Montreal: The Cruelest Lover

So, today I got ticket in the mail. For leaving my recycling out. To the tune of $169.
And before all of you shun me for being a recycling deadbeat, or composes slightly bitchy letters about how cleanliness is my business too, which seems to be the Montreal way, let me say one thing:

I was cited for a place I haven't lived in for about 8 months.

Yes, my old apartment has come back to bite me on the ass, like a particularly feisty ghost. The only explanation I can come up with is that the new tenants, or whomever, got some junk mail addressed to me, and threw it out with the recycling, and when the eager city employees dug through the muck, they saw my name and wrote me a ticket. Charmingly, the official citation arrived with my change of address pasted over it, thanks to the post office which probably missed my mail in the first place. Thanks, institutions. Stay classy.

So, until I resolve the issue (which might even involve a hearing!! Yay.) I'll probably be most negatively deposed towards Montreal. I won't sing the city's praises during the summer, or enjoy its festivals, and I'll eat my poutine in a car parked underneath an overpass, so no one can see my shame. Sorry.

The Random Bits

Well, I think I waited too long to get back to the porn guys after they liked my write-up. D'oh.

In other mildly annoying news, I have cookies that need to be squirreled away for two whole days, TWO DAYS people, before I can eat them. This is after I had to brown butter, mix dough, chill everything for a few hours, shape dough in teaspoons, bake, heat preserves, strain preserves, and then assemble sandwich cookies. I have spent less time studying for some of my exams than I have making these cookies. When they've finished maturing, I'm going to post a picture. Not only as a monument to my blinkered dedication, but for educational purposes. To illustrate how graceful little sandwiches of wit and elegance on the recipe site can become lumpen oozing messes in the right hands. Not that I would care, as long as they come out delicious.

(Oh, and I wrote my last undergraduate exam on Friday. I hope. I do not want to be too noisy in my celebrations just yet, lest ye Administration gods smite me.)

The Things I Get Myself In To (WARNING: ALMOST NAUGHTY CONTENT)

I am the man. Make what you will of the beaver.

So, like most of my friends, I am frantically trying to find a job in the midst of a recession, armed with naught but an English degree (god willing) and a helluva lot of hope. To that end, I replied to a copywriting job I found on Craig's List. The job mentioned that the candidate had to be comfortable with adult content. Which made me a little bit skeptical, but I am comfortable, so I did anyway. I don't care what people do in their bedrooms. Or the dark recesses of the Internet, for that matter.

As soon as I sent off the e-mail plus attached resumé, I regretted it. They would laugh at me! I had accidentally sent it from the e-mail address that sounds like a sex term anyway! What the hell would I have to do, anyway? Find more and more synonyms for "penis" until every word in the English dictionary begins to look like a dirty joke? "Stupid sexy Websters," I thought, "no." And I hid from the computer screen for the rest of the night, lest they magically be able to see from it. And judge me. This morning, I got an e-mail from them saying they were intrigued by my background, but that they wanted to run a little test first. I had to read someone else's review of an adult website, one for connoisseurs of "hairy" women, and then rewrite it, using the same facts but with my own wording.

I felt another period of philosophical questioning coming on, as I scrolled through the galleries of ladies in their untrimmed glory. Did I want to be doing this for the rest of my life? Not that there's too much wrong with that, but I fell my Mom's judgment coming on. But then I thought of the following sentence:

"The only thing you might have to worry about... is getting lost in the bushes."

And, reader, I sent it in. Because that right there's a load-bearing sentence.

Schoolday the Thirteenth XII

Sorry about my absence. You know how in horror movies, there's always a moment when the hero/ine thinks the danger is past, and the monster is killed? And they turn around to breathe a sigh of relief, but over their shoulder we see the ghoul sit right back up and make a grab at them, and we know this will be the worst battle. School was kind of like that two weeks ago. I was getting all cocky, thinking I was just about graduated, when I got mired deep into finals. Last week, for example, I had two exams, one take-home exam, and two papers. Friday alone I had one of those exams and one of those papers, and then I foolishly decided to work from one to seven. I went to bed at ten that night.

But all this is in the past. And is boring. Although I had a funny moment Thrusday at school. I was working on my paper on Altman (Short Cuts, bless) in the screening room. I had made a mental note that the headphones weren't plugged in, and that I should do that before playing the movie. Which is why it was super embarassing when, fifteen minutes later, a girl taps me on the shoulder to ask me if I realize they aren't plugged in. This is while I have the TV on at max volume, with the headphones on my ears. And then, to make matters worse, I leave, and then the same girl came out to ask if the cell phone she found was mine. It was. I was tired.

But I have some fun stuff coming up, hopefully. Time for more knitting, reading, assorted cultural activities that keep me from being a hermit. Oh, and I have Twitter now- username Protagitron. I heard that John McCain had it, and I wasn't going to be less plugged-in than someone who's older than Israel. And now I'm not sure what it offers that Facebook doesn't. But I beat Oprah to it, so at least I feel cooler than someone. Suck it, O. (Please don't kill me with all of your money.)

Unspeakaby Sad Thing That Happened Today

So, I bounced into work today in a good mood, because the sun was out, the birds were singing, the torture of my Japanese Culture class was almost at an end, and so on. And then I hear my boss hang up the phone with an "Oh no!" I asked her what was the matter. It couldn't be that bad. Nothing could be that bad on this wonderful, glorious day. But, oh. Oh, how I was wrong.

It seems that a little while ago, a nice old man had phoned the bookstore to order his granddaughter a hoodie. She had just received her acceptance letter in the mail. He didn't have a credit card though, but we could do a special money order for him. The money order never came, and we forgot all about it. Until we got the message that he had passed away. And his family wanted to finish the order, so his granddaughter could get the last thing her grandfather had ever wanted for her. And, since I was the minion, it was up to me to phone the grieving family and get the ordering info without blurting out "THIS IS THE SADDEST THING I HAVE HEARD ALL WEEK. SERIOUSLY." over and over again. I did it, but it was horrifying.

Oh, and the reason we never got the money order was because he had mailed the envelope without a stamp on it. Oh dear. My life has become an Onion article, in some abstract way.

Sign of The End Times

Today on the metro some white douchebag was taking up three seats in a busy car. He had also dressed himself under the mistaken assumption that he was a rapper. In Compton. When I glared at him in all of my passive-aggressive glory, I realized that his shirt had some brand name with the tag line "Manufacturing street credibility" written underneath.

Now, I know I don't much about the street, hailing as I do from the G-Spot (aka Guelph, Nowhere.) But I thought the whole point of street credibility was that it was a noncommercial and nontransferable asset? Please advise, so that I can be hip with the youth of today.