I'm not that social, just a good drinker.

There's nothing like a Friday afternoon with nothing but time and unlimited internet access on your hands.

I considered doing some work on that thing that might one day turn into a book or something like it, but opted to instead do something that takes far less focus and creative energy, as I'm sorely, dearly lacking both at the moment. Perhaps once Sunday's big move is over I'll be able to finish one of the numerous half-done projects I currently have going, but until then here's a smattering of songs (in no particular order) which have soundtracked a February that I can't even begin to try to explain. Enjoy.


SeeqPod - Playable Search

Touché.

Aftermath

Friday.
Decide to find a new job, become intent upon finding new job. Crash a Von Bondies show across the street from my place, make flirty small talk with a handsome 20 year old boy, kidnap such boy and take him to wherever those L.A. girls are tonight, take him to crowded bathroom stalls, take him to McDonald's, take my time. Sleep, eventually. He can sleep in the kitchen.

Saturday.
Wake up with a 20 year old boy in my house. Wake. Up. Sit in Starbucks alone, run into a friend and open his store with him; listening to the Rolling Stones and eating muffins there, it feels like life is good. Leave the store under the glare of McCaul, and go for a walk. Run into leeching friends, run into the ex and his new, semi-handsome roommate. Go to the bookstore. Get hit on by creepy lecherous dudes hanging out in the Self Help aisle. Run away. Oh yeah, it's Valentine's Day, isn't it? Walk around underground for hours, and think about how fucked up things were on the eve of this day exactly one year ago. Decide a pasta binge is in order. Make pasta, binge, help R move boxes up and down staircases, up and down, up and down. Binge again. Text war with a boy. Binge a little more. Pass out. Blank.

Sunday.
Wake up late, get coffee and snack, wait for R, drink with R, eat pizza, D and C come over, A comes over. Cab ride. Guvernment special treatment, shit DJs, whistling girls who think we're the girlfriends of the shit DJs, dancing, smoking in the back behind a screen of laser light. Peeing with the help of a key shaped like a baby's arm and a dude who's a stranger peeing in the sink while someone supervises so no one looks at one another. Scummy. Hot dogs outside with R after a lot of stolen-from-the-shit-DJ-beers and gold lame leggings dancing through lasers. Cab ride. So-called after hours at some guy's place. Other people sitting on the floor, all boring. Fat girls in McDonald's while the sun's quickly coming up, who work for the company I desperately applied to on Friday. Karma! Fate! My life as a waster has all come together for a reason!
Or not.
Just more BLT bagels outside in the cold, bagels with cheese in toaster ovens like my mom used to make for me, sleeping in a bed with R on the other side while the sun is glaring, warm and hope-filled, through my tiny window. Peace.

Monday.
Wake. R. More bagels. R in aviators and a polo cardigan, me in fat-day leggings and a baggy sweater and shades that aren't mine, hiding my disdain for that sun which I loved that morning. Loved it with all my being. Bagels and sunshine, great ways to end a great night. Stumble over to my mother's house, occupied only with my brother and his drugs and my television. Do something good for my future, that I said I would do over a month ago. Watch five police cars stop everyone and everything that moves under another window. Wonder, is the danger greater now or when they leave? Good question, or paranoia? Decide firmly upon the latter and OH FUCK what about my brother, he left right before they arrived! Could this all be about him? Oh no, oh no, oh no. Motivation to let the paranoia take over and call HE'S FINE. So I'll wait longer. Get home. Get stoned. Fall asleep at a good time for the first time in a while. And don't forget to set the alarm, the shower can wait til tomorrow.

Tuesday.
New French Girl living here in my house. What the fuck, why is someone else up at the same time as me? Motivation to make coffee, make small talk, drag my ass out of there. Work sucks. Apply to more jobs that will ignore me. Pretend to care about other people's shit and can't manage to be really quite nice to any of them.
Another fucking day in the easy life.
And it's so fucking hard.
But walk home eventually, purposefully, dress hems and meetings with mom in mind. There are voices in my kitchen that don't sound like the usual ones, but I'm sure someone just has friends over, nothing new. Except they're old faces. Chinese lady landlord, father of the bitch upstairs and an old, faded man I've never seen before. Miserable, sad McCaul has kicked us out. She's crazy. She'sabsolutelyandcompletelyinsaneandTRICKSpeopleintothinkingshe'snotbutsheis and Oh My God I Have to Move Again.
I Have No Money.
Oh
God.
The past three months of my life flash before my eyes and I continue to calmly marker my dresses, get a move on. Hang out with my mother, trade insults with my brother, take the streetcar 'home', drop out from thinking about what I'm going to do. My dead grandpa's sweater and favourite plaid are comforts, but not comforts enough. And I don't know where the fuck I'm going to go now. Sleep.

Missed Connections.

As previously mentioned, I'm completely obsessed with craigslist's missed connections.

And no, I know what you're thinking - I'm not on there looking for myself....for one, I've already found myself once or twice, thankyouverymuch.

Secondly, and more significantly, the people who actually go through with posting missed connections are, by and large, not the kind of people I would consider going on a real, live date with. This rule is, of course, circumstantial and dependent upon who such secret admirer is and whatnot, but I would go so far as to say it's true more often than not.

Especially when I see posts like this.

i saw you roughly 4-5 years ago on the 512 Keele westbound streetcar from st clair station (east) during the school year. you we're about 5'2" - 5'6", brunette or dark brown hair, with caramel skin and light coloured eyes (blue/grey/green/hazel). you we're wearing a sort of sailor's coat and jeans. you we're sitting near the back and i was standing infront of the rear doors. I never went up to say anything because i was very shy then and it was pretty crowded. i thought i saw you again near mt. pleasent and eglinton but when i went for the double take you were gone so i think i might have just been dreaming that one. i know it's a long shot but there hasn't been a day that's passed by that you haven't crossed my mind... and i really want to know why, i wish i had said something even if it was stupid so you would have atleast noticed me...i hope you did...

Okay, so let me get this straight...dude saw this girl who may have been between 5'2" and 5'6" who may have had eyes that were one of four colours 'roughly' four to five whole fucking years ago, didn't speak a word to her, has thought of her every day since, quite possibly experienced a hallucination of seeing her again, and is now turning to CRAIGSLIST MISSED CONNECTIONS to find her??!

If this isn't one of the most disconcerting things you've ever read...well, then I really don't know what on earth you've been reading, and nor do I want to for that matter.

Other cities are great to read as well. One observation I've made is that Paris tends to have the fewest missed connections posts while New York consistently appears to have the most (and, might I add, the craziest of the bunch).

I like to think of craigslist missed connections forums as social experiments of sorts; I feel like clicking through the postings in any given city provides me with some tiny bit of insight as to what the populus of that place is like....which, in essence, leads me to the conclusion that there are stalkers, innocent romantics, criminals, lovers and assholes all across the globe, and that they are more craigslist-savvy in some cities than in others.

But yeah, you know what I mean.

And moreover, who am I kidding? I so checked this morning to see if that guy reading 'On Being & Nothingness' and making adorable eye contact with me at Osgoode station yesterday posted anything.

The Very Strange People With Whom I Share A Very Strange Apartment: McCaul

Of the three individuals with whom I co-inhabit, the first is McCaul.

McCaul was the first person I knew in Very Strange Apartment prior to my move-in, and my extremely odd love-hate relationship with her can most easily be understood if you listen to the song 'Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth' by the Dandy Warhols...as I have, indeed, always known that she is insane. From the moment we met one another it's been glaringly evident that I am the reasonable Courtney Taylor-Taylor to her intelligent-but-fucking-crazy Anton Newcombe, and this dynamic has only increased in its scope since I began living in The Very Strange Apartment.

That being said, she's also kind of nice to be around in other ways. For one, McCaul at least knows the difference between there, their and they're, which is more than can be said of the other two, who I'll get on to at a later time. And she's a Cancer-Gemini cusp-er like me (though, as previously stated, her batshit Cancerian side is far more dominant than my own), resulting in us kind of getting each other in some fundamental way that defies the general logical standard of friendship.

To provide some insight into what it is like to live with McCaul: yesterday I found myself in said Strange Apartment with only her, which is a rare enough occurrence in and of itself, as she's usually off somewhere doing whatever it is she does all day that none of us can quite figure out. McCaul, who has recently quite literally kicked out one of our roommates for being a messy individual, made a bunch of noise in the bathroom for about half an hour, all the while audibly scoffing and huffing and puffing and making a general ruckus that led me to believe she was maybe possibly cleaning for the first time ever.

How wrong was I.

Upon her emergence from said washroom I was sitting at the kitchen table having a cigarette, as I tend to, and very politely asked her what she had been doing in the washroom for the past half hour. This was a simple enough question for someone to ask their friend/housemate, no?

God no! Nothing is ever as simple as it seems with McCaul, as my friendly "what were you up to in there?" was met with a four minute rant that went something along the lines of "ohmygod can I not do anything in this house without everyone fucking bothering me?!No one in the world gets me and my untapped genius, etc. etc...I am SO misunderstood by the fucking universe, etc. etc...and please just let me go to my room without bothering me...FUCK!"

...Okay, then.

Keep in mind that there were, as far as I know, absolutely no incidents leading up to this outburst of McCaul's; this is simply the kind of thing one comes to expect from her a few times a week on average. I nonetheless always find myself somewhat dumbfounded when met with her specific brand of crazy, and as such responded with a less-snarky-than-it-sounds-on-paper "I just wanted to know if you cleaned up in there", and proceeded to my own room to finish my cigarette, but not before surreptitiously checking out the state of the washroom (messier than before...how?!)

It's also interesting to note that no more than two hours later she invited me up to her room to have a glass of wine and listen to her talk about her on-again-off-again boyfriend. Which I did. The bathroom incident was never discussed. So I cleaned it myself.

Even In Your Lightest Day.

Tuesday night.

Get an old mirror back from the place I've left behind, get drunk and get to bed on time to wake up for work tomorrow morning.

And stare at myself in the old mirror, shrunken and sunken and older and as confused as ever. And listen.

Everything you are you have come so far, but did you bury your needs?
And you aren't that young.

Thanks, Darker My Love. I really needed that right now. Ugh.

Work.

I've been sitting at my desk absolutely blank-faced and cross-eyed for just over an hour now. Not moving. Seriously.

Moreover, I'm developing a somewhat borderline abusive relationship with Visine, Vicks Vapour Inhalers and smoke breaks just because I quite simply have nothing better to do with my time. I don't expect you to fully understand why I'm polluting myself with such activities, but I would like to state that if you were in this position right now you would most likely understand why a rather violent rush of chemical eucalyptus up your nose, eye drop tears streaming down your face and passive-aggressively pissing off your co-workers with the stench of your millionth B&H at 2:46 p.m. is better than nothing.

How is it possible that I'm able to go days on end, weeks even, without doing anything I actually care to do here? No wonder my mind wanders as it does and I'm sitting in front of this ridiculous screen typing these ridiculous words for anyone and no one in the world to read....

I'd say another coffee break is in order.

Acid House Killed Rock n' Roll

Things I Have Learned In January 2009

[various sources]

Mondays are the new Fridays for going out and getting absolutely shitwrecked (not only are they more fun, free drinks are also easier to come by).
Tuesday nights are the new Sunday nights for being domestic and well-behaved (while only partially drunk).
Black is the new neon to "everyone who matters" (in this stupid, pretentious, late-on-the-mark fucking city).
EVERYONE KNOWS EVERYONE and nothing is private (particularly when you still don't have a door on your room).
My family are the best friends I could ever ask for in the world (I have no snarky comment to add to this, it's quite simply just true).
Sleep and food are important things for living human beings to get (but you can, on average, go 36-48 hours without either and be fine...or at least seem like it as far as your colleagues are concerned).
Not working with your roommates is a really, really good thing (getting their discount at the places they work, on the other hand, is).
Craigslist missed connections is the most entertaining thing to be found on the internet (the more hostile the post the better).
And sadly acid house did kill rock n' roll (but thankfully it also gave us Primal Scream).

Saturday.

Waking up with the boy I like in my house (n.b. mom: I know you're most likely reading this, and you can rest assured that nothing of that sort happened) was categorically pleasant, as was our trek to a sit-down breakfast place a few blocks away on a bright, sunny, minus-fucking-nineteen-degrees-Celsius Toronto morning. Of course the brilliant idea of his to make our way over to this specific breakfast joint required that we had to wait in line for twenty minutes outside in the horrendous-fucking-minus-nineteen-degrees-Celsius weather to be seated...

But thankfully for such boy the bacon, eggs and toast were excellent. For had they not been, boy-I-like may have quickly and irreparably turned into boy-who-made-me-wait-in-the-cold-for-a-sub-par-breakfast.

Which he abandoned me halfway through, mind you. Waiting in the aforementioned treacherous line-up discussing the weather with a bunch of proletarian metropolitan well-to-do's meant that our strange, pseudo-date time of eating hangover homefries and cryptically flirting with one another was cut a bit shorter than initially planned. He had to go to work, which I could have and probably should have accompanied him to (I was, after all, merely nursing a third cup of coffee at that point), but I truly didn't mind being left on my own in a breakfast joint anyways...so I didn't.

In fact, I think it's safe to say that I don't understand or want to associated with anyone who does mind being left alone in a busy downtown breakfast spot run by charming French people with their thoughts and a recently updated iPod on a cold Saturday morning.

My half hour of solitude in such restaurant turned out to be so lovely that on my walk home I determined that it could be followed by none other than a trip to the bookstore in a similarly glorious state of being by myself. Even the rude shopgirl who curtly explained to my visibly-hungover ass that "some authors are more prone to theft" when I inquired as to why the Bukowski book I wanted was furtively hidden behind the counter couldn't bring me out of my I Love Being By Myself high. I didn't even respond to her in an equally bitchy fashion (which, might I add, is perhaps the second time this has ever happened without first undergoing duress from those around me) and instead thanked her so much for her assistance and politely paid up.

I finally arrived back at The Very Strange Apartment I Share With Very Strange People at some point mid-afternoon only to find...
Broken glass in the kitchen? Check.
Clothing and jewelry that aren't mine strewn about my room in the aftermath of OneHellOfaFridayNight? Check.
Too many empty bottles to even think about throwing in one garbage bag? Check.
A phone beeping with text messages from boys I'd rather not respond to? Check.

$2.75 and a six minute streetcar ride later, I arrived at my safe haven (a.k.a. my mother's home which no one resides in on the weekends). It's not that I needed to escape...well yeah, actually, I think I kind of did. But anyways, thank fucking god for the safe haven. Everyone should be so blessed as to have such a thing.

So I proceeded to top off an already-glorious Saturday with listening to 'Open Heart Surgery' by the Brian Jonestown Massacre on repeat for two hours while staring out the window and timing the streetcars going by, and eating more Turtles than I thought humanly possible. Oh, and I eventually cracked open Portraits of a Wine-Stained Notebook. Which, naturally, merely led to writing (read: self-pityingly whining) in my very own wine-stained notebook about how, while I may be a drunk asshole, I will never be as good at being a drunk asshole as Charles Bukowski was.

Saturday was a brilliant day.

You said the brains I had went to my head.

My brother driving, me in the backseat, changing the radio station and hearing the opening chords of 'Don't Look Back in Anger'.
At night.
Away from 1503 forever.
Exactly what I needed to hear when I needed to hear it.
And shouting it out the window into a cold, dark, typical January cityscape. Packed up in between all of the cargo of broken hearts and empty apartments. Lungs filled with cigarette smoke, cold air and relief. Feeling it in a place inside my chest that I didn't know existed until that very moment.
Exalted.

And you ain't ever gonna burn my heart out.