I'll do it tomorrow

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

In the days leading up to winter break, I always make a set of grand, hypothetical plans to enjoy a hyperproductive few weeks off. I imagine that all those things I was too busy or stressed out to do during the school year will magically get done as soon as my school workload disappears. This year's list included:

The Maze of Frustration

I'm fairly certain the University is conducting some sort of experiment to see how many frustrations us students can handle before someone snaps and sets the building on fire. I thought they had succeeded today when the fire alarm went off in the middle of my workout--not to mention about 50 students' exams--but after spending 20 minutes wandering the university in a sweat-soaked shirt, a headband clearly made out of scraps of an old t-shirt, and bleach-stained sweatpants (I like to exercise in style), I was allowed back into the building. Having a fire alarm go off in the middle of a kinesiology exam will probably make at least one person blow a fuze, so I expect to return to class in the new year to find the school has been taken over by students from the applied health program.

My Ongoing Feud with Groupon

Looking for a cheap pedicure? Maybe a rub-on tan? Have you ever wished you could have a trained professional use a tiny laser to zap the life out of every single one of your hair follicles, for 10% the going rate? How about paying someone half their usual fee to inject a permanent ink design into your skin? Then Groupon is the place for you.

No, sorry, it's not a hilarious blog-post. It's just another rant about my perfect body.

I know, I know. There are some links I just shouldn't click on, and some articles I shouldn't read. But then I wouldn't have anything to complain about. So, moving on...

I am completely and entirely fed up with articles that tell me how to dress for my body type. The end result being I should just stop reading them, but the reality being that I will continue to read and complain about them for the rest of my life. I have no problem with suggestions about what to wear to make myself look good. I just don't like the general assumptions about what makes me look less good*. It would be fine if the article were titled something like "Tell us what part of you is the ugliest and we'll show you how to hide it," instead of titling it something like "A Little Black Dress for every body". Then I would know what to expect.

Rant: because electronics stores dealers are the best sources on petty crime

I've been on the hunt for a simpler way of recording cell phone conversations for a while now--not because I am a hardened criminal looking for new ways of trapping people into blackmail deals by recording their most incriminating intimate phone conversations, but in fact because I am a reporter, and conduct an average of 4 phone interviews a week, and I take the whole idea of accuracy pretty seriously, and damned if my speaker phone doesn't cut out on me half the time so I spend most of my time typing fiendishly to try to get all my interviewee's quotes down into a word document. And now I'll be doing twice as many articles, which means twice as many phone calls, and my poor fingers have had enough.

Kick-Ass Wedding Ideas*

Being in the wedding business, I feel that I am fully qualified to start planning out a few weddings of my own. I read in some wedding magazine in the staff bathroom that your wedding is supposed to be a true reflection of you and your intended's personalities. So, here are a few wedding ideas for the more creative spouses-to-be:

39 Hours in Halifax. Thank God for Quick-Dry Trousers.

Last weekend, I found myself in Halifax, doing the Orange Dance* to 90's dance hits in my stockinged feet. How did I get there? It was a wedding, of course.

I love weddings! Once you get over the hurdle of the Awkwardly Long Speeches**, weddings are all cake, dancing, eating, and comparing blisters with the bridesmaids: all fun activities. And so while I may not fly thousands of miles cross country for Christmas or Spring Break or to watch the jellyfish come out in spring time, I will definitely rearrange my entire life so I can spend less than 2 days total in this small, water-logged city, provided there is a wedding involved.

I'm Un-Googleable!

Well, sort of.

Luckily, my dad doesn't talk to his cousins very much. At least, most of them (he has what, 96?). Because of this, 20-some odd years ago there was a little mixup and the family ended up with two Amys, with the same last name, born within a year of eachother, who lived in the same general area, both had a penchant for creativity, and both went to the pharmacy to fill a prescription for penicilin in 1992, which is how we found out about eachother. We also go to the same school and the same gym, and I think we have the same bank, too.

What I love about this is that the other Amy has grown up to be a bit of a crack-hoe a famous actress. I say this out of respect! Respect for the person who has made me basically invisible (and therefore INVINCIBLE) to the internet. No matter what information about me gets onto the internet, the other Amy's info will be way worse...or better...exciting, I should say, thrilling even...any rate, will make us both unemployable as Sunday School teachers. I googled myself today and found that 'I' have an IMDB listing (damn her and her fame!), that 'I' posed for some scantily-clad model shots from that time I was Hot Chick of the Week somewhere, that I am too lazy to fill out my Grow Creatively account, and that my facebook profile is readily available, complete with a picture of me licking a girl's face as the profile shot. At times I worry that the next job I apply for will call me for an interview on the grounds of how good I look in a bikini and will be shocked when I show up and am not the red-haired, brown-eyed actress they Googled last night. But mostly, I let Amy's monopolization of my Google space lull me into a false sense of security. If people are finding my cousin on Google, that means they're not finding me*.

Which leads me to the final chapter of this rant: while researching my latest news article (I write for the school paper now, btw. Very glamorous, I know), I came across a blog of 'ramblings' that had not only said blogger's 'ramblings' on it, but also her full name, where she goes to school, what her major is, her mailing address, email address, phone number, BBM account, twitter, facebook, and linkedin account on it*. Yikes. I was tempted, so sorely tempted, to start mailing her letters made out of cut-up newsprint with messages such as
"Get your mailing address off the internet, for Christ's sake!" on them. Poor girl. If only she had a second cousin to protect her good name.


*right right, not quite true. Eventually you'll find an article or two I've written for .

Oh look! Another disturbing post about male genitalia!

This weekend marked my first brush with penis cupcakes. I've made boob cupcakes plenty of times, and I've made little cupcake butts (with the cake died the bright pink of raw meat so that party-goers could pretend they were biting into raw flesh when they ate them); if you make a round, tasty object, someone will eventually call in and ask you to turn it into a pair of breasts. It's inevitable. But people don't usually think 'penis' when they think 'cupcake'.

First of all, don't ever do a google image search for penis clip art, unless you want to see disturbing pictures of what happens to penises after they die. Usually, my cupcake art involves a fair amount of tracing but after I saw the penis zombies I realized I was going to have to free-hand this, because no way was I continuing my image search.


I was actually quite proud of my penis cupcakes; it was my first free-hand drawing event, and, having spent the last week studying the art of the Underground Comix Movement (which is entirely built off of depictions of human genitalia), I felt that I could count this batch of cupcakes as an homage to R. Crumb. I pictured the bridesmaid who ordered them coming to pick them up and being wowed by my artistic nuances. She would be a purveyor of comix. She would say "this is reminiscent of the artwork in Binky Brown meets the Virgin Mary!" (she didn't). We would have a bonding moment (we didn't).

The customer wasn't nearly as excited by my drawing skills as I was, but that was okay, because I had the foresight to take a picture of my handywork. I spent the next 3 hours at a birthday party, showing my 12 penises to anyone who would sit still for long enough.

The next morning, on my way to church, I discovered that my phone wallpaper is now set to a picture of 12 chocolate penis cupcakes. Try as I might, I can't seem to change this. 

hm...I can't seem to find the title of this post...maybe I forgot it somewhere.

I blame the sunflowers. Actually, no. I blame autumn in general. Fall is the time for extremely complicated orders of wedding cupcakes. In summer, most people are content with pink icing and some glitter. Throw on a small gumpaste daisy that you punched out with a cookie cutter in 20 minutes the day before, and their minds are blown. But in fall, a simple request such as "can you make the icing colour to match my tablecloths" is replaced by something more along the lines of "can each cupcake have a detailed hand-sculpted depiction of a bountiful harvest on it...that matches my tablecloths?" while these sorts of orders are more exciting, they tend to sap my mental capacity more than a little.

I got up at 4 o'clock this morning to help make every bountiful-harvest bride's wishes come true. The first thing I noticed when I got up was that my one pair of jeans not only has a hole in the crotch (which I already knew about) but also a hole in the bum as well. I was going to be at work for the next 9 hours, during which time I was sure no one would notice my unfortunate choice of pants. But after that, I would be going to class, and I had already spent an afternoon earlier that week traipsing around the university in a see-through skirt and wedge shoes filled with my own blood, and I wanted to maintain my dignity somewhat. I decided to bring along a nice long shirt to change into, one that would cover up my shame.

I spent the next 9 hours at work, making burnt-orange creamcheese icing to go with "fall red" velvet cake with plum coloured accents, all the time waiting for my coworker to relinquish his grasp on his masterpiece of marbled cupcakes, at which point I had to affix oreo cookies to the top of each one with green icing and dab on sunshine-yellow icing petals, to produce 150 sunflower wedding cupcakes. I hope at least one guest took theirs home to frame it instead of dismantling it and eating it in 2 bites, like I would have.

Those gorgeous sunflowers must have sapped more of my strength for logical thought than I had expected. My troubles began when I zipped merrily from work to school, rifled through my backpack to find my hole-hiding tunic top, to discover that I had managed to lose my change of clothes somewhere between home and work. I ended up sitting through a 3-hour lecture in a sweat-soaked t-shirt, sugar-covered jeans, running shoes stained with lime-green icing, and several sizeable holes in my pants. I sat next to a girl who was convinced that she smelled strongly of salmon. I was convinced that I smelled like vanilla icing mixed with the musky scent of my own armpits, so I felt I was in good company.

After class, I made a quick stop at a news stand to get several copies of the school paper, since my first article is in there and I knew two of my interviewees needed copies. Then I went to the bookstore to squander my money on textbooks. At the bookstore, I realized I had lost my purse. I put down my backpack to dig through it, just in case my purse was somehow shoved inside it. No good.

I ran back up to the university classroom. No purse there. Maybe my prof took it back to her office to hold onto it for me. I went to her office. No purse. On the way back I realized I had lost track of my newspapers. I grabbed one more--surely they could share. I went from the news stand to the lost and found to the second floor where I heard someone calling my name and found that a helpful classmate had found my purse and was carrying it for me. At this point I had disoriented myself so much that I had lost the powers of social interaction, grabbed the purse, probably said thankyou, and then headed back to the bookstore.

On the way to the bookstore I re-thought my mizerly ways and grabbed 2 more copies of the newspaper. Then I got to the bookstore and realized I had left my other copies of the newspaper on the bookstore desk. Now I had 6 copies of the Uniter and my purse. I spent 3 minutes on the ground digging through my purse for my wallet. Now I had a purse, 6 copies of the Uniter, and no wallet. I emptied the entire contents of my purse and my backpack onto the bookstore floor, and there, at the bottom of my backpack was the wallet. So I bought my books, managing to leave several forms of ID and my credit card on the bookstore counter, as I did so, and was unchaining my bike when I realized that now I had my wallet, purse, and six copies of the uniter, but no ID or money. Back to the bookstore for me.

When I got home, I found that I had managed to open up my phone in my backpack, and was composing the following message to my boyfriend:

"WUppp ?l,okmijuy"

That just about says it.

What to Blog About When There's Nothing To Blog About

I am writing this post at the demand request of C, who is apparently willing to read a blog about absolutely nothing (provided that it's written by me, of course. Such devotion.). I hope you all are, too, because here it is.

At times, a blogger might discover that she has nothing to blog about. This is a very bad sign, because, in general, those who blog really have nothing better to do, which means that they are already blogging about nothing. If even a blogger doesn't find her life interesting enough to blog about (and this coming from someone who's written posts about how many mugs she has on her desk), reader beware: you're in for some truly awful writing.

In case you are the unfortunate blogger who does, for one reason or another, find herself with nothing to write about, fear not*: I have compiled the following emergency blogging list just for you.


Amy's List of What to Blog About When There's Nothing To Blog About

1) Blisters.
If your life is boring, this probably means that you are working too hard at some pathetic and mindless occupation. Whether you're treking around the office in your Payless high-heels, running around the University in your brother's 3-year-old sandals, or crawling around on your hands and knees in your house because you left a mountain of half-eaten tins of tuna in your closet last spring and now it's time to exorcise them, chances are your reason for lack of blog-worthy stories is taking its toll on your skin. Why not pen a post about your favourite blisters? I bet everyone wants to hear about the fluid-filled bubble on your left toe that whistles when you squeeze it in the right way.
2) Cats
One might argue that if you have cats, you will never have nothing to write about. As I revealed in my Apology to Capu last year, no matter how ugly, scabbed up, whiny, and snotty an animal is, if it has whiskers, 2 ears and a tail, someone will want to read about it.
3) Your pile of dirty dishes
Yes, it's been done before (and better than you'll ever manage it, since it was done by me), but hey! There's nothing new under the sun! Just because I rocked the world with my post on my coffee mugs and what was inside them (don't worry, I won't link you to it, as it is now out of print; I'm sure you've printed it out and hung it on your wall somewhere anyway) doesn't mean that you can't make a sub-par commentary on your stack of soup plates, or wine glasses, or the pile of greasy newspapers you eat your daily dose of scrambled eggs and pizza off of.
4) Your brother's pile of dirty dishes
I have found that anything I can do, my brother can do in a more extreme and entertaining way. I have 5 empty vanilla bottles on my shelf? He has 96 empty energy drink cans on his shelf. I go to a party to knit sweaters and make puzzles? He goes to a party on an airplane runway and makes a video of himself dancing in time to the flashes of the landing lights...and then makes a perogi-based salad. I'm sure that if I have a desk full of half-full cups of coffee, B has a helicopter landing pad poured on our roof that is entirely dedicated to his collection of half-empty cereal bowls. And if B's like that, I'm sure your brother is...at least slightly more interesting than you. So go ahead, put on a gas mask, and start searching your roofs for piles of dirty plates. Sometimes you have to work to get a good blog post.

There you go. If you need more than 4 marvelous suggestions from a prolific master-blogger such as myself, it's time to shut down the blog and start a feline daycare service instead (which will, in turn, lead to an amazing blog, so there you go, suggestion number 5. You're welcome).



*Please note that I say writers fear not; as I mentioned before, this is a bad time for readers. My thoughts are with you.

Thanks for the Gym Shorts and Have a Nice Day!

Living in Winnipeg is like living inside a gigantic clothes dryer with several hundred thousand other people. In the summer, we are constantly blasted with extremely forceful gusts of warm summer wind that do their best to knock over signs and embarrass anyone who is still naive enough to wear a wrap-around dress on a windy day. At times, the wind can be a pain, but when it comes to drying clothes I find it quite handy. At least, I did, until today.

The Cynic's Dream

Bronner's Soap quote of the day: "Only hard work-God's Law can save us, but if we teach only our clan? We're all hated then!"* And now, on to the post!

I'm preparing to enter the final year for my Bachelor's of English Lit. This makes me qualified to discuss 3 things:
1) English Literature
2) the fact that, for the last time, I don't want to be a teacher, for fuck's sake**
3) the fact that I am excited to take my $21,000 worth of education and put it to good use in a restaurant somewhere.****

All you need is a 12-gallon Rubbermaid

The other week, I was at the beach with my sister and a few old friends reminiscing about the good old days of our childhoods when we lived in exotic places like South Dakota and all you needed for a good time was a box of water and a tree.

Enjoy the creamy emollient lather on baby, bath, beach, body, dentures, deoderant, shaving & aftershave.

As you faithful followers may recall, last year I had an amazing epiphany in my Eco-criticism class and started taking baths in an icecream pail. As most of you probably don't know, I stopped doing that as soon as I moved back home because it is eerily, unnaturally, inhumanly cold in my house most of the time and I just couldn't handle 10 minutes of splashing luke-warm water on my freezing body in a drafty bathroom.

I recently went back to the ol' 1-gallon showering method, for several reasons: one, it is so gloriously hot in Winnipeg right now that even my house is warm enough to bathe in; but mostly, two: a friend of mine has stopped using shampoo and conditioner* and I hate her for being more eco-friendly than me.

This is what I do all day...

I feel I have dazzled you with my wits long enough, so today I will dazzle you with my day-job skillz instead. I am now famous for my ability to draw tiny little cartoon faces out of chocolate and put them on cupcakes. It's all just tracing, but when people look at it they say "wow" and when I tell them how I do it they look at my blankly like I'm trying to explain how to replace the a-v joints on a steering column*.

So annywayys admire my handywork.

oh, what, this again?

Now that I'm trying to write more regularly again, I can't help but notice that I'm failing miserably. So now I must revert to the age-old excuse that my life is too boring to write about. Want to hear about my bike-ride home in the rain today? Neither do I. It was marvelous, but that's besides the point. So read this post and pretend that I'm saying something of substance here. Something profound. Something hilarious. Something that actually exists.

In the good future days...

I often dream of the time when I become a famous novelist who lives entirely off of her earnings from creative endeavours*, and how I will have an amazing assistant whose life is made better simply by being in mine.

The general dream is that this assistant will be exactly like me except bad at writing, so that she won't pull an Eve Harrington on me (don't worry if you don't get this reference; my assistant will explain it to you!). I would pay her an exceptionally high salary for an assistant, which would make her like me, and would allow her to borrow outfits from my lavishly stylish closet whenever she chooses, which would make her love me, and she would constantly be telling people what a great employer I am. In exchange, she would be really good at all the things I am not good at, such as making coffee, cooking omelettes that remain in omelette form, finding good music to write to,  preventing me from writing in marking pen all over my body, walking in high-heeled shoes without having ankle pain (a tip she'd pass on to me, of course) and understanding how twitter works.

Summer Lesson #4: Never borrow books from anyone you want to remain friends with.

I'm reading a book right now that was lent to me by a friend who is a one of those people. You know those people, the sort of people who cannot read a book once the spine of it has been broken, the sort of people who have can't be friends with someone who dog-ears pages*. These people are the true Book Enthusiasts among us, because they care just as much about the state of the book itself as they do about the story the book holds. Me, I am not a book enthusiast. I don't care if the pages of the book I'm reading have been replaced with bits of used toilet paper, because it's the story I'm after. And because I don't care, I am terrified by the people who do care, because a Book Enthusiast will inevitably be someone whom I a) want to be friends with and b) has a pristine collection of books I really want to read and can't find at the library.

Lesson #3: Always define your terms, or you might end up insinuating your girlfriend dresses like a slutty referee in her spare time.

When I was in grade 12, I had the misguided notion that I needed an extracurricular activity and I chose debating. I chose debating because 1) my english teacher loved me and loved debating and wanted these things to go together and I enjoy being adored, and 2) my friend (the one I showered with bits of shark skeleton) and I had once gone to a debate where the winner was a particularly attractive fast talking young man and we both agreed that we were more likely to get laid if we were exactly like him. This led to the most horrible debating experience I've ever had, where it was our job to define the term 'violence' and we managed to form a loophole where rape and spousal abuse were not included in the term 'violence' and ended up having to debate in favour of sexual assault.

Summer Lesson #2: Don't believe anything you learned in grade 5 biology.

When I was 10, my family moved to a reservation in South Dakota for a 3-year term with Habitat for Humanity, and I was enrolled in a Catholic school there. I've never actually asked my parents why they decided on Catholic school; I can only assume that it was because the other alternative was a public school of some notoriety*. I had never realized that my brand of Christianity was not the only one, and so from the moment I entered Religion class and was handed a rosary, I started learning all sorts of things I had not bargained for.

Summer Lesson#1: If it's meant for your genitals, it will cost more

I have decided to compile a list of things I have learned this summer. The first lesson I will share with you is something that I learned just today, less than an hour ago, when I wandered into our upstairs bathroom and discovered that there is now an extra razor in the bathroom.

I have this theory that my brother probably shaves because he doesn't have very much facial hair, but I've never come across a razor in that bathroom other than my own, which is cute and pastel green and white and is a Schick Quattro (for women!!).The thing that floored me (yet is probably a no-brainer to most other people) was that Ben's razor is the exact same kind as mine, save for the fact that it is black and silver and goes under the testosterone-injected name of Schick Titanium.

I would just like to add...

I would just like to add that, since my post about the Plenty of Fish Seduction Trifecta, the amount of traffic to my site linked from google searches for 'shirtless fireman with kitten' have increased exponentially (as in there's been at least one).

In which I try to interview a city councillor and spend 5 hours in the hospital instead

Continuing the series on my Increasingly Dangerous Tuesday Activities:

I woke up Tuesday morning and realized I had absolutely no pressing engagements of any kind, so I decided to donate blood. Blood donation can be somewhat of an all-day affair for me, so I try to save it for a day when my schedule is completely clear. 10 minutes after I made my appointment at CBS for noon, I got a call from Harvey Smith, whom I've been hounding all week to give me an interview about eco-friendly house renovations, saying that I could come and interview him at 2pm that day.

The Changing Trends of Fishing

During that short phase last week when I was convinced someone was going to kill me (see previous post), I had the idea to get my mind off things by resorting to the age-old tactic of surfing Plenty of Fish for the most impressive attractive personality combo pic, aka something that I until recently referred to as the Seduction Trifecta.

The Revenge of the Taturday Friend

As you may recall*, several weeks ago I had a visit from my Taturday friend, an incredibly innebriated man who showed up on a Tuesday morning (my version of Saturday) and tried to break the door down in search of a woman named Kristin. In the end I was victorious and he was in jail, but apparently that experience has imprinted in me the idea that anyone knocking at my door intends on breaking my door down. Fast-forward three weeks. I'm house-sitting at a friend's house. I'm all alone. It's 3:30 in the morning. I am awakened by a very desperate knocking at the door.

Sleeping with the Monster-Cat

For the last week or so, I've been cat-sitting for some friends of mine. I've hung out at the house often enough, and so I was fairly well-acquainted with Emmerson the Giant, a cat larger than most dogs I know*. I can't remember exactly what breed of cat Emmerson is, but I believe it's a cousin to the Raccuma, a cross between a raccoon and a puma; of course, he's inherited the feral instincts of neither of these wild ancestral creatures. His behaviour most often resembles that of a large space-foam pillow, and I would use him as one on a more regular basis if it weren't for the fact that his fur behaves more like spider-web than any hair I've ever seen. What I'm trying to say here is that this cat is huge and weird. But taking care of a gigantic space-foam pillow cat covered in spiderweb hair, while strange, doesn't actually sound that hard. And it isn't, as long as you don't try to sleep in the house.

A day without pens

On Wednesday, I woke up and realized that today was the day that I could begin registering for courses at the prestigious university I attend. I excitedly logged on to WebAdvisor and prepared myself for the satisfying moment when I could press the ‘register’ button on the three courses I’d picked out almost a month beforehand. And then I remembered that pesky little honours permission form that I have had to fill out 3 times in the past year and a half, and yet always forget I need. Damn that form.

The Pollock and Pollock Gossip Show

Several weeks ago I was stopped on the way to work by a woman named Natalie Pollock, who wanted to interview me about the fines for riding a bike on the sidewalk. I complied, and ended up getting on the Natalie Pollock News Show, where my video has been viewed by 156 whole people!*

Stunt Flying

On Tuesday, my boyfriend took me for an aerobatic demonstration flight in a Pitts S2B. In layman's terms, that's...well, I'm not sure what this would actually be in layman's terms, because when I told my coworkers that I went stunt flying, which seemed like a fairly normal term for it, they looked at me like I was speaking another language*.

That morning, when I found out where we were going, I was very excited. My way of being excited is to not talk very much and maybe have my eyes grow slightly wider, which can easily be mistaken for my Screen Saver Face**, which is often mistaken for my Sad Face, my Tired Face, or my Six-Year-Old Lost in the Middle of West Edmonton Mall Face. In fact, I may only have one real facial expression, but anyway, on Tuesday, this face meant Excitement.

The Intrepid Dezine Half-Marathon: Then and Now

Last year I ran my first-evar half marathon. I set it as a goal around New Years and spent the next 5 and a half months training for it. I took it very seriously. I went running roughly 4 times a week and played with the incline-setting on the treadmill to make it feel like I was running up and down hills (not that Winnipeg has hills, but I was afraid that the marathon course might suddenly develop hills and I refused to be beaten by any sort of hills, imaginary or otherwise).

This is why I should never be left unattended

Actually, there are many reasons why I should never be left unattended, especially near bodies of water deep enough to submerge a body in, or near anything that effectively tampers with the natural pigmentation of hair, skin, or clothing. I still remember the day my cousin and I were out walking near the man-made lake by her house and how hard it was to explain my logic to her father after we returned half an hour later drenched in lake-water with our shoes full of mud. And then, after Spring Break '07, during which I locked myself in my dorm room for several days drawing multicoloured vines all over my body, my sister sent my roommate an email politely requesting that she never let me near permanent markers of any colour ever again.

Taturday

My Saturday is a day that most of the world actually refers to as 'Tuesday'. It is the one day of the week when I am basically guaranteed to not have to get up early, not go to work, and definitely not lead a church service followed by a lunch potluck where I spend most of the time trying to think of appropriate questions to ask a pastor from the DR Congo. Ah, Tuesday: a day where I am allowed to do nothing at all*.

Unexpected consequences of the internet

When the internet was first formed*, everyone*** rejoiced at the magical creation, unaware of the most certain doom that would result from its creation. Innocently created as another medium for communication, the internet quickly became associated with dangerous and immoral things, such as stolen identity, pornography, and the sale of canned unicorn meat ('excellent source of sparkles!'). Having taken away our need to leave the house for food, clothing, immoral activities, or social interaction, the internet effectively groomed a generation of humans whose abilities do not exceed the frightening dexterity required to drink, eat, and operate a laptop mouse-pad at the same time.

Now, the creators of the internet could easily have seen these results coming. But what no one could have predicted was the incredible opportunities for passive-aggressive behaviour the internet has provided us with. There was a time not so long ago when passive-aggressive attacks didn't extend beyond intentionally taking 3 hours to put up a shower curtain because you secretly felt your roommate should be doing it for you. Now, the internet has reached a point where you can:

-write a passive-aggressive facebook post attacking an unnamed person for their unreasonable criticism of your inability to care for your cat (you know who you are!!!)
-have a several-week-long email fight with a coworker about whose job it is to refill the photocopier paper with cleverly placed patronizing emoticons preventing you from ever having to admit that you're fighting ('see the smiley face? it mean's I'm kidding!).
-document said email 'conversation' and dedicating a youtube episode to it because you know you're right
-write an impassioned blog post implying that all your facebook friends mindlessly re-post any patronizing, anti-feminist quote they find mildly clever whilst simultaneously suggesting that you are the only one who was smart enough to a) realize the true meaning of it AND/OR b)figure out where the quote originated.
-even greater still, one of the targets of your blog post will inevitably be reading your blog, unbeknownst to you, and will then apologize to you via facebook for posting such a silly quote without admitting that they have read your blog, thusly secretly accusing you of the sin of passive-agressivity*****. You can then up the ante by writing a follow-up blog post discussing passive-aggressive behaviour without ever having to admit that you are the one doing it, which is sort of apologetic if you read it in the right tone (it's meta-meta-meta narrative!).

In the end, this is much more effective in creating enemies than failing to put up a shower curtain ever was. I'm surprised that more wars don't get started this way.



*There are several vague and highly contested theories on how this happened, much like Genesis. I believe that it came about when two free-range phonelines pushed up against eachother like techtonic plates. Others believe that it is actually created by human beings and that the scientific tectonic phone-line theory was created in order to test our faith in humanity**.

**of course, the content on the internet is itself a much greater test of my faith in humanity.

***like maybe the 13 people who knew about it

****These are most definitely all facts. I took a Computer Science course on website building two years ago when I realized Biology was not the only science I could take in university. So I know these things.

*****Which is totally a word.

Whatever you give a woman...

One of the more irksome quotes floating around on Facebook lately has been this:

"WHATEVER you give a WOMAN, she will MAKE it GREATER. Give her SPERM, she will give you a BABY. Give her a HOUSE, she will give you a HOME. Give her GROCERIES, she will give you a MEAL. Give her LOVE and she will give you her HEART! She MULTIPLIES and ENLARGES what she is GIVEN. So, if you GIVE her CRAP, be PREPARED to RECEIVE a TON OF SHIT! ahaha...I hope to see every girl on my friends list re-post this."

Originally a quote by Erick S. Gray that was mildly amusing when taken in context, overuse of the quote and capslock has morphed this quote. When I read it, all I can see is a disembodied voice congratulating women for being universal ATMs that work in a whimsical, inconsistent and rather disturbing way: put in food, out comes meal. Put in house, out comes home (...). Put in love, out comes heart(?). Put in crap, out comes more crap (??) and put in sperm, and out comes babies(well, sometimes). This causes me to envision a world in which sperm has become the main currency* and is popularly used on the blackmarket to purchase children. But I digress. While the quote may have some resonance for some women, it certainly isn't universal for womankind and I hope I won't have to see every one of my friends (male or female) repost this. I've created a counter-quote which has far more resonance for me:

"Give me SPERM, and I will avert my eyes and walk away QUICKLY. Give me a HOUSE, and I will be confused because I ALREADY HAVE ONE. Give me GROCERIES and I will ask you why you aren't making your own damn MEAL. Give me LOVE and I may give you LOVE in return (but probably not a HEART transplant). I hope to see every person on my friends list make up their own statuses for once so they don't have to repost things that sound CLEVER but really make no SENSE and have GRATUITOUS overuse of CAPSLOCK."


*and oh what an interesting life that would be. I don't even want to go into the consequences of sperm-currency.

The Eleshirt

When my boyfriend first showed me a picture of the Eleshirt he wanted me to make for him, I thought ah, what a hilarious and unique way of ending a relationship. As everyone knows, the number one key to keeping a relationship alive is to never bring sweaters into it.

There are two main ways to end a relationship using sweaters. In one scenario, one party of the relationship becomes far too attached to a noteably dorky sweater. In newer relationships, this simply means that the offended party will conveniently 'lose' the ugly sweater party's phone number, thus saving them both the pain and embarrassment of having to appear in public together with said sweater. In a more committed relationship, the offended party will either be ridiculed by his or her friends for allowing the ugly sweater party to continue wearing said sweater, or the offended party will take matters into their own hands and conveniently destroy the sweater in the wash. The loss of this sweater will haunt the ugly sweater party, betray the sense of trust in the relationship, and ultimately allow the relationship to fall apart altogether.

In another scenario, the Offending Party will knit, sew, or otherwise create an ugly sweater and then give it to the Offended Party as a gift. The Offended Party must thusly either be overjoyed with the sweater and appear in public wearing it, or end the relationship immediately. If the Offended Party goes with the former option, his or her willpower will be slowly worn down by the inevitable torment that he or she will suffer at the hands of non-sweater-wearing parties (ie Everyone Else), and will eventually destroy the sweater out of shame, thusly destroying the sense of trust harboured between the Offending and Offended parties, the strain of which will ultimately end the relationship.

Some of the greatest relationships have ended over sweaters. Little known fact: There was a scene at the beginning of Gone With the Wind in which Rhett Butler shows up to the Twelve Oaks Plantation Barbecue in a dorky sweater which one of his Ladies of Scandal had given him the day before. Seeing Rhett in the offending garment, Scarlett decides she can never be seen with this man again. The following 25 years of pursuit on Rhett's part and avoidance on Scarlett's are entirely based on this incident, and not on Rhett's unfortunate reputation. However, the producers of the movie realized that this issue would hit far too close to home for most of its viewers, and decided to cut the scene in order to avoid suffering their audience undue emotional trauma.

When someone says to me "I'd like you to make me the kind of sweater that my mother would have forced me to wear in third grade and which will probably give you nightmares forever, and yes I will wear it in public," I have to wonder how exactly he thinks this fashion choice will pan out.

Regardless of how awe-inspiring it is, the Eleshirt provides a trifecta of sweater complications, because not only is it a dorky sweater which Colin will most likely insist on wearing in public and in my presence (see Scenario 1), but it is also a dorky sweater which I have made for him and so he has to wear it in public (see Scenario 2).

Most importantly, aside from the small number of guys who also live on bodybuilder and will recognize the eleshirt as a tribute to an internet meme, everyone will see Colin in this shirt and will see me standing next to him and will assume that I have forced my boyfriend to dress like a five-year-old. Pedestrians will lean over to him and whisper "Get out while you still can" as they walk by. I will have to make myself a large shirt with an explanation of why I have made this eleshirt* so that I can escape all blame.



*In exchange for a free movie ticket to watch a half naked blonde Norse god fall in love with Natalie Portman and then smash a lot of things with a hammer.

**I must also say that the crafting community deserves to see more tutorials done by this guy.

Food and Writing

Of the 9 or so jobs I've had since I was of legal working age, 7 of them have been in the food industry. The other two have been office jobs. I've found that a curious thing happens when I work in the food industry. It begins to take over my non-working life: invading my dreams*, affecting my choice of reading materials**, and working its way into my creative sphere. The office jobs didn't have quite the same affect***; whether that's because these jobs were so low-stress my mind could let go of them after 8 hours of work, or whether they were just so boring I did not feel the need to pursue them in my spare time.

When I worked at Animal Tracks, I started scripting a comic book detailing A Day in the Life of a Fast-Food Cook. When I was at The Madison, I started several short stories about the conversations I had with the residents. I was at Goodies for a year, and in that time, managed to get 50 pages into a novel about sugar-based humanoid life forms that tumble through a portal into the parallel universe we call Winnipeg only to discover that the goings-on of the bakeshop that said portal was situated in directly affected Life as they Knew It in their own little world. Most of this was scrawled on the backs of discarded receipts during slow days at work****. Of course, each of these projects ended as soon as I switched jobs. I did try to keep that novel up (I had just gotten to the part where they discover that the temperatures of a Winnipeg winter makes their bodies brittle and then someone's nose falls off, and they need to sneak back into the bakery and glue it back on with melted chocolate ganache. What fun!)

Anyway, my current job has left me with the ambition to create a chap-book of cupcake poetry. So far I have one. I managed to keep it in perfect iambic pentameter, until line 14, when I decided it wasn't going to be a sonnet after all, and then it became a mishmash of different syllabic emphases. Enjoy.

In Praise of Cupcakes

I will not claim to love these cakes I sell,
nor cherish our outstanding clientele:
the shrieking children overfed, cake-high,
who wipe their noses on the glass and cry,
the deer-legged women who will quake in fear
and ask “how many calories in here?”
the place is madness, this I will admit.
I once loved cake but I got over it.
And yet I praise this one discovery:
to give away one cupcake will save me
from paying for my drinks, the plumbing bills;
my drycleaning is free, so are most meals;
I’ve learned my dentist fancies buttercream,
my hairdresser prefers chocolate praline;
my ex-wife’s lawyer loves lemon meringue,
so does her maid; she eats it all the time.
So while cupcakes may be the death of me,
while cake gums up my eyes, invades my dreams,
and though I wish I could forget about them
truthfully, I cannot leave home without them.



*When I worked at Baked Expectations, I found that no matter how late I got home, I had to unwind for an hour or so before going to bed or else I'd end up washing dishes in my dreams as well

**For instance, while sitting in the waiting room of the chiropractor's office on Wednesday, I brought along The Whimsical Bakery Book for light reading instead of the usual young adult novel.

***Alright, so I did go vegetarian after working at CFGB. But I wasn't about to write a novel about it.

****I also collaborated with the evening counter attendant to create confectionery-themed versions of pop songs. I remember redoing 'Sexy Back' by Justin Timberlake, but unfortunately can only remember one line of it now: "I'll make you bake cookies if you misbehave".

How to survive accidental inebriation at work

About 2 weeks ago, I suddenly became allergic to something in my bedroom. I as of yet have not been able to pinpoint the problem. There is virtually nothing in my bedroom that cannot also be found in every other room of our house, so I can only conclude that I have become allergic to my own mattress; a problem that is very difficult to correct, especially since this mattress is only one year old and is the largest purchase I have ever made (barring University and travel expenses); I'm not about to remove it to see if it's the problem.

Anyway, this story has very little to do with my allergies except for the fact that said allergies have cleverly prevented me from realizing that I am also coming down with a cold. When I woke up this morning with a sore throat, I assumed it was the result of my trying to scratch the itchy allergens out of my own throat all night. In fact, when I started snorting out golf-ball sized wads of mucus from my nose, I thought that maybe my body had finally gotten hold of whatever was irritating me and was flushing it out. It was only when I got to work that I began to realize that I was being affected by more than my usual bedroom allergy.

By 11 am my throat was on fire. I tried to bravely live with the pain for about half an hour, then realized that no one at the bakery was going to have a good day if I continued living in such a manner. A short trip to the 'medicine cabinet'* revealed that the only painkiller we had on hand that day was a bottle of extra strength nighttime cold relief, celebrated for its ability to bring sleep to even the most irritated of patients.

Now, I am not known for my high tolerance when it comes to depressants; in fact, I am rather notorious for my lack of ability to tolerate them. So I should have known better than to go for a bottle of extra-strength anything, especially extra-strength sleep aid, 1 hour into an 8-hour shift in a place full of gas-powered burners, mixers with industrial-sized motors in them, and lots and lots of knives. And I really should have known better than to take 2 extra-strength painkilling sleep aids at once.

I did not know better. In fact, I knew so little that, half an hour after taking said sleep aids, when I began to feel like a box of crayons melting into a lump beneath a radiator, I was actually confused as to why I might be feeling that way. It took me a while to connect my suddenly pain-free throat to the fact that I was about to pass out in the strawberry buttercream.

Luckily, I was not the one in charge of operating heavy machinery that day, which would have made my body a weapon dangerous enough that I may actually have reported my medicating faux-pas to the boss and been relieved of my duties for the day. Deciding to instead stick it out until the medication wore off (4 hours later), my main job for the day became hiding my state of unintentional inebriation from coworkers, supervisors, and customers.

I simply had to avoid any task that would make it clear I was becoming a human strand of spaghetti. For instance, climbing ladders sounded like a particularly bad idea to me, and so, when I was asked to climb up to our top storage shelf and bring down a few stacks of boxes, I simply elected to fold more boxes instead. I made sure I was in a different room whenever someone needed to write out a gift tag for someone, as well.

Unfortunately, 3 hours into my Shift of Inebriation, I found myself trapped on the phoneline with someone who was even worse off than I was. Picture, if you will, one person who is high on cold medication and another person who is high on who even knows what trying to pick out a cake together. We spent a good 25 minutes trying to figure out what size of cake we would need to feed 30 people, what flavours it could be, what flavours it could not be, and why it could not be made to look exactly like the Beach Scene cupcake mural on our website, which was made for 150 people.

The moral of this story is: if you ever find yourself unintentionally high off of cold medication in the middle of a bakery, stay away from the phone.

*aka shelf that also holds rubber gloves and a pair of shoes that no one can identify

Book Club Evolution

I belong to a book club, which, like most book clubs I've heard of, is steadily becoming a non-book club.

I can blame most of this on the fact that we book clubbers insist upon choosing long novels that invariably involve sexual assault (all written by men), and 65% of the members of this book club are intensely involved in upper-year science programs at the University and do not have time to read long books, and 20% of the members of this book club are under the impression that the book club is actually a house party, and the other 10% is comprised of English majors, people who will not read books about sexual assault, and people who don't show up.

The first book club meeting consisted of 6 members, all of whom had read at least 50% of the novel of choice (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which was originally and more aptly named Men Who Hate Women, and was over 600 pages long). The meeting lasted 1.5 hours, and primarily consisted of a discussion of the book.

The second meeting consisted of 9 members, 5 of whom had read at least 30% of the book (The Pillars of the Earth, which was over 900 pages and left me with the distinct impression that sex in the middle ages was either horrifyingly violent and non-consensual, or a life-alteringly beautiful experience that generally led to hallucinations of a sort of heaven populated mostly by naked women wearing cloaks made of rabbit fur). It lasted 2.5 hours, and primarily consisted of a discussion over which book we should read next.

The third meeting I attended consisted of 14 members:
1 person who had read the book in its entirety (The Odyssey, which was over 400 pages long and...well, I only read the first 21 pages), and had come with 5 discussion questions and a rant on the discrepancies in Zeus's character,
6 people I had never met before, 3 of whom came ready to party
1 person whom I have known for 2 years and was under the impression she had never met me before,
3 people whom I actually knew (one of whom had read most of the book),
and
3 people who were dead set on turning this book club into a movie club and spent most of the evening discussing the merits of films by the Coen Brothers.

The club lasted 5 hours, 2 of which were taken up in watching O Brother Where Art Thou so that we could at least feel like we had read a version of the Odyssey, the other 3 being mainly taken up by a heated dispute over the necessity of the Raining Frogs scene in Magnolia.

Following this pattern, I can predict that the next book club will be scheduled as a discussion on Lolita, by Nabokov. Of the 25 attending members of said book club, 1 person will have read at least 10% of the novel, 2 will actually know me, 15 will show up ready for a party, and one will bring a keg with them. 7 will advocate that the book club become a movie club. The meeting will last 6 hours, 25 minutes of which will be spent trying to watch the 1997 version of Lolita, until Jeremy Irons becomes too creepy, and 3 hours of which will be spent doing keg stands.

The fourth meeting will involve 50 people, none of whom know me. 1 of these people will know that it is a book club meeting, 15 will be too drunk to know whose house they are in, 20 will soon become too drunk to know whose house they are in, 3 will be strippers, and 5 will get into a fist fight over whether Tarantino films are worth watching. The party will last 7 hours, most of which will be spent doing lines of coke off of the cover of the chosen book (The Fountainhead).

Death from Above

I should start a blog just for stories about my cat, the one whom I dislike strongly*. The one I like isn't that interesting. All he does is climb into my bed and curl up at my knees and fall asleep. Capu, on the other hand, is generally either wiping his nose on something or doing something that is new, strange, and beyond the edge of reason.

Today, for instance, he attempted to execute a particularly impressive guerrilla-style attack on everyone's new least-favourite cat, the large brindled beast who has been trying to take over the front yards of most houses on our street for the past few weeks. Today, Mr. Brindle was in our next door neighbour's yard, ensconced amongst the neatly stacked articles of our neighbour's latest building project, yowling insistently at the back door**.

Now, Capu is not the outdoorsy type by any means. However, he has taken a shine to my boat deck (most likely because he doesn't actually have to interact with nature itself, but can observe it from afar and duck back through my window whenever he pleases***), and today we were both sitting out on the boat deck, admiring the garbage-strewn back alley below when Brindle began his yowling.

Capu immediately slithered through the latticework of the deck and slunk over to the edge of the roof that sits nearly directly over our next-door neighbour's fence. Brindle, who has considerably more than one thread of Unflappable written into his genetic makeup, glanced up at the now bristling, 15-pound cat hovering mere meters above him, and went back to yowling at the door.

Capu was not about to be ignored, and readied himself to pounce. At this point I began to get a bit concerned for the wellbeing of this companion whom I dislike so strongly. As I said, he hasn't spent much time outside, and I sometimes wonder if he's entirely aware of the extent to which gravity will act upon an overweight, out-of-shape cat leaping from the kitchen roof onto a large, brindled cat surrounded by concrete blocks. My stupid cat My brother's stupid cat was about to leap to his doom. Not only that, but I was about to let him do it, too, because he was almost certainly going to take Brindle down with him and, while I do believe in the sanctity of the lives of all creatures etcetera, I also believe in seeing Brindle finally get the shit kicked out of him by someone, even if this beating lasts for approximately 1.2 seconds and the main actor in it is not Capu's brute strength, but the impact-force of gravity.

There we were, me perching on the edge of the boat deck, watching Capu, bristling to twice his normal size and fixing to pounce on that idiot Brindle, who was taking no notice of either of us and was pawing insistently at a stranger's front door, when all at once I saved the day without even meaning to. Perched on the ledge as I was, it was only a matter of time before that accursed gravity got the better of me as well, and I suddenly found myself tipping over the edge of my boat. The ensuing racket of me saving myself from rolling down the edge of a roof (undoubtedly taking out both Capu and Brindle in my final downward plunge) was enough to distract Capu from his attack stance and Brindle from his ineffective cuteness scam.


*Yet theoretically probably secretly love.
**This tactic does quite often work if the cat lives in the house at which it is meowing. However, I have this theory that Mr. B is from a different area of town entirely and only comes over to this end to mess with the local wildlife; I've never seen him enter a house he belongs in (though he's tried to come into ours more than once).
***I believe this situation is similar to that of city dwellers who are willing to go into the wilderness as long as they can take a camper with a flushable toilet and a 52" flat-screen tv with them.

there it goes...

In April of 2009, after watching too many Tennessee Williams films, I decided that I needed to change my life, and, as it was 11pm on a Thursday night, it was raining, and I was broke, the most radical thing I could think to do was lock myself in the bathroom and hack off about nine inches of my hair with my paper scissors, effectively leaving me with the shortest, ugliest haircut I had ever had. As I had done this to myself on the day before Easter Weekend, it was a good four days before I could go and have it corrected professionally.

That was the beginning of a number of adventures in short hair. My struggles to get a cheap haircut that did not leave me looking like a member of a notorious English boy band from the 1960's* guided me through hair salons where a woman with shaking hands took 60 minutes to give me a trim, to the Marvel Hair School, where the student refused to cut more than an inch off my hair and finished off my visit by reassuring me that "it doesn't look as bad as I thought it would on you", to hair salons that could actually give me a descent haircut but, regrettably, charged accordingly**, until I finally got sick of paying for haircuts and decided to grow my hair out again.

I spent the next 10 months eagerly awaiting a time when I would be able to fit all of my hair into a ponytail again. Unfortunately, having had wonderfully short hair for so long, I had forgotten all the problems that come with having a head of gloriously thick, fine, long hair. Problems such as having hair elastics explode in the middle of my morning jog from the sheer force of the hair fighting against it, leaving my head cocooned in a mass of wild, tangled locks. Problems like taking 20 minutes just to blowdry the damn thing, or 3 hours minimum to let it air-dry. Problems like not being able to put my hair in a ponytail often anyway because it gives me a headache. Problems like really actually managing to slam my hair in my bedroom door more than once***.

All these problems were tolerable throughout the winter, when long hair meant a free scarf that I don't have to worry about forgetting on the bus. However, as soon as the weather turned warm, I began to really hate my long hair. Finally, it became too much for me. I booked myself for the earliest appointment I could fit into my schedule, and announced to my hairdresser that I wanted to get rid of "all of it".

And so, she took off "all of it", which is exactly what I had asked for. I now have really and truly the shortest hair I have ever had (well, since I was maybe 2 years old). Unfortunately, having had gloriously long hair for so long, I had forgotten the problems with having short hair. Like having to wash it every morning because it will mold itself into interesting shapes every night, regardless of what I do or do not do to it. Problems like, if it is a bit too short (as it is now), there isn't enough weight to the hair to actually hold it down, so a quick wash and a blow-dry will result in gravity-defying hair that will stand a good three inches straight up from my scalp without any prompting.

I will say this, though. It is wonderfully freeing, being able to shower in five minutes, dry my hair in less than three, and never having to worry about shutting it in the door again.


*Not that I have anything against members of 1960's English boy bands, nor people (male, female, or in between) who look like them. I just feel that it's not a great look for me.

**Hair Xetra. You should go!

***Although I will admit I was shutting the door in a very silly way.

This being the first poetry class I've taken, I don't have a 'system' for my end-of-term crunch time. For end-of-term essays, it's easy: self-medicate with a mixture of coffee (to wake me up), alcohol (to slow down my over-caffeinated mind), and chocolate (solid, liquid, or gas form will do*), and begin an inventoried list of the various types of dirty dishes piled around my desk. Take breaks from this list every 15 minutes to write an essay paragraph. It works!

Unfortunately, the closest I have to a poetry-creating 'system' is as follows:
1) look at the computer screen
2) make a mental list of all the half-finished poems in your word document
a poem about lentils
a poem about cupcakes
a poem about eggs
a poem about freezers
a poem about starting to write a poem and then losing it down the hot air vent
a poem about funerals
Wow. that's a lot of unfinished poems.
3) take a nap
4) go to the store for some chocolate. Get distracted by the popcorn aisle. Realize you need popcorn, too. Stand in awe of the sheer amount of varieties of flavours. Butter? Butter flavour? Buttery flavour? Natural flavour? Theatre-style Twice the Buttery Flavour? Kettle Corn? Reduced Fat Kettle Corn?
5) realize that all these popcorn flavours sound awful. Decide you'll make your own. Realize you can't remember if you already have popping corn at home. Buy the largest bag you can find, and some chocolate buttons that surely can't be overpriced because they are fair-trade.
6) get home. Discover the largest bag of unpopped popping corn known to man is sitting on the front counter. Hide your pathetic bag of popping corn behind collossal bag of popcorn. Spend a lot of time trying to decide how to spell colossal.
7) try to decide whether or not Dad gave the air-popper away.
8) search for the air-popper
9) he gave it away
10) pop popcorn on the stove, unassisted, for the first time in your life.
11) try to decide what to put on the popcorn. There is parmesan cheese, or steak spice, or black pepper in a fancy pepper grinder. You are a mass of indecision.
12) add a light sprinkling of salt to popcorn. Good enough.
13) take ginormous bowl of popcorn up to your room
14) look at your computer screen
and repeat.

Not the most effective system I can come up with.

*Do they make chocolate vapour? Just breathe in the chocolatey endorphines? Surely they must.

Film Buffs

Have you ever watched a conversation between a film-buff and a non-film buff? It can be pretty painful. These sorts of conversations can creep up on you sometimes, though. Like maybe you're talking to someone and they ask you if you've seen The Hangover and you say you have and this makes them think you watch as many movies as they do and suddenly you're having a conversation about Philip Seymour Hoffman and you don't even know who that is.

Did you know that about 800 movies hit theatres last year? I watch maybe 15 films a year and these films range from sort-of alright, kind-of highbrow to...well, The Hangover. Generally if someone well-versed in the way of movies tries to talk to me, they realize the error of their ways within 15 minutes and try talking to me about books instead, and when that fails, they remember they have something to print out at the library and they make a hasty retreat. But then sometimes they're stuck in the car with me for seven hours and have no other option but to try to talk to me about films. Then the conversation goes like this:

Film-Buff: Have you seen American Psycho?
Me: Yes. It was pretty good.
FB: Have you seen Magnolia?
Me: No.
FB: Philip Seymour Hoffman was great in it.
Me: I don't know who that is.
FB: Well have you seen Flawless?
Me: No.
FB: He played Rusty. Have you seen The Talented Mr. Ripley?
Me: No.
FB: He played Freddie Miles. Have you seen Capote?
Me: No.
FB: He played Capote. Have you seen The Big Lebowski?
Me: Yes...
FB: He played that big guy.
Me: I don't remember him.
FB: The Big Lebowski was pretty good.
Me: Have you seen Ginger Snaps?
FB: No.
Me: It's a Canadian Werewolf movie.
FB: Oh.
Me: It's secretly my favourite movie. Except that's not actually secret because I talk about it all the time to everybody.
FB: Oh.
Me: And no one will watch it with me so I have to trick them into it, like how Franklin Graham tries to convert people to Christianity by telling them they're going to a concert and they get there and it's like "SURPRISE YOU'RE IN THE CRUSADES" except I just tell people the movie is about hot lesbian werewolves and then they watch it and it's like SURPRISE this movie is all about teenaged girls menstruating.
FB:...
Me: I think it's a great commentary on PMS.
FB: ...Uhm...Do you like the Coen Brothers?
Me: Who are they?
FB: They did The Big Lebowski.
Me: It was pretty good.
FB: They did True Grit
Me: Haven't seen it.
FB: They did Burn After Reading
Me: Oh I've heard of that one.
FB: I really loved the ending of that movie.
Me: Oh wait, this is probably a movie I want to see
FB: Especially the part when he suddenly realizes...
Me: oh dear, is this a surprise ending? I'll think about something else. I'll look out the window. Look at all that snow
FB:...and then his face when he...
Me: LALALALALA snow LALALA snow
FB: It was pretty great.
Me: It sounds good.
FB: Okay, well they also did O Brother Where Art Thou
Me: Um...I think I saw...half...of that...

This can go on for hours

The Road to Regina is Paved in danger

This last weekend, I was at the Pop Culture Conference at the U of R. It was incredibly fun, once we actually managed to make it there.

I've complained about the road trip so many times to so many different people, I feel like doing it again would be redundant. So instead I'll just post this picture:

Yeah, that basically sums up the experience. We were actually only stranded on highway 2 for about 4 hours, but that was long enough to make us miss the entire first day of the conference. What a bit of misfortune.

When we finally got to the conference on Saturday morning, we were celebrities. Thanks to technology, I had been updating the conference organizers on an almost hourly basis to let them know how horrible the wind was and how badly I needed to pee*. I proudly passed around my phone with the photos of the horrifying snow drifts on it, and we all laughed jovially about the irony of how, even when one is snowed in to a space the size of a closet with very few amenities for 4 hours, one can still update one's Facebook.

I must say, it was an excellent conference. They gave us reusable loot bags with some pretty sweet stuff in it, like CDs and credit card organizers and U of R frisbees, which was pretty exciting because I haven't had a frisbee for a while and last year someone was like "we should go out and toss around the frisbee" and I was all "I don't have one" and then they were unimpressed with me and we had to borrow one from my brother-in-law and then we didn't use it. But this time, I will have a frisbee.

All the presentations were actually interesting and the presenters were all quite talented. Por ejemplo, here was a powerpoint presentation discussing how Heidegarian theory related to Dungeons and Dragons, which went straight over my head since I don't know who Hiedegar is. There was also a paper on the Medicalization of Transgendered Children that everyone got very excited about but they all waited until the evening to discuss it so that they could drink copious amounts of beer before arguing about it and then there was lots of clapping and cheering and it sounded more like a Beat Poetry Night than an argument about sexuality. I've been in enough debates about transgendered children for now, though, so I sat out of earshot and talked about Shakespeare instead**.

I received a lot of very encouraging responses about my short story, too, and that was a great confidence boost, so, yay! As far as I know I did not form any connections with publishers who want to publish any unborn novels I may produce. I also did not have a fabulous shoe collection and impeccable fashion-sense (although I was very well colour-coordinated. I was very green. People kept on asking me "what's with all the green?" and every time I was surprised because I had forgotten what I was wearing). I am not too surprised by this, though. All in all it was a very enjoyable experience.

*Well I didn't say that out loud but I feel that the note of urgency in my voice made this clear to them.

**I will allow the reader to decide whether anyone was there with me, or whether I was just talking to the wall.

Fail.

UW has incredibly generously* granted us Conference-goers money to get to the conference, and are even paying for our registrations. Of course, with the lack of communication between departments, it will be a wonder if I ever get the money for registration.

Dr. M: The cheque they're giving you for the conference doesn't include registration money, but I've arranged for you to get it out of petty cash. We just need to wait for Dr. C to sign to forms, then talk to J.

J: Dr. C has not signed the forms. Come back later.

Dr. C: The forms? I signed them this morning. Why are you talking to me? Dr. M is in charge of this.

J: So now I have magically produced the form that Dr. C signed...some time...somewhere. Just take it down to Finance and they'll give you the cash.

Finance: Where's your receipt?

Me: Oh I haven't paid for it yet. We're paying for it with the petty cash you're going to give us.

Finance: You need a receipt.

Me: Oh alright well then...do you think they give receipts at conference? I'm just going to pay at the door.

Finance: When you pay online they'll mail you one. Then you can come get your cash.

Me: But they said if I give you this form...

Finance: but I can't just give you money. I need a receipt. Why does no one understand this?

Well, then. I guess the worst that could happen is that the UWFA goes on strike, the world falls to shambles, and I don't get my $30 back. Very small price to pay, considering how much it's going to cost the university in painkillers to cover up the splitting headache they'll be dealing with anyway.


*and no, this is not sarcasm. They really have been quite helpful about it.

Is moral bankruptcy something you need to file for?

For an unsettlingly long time, I've held an unshakeable fascination for Texts from Last Night. It's a website where people can post the bizarre drunken text messages they received from their friends the night before. If these texts are all genuine, I would have to conclude that most people text in full sentences and proper punctuation even when they're texting their friends about strippers and blow, and I must say I'd be rather impressed if that turned out to be true.

Regardless of whether or not the documented texts are real, I feel that the site provides a lot of insight into the mindset of depraved students (and most anyone who works on Wall Street). Surely it must be useful for something. Last year I was fixated on the idea of somehow turning TFLN into a Cultural Theory essay for my Lit Theory class. Unfortunately, it wasn't exactly a workable idea. I feel like maybe if I were in sociology I could have made a stab at it. Still, I could not shake the idea that I could take advantage of this site. What were these texts about spring break, body shots, and waking up naked covered in glitter, good for? Could they become a novel? A thesis, maybe?

Probably not, but I've found they come in handy for relieving writer's block. For instance, if you're sat in front of your computer trying to hammer out one more poem for the poetry anthology that's due tomorrow and your mind remains a complete blank, why not take a look at TFLN, grab the first text you see, and use it as the first two lines of your poem?

I wish we had morning classes together
so we could spike our coffee,
slumping down in the back-row
of that crowded lecture hall
for Intro to Biology,
or maybe New Psychology.
Nestled within three-hundred science students,
no one would ever even notice us,
giggling to ourselves,
racing eachother
to the bottom of our paper cups;
I begin to wonder why
we wasted our days
becoming English majors;
with 12 people to a seminar
we’d never get away with it
and now I see the beauty
of the elusive science degree
and why they always ask us
who the hell would become
an English major?
they’re not snubbing us
for our bad choices.
They just understand
the importance of
day-drinking.

or...

So thats when we found her crawling
hands and knees up first street singing
‘hold me closer Tony Danza’
as loud as she could,
a vision in spandex and faux-leather,
evidence of the triumph
of gravity over spiked heels
but bravely, unceasingly, increasingly fighting
our best efforts to slow her progress,
she thought she was on Morton Hill,
trying to go back to the bars.

See how the poem juxtaposes the low-brow custom of texting with the high-brow artform of poetry to demonstrate that true art knows no class (nor subject matter)? If that isn't A+ material, I don't know what is.

edit: ooh, new challenge. START the poem with one text. End it with the text right below. For instance: "I woke up and the dog was eating spaghetti off my chest." ... "And then he tried to convert me to Islam." What has begun as a cure for writer's block has become another distraction. Shoot. Maybe I should just write a poem about aprons and call it a day.

My Cat Smells like Disturbing Memories

Way back in grade 12 Biology class, I had the great pleasure of dissecting a baby shark with my soon-to-be-ex-friend Bobby. The shark was about the size of a small cat and smelled strongly of raw fish and embalming fluid*, and Bobby and I were assigned the job of dissecting the sharkling's head. Bonus points for getting the brain out intact.

So we started hacking away at the thing. I don't remember the flesh-rendering process but suddenly we were looking at the shark's skull, with yellowy strings of shark-nerves** protruding out from the springy bone mass. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure now whether Bobby was as determined to get that brain out as I was, but at the time I believed it was our collective dream and I was set on making it a reality. I bravely attacked the skull with my scalpel, chipping away at the stubborn surface with wild abandon. My abandon was so wild that I barely noticed that the chips of skull-shrapnel were zinging in the direction of Bobby's own face, until one notably large piece of shark skull, complete with shreds of nerve-endings, landed in his mouth. At which point he took over the skull dissection and I sat and watched. And you know, it's funny, we managed to remain friends for nearly a year after that incident.

I haven't thought of that incident for a very long time. I thought of it today, though. Remember my cat? The gross one whom I love theoretically? The balding one with the flea allergy, over-active shedding issues, and excessive dandruff? Well, last week I finally decided to stop complaining about Capu's disgusting maladies and do something about them. So I went to the pet store and bought an amazing shedding brush (this one seems to be more in the family of a garden rake than of a hair-brush) and a bottle of "Catch of the Day Alaskan Salmon Oil" which will "contribute to better skin and coat along with healthy joints." I have been raking and oiling my cats for a week now and I will admit, Capu doesn't seem quite as disgusting as he used to.

One unfortunate side-effect of this fish oil is that now my cats both have fish breath, which smells remarkably like that baby shark I dissected with poor Bobby. Now I must decide which I prefer: ugly flakey cats who smell like cat-food, or shiny flake-free cats who smell like disturbing memories and bad hand-eye coordination. I may never be able to sort this one out.


*This of course is just a theory. I have at least managed to block the memory of which chemical was used to preserve the shark babies; I know not the name, but the scent only.

**or something

Dentist Dodging

If you've ever complained about the cold-hearted, uncaring attitude of your spineless dental clinic, you've never been to the Ellice Dental Group. They are very committed to my dental health. In fact, they are far more committed to me than I am to them. I've spent the last 6 months playing a complex game of hide-and-seek with them. They phone, I don't answer. They leave messages, I don't return them. They call me at work to remind me that I haven't seen a dental hygienist in 4 months!! I promise to make an appointment later and make an excuse to hang up. They call and call again: your teeth have not been seen to! Your teeth have not had a good professional cleaning in months! Call me! We're playing Uninterested and Jilted Lover; they are the stalker to my stalkee, a faithful admirer that I've been woefully neglecting. Don't call me, I'll call you. I'll call you when I'm ready, I'll call you when I'm free, I'll call you when I'm interested just stop calling me.

It was the at-work phonecalls that turned me against the dentist. Beforehand, I was always flattered that they would think to call me. But after they started phoning me at work, they took on that semi-telemarketer quality that I detest. They left a message on our home answering machine again last week, and, as usual, I ignored it until it was finally deleted. I thought nothing of it. But Ellice Dental Group is not to be ignored. They've upped the ante now. When I got home from school today, what was sitting on my doorstep? A shiny new postcard with a decidedly sinister flare to it. On the front is a drawing of a decrepit, disembodied tooth. "Preventative Dentistry for a healthy smile", it reads. And then "It's time for your dental check-up and cleaning. Call today for an appointment."

This is no ordinary dentist's office. This is a Dental Mob. This postcard is saying "we know you've been ignoring us. And we know where you live," complete with an image of an extracted tooth to remind me of what will happen if I don't call today. Tomorrow morning I expect to wake up to a horse's bloody, severed jaw-bone tucked into the foot of my bed. But will I cave under this sort of pressure? Will I heed these toothy threats? Will I finally return my dental hygienist's calls? Tune in to find out in next week's episode of Patient to the Mob

I'm a star!

Not actually. But I got accepted as a presenter at the 2nd Annual Trash Talkin' Pop Culture Conference at the University of Regina. I can't say I've been to more than 2 conferences in my life and now I'm presenting at one! In my mind's eye, the place will be filled with genius literati and people with really good publishing connections who will be absolutely dazzled by my 'presentation': a 20-minute story about a girl who thinks the creature in her wall is trying to kill her. I will actually talk to these people (instead of sitting and staring at my program, which is my preferred public places strategy). We will all go out to that one bar I went to with Serena and drink martinis the colour of the Carribean Sea. Then we will be fast friends, and will all become literary legends together. In this dream, I also have a very keen fashion sense and lots of high-heeled shoes, though. In reality...well I have no idea what the conference will be like. I have a feeling there will be lasagna.

The Sickness Roll-Over Minutes Plan

Sometimes I wish I could just have all my colds in one year and get it over with. Think of it. I could just set aside a year, quit my job, quit university, and barricade myself in my bedroom, buying Halls Candies off the internet in bulk. None of this silly "let's schedule you to be sick over each and every school holiday you get" business. While I can appreciate my body's decision to save my sick-hours for when I have some time on my hands...well, I have time on my hands! This cold is getting in the way of an entire week of productivity.

Think of Christmas Break. I had allowed myself a week of worry-free festivities and was just settling down to several days of school reading and project preparations when BAM my head filled up with yellow mucus and I found myself unable to understand concepts as simple as Jason Statham action films (the premise of each is: he is British. he is bald. he has a gun. he used to be a Levi's jeans model. also, someone wants to kill him.)

Think of Reading Week. I had 156 hours of projects, adventures, and food I was going to fit into those 120 hours of break. Now what will I be doing? I will be sleeping. And trying to write about Gertrude Stein while swimming in my own lung fluid.

Well, this time I absolutely refuse. I finished my last class this afternoon and now it is vacation and I know exactly what I'm going on vacation from: this damned flu. And so, as my triple action Halls candy wrapper says, "keep your chin up...let's hear your battle cry". Whatever that means.


...whew. Well, writing all that really wore me out. Back to bed it is.

Valentine's Day Oreo Chicken

This Valentine's, I was fortunate to experience a number of exciting new things, such as drinking a stranger's home-made red wine out of an old whiskey bottle, forcing several men to listen to an in-depth discussion of menstruation, and making Baked Oreo Chicken. Of these things, the chicken is the only one I can really share, and so I will.

Inspired by SMBC:

Valentine's Day Chicken.

Ingredients:
12 oreo cookies
1-2 eggs
5 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
a dash of milk
oil
margarine

First, break in to your date's brother's house, only to discover that his brother's wife is still at home knitting on the sofa. Discuss British Real-Estate shows together over several glasses of wine and eat appropriately miss-themed V-Day Easter Egg Chocolates until your significant other arrives.
Next, stand in the kitchen looking dubiously at the momentous task awaiting you. Point out that there are only 2 other people on the internet who have attempted Oreo-Coated Chicken before.

Finally, place your Oreos in a blender and crush until reduced to a fine powder. Pour Oreo crumbs in shallow dish. Heat oil in frying pan. Meanwhile, mix milk and eggs together. Dip chicken breasts in egg and milk mixture, then roll in cookie crumbs.

Brown chicken in frying pan, turning as little as possible to avoid losing the 'breading'.

Place chicken in baking dish, top with an unspecified amount of margarine. Cover and bake at 350 for 30-45 minutes. When chicken is cooked through, serve on a bed of minute rice with red wine of a questionable origin. Enjoy.

But how was it?
Before going 'vegetarian', I spent about a decade of my life having a love-affair with chicken. So maybe it was just my joy at once again consuming the steroid-enhanced chest of a dead bird carcass (cooked to perfection), or the fact that I had enjoyed at least one glass of wine of questionable origin before hand, but I must say, the chicken was fabulous.

What is it with Wednesdays?

I don't know what it is about Wednesdays, but they never seem to proceed in a normal fashion. Half of the time I can't remember the Wednesday of the week at all (this in itself is oddly worrying), and then Wednesday is often the day that your dog dies and you set off the church burglar alarm twice, or the day your girlfriend breaks up with you at the airport on her way to Paris and leaves you her cellphone to remember her by*. This Wednesday wasn't as bad as all that--in fact, I managed to suffer a lot of accidents without experiencing many of the repercussions for them. But still. Wednesdays. Watch out.

It began at 5am when I woke up with a sore throat (unfortunate but not unexpected) and then nearly killed myself going down the front walk on the way to work. This in itself isn't that strange; the February frost-and-melt-and-frost routine makes this a daily occurrence. It wasn't until 9am, after managing to cause the bakery about $100 in mistakes and losses, that I realized that this wasn't mere mishap; this was Wednesday at work. Although the order sheet was stated clearly that it was 170 cupcakes iced in red icing with white sprinkles, for some inexplicable reason I made 200 cupcakes (misfortune 1). Then, realizing that the order was only for 170, I managed to readjust other baking plans to accommodate 30 extra cupcakes. I proceeded to ice the remaining 170 cupcakes in white icing, and decorated them with pink sprinkles (misfortune 2). This mistake went unnoticed until the delivery man, already running 10 minutes late due to traffic (Wednesday Traffic), arrived to take them to their intended destination. And I don't feel it is my place to tell the rest of that story, but I can assure you it was bad (misfortune 3), and I was not the one who had to experience the customer's...disappointment (injustice! misfortune 4).

My boss forgave me for it, though, since I have a fairly consistent track record of success at being able to read simple instructions. I reacted to this by gratefully braking a 600-dollar piece of baking equipment** (misfortune 5). I snapped it cleanly in half, and I'm not entirely certain how (it all happened so fast!), though I do believe it had something to do with sheer surfaces and gravity. Meanwhile, my boss was having several complicated discussions on the phone (apparently his Wednesday wasn't faring much better). I waited until he was done to reveal the latest mishap, and offered to return my most recent paycheque to him by way of apology (potential misfortune 6). He went into his office to fully digest this new information. Oddly enough, he broke the Wednesday creed of misfortune to come out and tell me that I wouldn't be held responsible for any of the damages I had caused thus far that day.

Relieved, I slipped, tripped, and smashed through the rest of my work day***. I showed up at my Gertrude Stein course covered in the icing I had forgotten to wash off of my elbows, and for a while I thought the rest of the day was going to proceed normally (if one can ever consider the Stein class normal), but then I found myself wearing a beautiful straw hat that had apparently been worn by Katherine Hepburn when she did her gardening, and I just knew something very awful was going to happen.

I wish I could say I was right because that would have been quite interesting but, although I almost did sit on it twice, and at one point found myself trying to have a serious discussion about Asberger's Syndrome while dressed as Katherine Hepburn on her days off, nothing really bad happened to that hat. I did manage to trip over one of my own boots though.

I made a quick stop at the grocery store on the way home from work, to get some nice soup to counteract the effects of my ever-worsening cold. I picked out a container of minestrone****, shoved it into my full-to-overflowing backpack, and went home, where, lumbering up the stairs to my room, I tripped and smashed my backpack on several stairs. It was about 10 minutes later that I remembered what had been in the bag when I smashed it, and I ran back to my room to discover my books, papers, and a change of clothes awash in beans and tomato broth (misfortune...8?).

This was when I decided to stay home from my church membership meeting. The thought of all the misfortunes that might befall me in transit to and from church made me shudder. Instead, I went with the much better idea of taking out a bunch of knives, turning on the stove full blast, and trying to make my own soup (and for some inexplicable reason I decided to peel the potatoes with a butcher knife. Was this misfortune or just plain idiocy? I cannot say). While waiting for the soup to boil, I decided to pass the time by writing this post. 40 minutes later***** I suddenly realized I had a full pot of soup on the stove, set to well-above simmering. Rushing down the stairs to check on it, I managed to knock two paintings off of the wall (misfortune 9).

Then Ben arrived from the computer doctor and there was a lot of business about our family computer being wiped clean of all viruses and any files of great interest or importance, and everyone having backed up all their own files except for me, and this gives me a great opportunity to sulk and add to the list of grave misfortunes but I must admit I can't actually remember what I lost (or IF I lost anything) and anyway it was my own fault for not saving things on something other than a CD disc 4 years ago or the USB stick I lost in Halifax so I can only call this Misfortune 9 and a half. But then...Ben had been so helpful in actually getting the computer fixed that I couldn't even bring myself to sulk about it, and you know how I love a good sulk. So let's just round that up to Misfortune 10.

Now I should go to bed before I accidentally amass a great quantity of famous paintings in my bedroom and proceed to set the house on fire.

*and no that is not my story. though it's so interesting I sort of wish it was. Better to have loved and lost, so one can describe it in an entertaining manner, than to never have loved and therefore have no stories at all.

**I won't bore you with the details of what it was, since most kitchens--and even commercial bakeries--don't have it. Just imagine something beautiful and incredibly useful to the point of indispensability, like a unicorn that can produce perfectly baked cupcakes with a wave of its horn.

***There is a fun off-shoot to this story about the difficulty I had in actually disposing of the ruined baking equipment, but I'm not interested in technical writing today and I feel that you've all suffered enough already.

****My vegetarian creed managed to win out over my need for chicken broth. For some reason, I feel like when I start turning to dead animals to make me well, that's going to be the end of my 'vegetarianism'. Paradoxically, I have no problems with turning to animal carcasses for romantic entertainment value, as you will see in my recipe for Valentine's Day Oreo Chicken (coming soon).

*****Yes, it does actually take upwards of an hour to complete a post. Sad but true.

Valentine's Day: The Perfect Holiday for the Anti-Social

V-Day is a whole week away, but after unpacking a mixture of 20 dozen heart- and lingerie-shaped sugar cookies, I can't get the holiday off my brain.

The thing is, Valentine's Day is pretty unpopular with most people I know, and I can't quite figure out why. I mean, look at the alternatives:

Christmas: a holiday where everyone is expected to be cheerful and spend lots of money. If you aren't in the red and beaming joyfully on Christmas day, with a turkey drumstick in one hand and a mincemeat pie in the other, people think there's something wrong with you. If you get too into the Santa-side of things, your religious friends come over to douse holy water on your celebratory flames by reminding you that 'Jesus is the reason for the season'*. If you grumpily refuse to have anything to do with a supposedly religious holiday that goes against every religious teaching you believe in, people treat you like a social pariah. Either way, your loved ones force you into celebrating the event in a way you'd prefer not to. More importantly, you are forced to see your loved ones, whether you like them or not. There is very little room in this holiday for the anti-religious, the ultra-religious, the anti-consumers, the diabetics, and the vegetarians. Christmas: everyone loses.

Thanksgiving: Once again, a holiday where you are forced to get together with your family and eat copious amounts of meat. Mercifully, there is no meaningful present-exchange. However, no matter what measures you take to avoid it, there will be a part in the evening where you must stand up and tell everyone around you what you are thankful for. The dangers here are numerous: you must think of a worthy thing to be thankful for, so as to not appear ungrateful or too consumer-minded (or pig-headed). For example, being thankful you found a mini skirt you look good in, or being thankful that your colleague's handwriting is neat enough that you can cheat off her during every test, or just being thankful that the waitress's skirt is tucked into her underwear and she hasn't noticed yet, are all inappropriate things to be thankful for.
On top of this, there's always the difficulty of the racism associated with Thanksgiving. Although many people argue that it's our neighbours to the south who bring a touch of racism to a day set aside to celebrate that special time when aboriginal peoples helped the new colonial immigrants survive the winter so that the colonists could come back and kill them all with smallpox later, I'd say that Canadians are so influenced by American culture that Thanksgiving is instilled with a bit of controversial flavour here as well.

Easter: The juxtaposition of chocolate egg-laying bunny mutants with the Christian resurrection story makes this holiday as uncomfortable as most. Should we spend the holiday on our knees praying or looking under the furniture for pastel-coloured smarties? Well at least there's chocolate.

St. Patrick's Day: If your vision of The Perfect Day does not involve you puking up green beer at 4:30 on a Tuesday afternoon, then what's the point of this one?

And so we come to Valentine's Day: A day where you can do whatever the hell you want. If you celebrate it, you're not alone. If you don't celebrate it, you have an equally large support group. You can celebrate this holiday by:
Eating chocolate until you burst,
Rolling your eyes and scoffing at anyone who asks you how you're celebrating February 14th,
Wearing a lacy red negligee and lazing around on a bed of roses (regardless of whether or not you have someone to watch you do it),
Dressing all in black, lining your eyes in an inch of black eyeliner, and growling at anyone who looks cheerful,
Drinking wine with your significant other,
Staying as far away from your significant other as possible soas not to give people the impression that you actually celebrate this ludicrously cliched holiday,
Getting together with your friends to watch An Affair to Remember and have a good cry,
Getting together with your friends for a zombie movie marathon,
Sitting at home doing nothing at all...
the list goes on and on. Valentine's day is one of those holidays where really anything is acceptable. In fact, even the most brutally sullen of people can celebrate V-Day; who doesn't love an excuse to be miserable? People might actually let it slide on the Day that All Single People Are Supposed to Hate. Why not go with the flow and be as petty as possible? In fact, this being the first year where I will not be single on Valentine's Day, I don't really know what to do with myself. What will I complain about now?

This is why, in a contest between a variety of awkward semi-religious holidays with too much food or drinking, the day where you can be a bitch and eat copious amounts of chocolate will always win.