...and then I put it in my mouth. It was a good idea at the time

So this little fella came in with my shipment of photo clips from photojojo, and despite many years (read: from the moment I understood the significance of the holiday, Halloween) spent listening to horror stories of hypodermic needles found lodged inside a Twix bar, or poisoned gum drops, or crack-turned-rocket candy (I'm still looking for those), I decided to unwrap this bad boy and pop it in my mouth.

It was disgusting, and oh so good.

I could go into an intensely graphic description of my lollipop consumption (read: fellatio references, duh), but that's way tacky and kind of pointless.

Oh, kind of like this blog so far.

But really, it'd be sweetly ironic if I was actually poisoned after I finish eating this thing. Possible last words:

How many licks did it take?

Or

Curse you...photojojo!

Probably, I'd just die while foaming at the mouth, with a little trail of vomit dribbling down my shirt. It'd be like being reverted into an infant once more! Full circle, I kind of like it.

So this blog is seemingly about nothing, but I just got hit in the metaphorical nuts after I finished reading D. Coupland's Jpod, and decided that it pretty much spoke to my generation. Suddenly, taking the time to Google (I personally Wiki stuff) random junk takes on a whole new meaning. Ooh, the goose bumps.

Because I needed some income before my Visa bill swallowed me whole...like a duck

You notice that the overhead ring things make the tires redundant; pfft, amateurs

It wasn't long ago that I had used up reams of paper in order to print out an endless parade of resumes and cover letters, spent way too much time baking myself in front of my monitor in order to fine tune said resumes and cover letters, and then had to endure the mild embarrassment of presenting the organized mess to a really-can't-give-a-shit sales associate who looked down her nose at me because she had the job and I (obviously) didn't. Bitch.
But a little righteously so. Considering that we're all in the midst of economical shakedown (or, okay, RECESSION), finding a good job goes from the difficulty level of trying to master a bicycle at the age of 45 (ask my mom, it's pretty hard) to mastering a bicycle at the age of 45, with one leg...and maybe a lazy eye. Point is, people who are quad-lingual and work at shiny lawfirms are booted out, only to sashay into the considerably less glamourous world of of the service industry.

Basically, they're taking our jobs. Us students have no choice but to rely on these things, because, well, we're students. Most of us don't speak more than 1.5 languages, and we have considerably less qualifications than that snappy lawyer because we're still in the middle of earning them. Battle field unequal? Oh yeah. It's like we're attempting to fight a war armed only with footballs and lacrosse sticks.

Chaaaarge!

Actually, that looks pretty intense.

Anyway, I had recently kicked myself out of a job at Starbucks (long story short: my boss was a douche) and was fully prepared to jump into a happy pool full of journalistic endeavours via an internship.

Totally looking forward to having people hang up on me and not return my calls; the whole experience is somehow more exhilarating when you can say something like, "Hi, I'm calling for the New York Times...bitch!" before they slam down the receiver. Pfft, as if I won't have auto redial.

But recession reared its ugly head again as most places were unable to afford keeping a respectable clutch of full-time staff, nevermind hire a total green kid to do the same sort of job. At a loss and with my Visa bill chomping on my ass (it was a good idea at the time to save my bank account by postponing the payment with my credit card), I gusted out a sigh long enough to get my drapes flapping and then prepared to dive into the service industry once more.

The process is something worthy of another blog (it took from mid-February to the end of March to finally land my ass an unshady job), but you can rest assured that I am happily employed now. I will be selling shoes to keep the rest of you on your feet and running for the next source of your pay checks.

hey, you

This is for you, because I'm pretty sure you're the only audience I really have, even though you never leave your mark.

God, how depressing is that? Not as sad as the thought of you hopping on that great, white piece of techonology we call an airplane to fly away. When I first heard, I felt like I was punched in the gut. The wind whistled out of my lungs, my eyes stung and watered and my mind was thrown into a dizzying swirl of disarray as a million thoughts spun around and clamoured over each other for a foot hold.

Selfishly, I wanted you to stay beside me, within reach, so I could hug you whenever I wanted to, bump shoulders or tie your shoe-laces together like a brat or whatever.

But you deserve more than my selfishness, you deserve all of my love, which is what you basically have. So I'm proud, fiercly proud, that you were able to find yourself a place (and some much-needed dough) in another faraway land.

...Okay, it's Edmonton, but it's not exactly a bus ride away, okay?

I'm glad you're going somewhere where you can grow in that field of art you're so desperately good at, to thrive in an environment that is actually bent on nurturing you rather than constantly trying to murder you with acadamic bureaucratic bull shit. I'm only sorry that I can't come with you, but you'll always be a phone call away from me, and I'll bug you constantly with text messages.

And anyway, I already started saving pennies so I can come to see you at least once a year.

I love you, but I won't miss you. I won't let myself make that mistake of letting something as picayune as a little distance (3434km) get in my way of loving you.

Photo courtesy of Tapeten @flickr.com

Midnight madness takes a bite out of me

Five minutes to midnight and I'm hopped up on something with no place to go. At times like these, I wish I went clubbing, or concert hopping, just for the sake of really living the night life and seeing what all the fuss is about.

In other news, I really need to get a memory stick for my camera so my blogs can be shorter and more shot through with photos.

Everyone likes a little eye candy.

I carry him in my pocket and he sings to me

...and yet you'll still wonder why girls fall head-over-heels for guys in bands.

---

In the grimy underground, one of the few places in society where it's acceptable to be as anti-social as heck, his song and his words are my saving grace. His voice, smooth as a cascade of molten chocolate flowing into a glass, can lower to the most sultry growl and rise into a piercing tenor--0 to 60 in nanoseconds.

When he sings, the lime greeny walls of Dundas station--mired by the constant build-up of dirt and leavings of an active civilzation--just crumble away from my consciousness. I feel my feet lift off the scuffed and sometimes oddly sticky platform, and the ceiling of unspeakable germiness disappears before my outstretched fingers.

Then the train comes and blows me back to the ground, but after I scurry in and nab myself a spot (which involves a brief scuffle with this old lady, and she was armed with a cane goddamnit), I lean back and fall straight into the sweet embrace of Matthew Bellamy's lyrics, imagining that he's singing to me, even though I'm sure he isn't; we never even introduced ourselves on eHarmony.

But that's the point, isn't it? Boy bands, rock bands, solo artists with their gushy lyrics and sweet nothings are meant to snare the very delusional female fan.

Sometimes, we know that the song itself is dedicated to a real life sweet heart of the artist's, but then we go satisfy our stalker tendencies and declare that the perfectly beautiful and stable beloved of our beloved is an ugly old hag, which makes it perfectly alright to go back to thinking that the song, really, is just for us (or, really, it's written for me).

It's an evil, evil marketing scheme, and whoever thought of manipulating the emotions of unsuspecting fangirls/boys is ...kind of a genius. But, you know, an evil one, rolling in lots of money and...god, this is kind of depressing.

My point isn't very clear here, mostly because I just kicked my butt at the gym and I'm really, really dying for a good hamburger. So to prove my point (about the manipulation and the evilness and blah, blah, blah), here's some South Park.

it was like eating ice, I mean, if my stomach were my lungs

They said it was at least plus 2 degrees outside on that deliciously cold morning, Sunday, March 15, but you know what?

They lied.

Or maybe not. Maybe, technically, it was +2 outside. It sure looked like it was. The sun was out and melting everything it could get its little fingers of heat-ray goodness on, birds were singing, and free boxes of Lucky Charms were being passed out.

I know what you're thinking right about now. Whoa, whoa, whoa you say Where was this free cereal action and why wasn't I in on it?

Well, that's because you were a lazy bastard (or just poor; and for the record, I fall into both of these categories) and you were still in bed by the time I was downtown at 10:05 a.m., hopping in the cold, wrapped in the very thin layers of my running gear and wondering why the hell I was about to kill myself in a 5 kilometre run/walk.

Oh yeah, because I paid $35 to torture myself, because the proceeds go to the Achilles Canada fund which supports disabled athletes to continue to kick ass.

...So yeah, good idea.

Now, for the record, I wasn't planning on actually doing this run until a week prior. And the weeks leading up to that week was spent slothing around: I munched leaves and moved as slowly as possible. With only five days to train, I was sorely dispirited, especially since running 1.5k to train was a bit of an ordeal.

But no more time to ponder about my shabby shape, the day had dawned and I was looking it right in its beady little eyes and shivering.

But that was from the cold, not for fear or anything silly like that.

Overhead, the oddly endearing corniness that our MC was shouting out to us gave way to a countdown, and all around me, huddled or standing tall in their black running tights and slim-fit windbreakers, runners perked up like horses in the gates, all but pawing the asphalt with their Nikes; and I was right there with them. My nervous system was jangling with the sudden adrenaline rush that was charging through my veins, making it feel as if my skin was vibrating. I danced on my toes, the guy beside me hurredly flipped through his playlist on his iPod, another guy rolled his shoulders, the crack of his joints echoing in the still, cold air.

The airhorn blew and we shot off! Immediately, the faster runners peeled and eeled their way through the crowd, dodging the more leisurely pacers and all but sprinting towards their first kilometre. Me? I was disoriented by the amount of people jogging around me, some ahead, some behind, some gaining, some falling back, it was all too much for a solitary runner to take!

I bounced my way through my first kilometre, my gait quickening, then slowing as my competitive feet fought to overtake the slow-pokes, while my rational mind continually chanted "there's 5 kilometres to run, 5!" The sunny day did nothing to melt what felt like crystalline ice in the air, which jabbed my throat with every steady gulp I took to keep myself going. I felt my lungs start that familiar burn, my mucles fighting against the cold to start its own heated throb, and my shoulders begin to tense with the idea of a 5k run. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a sign with clear writing in chalk: 1 K.

Volunteers in lime-green coats yell hoarsly at us as we charged passed, and right then, maybe it was the combination of seeing the first milestone of the run and having someone actually cheer for my ridiculous endeavour, but suddenly it all fell into place. My gain smoothed, the air didn't seem to bite so hard and a smile began to stretch my lips.

I ran that 5 k with no stops (except to tie my shoe, because that would have been dangerous). It took me 29 minutes, but I did it, and it felt ridiculously good when, while chugging my way to the finish, a man with a paper sign stuck on his back reading "blind runner" with a female assistant clearly kicked my ass. Ridiculous.

it's like hurting my eyes reading Thomas Hobbes all over again

Back in the dusty annals of my life, when I spent at year at the University of Toronto studying history and political science, I had to read Thomas Hobbes's "Leviathan."

On a side note, if you hover your mouse over the photos, they'll say something cool. Yeah, that's right, I learned how to span.

For those of you unfamiliar with the work of Mr. Hobbes, he basically says that humans gave up their right to autonomy for government, believing that this would be the only way to leave behind their savagery and enter a truly civilized existance.

There's obviously a lot more to it than that, but that's the basic gist that I remember. Having thrown this little piece of classic political science history literature hoo-ha in your face, don't you think that it would be such a huge let down for Hobbes to bounce through time and find himself in '09, where tons of people really don't give a crap about what their government is doing? Not to name names, but I was conversing with a good, intelligent lady friend of mine a couple of days back, and after we fumbled through the subject of what-the-fuck-is-Harper-up-to-now (it turns out he's playing a sort of Obama pantomine), she concluded the end of our discussion with a palm slap to the table top and the declaration of, "In the end, I don't know and I don't care about what our government does."

Wait, what?

These are the guy's that run our country and basically control our lives. Those little road blocks in life that tell us what we can or cannot do, the suits who decide how much of our income is taxed like so many pulled fingernails, the price of postage stamps, all of that, and so much more, is decided by our government.


vs.

So basically, not caring about what your government is up to is, in part, like letting go of the reigns, covering your eyes, and hoping that your horse doesn't run itself into a wall. Not the smartest idea, by far.

Yet I can understand where these people are coming from; afterall, I am one of them. Sure, I know about things like the upcoming budget proposal that'll decide where $40 billion dollars will blow across the nation, I know that Jack Layton rocks at debates as much as he rocks his little moustache (for the record, I like it), but beyond that, I have to rely on my sporadic newspaper reading habit or at least attempt to catch up on Rick Mercer to figure out what the heck is going on in those crazy buildings up at Parliament Hill.

But why? Why isn't it more fun for the regular Joe to just dive into all and becoming truly immersed with the minute details of politics, so we can finally figure out why the immigration process takes so effing long, or if Harper has anything to do with the fact that my toilet swirls in a lovely counter-clockwise orientation.

I know that on the one hand, we average hucklers find that, half the time, all the press release of what the Prime Minister and his band of merry fellows are doing now are just, well, dry. I read about politics in print news, but I do it because I feel like I should, not because I actually like picking up on a reporter's apparent dislike for Jim Flaherty. Politicians don't help the situation with their vague answers, dancing around an issue like a horny, feckless kid skirting around the issue of sex with his new girlfriend: they want to just spill the beans, but they're pretty sure they're going to get bitch slapped if they don't say what they need to say juuuust right. Of course, when they finally do get down to it, they seem to get lost in all their vagueries that they kind of forgot their point, and so did we.

That's a point for us. A point for them, though, are the loads and loads of people who are already involved and immersed, just swimming in the juicy, sticky pool of politics and all of its intrigues. They understand it like its a melody the rest of us just can't catch, and does this make them smarter than us? In ways, yes, but overall, probably not. It just so happens they're actually interested in what we perceive to be mumbo-jumbo, but unlike quantum physics, I think we have to realize that if we're really planning on actively living in a city, with its tall buildings, cracking asphalt roads and swarms of people, we need to figure out what those elected top dogs really are doing up there.

Because, in the end, politics and government is made to serve the people, we just have to give a shit.