Current status: yellow. buzzed. good. not jaundiced. pleased in general with the way the world is folding together. like four-fingered origami.

Wow. The launch last night (for On the Danforth was excellent. Unfortunately due to a fuckup on the part of the printers (at least, they told us it was the printer's fault) there were no magazines to be seen. Nevertheless, it was amazing to see everyone and talk about everyone else's internships, etc. etc. People are good this way, and on the way home two things occurred to me. Firstly, I hadn't had a drop of alcohol all night, and I probably should have. Secondly, there are so many great people in my life right now--between family, school, work, other friends, even those rivaling chiropractors from years ago whom I like to think were fighting over me--and I wish I could just get them all into a room together.

If I was good at throwing parties, I just might do it, but for now I'll have to keep them all in neat little piles with occasional crossover.

And for today's hilarity, courtesy bash.org:

"Geez dude, with my last [girlfriend] I made the most terrible fruedian slip. We were sitting at breakfast the one day, and I wanted to ask her 'pass the sugar please[.]'
Instead I said 'you're ruining my life, you fucking bitch' " <+darthpony>

bash.org quote of the day:

When I was little I always wanted little people that could fit in the palm of my hand.

they are called 'employees'

True indeed.

Breaking news: Toronto city council spent seven (7) (VII) business days arguing about the city budget. Their findings were many, their productivity was questionable. But among the most shocking things to be uncovered:

Our city has spent--in the last year--$100,000 on plant watering.

These aren't plants in our public parks or famous plants or plants that science is working on in hopes that they may one day talk (and maybe sing!). These are the plants in our city councillor's offices. They pay someone to come in and water their plants.

Now I am just a lowly non-city councillor. Assholes might call me the proletariat. But I can water my own damn plants (actually just the one plant). For $100,000 I could get a watering can for every city councillor's office. And deliver them besides.

So the pressure is on for my upcoming birthday. Family and friends alike demand what I want to do.

The answer (as I tried to explain to someone already) is that I'd love to find a middle-ground between celebrating my birthday and having it pass unacknowledged. Be it known: nothing upsets me more than having a group of people sing 'Happy Birthday' to me. Oh god I hate it. I hate it more than the dying mice my cat leaves outside the door. I even hate it more than the putrid-smelling man at my library who used to sit by the C-Books in Fiction (aka Joseph Conrad).

So if there were already going to be good plans this weekend, I'm in. Maybe if someone else was having a birthday this weekend . . . yes, I like the sound of that already. I get more excited about other peoples' birthdays anyway. Speaking of which, when is the next one? Let me know, peoples, and I'll bake the cake. And write your name on it too.

I never write poems. But here's one I wrote about 30 seconds ago.


**********
i am generally overdone
characteristics
of a girl.
i am things seen noticed for comment while
walking from place to place
in as inconsequential an act
as mailing a letter
from no one special
to no one less special
that the contents should be more to speak of
than the
girl/woman/breasts/hair/hips/legs/cunt/juices/smile/teeth/biting/down/on/you
it turns you on
but nothing's wrong
when wrong-with-you means
you have bad taste.
and chose the wrong girl
for your thirtysecond fantasy running
up a leg to a place
that i used to think special
thoughts
of the girl
before you
whimpering
in scared/ecstasy
movements and expressions
and
thoughts
you saw her.
mailing that letter
she asked:
who decides
who gets what
characteristics
and which ones have been done
which ones have been done
which ones have been done
which ones hair colour
eye colour
length of leg
leg of lamb
soft lamb the skin
that has been done.
what will be done.
will she.
be.
done.
or overdone.

Current status: still awesome.

Current tunes: none. But I got "Bananas and Blow" in my head.

So as part of our glorious leader David Miller's new plan to clean up the city and make his illegitimate children forgive him for years of neglect and missed school recitals, everyone in Toronto is encouraged to spend 20 minutes cleaning up the city today.

Environmentalists used to annoy me when I was a kid. Both of my kid-schools used scare-and-shame tactics to keep me from littering or being wasteful. And as many pills as I take to numb the pain of that childhood trauma, I still haven't been able to un-learn that lesson.

Sean told me once that low-level environmentalism (whatever that is, and I don't want to know what the creme de la creme of environmentalism is) is messed up in its intent. These are the environmentalists who don't think to rally against the companies who dump masses of pollutants into the world with complete impunity. Rather, they chase you down the street if you throw a soda can into a garbage can and set themselves on fire to protest your littering.

Another fact brought to my attention courtesy Chris: Second Cup Coffee Co. (Canadian) insists on using Styrofoam cups vs. other places that use paper cups. You corporate bastards, spend the three extra cents (or however negligible the cost is) on something that can--one day, eventually, in less millions of years than Styrofoam--biodegrade. I don't want to remember my inferior coffee cup in 2 billion years when it's all I have left to eat (the horse-sized bees will have eaten everything else by then).

Newsflash: littering isn't pollution. It just makes the place messy.

God, where did my cynicism come from today?

Current Status: moody

Tunes: The Bends.

______________________

I abandoned ship on the novel I'd been obsessively working on for three years. Bye bye to The Seven Days of Concentration: Dirty Styles, and all those characters like Julia with the bleeding head wound and Trap aka the twelve-fingered boy, Grain, Queer Astride a Bike

Looks like the next novel will not be happening given the current mood. God I just need to write but the next novel is just not happening. It feels like when you realize your lover never liked that "thing" you do, and why didn't they have the bloody decency to let you know.

I came across an old list of mine from age 14, "Michelle's Rules of Writing." (At that point I had just started my first-ever novel.) Item 7: "When someone criticizes your work, take it personally." Why did I write that? Why did I deliberately learn the wrong thing?

Other things about writing:

Raul (former writing instructor): "Don't get discouraged. Get angry. Get pissed. Write better."

Dorothy Parker: "I don't like writing. I like having written."

James Baldwin: "I want to be an honest man and a good writer."

also:

Anais Nin: "We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are."

also: running out of ways to cover the bruises. My hair is only so effective.

_______________________

It's turning out to be one of those days when I do an adequate amount of work and then go out in the rain and then eat a muffin and continue to do an adequate amount of procrastination and timewasting.

I never thought I'd say this: I miss my second-year. I'd go back there for a little while.

How nice. If your vacation could be just to return to one good place in time. It would be then. Too bad all the good things didn't happen at the same time, but I'd pick and choose if I could. Good times with Muck plus wine with Krista and before I'd gotten fed up with some people, most of all before that worst birthday I've ever had. What a good time that would be.

Little more stressed now:

1) I need to become bilingual, quick. Manager said she'd consider me to replace a woman's during her maternity leave if I could speak French fluently. Although I was pretty good in French (got my OAC in it)*, I haven't taken it since high school. Isn't it funny that only a week ago I was just about to recycle all my old French educational materials and I somehow thought, "no, I never know when I'll need to brush up." It's not fantastic enough to be psychic, so I'll just say hooray for coincidence, and, perhaps, intuition.

2) Tax receipts for both of my schools are not coming in. U of T said that it was mailed in February but big fucking surprise!, the lady at the registrar's** office says, "it is University policy not to take responsibility for an item once it has been mailed." I can order a duplicate, of course, but it must be done in person and there is a charge. Guess where I'll be at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow morning?

Notes on the above:

*OAC: it just occurred to me that since the Ontario Government cut out OAC (grade 13), the term is as obsolete as "heterosexual" and "WordPerfect" and "contraceptive foam." Saying you had your OAC in something used to mean you were somewhat accomplished, I guess the way they use AP in the states (if that isn't obsolete by now either).

**registrar: during office hours, these people are the scum of the Earth. They might be okay after they leave work, but there's no one in whose faces I would rather spit than my college registrar. It is socially unacceptable to spit in the faces of those you dislike, so it never hurts to have in your tool belt a few ways to annoy specific people. This is key: don't just do general annoying things; do very focused and targeted annoying things. My two favourites are to address the registrar as the "Register" and to call the country "Prance" when you're talking to French people. Watch them twitch; it's a marvel of science.

Today has, mercifully, been more productive. This is largely by my own doing. Getting my work done is really a very simple operation involving 1) sitting down at my desk and 2) doing my work. Well who knew.

Three notes for today:
1) I got the drop-in visit from my school program instructor. All went well. In the pass/fail scheme of my program, I have every reason to believe I'll pass.

2) My supervisor informed me that I'll very likely be hired on until the end of June because my placement ends too early. This still has to be approved by the office manager but maybe I can anticipate 2-3 months of actual paid work. That would be sweet indeed.

3) I had my first fuck-it-and-just-get-the-intern-to-do-it job today, which was to go to the card store and buy two cards for staff birthdays tomorrow. I don't like buying cards at all, and so buying them for people I don't really know well (usually I resort to the dirty cards anyway) was about as much fun as getting my wisdom teeth yanked out in the days before they put you to sleep. Thas right, people, I'm real old.

Onward, to work! And by that I mean, to stop procrastinating!

Okay, I can't take it anymore. It's 3 p.m. and I have yet to even start working. Is it fair to call this day a writeoff? True, it would be one thing if they were paying me, but without any real impetus to do the horribly boring and doubleplusunfun marketing project . . . ugh I'm flailing here.

But did I mention yet my dutiful appreciation for Something Awful. It's like the gift that keeps on giving. Or the clock that keeps on ticking. Or some other thing. I'll never forget "The Highway Shoe."

My lunchtime run-in with the president of the company went well. I barely know the guy, so I won't say I've impressed him or anything, but I clearly haven't disappointed him. I even danced around the sensitive subject of being hired past my internship with grace. I never do anything with grace!

I'm sure I can kill 90 more minutes before I go to my other job. I think I'll just work extra hard tomorrow to make up for today. Really though.

Good things have been granted me!

Or something. I just spoke to my supervisor about my performance thus far. She says I'm "doing great" and "doing fine" and "if there were problems we're be in meetings and asking you not to continue." I told her my evaluation would be coming in soon for her to fill out and that it would probably be pass/fail. She assured me she wouldn't fail me. Then I got that pleasant sense of relief not unlike the one you get when roadrunner gets away from coyote.

In other news, this city is too bloody small. I learned that my friend's roommate is my ex-boyfriend's ex-roommate. Just when I was starting to forget the bloody little deadbeat dad-in-training, just when I was starting to wane on my fantasies of running into him and punching him three times swiftly, this girl says she saw him when she was in the park. I asked if he was asleep on a bench with a newspaper over his face. She said no. I guess his descent into despondency is not as imminent as I'd hoped.

It's a gray day here in Torontoland. What a way to start a week.

Since Tuesday . . .

The morning of Tuesday April 6 marked not only the first official day of Pesach but my first technical fuck-up at work. I spilled water all o'er the keyboard of my little laptop and bemoaned my fate as the stupid twit intern who got beaten to death with her own laptop. But this was not to happen. I immediately shut it down, mopped up what water I could, then lifted all the keys with a bobby pin* so that the keyboard resembled an unplayed game of Guess Who?**. This left me with no computer at all, nothing to use to look like I was working when I didn't want to. So I had to make my newsstand-marketing phone calls all day.

I left early, at three, to pick up Ezra from the Greyhound station and take him to my house for the second Pesach seder. Ezra had been worried about meeting my parents for the first-but-kinda-second time. Assuring him that he'd already met my parents but he just happened to be making out with me at the time did nothing to assuage his fears.***

My family loves him. Can't get enough of him. Except that I left him alone for one week and he bought a leather jacket and a sword and grew a goatee. He shaved the goatee promptly.****

Okay, that's enough for now. Until I get bored. Staff meeting in 10 minutes.



Notes on the above:

*then lifted all the keys with a bobby pin: what is it about doing anything with a bobby pin that feels so hardcore? It's so "I'm so cool, I don't even need a screwdriver" kind of cool.

**Guess Who?: this was the only old-school board game in whose commercials the girl won when her opponent was a boy. In most game commercials the boy got to say "I WIN!!" but in this one, even though she won, the boy got to say, "you win, let's play again." Remember that boys are the winners and girls stay quiet. Otherwise your product won't sell. Proof of the pudding (I hate that expression), every cupboard or closet of board games in the 80s and early 90s housed a Guess Who? along with Sorry, Clue and Monopoly.

***He'd already met my parents: at the airport, when we walked off the plane holding hands and I kissed him goodbye in the we'll-probably-never-see-eachother-again way while our parents who came to pick us up awkwardly introduced themselves to each other.

****He shaved the goatee promptly:
E: So do you like my beard?
M: I can't lie. No.
E: But I asked if I should shave it off!
M: And I said, "if you want me not to make fun of you."
E: Subtlety doesn't work with me. I'll shave it if you like.
M: I would like.
E: Damn.
M: You were hoping I'd say, "that's very nice of you to offer but you really don't have to." I wouldn't have told you to, but you did offer and I would like to take you up on that offer.
E: I didn't bring a razor.
M: Don't worry. I have one.

I have to talk about the office IT guy.

Usually they're nothing special. Usually they're the people who fix the problems and then they're on their merry way. If this was 400 years ago they'd have their own guild and they would be a proud group of labourers who hold to family honour or something. Not so today. Today, when you meet a neat IT guy, you know if they're special.

Well this guy's special thing is that he thinks he's Neo from the Matrix. He wears a leather jacket (all the time) and looks like the TV-version of Keanu Reeves. And when he met me I was sitting at my desk all busy-like, and he was all,

"Hi, uh . . . I don't think we've met . . ." in that way that makes Keanu worth mocking.

Good handshake. Our IT guy reminds me of the pet employee from my days working at the Condom Shack. This guy's name was Sam and he just sat in the back room all day counting condoms. He was so cute. He never said anything or did anything but count condoms. And you knew that when he went home, he felt like he'd done his part. He'd earned his beer-and-nachos in front of the TV.

Just so with the current IT guy. We don't really talk (I don't have any computer problems worth reporting, and when I do I feel like a princess if I don't solve them myself) but my day doesn't get any worse when he's around.

Speaking of work, I've been phoning to "establish" a "dialogue" with our "members" regarding the "new project" we're "launching" as part of an "initiative" with grant money from "Canada." I do hate calling strangers.

. . . I just had that fantasy where I'm in Singapore and I have my hut and I wear only linen robes and flip flops and eat rice and shoots and fresh fish. I don't trust the paper here (yet I trust the seafood?) and so I can only write on the notebook I brought from home "long ago." Thus every word is precious and I don't waste a single one. When they find my body (I either got stabbed or bitten by something), they'll say, "hey! She's a lady! And she's been writing!" And when they realize it's stupid English shit they light it on fire with the rest of my hut, and steal my goat.

Lunch on Friday . . .

We're all so fresh and new. Everyone is a different person now from the ones I met in class in September. Everyone has a dull gloss--dull from working full-time but the shine I know is from that promise, that even if they're working somewhere that's about to go bankrupt and they've got nothing to keep them surprised, they still believe it gets better.

I like these people.

Saw an excellent movie last night. Goodbye Lenin. The main character reminded me of someone I know the whole way through. The love interest was so cute I wanted to assassinate her with my bag of Nibs. A story of an East German family before the wall thing happened. The mother goes into a coma, during which the wall comes down and the socialist country she loved is transformed into . . . well. When she wakes up she can't have any shock to her system, including learning that her country is not the one she left behind. It's funny and very very real. I loved watching it. You will too.

Current Status: still awesome, slightly more stoned than usual.

Read: The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd.
Eat: pancakes
Drink: beer, then tea, then wine

I did the first two while sober, thank you very much, so you should know that the slightly, luxuriously stoned individual's love of a good book and a pancake are not biased or affected by the consumption of . . . .

. . . there was this man . . . these people said to me . . . .