!

I guess it could have been "Beautiful"

2007-06-12T11:56:00.000-04:00

So I've spent the past couple days feeling mopey and down about a bunch of crap that's been going on lately (or I guess "not going on." Just be thankful I managed to get one of my friends on the phone last night, sparing you the "pity me" blog entry). Because of the mopeyness, I also haven't been sleeping well, putting me in an even better mood, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Anyway, what came on the radio this morning, woke me up and pulled me right out of my funk? Fighter. Officially making me ten times gayer than I ever thought I could be, in both senses of the word.

Rocky Balboa

2007-06-08T10:04:00.000-04:00

So Wednesday actually did turn into "watching Rocky Balboa and eating our feelings" night in the apartment, and somewhat surprisingly, the movie was pretty good. Stallone really plays up the "lovable dumbass" angle that he left behind in the past few movies, and it totally works. He's such a sweet old man! Anyway, I know a certain Mr. Monk Seal stole my thunder on this one, but I liked the movie a lot more than he did.

The plot: Adrian is dead, and Rocky is still not rich, but runs an Italian restaurant called, duh, Adrian's. He's all depressed because his wife is dead and his kid sucks and he spends his nights wandering around Adrian's and telling customers stories about his glory days. ESPN or whatever runs some computer simulation boxing match between Rocky and the current champ, Mason "The Line" Dixon, causing depressed Rocky to get back into boxing. He wants to do a few smalltime local fights, but gets roped into a big Vegas exhibition match against Dixon. Then he runs up some stairs or something and the fight happens. The end.

There's a lot of talking in the movie, which I generally enjoyed. The first hour+ of the movie is mostly talking, and it sometimes (okay...often) moves into schmaltzy territory, but even when things get lame, it's not cringe-inducingly bad. There's no fresh insights into the human spirit or whatever, and the "Rocky the Youth Mentor" subplot is totally lame, but the movie mostly works as a portrait of a 60-year-old guy unwillingly dealing with some big late-in-life changes.

The fight isn't the most awesome Rocky fight in history, but it somehow manages not to be completely implausible, and is pretty entertaining. Definitely nowhere near as bad as the Rocky V streetfight.

Milo Ventimiglia, going aggressively against type, plays a whiny emo douchebag. He also (1) doesn't have a scar, (2) doesn't take his shirt off, and (3) looks emaciated. Thanks for nothing, Petrelli. You ass. There's one scene where his character, Robert, throws a childish little tantrum about how Rocky shouldn't fight again because it would be too embarrassing for Robert to deal with. This leads to my favourite part of the entire movie, where Rocky reams Robert out for being such an obnoxious, selfish little brat. It's exactly the type of verbal smackdown that self-absorbed characters like Peter Petrelli, or Morris from 24, or Dawson Leery always deserve but never get, and it is extremely satisfying.

Overall, I would definitely rate this movie second after the original. As far as rewatching is concerned, I would probably prefer to watch the ultra-cheesy gaypornfest of Rocky III first, but that might just be me.

Too many posts?

2007-06-07T19:11:00.000-04:00

I even have a post for tomorrow, too!

I finally found Nicole Richie on Letterman. Enjoy!

'ina, 'ina, 'ina, yeah

2007-06-07T11:46:00.001-04:00

Is that Umbrella song about Rihanna's vagina? It seems like an awkward metaphor.

That's hot

2007-06-07T10:46:00.001-04:00

So Paris is out of jail, which is not shocking. I'm hoping that 40 days of house arrest means that people will shut the fuck up about her for at least a week, but that's probably too much to ask.

In related news, last night I turned on Letterman for the first time in literally years, and caught him interviewing Nicole Richie. I love David Letterman. He started off with one or two Simple Life questions ("You gave fat kids enemas? Fascinating.") and then spent about ten minutes asking variations on "what the fuck is wrong with you and your friends?" and "seriously though, you know you guys are a bunch of jackasses, right?" It was obvious that Nicole's had a lot of media training and was specifically instructed not to whine about the unfairness of it all the way Paris did, but then she awesomely defended herself by claiming that "everyone goes to jail" and sat there awkwardly while Dave, Paul and the audience burst into uproarious laughter. In my head, people were pointing at her while they laughed. She also said she might be going to jail soon, too, so keep your fingers crossed!

The interview was seriously pretty awesome. I'll post a link when it shows up on YouTube.

Good news/bad news

2007-06-04T12:11:00.000-04:00

Good news: Rocky V was still available on demand last night, so we got to watch it for free!

Bad news: Rocky V is fucking awful. Really, just an embarrassment for everyone involved. Rocky was "brain-damaged" but you couldn't actually tell the difference. The final fight was a bare knuckle streetfight. One of the main characters had a crazy mullet. Burgess Meredith looked like he was melting. This movie made me want to cut myself.

I can't wait to watch Rocky Balboa tomorrow!

I pity the fool...

2007-06-01T10:44:00.000-04:00

Since there's been nothing on television for the past week or so, Roomie and I have been taking advantage of the free movies our cable company offers On Demand. We started on Sunday with Thelma and Louise, a movie I had never seen, and never really wanted to see. My capsule review: Brad Pitt looked a little weaselly, but he had a pretty rockin' body. As opposed to now, when Angelina Jolie has feasted on his soul by sucking it out through his mouth. Seriously, why is he so haggard and tired looking all the time?

There's only ten free movies each month. Half of those movies are Rocky I through V. Guess what we've been watching all week?

I really enjoyed Rocky. It was a bit of a downer, with all the miserable poor people sitting around regretting their lives, but it was a good story, and the characters were interesting, and Rocky is at his best when he's being sweetly dumb. And kind of hot. Did I just say that?

Rocky II. I actually missed everything leading up to the fight, because I went out that night and Roomie was almost finished watching the movie by the time I got home. Hopefully I'll be able to go back and watch the rest of this later. Roomie tells me Rocky is even dumber than he was in the first movie, and I'm down with that.

Rocky III. Hulk Hogan as Thunderlips. Mr. T pitying the fool. An hours-long training/sexual tension montage. Does it get any better than this? Now, normally I'm not one for HoYay thing, but Jesus H., this was like Brokeback Boxing. Apollo and Rocky frolicking in the ocean and hugging and rubbing up against each other, all while wearing short shorts and half-shirts; Apollo calling Rocky "Stallion" about a million times; the entire final scene with Rocky and Apollo shamelessly flirting with each other ("You look good, Stallion") and the movie ending just seconds before they start making out and ripping each others' shorts off in the middle of the ring. This is how you make a truly awful guilty pleasure movie.

Rocky IV. This is how you make a truly awful movie. I don't want to spoil anything for you, but let me give you a rundown of exactly what happens: a replay of the entire final gay porno setup scene from the end of Rocky III, a little bit of plot, a fight, a little bit of plot, a 5-minute music video/montage of random scenes from all four movies, a lengthy training montage, a 15-second scene in which Adrian shows up in Russia, a second lengthy training montage, another fight, Rocky single-handedly ends the Cold War through perseverence and hard work, the end. Notable for proving that Brigitte Nielsen wasn't always repulsive. Also notable for proving that Brigitte Nielsen still wasn't ever all that attractive. I'm also pretty sure that Stallone had some work done between III and IV, because he looks better (not "good", just "better"'; he was only hot in the first movie) this time around.

Now here is where our story gets sad. Not only are Roomie and I going away for the weekend, preventing us from finishing the series until Sunday night, but the free movies rotate monthly, and today is June 1st! I think I probably like these movies a lot better when they're free.

It's Canadian, except for everything about it.

2007-05-31T10:00:00.000-04:00

So last night was the "cycle" two premier of Canada's Next Top Model, hosted by none other than Scarborough, Ontario's own Jay Manuel (taking over duties from "cycle" one host Tricia Helfer). I tend to go back and forth on Mr. Jay. I think he's kind of obnoxious and a bit of a sycophant, but he definitely has his moments. None of those moments occured in last night's episode, however. I skipped the first season entirely (except for the finale, only because I got to attend the afterparty), so I don't know how good T.Helf was as a host, but I have a feeling that she didn't rip off Tyra's entire personality. You know how Jay is always the first want to jump all over a girl's face if she tries to model like Tyra? He really needs to stop doing that, lest he look like an enormous hypocrite.

Let's do a little rundown.

"10 beautiful girls stand before me, but I only have nine photos in my hand. These photos represent the girls who will continue on in the hopes of becoming Canada's Next Top Model. The girl whose name I do not call must immediately return to the mansion. Pack her belongings. And go"? Check!
Giant portraits of Jay all over the mansion? Check!
"Fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce fierce" Check!
Crazy-ass weave and hooker eyelashes? Check!

Okay not really the last one, but that's the only way you could tell him apart from Tyra. Everything else was a bad impersonation.

I need you to do something for me. I need you to visit this site and wait for the second image to scroll up. The "Fabulous! Fierce! Ready for the World!" one. I need you to answer this question about Jay's shirt for me, please: What. The. Fuck?! That's what they plastered all over the city to advertise the show. Jay Manuel in his very best superhero S&M costume. Jay is not an unattractive guy, but the last thing I would ever call him is "sexy".

The rest of the show was okay. Nole Marin has Jay's ANTM job. Kind of hilariously, the judges hated most of the shots that Nole was raving about. The girls mostly blurred together, but I matched names to faces for five of the them, four of whom ended up in the bottom four. Then they got rid of the gorgeous, bitchy girl, which doesn't bode well. You'd think Jay would have picked up the most important lesson Tyra could have given him: bitchy girls make good TV. Don't fuck this up, J-Dawg.

Oh well. Jay might suck, but guess who we're getting as host of Project Runway Canada? Iman, bitches!

Lime?

2007-05-28T16:33:00.002-04:00

So I got a new computer at work. It has Vista and Office 2007, which I'm still getting used to, but I'll be fine once I adjust. My real issue is that on this monitor, the writing and the header on my blog are lime green. Is this the case with your computers? It's always looked darker to me. I feel like I've been walking around all day with toothpaste on my face and no one bothered to tell me.

You guys need to tell me these things. I swear I'm not actually tacky.

Am I supposed to post on this thing, like, regularly or something?

2007-05-22T12:30:00.000-04:00

...because I'm really sucking at keeping this thing up-to-date. Not that (both of) you are waiting with bated breath to find out what's going on in my life, but anwyay...I'm sorry. I'll try and post something about my weekend later tonight or tomorrow.

Some woman just phoned the office to set up a new business meeting on behalf of her son. Because he didn't want to use his cell's daytime minutes. He's 31 years old. I'm so happy that professionalism still has a place in modern business.

If only I had a wishlist...

2007-05-11T14:26:00.000-04:00

I need this yesterday.

Stuff

2007-05-09T10:40:00.000-04:00

1. Lily Allen. She seems kind of obnoxious, but the weather here kind of skipped Spring entirely and headed straight into Summer, and all I want to do all day is sit on my balcony and listen to LDN on repeat.

2. Idol. I'm going to be so happy when it's finally over, and Blake is obviously going to be in the final two, which annoys me, and this season I've tragically missed out on 100% of the Idol Fandom Crazy Train, and I hate fucking disco night and fucking Barry "but the song was originally sung by a boy in falsetto, how ever will a girl sing it in a normal voice? It's madness!" Gibb, but I still love this damn show. Melinda 4-eva!

3. Heroes. I love this show so much it hurts. And the Entertainment Weekly cover story this week has managed to make me excited for season two, which I had been a little apprehensive about previously. Even if next season isn't quite as good, it doesn't sound like they're going to fall apart with no clue how to follow up this season.

4. McDonald's. In the past year and a half, I've actually managed to cut fast food almost entirely out of my diet, whereas prior to that, it was almost my entire diet. But today is McHappy Day in Canada, and $1 from the sale of every McMuffin, Happy Meal and Big Mac goes to charity, and how can I say no to that?

5. Paris going to jail. Teehee.

I need to take a step back.

2007-05-07T09:46:00.000-04:00

So I was more apathetic than anything about last night's Amazing Race finale. I was only rooting for the BQs, and wasn't expecting them to win, so I wasn't shocked and distraught when they didn't. But then this morning the entire thing just made me really angry about Mike Boogie all over again. Why do the people who never deserved to be there in the first place always win All-Stars? How could this have happened three times?? So annoying.

And then we went for McDonald's. The end.

2007-05-04T17:13:00.000-04:00

My mom is doing really well. She was home when I got back into town around 2:30 yesterday, which was excellent, because I really dislike hospitals. She was in a fair bit of pain when I got home, so I gave her some Percocet and sat and chatted with her for about a half hour until she fell asleep. She woke up a couple hours later, and was walking around and in a good mood, which I was happy to see. Today she's been fine. Her sister came to visit, so they hung out for the afternoon, and she didn't start complaining about pain until about an hour ago. She also said the surgery pain is nothing compared the gallbladder attacks, so it's really not bugging her too much. Her doctor told her she would be off for six to eight weeks, but she thinks she'll be back to work in two weeks, three at the most. As long as she doesn't push herself too much, she'll be good. I thought I was going to be sitting in a room with my mom, watching her sleep, and holding her glass so she could take her pills, but it turns out I came home so I could vacuum and do the dishes and go to the bank for my dad.

And watch a repeat of yesterday's episode of The Insider. WTF is up with The Insider? What a terrible show. Today's episode featured a bunch of clips of "Larry and Anna Nicole's first meeting" at the Kentucky Derby where she was high as a kite and constantly grabbing Larry's ass (awww, romance!). Also, a story about a 2' tall little person and her 6'4" boyfriend. I think it was part of a weekly series, and that earlier in the week, she was pregnant and then had the baby. Today, the boyfriend proposed for the cameras, and I think the wedding is happening during the next episode. There was a lot of happy, tinkly music trying to trick me into thinking that the story wasn't "everyone laugh at the midget and her giant boyfriend" when it actually was. Oh, there was also some home movie footage of David Hasselhoff lying shirtless on the floor, drunk out of his mind, trying to eat a hamburger and spitting it back up and drooling all over the place. His daughter took the footage because apparently the Hoff told her to videotape him if he ever fell off the wagon again. I wonder if he also asked her to sell the tape to the Insider? You would think that Pat O'Brien might have an issue exploiting something like that, but apparently not.

Last night, I told someone an extremely long (I'm sure I was rambling for at least ten minutes), not-at-all interesting story that ended with, "wait. What was the point of this story again? Oh right! Then I got a Slurpee. The end." If you think this blog is boring now, just imagine all the stuff that gets cut.

Randomania

2007-05-02T11:57:00.000-04:00

I've been feeling all scatterbrained recently, so here's a big mishmash of what's been going on with me.

My mom had surgery to have her gallbladder removed yesterday. They were hoping to do a laparoscopy (??? I don't even know what the means, really), but they ended up having to cut her open. This is the second time she's had the surgery. The last time I was in high school, and she had such a bad infection that they couldn't remove the gall bladder, so they just took the stones. This time, there was apparently a bunch of scar tissue already there. They removed it, but they don't know if the pain is going to completely go away. It's frustrating, because my mom has had a few different surgeries in the last few years, and there's always some type of stupid complication that makes everything way harder than it should have been. Her recovery time is already going to be longer than she was hoping, and she was supposed to come home yesterday or today, but now it looks like she won't be home until at least tomorrow or Friday. I was going to head home Friday night, but I will probably have to go earlier so that my dad doesn't have to take extra time off work. Which is fine, and I didn't really want to have to wait until the weekend to see her anyway, but it's just frustrating, and I hate asking for time off work. Luckily we're having a slow week, and I can do most of my work from home. Anyway, she was apparently moving around yesterday, which is always good, but if you have any spare positive mojo lying around, please send it to my mommy! Not the Austin Powers-type mojo, though, she doesn't need any of that.

How good was Idol last night? I don't know if it's the lack of Sanjaya, or the contestants are actually stepping up their game, but last night's episode was great! Melinda really seems to be saving herself from the "boring" label without much prompting from the judges, and I really loved Lakisha's performance, even though that song doesn't do much for me. I couldn't decide how I felt about Blake's performance: most of it was really good, but I was so put off and embarrassed for him by that stupid "drop the needle" thing he opened with that I didn't really enjoy the performance as I was watching it. Plus, I still hate him for being such a whiny little bitch in that EW interview he gave a few weeks ago. Also, why is no one telling him how to dress around his child-bearing hips?

On the flip side of FOX, how did 24 manage to fuck up this season so badly? Who thought it was a good idea to sideline Jack and Chloe (and Bill, although I can't assume the Silver Fox is as beloved by everyone else as he is by me) in favour of the ongoing drama of fucking Milo, Morris and Nadia? None of those characters do anything for me, and I don't understand why they couldn't have just added one of those three characters and had Chloe take over the rest of those storylines. The entire White House plot is also lame. I think Tom Lennox was the only new character who really clicked, but he's also one of three characters who they pulled the "he hates Muslims, but he's still sympathetic" card on this season, and frankly, I'm getting pretty sick of that particular plot device. I also hate the VP, I think he's a crazy cartoon of a villain whose motivations I don't pretend to understand. He just likes blowing shit up? And he's the VP? Really, 24, you couldn't do better than that? Apparently they're revamping things next season, which is good news, because I know the show can still be great if they focus on what they're good at. I can put up with a lot of random ridiculousness as long it's still about compelling characters with complicated motivations. And Jack still tries to cut people's eyes out.

One more thing: STFU about Facebook already! I'm sick of it! Students in Toronto keep getting suspended for talking shit about their teachers on Facebook, so now there's a million stories in the paper everyday about its the devil, and parents should know what their children are doing on the internet, and blahblahblah fuck off. All they're doing is dusting off the same stories they wrote a year and a half ago and replacing "MySpace" with "Facebook" where appropriate. And the MySpace stories are rehashes of the IM stories, and the chat room stories, and whatever else everyone freaked out about because they teh inarnetz are scarrrrry! Just shut up already. I love Facebook, I think it's totally convenient and great for keeping in touch with people who I otherwise probably wouldn't, but if I'm not currently using it, I don't want to hear about it.

Okay, last thing. Firefox 2.0 is God. My computer rebooted when I was in the middle of writing this, and when I opened Firefox, it gave the option of restarting my previous session! Everything was still there! Magical. I love you, Firefox.

Likes and Dislikes

2007-04-26T10:53:00.000-04:00

Or more accurately, Dislikes: The Past 20 Minutes edition

1. When your office PC forces you to reboot and then Excel won't load until you completely reinstall Office on your computer.
2. "Oh, I was looking for the Office discs last week, but I couldn't find them."
3. "Seriously, dude, I looked everywhere."
4. Being totally fucked.

So you think you can strip?

2007-04-25T16:13:00.000-04:00

So I went to my first burlesque show the other night. Sorry, "burlesque" show. It was...where to begin? Let's begin with this: the show itself was fucking awful. But more on that later.

The show was at this supper club-y type place in Yorkville, which, if you don't know, is where all of Toronto's obnoxious, chichi, new money, rich people live. It's like, Porsches and plastic surgery as far as the eye can see, so right off the bat, it's not exactly my scene. But I like nudity, and I've been to the place before for work-related events and enjoyed myself, so I was willing to make the trek.

I was (mis)informed that things would be getting underway around 10:00, so I showed up shortly before that to find a mostly empty restaurant. Thankfully, my party of people was already there, so I took a seat, and we proceeded to spend the next hour making fun of every single person in the bar. The people there were...hmmm, how do I put this nicely? Revolting. Too much? Let's just say they were not my crowd. One guy was wearing his best pair of ball-huggingly tight jeans tucked into his boots, which weren't even cowboy boots (not that cowboy boots would have been better) and a white blazer. He also had a shaved head and crazy sideburns. He was one of the better dressers. Gold chains, spray-on orange tans, crazy cleavage, everything two sizes too small. And those were just the guys (ba-dum-ching!) I also don't think I've seen as many women with crazy, terrifying collagen lips in my entire life. Oh, there was also a group of men in their 50s with really long, curly mullets and sunglasses. We couldn't decide if they were actually Rush, or if they just wanted everyone to think they were.

I was planning on not drinking, due to an unfortunate incident the previous night where I accidentally had four drinks more than I planned to at a work function, but after being pushed around by obnoxious Guidos for two hours, I needed a glass of wine. I had $15 with me, and I spent it on one drink. Perfect.

So finally, sometime shortly after midnight, the show gets under way. Two dancers - a woman and a man (even better!) - take the stage, the music starts up, and...is this 'In the Mood'? Are they swing dancing? Why doesn't this look like the Pussycat Dolls? And thus began the worst swing dancing routine I have ever seen. It looked like they plucked a couple people out of a beginners swing class, threw them on stage, and told them to take their clothes off for the last 30 seconds of the song. The girl would do the splits every once in a while and then look expectantly at the audience for applause, like, people aren't going to clap until you take your clothes off, and at one point the guy just started doing pirouettes in the middle of the stage, which I'm sure his ballet instructor would be very proud of, but honestly? WTF?! So finally, the song is almost over, and off come the clothes, like, finally, except...the girl is wearing a full corset that doesn't match her underwear (I'm sorry but I hate the word 'panties'), and the guy is wearing underwear thats covered by the longish wifebeater that he doesn't even take off.

Lady: wearing the equivalent of a one-piece bathing suit.
Gentleman: dressed like your dad when he wakes up on Sunday morning.

My only hope was that the next performance would at least bring itself up to the level of 'mediocre'. But apparently, that was it. The DJ started back up with the house music, the "burlesque" show was over. "Come to our two-hours-late, 4-minute amateur swing performance where the dancers strut around in their dirty underwear for the last 30 seconds." What could be better on a Thursday night?

Happy birthday, Jen!

2007-04-20T15:05:00.000-04:00

I know how much you love rap music, so I got you this:

Enjoy!

It's sunny!

2007-04-18T14:49:00.000-04:00

This is the most useless thing I'll ever post, but I'm excited. I can't remember the last time I needed sunglasses, as opposed to wearing them so people on transit can't tell that I'm staring at them.

"I know her love is true, but it's so damn easy making love to you"

2007-04-16T12:20:00.000-04:00

Normally we listen to my iPod in our little office, but I left it at home today, so we're listening to some 80s station that I found on iTunes instead. I thought it was going to be, like, Soft Cell and Depeche Mode. No. Somehow, it's way better than that. Here's a sampling of the awesomeness we've heard already today:

Starship - Sara (when I was like, 4 or 5 years old, my best friend's name was Sara and I had a crush on her because there were a lot of things I didn't really understand yet. This song makes me think of her.)
Toto - Rosanna (I didn't even know they had another song besides Africa)
Police - Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic (damn you, Sligh!)
Bryan Adams - Run to You (I'm not even apologizing for loving this. Stop looking at me like that.)
Steve Winwood - Higher Love (whoa-oh)

All we need now is Jesse's Girl and my life will be complete.

My life is extremely exciting

2007-04-16T11:56:00.000-04:00

So I spent yesterday doing my least favourite thing: cleaning my room. Boo! On the bright side, my room is now mostly dust-free, I can see my desk again, and my laundry and ironing are done. The ironing thing is particularly exciting because I literally haven't done ironing in months. I spent the winter wearing the same three or four things to work everyday. If I had to iron, I would run downstairs five minutes before I left the house (aka five minutes after I had to leave the house to make it to work on time), iron the collar and the bottom of the shirt, and then throw a sweater on over it. The good news is that we have laundry in our apartment and our utilities are included in our rent, so I do laundry approximately 700 times a week. I am clean but wrinkled.

On the not-so-bright side, the rest of the apartment looks like it was hit by a fucking hurricane, so I'm going to have to clean tonight and probably tomorrow too.

Stuff

2007-04-10T18:36:00.000-04:00

Here's some stuff that I like right now. Maybe you'll like it, too; maybe you won't. Maybe I don't really care, what do you think of that?

1. The Fratellis - Flathead. I love this song. It's from one of the more recent iPod commercials, and the video looks pretty much exactly like an iPod commercial, which is kind of lame. But honestly, if you put a song in an iPod commercial, I will download it and tell everyone about how great it is. I'm sure that makes me a shill for the man or whatever, but fuck it. It's a good song.

2. The Hills. I can't stop being addicted to everything Laguna Beach. I know the season is already over in the US, but we're still two weeks away from the finale here. Don't spoil anything for me. Unless Lauren lights Spencer on fire and roasts marshmallows over his burning corpse. There's really no "spoiling" that scenario, as far as I'm concerned.

3. Blades of Glory. I don't really have anything to say about this except that it was hilarious and I kind of have a crush on Jon Heder.

4. Nelly Furtado - Maneater. "Because she said she love you love you long time."

5. Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theatres. Now, I don't throw around the word "motherfucker" lightly (lie), but what stupid motherfucker decided not to release the Aqua Teen movie in Canada? How am I supposd to see the movie now?? Okay, so I'm just going to go to Chinatown one day on my lunch and buy a bootleg copy for three dollars, but that's not the point. This is bullshit, or censorship, or something.

I am a total follower

2007-04-08T19:40:00.000-04:00

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Everyone else was doing it, so why not me?

Over 0 customers served

2007-04-08T14:33:00.000-04:00

So this is the blog where you all discover the reason I spend so much time on the internet. (SPOILER: my real life is not that interesting.) I'm hoping that maybe I'll start doing interesting things so I'll have something to talk about on my blog, but more than likely, I'll either barely post here, or I'll just start making shit up. Or I'll bore you to tears and you'll never come back.

Anyway, here's my blog, stop fucking nagging me to get one, watch this space, blahblahblah whatever.

Christmas Means Carnage

This is why I don't get along with gay people...

New

"Nobody is giving you $100,000 to leave the house"

Effin' Eh

Don't call it a comeback

Oh, Canada

Question.

Please enjoy this totally boring and not-at-all insightful survey.

Harley

Reason #...uh...1 why I love Jessica Alba

The poop.

Hypothetically....

w00t!

Day 80

Jesus

Hero this, d-bag

New job?

Shameless/Sad

Seven Weird Things About Me

Angry Johnny and the Mysterious Case of the Missing Pants

Cleanse

Brain Stew

Why I love my roommate, Reason #3209

Day WTF?!

Day 20

Day 8: The Hard Part

Whatever. I don't even know anymore.

Day Three/Four: Turning Point?

Day Two: Suck it.

Day One.

Why do you think I was late for work this morning?

Confidential to Charming Driver...

"I probably owe you an apology, either for something I've already done, or something I'm about to do. Sorry about that."

Meme Schmeme

Note to readers...

I'm going to send them to your mom after I fucking kill you

First in an exclusive series...

Dear person who came to my blog looking for shirtless pictures of Jay Manuel,

Let's show these fools how we do this on that west side

Masculinity, thy name is Aiken

Dear cockmaster,

The Hills are alive with the sound of drama

"Now I'll hide the eggs!"

In retrospect...

One more thing...

I think I deal with my emotions in an very healthy way, thank you very much

I can't keep doing this

A Heartbreaking Story of Staggering Fucking Horseshit

The funk soul Brotha

I swear I don't usually call cab drivers "motherfucker"

Got a devil`s haircut in my mind

This is why I shouldn't read horoscopes

BLEEEAAARRRGHHHH*&#$*&~~(*#!!!!!!11

The pride of Cape Breton

You Usually Have to Pay Extra for That

Absc-ass

The Most Amazing Hour in the Entire History of Television

I am extremely good with directions

Important Annoucement

I guess it could have been "Beautiful"

Rocky Balboa

Too many posts?

'ina, 'ina, 'ina, yeah

That's hot

Good news/bad news

I pity the fool...

It's Canadian, except for everything about it.

Lime?

Am I supposed to post on this thing, like, regularly or something?

If only I had a wishlist...

Stuff

I need to take a step back.

And then we went for McDonald's. The end.

Randomania

Likes and Dislikes

So you think you can strip?

Happy birthday, Jen!

It's sunny!

"I know her love is true, but it's so damn easy making love to you"

BLEEEAAARRRGHHHH&#$&~~(*#!!!!!!11