it's the little things that make me crazy, like the thought of someone else touching your skin Wednesday, January 10, 2001 @ 07:20 p.m. Did I mention that I ran into Andrew yesterday [Monday], well, "ran into" in that he came into the store; he greeted me with "wow, actually WORKING for once?" and he had this dumb headset on, for his cellphone so he can talk and still drive with both hands, and I told him he looked like a Macdonald's employee. It struck me that I have been such an idiot in some areas of my life, and in a way, I have always let him get away with not remembering my name. I guess sometimes we all reach these points in our lives when we realize that neither faith nor courage will save us-- and then we just have to wait, not because we believe in anything and not because we're brave and not because we're strong, but just because we have to. "i hate my alarm clock. I always wake up five minutes before it's going to go off so I can turn if off... otherwise it will wake me up." Angie gave me a jade dragon for good fortune, which is good because I really feel I could use a little good fortune right now. I guess we all could, probably. But especially me, right now. Typewriters: once you write something with one and then give it away, it's gone forever. No copies. Everything is first-gen. Apparently, documents from various presidential terms have different value-- I mean, a Lincoln memo is a fun collectible and conversation piece for those high-society parties-- but Nixon documents exist in such numbers that museums can barely be prevailed upon to take them. Partly because he was president during the document explosion; partly, also, because he overestimated his own importance (although, how can the President of the United States overestimate his importance?) My father told me this, and then I later read a Wytold Rybczynski article of presidential libraries. As we grow more and more well-documented, our words become worth less. What would we give for a full set of Homer's website archives? Note written to myself on the top of my history notes: 10/01/01: everybody in binary! At Second Cup I built a tiger-trap out of my large cofee cup and a couple dozen wooden stirring wands, and then we did several "stress-tests" on the design with bottles, styrofoam cups, and fists, in various combinations. Do not worry, tigers. You are not small enough to fall into this trap. obligato obconic obcordate odburacy obdurate obeah obedience obedient obeisance obelisk obelize obelus obese obey obfuscate obi obit obiter dictum obituary object (and derivatives) objurgate oblanceolate oblast oblate obligate (and derivatives) oblique obliterate oblivion oblong owloquy obnoxious obnubliate oboe oboist obol obovate obovoid obscene obscure (and derivatives; someone, possibly me, has highlighted this one) obsequious observe (and derivatives) obsess (and derivatives) obsidian obsolesce (and derivatives) obstacle obstetric (and derivatives) obstinate (and derivatives) obstreperous obstruct obtain obtect obtest obtrude obturate obtuse obverse obvert obviate obvious obvolute Our Linguistics prof was talking about how humans tend to think in binary opposite terms: hot/cold, dead/alive, off/on, and so on. And he was explaining about graded antonyms-- like hot/cold, where the meanings of both are relative-- and alive/dead, which is a more absolute meaning. He added that no one ever "superdead". So I wrote myself a note on my hand: "superdead". Is the band Supertramp superdead, or are they years away from a reunion tour? Interesting thought. Having studied Noam Chomsky at some length last year in Theory of Knowledge and even read a little Wittgenstein (his key passages on words' meaning being entirely based on context), I realized that actually, I probably know a lot more than I think I know, have read a lot more than I think I have read-- and that this is due in part to my parents, the only people in the world who make WIttegenstein jokes at the supper table (our family has an ongoing gag about "it's what Wittgenstein would call a family resemblance"). I'm not trying to be elitist, but it's strange to realize that you're not average, and that other peoples' reality is totally different from your own-- and that in the absence of some kind of empathy drug you can never really understand anyone else. On that ubiquitous junior-high project where everyone has to "invest" in stocks and try to make money: Becky and her friends bought all Gap and Holt Renfrew and Revlon and Saks Fifth Avenue stocks. "We knew we were going to lose money, but we didn't care." Me and my group bet our virtual $20,000 on some obscure horse with huge odds against it to win, place or show in the Kentucky Derby. It came in second and we tripled our money, but then our math teacher disqualified us: "no gambling." The grand prize of Macdonald's gift certificates went to my arch-nemesis and secret crush object, who netted a measly $5,000 by entirely "moral" means (to whatever extent the stock market is more ethical than horse-racing). Sometimes I strike myself as a big disappontment, but then, I guess everyone feels that way sometimes. And you just have to wait, and you come out of it, although sometimes it takes until the weekend and sometimes it takes three years. And maybe sometimes you never come out of it. * earth to chandra: your brother is cute. get used to it! * * * * * two new things that are cool: Tuesday, January 9, 2001 @ 03:44 p.m. typewriters lime margaritas excerpts and disconnected phrases from the notebook of wayward mobility: you have to excuse me, i'm still and you're in motion a spanish poem iwrote with my spanish magnetic poetry: yo salgo porque tu labio es fuego caliente verdader pero el mundo es frio I am leaving because your lip is fiery hot truth but the world is cold. My dad lent me his old typewriter, on which he wrote a half-dozen dissertations, and I have been typing everything on it: "the feeling of being intimately connected to what one is writing-- the fingers words i wrote appear before me" "do you ever get 2/3 of the way up the stairs and realize your life isn't worth it?" spend time alone find a stick in the basement drink water and gold dust and live on impatience slaughtered for weakness electric like static slaughtered, you're weak there's no need to speak you change your shoelaces i like firecrackers step on the sparks * * * * * it's you i blame, but maybe that's not right Sunday, January 7, 2001 @ 06:46 p.m. when i woke up this morning, my hair smelled really funny. the only way i could think of to describe it was that it smelled the way i always imagine gorillas would smell-- not necessarily bad, just sweet and kind of musty and foreign. weird moment: Jeff and Chris J. going down to the bar for drinks and Jeff coming back up a moment later with the saddest possible look on his face: "Chris says he needs more money." Then, everyone diggihg reluctantly into their pockets and a sad clutter of toonies, loonies and quickly appearing on the table. Last night, 2.30 am: "In spire of my ability to carry on intelligent, even semi-intellectual conversation, I can't walk straight, everything spins, and my whole head feels like it's moving. I don't feel good-- I'm a fatalistic, meloncholy drunk-- but it is a strange sensation." "We don't serve margaritas to Charles Dickens." "Now, stay out of trouble!" CUSTOMER Where are your toothpicks? JOCELYN We don't have toothpicks. CUSTOMER I thought this was a convenience store! JOCELYN We don't get much demand for toothpicks. Updated: dribblepita * * * * * my printer is very sneaky Friday, January 5, 2001 @ 11:33 p.m. wake up, printer! i want to print things with you * * * * * Today's metabolic notes Friday, January 5, 2001 @ 11:09 p.m. I'm not sure why, but I'm always hungry these days. Perhaps my metabolism is speeding up, for some reason? Or I am pregnant, for some reason? Or perhaps it's psychological. I came home from work with a craving for protein and ate two peanut-butter sandwiches and two glasses of milk. Now I feel better. This is a mental note to me: "to the batcave!" I watched six episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer today. "In Becoming, Part II we had the big swordfight, which was something I insisted on because... you gotta have a big swordfight." Cheers. "do guns make YOU think of sex?" "I'm 17. Linoleum makes me think of sex." * * * * * and she gives it away, and you are fascinated by her Wednesday, January 3, 2001 @ 10:02 p.m. I just finished watching the movie Magonlia. The frogs really pulled it together for me. Until that point I was kind of muzzy, but then frogs began to fall and suddenly i understood. * * * * * breakfast--every hour--it could save the world Tuesday, January 2, 2001 @ 12:12 p.m. i don't want jeff to feel like i didn't appreciate his website designs, but on the other hand, i have been away from my computer for so long that HTML was burning in my fingers. i couldn't NOT, you know? the "watch this space" section will be a one or two line thing that I change from time to time depending, as always, on my whim. are you proud of me? I quit three webrings, removed some old stinky links, and now everything looks much more... elegant. i want a webring. * * * * * watch for buried Mommas and Poppas references Monday, January 1, 2001 @ 09:53 p.m. Increasingly over the past months I've been writing more in my journal of wayward mobility (fun new paper format!) than in this one, because it's more convenient-- it goes places Mr. Jones just doesn't-- and also because, let's face it, paper is just more... flexible. I mean, it's really hard to draw little pictures of monkeys on a computer. Especially an old computer. And writing "Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy" over and over again on my computer doesn't capture the poignant sense of longing quite as well as good ole handwriting. But tonight I am back at the journal proper, because tonight speed is of the essence. I've got a lot to say, baby, and my fingers are-- fingers of fire-- you guys think I'm funny, right? 'You guys' who? Why do I have this ongoing fantasy that my life has an audience? Some kind of cosmic webcam-- like The Truman Show-- even what you do in private must meet public appeal. * I'm HOME! I dumped all my stuff-- both Christmas stuff and travel stuff-- into a big pile on my bedroom floor, and I have now eliminated this pile and built a newer, smaller pile on my desk. And with a huge bowl of ice cream with caramel sauce on hand, I am ready. That's how I work, baby. Building it up, building it down. HOW WAS MY TRIP?!? HOW WAS MY TRIP? HOW DARE YOU PRESUME TO ASK, YOU BASTARD? YOU FUCKING BASTARD! Ha, ha. Angie and Jeff have noticed that I use the word "fuck" a lot. Now it's important to my sense of self-definition that I keep doing it. Damn, I got caramel sauce on my 'e'. This can only end in pain, since it's such a well-used letter. Also, the whole bottom row of text on my monitor is now obscured by toys: Diode, my Bendo robot, three pez dispensers, Squirtle play-doh (what was I thinking?), two Macdonald's happy meal toys, and my fossilized sea monkeys. God bless Mrs. Gwin, who made me the accurate typist I am. * On the plane, my sister kept saying in a fake-whiny voice, "keep your tentacles on YOUR SIDE of the armrest." To tell the truth, I think the guy behind us was getting pretty annoyed. But it's all in good fun. * Some notes, presented in the journal of wayward mobility as a brainstorm thought-tree, or whatever it's called, on California: home to tanned, good-time girls like Sweet Valley twins and Malibu Barbie WEM on grander scale Mexican-style architecture of varying degrees of authenticity Signs in English and Spanish Celesteville-style like rows of houses and palm trees on hillsides technology's cradle? (more S.F. and Silicon V. than San Diego, now Japan or other?) FRY'S! birthplace and stronghold of modern celebrity ideal lush greenery-> PALM TREES! endless freeways and suburbania BUT: The IKEA stores in both San Diego and Edmonton are having the same sale-- the world is a strange place indeed. * Picture you. Yeah, you, in the boxer shorts with the holes in the crotch. Now picure you, wearing those same boxers and nothing else. At the Oscras after-party, a champagne flute in one hand. Trying to chat up Charlize Theron--and she has such great hair!--but she keeps laughing at you. That is the mental state I have been in for the past week. My childhood best friend and her two younger sisters-- the people I was visiting in San Diego, their father has been a friend of my dad's since they were 13-- have turned into three overwhelmingly beautiful, accomplished, well-adjusted, self-confident people. I HATED spending time with them. They wore SKIRTS-- to Mexican restaurants and afternoon movies-- the types of events that normal people wear jeans to. Whenever they left the house, they left smelling like three kinds of good. They got eight phone calls, each, every hour. They would be going out with friends and on dates every ten minutes and I would be sitting at the kitchen table playing gin rummy with my parents and I would just be, like, uh... see you guys later. No, no, I'm having fun! See me smiling? I felt like the biggest loser EVER. And I know I love the model PT cruiser and the Spanish Magnetic Poetry Kit (!) I got for Christmas, and I AM a huge geek, and I'm lazy about my appearance-- I mean, I wash, and I wear clean clothes, and I think that should be enough-- but still... my life exists in a way that lets me feel good about myself, and then I go out into the real world and remember that I am somehow-- different-- from most people. I realize how elitist that sounds, and I don't mean it to. Well, maybe I do. I mean, I fucking deserve it. This was the worst Christmas EVER! But, like the terminal optimist I am (oh, shut up), I have compiled a top ten list for my trip (along with several little drawings of monkeys and submarines, which you will just have to imagine). In no particular order... [Interruption: I diminish the pile on my desk, eat chocolate-covered espresso beans (I love you santa), call Kristan, and sing along with the radio while explaining to my sister that I am a "dominatrix supermodel beauty queen". I think that guy from O-Town (?) just said something about his "liquid dreams". Like, seriously. I don't want to know!] Old Navy-- a godsend. I love this store! It's cheap, it's easy, and I come out looking semi-presentable with very little effort. I have to conserve my shopping calories. The monkeys at the San Diego zoo-- fuck, I love monkeys. They're so damn cute. (I also love using the word "fuck". I mean, fuck, I have a reputation to uphold here.) Sitting in the bright sun listening to my California mixtape and getting a tan Going to Mexico and paying 204 pesos for a Spanish copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude-- Cien Anos De Soledad Barnes and Noble-- and store, not the website-- be still my beating heart. I spent almost US$100 on books on this trip. And you know I love it. Movie: "The Colour of Paradise". Airplane food. It comes in little tubs, it's... fun... I don't know why. Oh, and... flying EXECUTIVE CLASS! Ha ha. I repeat: haha. The seats are 150% wider, you get more legroom, and hot Australian guys come and give you full-body massages mid-flight... well, at least, that's what happened to me. Adding a tenth country to my list of countries I've been to. Canada, US, England, Wales, Scotland, France, Switzerland, Kenya, Tanzania, and now Mexico. Watching eight movies in seven days. Rentals: The Colour of Paradise, Erin Brockovich, U-571, Strictly Ballroom, Tootsie. In theatres: Finding Forrester, Miss Congeniality, and Cast Away. Realizing, with help from Meghan, that I have now seen a movie (Finding Forrester) that has not been released in Canada. Feeling superior to my friends and countrymen. LoveSeat-style Stadium Seating. The film entertainment innovation couples anywhere have been waiting for! Angie, I think, will be with me on this. THE. THEATRE. ARMRESTS. FOLD. UP. I love you George Bush! And this is not just good for couples, although I admit blow jobs are really, really hard to do with those damned armrests. I am talking fully binary, flexible, modular theatre furniture. It is a theatre-going geek's delight! I mean, this is-- patentable-- it's fascinating-- it's difficult to describe, but the thought of a whole row of seats with no armrests fills my heart with joy. Think of the possibilities! The future is friendly! Going home. I love my house. I love Edmonton. I love the fact that no one in LAX will help you with anything-- I mean, you could be slipping in and out of a diabetic coma and people would tred (trod?) on you-- but when you arrive in Calgary men in red cowboy hats jump out of nowhere and tell you where you have to go. Without you even having to ask. I love Canada because it's full of people like me, people who thinking other people who live in Canada are great and "the weather's not really that bad". I know that makes sense. Not being able to count. * I guess the weather in California really IS incredible. It's like the Sims-- it's like Barbie-- it's not really weather, it's an absence of weather. All the calories we spend getting bundled up and bundled down could be spent doing other stuff-- like growing palm trees-- and going to SeaWorld. Maybe it's all just as well. I am only making one new year's resolution this year, and that is to stop eating food from HUB mall more than once a week. You guys have to be the enforcers. Lay the smack down on me if I try to eat too many french fries. And if I bite you, you can translate that as "thank you. You guys are my strength and my fortitude." (junior high deja vu: "mom, can I go home? Jocelyn bit me!" This really happened.) Also, I want to read at least some of the books in this huge stack on my desk: The Beautiful And Damned Five Decades of Poems: Pablo Neruda 1925-1970 The Way People Run The End Of The Affair Gabriel Garcia Marquez' collected novellas The Lexus and the Olive Tree Out of Africa The God Of Small Things Jazz News of a Kidnapping The Secret Parts of Fortune Wuthering Heights These are books that I have purchased and then not read to varying degrees. Some of them are closer to read than others. To make myself feel better, though, I actually DID knock a few off the list this Christmas: Looking Around (Witold Rybczynski, and I spelled that without looking-- I'm about two-thirds through it), Popcorn (about half-read now, and I'm still working on it), My Movie Business (finished in about three hours-- John Irving writes another short, highly readable memoir). I'm a very impulsive book-buyer but a less impulsive book-reader. Sometimes I hate myself. But, that was last year's new year's resolution, and do I seem fitter happier more productive to you? Actually, yes. My new year's resolution is to stop answering my own questions in the style of an old, crazy person. * See? Total internet withdrawl. I had to come and play around with computers for awhile to make up for a whole week without a mouse in my hand. But now I'm back... to let you know... I can really shake 'em down. Also, I bought the badassest presents. You guys are going to love what I found for $1. Seriously! * * * * * l < subversive > ? boys [suck] i've been since march 1st, 2000!