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.

The Reading Pile

The other day, I was talking with a fellow English student at work. We were talking about how we read, how much we read, and why we read. We both realized that we usually read at least 50 books a year. This apparently puts us in the top something percent of readers in the world, but I suppose we have an unfair advantage in being English students. Like workers in a Siberian gulag, we are forced to do it. Personally, this semester I was assigned 16 books; so far I've read fourteen. But it was in the personal arena that we both realized how similar we were. We weren't monogamists, and in fact were more like serial kink enthusiasts. There was the book that was easily portable, and went into the backpack. And then there was the respectable book you had been "reading" for so long you were ashamed to bring it out of the house. This is not to be confused with the book that's too big to lug around, and is read before bed. So, in the interests of science, here's a look at my current reading pile, and the various phenotypes represented therein. Compare and contrast with your own.

And so the random links for today are literature-themed:
Forgotten Bookmarks. I once found a letter from the Netherlands, in Dutch, in a copy of the French Lieutenant's Woman.
From the McGill Daily, a write-up on the Scott Pilgrim series. Mr. Weisler works at my job, and I can assure you he is a most excellent person as well as a good writer.
Anthony Lane on Beckett's letters.
Lizzie Skurnick on why a web critic should mourn for print journalism.

Huey Long? I didn't feel a thing!

Sometimes I think I'm one of those people whose humour is actually just a series of inside jokes... with themself. See, yesterday I had brought my computer to class to try and work on an essay, which usually just means I end up scrolling through New Yorker articles while obsessively refreshing Facebook. The article I was reading at the time- George Packer's "Populism and Paranoia"- referenced Huey Long, one of those historical people who, like Benjamin Disraeli, I know is very important, although I cannot conclusively say why. So, this leads me to the Wikipedia article on Huey Long, which leads to a snort from my seatmate, Sam. He's surprised that, of all the things a person could be reading about in class, I'm reading about Huey Long. And that makes me laugh.

So, I've tried telling this story to about five people now, and nobody gets why I think it's funny. I'm not sure if it's because the name Huey Long is inherently funny, assasination or not, or because two people can have a weird bonding moment over a dead Louisiana politician. Or maybe I'm just amused that so much human interaction is mediated by the Internet. Either way, nobody's laughing but me. Maybe it's time to work in a double entendre with Long's name...

What I Did On My Ottawa Vacation

Sorry this took so long to go up. If this was real life, and I really had to write a report for school, I would make up for my tardiness by handing this in bound by a classy duotang and with an illustrated title page. Well, just imagine a picture of the Parliament Buildings and the Museum of Civilization (neither of which I went to) with "My Ottawa Vacation" in the classiest of fonts: Curlz! Or maybe you don't have to imagine it!


But what did I really do on my Ottawa vacation? Well, I saw my brother for the first time in almost a year, for one thing. It was strange- we hadn't seen each other in so long, but we didn't talk about that. Or give a Cliff's Notes version of what we had been up to. instead we settled into our usual routine of good-natured banter and teasing. I don't think my brother would have been so calm if he wasn't freshly in love. The whole thing's awfully cute from her bangs to my brother's plan that they'll live in his garrett for a month. Yes, my brother lives in a garrett. Vincent Van Gogh would find it small. If he wasn't hepped up on goofballs. Or absinthe. Whatever, I'm no art historian.

His roommates could sustain a sitcom, at least. There's the tall Philosophy M.A., who acts like Michael Cera and blow dries his air. I argued about homoeroticism vs. hyper masculinity for a while, since he (incorrectly in my view) believes that for the former to exist there must be some kind of intentionality on the part of the creator. I'm not sure if Commando is an able rebuttal or not. Then there's Vanessa, whose current boyfriend I met before her and who teaches locking at a dance studio. She would sing about my fishnets every time she saw me in a skirt. The last character has a name that should have prepared him for a life of porn stardom, but had decided to dedicated himself to campus activism instead. Unsurprisingly, he is vegan. They all treat my brother like some kind of den daddy, which is hilarious to watch. If your the little sister he has, at one time, shot in the face with a BB gun.

Oh, and things were done, of course. My brother is much cooler than I am, which means he knows all of the fun things to do in town. Like Time Kode on Friday, which is an almost-scenester gathering, but far enough from the beaten path that most of the bullshit is cleared out. And, reader, I danced. I danced because there was a protective layer of bad dancers around me, and the music was very good and very loud, and because I was wearing an extra-large hoodie. Oh, and there was a random movie with Sun Ra in it being projected, so maybe he was working his crazy mojo on me. The next day we met up with my cousin and his lovely wife R. I've been half in love with R since my cousin married her. She seems to know everyone, and have done everything, except for the things she's learning to do now. She also knows all of the good thrift and vintage shops, which is what we did. And all of the tony home furnishing stores. Some of those chairs- the leather, the line- were enough to make you house proud. And reject Ikea as the Swedish anti-christ.

Then it was dinner, and a movie. I was debating between Pontypool and I Love You, Man. I like to suppport Canadian film as much as the next person, especially when it involves zombies, but I also have a deep, deep need for glossy entertainment. So, I chose I love You, Man. To which I say: eh. I didn't regret any of the ticket price, but it really wasn't worth a penny more. It coasted a lot on the charm of Paul Rudd and Jason Segal, but anything that pulls off a running joke about Anwar Sadat (and a dog with an uncanny resemblence) is not entirely worthless. My brother *hated* it though, although perhaps it was less because it was boring and more because it might be uncomfortably familiar. This was discussed over brunch the next morning at the Manx, as my brother's best friend charmed some tea out of the waitress. I pushed my omelette around and wondered if I hadn't crossed some invisble line of authenticity by getting one with goat cheese and roasted peppers. I could have concluded this on the bus back to Montreal, after but I read. So I wouldn't miss my brother, or my family back in Guelph, or wonder soppily if I would ever wear a tatoo as well as my he does.

So, I left Ottawa without hitting any major tourist spot, not even the cat shelter. And I love my cats. But maybe that's the best way to see Ottawa, if you're a Canadian. Stay away from the tourist traps and you won't feel like a stock player in CanadaTown. And you might have a better chance of seeing my awesome brother.

Capital Bound

I'll be in Ottawa this weekend, visiting my esteemed (and unfortunately be-mulleted) brother. I haven't seen him for almost a year, since he went on a crazy adventure that took him from Ottawa to Korea, to Victoria, and then back again. Before I went, though, I just wanted to prove that the Monkey socks did get finished. I wore them yesterday, and they were perfectly fine socks. Although they made me hungry for cotton candy every time I looked at them.