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.