Found this in my gum at last night's Halloween Party (and thanks a million to Shannon for hosting another great one). Does anyone else think Dubble Bubble in't what it used to be? What with Pud's messed up face now? And what with the abstraction?

I'll state it this way: I have not become a cynic, but cynicism has begun to make sense to me. In my second week of working at the Magazinery I'm generally pleased with my job: most of the people are all right or better. The ones who aren't can't kill me. The work is all right. The office is not too far from home. I don't have any real complaints.

But the people who complain, oh do they ever complain.

They tell me that it'll take a month to get the whole job down and then it's the same thing every month. I can see myself a year from now thinking that this never ends, or that it's the same thing all the time and the only difference is what I bring for lunch that day. Not that I'm prophesizing. Everyone has up and down days, or weeks, or months. A down year is too much for me to think about.

It wasn't until 1949 that the terms "Country and Western" and "Rhythm and Blues" became the official names for the two genres of music. That was the year Gerry Wexler successfully lobbied for the change from the original names. Prior to this, all American music written by white people for a white audience was called Hillbilly Music and all music written by black people for a black audience was called Race Music.

Hillbilly music has stayed, more or less, but Race music. Race music! Who was in charge of the language back then? Mr. Burns?

On Books, the Proximity to, and the Organizing Thereof:

Three years ago I organized my two Billies' worth of books in the system made sappy by High Fidelity: autobiographically.* The first on the shelf is Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak and the last is The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir. How did I get here from there?

I thought that moving the new computer with the highspeed into my room would make me stupider and creepier, a night owl who only eats here and sleeps in a little ball. Instead, now I'm right next to the shelf of the best books I've ever read. And Great Expectations isn't one of them.

This is a long winded way for me to plug a man named Raul Correa who taught me some things about writing in New York City when I was younger and whose first novel, I Don't Know But I've Been Told has been out since 2002. It's about paratroopers in Ft. Bragg who take mescaline and jump out of planes. There's so much more to it but I'll only get it wrong:

Hightower is one cock-strong county boy who plays football for the post team and gets to report to the coach for three months out of every year. He gets sweeter than usual before a jump, and only gets mad when he pulls a box of c-rations with a can of Nut Load for a dessert. When this happens, he stomps the horrible can. In two years I have seen Nut Loafs stomped deep into the jungle floor of Panama, the mud of the Everglades, the red clay of Georgia, the deserts of Mojave and Egypt, and across Ft. Bragg. Like a complicated map of land mines. Hundreds of years from now, smart people in earth science will uncover this trail of Nut Loads under exactly the same amount of ground and will figure them correctly to be part of some kind of ceremony.

Some kind of ceremony. I like that.

Notes:
* High Fidelity: The book, not the movie. I'm one of those people who says the book is better than the film (because usually it is, with exceptions) but this one is bloody obvious. British humour doesn't translate into American irony--when will you mod wannabes learn that? Also it's funny how in the book the one-night stand character is an American in England while in the film she's a black woman in America.

Now I can finally dust off my I ♥ NEW KIDS coffee mug* and bring it, starting Monday, to my new place of employment, a magazinery in North York that's not too far from my home, my gym, and about 35 places to go for lunch.

Big thanks goes to all those who put up with me, entertained me, and watched America's Next Top Model** with me all throughout the most useless months of my life.

Now I ask myself, why wasn't I working on some kind of craft all this time? Where would all those macrame plant holders be now? Where, Stumblers?

Notes on the above:
* I ♥ NEW KIDS coffee mug: two years ago, in one of those eBay impulses I vowed never to repeat, I bought the following for $2:

-one (1) I ♥ NEW KIDS coffee mug
-one (1) New Kids iron-on patch from the Hangin' Tough tour (where to put it?)
-seven (7) New Kids on the Block stickers of individual band members
-one (1) set of New Kids on the Block Trading cards, including a Jonathan Knight card which states the following: "Jonathan lists health, happiness and peace as his biggest turn-ons. His biggest turn-offs: war, pollution and racism."

**America's Next Top Model: I only need one trashy, terrible, shameful reality show, and it's this one.

It so happens that in May 2000 I was profiled in my local community newspaper as a Local Hero for my charity work.* And it so happens that I was in a job interview with the publisher of said newspaper yesterday afternoon. Before we started I informed him that he was in the presence of a local hero, and he dug out the relevant article. In lieu of the author's byline it was written that, "the Thornhill Post salutes [me] for my work."

I wonder where else I can become a Local Hero so that in four years' time I can wow an interviewer?**

Anyways, it's been nice knowing you all in person. Now that I've moved into 1998 with highspeed I'll only be communicating with the outside world through Help! Bats! Everywhere!

Notes on the above:
* Local Hero: In that same issue of the Thornhill Post were two articles about how crime is on the rise in the area. One was titled, "Rock used to break in to convenience store."

** wow an interviewer: I just got this image in my head of myself but my mouth is stuffed with like 40 cigarettes, or it's me in the pink feather bra and matching shoes I wore a few Prides ago, and it's on some file that the Magazine of the Future keeps. "Ah yes," says the publisher, "I believe we keep all of our photos in this directory . . . Let me just pull you up . . ."

Asalesperson at a computer store said to me, "You see, the monitor--that's this big screen and the box around it--doesn't really hold any of the power you need to worry about. That's all in [taps CPU] the brains of the computer right here . . . "

It's so interesting to see the media-tion of masculinities through technology. Even technology itself is a loaded term. Symbolically it represents the highest expression of economic power, and the holder of said tech. is also the one with the power.

Ten years ago (I remember it that well) there was an article in the Globe and Mail titled "Compuphobia: Another Feminine Disease?" It was blatantly derogatory to women, stating that by a long shot women only see computers as "electronic typewriters." In large part, we're supposed to keep thinking that technology is something for men. It's always the IT guy in the office; the computer nerd is always a boy; and (not that I'm running for it) the computer-addled recluse is indisputably a guy as well.*

An article in Sunday's New York Times documented the advances in sex-toy technology and how far they've come from the clunky machines doctors prescribed our great-great grannies for hysteria. Vibrators and battery-free sex toys have become smaller, sleeker, better designed, more efficient, more expensive, more in-demand.** Interestingly, the word "technology" doesn't come up once. Because a vibrator (or, for that matter, a washing machine) is considered feminine it is not counted as technology, whereas a computer is technology indisputably.

That'll be enough for now. I need to go re-read Dale Spender's Nattering on the Net. It's a book that always puts me in a computer-savvy mood, and I can appreciate that we've come far enough from home-ec and typing class for one day.

Notes on the Above:
*the computer-addled recluse: Although I might be on my way. My new computer has enough stuff on it that if I didn't need to eat and experience human contact sometimes I could probably just live in my room.

**how far they've come: And I should know. I used to sell the damn things, and I sold them right. It is a little known fact that for the brief period during which I was employed at the Condom Shack the sales of vibrators went through the roof.

It took me two years of trying and fifteen minutes of Googling to finally get an anagram for my name. The Internet Anagram Server is just about the best thing ever if you like anagrams. I do.*

A few of my favourites from the list of thousands:

BABE IN A CALM HELL
A CALM NIBBLE HEAL
A CAB AMBLE IN HELL

Notes:
* I do: Almost every character I've ever written has had his or her name deciphered and anagrammed. I think that's why they're all megalomaniacs who champion what I've written and make the final decisions about what's going to happen to them in a story. My favourite anagram was for someone named Emma whose career in hand modelling ended tragically in an anarchist pas de deux. She now spins the city under the moniker Queer Astride a Bike and never comes back to her old apartment for her mail. EVER SHE'LL SHRIEK A MAN'S NAME.

I noticed I've started mumbling a lot more. I think it makes me look a little creepier, especially when I'm lurking about in my new trench coat and keeping my head down or covered with a hat. Looking creepy--and just as often being mistaken for a man--is not an altogether bad thing. Since I noticed the mumbling (probably an unconscious shout out* to Senor Cardgage) I haven't been hit on by strangers. This I like.**

Notes:
*unconscious shout out: if you spell it unconsciousshoutout it looks like a really irritating band name. Maybe they'll let me play triangle or something. (But I'll never sell out. I'll never hear my best friend say, "you've changed! It used to be about the music!" But then I have always wanted someone to say that to me.)

**hit on by strangers: I know that stories about obnoxious strangers hitting on women are nothing new, but this one happened recently and I've been irritated ever since:

At a streetcar stop. 11:30 on a Sunday night. Bathurst and Queen. Late summer. Pre-trenchcoat and mumbling.

Him: Hello.
Me: (nods in opposite direction of stranger)
Him: Where are you from?
Me: (shakes head no)
Him: From here?
Me: (shakes head no again)
Him: Where from then?
Me: (shoots glare at man fuck off)
Him: I am from Dominican Republic.
Me: (turned away again) That's nice.
Him: Yes it is nice there. . . . So where have you been tonight?
Me: (calmly) Leave me alone.
His friend: Watch out man, she's a woman.