New Header!

I engaged in some arts and crafts over the weekend, and now I have a shiny new header. I think it's funny (who doesn't love a wacky dog riding a sheep?) but now it's making the rest of my blog look bare.

Coming To a Street Corner Near You

I kind of feel like Montreal's become a convection oven. Even my sweat? Is sweating. I tried to do some statistics homework last night. It's an assignment that counts, sadly, as I'm sure it doesn't make any sense at all. Stats homework in the middle of a heat wave? New torture in Hades, yo. I also choked down some Forster for my 20th Century Lit class. I'm not a big fan of Forster- his philosophy seems so fuzzy, like he's trying to articulate something that he just can't reach. And his characters could succinctly be described as nutbars. But I get to read Mrs. Dalloway next, which is... better.

The job situation is also wilting in the heat. I am, by nature, incredibly shy when it comes to handing in my résumé, which means that I manage to hit one or two stores before scurrying off to home. Yesterday, I tried a card place in the mall, in spite of my horrific availability. I was foiled in my attempts to scuttle away so they could interrogate me on my hours. Then they asked me why I wanted to work in a card shop. After babbling something about how it looked like fun (lie!) and then something incoherent about how people are usually buying cards for happy occasions, but sometimes they are buying cards for sad occasions, and it would be nice to help people (you're doing it wrong, brain!), I then proceeded to spit out the lamest thing in the history of lameness: "Cards... bring people together."

Gah, well, if I can't get a job working at a card shop I could probably get a job writing them. The person interviewing me then complained that men were the worst interviews, because they always say something like "Derrr, 'cause I need a job." I didn't tell her that I admired the honesty of boys in this instance. Today I'm hitting up at least three cafés, and if all else fails, I'll become the most practically dressed hooker in history.

In Which I Plumb The Depths, And Reveal How Sad I Am

I'll be honest. Like most middle-class, white, Canadians I have been lucky enough to float through life without experiencing any true tragedies. I've never known much about persecution, racism, pestilence, illness, starvation, or war. I just watch them on TV. Of course, this doesn't make me feel blessed. I'm a flawed person, and so a sea of minor annoyances and petty grievances afflict me. I leave my wallet at home, and my keys as well. I'm bad with money. I have not been knitting or sewing as much as I used to. McGill never gets back to my e-mails. I can never muster the cajones to apply to as many jobs as I should. And so on, and so on.

The biggest two issues, which feed into each other daily, are first, how hard it is to watch everyone else be happy as you continuously fail, and secondly, the "no mans" problem. I'm usually embarrassed about the latter, since it seems like I'm betraying my feminist ideals and the awesome, happily alone person I used to be. I don't know what happened. It just seemed like one day, I realized there was one rite of passage I had missed, of being loved, or just being found attractive. And as much as I tried to let it not bother me, it began to feel as if a door to maturity had closed without me noticing. Being alone would have been fine if it was my choice. But this wasn't. And watching all of my friends fall in love, and be in love, and throw me over again and again because of that silly notion, began to sting. I would say that love is a crock, but I've seen what it can do to people, so I believe it's real enough.

And it wasn't just the partnering, it seemed like everyone else was moving ahead with their life while I was stuck in a holding pattern somewhere over Regina. They had jobs and internships, and scheduled voyages to their boyfriends. I had an obese cat and some Westerns on DVDs. And trying to fix things just made me anxious. Particularly the smash of Fall '09, which somehow dribbled on until now and will be detailed in a later entry. Then I tried to throw myself in with any man I saw, figuring I would take the buckshot approach to finding love, or at least finding sex. But they already had girlfriends, or were gay. Even my gaydar wasn't working! Most of the time they just didn't feel right.

I've been thinking about this more as I've been lurking on an acquaintance's blog. I met Ted through Fight Band, and took an immediate and intense dislike to him. First of all, being with him was like being with a foul-mouthed, homophobic hummingbird. I think I even have a whole inch on the guy. He's also one of those white guys with an acute case of China Doll Syndrome, and since I'm neither Asian nor cute, I was pretty much ignored.

But then... he kind of grew on me. The more time I was forced to spend with him, the more I realized that there was a soft, squishy soul there. I mean, he had a white board on his door with his goals for the day, upon which was written only "Find true love." I'm not made of stone! And then I found his blog. It detailed his quest for true love, frequently in Japan. His ideas about love, as an undertaking requiring military-like stratagems and constant baseball metaphors, were alien to me. Is this what it's like for other people, do they talk about going 0 for 2 and measure their batting averages? How many of you have found your lover by calling on your pinch hitter on the bottom of the seventh? I don't even know if my own sports metaphors make sense, because I don't watch baseball. Maybe I should start talking about my own quest in terms of curling, or figure skating.

I always thought that if/when anything happened, the other person would know as well. I didn't know until Ted that I could wage a siege on their emotions. Or, shudder, call sex "playing baseball. " Maybe that's what's wrong with me, I'm too passive, waiting until I trip over some obvious sign before admitting that something might happen. Or simply just my waiting for someone else is killing me, and I should get off my ass and go out there and land the triple axle. The problem with that, as I've web-stalked Ted is that the chase begins to displace the prize, because once he landed a girl he seemed to lose interest in her. And I got hurt once or twice when I tried to be even marginally more agressive, and I can't any more. So, this one's for you, Ted: I think I'll ride the bench for now. And yet, Ted's Elvis Stojko-like dedication to skating despite his groin injury, and monomaniacal reliance on sports metaphors has inspired me. Even though the situation looks bleak now, I have hope. Maybe I'll get the bronze even if I miss the gold medal.

Down Into Hades

Sorry that a weird empty post popped up. That was an accident, something while I worked on a big , long post about my men troubles, and an acquaintance of mine who I alternately admire and despise. However, it is much too hot in Montreal to retrieve anything, and so I'll continue to enjoy my new hobby: sweating.

Beware My Awesome Powers

A few days ago, my Dad was in town and we were walking along Sherbrooke, right past the Musée des Beaux Arts. The posters for the big Yves St Laurent show had just gone up, which meant I had just found out about them, at which point the following conversation transpired.
Protagitron: Oh. My. God. I have to see that! The clothes.... the draping... WHY ISN'T IT ON NOW?
Dad: Is he still alive?
Protagitron: Who? Yves? Oh God no, I'm sure he died a couple of years ago.
Dad: Oh, I thought he was...
Protagitron: Nah, he's dead.

Then, a few days later, I saw this headline on the Times:

Yves Saint Laurent, Giant of Couture, Dies at 71

...
Oh God, I killed "Yves" with my brain!

Fortunately, I'm seeing the show this Sunday morning with some friends. We'll have to get there early, since the lines have been crazy ever since his death. Sniff. Morbid rubberneckers, all. I'll have you know I'm just going for the DRAPING.

(Sex à New York) dans Montréal

Between studying last weekend, I paid my XX chromosone dues by seeing Sex and the City. I had to. I couldn't take passing another cluster of women talking about the movie, in bars holding cosmos, in groups in front of the theater, or in crowds wearing Sex and the City shirts. It was either resist and die or give in to the madness.

I always knew I would give in to the madness. I have a weird relationship with the show. I hated it when it was on the air. I hated the characters, I hated their clothes, I hated that their voices would lurch in and out of normal hearing range and dog whistle shrill. I hated seeing Sarah Jessica Parker's face everywhere. And the nameplate necklaces and those stupid flower pins! But after my emotional breakdown of '06-07 coincided neatly with the local ABC affiliate broadcasting edited for TV episodes, it grew on me. Like a fungus. I downloaded the original episodes online. Although it was surprising that a woman named "Samantha" had always been there, I only loved it more. I never forgot its faults, but I found that it occasionally threw out insightful or touching bits along with the crap. It became like comfort food, or crack, or maybe a bit of both. Meth-laced mac and cheese. So of course I had to see the movie.
Now, ninety percent of the stuff written about Sex and the City is pretty damn asinine. I'll never understand the obsession with pegging where in feminism it belongs. My personal opinion is that while it could not have existed without feminism, it is not particularly feminist as such. There's also the stock topic of how vapid it is, which I think misses what part that plays in its appeal. So I won't bore you with more limp cultural analysis. I'll just give you a recommendation.

First, if you've never seen an episode, do not go. The whole thing won't make any sense and you'll garrote yourself with soda straws out of boredom. If you've seen the series, and liked it, bear in mind that the movie is around two and a half hours long, and most of it is about Carrie. Charlotte, the pressed and pleated WASP (who converted to Judaism, so throw a J in there) gets barely any screen time, although some of the better laughs. The infidelity story between Miranda and Steve- and God bless the person in the audience who hissed "Bastard!" when he confessed- is refreshingly adult, but a little rushed. The best part of Sam's storyline is its provision of male nudity. The rest is all Carrie this, and Carrie that, and between the new decor and the constant Starbucks cups, she's beginning to feel a little overpolished, a little too safe and flat. Even Big looks like he hits the tanner too much, or tweezes too often. The weird thing is that, in spite of all this, it's still satisfying. Like the show, it was bad for me, but I liked it. Call it the Cheetos defense of movies, and buy a ticket if you want the same. But please don't tell me if you're a Miranda or, dear Lord, a Carrie. 'Cause I'm a lady Stanford Blatch.

My Big Fat Greek Examohgodthepuns

Well, I just had a week of nutty shenanigans to contend with. Instead of trying to rent an apartment in the city, I will soon be buying a hut in the far North and living amongst the polar bears. They cannot harass me by phone or e-mail, only eat me which would be ever so preferable.
Ahem. Anyway, I have my Greek Mythology final tomorrow. Today I did seven straight hours of it. I think I've ODed on our Hellenic brethern. I've changed the cat's name to Philoctetes, and the degu's to Ajax. I'm so desperate not to study any more, even though I still need to be able to locate Aulis on a map, that I'm watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding on tv. With bad reception. Maybe it will tell me something more about the Aeschylus tragedies I haven't read yet. I think John Corbett is playing Orestes!
Wait, no, my tv reception is just that bad.

I Have Seen the Future, and It Has a Post-It With My Name On It

I spent the long weekend at my grandma's house, an Internet-free dead zone haunted by the ghosts of garage sales past. It's always a little uncanny, because every time I use the upstairs bathroom I realize that the same bottle of European Formula shampoo has been in the tub since I can remember. That's at least 12 years, people. I think it's ossified. Grandma's house does provide the laughs though, as her obsessive pack rat nature has sometimes lead her to branch out from her usual collections of thimbles, spoons, depression glass, flow blue china, etc, into the truly bizarre. So, I play a little game of "One of These Things..." My all-time top find was a lesbian pulp fiction novel, which just edges out the statue of Moses with horns. Kinky grandma.

Even while I was exploring the house with fear and awe, my relatives were portioning off pieces of it. Is this kind of dividing the spoils common? When people aren't even sick or infirm? My aunt even asked for the car. My aunt doesn't seem to have a high opinion of granny's longevity. Or else the resale value on her ride is really, really good. The whole thing kind of weirds me out, but I refuse to get shafted. So, the next time I visit, I'll engage in a little plan called "stealth post-it noting." I see an object? Bam! Suddenly a Post-It note with my name on it is there. Who put it there? Was it me? Probably. Expired can of soup? Bam! Table? Bam! Cheese in the fridge? Bam! The house? You better believe there's a 3M product with "Protagitron" on it on the porch.

Bam!

Open Letter to a Skunk

Dear Mr. Skunk,
While I admire your tenacity in making it in the big city, it would be nice if you could spray somewhere that is not right underneath my apartment window. I am currently agonizing over a minor life choice, and your fragrant emissions are adding a certain unfortunate je-ne-sais-quoi to my cogitations. Try the entrance to the Atwater Metro, it's not like your stink would stick out there.
And yes, Mr. Skunk, I realize that I am thinking way too much about this, and that I'm taking my stress out on you, but... but... you smell bad. So there.

Yours,
Protagitron

Protagitron Under Water

Yesterday I had my first swimming lesson. It's been one of the major hush-hush shames of my life that I can't really swim. Sure, stick me in the water and I won't drown. I'll even do a half-hearted doggie paddle, before listing to one side and lurching towards a comfortable sitting rock. But breast stroke? Butterfly? Freestyle? I am fluent in none of those. I managed to get through summer camp by signing up for arts and crafts and drama religiously- you should see the gimp bracelets I can crank out- but I didn't want to get through adulthood without at least knowing how to do the front crawl.

I mean, if the movies are to be believed, and they must be, humanity faces one of two futures. Either we become a flooded wasteland from climate change, or we become a zombie wasteland just because. And since I couldn't take zombie defence classes, I was left with learn-to-swim classes.

These classes are, by the way, a ruse. A clever ruse to get your money. First, there's the explicit costs of the classes themselves. Then you must purchase a swimsuit. Which requires not only money, but a masterful strategy to find not only one that is practical while not boring, but one without a few inches of shirring, hideous floral prints, or, God help me, rhinestones on it. Swimsuit manufacturers of North America, I will kindly provide you with three pieces of useful advice. First, there are some flaws no amount of artfully-applied shirring can hide. Second, no one wants to look like Grandma's sofa. Thirdly... rhinestones? Seriously? But a swimsuit was found.

You're not finished yet, though, The swimsuit requires various hair-removal purchases to be made. I am, genetically, cursed to a sideshow freak level of hairiness. Thank my Ukrainians and Scottish ancestors who probably decided to grow their own clothes. So, you buy a waxing kit, razors, and a depilatory in the hope that one of them will unlock the key to ad-worthy smoothness. The waxing will just unlock the key to a nasty-ass rash. Which means the purchase of some hydrocortisone cream must be made. And more alcohol, if I'm going to brave public viewing looking like this.

By the time I lurch into the gym, out a good chunk of cash and kind of tipsy, I realized I couldn't find my way into the pool. And not because I was that drunk. Because I couldn't find a damn door. I could see into the pool from windows, but all of the doors said "Pool Office," or "Pool Equipment," or "NO ENTRY- Male Swimmers must use locker room entrance." What's a female swimmer to do? Wander around aimlessly for fifteen minutes before going into the "Office" door, naturally.

The class itself went well. I like the water more than my skin likes wax, thankfully. Our instructor also seems like a nice goofy guy. Who is also blessed with a divine torso. As soon as my eyes started to wander south of his head, I would start to dumbly stare at his abdominal muscles, my mouth going all slack jawed. I have turned into a twenty-year old, female lech. This kid is going to turn out to be sixteen or some such nonsense. But until then, I'll do whatever Abdom- Andrew tells me to do.