$$

"I told you to keep your fingers out of your mouth," and, "Now I just have to ask, did you make that shirt yourself?" about two bedazzled dollar signs, and, "I know how you love that fuscia," and, "Oh, the rabies shots; I'm so sorry I didn't recognize you," and, "What do you have written on your hands today?" and, "You're a trooper."

You see, I'm kind of a regular hero down at the clinic.

(The centaur hands over to the fiddler crab a crock pot, not toilet paper as is commonly mistaken)

I wish I had a copy of Klessa doing this.

Chewed a coca leaf, smoked another. Can't sleep now and that's fine by me.

52 posts, like a year of posts.

Chewed a coca leaf, smoked a cigarette (plus one half). Coffee at my side, getting down to BUSINESS.

How to get things done (in theory)

Coffee at my right hand, wine at my left.

+/-

I think alliterations might be my favourite literary device. Actually, I know so.

And now the bad news: Most days I spend in the library I somehow end up sharing a table with and thus sitting across from one obnoxious couple. They kiss tender right in front of me, he offers her his sweater, she touches his hair. It's all very sickening stuff.

Charlie Darwin: on Love

“When the sexes differ in more important structures, it is the male which is provided with special sense-organs for discovering the female, with locomotive organs for reaching her, and often with prehensile organs for holding her.”

POWERMUSICELECTRICREVIVAL

And my parents just kissed, twice, for the first time I've ever seen unironically.

I am getting audited but I have an accountant for a friend

Watching Terminator with my father, I am officially a visitor.

What on Earth.

Somehow, somewhere along the line most recently, I seem to have lost my pharyngeal (read: gag) reflex and now the soft palette at the back of my mouth has mutated away from being made of private productivity and coy colour that it was, before. All of a sudden I'm sticking my fingers, the middle blistered, way back in my throat and nothing is stopping me from going until I puke out all of the shitty sounds and words that are in my brain and body.
And this is strange and violent and I cannot tell what changed but something must have, right? And I cannot even tell if this is, you know, right, or O.K., but hell, the pants I am wearing today are salmon and I have to do something with my time other than writing about development anthropology versus the anthropology of development or something like that which I cannot even remember.
!

Announcement

Finding things to do at work other than work is still a job.

I have bitten my hand, at that soft bit where the bone is deeper, the imprint where my thumb bone reaches back to the rest of my wrist. I see that the imprints from my teeth look an awful lot like a pair of lips. Open and sultry, almost begging for rusty lipstick, hair from yarn, and a little loving. This, I find amusing, like a commercial for soap that cleans both the dishes and the skin. I look down at it again and see: two small moles, just above, pale brown and looking back at me from the most perfect spaces.

So, I am waiting for class but did not do its readings (they were historical and I just do not have the patience for that, now) and suddenly I cannot speak using contractions and want only to lay on the grasssssssssssssss.

tree>car

We should be so lucky. To start the day with an enormous breakfast and also learn to fasten my accordion to my bicycle, though it looks much less French than it sounds, is to be full and free. Am I right?
But here, here is where it happens:
We are in our bedrooms at night and we hear:
A) A dancer colliding with all of our fine china.
B) The certain death of one upstairs and to the right (if you are, in fact, observing from the tree's perspective).
C) A car meeting the front porch.
D) What on Earth? Maybe the end of it.
E) That, that was a real fall.

And so that great tree on our front lawn that gave us big flat mushrooms for hats and blueprints for tire swings fell hard and suddenly we had on our hands a block party! It is the most exciting thing to happen all week (it happens to be a Sunday, which may be the beginning or the end but who's counting?) and then I feel like a kidder who just won the jungle gym lottery or a teenager who has been left home alone for a few days for the first time. So we climb, a little bit. There is some broken glass from the back left corner of a car called "HOPFER" and I bet Hopfer's going to be straight pissed when he learns "TREE>CAR" even if it's just a tail light, though the way the tree hugged the car otherwise might indicate some kind of collaboration. I hope for the former, mostly.
The authorities show up and tell us to stop having fun but they are laughing a little bit, too. I am bitten by something which hurts worse than a bee sting, maybe a tiny vampire, and later Byron finds plantain at the bottom of the tree. I chew it a little and swallow a little of its water before turning a small piece of the space on the outer side of my left leg, between by shin and my calf (I do not know my anatomy), into a small swamp. It is connective and I somehow feel a little bit more powerful because the tree is kind of part of me through this tiny red hole in my leg that begins to swell and bruise.
So, the light on the tree is beautiful and perfect and everyone is taking photos (digital) except for us who are too busy scavenging pieces for shelves and keepsakes and can you even guess how many wooden spoons you could make from this half tree who just came to abandon its ancestry like me? Not that it's on purpose, or anything.
I imagine that a baby was born with that blue, blue light shooting from center of the tree and splitting away its third.

I am no longer on academic sanction though now a new $2,836.06 is glaring into my eyes with a nasty, "So what? You gonna do it? Really?"

As it turns out, I could graduate this year with my Bachelors Degree in Anthropology. Who ever really needed the Honour in it any way? I think what I want is to work with my hands but I can't tell anymore so I just Google "woodworking fine arts college." Then I realize I do not want to lay foundations and build cabinets so what kind of carpenter would I be any way? I hear they're in demand in France. I could be a French carpenter. It's settled, then.

Our new baby Moon Baby scratched me in the eyeball last night. The optometrist does not open until 10:00 so I take the morning off of work to make sure I don't get cat scratch fever. That would happen; it's kind of my thing to get the diseases that infants do.

The weather has cooled down and I am so so mad. I want to be sweaty and sticky and naked in my bed laying on my back with the window open and the fan on. Unbearably hot. Whatever happened to that? I thought this was global warming?

Things deflect in funny ways. So does sound.

Learn this lesson. End things early if you want to.

I cannot play the guitar but I will do it any way and I will also kiss and make plans and let people rub bits of their fingers on my own and write "forever." without any capitals because, somehow, I can. Right?

Four Day Weekend

How in hell do you even play the guitar? I have no idea (maybe foreshadowed by the posture of my splayed right hand), but I decided to record a song on one today. The notes are shaky at best, percussion's off time, and the harmonies are unsure. I'm at least hoping that these lay together for an endearing final project, like how when children write songs they never rhyme or carry rhythm (there's not a lot of that in there, either). I never been much of a perfectionist with these sortsa things, anyhow.

(Note: I took it down)

Great, Great Aunt Sally never married. Aunt Sally never could find a man whom she admired as much as her father. Grand, Grand Nana Mary Shirley went to live with her, for company, and never went back.

Distant Cousin Keri is getting married in September and she had a shower today. It'd been ages and she commented on my height. I last remember her braiding a piece of my hair, putting a little piece of foil and blue and white beads on the end of it
Today, though, everyone just told bad sex jokes and bad marriage jokes. My Great Aunt Ronnie told her to feed him well. My younger sister told her to never shower in the sink (part of the "Recipe for Marriage" game). My mother's always told me to never marry.
We made toilet paper wedding dresses and ogled at lingerie and, well, told more bad sex jokes and funny stories about husbands and how they are all hopeless. There was a pair of boxers with a giant cock printed on the front and a cake dressed up as a bustier.

I think my mother might be right.

20 bees.

Coming home at 5:30 in the morning sober and exhausted and weeping because somehow birthdays are always disappointing somehow and you found that your mom bought BBQ for your birthday dinner and you hate having BBQ for your birthday dinners because you specifically said you did not want BBQ and all you can think about is that stupid Lesley Gore song and then you wake up in the morning when you're still tired but can't fall asleep again and no one is home.

Hah.

(More) Vegan Recipes for You to Enjoy

TAR BOWL

Ingredients:

• Oreo cookie crumbles leftover from a real recipe
• Almond butter
• Flaked sweetened coconut (what else is new?)
• Soy milk
• Sugar
• 3 raisins

Plan of action:

1. Put the Oreo crumbs in a bowl.
2. Put some almond butter on a spoon and stir it around in the Oreo crumbs.
3. Flaked sweetened coconut- about half of the amount of Oreo crumbs.
4. Pour in some soy milk. Make it like tar. You might have to add some more Oreo crumbs, and then some more milk. This is a science.
   
5. Maybe add in some sugar if it's not sweet enough.
6. I put in 3 raisins to try it out. I didn't like it very much so I picked them out and ate them first. This was a fun activity.
7. Do your fucking dishes, you slob.

***
Mostly I am just so bored but also too tired to do anything. Womp womp.

Today I became an Apicultural Research Assistant. I tore bees in half with tiny tongs and crushed them in a mortar and pestle.

Bee Puns

So's I got this job keepin' bees this summer; anticipating a really good beard of 'em by the end of it. While Frank Bornhofer calls this a "bee bonnet,"and that's cute, I kind of think "beehive," is a bit more appropriate.

Why Welland is Really Cool:

THE TITANIC. A bar but also 'da club' in the basement and karaoke and Jen and Holly and Matt (middle aged and depressed). PLEASE. Forever and ever.

Deflecting

Tropical Weetabix:

• 2 Weetabix biscuits
  
• Honey (raw honey with little wax chunks is preferable)
  
• 1/2 a banana
• Shredded coconut (1/2 sweetened, 1/2 unsweetened)
• Thompson raisins
• Soy milk

1. Put the Weetabix biscuits in a bowl. Shallow ones are best.
2. Spread a little bit of honey on them.
3. Slice banana on top of Weetabix and honey. Even distribution is key. Sing the "Chiquita Banana" song and think about the exploitation of Latin American female identity (or something).
   
4. Sprinkle some coconut on there. Sing "La Cucaracha."
   
5. Add some Thompson raisins. Put the container away, and then pull it back out to add two more raisins. Like that, yeah.
6. Find a sad, slow record to listen to. Maybe Bonnie "Prince" Billy.
   
7. Put in some soy milk. Not too much. Do this at the last possible moment before consumption.
8. Enjoy, or something.
   

Spoons in the Sink, Blue in my Brain (and on my legs)

We are moved into our new home on Home, the KITSCHen. My hands are buttery yellow all over, which is certainly a mixing error. This paint doesn't look much like a Portuguese Sonnet at all, actually. Somehow, everything I owned turned blue. I mean, by accident, everything I happen to own also happens to be some shade of blue. I also happen to hate the colour blue. It may be one of my least favourites, except for, say, a nice navy blue cardigan. By some universal hiccup, I came to own everything in a shade of blue- baby, peacock, cornflower especially. Things that are two shades of blue at once, even. So I am painting this two tone blue dresser I found in my garage in which my dad had been storing training wheels and light bulbs and long gone useless matter. And now it's yellow. I don't like yellow much either, though. How did this happen?

Speaking of blue and yellow, my legs are continually and mysteriously bruised all over. I am afraid to WebMD it (my usual course of action) since Jordaan squealed, "Oh my God it's like that movie where the girl has leukemia and she has bruises all over her legs and then she dies!"
I asked my mom if I had leukemia, and she said no, but she also recommended I go to the doctor to get the skin on my feet checked out while I'm at it.
Totally gnar.

I still don't have a summer job yet, really, except for a part time one. Album recording will be going on soon, and I so hope that the neighbours upstairs don't mind. I am sure they won't- they seem really great, and even brought me a pumpkin loaf and some zines today! Included was, "My Cat's More Punk Than Yours" by Five: Seventeen. Toning down my excitement on that one was a challenge. My two most favourite things! I am reassured that staying in Guelph is the right thing to do. Last night's brodown dude party had me second guessing, but I think I'll be just fine here.

TOTALLY GNAR!

"Ridin"
(feat. Krayzie Bone)

[Chorus]
They see me rollin
They hatin
Patrolling they tryin to catch me ridin dirty
Tryin to catch me ridin dirty
Tryin to catch me ridin dirty
Tryin to catch me ridin dirty
Tryin to catch me ridin dirty
My music so loud
I'm swangin
They hopin that they gon catch me ridin dirty
Tryin to catch me ridin dirty
Tryin to catch me ridin dirty
Tryin to catch me ridin dirty
Tryin to catch me ridin dirty

[Verse 1 - Chamillionaire]
Police think they can see me lean
I'm tint so it ain't easy to be seen
When you see me ride by they can see the glean
And my shine on the deck and the TV screen
Ride with a new chick, she like hold up
Next to the playstation controller is a full clip and my pistola
Turn a jacker into a coma
Girl you ain't know, I'm crazy like Krayzie Bone
Just tryin to bone ain't tryin to have no babies
Rock clean itself so I pull in ladies
Laws of patrolling you know they hate me
Music turned all the way up until the maximum
I can speak for some niggas tryin to jack for some
But we packin somethin that we have and um will have a nigga locked up in the maximum
Security cell, I'm grippin oak
Music loud and tippin slow
Twist and twistin like hit this dough
Pull up from behind and is in his throat
Windows down gotta stop pollution
CDs change niggas like who is that producing?
This the Play-N-Skillz when we out and cruisin
Got warrants in every city except Houston but I'm still ain't losin

[Chorus]

[Verse 2 - Krayzie Bone]
I been drinkin and smokin holdin shit cause a brother can't focus
I gotta get to home 'fore the po po's scope this big ol Excursion swerving all up in the curve man
Nigga been sippin on that Hennessey and the gin again is in again we in the wind
Doin a hundred while I puff on the blunt
And rollin another one up, we livin like we ain't givin a fuck
I got a revolver in my right hand, 40 oz on my lap freezing my balls
Roll a nigga tree, green leaves and all
Comin pretty deep, me and my do-jo
I gotta get back to backstreets
Wanted by the six pound and I got heat glock glock shots to the block we creep creep
Pop Pop hope cops don't see me, on a low key
With no regards for the law we dodge em like fuck em all
But I won't get caught up and brought up on charges for none of y'all
Keep a gun in car, and a blunt to spark, but well if you want, nigga you poppin dark
Ready or not we bust shots off in the air Krayzie Bone and Chamillionaire

[Chorus]

[Verse 3 - Chamillionaire]
Do what you thinkin so, I tried to let you go
Turn up a blink of light and I swang it slower
A nigga upset for sure cause they think they know that they catchin me with plenty of the drink and dro
So they get behind me tryin to check my tags, look at my rearview and they smilin
Thinkin they'll catch me on the wrong well keep tryin
Cause they denyin is racial profiling
Houston, TX you can check my tags
Pull me over try to check my slab
Glove compartment gotta get my cash
Cause the crooked cops try to come up fast
And been a baller that I am I talk to them, giving a damn bout not feeling my attitude
When they realize I ain't even ridin dirty bet you'll be leavin with an even madder mood
I'mma laugh at you then I'mma have to cruise I'm in number two on some more DJ Screw
You can't arrest me plus you can't sue
This a message to the laws tellin them WE HATE YOU
I can't be touched or tell 'em that they shoulda known
Tippin' down, sittin' crooked on my chrome
Bookin' my phone, tryin' to find a chick I wanna bone
Like they couldn't stop me I'mma 'bout to pull up at your home and it's on

[Chorus 2x]

***

If you actually sing this song it takes basically 9 years. It sounds pretty cool on the accordion, though. I have to memorize this right away. Shouldn't be too hard, seeing as I can totally relate! I don't wanna have no babies either, Krazie Bone.

GUITAR SOLO

I finished my second year of university tonight. It feels kind of anticlimactic. I could take Alice's lead and strip into a red unitard just go wild with someone dressed in the Louis XVI head. I could be taking advantage of my newfound freedom without the labourious burdens of academia by reading something for pleasure or making a craft. I should probably be riding a bike, going to the bar, or jumping for joy at the very least.
Earlier tonight I did let out a few "WHOO"s, but those were also in response to House Centipedes (Scutigera coleoptrata) because shit, guys, come on- those things are gross out to the max!
A) Why do they need 30 legs?
A)1) Why do they need to be so long?
B) Nothing else with 30 or more legs lives in my house. Get out!
C) That colour is not flattering on anything. Translucency is out!
D) It was in my toiletries bag, probably rubbing its butt on my toothbrush.

Instead of outward celebration, I am eating popcorn and sitting in a crumby, squeaky bed, with these dudes giving me the creepy crawlies. And that's just fine.


(This picture is the best because Dee's eyebrows look like happy little eyes. Oh!)

"My Mother and I at Yosemite Park, Mom Falling Down a Waterfall": According to my aunt and herself, my mom currently holds the title for "Funniest Woman Alive." It's also commonly accepted that once she dies, I will carry on the legacy. This photo is a testament, dare I say proof, of such claims.

***

Both The Ten Commandments and Les Dix Commandements are on, but the only Jesus Christ Superstar being aired is dubbed in French.

Whiskey and Guiness

What a treat.

Trois Morceaux en forme de poire

Gnossienne No. 3 by Erik Satie

This song caught me off guard today. This is the first song I learned to play that actually meant anything to me. The first piece of music I played with real imagery behind my eyes (closed) and the first song I really felt. I felt myself swaying bit by bit, effortless hands, and I finally felt something welling up inside of me that needed to spill out. It took me a long time to get there.

Monsieur Satie, I owe you one.

Holy shit.

If I die before tomorrow, this is probably why.

(Famous last words).

Just a Quick One

I came home drunk at 2:30 to my folks house after a night at Handlebar Hank's, having had sneakily drank vodka straight from my flask inside the establishment, mind you. Drinks are cheaper in small towns, too. Playing the accordion at last night's Welland show went pretty alright, I think. I'm getting better, but also my left arm is sore from pumping those bellows. Mostly seeing that people in this town are making good music and caring about it is really refreshing and encouraging.
This morning I was woken up by Bruce Springstein's pianist's new song (my dad saved it for me because there is accordion in it) and watched Will & Grace and Ellen on TV in the basement.
Once we came upstairs my family discussed "trans-trannymen", something which my dad refuses to believe in (that is, Trans-Men who also change transmissions). It's my mom's birthday today and all I wanted to get her was a nice vegetarian cookbook and I couldn't even find one in the stupid mall, which I drove home from listening to "Feel the Pain" and "Brain Stew".

'90s alt lives!

Insofar, being at home again is better than it used to be these days.

Bloggin' Since '02,

But these are the only posts I can find. Valentines years past:

2007: " The dining hall is filled with candles and pink glitter hearts and they are fucking BLASTING Andrea Bocelli. I hate life."

2006: "I guess I need to make some changes." (This was actually posted on February 13, though close enough to potentially denote some Valentiney feelings).

2005: "Happy Sarahtines Day. Maltesers, Chocolate covered raisins, Skor, Maltesers, Chocolate covered raisins, Skor, Maltesers, Chocolate covered raisins, Skor, Maltesers, Chocolate covered raisins, Skor. This is all I have been eating for the past 24 hours. I'm a health machine, oh yeah! And no thanks to the Bulk Barn. Oh, I forgot to say that STYX is also engraved on my chemistry desk. Oh man, that class just keeps getting better and better. But worse and worse in that I'm not doing very well. I wish I was a rapper. They're so damn saucy."

I was hoping they'd be a little more tragic, though I guess 2005 sees such tragic undertones in my melodramatic chocolate consumption.

2008 Valentine's Day Sentiment: "You're the Zach Galifianakis to my Fiona Apple."



I don't care that this is a little bit old. I listened to this song on my walk home and it made me want to pound something in the best way.

Hokey but Not Quite

I saw a raccoon on my walk home tonight and it was a little bit beautiful, the mangy little thing. Round and tumbling. More beautiful is being the subject of a poem, and the most beautiful is that feeling you get when half way through winter you don't care about the shitty season anymore because there are sunnier things to be thinking.

I was told once I said the word "beautiful" too often, and also that I spoke it with an accent. Well hot damn, that's okay, isn't it?

P.S. "A commentary on a dream in which my spirit guide, Danny DeVito, killed me via several (unnecessary) gunshots to the spine. And in case you were wondering about the great beyond, 'The afterlife is just like life except you can only talk + be seen by like 2 people. You wander the earth. That's it.' What a bummer!"

Why do I have to look like Quasimodo this morning? Why can't my eyelids just co-operate?

The past little while has been a series of surprises- good and bad and maybe overwhelming precipitations. I like surprises, but more so in the way that I like finding an accordion in mum's closet before Christmas. Even surprises that aren't entirely surprising, but are filled with beautiful words that make you well up. I have realized lately that for someone who finds trouble in reconciling the belief in a sort of religious divinity, I am very blessed. My body is filled with this warmth. It tries to reach my hands but sometimes it does not get there though I wish it would. I am trying.

A Tiny Cat Wiggling On My Legs

Try to keep them safe, be good to them.

How I Learned to Say, "Yes."

I'm chronically indecisive, mostly. Anyone who knows me is more than acquainted with my inability to a) make a decision and b) make it a real decision, in terms of sticking with it. At first, I'm sure, it was kind of funny. Maybe my parents thought I was smart for weighing my options so heavily, but when it came to taking eons choosing between shorts vs. pants on a mild spring day, or the panda rughooking kit vs. the kitty cross-stitching kit, maybe that was an indication of something more serious. (Note: I got the panda, one decision from my past I'm positive was the right one. The shorts vs. pants story is something entirely different which made lying taste like echinacea, figuratively or course).

While I think New Years Resolutions exist along the lines of, I don't know, lies people tell to make themselves feel better (for lack of a real, and also funny, example), I am resolving to make decisions better, which also involves its inverse, making better decisions. Mostly these decisions involve saying, "Yes," to things instead of, "No," which is something I got really good at when I was an angsty teenager. Keeping yourself inside and not doing much of anything is always easier, though unsatisfying.

I guess what inspired writing this was expressing that pesky, "No," when asked to go build a chicken coop. Minutes later my brain said, "Yeah, why not?" but I think part of this whole learning to make decisions thing is learning when you are making bad ones and how to avoid doing that later on. That's how we learn, right? You learn to not touch the stove from touching the stove. Just turns out I'm learning it 15 years later than most people. That's fine, too.

Maybe my motto for 2008 should be, "Gettin' Shit Done, Kinda."