Blogosaurus Vex

One of the things I struggle with on this blog is my urge to be totally, grossly honest (“So-and-so is such a freaking idiot, can you believe it? Wait till I tell you…”) while maintaining some sort of decency and respectability. What if my anonymity was blown and people at school or work found this? The consequences make my stomach turn. As a result I can’t just be totally honest. I try to write with the idea in mind that one day someone of significance to my life will find this blog, but I have to say I’ve probably already blown my image if that’s the case. Sometimes I fall back on my fantasy belief that my true identity can never be discovered. Well, by anyone other than the friends who already know me. Of course this is nothing more than fantasy. One day, when I get all professional, I may have to deep six the blog to protect my professional identity (did you like how I used “deep six” totally spontaneously? Fucking cool!). In the last week I’ve read about no less then three law suits that were brought or lost due to content on the person in question’s blog (all three were doctors). That’s a scary thought!

So, assuming my ID gets outed one day, I have to self censor. But what if it never happens and I miss the opportunity to go on and on about my fellow students, my work, my screwy family, my true thoughts about things that happen and interactions I have? I guess that’s the price I pay for having an online blog. Alas! Because I totally have some good dirt I could share.

In a perfect world, this blog would function as a no holds barred venting space where I could focus my ire-ful attention on the minutia that makes me crazy. It would be funny. And possibly grounds for dismissal. Why is life so unfair? (Note: said with sarcasm. Only the bourgeios have these kinds of problems. It’s a very white, priviledged problem and I know it.)

The one thing I can probably talk about is me. I was thinking about doing one of those 100 things about me lists, and I may still. But here’s a taste of my top 10:

1. I hate wearing socks and never do if I can get away with it. When I come home, I take off the socks at the same time as the shoes. I cannot understand people who wear shoes inside. Feet need to be free.

2. I don’t understand people who don’t read. What do you people do? (Except Esan: I know he’s out conquering the world one sport at a time, and is excused from reading. I want my blog url on his Tour de France bike.)

3. I have incredibly vivid, cogent, sensual dreams (sensual meaning involving the senses, not necessarily sexual). Movies play out in my dreams. Sometimes I have serial dreams that last over a course of nights with the narrative picking up and progressing each night. I also get night terrors once in a rare while, which sucks harsh donkey cock. I burst out of sleep gasping and terrified, heart slamming and sweating, clutching the bedclothes but struggling to sit up, jam packed with adrenaline. Of course nothing is there. But you try falling asleep after that happens! Good luck! I’ve lucid dreamed twice and it was the best dreaming of my life. In one I controlled my drifting flight over a tennis court and surrounding buildings; in the other I did naughty things I can’t tell you about. Grrrrrawr!

4. I drink about 2L of diet pop a day. Husband never gets any because I drink it all.

5. I’m phonophobic and often go a week or more without answering it. I just let it ring, telling myself if it’s important they’ll leave a voicemail. Then I don’t check voicemail for a week or so. I am somewhat of a phonophobe. I do however obsessively check email, so that’s the way to contact me.

6. I never lose my keys. Ever. Actually, about once a year I lose my keys, and because I have no skills in place to deal with this crisis, my head explodes. Just ask Glass Hurricane, she can tell you.

7. I clean my ears with Q-tips, even though they say you shouldn’t. I derive inordinant pleasure when I get a good waxy clump. Very satistying.

8. I can’t stand to have my navel touched. No one touches my navel, not even Husband, who would like to. Fingers in my navel make me squirm and feel like barfing. I do clean in there (it’s quite deep with a wedge at the bottom, so stuff gets trapped in there) but I have to brace myself and just power through. I consider navel cleaning only slightly less unpleasant than a pelvic exam.

9. I think Oprah is a bossy, self important know it all who clearly does not know it all – and yet feels compelled to tell you all about it. The woman promoted The Secret, which is utter vomit on the scale of purchases (best being kittens and puppies, worst a pail of steaming vomit).

10 I secretly judge everyone. Even you.

Posted in Hobbies, Personal | 9 Comments »

Dang it’s sunny out today. Kind of makes my eyes burn actually. I’ve lived in BC too long – I can only tolerate greyness. And while I do prefer rainy days – they’re the best days of all! – there’s something compelling… eerily compelling about the sunniness. It makes me want to get out and do things (it took be about an hour to identify this feeling because I have it so rarely). I made a list of the things I have to get done (read chapters, write paper, clean house, prepare dinner, return phone calls), made a list of things I’d like to do (walk while listening to my new music, take a road trip to the valley), and then tossed the whole bunch away to do blogging.

See why I never get anything done? It’s this damn blog! I blame you, veiwing audience! What a bunch of jerks you all turned out to be.

Anyway.  I’m thinking it might be a good day to take the hard top off the car and go for a drive.

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We just got back from a field trip to observe a family of geese living near our place.  With some hunting (and my sharp, honk-detecting ears) we found them: mom, dad, and five little imprinted goslings.  It was terribly cute.  We watched for an hour or so, until some less-sensitive folks arrived, got too close, and set the adults to hissing.  We took that as our cue to leave (plus Husband was pretty goosed out by that point) and now we’re home, sadder but wiser.  Ha ha, not really.

One thing I miss about Halifax is the ocean life.  Here, there’s never anything to see in the water.  Sometimes you see otters or seals or whatever the are, but basically never any fish.  In Halifax I was constantly watching jellyfish and starfish and minnows and such.  The ocean was much oceanier there.  And of course the fishing life was much more integrated into the city and its culture.  Halifax felt like a fishing town and a port, whereas Vancouver feels like Robson Street (people who live here will know what I mean).  On the plus side, I’ve never experienced a blizzard here.

Posted in Domesticity | No Comments »

Especially: is not pronounced EX-specially.

Ask: is not pronounced AXE.

Et cetera: is not pronounced ECK-cetera.

Library: is not pronounced lie-berry.

And try to remember that literally doesn’t mean figuratively.  Examples:

1)

Incorrect: “It was literally raining cats and dogs!”

Correct: “It was literally raining water!”

2)

Incorrect: “I literally died!”

Correct: “I nearly died!”

Finally: Irregardless is a double negative.  Don’t say it.  Say either “regardless” or “irrespective,” as appropriate.

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Stop saying your baby looks like Winston Churchill.  Despite what you think, it is not a terribly clever thing to say.  Not even when you manage to slip it into conversation ostensibly spontaneously.  Just stop it.  This is so overdone it’s burned.  You don’t want your baby to be burned, do you?

And anyway, most correctly, we should say that Winston Churchill looked like a baby.  Which baby?  The Gerber baby.

Posted in Ranting | No Comments »

So I think I’m going to have to stop getting personal training.  I’m pretty unhappy about this because it’s made such a difference for me.  I’ve really made progress and this is the best I’ve ever done in terms of getting in shape and staying loyal to a fitness regime.  But it’s just too expensive right now.  I had to choose between the gym and some medical expenses, and, well, obviously the gym loses out.  I guess I’ll get a regular monthly membership at some regular gym and try to keep things moving on my own.  But still, I’m pretty disappointed about losing the training.  Seriously, it’s the best thing I’ve ever done for myself fitness-wise.

If I get all fat and lazy, you’ll know why.

Posted in Health | 1 Comment »

…are a regular part of Husband’s diet. He loves them. Especially the mushroom flavour, which actually is the only flavour he will eat. I once said that his greatest love is his car, and that if faced with the choice of shoving me or the car into the mouth of a flaming volcano, he would shove in the car, but only after a good long think. He doesn’t love noodles as much as he loves me or his car, but almost.

The problem is in how he prepares the noodles. The instructions are pretty clear: boil water, add noodles, wait three minutes, eat. But this isn’t nearly gross enough for Husband. He has developed his own special system for noodle perparing that has a complicated timing system and a dubious result. He likes to let them sit on the stove, post boil, until the noodles have swollen up, as he says, like a corpse in a creek. Only when they are soggy enough, only when they look maximally like long albino worms, will he deign to eat them.

I love him but he can be pretty gross.

Posted in Domesticity | 4 Comments »

I could not get in gear today.

I slept in until 10:30, which is basically unheard of for me.  Then I slugged around all morning until it was time to go out for a crepe for breakfast.  Then home again, for much loafing on the couch and wasting time watching crap-o TV (Sunday daytime TV is total garbage, but that didn’t stop me from watching it).  I tried to nap just to kill time.  Then I ate a bunch of garbage food because, what the hell, the day is already a wash.  Husband went out to poker, and I did more loafing.  I did make one halfhearted stab at my paper, but that lasted about, oh, fifteen minutes.  Finally I decided that if I was going to do no school work, I might as well get at least something accomplished, so I did the billing for Husband’s work (tedious!), which has been hanging over me for a while.  I did the dishes.

Now it’s almost 10pm and I have basically totally wasted the day.  I feel sluggy and yucky from no exercise and overeating.  I feel guilt for doing no work when I have a busy week coming up and will be pressed to get everything done before school next weekend.   I didn’t even enjoy the day of laze – I just couldn’t focus or do anything useful while simultaneously not enjoying the sitting around.  It completely sucked.

Posted in Personal | No Comments »

I got some more Facebook invitations today. And, yesterday, when I signed up for about ten minutes, Facebook helpfully showed me the profiles of everyone in my email address book, telling me which ones are on Facebook and which ones aren’t. Not only did this freak me out because, hey, how does Facebook know who’s in my address book? Oh wait, it already knows my email password, why does this surprise me? But it also freaked me out because some of the people on that list are people I should never be on a social list with: professors, ex-boyfriends, employers. Yuck. I felt curiously violated – I never gave permission for Facebook to delve into my email account. And I couldn’t stop it.

I find Facebook to be a bit spooky. Not only does it know my email account password, and mine my email address book for contacts I have, but it has a privacy policy which is distinct in that it does not promise to never sell or share my private information. Every privacy policy I’ve seen online brags and brags about how they will never let other people see your information – but Facebook doesn’t do this. It says I can control what information appears on my Facebook page, but there is no mention at all about selling or sharing my information in other ways. And, for Facebook to really work, you need to tell it your real name – and it asks for birthdate information, and other demographic information that would be helpful to marketers and fraudsters alike.

Basically, I’ve decided Facebook is too Big Brother for me. Why would I put myself at the mercy of a shitty privacy policy for the spurious “convenience” of contacting my friends? I can email my friends. Or phone them. I admit there is a curiousity factor in looking up old acquaintances, but let’s face it, if I wanted to still be friends with those people, I would have kept in touch. Maybe I’ll make a fake profile so I can spy on people I know, but I suspect the thrill of this will wear off pretty quickly.

Facebook is like pancake mix. Pancake mix has exactly two less ingredients than making pancakes from scratch. This is spurious convenience with a fat price tag. It’s a scam. Just phone your friends. Or read their blogs!  Because as far as I can tell, there is nothing intrinsically interesting or useful about Facebook.  The only thing it has going for it is its popularity, which capitalized on our desire to be included in social things.  In other words, Facebook is popular because it’s popular.  How lame.

Posted in Ranting | 2 Comments »

Can someone please explain Facebook to me? Today I received by sixth or so invitation to Facebook, and I broke down and signed up. Curiosity finally got the better of me. What’s so special about Facebook? I had to see for myself.

Well, I gotta say, I don’t see it. Okay… it’s a basic info webpage about yourself. You can put up pictures and leave messages for people. It has a nice layout. Um… why is this so popular? In what way is this superior to actually interacting with other humans?

Not that I ever interact with other humans. But you know. If I wanted to I could.

Also, this is probably a totally lame internet retard thing to admit, but Facebook totally freaked me out when it asked for my email account password to log in to my account, rather than the Facebook password I created.  What the hell is this about?  How does it know my email account password?  It’s a conspiracy!

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »