Weekly Digest

I grew a Jalapeño pepper. Gaze upon its spicy beauty!*

I. Sockapalooza Update
My sockpal, Two Sticks and Yarn, got her socks! My sockpal got her socks! SOCKS! PAL! VICTORY! Forgive me if I'm a little bit excited, but I spent the week since I sent them going over various horror scenarios in my head. The socks would get lost in the mail. The socks would take weeks to get there. The socks would be destroyed at the border as a national security threat to the U.S. Before you laugh at the last one, my roomie's grandmother sent her a crocheted blanket during first year. It was incinerated by some, shall we say, unhealthily dedicated Canadian border security. Or, they would get there but they wouldn't fit, or they would unravel. After seeing some of the other lovely packages, I was convinced she would bemoan my lack of classy packaging and tasteful bonus geegaws, and that Yarnstorm (incisively described as "the knitting Martha Stewart" by mote) would preside over my trial. But Jill B seems to really like them, so I'm both pleased and proud.
Read her touching write-up on my socks- I made everyone at work and in my family do so. Yay!

II. Roomie Update
My hetero wife and her family are all okay, but when I checked in last a boy from her little sister's class was still missing in the bridge collapse. It's been a while, and I know a lot of names have been taken off the list since I heard from her. I hope his was one of them.

III. Neglected Hillside Anecdote
I forgot to mention the best part of Hillside. My brother and I were down by the shore, trying to dodge hippie wang and bush in its natural habitat, when from behind the bend came the Pervatron in his pontoon. He wore tight cut-off chinos, no shirt, a life jacket, and huge early 90s sunglasses, striking the "Tino" as he sailed up. At first I was confused about what he was doing. He was slowly moving closer and closer to the shore, to the point where it was becoming alarmingly shallow for his boat. But then I realized he was on the hunt. The hunt for a group of nubile, skinnydipping Hillsiders.
First he purred:
"Helloooooooooo"
and then
"How's the waterrrrrrrrr"
As he passed the buffet of boob. He went a few meters further, not even to the next bend, when he swung around and did the perv loop again. And again. I'm sure he's still out there, forlornly calling "Helloooooo" to the void, wondering if he would ever know how the "waterrrrrrrr" was.




*Actually, I grew many Jalapeño peppers. If anyone in Guelph could give a few garden-fresh peppers a good home in some salsa, I can hook you up.

A Letter to my Roommate, or: Too Lazy to Write a New Post

Dearest Roommate!
I can't believe you're home already! Are your parents spoiling you yet?

I've assumed that you are okay, and not hurt in the awful bridge collapse (note: she lives in MN). My scientific reasoning for this was the infallible, "She's MY ROOMMATE and I LOVE HER" argument. How are Minnesotans handling it?

Not much news to report on from here. I ordered myself a new iPod, and have decided to finally lay old, cracked, Greenie to rest. However, instead of throwing it out, I've decided to decorate it with nail polish and resurrect it as that most useful of items... the paperweight. Especially in this digital age. Ahem. It should be here any day now.

I also went to a local music festival in Guelph last weekend, called Hillside. If you're not from Guelph, you may be unaware of what A VERY BIG DEAL Hillside is to Guelphites. In the newspaper, an article has quotes from residents describing it as "like Christmas". As you walk in to the festival, giant letters spell out ANTICIPATION in all-caps, like a particularly earnest LiveJournaller. A write-up i one of our local newspapers thought that was an accurate description of the mood of festival-goers, which is a lie, since mine would have read GASSY. It's an annual weekend where the crunchiest portion of Guelph can create their own little Utopia, and glad-hand each other on how socially conscious they are. The programmes are not only printed on post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks, but in a printshop powered by biodiesel fuels. Gear is transported from stage to stage not in a truck, but in a large tricycle. Food vendors use plastic plates that are washed and re-used as the festival goes on.

This year, the big craze were these stainless steel water bottles. After Wal-Mart had finally built their store, the anti-Wal Mart squad needed to funnel their energies into other projects, and so they set their sights on Nestlé. Nestlé bottles water that comes from a spring near Guelph (i.e. the very same water that runs through our taps), and with our annual water rationing in summer, their application to get their water-taking permit renewed was not well-received. I look forward to the cause celebre CD local Guelpherati put out, to follow the Wal-Mart volume. Since plastic water bottles were a waste problem at Hillside anyway, they came up with the idea of offering bottles for sale, and hiring a big tank truck to bus in city water. But with the recent health concerns of off-gassing plastic, they went one further and got Klean Kanteens, (whose name is one K away from awful hilarity). What ensued? Water bottle mania. 30 minute long lines to get these bottles. To obtain one would give you immeasurable Guelph cred. To be without one would make you a lesser man. I decided I couldn't care less, and that if I really wanted an off-gassing free water bottle, I would just head down to the local hippie health store, pay the extra $ and get myself one of those pretty Sigg bottles. However, my Mother wanted one. And her lovely daughter spent twenty minutes in line and got her one before they sold out. I'm only a little more curmudgeonly to show for all that!

Now, these are all very noble endeavours, but after the first twelve hours I always feel a distinct urge to drive over to the festival in my Hummer, eating McDonald's take out and running over some endangered waterfowl on the way, while blasting Toby Keith. Fortunately, I hate Toby Keith. Almost as much as I hate the goddamned water fowl.

In spite of my deeply cynical and lazy nature, I continue to go to Hillside because the music is usually quite good. If you want me to, I can YouSendIt or whatever a sampler of my favourite Hillside artists. I highly recommend the Klezmer hip hop of socalled, and the insane stage show of Shout Out Out Out Out. I also had a weird moment when I found myself attracted to a rather aged member of one of my brother's favourite groups, although it's probably just all my repressed sexuality beginning to boil over. In my defense, however, it was at a really fabulous workshop where a bunch of Hillside artists got together and played the music of The Band. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down was amazing- everyone stood up and sang, and even I pretended to know the lyrics.

How are you? How's the family? How is le boyfriend? Write back! Also, would it be okay if I ordered something from a US-only company for delivery to your fair abode? It's very small, 9"x6", and I would be forever in your debt.

Off to see Ratatouille,

Protagitron

Ratatouille was adorable, by the way. I'm curious about the particular alchemy of Pixar- how they can transmit humanity so easily through animation, and how different it can be from something like the Uncanny Valley fest of the Polar Express. All the Polar Express does is CGI over human actors, but there's something unnatural about the final product- like a horror film set at Madame Tussaud's. Pixar shows that movies don't have to sacrifice emotional reality for a bit of visual fun. Be warned- it will make you hungry. I'm trying to teach my degu how to cook me a cassoulet as we speak, but his lack of opposable thumbs and long-term memory is proving to be an obstacle.