March 30, 2005 >> Public transportation

So me, Carly, Chad and Jen had tickets to go see the sneak preview of Sin City, a movie that looks wickedly wicked and which I was most excited to sample. However, the sad sad death of the Tempo and differently abledness of the Blue Beather left us at the whim of the Grand River Transit system - first time I've rode the bus since working in the plastic factory. But that's aight. I was singing songs and flyin' high as we rode the number 12 bus down University Ave. You know. Basking in the glories of public transportation.

But suddenly something went horribly wrong! Satan-bus number 12 turned RIGHT on King instead of LEFT and we suddenly realized that we were en route to Fairview Mall due to some crazy fuck-up with the bus's electronic sign. Now Fairview Mall is a very fine place, if you happen to enjoy surgical clothing displays and teenieboppers, but Sin City was clearly not there. No Sin City. Only shopping. Problem.

Shenannigans erupted and we were engulfed in a flurry of running and kicking and checking bus times and chain smoking (me). Good old number 7C came through in a pinch, albeit minutes late, and we arrived at Galaxy with rosy cheeks and related stupidity. We got in line just in time to see a Galaxyboy on the far side of the cordons handing away the last tickets to the show.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" I said, and then I said "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" again. But to no avail. We were told to come back with our oversized novelty tickets at some other time - ostensibly some time when the movie is fully released in theatres and the badassness of seeing Sin City before anyone else has faded. NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I blame the GRT.

Posted by Chris at 11:52 PM >> Commentations (0) | Permalink

March 28, 2005 >> Certifiable

I am frustrated.

Frustrated by the fact that I wasted my whole weekend when I could have easily been doing this stupid research. Frustrated that now I can't stretch myself any further, the research itself is fuckin' hiding. The book reviews I need are currently somewhere in the nebulous and unfriendly wilds of the WLU library website, cowering beneath abstract listings and non-searchable databases. They are tenacious cockteases.

Frustrated that I was putting my laundry away and a single black sock fell off the shelf - not once, but twice. Frustrated that I have no printer paper. Frustrated by frustrated by frustrated by the stupidest and most insignificant things in the world. Christpunchers!

And suddenly I'm calm.

I can't really say how, but I think the very process of writing everything down led me to think about what a whiny bitch I probably looked like to everyone out there in internetland. Which led to me thinking that I probably was being a whiny bitch. Which, as I can see now, I clearly was.

I was complaining about socks falling! SOCKS! And printer paper! Why didn't you motherfuckers punch me in the kidneys earlier to shut me up!?

Well, at least I'm fixed of my whinus bitchanissa symptoms. Thanks for the support and advice, guys. I couldn't have done it without you.

You know, maybe I'm onto some kind of twisted one-way psychological blog therapy with this post. Or maybe I'm bi-polar. This would be a tough multiple choice question to answer with a number 2 pencil.

Posted by Chris at 07:28 PM >> Commentations (6) | Permalink

March 27, 2005 >> An Esoteric Easter

You wonder what Jesus thought when he first woke up in a tomb with a bunch of dead guys - real dead guys. As the rock rolled away and angels waited outside with bated breath, maybe he walked out into the light knowing everything, and maybe he didn't. You wonder if Jesus knew that Cadbury would sell chocolate eggs filled with peanut butter in his honour (certainly not for profit!).

You wonder whether he had any inkling that resurrection and rabbits go together like peas in a pod. You wonder whether Jesus ever killed a bunny, for food or to turn its carcass into wine or whatever. You wonder what carcass-wine would taste like. They sure didn't address that issue in Sideways.

Posted by Chris at 06:40 PM >> Commentations (2) | Permalink

March 26, 2005 >> Cream of Canadian Content

It's easy to get drawn into the insulated world of Laurier life - drinking, WLUSU politika, social drama and whatnot - but it's still important to know what's going on in the world. Right now I am procrastinating but still trying to stay productive by reading back issues of Maclean's. I've been busy, and it's time to catch up.

I have an extremely high opinion of Maclean's. This magazine consistently deliver interesting content that never wavers from Canadian issues, and breaks down the most relevent stories of the week into very palatable info-bytes. I subscribed online one very drunken night for the ridiculously cheap price of 40-something dollars for a year's delivery, and I can honestly say in retrospect that it was the best inebriated decision of all time.

In fact, my opinion of Canadian content as a whole is skyrocketing. Last night I was watching Zed on CBC and it is brilliant programming - a variety show based around indie music showcases and viewer-submitted animation and movie shorts. It's on at 11:30 weeknights and I guarantee that you won't see anything like it - the content is generally very unique, very quirky and very intelligently presented. I guess a lot of my praise should be directed towards the indie producers, but still, CBC needs golf-claps for advancing such a beautiful premise on national television.

I worry about CBC a lot, ever since I stumble-registered myself into a Canadian Identity course last year and the class endlessly debated the necessity for a government owned-and-operated station. I personally feel that it's important to our identity but, until lately, I've felt that the CBC is squandering their opportunity to connect with young Canadians and start fostering a sense of pride and inspiration in our media.

I realize it's difficult - the CBC needs to appeal to ALL Canadians, not just artsy cynical motherfuckers like me - but the puck stops here: if we're going to start rebuilding the Canadian identity independent of American stereotypes, the CBC and the youth intelligencia is a hell of a good place to start. And Zed is only the first step.

If you're like me, if you care about the state of Canadian media and want to showcase our talent - the real talent, not this Nickelback/Celine Dion shit which currently dominates our cultural export - then please, for the love of God, let CBC know. Don't let conservative pundits run the agenda or things will never change and the CBC will be stuck in their ways, thinking that hockey is all we really care about.

Posted by Chris at 03:12 PM >> Commentations (5) | Permalink

March 24, 2005 >> Oppressed consumer!

So today I learnt that Futureshop's much vaunted extended warranty is a huge piece of shit. See, apparently it doesn't cover "physical damage", as in they won't be able to repair the flimsy lid that fell off my Panasonic discmanny. I'm a little taken aback at this point, unsure as to whether I should be pissed off at Futureshop for being so covertly stingy, or pissed off at Panasonic for skimping on materials and/or not training their child workers to properly affix lids. Maybe I should be pissed off at myself for selecting such a problematic motherfucker as my primary musical fix.

Anyways, like most other bloggers, I have decided to use the internet as a vehicle for taking my personal problems into the public sphere. Boycott Futureshop, you impressionable souls! See what they've done to me? They'll get you too! Never buy another Panasonic product again... unless they happen to send me some free shit to shut me up, in which case they are a mad cool corporate entity once more. Unite, my brothers and sisters! Throw down this oppressive system of commoditization! And so forth.

Posted by Chris at 07:53 PM >> Commentations (4) | Permalink

March 23, 2005 >> I love it a lot

It occurred to me today that language can be a fragile and dangerous thing.

Case in point: Pimlott's office. I'm standing there with Erin, a classmate from Politics of Writing and Publishing, and blathering on about how my excuse for missing last week's class was entirely true. See, I was tired and cough-y and just generally bleeeeeeeeeh and even though I actually love the class, I decided to bail just that once. You know. For me.

Well apparently Sassy Jenny Assy and/or various undisclosed classmates ratted me out, which irked me because this was the one time I was actually sick and telling the truth. The whole "I've been sick" thing has been used way too much in academic history, and consequentially you can't drop it as an excuse anywhere without raising suspicion. It's getting to the point where you have to say that you were driving your mom to the airport or something when you're actually dying of cancer. It's balls.

Anyways, Pimlott was fucking with my head, as Pimlott is wont to do, and apparently an F+ in participation is headed my way as a result of my ditchiness. It probably didn't help matters that I was at his office to pick up the class readings roughly 45 minutes before class commenced, but what can ya do?

In my blathering, I happened to stumble upon a particularly poignant phrase: "Usually I'm ambitious about these readings." Because, you know, I'm not, but I still needed to recover a bit. How is he gonna know if I do the readings an hour or a day or even a week before seminar? Ambitious is generally a good word when you need to build yourself up, and I rely heavily on its graces.

So of course he zeroes in on it: "What do you mean by that?" *Blank stare by me* "Is that some kind of colloquialism?"

Me and Erin look at each other, confused, and I start stuttering and attempting to explain. How the fuck do you explain "ambitious" to a university professor? Luckily, the photocopying is done by this point - the man nicely reproduced the readings for us out of his own pocket - and we bolt.

Later in class, I find out that he thought I said "I'm bitches about these readings." Bitches. Yes, bitches.

Thank you English!

Posted by Chris at 04:59 PM >> Commentations (4) | Permalink

March 22, 2005 >> Oh shit!

I almost forgot... there's also this video of me singing along (in monotone) with Mike's super-excellent guitar. We touched on an eclectic range of hits that day, all of which were drawn from Weezer's Blue Album.

Note: Right click and choose "Save As"! We don't have any fancy-pancy media delivery system up in this house.

Posted by Chris at 07:41 PM >> Commentations (0) | Permalink

>> All quiet

Ever get in one of those moods where you want to write something and then when you sit down to actually do it, your mind totally blanks? Well I guess it doesn't totally blank, otherwise I would probably be struggling to figure out how to move my fingers, but don't be fuckin' snide. You know what I mean!

Anyways, nu-content!

-St. Patrick's Day Drinkathon gallery!
-Be Cool movie review!!
-My sappy column about leaving university from last week!!!

Pow! Bam... smash.

Posted by Chris at 07:33 PM >> Commentations (0) | Permalink

March 19, 2005 >> Thanks Freud!

You wake up.

Somehow a party on the edge of nowhere ended in you lying on a futon-couch-desk construct with Madonna, a very nondescript and ordinary Madonna without gothic robes or a cone-shaped bra, and you're pretty sure she wants you. Everyone else leaves, raving and unhappy and no longer needed. But you're obsessed with finding an oddly shaped spoon that you were given, and you have an inkling that it may have slipped under the couch. This is the spoon. Madonna can wait. Then everything shifts and you're in a public restroom that's both empty and full at the same time. There is interrupted stall-fucking and flumes of water and high-fives and a missing backpack that you abandon everything to search for. In your frantic haze you run past a short-order cook running business out of a bathroom stall and a bizarre procession from the past and present. There's a mythology about these two guys who patrol the bathroom and indescriminately cut off ears. They find you before you find the backpack, appearing out of nowhere. You are immobilized after a brief struggle but your ear is only slightly cut, not severed. There isn't very much blood and you feel strangely thankful for these random punks and their razor. The cut leads to reconciliation and the unidentified blond girl showers you with insights and somehow you know that your backpack is at her house.

You wake up. Your ear is fine and your backpack is crammed under the bed in its usual spot. The spoon is still missing but it's been gone for a while, and you know that there are plenty more spoons out in the kitchen. But you still wonder.

Posted by Chris at 01:33 PM >> Commentations (0) | Permalink

March 18, 2005 >> Valuable St. Patty's Day Update!

So I'm currently wearing a pair of green foam antlers...

Posted by Chris at 12:09 AM >> Commentations (0) | Permalink

March 17, 2005 >> Shamrock Shyster

It's Saint Patrick's Day! I know this because Google has tastefully decorated their logo with a shamrock hat and a great deal of vomitous green. I can also scan my MSN contact list and read names boasting about being drunk at noon, and how everyone's Irish for a day, and just plain boring old "Happy St. Paddy's Day!" I think I might go with that one myself, because sometimes it's more fun to conform than to make the dreary effort to be witty and cynical.

Whoops, I lied!

Truthfully 'nuff, I don't especially feel like drinking today. I think I'm still in recovery from last weekend's shenannigans or I might be sick or something... whatever the deal is, my mind goes "green beer motherfucker!" and my internal organs or whatever say "try it and we'll make sure that the Irish never invite you back." Which would be a pity, because I have a great deal of admiration for the Irish and the fact that they still have an entire day dedicated to getting smash-faced despite the fact that my ancestors so rudely tried to colonize them.

So I'm stuck at a crossroads, trying my darndest not to be cynical (which is generally my response to disappointment) and debating whether or not my stomach is bluffing. Because it has in the past.

At the very least I think I should get dressed. Everything starts from there.

Posted by Chris at 12:02 PM >> Commentations (1) | Permalink

March 16, 2005 >> Dig and dig and dig and dig

It's a tunnelling in the back of my head. I can feel it. It doesn't hurt, necessarily, or bother me to any massive degree but it's still a boring sensation that one might say is "not normal." If I told you that it doesn't feel like a physical pain, one might upgrade their diagnosis to "fucked up." If I told you that it goes away when I listen to Modest Mouse, I'd be lying. I might try Stars in a few minutes though, just to make sure.

I'm not too concerned and you're not a psychiatrist - we make a wonderful pair.

Posted by Chris at 09:49 PM >> Commentations (4) | Permalink

March 15, 2005 >> Nobody plays the lute

Today I woke up and I was stoned.

It wasn't intentional. In fact, I didn't even notice until I was off into the bright, bright sun and on my way to class. About halfway down University I had to turn off the discman and think to myself: Why does Death Cab For Cutie sound so damn cool this morning? Why am I thinking in the morning anyways? Why did I just wonder why I was thinking? What am I thinking about?

It was then that I realized that I was fucking baked out of my tree. "Muffins!" I shook my fist to the heavens. "Damn you Meegan and Jen!" Last night, Meegan and Jen baked some wonderful muffins with a special breed of magic. Although I was being a nerd, typing my Doctor Faustus essay in the living room on my overcompensation laptop, I still managed to snag one at about 1 AM. It was deliciously frosted and made my concluding paragraph incredibly difficult to write. I giggled at Dave Chappelle and went to bed bleary-eyed.

Usually these things pass in the night, but apparently the muffin is more powerful than the bong. I somehow made it to class and sat, dazed, through a class discussion. Mostly I stared at the girl wearing black nylons, a KISS shirt and a gigantic stuffed bunny. I wondered whether the bunny would be going to any other classes that day.

Things didn't improve in 16th Century Literature, a few hours later. I heard snippets: "Male beloved," for example, and "spice up your reading." I made a few uninformed comments about poems that I didn't really care to read.

Anna talked a lot, as usual. She talked pretentiously and theoretically. "I think we should have her killed," whispered Marta. "And stuffed like a bear!" I added enthusiastically. Rod turned around from the row in front of us: "We could mount her on the back wall." He was right. We really could, if one of us knew taxidermy.

Amy had some kind of fucking crazy ADHD and liberally drew big, sweeping lines across my page of notes. She drew an outline of her hand and I cut off her fingers.

Marta showed me the bedframe bruises on her leg. I was impressed. Marta said that she wished she could die fifty times in one hour, like Cleopatra. That would be hot.

In the front of the class, the discussion had turned to lutes. Evil lutes with the power to change love, apparently.

A question: "What exactly is a lute?"
Marta (quietly): "It's a banjo."
Me (quietly): "It's a tiny guitar."
Luft's response: "It's... it's a stringed instrument, kind of like a little guitar... *appeals to the class* Don't any of you play the lute?"

*class snickers*

Me: "None of us plays the lute."

Posted by Chris at 10:44 PM >> Commentations (4) | Permalink

>> brb

back.

Posted by Chris at 01:17 PM >> Commentations (6) | Permalink

March 10, 2005 >> And she knows all his favourite songs

"I'm dead as dead can be
My doctor tells me
But I just can't believe him
Ever the optimistic one
I'm sure of your ability
to become my perfect enemy
Wake up and face me
Don't play dead cause maybe
Someday I'll walk away
And say
You disappoint me
You fucking disappoint me
Maybe you're better off this way."

**************

Last night was an evening of glasses and cups poured onto fabric. It was wet and cold, but I learned that a space heater has an outside chance of drying a pair of blue jeans if you give it the opportunity. It didn't really get a shot at my soaked t-shirt but I'm sure the space heater would've been all over that like a fly on butter.

You can't really see any wet shirts here but I assure you, they were not hallucinated or imagined! I don't joke around when it comes to dampness.

Posted by Chris at 11:39 AM >> Commentations (4) | Permalink

March 07, 2005 >> Waking Moments

Today it rains. It rains a lot and I sleep until one-thirty, stranded in a bed of dreams that's incredibly enticing while I'm there, but vanishes without a trace in those crucial waking minutes. You know, the early moments where dream and reality blurs and you're not so sure whether you're actually waking up or if this bed thing is just a pitiful extension of the crazy adventure you were just having.

And then you see the clock and the papers on the desk and the blinding sun and you realize that you're awake and oh fuck, it's one-thirty. And you wonder why you wasted so much goddamn time in bed, and that's when everything comes rushing back - a broken dam of false memories washing over your mind, hinting at the beautiful things that you saw while you were asleep. Everything around you seems less good for an instant, and somewhere in the midst of that flashpoint of dispair, the dreams leave you behind. And you're here in the world with essays and research and the front end of a Canadian March, when all you really want is to go back to wherever you came from. To go back to sleep.

But when the initial disappointment fades, usually in front of the bathroom mirror as I brush my teeth, the world looks a whole lot more promising. The dreams come and go but my toothbrush will always be here, and the sink too. I look the same as I did the day before, although it sorta appears that I'm trying to grow a molestor mustache. Out in the kitchen, Chad and Jen will be making a post-lunch breakfast. Good Times Gord will be watching TV, right on schedule. And there's something to be said for this kind of day-to-day sensibility. Being awake isn't so tough.

***********

Okay, enough of this. What the fuck am I even saying? New blogs added to the Others page today: Amy and Dan are on the list!

Posted by Chris at 05:44 PM >> Commentations (5) | Permalink

March 06, 2005 >> Uninspired

The past weighs especially heavy on my shoulders today, but that's okay because there's a...

Now column online~!: Paris Hilton & the Celebrity Trap

That's all I got. I mean, obviously I have more but it's brooding, sitting behind the gates of my fingers and I don't have the strength to open the portcullis.

Posted by Chris at 12:23 PM >> Commentations (3) | Permalink

March 03, 2005 >> Aimless

Cancelled class: Good because I didn't have to learn anything, bad because I have to be awake.

Luckily I have a list of fucked up search keyphrases from February to confound and bewilder me (once again).

heart ventricals
the sour keys
vancouver sluts
lassy mogs
spank each other or spanked each other -xxx -mistress -porn -monkey
gonzo cleaning fluid
a drunk woman superglued her to
weedologist
sexing up bitches image
scopophilia gender split
laser breakdancing ocean's twelve
poetry gothic pirate livejournal
ringtones voice massages my cell phone
canadian girls frosh week
austrailian box jellyfish
group x arabian rap sensation bang bang bang
inurl comments inurl id= 2005 gay porno -blog
crackhead squirrels
preteen younger teen kids little virgin (what the hell?)
hardcore gothic poetry
grils with weed in it
black shapes crouched lay sat between the trees leaning against the trunks clinging to the earth heart of darkness
jen gavin
reindeer having sex (again!!)
lemon rebellion

What is wrong with you people.

Posted by Chris at 12:08 PM >> Commentations (10) | Permalink

March 01, 2005 >> Facsimile

I press the button.

Click click click, goes the fax.

It tastes the paper, spits it out disdainfully for a second or two - just long enough to constitute a taunt - and finally swallows each sheet with a whirring sound. The fax machine doesn't seem very impressed. It is hauty and prideful.

BEEP BOOP BEEP BEEP MEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Now dialing... boop. boop. boop. Redialing.

"Maybe the machine at the other end is busy," a Kinko-clad employee suggests. "Maybe it's out of paper. It could be any number of things."

I nod thoughtfully. Maybe the machine at the other end is a slut.

Posted by Chris at 05:02 PM >> Commentations (3) | Permalink