Through the Static

Sometimes I have clairvoyant dreams.

They never direct me to any epiphanies.  They don’t solve mysteries and they don’t teach life lessons; they are merely strange and cryptic windows into the lives of others.

Example: I will dream of you singing a particular song in a particular manner.  Upon waking, I will tell you of that dream and you will tell me that while the song was different, the strange style in which you sang it (in the privacy of your home, with no one around but your cat and your girlfriend) was correct.

Example: After having been out with you the night before, I will dream of shopping for a new phone.  Upon waking, I will discover a worried email from you, announcing that you have lost your phone.

Occasionally, I will also dream of the future.

Example: Several years ago, I dreamt in the autumn that a friendship would end in the winter.  That I’d be left to sort out my jagged feelings for an unstable man while I stepped with nimble feet through deep slush.

Example: I dreamt of finding a wad of American money on the floor.  The next day, I was in line at a gift shop, and I saw a wad of American cash sitting on the ground.  WTF?!?  I was so stoked, until the cashier saw it too, and alerted the rightful owner (or so I assume it was the rightful owner.  If someone asked you if that wad of money was yours, would you claim it as such?).

And very rarely, I will dream of artistic inspiration.  Things that I can make, either for monetary gain, or for fun.

Example: Last winter, I dreamt that I was looking back on some quilts that I had made.  There was a sense of accomplishment, and the quilts were both witty and practical.  Upon waking, I was nervous and excited, and it took me a long time to think through the actual quilt making process, but eventually I made it happen.

Example: Last spring, I dreamt that I was making ugly pants for nothing more than monetary gain.  Upon waking, I did exactly that.

Do it Now!

All of you should get up right this moment and go to The Rage and Distill Gallery so that you can see my quilts on display.

And then you should buy my quilts.

Do it now.

Here’s a picture of one of the quilts:

 

Photo by Anna Barrs

If you look really closely, you might notice the Mr. T portraits in some of the squares.

 

“It’s a Type of Candy!” I Just Said That Out Loud

I’ve gotten back into the candy making lately.

Cold weather (today and yesterday notwithstanding, however, I must let it be known that I’m getting sick and tired of this above freezing weather we’ve been experiencing.  There are all these wasps flying around, thinking that they’re cock of the walk! Venomous little fuckers, just you wait and see who’s cock of whom.  Or “which.”  Maybe “what” is the word I’m seeking), unpleasant adventures in public and a general malaise have been keeping me indoors and cooking.

Most recently, I have made peanut butter truffles and chocolate covered marzipan.  Yep, marzipan.  I never even knew what it was before this week, and now I’m eating it.

It’s almondey.

What Would Stacey Say?

I was talking to an acquaintance recently about odds and statistics and the like.

I had no idea what I was talking about; my most recent lesson in statistics came from The Babysitter’s Club, where Stacey tells Mallory that statistics can be skewed in order to prove a point (point in question was that all the boys in Stoneybrook were suddenly behaving like jerks.  As it turns out, they weren’t, it was just a few boys misbehaving randomly and temporarily).  But I was the one who brought up the topic of odds and statistics, and damned if I didn’t try to make some sense out of it (I certainly didn’t).

We were discussing this acquaintance’s recent run of bad luck in trying to find gainful employment.  There were lots of openings in his field, he had lots of great experience, but the odds were totally fisting him in the butt.  For the past six months.  With no lube.  Sometimes life is kind of harsh.

So he confided that he was starting to wonder if karma had something to do with it.  Which surprised the hell out of me; this dude is one of the most pragmatic, no-bullshit people I have ever met.  Not a hippie, not a pussy-footer, not a wishy-washy mystical crap-dabbler in any way.  But there he was, dropping the K-word.

Now, I’m not normally one to believe in karma.  I think that if there even is anything resembling ‘fairness’ in this world, that it’s obviously completely beyond my realm of understanding, so I should just shut up and stick to what I understand: simple algebra, The Babysitter’s Club, and amateur candy making.

But what the hell do I know about anything?  Maybe this acquaintance did something to deserve this run of employment related bad luck.  Maybe I did something to deserve my own run of romance related bad luck.  And maybe Paris Hilton is a fucking demigod who will never be held accountable for anything ever.

Or maybe there’s no reason to anything and everything will be magically great for all of us (including Paris Hilton) by the end of the week.

Is that a statistic?

Slave or Scholar?

So, I dropped out of school.  Before I even started classes.

I spent more time going to George Brown in an attempt to reclaim my money than I did trying to learn things.  Have you ever been to the Casa Loma campus?  I think that’s where they keep all the stupid kids.  If you take public transit, you will be automatically sucked in to this endless line of students who file slowly and incessantly from Dupont station to the school buildings and back again.  It takes forever to reach your destination, and then once you get there, you will be faced with another huge lineup of people standing still.

People suck.

But that’s not why I dropped out.

The reason I dropped out was because I was able to find tutorials online for every little thing I’d wanted school to teach me.  You just can’t take the DIY out of the lady.

Fuck school, I’m just going to keep on keeping on.  And in case my old methods start to fail me (there’s this coat pattern that has been causing me nothing but grief as of late.  Seriously, what’s a bitch gotta do to pull a magenta velvet military coat out of her ass?  Learn how to make coats?!?  Fuck this world), I’ve taken on an intern position with a fashion designer who has a studio near me.

I’m still going to learn things.  I’m just not going to pay for the pleasure.  Or get paid.  I guess it depends on how you look at the situation.

Faitheism?

As a child, I spent a lot of summers visiting my grandparents in Nova Scotia.

This was my favourite thing to do; I loved everything about Nova Scotia and my grandparents.  I even enjoyed going to church with them on Sundays.  I liked the Sunday School and the hymns and the after church lunch of cold cut sandwiches and homemade cookies.  Because I liked all of these things, I didn’t mind it when my grandmother made me a born-again Christian.

I even kept up with the Christianity through most of my high school years.  One of my closest friends from high school(with whom I am currently having a text message conversation on whether or not to have a True Blood night tomorrow night) introduced me to a couple of Christian youth groups, and through them we made close friends with a few other boys and girls.

Yep, while most of you were experimenting with drugs and sex, I was merely experimenting with spirituality and the possibility of a higher power.

And sex.  I mean really, if you think my hormones are bad now, just imagine the teenage version of me, surrounded by dozens of handsome, virtuous, young men.  Everyone experiments with sex.  Sex=Love/Love=God/God=Orgasms.  If I were Catholic, I could be nominated for the role of Sex Pope with that formula.

Anyway, as I aged, my thoughts and feelings about God took a turn for the worse.  I started to question my beliefs, and, after a few upsetting incidents with the church, decided to break up with religion.

I spent my early twenties in an atheistic rage, spurning any and all encounters with organized religion.  Spewing contempt for the poor ignorant lambs who believed in a higher power; feeling that religion was an evil tool, more adept at causing violence and destruction than love and creation.

I was like Richard Dawkins, but less handsome.

Throughout this time in my life, my mind would sometimes wander back to my grandparents and their beliefs.  They didn’t support the blowing up of abortion clinics.  They didn’t think that all brown people would go to hell.  They wouldn’t cast aside their son or daughter, simply due to that person’s sexual orientation.

My grandparents were (and still are) good people who worked hard and tried to make the world a better place.  Their lives were made better by believing in a higher power.

I still don’t believe in an afterlife, I don’t believe in a devil, and I certainly don’t believe that there is a holy man in the sky watching and judging every little thing I do while letting starving orphans in Africa die of AIDS.

I don’t know.  I just hope that there’s something larger than what I can see.

Six Months

Today, it has been six months since I quit smoking.

That’s good.

I am finished with the scotch and bubblegum phase, my smoker’s cough is gone, my hair is shinier, my weight has levelled off (five pounds gained, not a big deal), I have more energy, I am more creative and I can run up a flight of stairs without losing my breath.

I worked hard to achieve a goal and I succeeded.

Take that, slackers!

Me vs. Me

I received a comment recently about the nature of my blog posts.

It seems that at least one of my readers is concerned with the incongruity of my writing; specifically, that I may not always practice what I preach with regards to men vs my own independence.

I suggested to this person that humans are multi-dimensional creatures by nature, experiencing conflicting emotions on a daily basis, and therefore not as easily compartmentalized as our fictional counterparts.   My writing occurs when I feel inspired, and that inspiration usually comes about when I am struggling with some of my more delicate/fragile/stupid emotions.  Hence the whining.

I also suggested that these feelings are recorded as they occur, and that although they are permanently etched into the internet, they might not be a lasting part of my day-to-day existence.

In short, I was basically saying “Chill bitch, you don’t know my life.”

Which you don’t; this blog is merely a vomitorium for my musings, and has little relevance to my regular life.  For example, do you know what I did last night?  Or where I went this past weekend?  Who accompanied me?  What new money-making hobby I’ve taken up recently?  Any of the details of the Worst Date Ever, which occurred last week?

Alright, I’ll give you some info on the last one, only because it’s educational:

Unspoken rule: If you are using an online dating service, and are actually planning on meeting the person with whom you are communicating online, Don’t Post Pictures of Yourself From When You Were Forty Pounds Lighter!!! Anything more than a ten pound difference makes you seem either really deluded or really inconsiderate.

And I might have been fine with the man if it were only his girth that he misrepresented.  But there was much, much more.  I ended up faking a drug overdose and leaving after forty five minutes.

Hey, at least I paid.

Turkey Trauma

I spent the entire day yesterday cooking a turkey dinner.

Turkey, stuffing, mashed sweet potatoes, squash, an aborted attempt at gravy and some canned cranberry sauce.

I now understand the pain my mother went through every Thanksgiving and Christmas, and why she would so readily accept invitations to dine with extended family on these holidays: turkey fucking sucks!!

Initially, I was expecting to cook it on Monday and share it with Grumpy and Janky.  This would leave me plenty of time to work up an appetite for another Thanksgiving with my fam.  But I miscalculated the amount of thawing time it required, and wound up cooking it on some kind of demonic hangover (one of those hangovers that actually gets worse throughout the day?).

The turkey also took three hours longer to cook than what it claimed.  And I couldn’t find the neck piece that needed to be removed; it was tucked away in its butt cavity, which I also couldn’t find until it had been in the oven for two hours.

Eventually, I found the butt, the neck hidden inside (that’s so perverse), along with some other unrecognizable part of the bird’s anatomy.

Blech, by the time it was finished, carved and beautiful, I had absolutely no desire to eat the fucker.  But I did.  It was delicious.

Then I decided that I should totally make a stock out of the carcass.  I looked up instructions online, which suggested that it needs to simmer for FOUR hours. This is after having baked it for six hours.

So I heaved a sigh, did what needed to be done and boiled the carcass.

Except by that point, my hangover was taking control over my life.  It was all panic attacks and nauseating headaches, so the smell of the boiling bird bones made me want to vomit.  I ended the stock after two hours, and forgot to put it in the freezer, so now it’s garbage.

Fucker.

Henry Rollins Needs More Cute Soldiers

My vagine is permanently closed for business.

Three fucking years of guys who either hurt me or suck too much to be allowed within reaching distance.  Without mincing words, I’ve had enough.

Sigh.

Here’s to getting fat and wishing my life turned out differently:

Sorry, Handsome Henry, we have differing perspectives on how to live life.  Hint:  Mine’s more fun!