worst yo' mama joke ever

Today I was in psychology of individual differences waiting for my exam to start when I heard one the the best snipets of conversation ever. The two girls in front of me [typical York girls] had a dialogue that went EXACTLY like this:

girl1: My mom is being so unfair... blah blah blah I'm a spoiled brat and I want something else to be unthankful for.

girl2: Yeah, moms suck.

girl1: Well at least my mom's not an alcoholic so she's got that going for her.

[girl2's mom must love the sauce becuase what follows might be the bitchiest thing I've EVER heard]

girl2: You know, when I met your mom I knew she was kind of a bitch.

girl1: You're telling me!

girl2: No, like a huge bitch. I wanted to stab her in the face.

girl1: (shocked)... Well, she's not that bad!

girl2: Do you think there will be a lot questions from the article on Gestalt therapy?

I wish I was making this crap up. As soon as I heard it I started laughing [but only quietly, I think the second chick might have rage issues]. Congratulations to girl2: the transition from 'I want to stick something sharp into the front of your mom's head' to 'so about this exam...' is better than anything anybody could make up. Ever.

I dream of Geanie Condi

Have you ever had a dream that was so odd that you had to tell people, even though it's a little embarassing? I know I have. I'll give you a little background though: last year when I was living in residence, I came down with a little illness called scarlet fever. I know, I know, who the hell gets scarlet fever in this day and age, but apparently it wasn't wiped out in the 1800's like I previously thought. Just let me tell you, it's definitely all it's cracked up to be. For a few days I had a sore throat [in hindsight it was strep], but no big deal. Instead of going to the doctor I decided to handle my sickness the way a real man does - with lots of complaining, bitching, and whining to get girls to do things for me. The night that I was the sickest I went to sleep around 10. After writing that, I realize that "went to sleep" is a bit of a misrepresentation of what happened. I tried to load myself up with Nyquil [nectar of the gods] and Neocitron, hoping to finally get a good night sleep; I realized I had a little fever, but nothing I couldn't handle. About an hour after lying down I was POSITIVE that I was going to die. My heart was racing, my fever was way up, I was sweating like crazy, but at the same time freezing my ass off, all while I was having a hard time breathing. My best friend/roommate eventually came back and took me to the hospital. Toronto hospitals normally let you sit in the waiting room for hours [I think it's a strategy to piss off the people who aren't actually dying to the point that they leave] but after several attempts by the triage nurse to verify that my resting heart-rate was over 150 and finding out that my temperature was somewhere in the range that will cause brain-damage, I was admitted right away. I was hooked up to an EKG to see if my heart was going to explode like a melon hit with a sledgehammer and my fever was brought down with ice. The doctor checked my throat, took one look at my chest (bright red at this point) and told me I had scarlet fever. From here on in, I have no concrete memories of the next 3 days.
Here's where the story gets good. One of the side effects of having a fever that can kill you is that your dream life gets a whole lot trippier. Fever dreams are intense. I only have vague memories of a couple of dreams but by far the most bizarre was centred around Condoleeza Rice. For those of you who don't know Condi, she is the United States Secretary of State and during the last term she was both National Security Advisor and Secretary of cut eye.



I can't tell you the main plot of the dream, but will swear that it was ENTIRELY non-sexual, I mean, can you really sexualize Condoleeza? Pervert. There was something about a plane and me having to get on it as a matter of [America's] national security. I don't really know. The dream ended with me on the plane and Condoleeza giving me a big gapped-tooth smile telling me I was "doing the right thing". From there on in, your guess is as good as mine. Definitely one of the weirdest dreams I've ever had since I really didn't have much exposure to or opinion on condi. After my dream, however, I've followed her career a little more, it's hard not pay attention to somebody on the news after they've appeared in your dreams. Who knows, maybe I was misdiagnosed with scarlet fever when I all I had was a mild case of jungle fever.

27 of the best hours of my life

Okay, so last week I spent the entire week watching the first season of The OC. Now I know what you're thinking, but it's a damn good show! The plot is full of complexities that are just begging to have me apply for grants to buy the DVDs so I can qualitatively analyze the dialogue and relational dynamic between characters, but that might be pushing the line between healthy enjoyment and unspeakable obsession. You might already call watching 27 episodes of a one-hour show in 6 days obsession, but I could always say you just don't appreciate the subtle nuances that The OC has to offer. I also know that you're saying "come on Ryan, you just started watching for the lesbian story arch between Marissa and Alex". And you know what, you're right. You always know how to cut to the core of me, my friend. But what started out as a chance to see two beautiful girls* make out has turned into something much much more. I have learned some of life's great lessons through the OC and I'll share them with you now.

1. Always be willing to take a chance on a kid who's just come out of prison, quickly adopt him, allow him to move into your pool-house, drive either of your hundred-thousand dollar cars and trust that he won't do anything to harm your socially isolated sixteen year old.

2. If you are said adopted kid, you don't need real clothes, just wear a wife-beater all the damn time. Failing that, a V-neck tee shirt will be just fine. Occasionally top it off with a grey hoodie, unzipped.

3. The best way to get the really hot girl that lives next-door is to never be happy. Ever. You can't stop brooding for a minute; otherwise your tough guy veneer will be shot. Girls don't want a guy who is happy, they want to feel like they have a purpose, they want to make you happy.

4. So you just moved from Chino [ew] and want to fit-in in Newport beach, the best way to do so is to quickly identify the coolest guy at the school, who happens to be dating the hot girl next-door who's completely into you, promptly get on his bad-side and throw a punch the first chance you get. By the way, season one is full of punching, season two, not so much.

5. If you are Marissa Cooper, accept the fact that nothing is going to go right for you, ever. Essentially, you're life's punching bag. Your mom is a skeezy money-hungry whore, your dad stole millions of dollars, your ex-boyfriend that you gave up your virginity to [out of spite for Ryan] will bone your mom the first chance he gets, you'll always be a borderline alcoholic, and even though the show hasn't hinted that you have an eating disorder, we all know it's just a matter of time. As if all of this wasn't weird enough, you go and have a lesbian relationship. That's my girl.

6. Formal events are just begging to have a fist fight break out. When you go to punch somebody at this black-tie event, there is always going to be a table for them to crash into. Also, expect a counter punch and make sure you land on a dessert cart, or for a really big effect, in the infinity pool.

7. You're fortunate enough to be a corrupt real-estate developer who happens to have an amazing lawyer for a son-in-law, make sure you treat him like dirt. This will ensure that whenever you have problems with the law [which is often], he'll always be willing to cover your ass. I'm pretty sure that if I've learned anything from the OC it's do NOT be nice to people, it doesn't pay off.

8. So you admire a girl from afar; do creepy things for her and she'll find you appealing. Name your boat after her before she knows you're alive. Memorize a poem she wrote in the sixth grade. Know weird things about her, like the fact that she used to share her lunch with a squirrel. Nothing makes girls hot like knowing everything about them, especially when you've never spoken.

9. If you're seventeen or eighteen and you look seventeen or eighteen; could you be any more of a loser? Didn't think so.

10. If ever life seems perfect, don't be too happy, a world of tragedy and emotional pain is about to be released on your candy-ass, the likes of which you couldn’t imagine. Just wait. It'll come. An ex girlfriend/boyfriend will just show up out of nowhere. Your brother will get out of prison. You'll become friends with a seemingly nice guy from therapy [!] who is incredibly unstable [!], nearly killing himself in the penthouse of the four-seasons. Your boyfriend or son will just set sail into the sunset to live with his friend [and friend's gay dad], leaving you nothing more than a broken-heart and a note. The porno you made when you were young and sluttier stupid will be aired at the launch party for your new magazine. Do I really need to go on?

If you don't like The OC, give it a chance. I know it's intimidating - all of the characters are tightly knit together in a tapestry of marriages, blood relation, and current or past romances; but trust me - when you figure everything out, you'll realize how incomplete you were before you started watching.

*Only fantasy lesbians are hot. I bet that there isn't a lesbian couple on the face of the planet that looks like Alex and Marissa.

i'm not going to get into gradschool thanks to my mach 3

I don't have issues with impulse control. In a lot of ways I'm really good at that whole self-control thing, but sometimes... not so much. I'm referring to the fact that last week I had to end beard-quest. I was sitting at my computer [I'd love to say doing work, but that would be a lie] and I just realized that the beard had to go. Now! It was itchy and annoying and I didn't like the way mothers looked at me as I passed their children. Although I had mixed reviews in terms of the aesthetic of my facial hair, I personally didn't think it looked good. I found it a little too... homeless. Am I glad I did it? YES. I think that every man [only real men can grow facial hair] should grow a beard at one point in his life solely to appreciate the patience and effort that goes into it. Beard growing really is a form of self-discipline, or is it just a total giving-in to laziness and not shaving at all? Whatever it is, I will admit that I now beardlessly find myself looking at guys who have full facial hair with tremendous respect.

I am pretty worried that my shaving will hinder performance in upcoming exams. You see, all of the great male psychologists [and a couple of not so great female psychologists] sport facial hair. It's true. Freud rocked a full beard, as did Perls, not to mention my advisor Les Greeberg; while Jung opted just to have a sweet 'stache. The facial hair doesn't stop in the clinical field either; social psychologists are in on the action. I've seen Zimbardo with several different forms of facial hair - the very best being a moustache and goatee combo that makes him look like Satan.

Phil, you have some great ideas and the experiment where locked college students in a basement "prison" driving one to insanity is definitely a personal favorite, but dude, you look like Lucifer.

Last week I also got a haircut, which I’m not a huge fan of. I find it too reverse-mulletish. Business in the back, party on top. I also had an awkward run-in with the woman who cuts my hair at "Value"-mart. Seeing her outside the scissor-bearing context and not having her flatter me with hollow [tip-bringing] compliments about my attractiveness was just weird. Plus, she knew my name and I completely forgot hers. Because it's Roya. That's not the kind of name you can expect people to remember, honestly.

So here's a picture of me less hairy from the neck up and not smiling. What more could you ask for? That's right, not much.


UPDATE

I realized I didn't give you a before picture for contrast effect. In hindsight I should have taken a before and after shot [the fact that I felt the need to shave THAT second made me forget about you. I'm sorry baby, I swear I'll never do it again. I've changed.] but this is the last picture of a bearded me that was taken. It was only 3 days or so before I shaved, you get the idea. The guy in the picture is my friend Chris. If you ever need a bodyguard or a hired goon, he's your man.

chris is an endless supply of blog fodder

When it comes to waking up, as anybody who knows me well is aware, I tend to be a little confused and disoriented while regaining consciousness. Sometimes I don't really know where I am - I'll think I'm at camp, in my old dorm, at my dads place, wherever - basically it just takes me a few seconds to figure things out. So when people talk to me within the first minute or so of me coming to, I tend to completely misinterpret what was said. Thursday morning, however, I definitely didn't misunderstand anything. Chris slept over at our place so he could go to Feen's birthday party the night before. Once again three words sum up Chris: one man party. This picture should give you an adequate visual of that statement:

Being a one man party, Chris brings his own sounds system, he's not a quiet guy. So I just regained consciousness, figured out where I was and I heard "Where the hell does this bitch buy refrigerators". Try to put yourself in my shoes sheets: you just woke up and figured out where you were and you hear Chris scream that statement. If you're lucky enough to be anything like me, you'd laugh your ass off. Not a bad way to start any day. As it turns out, he was watching The Price Is Right and a woman guessed 5 500 dollars for a fridge, I guess that is a little high.

this post is sadly all about margarine..

I needed to pick up some margarine the other day, along with a variety of other food items. No big deal, a trip to "Value"-mart and it would be over. While I was there I saw "Cock" fish sauce, and that made me snicker, but what I was really hoping to pick up was a specific brand of margarine that I thought was particularly funny. I don't know where he got it, but one of my roommates [I don't even know which one] had a brand of margarine called "Chef Master Soya". Why did I need that specific brand? It wasn't the texture. Or the taste. Or the colour. Or even the package design [white background, green letters]. It was just the name. Chef Master Soya sounds like some kind of BAD ASS M.C. And I prefer to eat products that sound cool. But sadly, Value-Mart let me down again and I was forced to look for another oil-based spreadable. When I realized that there was actually a wide selection of margarine [a Value-Mart first], I looked for the funniest. I ended up with a President's Choice product* called "Memories of Butter".

Now I don't know about you, but my own memories of butter are not fond enough to create a product based on them. I don't really have anything against butter, it's nice enough I guess.. but I can't really bring to mind a single butter-related memory. So, I brought my butter-memory-inducing margarine home and you know what it tastes like? MARGERINE. That's it. It doesn't taste a damn bit different than any other brand. I don't know what kind of farce the president is trying to pull; I've been a big fan of his products in the past, but he's trying to pull the wool over our eyes on this one. Once again, it does not taste like butter nor does it bring back any butter related memories. Be warned.

*President's choice products are not to be confused with the yellow-packaged no-name products. Why not? Because all no-name products taste vaguely like ass. PC products, on the other hand, often rock my world. Those Decadent Chocolate Chip cookies. Amazing. PC White Cheddar Mac & Cheese - beats the hell out of white KD any day. That said, the Memories of Butter is only on par with other margarines and not nearly as cool as Chef Master Soya. Word to your mother.

i bet you don't have a holy water-bottle

Have you ever been to a dollar store and found something that was just so unbelievably dollar store that you couldn't help but buy it? You know what I'm talking about, things that are so crappy that you can't believe that the Chinese are actually proud enough to slap a 'made in' sticker on them? Well you, my connoisseur of crap, haven't lived until you have experienced Honest Ed's.

Honest Ed's is hardly a store - it's more like a craptacular retail experience. I realized my friend April [don't call her Ape] has lived in Toronto for two years and had not yet experienced Ed Mervish's honesty, so on Friday Nate and I insisted that the three of us go.

Seeing Ed's in the daytime is a lot less spectacular than when it's dark because at night the exterior is lit-up Vegas style. I don't know why a discount store needs to be covered in thousands of lights, but who am I to argue with good taste? Upon entering the store you're immediately overwhelmed.

There is literally stuff everywhere and while at first there seems to be some order to the chaos, some things just boggle the mind.

Why was there a 20 000 dollar Chinese pagoda for sale in the basement alongside kosher salt? Why were there a pair of 15 000 dollar dragons in front of discount soda*? There's no use trying to make sense of Ed's - it just is.

*Um.. When soft-drinks are 29 cents, you know that there's something hella-wrong with them. This particular brand started off tasting like melted no-name freezies [no particular flavor...well it was supposed to be cream soda] then, while swallowing, it suddenly became intensely bitter - like a punch on my tongue [and my sense of better judgment for having bought a 29 cent pop]. The dink wasn't finished there - it decided to make an encore appearance with its HORRIBLE aftertaste. It may have been awful experience, but I regret nothing. [Thankfully we each only bought one]

The undeniable highlight of Ed's for me was "Religious Time".

Religious Time [with a cleverly modified Coffee Time sign] was bizarre to say the least. You would think that there would be a token Buda or Vishnu, maybe a cross or two without the Messiah still on it, perhaps a Mohammad action figure; but no. Religious Time is essentially just Catholic Time. For your convenience, Religious time is located right in front of the Tax Centre and beside electronics. If you're ever at Honest Ed's, go through Religious Time, don't let the opportunity to see plastic figures of Jesus and Mary with a Leave it to Bever poster behind them pass you by.

Look at Beaver, even he's confused. I did find a pretty kick-ass souvenir of our trip to Ed's in Religious Time; this plastic holy water bottle:

It didn't come with water and I'm not exactly sure how to go about making water holy, or for that matter why it would have a squirt top on it. Maybe when water become holy the viscosity goes up and it can only be squeezed out of its container like hand-cream. Who knows. But if you are in Toronto and you haven't experienced Honest Ed's - GO. Hell, if you're out of town come here just to see it. You won't be dissapointed.

once you read it, you can't unread it

Cougars [the sexual predators, not the giant cats] aren't a rare species. Maybe the cats are [I don't know and haven't bothered to check (read: I don't care)] but the randy older women are definitely abundant. Toronto cougars, probably through a combination of both lack of knowledge of cool bars and their inability to get in, typically end up at any number of Fox and the Fiddles where they attempt, with varying degrees of success, to sink their middle-aged claws into their young, some what suspecting, prey. I'd be lying if I said I didn't know any guys who a) are into older women and b) have been caught making out with an averagely-yummy-mommy; but I [thankfully] have never seen that intersection of Drunk St. and Desperate Ave.
Cougars are one thing, but flirting with a women in a Bentley is completely different. Bite me, it is!
The other day as I was walking back from my least favorite grocery store, Value-Mart*, I walked past the PetroCan station where there was a woman in a Bentley Arnage waiting for a fill up.

I live fairly close to one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Canada, Bridal-Path, [in a completely average apt with more roommates than you could throw shake a fist at] so I probably get to see nice cars more than the average person, but I never get to see them up-close. As I was checking out this half-a-million dollar car, the woman clearly had her eye on something a little (okay, a lot) cheaper - me. As I was scanning the car, our eyes awkwardly met, and the Mrs. Robinson smiled at me. I decided to throw caution to the wind and gave her a wink. The gas-station attendant gave me the compulsory heterosexual male greeting, a head nod, and said 'nice eh?'. I hope he was referring to the car and not the fact that I just somewhat hit on an older woman with the thought in the back of my head that she could probably pay my tuition with money dropped down the side of her driver's seat. Think less of me yet? That's what I thought.
It could be worse though, one friend told me "you should have dropped your pants before she had time to say 'fill 'er up'". The double entendre made me dry-heave a little.

*Value Mart. I hate Value-Mart with a righteous anger that burns but will not consume. Value-Mart is not value-oriented - as the name would lead you to believe, their produce is crap, and selection of all products - very limited. If all this wasn't enough, Value-Mart's employees are jerks. Discussing the details makes me outraged, but let's suffice it to say that I've gotten my fair share of eye-rolls for asking simple questions. The only redeeming qualities of de-Values-your existence-Mart are the guy who works in the deli that loads you up with potato wedges and the fact that it's close.

I saw a girl on the bus today with a pubic hair on her face. This would normally push the make-me-chuckle threshold, but the fact that she was bitching out somebody on the other end of her cell phone made it even better. If the person on the other end had known about the face-pube, they probably would have had the last laugh instead of me.

i'm surprised it's not just 'stand still'

This summer Fat Joe and his squad terrorized there way into our hearts with a little diddy called Lean Back. The song was acompanied by a "dance" sensation that swept the nation and probably made a lot of fat people feel pretty good about seeing one of their own in the spotlight for something other than sumo-wrestling, pie eating, or for having to be removed from their house with the means of a fork-lift and a knocked down wall. I have no problem with "Leaning Back", but I can't believe that it was as popular as it was. It's hardly two steps. Allow me to demonstrate.

Step One: Don't lean back. This step is imparative.


Step Two: Lean back. You cannot skip this.


That's it. Any questions? At least The Macarana, The Hustle, and The Hokie Pokie involve a learning curve, but then again [to the best of my knowledge] they weren't created by the morbidly obese. And yes, I am really tired in those pictures, you would be too if you stayed up all night thinking about leaning back.

Now I'm not a sexpert or anything, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that this site might be just justifying somebody's behaviour. It's also weird. Really weird, because most people probably work up to the poop-shoot instead of seeing it as a starting point. Could you imagine that conversation? Keeping with the context [two (probably) virgin Christians], I don't see how it could possibly be brought up casually.

keep on truckin'

I wish I would have brought my camera down to Kensington on Friday because Tyler, Nathan, and I saw an old-school pimp. No, I'm serious, a real pimp in the daytime! He was sitting in his 1970's Caddy and [no joke] counting money! He wasn't no half-assed pimp either - the vinyl roof on his car was pristine and even though we didn't see his feet I would bet everything I have that he was wearing "gators". I knew he was old-school because his car wasn't moving, but neither were his rims.

Kensington proved fruitful. I scored a sweet western shirt and Nate [possibly inspired by the entrepreneur we saw] picked up a jacket. You probably didn't get the memo, but white trash is the new high fashion. The jacket is amazing. I was just going to describe the jacket - but a picture's worth a thousand words.

Not a single one of that picture's thousand words, however, can tell you what that jacket is like to wear. First of all, it smells. Bad. Kind of like it was sitting in a basement for the last 20 yrs, which in all likelihood it was. It's also heavy and not a little heavy either; it's honestly thirty pounds. It makes me think that in the seventies all jackets were lined with lead. The last point I'm going to make about Nate's new outerwear is that although it's incredibly stylin', it isn't functional. When you're wearing the jacket it's almost impossible to move your arms and it feels like you're wearing old carpet samples. Enough said. And yes, that is a Hilary Duff poster in the back - Nate's a huge fan. Don't judge him.

My friend and former roommate Chris came and spent the weekend at my apartment. It was great to spend time with him again because he's pretty much a one-man-party. Just look at this picture and tell me that he wouldn't be a fun guy to hang out with.

Despite the fact that Chris is the man, he's definitely not one for activity - tranquilized sloths have a busier schedules. Yes. he's that lazy. In the summer he limited himself to doing one thing per day. He's always telling me that he's more or a sprinter than an endurance runner [strictly metaphorically] and while he doesn't do a lot of little things, when he does something - it's BIG. This attitude is great - it actually works! When people expect the least from you, anything above and beyond nothing is a bonus.

Beard Update: Beardquest 2005 [yes I'm aware of the innuendo] is coming along nicely. It's been about a week since I shaved and it's looking fuller and more majestic everyday. I've been tempted to shave it a few times because it gets incredibly itchy, but I'm not going to [yet].

i wish my phone had candy-waiting

Cell-phones don't work on the subway. That was my first indication that homeless guy I saw on my way to Kensington market wasn't really talking to somebody. Two other things that clued me into this fact were: 1) homeless people generally don't have cell-phones and 2) his handset wasn't made by Motorola or Nokia but whatever company makes transparent phones and stuffs them full of candy. As a psych major, I'm not really scared of people in psychotic episodes [nut-jobs], so I kind of like to watch them from a distance and observe their symptoms. This guy was hilarious. He continued with his conversation all the way from Yorkdale to St. Clair west and stopped only once saying "hold on a second" [as if he had a call-waiting] after which he proceeded to stuff his face full of the candy that was inside of the phone. I'm not sure if this affected his reception or not, because not long after he got really mad and hung up the phone with a combination of obscenities and crazy.

I'm growing a beard. There's not really any reason for it, but at least when people ask me 'what's new' I can tell them about my new project. Why leave all of the fun of growing a beard to orthodox Jews and Santa Claus, maybe I'll start a cool trend. Some people would say that it's stupid to consider growing a beard as something to do, but to those people I say: 'screw off'. Plus it'll make me look badass.



Something else that I think makes me look badass is my jacket. I posted this picture to give you a visual [with the beginning stages of my mighty beard] and as you can see it has fur trim around the hood. I've heard everything from 'it makes you look like a wigger' to 'are you going to explore the north-pole', but I like it a lot. It's real fur - fox - that adds that touch of class. Plus it doesn't look all nasty like fake fur, a lot of which look like somebody skinned Oscar the Grouch. Even though I like my jacket, a lot of people don't. These people are losers. And PETA. That's right - the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals think there's something wrong with wearing fur. PETA people are hardly ever shy, and seem to feel the need to tell me that they hate my guts whenever we cross paths. And even though some PETA members come and go, others are more special and will leave footprints in your heart. One footprint leaver was a girl I'll call PETA-bitch and this is her story.

A few weeks ago I was walking to write a cognitive psychology midterm when a girl walking beside me suddenly grabbed my arm causing me to spin around. When I put my hand up [partly out of surprise, but mostly to gesture 'what the hell!'] she smacked a PETA brochure into my hand. Quickly realizing that this wasn't an invitation to a kegger [or at least not a kegger I'd want to go to, considering there were lots of pictures of bloody animals on the flier] I proceeded to crumple it up in front of her. This made PETA-bitch mad. She started yelling at me, so I took my Ipod earphones off [I had a few minutes for the friendly exchange of ideas] and enjoyed one of the most nonsensical rants I've ever heard in my life. I only stopped her a few times, because I thought, this girl is giving me gold for a story to tell later. At one point in our conversation [if you could call it that] she said "animals are people too", to which I replied "no they aren't, there animals, so technically not people". This made her stumble over her worlds and search for a new cliché, thankfully she found one. PETA-bitch busted out my personal favorite: "fur is murder". Realizing that my exam was going to start soon, and that this conversation was going nowhere I said "No it's not, fur is fur" attempting to end our pleasant dialogue with "no wonder people don't respect PETA" and I started to walk away. Maybe it was the look in my eye or the fur on my hood, but I think this girl liked me. I say this because she didn't seem to want our interaction to end; as I was walking away she grabbed my arm [hard] and started to get even more hostile. I'll concede that while I might not know much about animal-rights, I know a hell of a lot about harassing people, and grabbing them [hard] normally pushes the line of annoying to assault. Actually grabbing a stranger takes balls... ovaries? I proceeded to use a self-defense moves that I learned from my "protecting yourself from being raped" class [great place to meet girls] to get her hands off me, and walked away with a smile on my face and a story in my heart. Even though she was crazy and annoying, PETA-bitch made my day. Destiny’s Child "ain't gon' dis you on the internet" but I will.

my list is getting pretty long

Do you have an enemies list? I know I do. And while I was lying in bed at 7 o'clock this morning I added a new name to it: Crossing-Guard. Okay, so it's technically an occupation and not a name, but he's still added to my list. Here's the deal with Crossing-Guard, he blows his whistle while escorting people across the intersection EVERY TIME- I think that he decided that this was a crucial element to the safety of the crosser because most crossing guards do the job half-assed by refusing to take one step more than necessary into the intersection.

There are a few things that bother me about the whistle.

1) It's already kind of awkward when you're 22 years old and a crossing guard is escorting you, big red stop-sign in hand, but he makes it worse by drawing attention to the fact that I'm incapable of crossing the street without his assistance by blowing a whistle. I now avoid him by crossing the street before I get to the intersection with total disregard for how this might make him feel.

2) I don't really see the point of the whistle. I mean, the people to be concerned about are IN CARS. If somebody is paying so little attention as to run a red-light and not see a senior-citizen in a reflective jacket, something tells me blowing your whistle isn't going to prevent me from being hit.

3) This is the most annoying whistle aspect: it wakes me up every morning.

While Crossing-Guard's whistle would probably not stop a car from careening into children on their way to school, it sure as hell is loud. Loud is an inadequate description. This whistle seems to pierce all matter - with my window shut, it seems just as loud as if it were open. I'm not sure where he got this whistle, but I suspect that it was forged in the fires of hell itself.

So today, during his lunch-time shift, I sneakily took picture of Crossing-Guard [enjoying a sandwich and not crossing people (and thankfully not blowing his whistle)].



Don't get all high-and-mighty on me and pretend you never taken a picture of a stranger without their knowledge or consent! I took it so that you can have visual [I did it for us!], and to add it to my enemies list. I like my list to be thorough. And have pictures.

Who else is on my list you ask? Wouldn't you like to know. I'm not going to tell you though - I watch CSI, they're exhaustive - in the event that anything happens to somebody on my list I don't need it coming back to me.

this post is much less funny

The other day I finally had a chance to hang out with my brilliant friend Heather Ann, who I haven't really seen in way too long. H.A. goes to YorkU with me and is as passionate [read: nerdy] about her discipline [linguistics] as I am about mine and is interested in discourse analysis and socio-linguistics, which is cool because both areas overlap with sub-disciplines of psychology.
Among other things, one of the topics we covered was the way in which English has developed to minimize the use of gender in the conjugation of verbs and the designation of gender in titles. There are a few reasons for this, not the least of which being the law of least effort. In all things we do we aim for maximum achievement with minimal effort. I've heard it said if necessity is the mother of invention than laziness is the father. One of the main areas where you can see this law in effect is in language and not just English, all language. Long words that are used frequently [eg. television, automobile] are designated shorter words to be more efficient [we're THAT damn lazy]. The same goes with gender-tense, it's easier to just be gender-neutral. Another reason why we have lost gender references in English might be due to the fact that feminism has pushed inclusive language [the same way drug-dealers push crack]. As I thought about this more I realized how awesome it was that some of the earliest women's rights activists were called suffragettes, not to be mistaken with the rockettes [both of which have clear gender assignment denoted by the use of suffix ettes]. I was thinking it would kick-ass to bring this back. Think about how much funnier some titles would be: coppettes, lawyerettes, plumberettes, makers of cigarettesettes. I'm not asking you to implement it.. but give it some thought, friends and friendettes.