Barfmonzo

I ate two doughnuts this morning. That was a mistake, usually one doughnut will initiate the slow gag reflex within me, but no, I had to have two, I don’t even like doughnuts (probably because they make me feel like puking). But they were “Good-bye Bethany!” doughnuts and you sometimes need to eat the sweet part of the bitter-sweet goodbye. Actually, its pretty much all sweet from my end, the bitter is for those left behind here at the office whose lives will be rift in the absence of my stunning personality and presence. Today is my final pension day – barfmonzo.

I probably won’t be able to post for a little while. I like to post often since I enjoy reading current posts on my friends’ blogs. I’m not sure if this decreases the quality of post, but I am fairly sure it increases the randomness of content. You don’t get the segue (yes, I did have to look it up to spell it correctly), those reside exclusively in my head.

I’m a very picky desert person too. I would never pick doughnuts for myself, but other people like them. Sue can tell you all about it.

I’m not done packing all the little pieces of crap in my room yet. It’s always way more than you think it should be. My roommate is gone, flying to Victoria. My youthful days are over as I move into the sphere of adult life. I do not completely align myself to it, but I will have to travel alongside it for a while. But I will continue climbing trees and chewing bubble gum.

It doesn’t seem to remain in-situ

I watched Trainspotting last night, but I still don’t know what “Trainspotting” means. Like I think there was one suggestion of a train in the whole movie, and I’ve been asking my friends if they know what it means, but they don’t.

ANYONE in the world wide web know what it means? Please tell me! I couldn’t even wikipedia it because it would just tell me about the movie and the book. And the online dictionary was like, “do you mean transporting?” I just want to know, I’m very confused.

Tomorrow is my last work day and my last day in Toronto. The next few days will be crazy. As long as I make it to the other side.

Do old men wear boxers or briefs?
Depends.

Its not whether the wind is blowing

Update: Successful weekend in Ottawa, I registered and found a way to not be homeless (or more simply, I have a place to live) and now I feel much better. Stupid crap, who invented deadlines anyway? Whatever.

Right now I’m registered in 5 courses, even though you’re only supposed to take 3. But I plan on dropping 2, once I figure out what those 2 shall be. Ottawa is beautiful, absolutely nothing like Toronto in the layout and the neighbourhoods – just completely different.

I snuck into the Emily Carr exhibit (mwhahaha). My mom had a ticket and a little shirt clippy thing, which I took it and went in again. Or for the first time. I don’t actually feel guilty, because, well I just don’t.

We had lunch at the casino on Saturday, which was fine. You see all the people mindlessly pushing buttons and feeding quarters into the machines. The best was this toy horse racetrack thing they had. Different people sit around the track and bet on the little horses, which then burst out of the little mechanical gate and make believable galloping motions around the track. Its kinda cool, clearly one of the wonder of magnet technology moving the figures around the green felt. But there was this guy who was like, “Go number 4! Number 4! Number 6!” yelling at the little horses, who can obviously hear him and change their strategy accordingly.

But yes, I’m in Toronto for 3 more days then I’m outta here, both exciting and sad. Single teardrop.

Oh so pasty

I am very pale today. If you thought I was pale before, you were wrong – I actually get whiter. Sleep is an issue, my mental clock doesn’t take the weekends off so I was unable to sleep past 7:30am. Meh, what can you do. I guess it doesn’t help that I didn’t get home till past 1 last night since I went out with my friends. I find it amusing to see guys wholeheartedly singing along to musicals, even if it is RENT.

This was me trying to sleep in:


For those of you who are little tiny babies and don’t remember the 80’s, it’s made of Construx. I think we still have our box of it, with the connectors and the beams and the sweet glow in the dark radar dish things. They even had slanty connectors for whacked out designs. Its particularly good for making scaffolding, very sturdy. I’d always try to make regular three-dimensional shapes. We had Lego too, but Construx was characteristic of my young childhood, especially since they’ve now discontinued it. Back in the day people didn’t care if kids played with little pieces of plastic perfect for choking on. I’m sure I chewed on a few myself.



But, the reason I use this for my lack of sleep description is that I felt like a kind of construx dodecahedron with extra arms pointing out rolling around in my bed. Lack of relaxation you see.

So now I’m pale, but I drank at large tea so maybe I’ll make it.

.

So I’m getting a little stressed out because I have to be settled in downtown Ottawa before September 5th, hopefully more around the beginning of Labour Day weekend. During school I would get really stressed out, like any normal student would, and it feels like all kinds of little buzzings, movement and tiny electric currents going through my brain. Do you know what I’m talking about? If not, don’t assume anything, you’ll likely be assuming wrong.

But now, the stress is different, my head is clear and content. The feeling doesn’t start till slightly below the tops of my shoulders. So the “bottoms” of my shoulder and inside my chest is experiencing all the physical side affects of my anxiousness that would normally reside within my head.

I’m sure it’s because its not academic stress where I have to think and my studies haunt my dreams, its quite separated from that. But it’s still that ticking deadline (“slowly walking down the hall, faster than a canon ball…”) staring me in the face which has to be dealt with.

At least I’m not writing midterms at the same time. That’s what sucks about applying for grad school during the fall semester, all your brain power has been sucked away. If only I could sleep more. I’m jealous of those people who feel absolutely normal on 6 hours sleep a night (I’m looking at you, Pyweon).

Absolutely Terrifying

I got into the Masters of Linguistics program at the University of Ottawa. I'll be moving there for September. Now you know.

L'Abstrait

For so long it has felt like I’ve been heading towards a cliff where I would fall off into the grey space and become part of it. I see myself standing at the top, looking down to where I couldn’t see the bottom. Needless to say falls from great heights are normally undesirable especially when unassisted by appropriate gear so I was trying to avoid the cliff in whatever manner possible. I have been failing at it so far, I still don’t know for sure what’s going to be.

But now for some reason the cliff has changed into an invisible barrier in time which is deftly located by its affects. Now, instead of a person on top of a cliff I am a sheet of dark blue material, like a pulled out roll of brown wrapping paper extending across some non-descript surface. Maybe not quite like paper, but not quite like sheet metal either, somewhere in between. This invisible barrier (that is, September) is where I am broken up into pieces, small squares to be exact, and diffused beyond that threshold.

Square or cliff falling, everything is still up in the air-ish and highly uncertain. Stupid figuring out your life crap, I rather dislike it.

Optional reading

Yes, I am in a poetry mood. Here are some short (actually, progressively longer), fun poems, I find.

1) My first year answering machine message:

Emily Dickinson

By Wendy Cope

Higgledy-piggledy

Emily Dickinson

Liked to use dashes

Instead of full stops.

Nowadays, faced with such

Idiosyncrasy,

Critics and editors

Send for the cops.

2) What my mom recited to us as kids:

The Twins

By Henry Sambrooke Leigh

In form and feature, face and limb,

I grew so like my brother,

That folks got taking me for him,

And each for one another.

It puzzled all our kith and kin,

It reached a fearful pitch;

For one of us was born a twin,

Yet not a soul knew which.

One day, to make the matter worse,

Before our names were fixed,

As we were being washed by nurse,

We got completely mixed;

And thus, you see, by fate's decree,

Or rather nurse's whim,

My brother John got christened me,

And I got christened him.

This fatal likeness even dogged

My footsteps when at school,

And I was always getting flogged,

For John turned out a fool.
I put this question, fruitlessly,

To everyone I knew,

"What would you do, if you were me,

To prove that you were you?"

Our close resemblance turned the tide

Of my domestic life,

For somehow, my intended bride

Became my brother's wife.
In fact, year after year the same

Absurd mistakes went on,

And when I died, the neighbors came

And buried brother John.

3) Part of the Linguistics into to morphology unit:

Jabberwocky

By Lewis Carroll

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought--

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One two! One two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"

He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

On Verse

On My First Son

.

by Ben Jonson

.

.

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy ;

My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.

Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,

Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.

Oh, could I lose all father now ! For why

Will man lament the state he should envy?

To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,

And if no other misery, yet age !

Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say, Here doth lie

Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.

For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such

As what he loves may never like too much.

Businesses

Business #1: Brad update
I don’t see our dear afternoon security guard much anymore. You see, our paths initially crossed shortly after I crashed my bike and had to take the subway for the month of June. This meant I walked out the front door, past the big security desk where all our “Good evening”s occurred. But since June I’ve been riding my bike which means I take the service elevator to the back garage-type door and I do not walk past the desk.
I did see him at the back of the building once and he was equally as jovial then with a, “See you later.” This is also the moment I realized that he is tall, since I’d only ever seen him diminished by the dimensions of the security desk before.
Last night I walked out the front door with another lady and went around the building to my bike instead of taking the service elevator. I said, “Good night,” (and had to bite my tongue before I said “Brad” since it’s not actually his real name) to which I got a startled response in return. I think he thought I had tragically vanished from the office building and now he had only seconds to deal with the ghostly figure that greeted him in the lobby again. At least my hair was fantastic…..

Business #2: Radiohead
I recently bought Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief from HMV. I haven’t opened the latter yet, I figure one Radiohead album at a time is enough to handle. But I just love Amnesiac, I think they say its from the Kid A sessions (which so far is my favourite album of theirs) and “You and Whose Army?” is my current favourite track. It starts of erie and breathy but then this wicked piano with a deep, raspy quality comes in and I just LOVE it. This album is the most jazzy yet (in my experience of their albums, not for their albums in total) which is cool, influence is a good thing and doesn’t always make you a copy cat. Its how music evolves and changes. If we all started from nothing we’d be listening to, well, nothing that sounded like music.

Business #3: Schezwan (sp?) Eggplant Tofu
Its good stuff, seriously, you should try it.

“On a clear day I can see, see a very long way”

My stomach is in knots. I dislike being anxious and nervous, but whenever something is going on I’m very prone to being so regardless. I have been much more anxious before, I just don’t like the feeling in general. Today stuff happens, as mentioned in the previous post, and then I’ll know soon if “things” will work out. I’m not depending on it, so its ok if it falls through, but if it doesn’t happen then I still need to find out what happens in September.

However, if it does go through there’s a lot of stress yet involved and I’m not sure how I’ll handle it. I’ll run my errand at lunch and we’ll see.

Besides that, I went to the drive-in on Sunday night and got home a bit after 5:30am. I think its good to stay up for a ridiculous amount of time once in a while. I actually made it through all 4 movies without falling asleep but I was fairly tired by the end. You know how everything just gets really funny when you’re tired? And you just laugh and laugh….

We saw: 1. The Devil Wears Prada
2. John Tucker Must Die
3. My Super Ex-Girlfriend
4. X-Men: The Last Stand

The first 3 of those aren’t really my kind of movie, I mean I have seen Bring it On and 10 Thing I Hate About You (notice how it rhymes with “Taming of the Shrew”) more than once, but that was back when I was in high school and these sorts of things were excusable. Whatever, the first one wasn’t bad, but highly predictable. X-Men was good, but I haven’t seen the second one so I was lost a little, but stuff blew up and flew around so I could still dig it.

Apparently there’s always 1 revolving door open per building for the Toronto downtown concourse. Jut in case you wanted to know.

Anyway, going to lunch now to decide my fate.



Ok, I’m back from lunch now. It’s all sent, they promised me it would get there tomorrow. We’ll see. Out.

Recent Update

I might know where I'm going to be in September. It also might all fall through. Depends on what happens in the next few days. Just hoping God leads me in the right direction.

You work hard for your money

I have problems with settling. Not just for myself but against seeing other people settle in many capacities. I have no idea where my life is going to go for the next year starting September 1st, 2006 but I know its not staying here at the pension company because that is too close to settling.

Dramatic within my own head, I normally project misery and an unfulfilled hollow sense that those who work in offices like this and factories, etc, cannot truly be happy and have therefore ultimately settled on the mortal level. When I worked at the factory it was a much more pervasive feeling because the factory sucks the life directly from your veins. It was living for the weekend to the extreme; especially if you were unlucky enough to be on the afternoon shift (I will maintain that the night shift is not as bad as the afternoon). What you do at a factory, and at a lot of office jobs, you don’t actually care about, it doesn’t actually make a worthwhile positive impact on the world. They’re just means to an end, a way to pay the bills and keep living for the weekend.

The thing that kills me, thinking about the factory, was that full time people have to do this EVERY day ad infinitum (until you retire) with minimal vacation. You only get to not come for two weeks out of the year (and don’t think people get extra for Christmas) and so there’s no real break from the monotony and noise of oily machinery (or tappy keyboards and stupid little phones). That’s why I like school; school comes in 4 month increments. For 4 months my life I focus on this set of 5 courses then I get Christmas. For another 4 months its another 5 courses, then it’s the summer. For 4 months I do whatever I do, work, go to India, what now. I like that; I need change that’s not unforeseeable.

I see people doing these jobs, and its definitely not what they wanted to be when they grew up, and I feel very sad and hopeless for them. However, I never see them at home with their families or hobbies or anything, but work takes up so much of your life. I find that more of your life is eaten by the earlier you have to be at work. Sure you get home earlier, but going to bed at 10 pm? Are you kidding? That’s when its all just getting started! I don’t want people to be disappointed in their lives, but who could stop anyone from settling, if that’s what they decide they need to do.

I’m just a dreamer with wild ambitions whose foolish enough to work towards those ambitions. I’m very against settling, its just not worth it.

For Dinah

NE thing 4 U

Ok, so by special request from Dinah and Pyweon I am to post my “surprise ending” poem, which isn’t really a surprise. I wrote it in grade 9 geography class, not for the class, just in the class. If I give you title first as per usual then I’ll ruin the “surprise” so I’ll put the poem first, press enter a bunch of times, maybe add an unrelated picture, and then I’ll put the title.

I’m sure you’ll be stumped, for 0.2 seconds.

As a child his mother held on
Knowing he would soon be gone.
Till the seasons turned his colour,
Good-bye home, life and mother.

The Leaf